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[R] Through the Motions {Daphne & Alastor}

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staripop

PostPosted: Tue Mar 26, 2024 7:46 pm


The skin on Daphne's knuckles was the yellowish red tinge of a fading bruise. There was a shallow cut across the back of her forearm and a deeper stab mark on the back of her shoulder, although she had bandaged that one up before she'd come out.

She'd taken Alastor's advice, and she'd found herself some punching bags. Some of them were made of fabric, and they were hung up in a gym. One of them was a robot on a word. One of them was a Captain who had fought back.

She didn't know what she was fighting for anymore. She didn't know if the promise that she'd made to ghosts was even worth caring about. Her wish on Urania had rubbed it in her face. The people were gone. They deserved a memorial, but was something like that worth risking her life for?

She didn't know.

Her focus had narrowed onto her strength. She went through the motions of training, of fighting, and it worked. She was getting stronger, for what little that was worth.

She went through the motions of asking Alastor to meet with her, too, and she sat in their usual spot in the park while she waited for him.


Kyuseisha no Hikari
PostPosted: Thu Mar 28, 2024 6:34 pm


A gloom hung over Daphne and Alastor could see it just as much as he could sense it. Something distant etched into her features, something faraway and absent had dimmed her usual light.

He was a few minutes early to their meeting point and there had been no troublesome or concerning energy signatures that passed through in the entire time it had taken him to travel from one end of the park to the other.

Daphne was here in body but he wondered if mind and spirit had traveled to some faraway place in her solitude.

She didn’t look like she’d felt him approaching, so he greeted, “Daphne. It’s good to see you.”

Maybe not the bruises on her knuckles, or the newer injuries she bore, but he was a warrior and thought them to be badges of honor. She didn’t seem like she was eager to show them off so he didn’t ask.

Some occasions were befitting of tact and diplomacy but he felt no need to tiptoe around the subject. “What’s going on?”


stari_maga


Kyuseisha no Hikari

Crew

Dragonslaying Dragon


staripop

PostPosted: Fri Mar 29, 2024 7:38 am


When Alastor showed up, Daphne waved at him, but it was halfhearted. She'd never been one to hide her feelings. It was part of why she'd struggled with the expectations of diplomacy for so long.

She wasn't about to hide things from Alastor. It felt like he was one of the people who understood her the best.

"It's Urania," she told him. "Not her, just," she sighed. "Every time we clear the Chaos off of a world of someone like us, it's just a reminder that we're fighting for nothing."

She knew Alastor saw it differently. He liked his world, and the little garden outside of his castle. Daphne just wanted something more than vegetables if she was going to keep risking her life and her heart like this.

"Literally nothing. Without the Chaos on these places, everything's just empty. Prettier, maybe, but empty."

She'd been sitting on the ground while she waited for him. Now she pulled her knees into her chest, curling her tail around her feet and looking over her shoulder at him.

"I'm not giving up. I hope you can tell I'm getting stronger," and she almost cracked a smile looking at her bruised knuckles. "But it bothers me."


Kyuseisha no Hikari
PostPosted: Mon Apr 01, 2024 3:57 pm


Daphne looked like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. She was deep in thought, and though Alastor didn’t outright say it, he thought she was very wrong.

“You’re getting stronger,” he agreed. He didn’t need to see the state of her knuckles to know that. She carried herself differently, too. She was vulnerable now but it didn’t diminish how far she’d come, and he could never see such a display of emotions as weak.

“Do you really think it’s nothing, though?”

He asked patiently, not like he was challenging what she thought or felt but like he genuinely wanted to hear where her thoughts were on the subject. He wasn’t going to debate how she felt. “I don’t know how many other worlds have needed to be purged of Chaos,” he admitted, “I’ve only been to my own, and Urania’s.” He was sure there were others, the universe was so fast, but he hadn’t heard of any other revitalization efforts.

