Worrying came naturally to Reiki in many ways, but he’d tried to moderate the tendency somewhat since Christmas. At least, with specific regard to the meeting he was heading toward, the one that he had specifically asked for (and borrowed Kaifeng and his signet ring to request). As Reiki headed down from leaving a gift at Levi’s apartment, he kept smoothing his hands down his skirt with the black-purple-silver plaid print and the fluffy petticoats he’d paired with it, trying to keep himself more or less grounded.
In the note that he’d sent Faustite, Reiki had promised that he didn’t want to talk over Faustite about his own feelings. That sentiment held true. What challenged him as he slunk through town, unpowered, was the same thing that had challenged Reiki this whole time: the upcoming conversation mattered to him. Faustite mattered to him, regardless of how much anybody else in Reiki’s life (especially Yuki) wished that this wasn’t the case. Twisting himself around into a million knots about how Faustite might or might not react, when Reiki told him what was going on, it happened as naturally as breathing, as stubbornly as Reiki’s own conscious refusal to give up on getting the mix for a number exactly perfect when he’d already gotten attached to the idea.
Being entirely honest with himself, part of Reiki didn’t actually want to have this conversation. Part of him wanted everything to magically be okay, so that he wouldn’t need to tell Faustite anything when he felt fairly sure that it would change so much for them and that he ran a considerable risk of hurting Faustite.… But between Reiki and the Mirror, something had to give. Since that something was Reiki himself, he needed to own his choice to Faustite, to let Faustite decide for himself how he felt, instead of deciding that for him and ******** off without a word in order to avoid the fallout.
For all he couldn’t blame anyone who’d left the Negaverse like that, Reiki hated how the mere thought of doing that himself felt.
That he had another gift for Faustite tonight……both helped and didn’t? Reiki had intended to have the zine ready for Christmas, but he’d needed some extra help from Obaasan in getting the internal layout correct. Too many drafts had wound up with the pages all out of order, and only her expertise from having once led up making several vintage Star Trek fanzines had saved Reiki in the end. Bringing it to Faustite tonight, though……almost felt like begging Faustite not to hate him instead of allowing him to feel however he would. Still, Reiki had chosen the fics of his based on hoping that Faustite would enjoy them even if he didn’t know the characters. He’d made it for Faustite, and whatever else happened, Reiki wanted him to have it.
He powered up a few blocks off from the park where they’d agreed to meet and crossed the last stretch as Murikabushi. Maybe his fuku wouldn’t feel like some other queen’s beautiful gown, next time he and Faustite crossed paths after this. As much as Reiki dreaded the sight of himself in so much white—Pendour had tried very hard to reassure him that he likely wouldn’t look so bad in white, and he appreciated her efforts, but reserved the right to disagree—the concept of actually feeling at home while powered up as a magical girl went to his head faster than the old song suggested. He tried to banish those thoughts as he took a seat on a bench to wait for Faustite, though.
Intoxication over things that hadn’t happened yet was silly to begin with. But Reiki really couldn’t afford to let himself succumb to that before he and Faustite had actually talked. He needed to be present in the conversation, or he was that much more likely to ******** it up.
The zine, wrapped up in violet paper decked out with silver stars, came out of Reiki’s subspace and rested in his lap.
Strickenized_
Since the Muri-Kaifeng-Helene thread is still getting to it, Faustite’s gift included: two big bags of Thin Mint Pretzels; a plush dragon with a hand crocheted green body (similar to Albite’s green) and some stitched-on details in a more emerald-adjacent shade (similar to Alkmene’s green), and a post-it note on the forehead that said “NOT fire-resistant but should be safe with cincher, Handle With Care”; and a handmade zine of Not Safe For Gaia fanfiction (details below) with hand-drawn cover art (a black, taloned hand curled around a little ball of fire, with black roses and thorns twined around it like the snakes on a caduceus) and a post-it note attached to the Table of Contents: [I realize you may not know all the characters, so I tried to pick some where you didn’t need to know them to super-intimately to appreciate the Boys. 🖤]
cw: nothing outright Not Safe For Gaia is said below the spoiler cut, but there are implications of Not Safe For Gaia things, including: [adopted] sibling incest (Thor and Loki from the MCU); incredibly intense Monster Or Monster-Adjacent Romance (human/dragon, human/demon, human/angel, human/Cardassian, and human/Turian); hero/villain ships (Thor/Loki, Saren/Shepard from Mass Effect, Hannigram); mutually ******** up Bad Romance ships (Luo Binghe/Shen Jiu from Scum Villain); two ships that are not per se teacher/student but do have a mentor/protege backstory (BingJiu and Obi-Wan/Anakin from Star Wars); and risk-aware consensual kink that often involves pushing characters’ limits and testing their endurance.
