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Post by Linyü on Mar 10, 2021 23:48:23 GMT -6
The one thing he could offer her - the one thing that he had always tried to offer her, when he could - was choice. “Do you want to talk to him?” he said. She looked up, eyes widened ever so slightly in surprise. He smiled at her again, and hoped it looked encouraging, though he couldn’t be certain as to what kind of expression he was making just then. "You can if you wish."
After a moment, her gaze wandered elsewhere, though the gesture was thoughtful this time rather than avoidant. “He seemed strange.” It wasn’t really an answer, but maybe she didn’t have one yet. Maybe she couldn’t really believe it was happening, the way San still couldn’t quite believe it, even as he brought it up himself. It must have been true, for Roku had no reason to lie about it, but even so.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 10, 2021 23:48:39 GMT -6
He had thought that would be the end of the matter, but to his own surprise, Rei continued. “I knew it wasn’t you, but I didn’t know why. Roku explained.”
If San hadn’t been in the habit of quelling his own expressions, he would have grimaced then, in distaste. Roku had said that he had acted a fool, and without further detail, there was only a void for his imagination to fill. However the spirit within the node had conducted itself, it could not have been well. Worse that Rei had been around to witness it.
A faint touch brought him out of his thoughts: Rei had fluttered closer, laying her small hand on his. “I’ll keep you out of trouble,” she said, and her voice was so solemn that he began to wonder anew just what had happened in the stretches of time he didn’t remember.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 10, 2021 23:49:50 GMT -6
He smiled, rueful and self-deprecating. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be in your care then.”
She blinked, apparently not having anticipated his response, then looked away again and nodded. A promise between them, sealed in so many words.
Whatever else they might have said, it was interrupted by the arrival of food. Rei ducked away long before the server reached them, and the woman who dropped off the plate left the table none the wiser. But then, she didn’t seem inclined to linger, and though she made some effort to hide her distaste, it wasn’t enough.
That suited San perfectly well, however. The less close scrutiny he attracted, the better. He was in no mood for conversation, though if it came his way, he could hardly refuse it. All the better that his appearance was enough, for the moment, to dissuade anyone from taking such pains with him.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 10, 2021 23:50:30 GMT -6
The food itself was nothing he was used to, but not so foreign as to be utterly unrecognizable: some sort of stew, and a slab of bread to go with it. It reminded him a little of what they had eaten on the ship, though the scent was different, flavored with spices he didn’t know. A small salad rounded out the meal, and San picked out a cherry tomato, handing it off to Rei in her hiding spot. He didn’t see her, but he felt the slight weight of it leaving his hands.
He ate knowing he had to rather than from any sense of enjoyment. The food was serviceable, hot enough to scald his tongue beyond the capability of tasting much of it. He made it through about half the food before he felt too full to continue, which was better than he had expected, all things considered.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 10, 2021 23:51:27 GMT -6
It seemed seasickness, or the lingering vestiges of whatever illness had kept him asleep, had been responsible for his nausea before. Still, he knew better than to force himself to eat any more, lest he throw it all back up later.
The rest he took up with him to his room. No one stopped him, for which he was glad; it would save him the trouble of coming back down for dinner, and he had eaten worse things in the course of his life than cold stew and bread.
He didn’t check to see if Rei followed, but she reappeared by his side as he walked down the corridor leading to his room, and slipped in as soon as he opened the door. When he closed it behind him, she was sitting on the windowsill, looking out. He paused, waiting to see if she had anything to say about what she saw, but she seemed merely to be watching to give herself something to do.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:45:52 GMT -6
San set the tray of food down on a small bedside table, then sat at the edge of the bed, like he had done earlier. The square of sunlight had shifted, but some of the warmth remained.
“Sleep,” said Rei. She had turned away from the window, and she was looking at him when he turned to meet her gaze. He remembered, earlier on in their acquaintance, how bad she had been with eye contact. Maybe she still was. Maybe he had simply stopped noticing. Small as she was, and serving as a scout whose job was staying out of sight, such a trifling thing no longer seemed to matter.
He must have worried her, he knew. “I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it; he didn’t know that he would have done any different if given the chance to take back what had been wrought, but he was sorry that she had been dragged in, if nothing else.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:47:44 GMT -6
Rei shook her head gently, without impatience. “Sleep,” she repeated. “I’ll stand watch.”
And in spite of everything, San felt a sense of relief at her words. He wished he had the energy to admonish himself for it, but she was right; without the restless energy churned up by unpleasant memories, weariness pulled at him like so much quicksand. With a muffled groan, he laid back on the bed, resting his head against the pillow. The bed was more comfortable than the cot that he had occupied on the ship, more comfortable than his quarters had been when he had still been Watchful. There was nothing grandiose about it, but it was better than he had had since he was a child, and the touch of it felt alien, somehow.
