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 Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:42 pm
Elsa had never felt afraid or unsafe in Mirrorspace, barring times when it had seemed to act more with a will of its own than the will imposed upon it by its Senshi. He wasn’t even sure he did now, after everything that had happened.
Elsa wasn’t sure what he felt at all, really. So many things, whirling through his head; Reiki was leaving—was probably already gone, all things considered. His magic really had been wrong, been broken, because something in him had been wrong and broken—misaligned, changed, he didn’t know what the right word for it was. All the terrible things that had happened to the last Sailor Elsa at the end of her life had left scars on his very starseed. Scars that Mirrorspace had not been able to see past.
Somewhere out there, there was a world waiting, and it might be as broken as he was, and no one else would ever be able to fix it. It was all on him, if that was something he wanted. But he didn’t know if that was really what he wanted.
Elsa was not used to being unsure. Usually, he was decisive, sure of himself, sure of his path. But everything felt out of joint, now. Wrong. Bad.
Maybe he should give it some time. Sit with what he’d learned. Figure it all out later.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:48 pm
Murikabushi was gone. Someone else, too.
Remarque had gotten his message a few hours ago, and not long after that he’d felt a familiar, uncomfortable pain in starseed. It ached, duller now than before, but Mirrorspace had made it very known to him that it was suffering. He’d known it was coming so it didn’t surprise him.
Didn’t make it any more pleasant, though.
He didn’t have the luxury of not worrying about who was gone because the energy he would have saved knowing it was Murikbushi was now spent on Elsa.
Murikabushi’s message had outlined an anomaly he wasn’t familiar with, and there was a part of him that worried the Negaverse had uncovered some way to youmafy them. And if the Negaverse was turning against them…
No, he wasn’t going to think about that right now. He was going to find Elsa and figure out what was going wrong.
He’d messaged Murikabushi back a brief, ‘I’ll take care of it. Good luck. See you around.’, and set off to find Elsa.
No matter how many times he insisted to Mirrorspace that he was looking for Elsa, it never guided him there. There were cracks in the walls and the floor, and he kicked through more debris than he wanted to see. Mirrorspace might have been a little dramatic. He already knew it was unhappy about Murikabushi leaving. Or, maybe it was doing the best it could. Maybe it didn’t know where Elsa was.
Remarque turned his search to Destiny City. A meticulous trip to every mirror he could think of at first yielded no results. A Dark Mirror energy signature here or there in the distance, but none of them were strong enough to be what he was looking for.
And then, finally, in a dark alley in a less familiar shadow of the city, he found an Eternal Dark Mirror Senshi. Remarque had seen him before but he didn’t know his name. Only that here, alone, he looked in poor shape.
Remarque was half out of the mirror when he slowed himself to take in as much as he could. If this was Elsa, he didn’t want to scare him away. If it wasn’t Elsa, then something else was wrong here, anyway.
There were no other energy signatures nearby so his immediate thought was that there was no threat, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a problem.
Remarque wore an impeccable poker face, and if he’d wanted to hide all emotions from his face, he could have. Instead, he let curiosity and the hint of concern linger on his expression. It was too easy to come across as standoffish, otherwise.
“...Elsa? You all right?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:49 pm
An unfamiliar voice calling his name made Elsa startle. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there, totally lost in thought—probably only a few minutes? Maybe? Maybe longer? Either way, there was someone else here now, and they apparently knew who he was. Elsa turned, shaking his head a little, and took in the person in front of him—tall, which sure, most people were compared to Elsa, but the handsome blond in front of him had to be close to six feet, maybe an inch or two under. A Dark Mirror Eternal, which did make Elsa relax a little, because at least it was a member of his own Court. And though it took a moment for the recognition to click, when it did, Elsa’s eyes widened a little—he knew this man. Had seen him in Mirrorspace, before.
He was the one who’d saved them all, when they’d had to fight the shadows that came from that strange crystal deep in Mirrorspace.
“Prince Remarque,” he said, which was probably more respectful than he necessarily needed to be. “I—sorry, I don’t—no? I am not okay,” he admitted.
He could have lied. Maybe on another night, under other circumstances, he would have, but there was…too much that had happened. And if anyone needed to know what had happened to him, Remarque probably did—Elsa might not be the only one who was misaligned.
Or maybe he was. Or maybe Remarque already knew this was possible; he’d been a Prince, as far as Elsa knew, before Elsa eve Awakened, so the amount of weird s**t he’d seen had to be pretty high.
“...Have you ever heard of a Senshi Awakening with the wrong sphere?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:52 pm
Ordinarily, Remarque would have insisted he drop the formal title. Tonight, it wasn’t important. The response was so honest that it nearly took him by surprise. He wasn’t used to people actually admitting when they aren't doing well. Most of them tried to hide it, tried to resist it.
But who would have with a question like that?
Remarque might have thought it just a hypothetical, a feeling. Could a Senshi be born with the wrong sphere? No, it was whatever sphere was bound to your starseed. Did he feel that that sphere was always fitting?