Quote:
The specific ten stories in the little homemade zine that Reiki put together for Faustite are:
“summer’s grass might hide a thorn” (A Song of Ice and Fire, Renly Baratheon/Loras Tyrell. In which Ser Loras goes green with envy, watching his Lord Renly—the man he loves and would see become King—seem to flirt with another pretty young thing. So, Loras drags Renly out of the banquet to prove how and why he’s the best knight in the Seven Kingdoms, in very Not Safe For Gaia fashions).
“what can i possibly say” (Marvel/MCU, Thor/Loki. Alternate take on the reveal of MCU!Loki’s Jötunn heritage, in which Thor notices and gets Loki banished to Midgard with him in some ridiculous, Asgardian himbo attempt at keeping His Loki safe. This is the exact opposite of what Loki wanted, but there is some comfort in the fact that Thor is doing literally everything he asks right now. Codependent dumb-asses are codependent. The comfort is Not Safe For Gaia. Is this fic here because its take on Thor reminds Reiki of Albite? ……A little bit, yeah).
“you try to warn him, but he doesn’t listen” (Star Trek: Deep Space 9, Elim Garak/Julian Bashir. Well, truly, what kind of queer space lizard boyfriend would Garak be if he didn’t use all his creativity and experience from working for the Cardassian Obsidian Order to help train his dear doctor in resisting an intense interrogation? Moreover, do these two really need to justify their intense but loving Not Safe For Gaia boyfriend activities with “spy training”? I mean, no, they don’t, technically. But they’re going to do it anyway because they are Like This and it’s part of the fun).
“constantly talking isn’t necessarily communicating” (The Vampire Chronicles, Louis de Pont du Lac/Lestat de Lioncourt. If Lestat wants any relief, he has to control himself and sit there quietly, saying nothing and making as little noise as possible, while Louis finishes the novel he’s reading. This would be a lot for anybody, but for Lestat, who will simply wither up and die if you do not give him attention and let him talk for as many hundreds of pages as he wants, it is pure torture. Yes, it is torture that he enthusiastically consented to, but that’s not the point. Louis also has methods of making it harder for Lestat to stay quiet, and he utilizes most of them).
“i was looking for a breath of life” (Star Wars Prequel Trilogy/Clone Wars era, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker. Something something, so it’s an Alternate Universe where they fell to the Dark Side together so that the Jedi Council couldn’t break up their torrid, forbidden relationship, and then they took over the Galaxy Far, Far Away because why the ******** not, and now they have to deal with the massive sociopolitical fallout. That’s not in this fic, though. In this fic, Emperor Skywalker and his right-hand man/Master get Not Safe For Gaia in ways that include extremely inadvisable uses of the Force to test Anakin’s endurance and ability to withstand being choked).
“you’ll always be my favorite ghost” (Hannibal [Bryan Fuller], Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham. Mutually codependent murder husbands on the lam together after the finale episode’s cliffhanger, getting Especially Husband-Like with each other immediately after doing one of their ridiculous modern art installation murders, and maybe a bit rough about that intimacy, but they both like it rough).
“i guess i can tell you that now” (MDZS, Wangxian. Something something, a ravenous dragon will kidnap Princess Jiang Yanli because reasons, something something, her mother makes Wei Wuxian dress in girl drag and take her place because it’s fine if he gets hurt, something something, Lan Wangji is a dragon who expected to be kidnapping a nubile girl he could simply devour and be done with, not the most gorgeous and infuriatingly charming boy he has ever seen in his entire draconic life. Wangxian get Not Safe For Gaia while LWJ is in his dragon form. Reiki was in A Mood when he wrote this and the mood in question was “homosexuality.”)
“everybody’s got this broken feeling” (Mass Effect, Saren Arterius/m!Commander Shepard. “If Shepard can come back to life, then so can Saren, and then he and Shepard can make their palpable sexual tension everyone else’s problem because I think it’s hot. Also, I don’t care what canon says. It’s the magical space future, Gorgeous; I will find a way for humans and Turians to smash beyond forehead touching”—how Reiki described this fic to Yuki while writing it, probably).
“my hands no longer an afterthought” (Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System, Luo Binghe/Shen Jiu. Reiki over here like “Yeah, I loved Scum Villain but also, I literally don’t care about the protagonist, please give me the traumatized jerk he transmigrated into, I’m interested in him. Shen Jiu is the best and silly isekai boy Shen Yuan is unworthy of Luo Binghe, who has done nothing wrong ever in his life.”
Anyway, when Luo Binghe became the Demon Emperor, he kidnapped his abusive shizun and took him as a wife. Mutual “can’t really decide if it’s enmity or toxic love or some secret third thing, but they sure do feel it intensely and make it everybody else’s problem.” The Not Safe For Gaia is very rough, and Reiki leans hard into “What if Luo Binghe had more visibly monstrous demon traits? That sounds sexy.” The title is from Richard Siken’s poem “Little Beast,” which, incidentally, is how Shen Jiu addresses Demon Emperor Luo for the vast majority of this fic).
