[Closed] Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain

[themortalhalf]

Who: Shinjiro Aragaki (themortalhalf) and Miki Sanada (helenchanted) and Akihiko Sanada (risetocaesar).
Minor appearances by Minako Arisato (greatseal) and Minato Arisato (fools_journey)
Where: Shinjiro's Apartment (Libra 7-06)
Summary: The orphan trio has a lot of catching up to do. Continued from here.
Warnings: Some possible language on Shinjiro's part. Teal deer. IDK.



Shinjiro pours the green tea he's made into two ceramic cups, leaving them onto the counter near the side of the sink absentmindedly, giving the tea a few minutes to cool while he waits for Miki to get back from changing out of her festival clothes. Perhaps she hadn't needed to, but what they had needed was a few minutes to breathe, and he was more than willing to give her as much space and time as she needed before coming down to his apartment again. They both needed a few moments to themselves before diving into things. Most of which he wasn't looking forward to telling her. Not when she had looked so upset and confused as it was—though she seemed to possess the Sanada habit to recover fairly quickly, all things considered. Meanwhile, he's still trying to digest some of the things Minako had told him.

He wonders then if he should make something quick and more substantial to go along with the tea, though decides against it seconds later. Food would only be an unwanted distraction that would probably be left mostly untouched. And... hell, he doesn't even know what food Miki likes now. That alone makes him suddenly and painfully aware of the divide that's between them. She seemingly knows him, but... he doesn't know her. Just the shadow of her that rests in the dust-filled hallways of a part of his life that's come and gone.

She was clearly different now, exuding the type of confidence he never expected out of the little girl that was, in his mind, little but a fragment of memory a decade decayed. He suddenly feels inadequate. He isn't her Shinjiro, after all. He'll never remember her like she might be expecting him to. He doesn't know how to fix this kind of thing. How to start over. Continue from where they left off. It had been ten long years for him. Who knows how long for her. This place was a pain in the ass, even though no words can quite express how happy he is to know that she's been able to make a life for herself somewhere, and that he and Aki had maybe been able to be a part of it—for a little while, at least. And it's comforting, in a way, that he has the chance to see what kind of person she could have been, as much as it pains him to see the potential that was cut short in his own.

He finally sits in one of the kitchen chairs, leaning his elbows on the table, watching the door. He no longer feels the sting from the scrape on his face from where the geta had hit him, though he can still feel the rough redness that's making his eyes feel dry and irritated, though he had managed to dam everything back as they had made their way back to the apartments. Shinjiro hadn't trusted himself to talk for more than a few words at a time, and his mind was busy enough trying to figure out what to do. How to tell her the things she needed and deserved to know, and how to ask the questions of her that needed to be answered. He had to be so damn sure about everything this time, about who she was (though he didn't doubt it), about what had happened in her timeline and where they stood at this point, that it would kill him to find out that he was wrong.

He couldn't bring Aki into this until then. He could do that much for him at least—and her. He didn't know what kind of timeline Miki had been taken from, but she couldn't have any idea how her brother had lived on his side. How he probably couldn't pass a single toy store without thinking of her. There's a reason they rarely brought her up.

He picks up his COMP then, absentmindedly at first, before he fires a text message Minato's way.

Make sure you get the right tank with a filter.
10 gallons if she's bringing home one. Bigger if she wants more.

Though maybe they had already found something at this point. He doesn't know. But the text would do its job. It says "look after your sister" just as much as it says "we're fine, so stop worrying." As "fine" as things can be, anyway. And Minako will know about it if she's around. Might keep the eventual interrogation at bay for a little while longer.

And now he all he can do is wait. For the tea to cool and Miki to come back and his emotions to settle.

Comments

[greatseal]

She's a little torn on how to react to this. On one hand, he's laughing. That's good. On the other hand.... he's laughing?

"That really was Minato's idea. After he came up with the pun." Bad puns still do remind her of Ikutsuki most of the time but... that one was funny. In her opinion.

"...And those kinds of Shadows are actually pretty cute."

[themortalhalf]

Shadows had stopped being cute the moment they tried to kill him, though "cute" is what the manufacturer was clearly going for. Make the damn things marketable. Not that it was cute, as far as he was concerned. At all. But she can think what she wants about it.

"So who are the rest of them supposed to be?"

If she's naming her fish after people she knew, he can only assume she followed the trend.

[greatseal]

"Well, that one's Shinjiro..." She points to the very serious looking maroon-and-black fantail. He has a large grey splotch on his forehead and a few bites out of his back fins. He'd seen plenty already in his brief time on the planet. "The rest don't have names. We thought maybe they could be Akihiko-senpai's fanclub."

[themortalhalf]

Of course she'd go for that one. Doesn't have the sense to go after a better fish.

His eyes, however, follow the rest as they dart around. His fan—"Oh. Those girls." He snorts. He may not go to school much, but he's seen them every now and again. Stalkers, the lot of them. Giggling damn hyenas who like to gossip and shit and talk about the stupidest damn things he's ever had the delight to overhear. At least they're harmless, girls that Aki remains fairly unbothered by, to his credit. Not like Aki really notices what they're up to. "Don't think these ones have much of a shot either."

Snowflake's chance in hell, maybe.

[greatseal]

"Probably not. But it makes the tank more interesting." It would be pretty boring if there was nothing but Shinjiro-fish lounging in the corner behind the castle and Akihiko-fish doing epic training laps around the perimeter.

[themortalhalf]

And to think she had been initially considering only bringing home one. So much for that. The first was just a gateway. From there, one become two, which then soon became eight. Figures. Let your restraint go, and you come home with more than you initially bargained for.

