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 Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 6:57 pm
[follows call my name, and save me from the dark]
The moment Elsa stepped out of Mirrorspace, all of his bravado crumbled.
He had stood up to his clone, projected certainty and surety, but if he was honest: he was terrified. And all at once, back in Destiny City, with his MirrorSeal in hand, it was real. Real, that he was abandoning the Court he’d given nearly a decade of his life to. Real, that he was abandoning his sister and sister-in-law. Real, that he was lighting his old life on fire and abandoning Levi Burningham, all because he wanted to chase a memory of a dead woman on another planet.
All because he was so wrapped up in this stupid sphere debacle, this—this big, dramatic tantrum he was throwing because Mirrorspace had been wrong about him and it had shaken some shitty self-perceptions that he had just accepted as obviously real, and—
The tidal wave of emotions made Elsa’s knees give out, and he sank to the ground in a dirty alley near Scandals, because it was always this alley near Scandals—he kept finding himself pulled back to it, like if things just…finally went right, maybe he could undo the damage he’d done here, that summer night nearly two years ago. But nothing could change it. Murikabusih had left the Mirror, and now Elsa was going to leave it too, and he realized very suddenly that he had no idea how. That for all his certainty and all his planning, he had failed to plan for this.
He had his MirrorSeal. He was committed to leaving. He couldn’t just turn back, couldn’t admit that he wasn’t as ready for this as he’d thought, that he hadn’t planned as well as he’d thought he had, that he was scared.
What if he left it all behind, and all that was left was something cold and empty? Something with its heart carved out, a pretty puppet in white trying to fill the shoes of the Sailor Elsa who had come before, who had bravely sacrificed herself for her world and her people? What if the person he became was even more of a mess than the one he left behind?
Elsda didn’t start crying, but only just. But he did huddle up, a little, burying his face in the scarf Reiki had made for him and clutching his MirrorSeal to his chest.
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 6:58 pm
Murikabushi needed to stop coming around here.
The very idea of that felt wrong on some deep and unshakeable level, because Scandals had been one of his homes for a whole-a** decade. He knew the schedule backwards, forwards, and upside down. He knew which bartenders made the best drinks by which metrics for comparison, and which patrons would gladly reimburse you cash if one of the performers used a drink ticket to get them a beverage. Even if he didn’t perform there right now and likely wouldn’t for a while, Murikabushi loved Scandals and part of him still wanted to be there.
He couldn’t. Not really. “Did you or did you not purify so you could do what you want” only went so far, in his mind.
Another part of Murikabushi, though, very much could justify going to Scandals while powered up. He didn’t know everything that the Negaverse had at their disposal. He trusted the Court not to do anything. Only so many of them knew that Scandals had been Murikabushi’s home bar when he’d still been Reiki, and none of the ones who knew were the types to attack a queer bar over him leaving. But the Negaverse remained, and even though Murikabushi hadn’t told any of them what his home bar had been, Faustite did know his civilian name. If he were ever in his feelings (negatively) about the choice Murikabushi had made……Muri wanted to believe that Faustite wouldn’t go after a queer bar just because it had ever made Murikabushi happy, but he had to admit that he simply did not know Faustite’s heart well enough to make that assumption.
Plus, a sad truth of the world was that Chaos factions weren’t the only ones who might have gone after a queer bar for any particular reason. Plenty of non-magical assholes existed in the world, who hated queer and trans people for existing while queer and trans, and hated drag artists for doing drag, and generally hated anybody who lived their authentic self rather than submitting to those people’s imagined arbitrary authority. If Sailor Huge-Tits of Who-Cares had been around tonight and decided to starseed some skinhead ******** who’d been lying in wait, waiting for a chance to violently jump somebody, even Murikabushi’s horror at the concept of destroying a starseed—destroying the very essence of a soul and their ability to reincarnate and ******** do. better. with their life—may not have been enough motivation to stop her.……
Maybe he’d fight her to get the starseed back to Cosmos, but he probably wouldn’t go putting it back in the skinhead’s hypothetical chest because ******** that hypothetical skinhead and ******** every a*****e out there like him.