No. He was the Senshi of Puppetry, he hated puppets. Maybe not pulling the strings, but still.
Elsa’s demeanor did not give him room to think this was a hypothetical and he watched him closely.
“No, I haven’t. Have you?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:53 pm
Elsa still wasn’t sure what he was feeling. Everything, all at once, possibly. Or maybe nothing. Maybe he felt as empty as his new sphere, remade as something else. Probably he wouldn’t really know until he had some time.
And maybe it wasn’t a surprise, that Remarque didn’t know—but there was something about the question that made him giggle, helplessly. It didn’t really sound like he found anything in particular funny, but he giggled nonetheless.
“Yeah,” he croaked, “you could say I have.” Which was a little bit question-dodgy, and he knew it, but the enormity of the experience dropped on him like a ton of bricks, all at once. “Me. I—ten years, almost, thinking I was the Senshi of the Wendigo. But my magic has always been…weird. It stopped working for a while, when I was a basic, but I thought that was all in my head. And lately, it’s been….out of my control. I thought there was something wrong with me, and I guess I was right.”
Another round of bitter, helpless, exhausted laughter.
“Hi, Remarque. I’m Sailor Elsa. Senshi of Emptiness. Just spent I’m-not-sure-how-long in Mirrorspace, figuring that one out.”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:55 pm
The laugh was wrong. There was no humor in it. Remarque might have called it deranged, but the more he listened, the more he wondered if it was justified. His eyes were narrowed, not in hostility but in thought.
Elsa didn’t seem right.
But then, neither did the situation. He took a step forward.
“What happened, how did you figure that out?” he asked, and then added, “Do you need to sit down for a moment? We can talk it out.”
He could listen. He wanted to understand.
Spheres couldn’t just be wrong. There had to be an explanation.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:56 pm
Elsa took a moment to take a deep breath. Hysterical giggling was not, he was pretty sure, going to be any kind of reassuring for Remarque, and it was also just making him feel worse about the whole thing.
“It’s….a long story,” Elsa said, as a warning, but Remarque had asked and this was pretty important. “First” didn’t mean “only ever,” after all.
“So, like I said, my magic has been…weird. My Eternal attack—I try not to use it much, because it turns me into this…hungry monster. No emotions, no registering pain—not great as you might imagine—just hunger. And I’ve been having….blackouts, after I use it. So I stopped. For a long while. But earlier tonight, I got cornered in a fight, and it was with another Eternal, and the point is that I had to pull it out. And later, I ran into someone—Murikabushi, you might know him? Tall, gorgeous, talks a lot—and things have been pretty fraught between us lately. So he’s leaving the Court, and I.”
Elsa stopped. The rest, that was all easier to talk about, especially with the benefit of knowing that there had actually been something wrong with him. That his magic bleed-over was a sign that something at his very core had been Not Right. But even with that, even knowing that his actions had been completely out of his control, he still felt awful about swinging a fist at someone he cared about. And about how much worse it could have been.
“I lost it. Or my magic bled over. But the point is that I attacked him, and I felt—awful, obviously, so I booked it into Mirrorspace because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. It felt like the safest option, you know? If I’m out of control, better to go somewhere with no people to ride it out.” He shifted, crossing his arms in a way that he hoped minimized how obvious it was that he was hugging himself for comfort, because this whole thing was stressful.
“So. Not to bore you with the in depth details, but I found these weird vials of golden liquid in Mirrorspace, and I thought to myself, ‘well, chugging the strange magic potion of unknown provenance probably can’t make the situation any worse,’” he smiled a little sheepishly, because that really sounded like a stupid decision when he said it out loud, “and I recovered some memories. Of the last Sailor Elsa. How she died.”
His shoulders dropped and all trace of self-deprecating humor left him.
“She died scared, Remarque. In pain, and afraid, because she turned herself into a monster to save people she cared about—and the monster took over, and she killed them. And I think—I think all that pain and fear and guilt left a mark. A scar so deep that when Mirrorspace made me a Senshi, it got things wrong. She died thinking she was a monster, that she might as well be the Senshi of the Wendigo—and that’s what I was. For years. But not anymore.”
He could practically feel his new power at his fingertips, eager to be used. And even if he didn’t know all of what he felt, Elsa did know one thing.
He wasn’t afraid. Not anymore.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:57 pm
Remarque had heard of odd, or malfunctioning magic. That wasn’t odd. He even knew of Senshi whose magic transformed them into a monster normally.
But, all of this together…
Something like dread grew heavy in his stomach.
Tall, gorgeous, talks a lot–Elsa had an unusual assumption of Remarque if he thought his idea of ‘gorgeous’ was a six foot tall guy in a Marie Antoinette costume and four inch heels. To each his own, but Remarque’s idea of gorgeous was his wife and his bank account.
