asgardeventide | [video]

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[Nakama's not looking quite so sickly the next time she appears on the network feed - she's been getting treatments from Dr. Watson that are at least resting her body, if not her mind. There's a figure behind her as well, hair slightly and unevenly shorn but still recognisable as Karuika Mirel. He's not exactly hiding, but it's clear that she's in charge of this post.]

Hello, everyone. Karu had an idea for another event we could do ourselves, just as travelers, and I wanted to run it past everybody and see what you thought.

If we find a good spot, we could light a controlled bonfire - sort of to represent the gift that light was to us recently - and people could write down any of their worries and concerns and throw them into the fire. I'm sure we've all got things still weighing on our mind, and it would be a way to purge yourself of them and move on.

[She glances behind her, murmuring under her breath.] Was that alright?

Perfect, Nakama. [His voice is warm and encouraging. He adjusts the red headband covering his usually obvious ears and turns to address the network himself:] Is this something transients -- ah, travelers -- would attend? I plan to string lights around the city. With any luck, they will become colored lights by the end of the night.

Think of it as rebirth.

So just let us know, okay? Thank you for listening.

((ooc: replies may come from one or both of them! If you're mean to Karu, you're guaranteed to get a Nakama, though.))

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"Uh, yeah, I can kinda s-see that," he manages, looking over the message again. It'll take him a while to feel comfortable with text quirks.

His shoulders and back feel like solid rock. He's been trying too hard not to shake. "Oh-- you don't have to do-- but if you could take this one so that I don't--" You know, somehow mess it up. Karu isn't really a public speaker at this point...

"He's been really kind to me... he's also been so rude that I might have slapped his face if it were in person. I think it's just how he is. You stick around for one, you get the other."

When she feels that, she moves into proper place for a shoulder rub without even asking. "Just relax for a little while, Karu. I'll take the next few if you want, or the rest that we get. Just try to calm down."

"Oh... like Shou sometimes. If you want to take this..." He would be grateful. He's not exactly trying to avoid anyone out of dislike, but he's assuming people might want to avoid him. That and he'd rather watch the text quirk in action before making a complete idiot of himself.

He jumps as she gets into place, stunned by the gesture. "Uh... this isn't so bad. I'm okay to--" Liar. Lies can be quite becoming of him, but not when he's failed to sleep well in ages and "anxiety" basically written on his forehead.

"... sort of, only more snarky and sarcastic and a lot less bluster."

She smiles slightly, glad to see that Karu can talk so casually about Shou's tempermental nature. It still bothers her a bit, and after they stumbled into fight after fight on their first day in their new home, she's been wondering how wise it was to live with him. But Karu is obviously serene about him, he shows it in every argument, so she'll just have to learn to be the same.

"Just relax," she repeats quietly. "My mom taught me how to do this, and she's an expert."

(Yes, she worked in massage parlours for awhile before moving all the way to prostitution. Yes, shoulder rubs are all she taught Nakama.)

"So you can at least banter with that one." Sarcastic types usually go for that, don't they? He finally relaxes as per her request, though it only does so much. Even at rest, his shoulders are solid enough to cause someone blunt-force trauma. He smiles weakly at the "bluster" comment. Shou in a nutshell indeed...

"If you're sure..." Generally, he tries to be mindful when she mentions her mother. In this case, he has no inkling of her mother's prostitution, so he has no reason to question. Maybe she was just a massage therapist!

"I'm not very good at banter," she confesses shyly. "Merlin and Morgana and Arthur are teaching me about teasing, but I'm still learning. I'm so used to it being a form of cruelty, it's hard to adjust to it being a kind of play between friends."

She contines to massage his shoulders, small hands surprisingly strong and sure. "Yeah, I'm positive. You feel like a brick right now. I should do this for you every day."

He blinks. "Oh... you are an only child, aren't you?" Never had he considered it until now.

The gesture itself is enough to make him soften, but as he feels her small hands working into the painfully stiff muscles in his back, he practically deflates. There's an occasional wince or jump if it's especially painful, but overall he's fairly good about it. Luckily, he's not all that big himself, so she doesn't have a ton of surface area to deal with. "Ah, no, it's just... It's been a long week. I ought to pay you if I got treatment daily."

"Yeah, I am. I guess you learn a lot of that from siblings, huh?"

She shakes her head, then realizes he can't really see it from here and makes a noise of dissent. "It's a favour. I'm not a professional masseuse, I can't charge for it. Just until your muscles start to loosen up a little."

"Yeah. You tease each other all the time. Throw things at each other, beat each other up... Sounds awful when you look back on it." He shakes his head. "Once, my younger brother threw this rock at the back of my head... I needed two staples."

He turns back when she makes noise, taking care not to trip her up as she works. "I'm sorry. I am... trying to be stoic about everything right now," he admits, keeping his voice low. And just to spite himself, he winces right after as she finds another knot.

"It kind of does," she must admit, "but I've seen it before."