“god’s treasures are buried in ruined hearts” (Supernatural, Castiel/Dean Winchester. In which Castiel feels up Dean’s soul. No, this is not an exaggeration. Yes, this is something that can technically happen in SPN canon. Reiki’s version is incredibly Not Safe For Gaia because of course it is and includes a LOT of Cas lovingly and concernedly reading Dean to filth about how so many people have fought and died for him, and so many people choose to live for him despite the objectively awful circumstances that follow them everywhere, and Dean still doesn’t believe he deserves to be saved. Reiki wrote this before he Awakened and learned anything about starseeds, so any resemblance to reality is completely accidental)
Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 5:38 pm
Far he may have fallen yet, and long did he have to go before he could reclaim his staunch autonomy, but Faustite did not yet beg. He did not beg for Albite to let him leave the house, nor did he beg for Alkmene to stay home. He did not beg Celadonite to let go of him for a while, or beg Taenite to watch Albite and ensure the rash boy didn't commit stupid crimes, and he did not beg Heliodor to keep his passing to himself. But he did not leave without a word, and all who were curious for where he went would find a note on the seat of his wheelchair. With him came only but the most unequivocally loyal.
Faustite teleported to the suggested location, and his rustiness with the skill showed in how he felt just a margin dizzy afterward. Were he yet only a General, he'd have felt the blood flee his legs surely, but while he wore that selfsame uniform, he'd been a General-King shortly before. It was with his pair of specially made crutches that he was able to hobble his way across the blessedly smooth concrete in search of the boy who called on him that night.
The midnight hour was approaching, and the city held fast to its fireworks in a surprising show of temperance. New Years Day didn't share the same meaning for him when he was branded outsider to it, but he understood anticipation just the same.
But crutches were troublesome things, and he had already broken out in a light sweat by the time he spotted the boy in his familiar, noble purples and reds as he was perched upon a bench. Luckily, whatever he had with him rested in his lap, for if it was sitting on the bench next to him, Faustite would have had half a mind to tell him to move it out of his way.
Elsewhere, distant yet within line of sight, were the shadowed raven youma that wove grand circles about the buildings. Their orders were but to watch, and to send word to the boys and the team should something go amiss. He'd grown to trust this one, however, so the expectation was for a nosy White Moon Senshi to spring up and ruin an otherwise docile time.
As he approached the bench, he tried to smile, but part of his face still ached where an arrow had protruded just beneath his cheekbone. That arrow had long since evaporated, but its hole demanded time yet to heal, so many of his expressions remained muted. There was no greeting to accompany that half-smile, either, for his hands were occupied, and any matter of writing his hellos would have to wait until he could negotiate his crutches into one hand and seat himself with a notable lack of grace. It was in the absence of Albite's help that he most recognized its usefulness, it seemed.
Heaving a sigh of relief, Faustite withdrew his charcoal pen from subspace and wrote a simple phrase that would blaze to life somewhere in Murikabushi's periphery: Been a while.
Feeling the Negaverse aura crop up on his senses, Reiki couldn’t help the brief, admittedly airheaded thought, Aw, ******** me, that better not be somebody else. Of course, it could have been somebody else, but as he fussed with tucking some loose hair behind his ear, Reiki settled his nerves with the reassurance that, A., it probably wasn’t anyone else. However, B., if it was, then maybe they wouldn’t try to start any trouble.
In the event of them getting feisty, though, C., Reiki could find a way to handle it. Whether it required violence or not—and he hoped not (tacky, tacky, tacky to choose violence with one of Faustite’s colleagues right before trying to be soft with the boy himself)—Reiki could and would get himself out of any Situations.
Fortunately, the universe went with Plan A. Kind when things work out how they’re supposed to.
Reiki looked up to meet Faustite with a smile, but at the sight of him, that warm expression faded first into confusion. The closer he got on his crutches, and the more Reiki could drink in the visual indicators of his current state, the more that confusion melted instead into concern. Part of him itched to get up and go meet Faustite—but with a deep breath and a metaphysical pillow, Reiki gently smothered the impulse. Shoved it down and made himself sit still. Assuming anything about Faustite generally ended with Reiki being wrong, and in this case—when the matter at hand was Faustite’s capabilities and the state of his own recovery from………whatever mangling he’d endured—Reiki’s habit of making assumptions felt far too likely to veer hard into condescension or worse, pity.
Can’t very well complain about not wanting any White Moon idiots to treat me like a pity case, Reiki mused, shifting his skirts closer to him so Faustite would have more room to sit and rest his crutches, then turn around and do the same thing to him.
Reiki was considering what to say—how to even open a conversation when Faustite had shown up looking like he’d been through everybody’s wringer multiple times—when Faustite took the initiative. The words that burned at the edge of Reiki’s vision, and the tool that it seemed had made them, were useful. Put a small smile back on Reiki’s face as he turned to face Faustite more fully, though the simple fact of smiling did not, overall, make him look less concerned.