Fortunately, no trouble seemed to be coming for Scandals tonight. Muri had lurked across the street, atop the flower-shop’s roof, for a while now, long enough that he’d stopped counting both minutes and how many songs he’d cycled through humming to himself. Aside from taking a moment to dust a youma before it nommed on some patrons who were leaving Gertrude’s, he hadn’t had much to do. Attributing Scandals’ continued safety to his presence felt both premature and extremely egotistical, but whatever little bit Muri could do to keep a special place like this safe, he wanted to do it. Still, there were several other places in Destiny City that might have also needed him to look out for them tonight, and Muri was stretching out, getting ready to move on elsewhere, when he felt it.
The unmistakable chill of a Dark Mirror aura, coalescing into the alleyway beside Scandals. The same alleyway where Elsa had saved him once and whisked him off to the Black Mirror.…… Elsa, whose real name Murikabushi knew that he had known, once, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember it anymore. That had to be some built-in safety precaution, just like Monoceros forgetting Reiki when he’d gone from being Toráin to being Robin, and true, Murikabushi never wanted to become a safety risk for Elsa, not even unwittingly, not even due to somebody in the Negaverse deciding to torture him for whatever reason or something similar. But Murikabushi also remembered that Elsa had chosen his civilian name for himself, that it was the only name of his he had been allowed to choose, and forgetting it—even if Muri hadn’t done so on purpose, only as a side-effect of purification—felt like yet another sin against Elsa on Murikabushi’s already very long list of those.
As soon as Muri felt the Dark Mirror aura, he perked up, watching the alleyway for something, anything, being amiss……but nothing happened. That, in and of itself, felt more than amiss enough. There wasn’t anyone around right now for the Mirror senshi to drain, but……maybe they were hurt. Maybe they needed help. And regardless of Muri’s feelings about Mirrorspace, he really didn’t hold any grudge against the people in the Court. Whether they agreed with each other or not, they were Muri’s fellow senshi, and they needed to look out for each other.
Muri took a deep breath, then leapt gracefully off the flower-shop’s roof. He slunk into the alley carefully, both so that he wouldn’t miss any sudden movements and so he wouldn’t startle the Mirror senshi, whenever they appeared. Finding them didn’t take long: they were curled up on the ground by the full-length mirror that they must have come out of, and their shock of blue hair made spotting them easy. As Murikabushi got closer, he noticed something more than the hair: a scarf, one that he remembered knitting himself, which meant that it could only be—
“Elsa?” Without thinking, Murikabushi dropped to his knees in front of Elsa. Part of him itched to ask Do you want to build a snowman?—but Muri restrained himself. “…Elsa, it’s me.”
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 6:59 pm
Elsa knew he could feel another aura nearby, but he was trying not to focus on it too much. Maybe they wouldn’t notice. Wouldn’t come find him. And even if they did, he was pretty sure he could manage to cast his magic and get out of there, if he had to. Not that he particularly wanted to fight, but if it came down to it, he knew he could.
But apparently he wouldn’t need to. He lifted his head to look—because he knew that voice, and yes, he knew that face.
“Muri?” He inhaled, sharply, and his eyes squeezed shut for a moment—don’t cry, don’t cry, do NOT start crying, this is absurd—before he could look Murikabushi in the face for a longer moment. “I—I’m sorry. There was something wrong with my magic, before. Has been for the entire time I’ve been a Senshi. But that’s no excuse. I never should have raised a hand to you. I never should have—I’m sorry.”
His breath caught, hitched, tightly.
“It’s fixed, now, but—apparently a Senshi can awaken with the actual wrong sphere. I did, somehow. So I’m the Senshi of Emptiness, now.”
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 7:00 pm
Oh, *no*, Elsa, Murikabushi thought but managed not to say. For all it could have sounded sympathetic, it also could have come off as patronizing, which felt like the last thing that Elsa needed right now. If not the exact last thing, then certainly one of the top five last things.