Elsa was the one drinking things he found in Mirrorspace, he might not have been completely sane to begin with.
“You drank something in Mirrorspace, how do you know you didn’t just get a dose of ancient acid?” he asked slowly, not because he didn’t believe Elsa but because he needed to make sure they were looking at this from the same angle. “Something like that might be messing with your mind. Are you sure that’s what happened?”
He didn’t want Elsa to get the wrong impression; he wasn’t here to criticize or judge him, so he clarified, “Murikabushi was worried about you, he’s the one who asked me to look for you. I want to make sure you’re okay. But we’ll figure this out.”
Murikabushi and Elsa must have been close. Remarque couldn’t shake the nagging voice in the back of his head, especially with the way they both talked about each other.
“He’s already gone. Are you leaving, too?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 3:59 pm
Okay, so maybe Remarque had a point, maybe Elsa couldn’t one hundred percent know that what he’d seen was real—but if he was honest, deep down, he did know. In a way he simply couldn’t shake.
What he’d seen—it was real.
“I know that I just know probably isn’t the most convincing thing I could say, especially when I’m probably not making myself sound the most stable,” Elsa acknowledged, “but I do. I really do just know. Plus, it doesn’t really make sense that Mirrorspace would lie in a way that makes it look worse, you know?” But all of that was sort of aside points. “Anyway, my magic—it’s different, now. Changed. So whatever happened in there—-it was real enough to do that.”
It hurt, in a way that settled deep in his chest, that Murikabushi was apparently still looking out for him, even after how wrong things had gone between them. But of course he was. What else would Murikabushi do.
Too good for his own good.
Remarque’s question gave him pause. He hadn’t really thought that far out, not yet.
“...I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe. Everything I saw—I don’t really feel like it’s fixed. And maybe it’s not, per se, my responsibility to fix it? I could totally forget about it, walk away, keep doing what I’ve been doing but presumably with less misaligned magic? But I’m also literally the only person who can fix it. And that would require being able to get to my world. Which I can’t do, if I stay.”
He huffed. “On the flipside, I’ve got a nice life that I like and it’s not so easy to just decide to abandon all of that and start over, so it’s not exactly an easy decision.” To say the absolute least.
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 4:00 pm
“No, I can’t imagine that it is.” Remarque drew in a breath and held it, letting the thoughts sort themselves in his mind. He didn’t want to lose a second Senshi tonight, and if Elsa was already feeling off balance it was just in his nature to want to try and settle him–here, with the Dark Mirror Court.
“I’m sure you’ll understand when I say I’d like you to give yourself some time to go home and rest before making any big decisions. It sounds like you’ve already gone through a lot tonight.”
Although, it sounded like Elsa was already convinced he had a greater purpose elsewhere.
If he had to leave, it needed to be on good terms, but Remarque wanted very badly for some switch to flip in his head–for him to rest and realize he’d just dreamed it all, or understand that there must have been some greater purpose at play.
“If your magic stabilized if something that massive changed–after leaving such a scar on your starseed–it might be dangerous to try and do too much more with it. Give yourself some time to heal, in any case. Is there anything I can do for you right now?”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 4:01 pm
Elsa nodded, slowly. Remarque was being more than reasonable—rushing into anything right now, when he felt so off-balance, wouldn’t do any good for anyone. Least of all himself.
“Yeah, for sure,” he agreed. “I need to…really think all this over, and decide what I want.” Because if he was totally honest, he had absolutely no idea. It all seemed like so much, and maybe he was only thinking about it in the terms he was because he’d just had it all dumped on him at once, the idea that there had been something wrong with him and now it was fixed but maybe it wasn’t—
“You’re completely right that I don’t want to do anything that might strain my starseed right now.” He wrinkled his nose. “That sounds…like a really bad idea. But you’ve done a lot, just listening to me? Thanks.”
It seemed a lucky thing, really, that Remarque had been able to find him. Maybe not so lucky per se if Murikabushi had asked him to look—but still better than him having to stagger home alone and process all of this on his own.
“Explaining it to someone else has helped. A lot.”
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2024 4:03 pm
Remarque didn’t know if he’d truly done a lot or if Elsa just felt obligated to pay him some lip service for keeping him company, but he nodded in return anyway.
“Just keep me in the loop, whatever you decide to do. If you need me to check up on you, I will. If you think talking more might help you make up your mind, I’m glad to be a sounding board.” And tell him if he thought he was losing his mind. “I’ll dig around and see if I can get any more information about your situation.”
Just because he hadn’t heard of it didn’t mean it wasn’t possible, but if it was some sort of trick…
It was a bad one, and it didn’t sit right with Remarque in any capacity.
Given the weight of the evening already, Remarque was sure Elsa might like some time to himself, to think about things. He didn’t suggest Elsa let Remarque take him home, and yet the offer was there nonetheless.
“Be careful getting home. If anything comes up, use the compact. I’ll be wherever you need me.”
Preferably before something bad could happen.
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