“Her world is only freshly freed. It still needs a lot of time to heal. But if she pours her energy into that, I think it’ll snap back. You haven’t been to my world in a while. You should come with me some time. Maybe I can change your mind. Or, at least, show you what I’ve been able to do since you helped me.”


stari_maga


Kyuseisha no Hikari

Crew

Dragonslaying Dragon


staripop

PostPosted: Sat Apr 06, 2024 7:02 pm


He thought she was wrong. Of course he did.

"I see the point of defeating Chaos where we can so that there's less chance of it coming to places like here," she said, with a shrug. "There's a few people here that I want to protect."

Alastor was one of them. There were also the other handful of refugee senshi that she'd met, as well as the humans who were taking care of her. There was the man she worked for, who reminded her more of home than anyone else she'd met here.

"But the things that matter there are gone."

She'd seen the fallen city, and the scorched soil where there had once been savanna. She knew that everyone was already dead. She was tired of people telling her to keep hoping.

"I thought about corrupting, again. I know it's stupid, but it's a thought that's there." Forgetting was tempting. Looking for illusions was tempting. She knew it was wrong, and maybe saying it out loud would stop her from thinking it again.

She did sit up taller when he mentioned his world, though, seeming truly interested for the first time since they'd gotten there. "Why? Did you find someone?"


Kyuseisha no Hikari
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 11:18 am


A muscle in Alastor’s jaw twitched but he wasn't mad at her. Just Chaos. He could imagine how tempting it could be when you needed an escape. He could almost understand it. He’d just never been able to justify what felt like giving up, no matter how hard things felt.

It wasn’t her fault. Just Chaos.

“Yes.”

That was the meat of what she wanted to hear, but there was so much more to it.

“At first, birds, fish, bugs. Little things that I’d missed over the years. Now, rabbits, goats. More than I can list now. Every trip I go, I find that something else has come out of hiding. And there’ still more than half my world that I’ve never been able to reach. There’s a whole continent I’ve never seen. I’m still trying to figure out how to get there.”

But she asked if he’d found someone and he had. “For all my life, there’s been island in the sky. I’d dreamed of going up there. Not so long ago, I did.” He could give her an essay on what he found, but he still needed to go back and research. “And while I was up there, I found a Mauvian. He’d been in stasis, but.” Alastor shrugged. “I’ve known him since I was a child. I thought I lost him a long time ago, with everyone else. But I found him up there, and I brought him back, too. So I don’t think it’s impossible to believe there are others who have survived. On my world, or yours.”


stari_maga


Kyuseisha no Hikari

Crew

Dragonslaying Dragon


staripop

PostPosted: Mon Apr 22, 2024 5:37 pm


It wasn't the answer that she'd been expecting. She'd thought he was going to tell her about bugs, maybe, or some squirrels to eat the garden he'd been growing, but multiple animals, possibly with steady populations?

A Mauvian in stasis?

It was like she froze for a moment, trying to process what she was hearing. She blinked at him, once and then twice.

"Why do you always have to be right?" she asked him, eventually. "Every time I convince myself that there's no hope, or nothing worth fighting for, you remind me that maybe I'm wrong."

Although, if she was being honest with herself, she didn't need his reminders in a logical sense. She knew, theoretically, why she fought. Chaos was awful. She'd known that since before she'd set foot on this planet.

"Everyone acts like hope is some beautiful thing, like it's precious and it'll guide you in the darkest times, but it's not. It just makes everything harder."

She looked down to the bruises on her knuckles, clenching her fists and releasing them. The motion triggered a dull ache and a corner of her mouth twitched downward.

"If I gave into despair, I wouldn't have to get up every morning. That's the hardest part, you know." She took a half step away and feinted a punch to the side. "Training until it feels like my arms will fall off? Taking a sword trying to protect someone else? That's the easy part. Wishing for a future where things might be a little bit okay?" She shook her head.

