[OPEN] The end of the storm

[watermemory]

Who ⬤ The team members and ANYONE!
What ⬤ The mission was a success! Time to face the music from friends and family.
When ⬤ Just after the tower expedition
Where ⬤ Outside Kaigo no Bou, probably moving around
Content Warnings ⬤ References to violence and horror imagery


All at once, the rains cease.

The damage remains, both to the city and to her inhabitants, but reality reasserts itself, and the ill wind that's blown through Jigoku-cho has—for now—come to an end.

Emergency services have borne away the injured, including the Daitengu and the freed Enma, leaving a gaggle of people emerging into the night.


[This is an OPEN IC MINGLE. Go forth and icly rubberneck or speculate or collect your friends back home to get some rest or yell at said friends for taking risks without telling them they were chosen for this mission out of some misguided attempt to get them to not worry. Who would do something so stupid, anyway.]

Comments

if so i'm Sorry Again But More

[watermemory]

[The air feels heavy around him. The activity around them -- the murmur of conversation, the rumble of motorcars, the steady dripping of "rainwater" from the eaves, the emergency crew carrying a constant stream of the imprisoned staff outside... it narrows down to just this: Tama shaking like a leaf beside him, and his words echoing in the air.]

[The fight at their apartment filters into his mind: Tamamori leveraging his own safety to convince him to escape the military's attention, once their contracts were over and they were back in the capital. He'd hoped it was just a threat made in duress, because... because the alternative was this.]

[He pulls Tama into a hug without even thinking about it, face buried in his shoulder. Forget his aches and pains, or the people around them, or some of Tama's hairclips poking into his own scalp.]

You can't. [His voice is almost muffled, and not just because he's talking into Tama's shirt collar.] If you did-- only-- only one of us would come back-- if we did at all. [He knew that in his bones. He'd thought of that fact enough over the previous year, after all.] You won't have to.

the coast is surely clear so time for more depression

[fuckdogramagra]

[ There's a thousand and one stories he could make up to get out of this, symptoms to blame, personal quirks or even just generalized exhaustion- but he can't. If he can't be honest, then how can he expect Minakami to be open with him? It had to start from somewhere, even if he'd seen it fail so many other times. But this was the...furthest he'd ever gotten. The most direct he'd ever been about something this grotesque. It felt wrong, in a way, that he'd seen the worst in them, but had been able to keep himself covered. Tama already couldn't understand why Minakami would love him so much to keep going through multiple lifetimes, seeking him out- so it wasn't like he could find himself any uglier than he already did.

He sort of sits there, being hugged passively for a moment or two, before he can finally find the mental strength to weakly grip back. ] I won't, if you don't. Promising is hard, but...we can both try. [ That's the best they can hope for, right? Maybe it was the warmth making him drowzy, or the feeling of being the weight dragging Minakami down to the bottom of the river, but he tried to hug back tighter after a moment of pause. ] I'm sorry for saying it. I'm not feeling well...

you cannot hide

[watermemory]

[He can hear his own words, the very same ones he'd said in the theatre, two months ago. 'I won't reincarnate anymore.' At that time, that solution had felt so simple, almost elegant. Cut off the cycle, pay back the blood on his hands, let his friends find a happier conclusion on their own. Hearing the same possibility come from Tamamori feels like a terrible cosmic joke. He regrets saying anything, but the experience, the near-escape sits on his mind, too immediate and big to not let out somehow. He can only hope talking about it hasn't ruined everything.]

Okay.

[He squeezes his eyes shut, hands fisted in Tama's clothes.]

...do you still remember, when "you" folded those cranes?

[He remembers the rest of that last morning: The first noise to break the silence had been pounding footsteps coming up the path. The physician had thrown open the front door and Mina had looked blankly up at the intrusion. The physician's expression was already settling into cold bitterness at being too late. But none of that is what Tama could know, if he consciously does at all.]

It wasn't only that. We lived together. You planted camellias like your grandmother. Once it snowed up to the eaves, and I had to climb out the window and nearly broke my leg on the ice, and you yelled at me for forever. [Talking about it is strange, all of this is strange. If the month-long nightmare is over, this conversation is taking a dreamlike feel.] ...Even if it wasn't forever, we were... we were happy. That's all I want.

the vibes across these threads are chaos incarnate

[fuckdogramagra]

[ At first, all he can think of is the strange, almost pained look Minakami had given him as a child, when he'd been stubbornly trying to fold flowers for his grandmother...but at the same time, his response is automatic, from impressions and memories once again kept behind the veil of lives. ] ...I was so happy that you stayed with me, even if it would have been easier to be apart. [ Surely that was a part of him that had never changed, the inability to stand his own loneliness- maybe it came from knowing that someone belonged at his side. A procession of lives, spent together...it was a fatally romantic kind of forever, wasn't it? ] Though, I have to wonder what your poor leg ever did to deserve all of this...I'm glad that you're always "you". Dependable, curious and caring...stronger than me. But it's not so bad, when I can support you too.

[ His movement is very literal, trying to cradle his own grip around Minakami to let him sink his weight in easier, but surely he's always been transparent in these sorts of matters. Honesty is hard, but lying is exhausting- and deep down, he prefers the truth only because he wants to be someone that others can be honest with. ] Being here with you now...it's worth everything that happened.

look,

[watermemory]

[Despite everything, he smiles a little, partly warmed at the words and partly in relief; it's a motion that Tama would probably feel rather than see.] Nobody asked me to go out the window or play with wooden swords at the top of the stairs... If that's "fate", it's fate made of choices we'd have made anyway, isn't it? Even when it's little things like that.

I said I wouldn't ask you about-- [He's about to say "the shopkeeper," but he's still haunted by the glimpse of that man's face in one of the monsters, when he'd been forced to draw steel on it. Even if it was only a nightmare -- if it had spoken in the same voice Minakami heard down the telephone, he thinks he'd have done worse than freeze.] --about the future, when it hurt you to think of it. But... if you believe me... when you're ready, I'm here to listen.

[He's still skittish about talking about the past, to be honest -- it feels like it's gone wrong more than right, the closer they've gotten to the present day. Some equation that's gone unbalanced somehow. It'd be too cut and dried to say that was why he'd given up on the idea -- but it'd be lying if he said that didn't factor. Still. He's glad he didn't, in the end.]

...me too. [He tilts his head sideways, gently butting Tama's head with his.] ...come on. Let's go home before the sun rises.