Her face darkens. Ushiro, the boy who beat his younger sister. No one else reacted like that was normal, but Karu seems to be saying it wasn't so far off the mark. Why were siblings so terrible to one another?

She shakes off the memory, moving her hands on to his neck. "I can understand that. It's how I usually prefer to be. I just... don't have the control right now." There's real pain in her voice when she says that. She so wants to be strong for other people, but she's been weakened so badly...

"It sounds bad, but it teaches you how to use your voice when you need it sometimes." He rolls his shoulders, idly rubbing at the back of his head. Talking about that old injury made it sting briefly. "And banter, of course. There is nothing quite like being told you're a 'big stinky meanie.'"

He shivers under her hands on his neck, peering back. The scarring is there too, so the skin is rough and uneven. He doesn't say it, but everything about his face is waiting for her to recoil in disgust while asking 'are you sure about this?'

"But you will again. I know you might think I'm bullsh-- lying-- when I say that. Right now, let me take care of that for all of us. I can do it." Even if his anxiety might say otherwise, he sounds absolutely genuine. "... J-just not with the network. I will get used to it though, you know, eventually."

She laughs halfheartedly. 'Big stinky meanie' is a little different than wishing your sister was washed out to sea, so maybe Ushiro was unusual after all.

She's also pointedly ignoring the odd feeling of his skin under her hands, aware of his discomfort but waiting for him to object out loud before she stops. He needs this, so if he'll allow it, she'll keep going.

"I know. I know I'll get better. It just feels so far away right now. And... I appreciate that, but don't forget about your own needs, okay? That won't help anyone."

When she doesn't wrinkle her nose up or cry out in disgust, the fleeting panic in his eyes wanes away, leaving only the shame. Even so, he isn't stopping her. He just mouths an apology that he can't bring himself to say aloud.

"I haven't forgotten. I just do what I can." He looks up at the ceiling of their new home, apparently finding it just fascinating. Or he's thinking of a subject change.

"I am glad a few people are in favor of this. I just won't use 'rebirth' as a term again. Vigil, observance, or release might work."

"You could never have known that it would make two people prickly like that, though. And they're from the same world, so I think maybe the word has a different meaning there, even though Riku said it didn't. Maybe it's too personal to explain."

She continues to massage his neck, nudging the back of his head lightly in a signal to let it drop. She's used to rubbing her mom's neck and shoulders, and she knew how to move to make it easiest.

"If it helps even one person, it's worth it, right?"

"It is," he answers, not missing a beat. "I suppose I just expected everyone to just shrug, or ask what I was blathering about. You know, 'oh it's that weird boy with the stupid ears going on about nothing.'" He even puts on a nasally voice for emphasis.

It takes him a moment to process exactly what she wants, but he dips his head down and tentatively pulls his hair down over his shoulder so that she doesn't accidentally tug on it.

"Rebirth at home is... harrowing," he admits, his voice kept low, "But overcoming it proves your strength." Which explains why his feathers had been so ruffled in his conversation with Euri. "Here, we've already experienced that harrowing. I thought it was time to move forth."

"But you weren't. And there's nothing wrong with your ears." She sounds personally offended by his low estimation of himself. "You were talking about something really important. It made a few people mad, it made a few people excited... that's a pretty good response. Even the ones who were angry obviously felt something about it, so that means it wasn't nothing."

She's thankful for that gesture, and pats his neck lightly to let him know before she continues the strong massage.

"Of course it is. You can't wallow in bad feelings forever and say it's making you stronger. Maybe that's how some worlds do it, but I know from experience that it never helps you."

He smiles a little, though it's both covered by hair and out of her line of vision. "Having even one person listen when I speak is strange. Having several people listen and react is even stranger. I don't view myself as a leader." He even manages a laugh. "Oh, well--" There's his bartering tone... "--if I am to believe that my ears are fine, can you accept the idea that... maybe there is nothing so wrong with your appearance?" Aaaand totally putting her on the spot because he knows she has image problems as well. Neither of them are great at taking compliments!

His neck is not quite as bad as his back, but it also might be harder to tell with the scar tissue everywhere. He shivers as she works on the muscle there, only stopping to nod.

"There is no strength living in the shadow of self-pity." A lot of people seemed to do that. Many are given such unfair lives, but an unfair past cannot ruin an entire life, can it?

"I know what you mean. Even when I was Class Rep, no one listened to me."

Her hands stop for a moment, and she imagines that he must be able to feel the heat radiating off her face even from this distance. That's a mean trick, but... it's also only fair.

"I - I can try." Choking and stumbling over her words. "Even if there's nothing wrong with it, there's really nothing special about it. But I can try."

Ah, she's so thankful for the topic change. "No. I know that firsthand, from my time here. People don't even guess at my past until I tell them, and no one... I mean, no one has judged me for it. It's so strange."

"Class Rep? You lead the class-..?" He's been to school, but some of the more modern slang terms fox him.

While he cannot quite feel the warmth emanating off of her, he notices how her tiny hands seize up as soon as what he's said sinks in.