Listening to Elsa, Murikabushi carefully, cautiously, reached out to put a hand on one of Elsa’s knees. He kept his touch light, ready to pull back at the slightest indication that Elsa didn’t want to be touched right now. And Murikabushi had questions, as he took in what Elsa was saying. So many questions, and so many of them felt fundamentally unanswerable. How could a senshi awaken with the wrong sphere? That felt like such an important part of a senshi’s entire identity as a senshi, but you could somehow get it wrong? Had Mirrorspace done that, or would it have been the same if Elsa had Awakened into the White Moon or the Negaverse? Too many hypotheticals that nobody would ever know, because reality had done something different.
“You’re right that it’s not an excuse,” Murikabushi said, gently, “but it is an explanation…and I already knew that wasn’t you. No matter what happened, you’re not like that.…” He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether or not he should say something else. Well— “I’m sorry, too. For snapping at you, that night. And the bitchy, passive-aggressive Japanese.…… I was upset, and I was tired, but that wasn’t an excuse. You didn’t deserve that.”
And unlike with Murikabushi, who simply was kind of a b***h, Elsa’s explanation actually did absolve him of everything (as far as Murikabushi was concerned). But—was it a good idea to say the other thing nagging at his mind? Would it help? He didn’t know, but all the same, Murikabushi added, “I don’t know if Remarque actually checked on you? But……that was the last thing I did in the Court, asking him to do that.…… I didn’t want you to be alone when you were in trouble.”
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 7:02 pm
Elsa did flinch, a little, when Murikabush’s hand came to rest on his knee, but lest Muri take that as a sign the touch was unwanted—when, right then, it felt like the only thing grounding Elsa in the current moment, and maybe the only thing keeping him from breaking into hysterical sobs—he laid his free hand on top of Muri's.
“It’s—I pushed you,” Elsa pointed out, “provoked you. Threw things in your face that—I don’t really feel that way. I know…you had to make the choice that was right for you. But I was so angry, I couldn’t think--and I never wanted to be that person again, never wanted to hit someone I cared about, and the magic bleedover—it made me into exactly who I was trying not to be.”
He took a shuddery, tense breath.
“Rem did come and look for me,” he acknowledged. “Thanks, for that, I—he found me after I’d already fixed things, but I was still pretty shaky. And I promise, I’ll tell you the whole story of what happened another time, but the whole thing made me realize…I…”
He extended his hand, the one clutching his MirrorSeal, away from his chest, and opened his palm, letting the sparkly little thing float above it.
“...I realized I needed to do what was right for me, too. But I don’t know how. Not really.”
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 7:04 pm
If Elsa meant for anything he said to push Muri away or push him into some kind of realization that Elsa was right in his ostensible desire to be punished or rebuked for the prior argument, then he wasn’t getting what he wanted. Or maybe he only meant to express his own feelings of guilt about what had happened. Either way, Muri left his hand on Elsa’s knee and kept his gaze focused right on Elsa, listening to everything he had to say and already having forgiven him.
“I know……I know that it wasn’t you,” he said gently. “Maybe you said those things? And in the moment, I was exhausted, and hurting, and I didn’t stop to think about how you aren’t like that, Elsa. But you’re not. And the magic didn’t make you anybody; it forced actions on you that weren’t your fault.”
Which Muri worried silently might not be what Elsa wanted to hear right now? And maybe he’d feel some Type Of Way or other about it? But Muri stood by the sentiment, and his eyes all but outright begged Elsa to please, listen and believe him, or at least consider that he might’ve had a point. As far as Muri was concerned, Elsa having any pent up anger of his own didn’t mean that what he’d said and done that night was his fault when the sheer involvement of magical problems that neither of them had understood at the time had taken away his ability to really act freely.
Maybe Muri wouldn’t be able to make Elsa agree with him on that? In the short term, though, there was something he could help with: a Mirrorseal—and oh, it could only be Elsa’s—floating right above Elsa’s hand.