“It has been,” he agreed, fussing his hands over the violet wrapping paper as he forced himself not to start asking the dozens of questions springing up in his head like weeds in spring. Given the limitations on Faustite’s ability to speak, it only felt right for Reiki to say less, for once in his life. Try his best to pull out the heart of what he wanted to say, instead of assaulting Faustite with chattering that went ten miles a minute and probably contradicted itself at least twice. “Seems like it hasn’t been a great time for either of us, though at least my problems didn’t come from……kidnapping and torture? Accident in the Rift? Princess s**t?”
All of the ideas felt more or less equally plausible to Reiki. Probably plenty of White Moon senshi and Knights in Destiny City might have taken on the task of kidnapping and torturing Faustite; they might have even done it for no reason beyond making him hurt. The Rift, while mostly an unknown quantity to Reiki, sounded like an inherently dangerous place from what little he did know. And sure, Ida had promised him that she would still help Faustite after everything that had happened, but Ida-hime-sama was not the only Princess in town, and at least one Reiki could name had tried to kill Faustite before. Considering the formidable magical power that all princess senshi seemed to wield—even, Reiki had to begrudgingly admit, a Dark Mirror prince(ss) (mostly annoying because Remarque saving everyone during that misadventure in Mirrorspace had disproven Reiki’s “Maybe Mirror senshi are broken rejects and that’s why we have to be here” theory and stolen the last scraps of his ability to hide in that particular rationalization)? One of the White Moon Princesses easily could have put Faustite in such a bad way, physically.
Regardless, Reiki added, “Thank you for coming tonight.… I’ve missed you.” He slid the wrapped up zine off his lap and held it out for Faustite. “I meant to have this ready on Christmas, but making it gave me some trouble. Had to get some help with it.”
Strickenized
Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 7:18 pm
Princess s**t, Faustite wrote in turn. It was a smart enough guess; Faustite wasn't sure what else would match up with what happened to him besides firing squad, and as it had been explained to him before, getting shot would have left much larger exit holes on the other side than the arrows did. Decidedly, kidnapping and torture or accidents in the Rift failed to reproduce such staggering uniformity.
But Faustite had endured altogether too much time to reflect unfeelingly about his own misfortunes, however self-imposed. Muri had only the matter of moments that elapsed upon first looking at him and seeing the damage that wasn't hidden by his conservative uniform. That he had questions about it was depressing, but expected. Faustite need only endure them.
The dilemma that Muri presented, however, was not the one that Faustite came to expect. He'd essentially had the pre-marathon training of enduring Albite's endless motormouth tendencies while Faustite couldn't tell him to shut up, so Faustite felt himself well-prepared to take on Muri's hurricane of words, exceptions, and real-time revisions to natter his way into a very specific meaning. While it demanded the majority of his meager stores of patience, he learned to weather these exact situations — even if it required a nap afterward. He could likewise endure being confronted with A Boy, for as much as boys had the tendency to hurt him at times, their mere existences oft outweighed any harms they inadvertently inflicted. The ones who managed to outstrip the benefits of being A Boy were simply reclassified and rebranded as no longer boys.
Like Encke, for example. That one was a target. Boys were not targets for such things as warfare.
However, Muri's challenge came not from his wordiness, but instead from what lay in his hands. Faustite recognized, then, that it required him to put on his cincher, which he had taken off for an earlier bath and entrusted to Hestia to scrub clean thereafter. It was returned to him, of course, with a veritable shine to it, but that hardly made it easier to put on when raising his arms felt like he was getting shot all over again.
This time, there wasn't an Albite around to help him into it. But Faustite could sweat the impending pain of putting it on while he kept Muri talking.
You didn't need to get me anything.
But, of course, his heart skipped for looking at it. Even after his derision for Christmas grew after his sister so swiftly fled their group or when his mom passed away. Small surprises like this one and the ones gifted to him by his boys threatened to redeem the holiday, though it still nevertheless slipped past him unnoticed when he was so ensconced in missions and duties.
I can't speak, but you can. Tell me why it gave you trouble.
After putting the onus on Muri to occupy what would be an inevitable silence, Faustite prepared to don the cincher.
The confirmation that Faustite’s injuries had come from princess s**t put one name in Reiki’s mind, clear as those big, special crystals that princesses got to wield: Cybele.
Much like Ida, she wasn’t the only Princess in town. Offhand, Reiki was vaguely familiar with Lysithea (had gotten Monoceros out of the Negaverse, Princess of the planet whose fairy tale-looking Knights had been running around town of late) and the name Ganymede (he did not know them from a hole in the wall, only that they existed and were a Princess). Others all too likely existed as well; if Reiki had proven nothing else since Awakening, it was that he didn’t know a damn thing about magical girl goings-on in town. Plenty of candidates existed who might have done it besides Cybele.
But Cybele’s magic fit more than Reiki wanted to admit. He recalled too well the feeling of being pelted with arrows, being ripped apart by dogs that didn’t exist. On top of that, she and Faustite had the sort of enmity where each wanted the other dead for reasons that Reiki didn’t entirely know and couldn’t really begrudge them. Based on what all he knew about both Cybele and Faustite, their reasons for hating each other almost definitely rested on a solid foundation.
