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Post by Linyü on Mar 16, 2021 20:11:57 GMT -6
As he rode out the wave of dizziness, he recalled a hazy impression of something - a dream, he thought, from just before he awoke. That in itself was a strange thing. San didn’t often have dreams - at least, not ones he remembered - that weren’t nightmares.
He didn’t remember much, and the harder he tried to hold onto it, the more it felt as though it were slipping away from him. There had been a voice, familiar and strange all at once. What had it said to him…?
-...child… ke...-
“Agh!”
A sharp, blinding pain - he didn’t remember falling, but San found himself on the floor, on his knees, gasping for breath. His head hurt as though it were being split open. Slowly, it receded a little, and he could stand shakily back up, but as his mind cleared, he found himself wondering where it had come from.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 16, 2021 20:13:08 GMT -6
This couldn’t possibly have been a side effect of his emaciated state.
What had happened to him…?
Try as he did to recall the events on the day he made his escape from the Watchful Ones, the details remained indistinct. And the attempt brought with it the recollection that his sister had… That she was… San grimaced. He knew running away from the truth of it wouldn’t change what had happened, but the pain was so raw that it left him breathless, and as he felt it rising he couldn’t help but push it away, the way he had done when it was the memory of his parents running through his mind.
Maybe in time it would dull, and he could face it as he ought. But right now there was too much, and… There was too much. He ran his hands through his hair, digging the short nails into his own scalp, and tried to breathe.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 16, 2021 23:13:16 GMT -6
“You look a sight,” said Roku.
“What happened to me when I escaped?” San said, not bothering to acknowledge the cat’s barb about his appearance.
“Well, at least the new clothes fit. No ‘how are you’, or ‘thank you for the gift’, hmm?” Roku jumped off from his perch on the window and padded about the room. San watched him, holding his silence. Roku jumped onto the bed, taking his time to pick out a suitable spot and circling a few times before settling himself down and closing his eyes, his tail tucked neatly around himself and under his chin.
San waited.
Roku opened one eye. “Something happened, then.” When San still didn’t reply, Roku opened both eyes, staring searchingly at him.
“I shouldn’t have been asleep like that,” San said at last. He had considered telling Roku about the headache, but the words stuck in his throat.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 16, 2021 23:13:31 GMT -6
The cat narrowed his eyes, as if he could tell that San was hiding something, but in the end Roku didn’t push further.
“What do you remember?” said Roku carefully. Now it was San’s turn to be on alert. Roku hadn’t given him a straight answer, and while it was never in the cat’s nature to be forthright, this time it felt as if there was a reason for it beyond a feline sense of contrariness.
“I… Someone said…” Again, the words lodged themselves in his throat. He couldn’t even recall who it was - one of the handlers, not one he usually dealt with - it had been about the node. He didn’t remember whether they had said Shi was - was dead, or if they had just said something that made it sound like she---
”San.”
San jerked back to attention with a startled gasp.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 16, 2021 23:16:41 GMT -6
Roku was standing on the bed now, no longer curled up, no longer even pretending to be sleepy and inattentive. His hackles weren’t up, but the fur on his tail was raised. He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but thought better of it. “Nevermind,” Roku said. “I’ll tell you what I know. I don’t remember the specifics, but Juu had been there. Pan.”
San turned away, staring at the floor. “I know who she is,” he said. “You don’t need to remind me.”
“Habit,” said Roku, with a sharpness that sounded surprisingly like self-admonishment. San glanced at Roku sidelong after all, but now it was Roku who was no longer looking at him. “She… I don’t know what it was, but she hit you with a spell.”
"A spell," San repeated.
"Yes. How much do you... No, you wouldn't know anything, would you?" Roku muttered.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 14:31:37 GMT -6
His tail lashed back and forth. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn’t a comfortable topic for him either. San schooled himself and waited, but he began to wonder if he ought to dread what was coming more than he already did.
“You understand that the node you swallowed was aspected to Chaos,” Roku began. “That you are a Chaos elemental?”
San nodded. This much had been explained to him. The handlers that had given him the node did not explain the exact nature of his abilities, though at the time he hadn’t thought the implications through. He had been chosen. It was an honor. After the process, he would be irreversibly changed. Back then he had thought, foolishly, that if he did this, he might understand some of the changes that had overtaken his sister.
“The elements,” Roku said, “are divided into eight opposing pairs. Fire and water - this one you know.”
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 14:31:51 GMT -6
Again, San nodded. Roku was approaching this in a roundabout way, but the gravity of his tone suggested it wasn’t caprice that drove him this time, but apprehension. “The opposing element to Chaos is Order. And Pan… is an Order elemental.”
Order. This San should have known, should have remembered, but didn’t. Pan’s time as Juu had always felt significant, but the truth of it was that he hadn’t served with her for very long. A year, and then she was gone; a year and then Shi took her place.
Had they ever told him what Juu’s element was? He remembered ice, remembered the glower of her eyes as they turned violet. No more than that. Even as fellow agents, they hadn’t known. Shi’s had been easy to figure out, a blaze of heat and violence, unambiguous and unmistakable for anything else. But Juu had been subtler.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 14:32:20 GMT -6
San had thought that she might have been like Robin, though what Robin was, he couldn’t have been sure either. Aside from that fateful, terrible night, San hadn’t often had the opportunity to watch Robin’s work.
“Opposing elements act as checks against one another,” said Roku. “There may yet be some ability of yours that would destroy her. I couldn’t say. But whatever she used on you that day… acted on your Chaos aspect.”