The ceiling greeted him again, and in its pocked pattern he tried, and failed, to find the constellations he used to search for in the skies above Ningjing.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:53:27 GMT -6
Instead, it seemed to shift, and as he lay there it felt as if he could still feel the rhythmic sway of the ship beneath him, moving in time with his visions. Faintly, he could hear a song: Rei humming something softly from her perch on the windowsill. It was familiar, though he struggled to place it, his thoughts refusing to focus even as he tried to marshal them into something coherent. And then it came to him - his mother's lullaby. But how did Rei know it? San himself hadn't heard it since the death of his parents, and... He didn’t remember closing his eyes, but sleep came for him as though it had been waiting. His last thoughts were of a small room in the warrens, his own voice humming the song; and of his mother’s hand carding through his hair as she sang him to sleep, eons and eons ago. ------
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:54:10 GMT -6
Rei was gone when he awoke, replaced by Roku, who was sitting on the edge of the bed. They seemed to be trading shifts, watching over him. Another reminder of his state as an invalid, and as a burden to their team; and now with no one else to take up the slack. Roku and Rei were both scouts with little defensive capabilities, and in his current state, San wouldn’t even have been able to make a clean getaway, if it came to that. Frustration coiled sourly in his stomach, though at least now it was no longer joined by the sharper pains of being starved.
He wasn’t hungry, but he sat up anyway, and picked up the leftover bowl of stew. Methodically, he ate two bites. On the third, he met Roku’s eye. The cat flicked an ear. “Nothing of note to report, if that’s what you’re asking.”
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:56:10 GMT -6
By which he meant that there was no sign of pursuers, and that his arrangements must have been proceeding within his own expectations, whatever those might be. He didn’t seem inclined to share anything beyond that, but San had expected as much. Roku always did prefer to keep his own counsel.
San wondered, not for the first time, if this had been the case with the members of the unit that he had favored better. He wondered how much Hachi knew of Roku’s inner workings - or Shi. They had been close, he remembered, with some chagrin. He remembered, too, how Hachi had laughed it off, and said Roku was always sweet on girls.
“What do you want me to do?” said San.
“Nothing you aren’t already doing,” Roku replied. The answer made sense. Roku had never been one to mince words when he felt the need to speak.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:56:29 GMT -6
If he had further instructions for San, then San was sure he would have heard them in due time. “Eat. Rest. Exercise if you wish, but pace yourself. If you injure yourself past the point of being able to move when the time comes, there’s nothing I can do for you.”
Privately San thought this last statement was unnecessary, but perhaps it had been more for Roku’s own satisfaction than for San’s benefit. He was aware of what he owed to Roku, and in some ways it seemed rather strange that the cat was still here. They had never been close, the two of them, and Roku was independent enough that San imagined he could make it well enough on his own.
“You look as if you’re thinking about something unnecessary,” Roku remarked, twitching his whiskers in what might have been amusement. He met San’s gaze evenly. “Well?”
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:57:33 GMT -6
San considered simply brushing it off. He could have; it would have been easier for the both of them to simply let it lie, in a lot of ways. Not talking about these things was what they were both used to, and he wondered if it was the illness or the severity of the situation that was getting to him, that he couldn’t shut out these thoughts anymore. But Roku seemed expectant, and if he laughed off what San had to say, San supposed it was as much as he deserved.
“Why are you still here?” he asked.
The tip of Roku’s tail flicked one way and then the other. “I could take my leave, though I imagine that would be more to your detriment than mine,” he said. The amusement in his voice had grown.
“No… Why are you here?” San said. "Why are you still here at all?"
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:57:43 GMT -6
Roku was being intentionally obtuse. San knew full well that Roku understood what he was really asking, but that feline sense of humor wanted San to say it outright. “I don’t have anything to offer you.” Not when he was like this. Not anymore.
“Ah, now that will be for me to decide, thank you very much.” Roku licked a paw and swiped it over one ear. “It’s true, in your current state you’re almost more trouble than you’re worth. But you’ll recover, in time. And then you will be in my debt, will you not?”
All of this was true, and yet San couldn’t shake the sense that Roku was saying it for his benefit, somehow.
Exhaustion descended on him once again. “What do you want then?” he said, rubbing at his face.
“That’s for me to know, and for you to guess at.”
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:58:19 GMT -6
“If it’s for Shi’s sake--- If she made some sort of deal with you---”
“No,” said Roku, more sharply than San had anticipated. He looked up. Roku had hopped up to the same perch on the windowsill that Rei had occupied earlier, only now the window was open, and he stood perched there, limned in moonlight, looking like nothing so much as a living shadow. “Whatever you are imagining, no. I offered her advice of my own volition.” There was a pause, in which Roku seemed to weigh his words, before he said, “The service is hard on girls her age.”
Before San could ask him anything else, Roku slipped out the window, disappearing onto the streets or the rooftops or wherever it was he went off to. A cat in the city was almost impossible for people to track, even if they were determined to do so.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 11, 2021 18:58:29 GMT -6
That had always been Roku’s advantage, and if he wanted nothing more to do with a situation, then there was precious little anyone could say or do to make him stay.
What he wanted was for him to know, and for San to guess at… That much was true enough. Maybe it was merely a case of using the tools you knew best, even if they were in need of repair. Whatever else one might say about San, at least Roku knew what made him tick.
The possession threw a wrench into the matter, but if Roku was still here, then maybe the cat had some solution for it. Or maybe he thought the amusement of watching how the situation unfolded was compensation enough for the hassle.
San stared at his hands. How much time had passed? Had the spirit come and gone again in the time he had thought he was asleep?
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