But talking about the virtues of her newly acquired fishtank wasn't why he had come here, and he'd rather keep things from becoming unnecessarily complicated while he has the chance. Get it out of the way before something else could fall unceremoniously through the ceiling on them. ...Though keeping the timelines straight wasn't entirely why either he had come over either. But it was in part. Mostly. It was his rationalization, like he needed an excuse to come see her, even without Miki all but pushing him out the door and telling him what to do. When had she ever told him what to do back then?

He frowns a little—sparing one more passing glance at the fishtank—before taking a few steps back and leaning against the wall in an easy imitation of a slouch. "She said she told you about half." Though that might have been more than enough. Might be easy to fill in the blanks from there, since the events had more or less been the same. The key players had just been shuffled around. "Anything not clear?"

[greatseal]

She gives him a look that says pretty clearly 'If that was half, what else is there?'

"Don't tell me even more people are dead or part of Strega..."

[themortalhalf]

Depends on what she's been told, of course. But perhaps that look she has on her will become his default expression by the year's end, given the absurd rate this world is throwing curve balls at them. They'll all be desensitized to any and all Philemon's—and the universe's—bullshit soon enough. Both of them can start thinking of taking up a new hobby whenever they feel like.

"The dog and Amada were the only ones." Besides Minato. But Miki took care of that revelation. As for the dead... Well, at least the universe was fairly consistent in who it took away. Kept the scales balanced in its own twisted fashion. "Aki died saving Miki." Which, perhaps, is the least surprising thing he's seen or heard in the past 24 hours. And it's not... hard for him to say, oddly enough. Maybe because it's something he can see Aki doing so easily it might as well have been that way all along. Moron. Can't even be angry about it.

Jin's alive. Guess that's... something. And Minami. She had lived. Hadn't become the Seal this time around. He's not sure what to make of her. Should he consider her a sibling the Arisatos never had, or some kind of duplicate to Minako, despite being younger? Seemed more of the latter to him than the former. But if that's the case, then Minako had never existed at all. That, perhaps, was even stranger. "But most thing's're the same. She mention Minami to you?"

[greatseal]

"She did."

Minako could handle not being born. After all, neither she nor Minato had any way of knowing whether there had been complications in the first place, for example. That's not something you'd tell a young child. Not something Minami or her version of Minato would know, either. It's just more likely that their parents wanted two children, and only two, however those cards ended up falling.

"I guess... What still makes the least sense is Strega. Most of our relatives aren't the best but they wouldn't have allowed that kind of thing. At least, not the ones who were around right after the accident." Her grandparents, frail as they were, wouldn't have left Minato behind. Not voluntarily.

[themortalhalf]

"Probably got lied to."

Lots of things could happen to a body. If two people died in a car crash, it easily could have been three, with more complications. Car crashes weren't pretty. Can't say he knows the details, but he can imagine. For every handful of good people in the world, there's an unfeeling asshole to make up for it. And the people who ran the Kirijo experiments on the orphan children were definitely bastards. And if they knew that Death had been sealed in him (if they had; hell if he knew that for sure), why wouldn't they have wanted him?

After that, the Strega part doesn't sound quite so implausible to him. Everything he had heard about what had happened there was unsettling. Having to put up with being experimented on, watching the other children—perhaps friends—die, and have your own Persona try and kill you. Then have to take pills to keep it down. And those pills weren't a walk in the park either, and not a solution, just a delay. He could see how Jin and Takaya, though he knew them comparatively little, became who they were. Be hard to be "normal" after that. Didn't excuse the things they did, but it helped explain things.

[greatseal]

"Probably."

But it didn't answer the bigger question of why. Why only in that world? Why not to her, and the Minato here, too? Miki probably doesn't even know those kinds of answers.

But despite everything else, Minami and Miki survived. That's what she needs to focus on. They'll live and have good lives without needing to fight anything. Just the way Akihiko would want. And Shinjiro.

And her. Even if it's not the sibling she remembers.

"So how is Akihiko-senpai doing now?"

In times of trouble, deflect, deflect, deflect.

[themortalhalf]

And there's one of the problems with the way the world runs. Too many questions, not enough answers. And even if they had all the answers they could ever want, it wouldn't change a damn thing. Especially not from where they are.

But he takes her redirection easily enough. If she had any more questions, she'd ask. And her brother knows everything. Might be something that's better discussed between them. He'll leave it to her. As long as things are straight. The harder things have all ready been said. Be asinine to overlook the good that's just next door.

He directs his gaze over to the wall opposite then, where his apartment lies. Aki's probably still sleeping the minutes away, though probably not for long. His body, if anything, is well-trained. Not like him to sleep long into the day. Probably be wasteful to him, not when he could be training. Even after hard night in Tartarus Aki'd still get up to run and shit—that was easy enough to remember. In the meantime, Shinjiro would still be in his room, making a valiant effort to sleep through the alarm.

"He's himself."

Which is all he could ask for, really. He had been happier than he'd seen him in... well, a long time, which is something he deserves with all the shit he's been through. It'll be a surprise if he lets Miki out of his sight today. He gets to relearn how to be a brother again. Not like he's forgotten or anything, but Miki's grown up to be a teenager and he'll be damned if there isn't going to be a learning curve associated with that.

He's secretly going to enjoy watching Aki be a brotherly dumbass in the meantime. Miki's not so little anymore. Not painfully shy. Strong enough she could probably twist Aki down to the damn floor.

"They're a lot like each other."

Deep down.

Fuck, though, if he's not sick of seeing the both of them cry.

[greatseal]

The tears will disappear soon enough. Within a day or two, things will be so normal it'll be like Miki had been here all along. At least, that's Minako's own experience. Maybe everyone else isn't as adaptable as she is.

"I could see the resemblance too. I just hope he can handle her a little better than he does most girls..."