As much as he wanted to know more about the situation, Faustite reaching to don his cincher meant interrogating him about it would lead to a whole lot of nothing. His hand had their work cut out for him. Without them free, he couldn’t talk. Moreover, he’d asked Reiki questions and given him free reign to talk.
“I know I didn’t need to get you anything. I wanted to, though,” Reiki said, nodding and watching Faustite.
There was a fine balance to thread here. If Faustite needed help, he might not ask for it openly, but assuming that he couldn’t take care of himself might fall into the same trap of condescension and pity that Reiki had wanted to avoid when Faustite had walked over. The answer, it seemed to Reiki, came down to simply trusting Faustite to know his own abilities and limits, but watching and being available anyway.
Should be easy enough, Reiki told himself. I’d trust him to put my starseed back if he took it out, so I should be able to trust him with himself.
(The relative value of the boys in question might have been debatable, but at the same time, Reiki could think of several people who would have argued with him saying so without even invoking an argument like “Faustite is half-youma and that’s wrong” or “Faustite is an irascible, ill-tempered Hell-gremlin who regularly chooses violence against innocent people” or, indeed, any argument about Faustite, his character, his behaviors, etc.)
“As for what made the trouble,” Reiki went on, “you’ll see when you open it that there’s an internal layout to it. As we see, it’s somewhat book-shaped?”
He grinned more broadly as he held the zine up to demonstrate, but it didn’t feel like the grin of a seasoned queen, fresh off performing a complex and involved number, coming out to do a quickie encore to a prepared medley of Britney Spears, Klaus Nomi, and Miley Cyrus with Stevie Nicks to stall for time while some snafu backstage got cleaned up. An amateur night sort of grin. The face of a baby queen in the best outfit she could throw together at Forever 21, one of her first times performing outside her bedroom or her drag mom’s living room, having just finished twirling to Britney’s “Baby, One More Time,” desperately grinning to the audience for confirmation that she’d done well and that they liked her, they really liked her.
……Well, okay, maybe not quite that bad.
Not that Reiki had been that exact girl or anything (he had), but at least he could clock that the mood right now reeked less of desperation. Rather, his grin came out of hope tempered by anxiety, compassion, and the awareness that, in all likelihood, there was very little that he could do. No matter what kind of magical girl fantasy he’d dreamt about as a kid, Reiki didn’t have healing magic, and even if he had, being the Senshi of Hunger meant his brand of healing probably wouldn’t have done much to counter the very real wounds that Almost Definitely Cybele had inflicted on Faustite. But still, the consummate performer’s hope that he could amuse Faustite somewhat.
“On a structural level, the thing about books is, when you break them down, they’re made of multiple collections of larger pieces of paper folded in half and layered together. That’s all fine and easy to keep track of when you only have a couple sheets of paper, like say……when you’re eight years old and you want to try drawing a comic like the only maternal uncle who treats you decently? So, you get some four or five sheets of printer paper, fold them up, and go from there.”
Reiki paused to give the knowing shrug of an adult who had once been the child in question, even if Faustite wasn’t looking. If he didn’t see the gesture, he could interpret the moment of significant silence how he pleased
“In that situation, not only do you have fewer pages to worry about, but they’re also right in front of you. When you’re talking about enough space to print out short stories you wrote, though? Definitely a couple thousand words each, so writing them out by hand would be prohibitively time-consuming?” With a sigh, Reiki brought his explanation to a conclusion: “What you want to do is lay things out on the computer ahead of time, but then, it can be easy to get the order of things wrong. So, you end up going to stitch and bind things and finding the pages all out of order, and you just keep getting it wrong. At least in my case, my obaasan—that is, my grandmother—knew what to do. She noticed where I was going wrong pretty much immediately.”
He considered for a moment before adding, “None of the characters are mine, but I tried to pick stories where you could hopefully enjoy the pretty, fictional Boys without knowing that much about the stories they originally came from.”
Strickenized_
Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2024 5:08 am
Spoken like a willful boy, Faustite thought. It was one of the qualities he appreciated about Murikabushi — it didn't matter what was implied to him by his uniform, or what his Dark Mirror betters thought, or even what Faustite thought, if he set his mind to something, he was oging to do it. And while that quality was a poor one in a soldier, Murikabushi wasn't his soldier. There were no commands exchanged between them, only words and gestures and things unnamed. Gifts too, now.
So Faustite focused on getting his hands to work properly. With the charcoal pen gone, Faustite focused on fitting the cincher neatly around his grate. The harder part came when he needed to snap the clasps together for that required a measure of dexterity that had been compromised since his hands were shot up by spectral arrows. Turned out that they were the lesser of the punishments meted out to him, but they were no less punishing for how they restricted him from simple tasks with pain and scar tissue. Each clasp was its own struggle, and there were six in total, which lasted him nearly the runtime of Murikabushi's mouth. Faustite figured that was similar to the runtime of Waru's mouth, so he really hadn't made any progress yet.