"Maybe you don't think so." What you find mundane might be a rarity to others. He stifles a laugh as she struggles, though he himself is no better. "But our swap is fair. Effort for effort."

He shuffles his hands, rubbing against the ratty old cloth of his gloves. "What a strangely perfect idea -- nobody judging or expecting something of you." He sounds wispy, like he's not quite there as he tries to wrap his head around the concept. "I haven't been here long enough, I can't say I understand."

"In meetings and things like that, yeah. I led roll call, generally tried to keep things under control for the teacher. I never did very well, though."

She's still and silent for a long time before she goes back to rubbing his neck. "I guess it is. I don't see why people here are so concerned by how I feel about my looks. I'm just an u - a plain kid. That's all."

She shakes her head, even though he can't see it. "No, I didn't say that. I've been judged for things I've said or done here, and I have expectations on me. I just said that my life hasn't been judged. What you've been through before here doesn't seem to bother people... unless you've died. That one will usually upset people."

He knows that much by now, right? She can say that? She's never sure who she has and hasn't laid all the facts out too, but she's at least alluded to it in front of Karu. She's fine.

"Ah, students must be allowed to do that in your world." This was not the case for his school experience, so it's a foreign idea. "I am sure you weren't bad at it. Maybe everyone else sucked at taking orders."

But once she speaks of herself in a way that resonates within him, he rolls his shoulders, allowing her to finish her thought. Then he turns to look at her over his shoulder, catching her only peripherally. "I think you do see why. Why did your tone change when I spoke ill of my ears? That is where you might find your answer." Of course people wouldn't want someone as good-hearted as Nakama talking badly about herself! No more than she would want to hear Karu knock his appearance.

Because of his positioning, he can kind of see her head shaking. "Oh -- yeah. I wasn't clear. I meant expectations and prejudices from home. The life we left behind."

He hesitates as she speaks of death. He remembers hearing her talk about it as she lay dying here, but hearing again doesn't make acceptance of it any easier.

"Of-- of course it will. You meet someone only to--" Only to find that their time is actually spent. But he can't say this to her. She must know already. "... What do you think of it when someone tells you they want to die? Or that they are better off that way?" He's partially trying to jar the subject without getting too far from it. It's... an important subject that they haven't touched upon too much when it came to their own lives. Of course they have spoken about the death toll from the darkness, but with both of their homes sharing unique wartime environments... surely it's touchy subject for both of them.

"The teachers just blamed the poor control on me, so they didn't get in any trouble for it." A hint of bitterness rises in her voice. "I worked harder than anyone else in that school, I did the work of four people, and I still couldn't earn any respect."

She just takes in his next two statements silently, not sure how to explain it... the aggravated way that people didn't care about her in her world, the outright hatred couched in disdain. She never knows how to give people a full picture of that world, that life.

But then death comes up, and she finally leaves her massage behind, moving to sit down. "We all have limited time here, though. Eventually we'll all go home, and whatever we're returning to, we won't remember our time here. All the friends we made, all the changes we went through, all the struggles. It'll be as though we blinked, and a split-second of time went by instead of the months or years we have to be here. It's not that different to be going back to nothing."

She's playing strong, but it's not really working. She hates that she can't see her mom or help support her friends when she returns. But at the same time, that was her tradeoff for piloting Zearth - why should she deserve to live through it when people like Daichi and Waku can't ever come back?

"So the instructors were as unjust as the children." It is not really a question. From what she says, even those who were supposed to be mature in her world acted like petulant children.

He prepares to stand again once she moves aside, but her words strike him dead in his tracks. He knows of the war, and thanks to recent events, knows of the regenerative power of Asgard when it came to death. But forgetting everything? At the end of the day, this will mean nothing?

His breath hitches. "... How cruel." It isn't much, but it's all he can manage. His gaze turns down to his covered hands. "I've... been so stupid." Here he thought that, despite all of its flaws, this was a second chance, a way to repent. He can run around just like all the other young people without his body giving out, without passing out on the street, without people asking "what's wrong with that boy?" or "is he a monster? a zombie?" His condition wasn't worsening, and just when he thinks he can beat death and make up for an old mistake... it isn't true? It will be gone in a flash? Nakama will die, and he will be back on a countdown to death?

"Sorry, Nakama. Thank you... for the massage." He sounds... blank.

She gives him a sharp, probing look.

"You didn't know," she says softly, in contrast to her gaze. "When people come back from being returned home, they have no memory of this place. It's like it only exists while we're here."

Then she hangs her head, sadness etched into her features.

"I'm sorry to have told you so cruelly. I really thought you knew."

"I should have known. But I didn't."

He stands up, not quite prepared to look at her. It isn't her fault. She's only the messenger.

"Sometimes truth is cruel. I'm going to... go run a bath." His voice is cracking, regrettably, but he's trying to keep any despair to himself. News like that would hit anyone hard. "I'll try not to be long."

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[video]

action; karu, you been homestuck'd.

action;

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