Nova + Chisaki: Home

[taking_names]

Who: Nova and Chisaki
When: Sunday late morning
Where: Nova's house in Omghan
Before/After: After Nova attacks Ravi with happiness
Warnings: TBD



The fact that Omghan had been merged with some unfamiliar earth city complicated Nova's homecoming a bit. He had expected the trip to be effortless once he emerged from the warp into the small town, but the familiar twists and turns bled into some mysterious streets dotted with tropical vegetation.

He wandered long enough that he began to consider calling someone (how? he could find an old conversation to reply to, maybe...) for help. Just as he was near to surrendering, though, he caught sight of his house, nearly hidden as always through its own collection of bushes and trees.

He walked up to the door and let himself in, seeing no reason to knock at his own place. He stepped inside, looking for housemates.

"Is anyone home?"

Comments

[a_wrong_turn]

Her eyebrow raised and her mouth flattened out.

It was far from a convincing lie. Chisaki folded her arms over her chest and gave him a long look that grew slowly in irritation as she took a long look at him. Was this some sort of joke? He was a berserker. Even if he was an alchemist, she had never heard of any side effect like that before. She let out a long, annoyed sigh at him.

"Okay," she said, with a note of resignation in her voice. "What the hell's going on? Science experiments don't delete your memory of proper names. Blow off your eyebrows or something, maybe."

[taking_names]

Chisaki, why!

HE SHOULD HAVE PRACTICED IT IN THE MIRROR.

"...I was dead for a little while yesterday and lost them in the Dark."

[a_wrong_turn]

She stared at him, not comprehending for a moment. Nova had died yesterday? But she talked to him by e-mail; whatever awful things she said to him before, they had put those things behind them. Irena dropped off a present. He was here, safe and sound, and right in front of her. She looked at him -- believing he was saying the truth, while still thinking that he was wrong about this. He couldn't have died. It made no sense.

She looked away from him.

Things began to occur to her. He said that she was his favorite earthgirl. He not only said the right thing, he said the perfect thing. She knew that she mattered, then; that she had always mattered. It was not just displaced guilt over his role in transforming her into a molavvas. Those were the sort o words one might say if he thought he would never get another chance. A last memento.

Her eyes settled on the top of the red squid plushy, which came to a triangular point that flopped over the edge of the sofa.

Her eyes stung. She tried to ignore that, when she looked back at him. Her lips curled back -- into a frown, into a shaking quiver, into a furious glower. Then, she reached back her hand, and slapped him hard across the face.

"You IDIOT!"

[taking_names]

He...

He hadn't even gotten to the awful part yet.

The slap knocked his head to one side, and he brought his hand up to the spot, a little stunned.

"How do you know I did it on purpose!?"

[a_wrong_turn]

She had started yelling. It did not stop now; her fingers bunched up into balls and she somehow managed to loom up at him, despite the differences in height. "You did it on what!"

[taking_names]

He stepped backwards, in awe of her rage aura, his heel finding the entry door close behind him.

"I WASN'T ADMITTING IT!"

Why was he an idiot if she didn't know he'd planned it?!

[a_wrong_turn]

She did not calm down, so much as not get angrier just yet. She stared at him; the door was closed, so there was no easy escape. She stepped forward to get closer to him. She did not continue yelling, at least, but her voice still had that anger in it.

"Did you do it on purpose?" she asked. Her voice shook when she said it, her mind finally catching up with that idea. "The gift and the e-mail--were those supposed to be your last words!?"

[taking_names]

He cowered, a little. He knew he was in no actual danger, but her anger was formidable. Before he knew it, he was completely pressed against the door, his expression sheepish.

"Were they good?"

[a_wrong_turn]

"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY!?" she bellowed.

This time, her voice was loud enough to make the boards of the walls and floor shake. Chisaki's balled up fists shook as she stared at him, while she looked at him, almost but not quite pressed up against him.

[taking_names]

"The...wrong thing?" he asked.

The only plan he could think of was to try to be endearing so she'd feel bad for being mad at him.

[a_wrong_turn]

"No fucking shit!" she snapped at him, angrily.

She tried to ignore the way her eyes stung and felt hot. Her composure was failing fast while she kept talking, though. Her lips quivered again. "They were awful last words!" she said heatedly. "They were the worst last words ever!"

Her shoulders shook and she looked downward, quickly, so he couldn't get a good look at his face. "Because you weren't supposed to get yourself killed over there. You were supposed to come back," she said, finally getting quieter. Except her voice shook with emotion and tears rolled down her cheeks. "We were supposed to be reunited."

She wiped at her her eyes with the back of her hand, but it just brought attention to it. "You idiot," she repeated. "Idiot, idiot, idiot."

[taking_names]

Oh no, was she crying? Don't cry, Chisaki, he hasn't even told you the bad part yet.

He reached his hand out a little, then drew it back when he realized he didn't really know what he meant to do with it.

Maybe he had underestimated the extent to which this was also the bad part.

"If it helps, I changed my mind at the last minute, it just didn't work."

[a_wrong_turn]

"Idiot, idiot..."