Frustrating, but expected. Being injured like this, Faustite found that each week led to an improvement, not each day, but since each day dragged on with boredom and preoccupations with his own physical restrictions, each day felt like a week. He'd been injured for months, but only weeks had passed.
With the last clasp finally secure, Faustite let out a sigh. Then he spread his fingers wide, curled them into fists, and spread them apart again. The soreness had gotten a little better, almost imperceptibly so.
During the process, he'd tried to glance up at Mruikabushi when he could, both to show he was listening and to track some of the conversation. While he'd been reliant on gesture before, he never truly realized the breadth of its use in daily conversation until he had no voice of his own anymore. It was there with Waru, as much as he loved to talk, in the crinkles of his eyes or the way his shoulders shifted and set whenever he was being bashful, or how much he loved to express his excitement with his fists. Murikabushi had fits of it too, particularly in his face for how broadly he smiled around the zine like it was a prized thing to him. That, Faustite found, was far more interesting to watch than the same old clasps he'd been snapping together for years.
Faustite would've smiled a margin himself in answer, if he couldn't feel the strange and jarring way that the recovering hole in his face pulled whenever his cheek so much as twitched. His stubborn shyness about the look of his own face or body condemned the rest. He wasn't Muri's height or Albite's build, he didn't have Alkmene's charm or Taenite's confidence. He looked wan and small and sort of elf-like, and that wouldn't do at all. Elves didn't smile, they stood there all serious and pretty as background supporting characters, and Faustite could only manage looking serious.
And Muri knew to translate when he started saying words that sounded like they referred to a sheep. Unlike Waru, who occasionally said things that did not sound at all like English.
While Faustite couldn't say thanks, he could express it by handling the proffered zine as delicately as possible. These sorts of affairs were made for human hands and human fingernails, the latter of which Faustite no longer had, so care was taken to rest the back of the magazine on the lower pads of his fingers to avoid making undue indentations with his pointed nails. The cover, Faustite saw, was beautifully done, if nondescript for what he might find. It reminded him a touch of Alkmene's tattoo. Then he began to skim a few pages.
It became quite clear what sort of stories Muri was sharing with him once he'd gone a few pages deep. When he was Elex, he was prohibited from having such books growing up, and he wasn't savvy enough with technology to negotiate around parental controls for WiFi or other public spots. When he became Faustite, such things strayed far from his mind, for he became more preoccupied with surviving the next training session, or coming up with bullshit stories to tell his parents about how he broke his hand when he wasn't in any sports clubs.
So when his attention fell upon a few choice phrases, Faustite immediately flushed very, very red. He tried to ignore the heat in his face, tried to tell himself that if he didn't acknowledge it, then maybe Muri wouldn't either, and it would be as if nothing happened. Maybe it wasn't even noticeable, between the night's darkness and Faustite's fire casting everything in a burnt orange. Surely it couldn't be.
When his head finished swimming, Faustite shut the magazine and sent it to subspace so he could get over his feelings about it before later reading it. He felt around himself for his pen, then upon remembering where it was, summoned it to hand again. He wrote on his arm again, which soon came to life as smoldering letters somewhere in the other boy's periphery: Thank you.
There was a great deal to be said by things other than verbal communication. Looking askance to see how Faustite moved had a certain thrill about it. Each time Reiki caught a little shift in his facial expressions, it felt like a special privilege, even with the hole in Faustite’s face (something that Reiki studiously pretended to ignored, silently telling himself that Elijah would probably try to do something crazier with his monster makeup for a number someday, as soon as he had a reason to do so, and his version would probably look more off-putting). Knowing how Faustite tended to be with most people—knowing all the litanies of more or less valid reasons that most people in Destiny City had for distrusting him, justifying any terrible ways they felt like treating him, wanting him at least as dead as he probably wanted them, and generally hating him—it felt even more special to be treated to any softness from him.
(Whether or not these microexpressions constituted softness out of Faustite was probably, at best, extremely debatable. On some level, Reiki realized this. But being allowed to see them at all, especially when Faustite was so horribly injured and in such a vulnerable state, still felt like a form of softness, though it was definitely better not to say so out loud and risk making Faustite feel………any Type Of Way about having something like that pointed out.)
Then, once it was safe for him to handle his gift (so carefully and respectfully, at that, a fact that made Reiki’s heart flutter), Faustite actually thumbed through the zine. Watching him flush so red, Reiki bit back the impulse to giggle (might have struck a sore spot) and the impulse to say anything about Faustite’s blush (might have made Faustite feel awkward or nervous, too aware of being Perceived to ignore it, or……something like that, maybe). Reiki did not, however, fight the impulse to smile. It came out warm and fond, the same as Reiki’s voice did as he said, “You’re welcome. I hope you enjoy it when you get it back home and get some time to read.”