"I get tired of it. It takes so much energy to think that maybe there's still something on my world worth helping, or that maybe I'll stop feeling like this so much of the time after I bury my parents. And I know that maybe I won't find anything, maybe it won't be worth it, and it makes it harder and then everything looks like a reason to stop trying at all."

She punched again, trying to get some of the emotions out that way, but the air was too soft on her hands. There were tears on her cheeks.

"But if there might be someone who survived then that would make it even more selfish to stop hoping, wouldn't it?"


Kyuseisha no Hikari
PostPosted: Mon Apr 29, 2024 4:12 pm


“Daphne, I’m the Senshi of Despair,” he reminded gently. “I know what it’s like. But if I didn’t have hope, I’d have had nothing but despair. No matter how hard things get, you can’t give in. No matter how much it hurts.”

He knew. Sometimes it was easy to look at Daphne and see how young she was, but that didn’t invalidate the hurt she felt. The weight of the world, the weight of her world, must have been devastating. How was she supposed to handle all of that loss?

Of course it would have been easier to give up, but what did that accomplish? If she lost hope, she lost the drive to look. Why put in all that time and energy if you didn’t expect to get anything from it? And if someone was out there, if they were waiting for her?

If she never found them?

Would she be happier not looking and never knowing?

He watched as she punched again, but her heart didn’t really seem in it.

“Hope isn’t some miracle cure to guide you to happiness. Maybe it’s a choice, when you can focus on the bad or look for the good. Maybe it’s self-preservation. I couldn’t tell you if it was selfish to give up. But you don’t owe anyone anything. It’s your life. You get to decide what’s important enough to put your time and effort into. It’s not the hope that makes things harder, though. It’s the fear of failing, isn’t it? Of letting someone down?”

Of letting herself down?

Of putting all that time and effort into something with no chance of return?

“Giving into despair doesn’t make anything easier. You just hurt in a different way. There’s no easy way out. You’re still processing all of this, you’re still grieving. It will get easier. But it’s like any injury. It hurts, constantly–loudly–at first. It’s all you can think about. Your entire life works around making sure you don’t agitate it or make it worse. It doesn’t heal overnight. Things just start to get better, slowly. Your life stops revolving around it. You get some freedom back. And then it’s an ache. Sometimes it comes and goes. It’ll always be a scar. But, it’s better. If you give up, you never get the chance to heal. It festers, it rots, it consumes you.”

He didn’t ask her to trust him but he spoke from a place of honesty and experience. He’d seen both sides of it. He didn’t want her to waste time being numb, or worse.

“I don’t want you to have to go through that. You have friends here, don’t you?” She must have, he thought her very likable. “You have me. I don’t have the answer for everything but I want to help. I want you to find your peace. And I want you to be free to hope.”

Without it eating her up inside along the way.


stari_maga


Kyuseisha no Hikari

Crew

Dragonslaying Dragon


staripop

PostPosted: Mon May 06, 2024 6:36 pm


Daphne listened. She watched him, and she stopped trying to punch the air. As he talked about grief, she even nodded, although the spark in her eye that she carried sometime was replaced by the grit in her jaw.

"It's so much, Alastor," she told him. "And no matter how I arrange my life, I still manage to set it off."

Maybe for awhile, it would seem safer under the covers of her bed than it would be fighting Chaos on Urania. Maybe if she corrupted herself and destroyed her memories, she could break free from this rut that she was in. Either way, her heart would still be broken. That despair that Alastor spoke of would still be everywhere, choking her, dragging her down, and then there wouldn't even be any chance to move on.

Hope hurt. Maybe things would get better, but maybes hurt worst of all, and she was so used to running away from things that hurt that way.

"But it's like I said. You're right." Running away now would just hurt others, and probably herself, too. "I think I know that, deep down, even if I needed reminders. I don't think I'm ready to give up just yet, even if I keep crying."

A moment passed. "At least, I'm not ready to give up on Earth."

