jigokulogs | [open] would you let me in

[she ends up picking one of the more intensive massages as the highlight, as had been Azem's first suggestion, and it's probably the best call she could have made. while tense at first, Emily learns soon enough to breathe with it, and allow it to simply occur. stress that had accumulated for weeks, months, years is allowed to be pressed out, erased from her muscles, from her back to her hands and she feels like she's practically floating. even if it's painful at times, it's a necessary hurt, to release it all and return to a ground level. she shuts her eyes, doesn't talk, and exists in the moment. no one minds. no one is asking her to do a single thing. it's weightless.

maybe, just maybe, she'll set aside time and do this a little more often than when pushed into it. for the health benefits, naturally.

when she's done with her treatments, she sits in the courtyard, tea beside her and wrapped in a light robe for the weather. hair unbound, she looks totally at ease, not stirring to look up until she hears his voice.]

I'm going to have to send her my thanks.

[later. when her mind isn't so tranquil.]

[ He comes to sit with her so that he can play with her hair, twining a strand around his finger in lazy loops. That has his full attention, and he doesn't even try to think of something to say for a while. She'd let him leave without making him say anything, he knows that. Really, what catches his attention finally is the smell of the tea she's drinking when she pours out a fresh cup. ]

Which tea did ya pick?

[ He had glanced at the offerings, any impossible number of healing herbs and flowers. He'd also rather talk about that than most of the things actually on his mind. ]

Chamomile and lavender. I thought I'd try to extend the state of mind here.

[there were others, more intricate blends, but one can always measure the quality of a place by their simpler offerings. pouring a second cup, she offers it to him. there's something on his mind - a lot of things, maybe. but they have their understanding that what he voices, he does on his own time. the words aren't forced from him, but granted, and if he tells her nothing, then they are too painful for him to speak.

the world hurts him enough, she thinks, in a thousand ways. at least in her presence, there are no sharp angles to catch himself on, no hidden tricks. just transparency, because the world was its own set of trials. knowing that, even though it rises in her throat, wanting to ask him why -

she knows he's aware she wants to. if the answer comes, then he'll be able to bear saying it.]

Smells nice.

[ A soft murmur from him, content to be benign and uninteresting a few moments longer now that he's achieved the quiet. He drinks his tea, his tail flicks in a strand of sunlight. There's a lot he could say, but he chooses the piece with the least complications. She already knows enough context to follow, ]

Had another talk with Nishitani.

[ The last one he had reported on had ended with Nishitani knocked out cold on the concrete. ]

...I know.

[no sense playing dumb about it. she doesn't like hiding things from him as a rule, really. so, he'll know - she has fragments, not enough to know the details, or why, but enough to understand that things got to that point because someone couldn't read the obvious signs of someone needing their space.]

He asked to talk. I told him the best thing he could do for you was to leave you be.

[that had been the heart of it. she had a feeling it was connected to whatever left Nishitani a mess on the sidewalk, but suspicions are just that - suspicions. not confirmation.]

Dumbass.

[ He exhales it faintly with his good eye closed, not even bothering to get all that worked up about it. Although, his tail does give a sharp little twitch. He's quiet a little longer, clearly trying to organize his thoughts into something coherent. ]

Can't... get through to him what it was like. Comin' out of the Hole.

[ The puppeteer raises a skeleton up from a hole in the earth. ]

He thinks it's just some beatin's, some pain. Why can't I get over it.

[ His speech is slow, words picked out and expressed with steadying care. ]

[the Hole. she remembers what that not-Majima had shown her. a walking skeleton, that got twisted into the hannya. things like that don't just happen.

a man doesn't work himself to pieces, drowning out his thoughts with distractions, just on his own. scars like the one where an eye used to be don't just manifest.

she says nothing, only looks at him, stays close. there is no rush. more than anything right now, she wants him to feel safe.]

[ He returns to twirling her hair through his fingers, it gives himself mindless to attend to. ]

Oyaji's oath brother took me in after. An' he was there takin' care of me, a lotta th'time. First person who hadn't beaten me in a year.

Way he put it, Sagawa was th'only thing keepin' me from goin' back there. He was gonna help me show Shimano I deserved goin' home, but I had to behave. For my own good.

[ He stops again, pulled into the memories of it. His tone goes incredibly, darkly sour, ]

He was doin' it all for me, an' if he was the one hittin' me... then I musta made him, huh.