She sniffled and hid her face in both of her hands. She never noticed that hand reaching out nervously for her, then retracting. She mostl noticed the tears streaking her fingerless gloves and felt a wash of embarrassment that bordered on humiliation. A whimper got out, albeit strangled.

"Why did you decide it in the first place?" she managed, though it came out muffled by her hands.

[taking_names]

"It's hard to explain -- and I don't believe it anymore... but do you remember when we were drinking and I said all of those things about thinking I wasn't who I was supposed to be?"

He folded his arms in front of himself. He hadn't expected her to react like this. It... it meant she cared, he guessed...

[a_wrong_turn]

She looked up, without quite looking at him. She felt embarrassed now, which made it hard to meet his eye. She had enough awareness to know that speaking was dangerous and likely going to get her in trouble again. She settled for nodding her head.

[taking_names]

He wasn't looking at her, either, but over her shoulder. At the squid, specifically, but she didn't have to know that.

"I thought my life was irreparably ruined, and that I was just stalling until I had to go to the Dark. So... instead of having it hanging over me, I wanted to control how I went there..."

[a_wrong_turn]

Chisaki finally looked at him at that. She thought about what he said -- that he changed his mind at the end. Something made him decide that he wanted to keep on living after all. It still hurt to hear that he had gone there, though. Part of her wondered if she contributed to it. She hadn't realized that he was hurting like that, though, and hadn't helped him. Other things brought him back.

"What made you change your mind?" she asked, quietly. "About wanting to live, after all."

[taking_names]

"Being about to die, mostly," he said.

Even though it would have made her feel better, he was a little too embarrassed to mention that she'd crossed his mind in those moments as well.

"And--and moreover when I was in the Dark I had a long talk with myself about how I'd gotten everything wrong and I feel much better about life in general now."

[a_wrong_turn]

"Oh..." She trailed off, not sure what else to say at first, and looked at him with a surprised expression on her face. "I'm..."

Chisaki looked back down at the ground. Her hands shook again, so she balled them up into fists and nudged them into her pockets. She frowned at him. "I'm sorry, Nova," she said, quietly. "I didn't know things were so hard on you. I was so distracted by everything over here and all the shit that went wrong that I just--I didn't think about the things I was saying."

[taking_names]

"Oh--no, it wasn't you. I made that stupid plan the day after I found out I wasn't real."

He had thought he'd damaged her life irreparably, too, but decided it was best to edit that out.

"I hadn't gotten to tell you yet, but I made... kind of a mess when I did it. With mess being an understatement for something you might hate me if you hear."

[a_wrong_turn]

She frowned at that. It wasn't the idea that it could be something horrible and unforgivable; Nova had done something horrible and unforgivable to her, and it hadn't poisoned her against him, even if she had never quite found it in her to forgive him. It bothered her that he could think she would hate him, after all of this.

"What was it?"

[taking_names]

"I'd been feuding with one of the players -- he created a friend of mine and built a crushing loss into his past. I wanted to make him angry with me and give him a taste of that, so..."

He looked at her directly, in case he was about to cause an even greater meltdown in their relations and this turned out to be a last look.

"I poisoned his sister with cake frosting."

[a_wrong_turn]

"Oh."

It wasn't all she had to say, nor all she felt on the matter, but it took her a moment to process that. His grievances with players ran so deep that he murdered someone who had done nothing wrong? It should have infuriated her, she thought. She should have screamed at him and told him to leave for doing such a thing. But, she thought, she wasn't what she was supposed to be. Instead of outrage, she just felt a sense of disappointment.

Nothing else vanished. She was still relieved he was here, grateful that he had been resurrected, and furious that he died. The same complicated emotions stayed where they were, lodged firmly in place. "Don't do it again," she said finally. "Killing a guy's sister instead of him is kinda chickenshit."

[taking_names]

"I fought him afterward, that was how I died."

That was a factual response that didn't really address the heart of the problem, but he wasn't sure how to come at it. He didn't have any excuses. She hadn't earned it. It was in no way an accident.

"Then in a strange twist of fate he became the leader of the clerics and brought us both back to life. Mine was convenience to him -- my friend who gave you the squid toy wanted me back and he wanted her powers to dispose of the cleric leader's body. And then he needed to resurrect someone to prove he'd inherited the heart."

[a_wrong_turn]

She nodded at him, but it was loose and distracted. It meant that Nova was lucky; they couldn't count on that happening ever again, especially if he got it in his head to murder the Vahishta's sister a second time. More than that, she couldn't protect him against the Vahishta. Her anti-holy enchantments did a lot, but there were limits, and she had no illusion that the Vahishta could overcome those limits easily. She frowned.

"Don't do it again," she repeated. "You can't--"

She looked back at him, instead of past him, and her lips hardened into a line. She still felt a sting in her eyes, but she was mostly through doing that thing that Chisaki Andrews never did. "It fucking sucked without you here," she said. "I don't doubt this guy was an asshole. But getting revenge on him and leaving me and everyone else behind would have--I mean, I guess I can't tell you I'm worth not getting your ass killed for." She was just a monster, after all. She looked down again. "But don't get your ass killed."