The dead worlds, her own world? She'd think about those later.

He was also right that there were some people that she cared about, and they were here. "But if I do try to hang on, to be hopeful?" She hadn't stopped staring at him, and she was still still. "Can I ask you about some things? Things that will maybe help. I have been thinking about some things."


Kyuseisha no Hikari
PostPosted: Mon May 13, 2024 6:11 pm


When Daphne fixed her eyes on Alastor, he met her gaze unwaveringly. She had his attention and his respect. He wasn’t going to give her some cheap answer just to placate her.

He understood.

She was wrestling with so many emotions.

“Anything,” he promised. There was a distinct lack of whimsy in his voice, like he didn’t expect easy questions. He had already braced himself for the difficult ones, and he was ready to answer to the best of his ability.

He wouldn’t claim to be right, or to know everything, but he’d do what he could. She deserved the best that he could give her.


stari_maga


Kyuseisha no Hikari

Crew

Dragonslaying Dragon


staripop

PostPosted: Tue May 21, 2024 3:56 pm


Daphne had two questions, but she decided to start with the one that had her her heart beat faster in her chest, the one where more was at stake. At least having so little to lose gave her some courage.

"What were families like on Alastor?" she asked him. It was an honest question. She knew their reputation for being warlike, but that didn't necessarily show in the brutal ways that she'd expected. There had been art in the building that she'd explored when they'd defeated the Chaos there. She hadn't been expecting that, so she had no way of knowing what their relationships had been like without being told.

"Here on Earth, it's very rigid. Who you're born to, who you bear. The only way to join a family is through marriage, and even that seems to end up fraught so much of the time. I'm not getting married, anyway."

This she said with more certainty than anything she'd said that night so far.

"On Daphne? It was the people you cared about. That was all that mattered. I had about a dozen parents. The father I told you about, he wasn't the one who sired me." It wasn't something that she had told anyone else, knowing that they would talk about the fact that they weren't related, that they weren't kin. "All it took was love and understanding to make someone your parent, or you sister, or your partner, or your child."

She took a breath, clenched her fists tight although she did not swing them again.

"And was hoping that someone from somewhere else might understand that better. If I have to move forwards, maybe someone could help me build a new family by being part of it."

She didn't look away. Her eyes, split-pupiled in focus, were on him.

"Someone like you."


Kyuseisha no Hikari
PostPosted: Wed May 22, 2024 4:49 pm


Alastor didn’t have to watch her closely to imagine what she was going through. What she felt. Family had always been important to her and she had shared enough with him that he understood what this meant to her.

Was he really cut out for family?

It wasn’t fair to say that he wasn’t, not when he had his husband and Atticus. They felt more like an exception than anything else. When he’d had Percy–technically he’d had Marius, but he was already grown up enough to take care of himself. He and Daphne had that in common.

It wasn’t like Marius called him family, though. Not personally, not privately. If he’d considered Devyn as much, he’d kept it locked away. The public outings, the books, the socializing–Marius did that for appearances. He said whatever he thought put Devyn in a more positive light, whatever humanized him.

Family was different on Alastor than it was on Daphne, or on Earth.

Devyn had no children of his own. He’d either adopted or been adopted into families. It wasn’t unusual to him to make your own family. Maybe things were more rigid on Earth but he hadn’t quite seen it. He had a habit of bending the rules wherever he went, though. It had worked for him, and Michael, and Atticus.

But he had a role to play with both of them.

He’d find Michael in every lifetime. Atticus was an accidental–but not unwanted–acquisition. He was also young, and by Earth standards he wasn’t supposed to be on his own, anyway.

Daphne had gone from a dozen parents to none. Of course she would want to fill the void. Not replace them, he knew that it didn’t work like that. She’d woken up and lost everything and probably didn’t know how to move forward. She was trying to rebuild what she knew, to make a foundation to build off of.

Devyn didn’t know if he could give her what she wanted.