There was something he wasn’t saying.
”Last chance.”
The playful sing-song tone he remembered; the familiar smile, a little upward quirk of the lips. His whole body was taut, ready to spring. Something charged filled the air.
”Don’t be a fool, San.”
His hand on the knife.
She was still smiling---
His fingers clenched.
Her eyes---
The scrape of metal---
A pressure---
Violet, violet, violet---
He had to get away---
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 14:32:47 GMT -6
San closed his eyes and breathed in, sharp. “She meant to kill me,” he said.
“Perhaps.”
It wasn’t anything he didn’t already suspect, and yet still it was uncomfortable to hear. He allowed that it was uncomfortable; if there was any further nuance to the feeling, he didn’t want to know. “Good,” he said. “I’d meant to kill her too.”
The cat said nothing, and when San opened his eyes, the look that Roku gave him was one of pity. He wished he hadn’t seen it. “Whatever she did to me,” he said, wanting no more of this, whatever it was. “That was why I slept.”
“It had something to do with that, yes,” said Roku. He licked at his shoulder, once, twice. “You don’t remember what…? No, nevermind, I’ll not make that mistake again. But you held out long against her long enough to electrify half the people in the room and teleport away.”
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 14:34:09 GMT -6
This part was genuinely beyond San’s recollection. He hadn’t thought of using magic since then; there had been too much else going on. But it should have still been there. There was no way to unmake an elemental, except in death. That had been part of why they were so dangerous. He stared at his hand, and willed something into it - the electricity, perhaps, like Roku had said.
Nothing happened.
“Hmm,” said Roku, as if he had guessed what San had been trying to do. “Well. Perhaps there are lingering effects.”
San said nothing, but thought of the splitting headache he had suffered for a moment, before the cat had appeared. He tried to compare its quality to that of the pressure he had felt when he had faced off against Pan, but... He couldn't be sure of it, but there was a quality to the sharpness from earlier that he didn't remember with Pan.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 18:13:15 GMT -6
That made it one more problem he didn’t know how to deal with. He didn’t like the rate at which the list was growing.
“Is there anything else that we should know about?” said Roku. San shook his head, expecting the cat to take his leave or state his business, but instead Roku jumped from the bed to the small table in front of the chair that San had fallen asleep in. “I am not, I must stress, asking out of a sense of friendly concern. If there are factors that will make you a liability, I need to know, so I can cover for them.” His eyes, pale green, stared into San’s with an intensity that San didn’t often see in the cat. “Whatever you may think of me, or I of you, there is no one else now except the two of us, and Rei. If you cannot trust me enough to be honest, then this isn’t going to work.”
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 18:18:42 GMT -6
Roku was right. San knew this, but that didn’t make the words any easier to hear. They had spent so long skirting around it - what had happened between them, really? Nothing worth noting, and Roku had done this much for him when the cat had no reason to have stuck around and put himself through so much trouble.
In the face of Roku’s strength, his own weakness was even harder to bear. But he imagined himself in Roku’s position, and tried not to feel as though he were a small child again, being admonished.
“I… had a bad headache earlier,” he admitted.
Roku waited.
“I’m not sure, but it didn’t feel like what Pan did to me.”
“And if it was something mild, I suppose you wouldn’t have brought it up at all,” Roku mused. “Well, if you suddenly collapse on us, at least I’ll have an inkling as to why.”
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 18:23:51 GMT -6
With the business of San’s state of health settled, Roku began informing him of the travel arrangements. In two days’ time, when his stay at the inn was up, Roku had arranged for them - or rather, for him - to travel further inland, to New Tarsia, with a caravan. How he had come to that arrangement on his own, San couldn’t imagine, but Roku didn’t feel compelled to share.
As for what was to be done with the intervening time, Roku’s suggestions were the same as they had been. San was to rest and recuperate as much as he could, with an emphasis on not overexerting himself. There was not much more to be undertaken. If they needed supplies beyond food for the trip, it was best to look for it after they had arrived at their destination; and in the meantime it was better to travel light.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 18:33:58 GMT -6
"And a word of advice," said Roku, over his shoulder as he stood perched on the windowsill. "I won't lecture you about your escapades last night, but do remember that you are trying to lay low. Gods know we cannot fight off any agents they might have sent after us, but at the very least we do not have to make their jobs any easier."
And with a jaunty wave of his tail, Roku disappeared through the window once more.
San stared after him and sighed.
He was confined to this room then, aside from his meals. Roku hadn't said it in so many words, but his meaning was abundantly clear. It was a point against San's own conduct; Roku's warning had been about more than the act of sneaking out for a walk late at night. San was taking foolish risks, and that was a habit he needed to break sooner rather than later.
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Post by Linyü on Mar 18, 2021 18:39:10 GMT -6
It was a bad sign that Roku had to say that much to him. A lot had happened recently, but that had never been any excuse, and he could hardly expect fortune or his circumstances to be understanding about his state of mind.
It was, in some ways, the worst possible verdict. Yesterday had been just a taste of what his mind would conjure up if left to run idle. Never had he felt quite so desperate for useful occupation, and never had he been denied it so thoroughly since his own infancy.
He stood and paced the room, then paced it again. And when he was too tired to walk any further, he did the smallest, most low-effort exercises he could remember to strengthen himself. It was not enough to monopolize his attention, but it was something to do, and the physical strain of it helped ground him somewhat.
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