[ From his voice it is communicated: he believed it at one point, but also became wise to its ugly untruths at another. It was too late by the time he did, he was already deep in the psychological cage Sagawa had been crafting for him. ]

Edited 2022-07-16 21:39 (UTC)

No.

[it's soft, not trying to contradict him, but a cry against the injustice of it. even if he eventually knew, her heart aches for the man that didn't know, that thought he earned that twisted form of control.

it's not as though she's a stranger to retribution and suffering. heaven knows she saw her cycle as deserved, for what she wrought with her hands and her negligence. but as far as Emily knows, he hasn't committed sins to be worth that sort of thing.

Sagawa took a wounded, desperate man, and put his fingers in the deepest cuts. the thought is sickening.]

[ There's a part of himself that still thinks he deserves it. That still longs for nothing more than to sit stupidly on the end of a leash and be told, for once, that he's done it right. He wants someone who owns him, who takes responsibility for his existence and affirms that he deserves to be. Because he can't do it for himself. He is the same unwanted child that he has always been in his own eyes. He only finds purpose and meaning in others. ]

...Nishitani thinks it's Sagawa that scares me. Or that I'm just that loyal to Shimano.

[ They're just men. They're not worth all that, and he knows it. They controlled him through his stupid, idealistic devotion to Saejima. It's a token no longer even on the board, the leverage is gone. ]

It ain't them. It's me I'm scared of. Cuz I wanted to... I wanted to let 'em erase me from myself an' just do what I was told.

[ He pretends otherwise, and always has with a lot of noise and bullshit, but the person in his interior world is a follower that just wants a place to belong. The masters he has found his way to have broken him, but it does not change the longing. ]

[she sets the tea down and leans closer to him, tucking herself against his side. she's quiet, knowing this is more than he's ever felt capable of telling her, that this is the truth that haunts him day in and out. even with those men two worlds away, it doesn't mean their scars left.

right now, she listens, a support against whatever darkens his mind. whoever he is in the interior, she hopes he feels it, steady and constant. he's still here. still present enough to be aware of what happened, but also aware that he's not there.

(her own threads, carefully sewing up where the hannya had torn itself open. reaching for it, even as it raged.)]

He gets... fuckin' offended with me, that I have these nightmares about 'em: that they show up, an' I just do what they want. He don't get... he's tryin' t'do th'same thing to me.

[ He slings his arm around her, hugs her loosely to fit in along his side. ]

Comes at me, an' tries t'fill my head up. Wants t'get his influence on everythin'.

[ Hates the snake because Chijoku keeps any part of Majima out of his grasp. ]

An' I don't trust him, or love him, or want him.

[ And so he shrugs. He's not sorry for what he said or did to Nishitani. ]

[she nods, something he'll feel a little more than see. it makes sense - it's difficult, when someone didn't see what they were doing. sure, she had promised Nishitani that Goro would come back - but she hadn't promised he'd come back to him. unless he can see what he was doing, unless he can figure out how to shift it, then it won't be the same. even if he doesn't do it on purpose, he does it, and the problem is that it's there at all.]

Then you don't have to. It's as simple as that.

[it's not her place to interfere, to entreat on his behalf. and frankly, Emily doesn't want to. she can consider him an ally, a friend, and yet leave him to clean up his own mess.]

You don't have to do a single thing you don't want to.

[at least, she hopes that's true.]

He just ain't gonna like it, an' ya ain't gotta explain shit to him. Tell him t'kick rocks next time, huh?

[ Not listening to Majima's own words on the matter is a problem of its own. He has been begging Nishitani to let it go for weeks. ]

Edited 2022-07-17 06:11 (UTC)

I'll try, but you know me.

[soft hearted, really, when it comes to caring. hard to dismiss someone who comes to her door, needing help. even if she should rightfully be mad at them, she finds herself reaching out, even to her own murderer.

well, that one was complicated.]

[ He does know her. He rests his cheek against her hair and goes quiet again. If it was just Nishitani, he'd hardly be so withdrawn and stricken. There's more, somewhere under the surface, but he's not going to break it open yet. He has decisions to make.

It's enough for now to just linger with her.

When he is finally ready to break away he murmurs, ]

Don't wanna smoke in here, gonna head out.

Okay.

[what he's told her today, she'll carefully tuck behind her own heart, keep it close and protected. the pieces that he gives, she commits to memory and values, pieces of understanding who he is, why he is.

(two puppets, holding onto each other in the dark)

she turns her head up and smiles at him, hoping that being able to voice some of it will ease his mind, even a little. whatever peace they can hold onto, just for a moment.]

[open] would you let me in

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