He understood her. He cared about her. He wanted her to succeed, he wanted her to get stronger, he wanted her to be happy. She’d been through so much and she still seemed so young. He wanted to help her be the best version of herself. He didn’t know what that translated to in her culture, or what she needed to call it to make it make sense. Parent, sister, partner, child. He wasn’t sure if he could simplify the dynamics of her world quickly enough to make sense for him based on his own, or Earth’s.

Alastor didn’t allow any silence to spawn, or grow, or fester. He tilted his head slightly and pressed his lips together in thought.

“You think that highly of me?” Though it took him by surprise, he still considered it high praise. Or she was just desperate. She had just been thinking about corruption not so long ago so he imagined it was a heavy shadow in her mind, trying to sink its hooks into her and drag her into darkness.

He sort of understood what she was saying. Maybe more than the people of Earth because he knew that she wasn’t from Earth. He knew that she was grappling with their customs, with their labels, their social construct.

He’d had all those years to adapt to his changing world. She’d just woken up to a different one. Maybe those years of travel, before his world shut down, helped him understand her unique circumstances in some capacity greater than those of anyone on Earth–but they had books, and movies. They could imagine other walks of life. Even here there were so many cultures with different priorities and expectations.

His expression softened. He smiled, but it was apologetic. There was a tired, old grief in it.

If he were being honest, he could hardly remember having a mother, or a father. He’d been close to forgetting them when he’d still had Percy in his life, and that was so long ago that he gave himself a headache when he thought too much about it.

It still felt fresh. Even when he knew he could go home to Michael, Percy was still right there in his mind.

A thousand years ago, Devyn had dreamed of adopting the full orphanage with Percy. They were going to grow old with their forty children, or more. It was a whimsical dream, there was no reality in it. Even now, he wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing with Atticus.

Really, Devyn wasn’t cut out to be a father, or family.

He didn’t think he could explain in a way that Daphne could understand. Not on the spot like this. It wasn’t her, it wasn’t her offer.

There were too many things that could go wrong and he was at the source of all of them. She was still coming out of her shell, still coming into herself. The Chaos on her world and the newness of Earth had undoubtedly been a setback but he saw that spark in her. She was a fire waiting to burst into glorious light.

What was there for him to do but stoke the flame? She’d reach that brightness with or without him–as a friend, or otherwise.

He chose his words carefully, despite not having much time to do so. “You should know that I bring trouble wherever I go. I’m not much in the way of a peaceful family life. I didn’t have anyone to teach me that. I lost my parents when I was very young.”

He couldn’t promise her a family. He could help her build a new one but he imagined himself more as a support role than an active participant.

“I want you to help you move forward. But I don’t know what role I can play under ‘family’. There’s a lot about a family that I’m still trying to figure out, myself. It’s…”

He exhaled and shook his head. “Complicated. But I want to be here for you. What can I do to help you?”


stari_maga


Kyuseisha no Hikari

Crew

Dragonslaying Dragon


staripop

PostPosted: Sat May 25, 2024 6:30 am


"Of course I think that highly of you," said Daphne. There was no hesitation there. There was a respect for him that went deep, and more importantly, an honestly that she didn't even share with most of the other people she cared about.

Adria was one of the sweetest people she knew, and he'd taken her in without hesitation when she came to Earth. She also knew that he got anxious about things, though, and she tried not to add to that with her own burdens. Cecil she loved working with, and she loved spending time with, and he was reminding her more and more of someone else who she loved with her whole heart, but he was still human. He still didn't even know who she really was.

Alastor, although she didn't see him as often, she thought knew her well enough that she could at least ask the question.

There had been one other, but Daphne hadn't seen her in a long time, now.

The response that Alastor gave her was diplomatic. She understood that, as someone who had spent her wholed life training in how to talk to people who wanted something that she couldn't give them.