“I know who to call for you,” he said softly, and carefully reached in to nudge some of Elsa’s hair off his face and back behind his ear. “Ida-hime helped me leave. She’s kind, and she won’t turn anyone away. And if you don’t want to go to her, I can call a different princess, like Cybele? Or ask Kerberos how to call out to Cosmos like he did?”
Murikabushi sighed softly, though, and added, “If there are any last messages you want to send your sister or Acubens? You should do that before I call. Your compact won’t work anymore after Ida gets the Mirror Chaos off your starseed.”
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 7:06 pm
Elsa shook his head, a little—it was easy for Muri to say those things, easy for him to brush it all off, but there were so many black spots on his time as a Senshi—it was hard for him to not believe that it all came from some ******** up place inside him.
Maybe from the same place that had been so badly scarred by what happened to the previous Sailor Elsa that it had distorted who he was at his core.
But he didn’t exactly have it in him to make the argument that he was a monster to the boy he was achingly in love with.
So instead, he kept silent, and when Murikabushi leaned over to brush some of his hair away from his face, he leaned into that touch, and nodded.
“I trust—well. I trust you, so I trust whatever Princess you bring me to,” he said. “Wherever we have to go. I…don’t think I can do this by myself.” He felt so stupid saying it. This was all supposed to be for him, to claim his independence, to become someone new.
But the suggestion of sending a message to Lav or Rhona made him shake his head.
“I already talked to my sister, before I went in. She knows what I’m planning to do. Saying goodbye all over again…it’d be cruel, I think. And for me, I can’t…stop and talk to her again. Maybe I’m a coward, but I’m afraid…I’m afraid that if I do, I might try to change my mind, and I don’t want to do that. I can’t stay.”
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Posted: Wed May 01, 2024 7:08 pm
It wasn’t that Muri didn’t understand why Elsa didn’t want to risk opening up a wound all over again, why he didn’t want to leave a message for his sister and Acubens-oneesan. Hell, Muri hadn’t wanted to tell Elsa that he was leaving either. If they hadn’t run into each other, or if Elsa hadn’t seen the Mirrorseal in his hand when they had, Murikabushi wouldn’t have told him a damn thing because he was too afraid of making Elsa hate him.
The same sense of Do I want to hurt him now and respect him enough to do it to his face, or do I want to hurt him later but several hundreds of times worse? that Muri had felt about Faustite had been there, but……not as sharp. Not as I won’t be able to live with myself if I choose wrong about this levels of pressing.
Mostly because he’d only met one other person who’d left the Court, and as far as he’d been aware, Asmo and Elsa hadn’t known each other at all. The thought that he’d be terribly bothered about losing somebody like that hadn’t occurred to Muri at all until right here in this alley, on that night, with Elsa snarling at him in ways that he hadn’t meant.
“It’s not cowardly to do what you need to do, Elsa. Especially not so you can be safe and happy,” he said as he pulled out his phone, preparing to call Ida. God, Muri hoped that she was out as Ida tonight, that he wasn’t calling her while she was actually in her civilian geish as Orah and possibly in the middle of a shift at the ER or something like that. Worst case scenario, well. He might have needed to get in touch with Cybele—offhand, he didn’t think that he had her number, but he did have Kaifeng’s and Muri wasn’t above nagging the little nightmare to please come help him with something, since Kaifeng’s signet ring would message anybody as long as he knew their name and their face—or maybe wish upon a star for Cosmos to appear and help them.
Thankfully, though, none of that was necessary. Ida picked up, and after a quick call, they had an arrangement to meet up in North End Park. Same place as before, maybe, but it was one of the places in town that Murikabushi most clearly thought of as, overall, Safe.
Once he’d put his phone away, Muri shifted to lift Elsa into a princess-carry. “She’ll meet us there,” he said gently. “And when we’re done, you can come home with me.”
Yuki might not have been entirely thrilled about it, given his opinions on Muri spending time with Chaos boys, but……well. Elsa wouldn’t be a Chaos boy, soon. So, maybe Yuki would see reason about not demanding anything ridiculous out of Elsa in order to prove his change of heart.
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