Which only left the other thing that Reiki had asked to see Faustite about.… The real thing that he’d asked to see Faustite about.…… The thing that boiled, now, all pent up inside Reiki’s chest and clawing at the doors to get out, held up mostly by the block that felt like it had welled up in Reiki’s throat from how desperately he didn’t want to hurt Faustite again.…… Not that the universe or Cosmos or whoever cared, because Reiki’s options currently felt like a choice between hurting Faustite right now, with enough respect to do it to his face, vs. all too likely hurting him even worse later, because on top of the central offense, he would have to deal with the fact that Reiki had decided how he would feel for him and run off to the White Moon without a word.
He wished that he could freeze time right here and now, and stay like this, still allowed to see Faustite blushing and being so delicate in how he handled something that Reiki had made.
He wished that he could bottle this moment and keep it forever, so he could always feel so tender, so appreciated, so safe with somebody who, by all rights, Reiki had no reason to feel safe with.
He wished that he didn’t need to risk ruining everything by speaking his piece out loud, because even if Faustite understood why Reiki was doing that he planned to do—even if he didn’t take Reiki’s choice as a condemnation/alliance with people who had hurt Faustite and/or hate him for needing to make it—things between them wouldn’t stay the way that they were. Things couldn’t stay the same. Leaving the Court would inevitably change things between the two of them, probably in ways that Reiki didn’t know enough to reliably predict.
But more than anything else, Reiki wished that he could have simply shut up and been happy in the Court, and happy in Mirrorspace, and happy with being Mirrorspace’s idea of who he should’ve been. Even if he couldn’t have done those things, then if he could’ve at least endured it, then he wouldn’t need to make this choice, and he wouldn’t have needed to tell Faustite about it, and none of this would’ve needed to happen.…… Instead, they’d wound up here. They’d wound up like this, with Faustite only somewhat aware that Reiki needed to talk to him about something important and a not-insignificant part of Reiki feeling like he’d rather rip out his own tongue than do what he’d requested this meeting for in the first place.
“……About the other thing, though? The main thing I asked to see you about,” Reiki ventured, heart thrashing like it wanted to rend and tear its way out of his chest.
Whether he could do this or not, he owed Faustite that honesty. Aside from some initial, surface-level rudeness that made all too much sense in retrospect (especially given how the Court had treated him before), Faustite had never disrespected Reiki. Moreover, Faustite had never lied to him. Repaying that by cutting him out of the loop as if he didn’t matter at all to Reiki—he couldn’t entirely begrudge others who’d done it for themselves, but that choice wasn’t right for Reiki. Not indicative of the self who he wanted to be.
“Do you remember,” he said, “and it’s okay if you don’t? It’s been a while since I mentioned it, and I know I tend to talk a lot, so it makes sense……if things get lost sometimes? But I know I’ve mentioned this whole……incident, I guess, where a bunch of people got whisked off to some middle-of-nowhere planet that housed a mixed bag of ruins and robots. And mostly, I spent said incident getting snapped at by people who just wanted an excuse to hate me, so like, okay, wow, it’s a day that ends in Y but in space, this time.” Logos, at least, had had a few proximate causes for her hatred, but she’d also had an even worse attitude than the Jeff Goldblum-looking ******** whose existence Reiki still didn’t understand. “The bigger thing that happened was that I ran into this robot who’s dressed like some Rococo courtier, and he yanked out my starseed because somebody told him doing that would let him enter the reincarnation cycle for himself.”
Reiki hesitated, folding his hands together and taking a deep breath that did nothing to steady him. Softly, he asked, “Have you ever seen a Dark Mirror starseed?”
Strickenized_
Posted: Thu Feb 08, 2024 7:41 am
For once, he was grateful he couldn't say anything in response that might expose a little too much interest in the readings. And, true to his consideration for others, Muri spared him by transitioning the conversation to something else. Though, the 'something else' was a hell of a topic to be brought up with someone who was able to pull starseeds.
A seriousness returned to his expression as his attention landed on Muri once more. He shifted where he sat, forcing other muscles to take up where his chest and lower abdominals were quick to become sore for supporting him.
In truth, he didn't remember Muri mentioning anything about a planet with robots on it. Faustite thought that something like that should have stuck out to him, for robots that could extract starseeds were something that would have set off his mental alarm bells. There was an impropriety about it, too, for Faustite had always considered starseed pulling as part of the Negaverse's power identity, and to hear that some ******** machine was infringing on it boiled his blood. But the tale that Muri told was, by and large, quite different than any tale that Faustite was expecting, and so by the end of it, Faustite was still at a loss for where this discussion — where this thing that was important to Murikabushi — was headed.
Faustite didn't like being left entirely in the dark. He disliked it about as much as robots undercutting his abilities by performing them themselves.
