capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

WHO: Look at the tags
WHERE: Starting at ~~his~~ ~~her~~ ~~their place~~ the MAC, around town, out of town, the surface of the sun
WHEN: Sometime after this but before this
WARNINGS: no
WHAT: Zelgadis takes some advice.
WORDS: yes

It was afternoon; shining was the sun, cold was the air, and doing nothing in particular was Terra, sitting by a closed window. Her expression and mood were not easy to read, especially turned toward the glass as she was, which at the very least meant she was neither bubbling over with joy nor bawling her eyes out for sorrow. Presently, she felt--well, if you asked her, Terra wouldn't be able to answer, either. Emotions were a complicated subject.

So for now, she was focused halfway between herself and the mundane action of a couple laughing teenagers pretending to be giant robots and chasing pigeons.

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It wasn't an expression she saw often, and it was contagious; a smile started cracking at her mouth, too. "Then what happened?" she prodded, obviously interested in the makings of a story.

"Mh," he grunted, spoon in his mouth at the time. It scraped against the line where the inside of his mouth became the golem hide on the outside. "Then I tried to get her to give me what she'd stolen. She wouldn't. And things got out of hand with Rezo..."

Zelgadis stuck the spoon into the remaining ice cream and let it sit there like something speared. "When all was said and done, she killed a fragment of our world's demon lord. Almost single-handedly."

Though the weather was still chill, and they weren't sitting in direct sunlight, the ice cream was beginning to lose shape; the vertical spoon slowly began to tilt to the side, like some scaled-down leaning tower. Giving the container a momentarily glance, Terra ran her fingers over the side of the box. The "ice" was mumbled, but the crystallizing ca-crunch was like twigs snapping underfoot.

It wasn't frozen solid, but it'd stave off melting for a while yet. "A fragment?" she asked at last, scraping another spoonful. "How does that work?"

Zelgadis gawked a little, uncertain of what she'd just done until ice clicked. Oh. It threw off his train of thought only for a moment; he decided to leave the spoon where it was for a little bit, folding his hands and leaning them on his knees.

"Shabranigdo was split into seven pieces a thousand years ago," he said. "During the War of the Monster's Fall. The pieces were scattered throughout the world, and one fragment found its way into humans. Blind humans. So this piece of the demon god passed through generations of the blind until Rezo. Once his eyes opened..."

Terra kept her spoon in her mouth, watching Zelgadis's face as he spoke. She remembered hearing the name Rezo before, but for the life of her she couldn't pin where, or when. Engrossed as that, she didn't interject into the story.

The strange beginnings of a parallel between his world and hers struck her as unusual, but she kept her tongue for the moment. Instead, she nodded, hoping he'd continue.

He glanced back to find her urging him on, so there was little else to do...Well, besides scooping up his spoon and using food as a decent excuse to stop talking for a little while and collect his thoughts on the matter.

"Shabranigdo was released when his eyes opened. Most of us got out before it started making a big move..." But not everyone. Rodimus. Zolf. He took a heavy breath. "And when we went back to take him on, Lina used Gourry's sword...cast the Giga Slave. It destroyed him - one-seventh of him, at least. That's one-seventh that he'll never get back."

He shrugged. "And that was that."

Giga Slave was a phrase Terra remembered, and with it things began to fall into place. Where she'd heard the name Rezo before, and what all these other things meant, for they had been the bulk of Zelgadis's nightmare when they had been trapped in the realm of the dragon's dream. She remembered people who had disappeared into nothing, how panicked Zelgadis himself had been, and all the rest.

Somber, Terra withdrew the spoon from her mouth, but not to eat more dessert. "She's a lot more powerful than she looks." Of course, Terra had already known this, having witnessed Zelgadis's nightmare and in her own fight against the girl. "I'm a little envious."

Zelgadis made a sound, a kind of schyeah in response, nodding his head slowly, smirking crookedly. "It's a little unfair," he agreed. "But I don't think I want that power. She didn't realize what she was messing with back then...nobody did."