Of course he didn't see it the way she did. Of course just because the place he was from was different from Earth didn't mean it was anything like Daphne. Daphne was special, the bonds that its people shared unique. Wasn't that what her teachers had always been trying to tell her?

"Trouble follows all of us," she told him, because regardless, she couldn't let that hang in the air. "I don't think that should keep us from having people that we're close to, even if," she swallowed, "Sometimes it ends badly."

She remembered on that last night, when she'd turned to face the mobs that were chasing her, trying to kill her. In the split second before her world had protected her, she'd seen two of her sisters looking back.

She didn't mention that. She just said, thickly, "But I understand."

She didn't understand. Logically, maybe, but not really. It still felt like a punch to the chest that she had to push down before she started to cry. It was another dead end, another thread of hope that led her to nothing.

She was going to go home and cry into her pillow. In the morning, she was going to claw her way out of the blankets and keep fighting, instead of giving into corruption, or oblivion, and she was going to do it because she had met enough people that she cared about that she wanted them to be able to have hope, wanted them to be able to have a future.

And none of them were going to care about her back in the ways that mattered.

"We can spar next week," she told him, when he asked what he could do. She had to keep going, keep finding things to hold onto even if so many of them seemed to fade away. "I'll be better by then." She swallowed, voice trembling. She didn't have much time to stay here before the emotions completely took over.

"I-" she flashed the weakest half-second of a smile, "I still have to beat you."


Kyuseisha no Hikari
PostPosted: Wed Jun 05, 2024 9:40 am


There was an unmistakable, tired guilt in Alastor’s expression. He was good at hiding his feelings, but sometimes things slipped through the cracks. He didn’t want to hurt Daphne. Things were complicated but he didn’t want to crush her dreams or make her feel alone. He didn’t want her to think that he was pushing her away.

“Daphne,” he said, more gentle than before.

He moved, finally. Not quick, because he didn’t want to startle Daphne. He wrapped his arms around her–loose, so she could escape if she needed to. He didn’t want to trap her with him but he wanted to extend some comfort.

She was important to him and he cared about her, maybe more than she understood.

But things were complicated.

He didn’t think she understood but he wasn’t going to argue semantics. He had a long history and it was difficult to navigate all those thoughts and feelings. His memories were not all so clean that he could clearly summon them to talk about this.

But, she wanted to spar next week. She still planned on beating him. He didn’t intend to lose but he didn’t want her to give up that goal. He didn’t want her to think she needed to rebuild her walls or keep a shell around herself to protect her heart.

He wasn’t afraid of tears, if she had them to share. He was more concerned of what they could do to a wounded heart. He didn’t want her to be any more susceptible to the pull of Chaos than she already was.

“Don’t ever stop searching. You’ll find your family. I know it’s hard right now but it won’t always be like this. Give it a little more time.”


stari_maga


Kyuseisha no Hikari

Crew

Dragonslaying Dragon


staripop

PostPosted: Sat Jun 15, 2024 5:53 pm


Why was he looking at her with those eyes if he didn't want her? Why was he talking to her with that voice if he didn't want her?

He hugged her, too, and at first Daphne didn't stop him. She stood stiff as a board when he touched her for one second, two, three. Then she broke. Her shoulders crumpled. The sobs wracked her chest out of nowhere, back to back. Her tears splashed on his filigree collar.

For a moment, she even bent forwards, forehead brushing his shoulder, like she might have let him hold up her weight.

She couldn't do that, though. If he was going to reject her, however politely, he wasn't supposed to want to let her do something as personal as that. She didn't understand why he was giving her mixed messages, but she knew that she didn't want to be like this in front of him.

Not now. Not anymore.

She gasped to stop the sobs, wiping messily at her eyes with the inside of one of her elbows. She jerked back, pulling away from the hug, but for a second, she lingered there, looking sadly into his eyes with the tears still welling in her own.

Then, without another word, she turned away from him and sprinted as fast as she could into the treeline.


Kyuseisha no Hikari
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