If it was something simple like 'please pull my starseed so I know what it looks like', then Faustite could have easily navigated that topic. He could have told Muri that now wasn't a good time for him to pull it himself, and could have summoned one of the team to do it in his stead, if that was such an issue. It would have made sense if that was the request, for why else did one call upon a Negaverse agent when one was of the Dark Mirror? It wasn't like they could pull them the same way that a Negaverse senshi could.
But Muri's starseed had already been pulled. Granted, he would have been unconscious for it, but if there was any documentation thereafter for him to wake up to, then there was no reason to petition a Negaverse agent to pull it for him. Perhaps it was something else? Or Muri wanted Faustite's 'professional opinion' about the state of his starseed?
Whatever the case may be, Faustite's brows furrowed as he listened on. To his recollection, he'd never seen a Dark Mirror starseed. If he had, that memory had been lost to him. Faustite shook his head.
Then, after summoning his charcoal pen once more, he wrote a follow-up on his thigh: Why?
Fair, Reiki thought as Faustite shook his head. Very fair that he hadn’t seen a Dark Mirror starseed before, considering how few of them seemed to exist in the first place. If there were more of them out there, then maybe they handled themselves like Persephone and her apparently royal-by-senshi-standards wife, and tried to exempt themselves from any kind of involvement in the war by not powering up.…… Part of Reiki hated all the people who had the power to help protect people in this war but chose not to. Yet, another part of him envied them for having so much caution and functional selfishness where Reiki had……something else, he guessed. Glitter and butterflies, probably.
Butterflies currently feeling like the most apt part of that guess, considering the extremely fiery boy beside him and how much Reiki hated this sense that there wasn’t some third option he could forge here that wouldn’t at least risk hurting Faustite. Even the Jim Kirk solution of “Have you ever considered cheating by reconfiguring the Kobayashi Maru test prior to the exam?” didn’t work here. Aside from the obvious aspect of Faustite being sapient and a person in his own right, rather than a machine for someone to crack open and rewire, wouldn’t putting him through that have simply been another way of hurting him? Forcing him to be someone he wasn’t for the sake of Reiki’s own comfort sounded like nothing more than hurting Faustite with extra steps and a side of hypocrisy.
“If you’d seen one of our starseeds before, it would’ve skipped part of this. Wouldn’t have had to explain it,” he said gently but directly, and then, following an impulse, Reiki grabbed a notepad and pen out of his subspace pocket. As he picked up his explanation, he hastily sketched a series of starseeds all over the page, angling his body and the notepad so Faustite could see. “Makes sense that you haven’t seen one, though, given how few Mirror senshi there are. So, everyone, magical or not, has a starseed; we know this. Then, some people have magically powerful starseeds, and some people don’t. Regardless of flavor, though, if starseeds get taken out of someone’s chest, they burst with light and color, right?”
To emphasize this idea as best as he could with only a single black pen, Reiki added a halo of simple radiance lines around one of the starseeds. He deadpanned, “Ooooh, fierce, she’s so shiny.”
However much that amused him, though, Reiki had to keep the explanation moving, so as not to waste Faustite’s time. “As I’ve been given to understand,” he went on, “the same is true about Negaverse starseeds. There’s Chaos in how their magic works, obviously? And I’ve heard that it goes directly into the starseed, for you guys?” Which still sounded, to Reiki, like a kind of pain that he couldn’t even imagine, but since he hadn’t experienced it, he supposed that he also couldn’t judge. “If you had to take out Albite’s starseed to check something, though? As I currently understand, based on what I know, Albite’s starseed would still have light and color. It would still shine like the precious thing it is. So would Alkmene’s, or Jada’s, or yours.”
To illustrate a Negaverse starseed shining while still being different from a non-Chaos starseed, Reiki added a halo of little cartoon flames.
“……It’s not like that with Dark Mirror starseeds,” he said, his tone going so sober and heavy that it almost fell flat. Preemptively moving to illustrate what he had in mind, Reiki gave the starseed at the center of the page no halo of any kind. Instead, he scribbled down each of the sketchy facets that he’d given it, filling each in with black. “Our starseeds have this gunk on them. The doodle’s not entirely accurate on color? After he saved me during the incident, Kerberos said the Mirror-Coating looks more like chrome. Which—yeah, he’s a White Moon senshi, and you should always critically interrogate the quality of your sources? But he and the robot both said the same thing. And they seemed too freaked out by what they’d seen for me to think they were lying.”
Briefly closing his eyes, Reiki sighed. “Blossom only got Kima to stand down and hand back my starseed because the stupid robot thought it was broken,” he said.
He couldn’t manage any kind of neutral expression as he looked to Faustite, for he cared too much about what Faustite might think about all this to be neutral. Reiki cared too much about all of this, really, from the Mirror-Coating gunking up his starseed to the boy beside him and what Faustite might think. Still, Reiki tried to rein in the distress he’d felt about this issue for so long, lest it in any way influence what Faustite might write at him after he asked, “It’s okay if you can’t answer right now, or if you don’t have an answer. But what would you think, if you starseeded someone, and instead of finding color and light, you pulled out something that looked sterile and dead?”