She nodded with a quiet hum. "Nothing's meant for power like that." Her tone was absent, eyes not focused on Zelgadis; she traced nonsense patterns into the chocolate with the tip of her spoon. "At least in my world... magic was wiped out in humans a thousand years ago, and the beings that still possessed it sealed themselves away. It wasn't until after I was born, when the Empire invaded and captured whoever they could... that ordinary humans could get that sort of power..."

There wasn't much of an emotional connection to her story; much less than one would expect. But Terra and emotions on the whole were never tightly interlinked, and this was not something she possessed her own memory of. It was all second-hand. Her pause was short, and ended in a shrug and another bite of dessert. "I'm the strongest 'human' magic-user in my world, but I don't compare to her."

"It might be for the best," he offered, not completely sold, himself. What little he knew of Terra's dismal world didn't give him cause or reason to throw any firm assumptions this way or that. "I mean, if anyone was touting Lina's power around to be captured and abused...Right?"

"Or would be too powerful to be captured," she offered in return, again relatively nonchalant. "I don't know. You know her strength better than I do."

There was a selfish desire tied in with that, as well. If Terra had been stronger, she thought, or at least closer in level to Lina's strength, perhaps their fight several months back could have ended differently. Not with Lina's death, no; Terra wouldn't allow herself to do something like that. But coming out even—coming out alive—would have changed everything.

"After everything that happened to me... no, I wouldn't want it for myself. But having someone as powerful around as either of you in my world would have made things easier."

Zelgadis hmed a little in half-hearted agreement - he didn't really know this way or that, so why pretend? - and leaned back until his head bumped the trunk of a still-standing tree.

"It's not making much of a big difference in a world like this," he remarked, glancing upward. "But I guess it shouldn't."

That he didn't know much about her world wasn't for lies or evasions; she wouldn't mind telling him if he were to ask, but it seemed that would be a conversation for a different time, if any. Discomfort rolled off her shoulders easily enough, and she replied with a simple "has to me," before stopping her own mouth with more dessert.

The chocolate was really good.

Strange how it was...strange, talking without deteriorating into something awkward or just uncomfortable in some miserable way. Zelgadis could count the number of times that happened before on one hand. It was...pretty sad, really. But he could make decent enough excuses for himself - and her, given the insane circumstances they'd been under for the past few months. There was always that feeling of tightrope-walking in a talk with Terra; he didn't know what could set off something bad, even innocently mentioned.

It was why he didn't feel the need to push on the subject. Histories and such. His own wasn't a carnival, so he was happy enough to let the whole thing dissolve into a food-based quiet for the time that it did. There was enough springtime noise to fill in the gaps that was never there back in the City; nothing about screeching tires made awkward silence peaceful.

Zelgadis exhaled slowly, closing his eyes. His fingers drummed idly and unfelt on his leg, listening.

Crazy circumstances were the norm for them, so it really shouldn't have been that much of a surprise that, being removed from them, things settled into something calm and comfortable. Eventually Terra left her spoon sticking in the dessert as well; it formed a sort of leaning cross with his, crossing paths at certain angles without touching. As for Terra, she leaned back with palms into the dirt, eyes turning to the canopy. Cool sunlight fell through numerous gaps in the tree cover, budding spring leaves not developed enough to provide complete cover. Birds sang some unfamiliar song, and wind rustled the branches.

The silence between them was long and comfortable, but for it, Terra was left mostly with her thoughts for company. Her eyes turned from the sky to Zelgadis, her confusion from earlier returning in a slow wave. The conclusion she'd come to before — that this was some sort of echo of her birthday celebration, only suited to fit his —- didn't seem to fit anymore. If that wasn't the case, she wondered, why go to all this trouble? She appreciated it, sure, she liked that he had, and brought her along for it. It was nice, but for the life of her, she couldn't find a reason for it.

Was there one?

Of course there was, but Zelgadis wasn't offering much up by way of clues. Spelling out his motives would've been horrifyingly embarrassing - one-sided, probably, but he was the one who had to live with himself when all was said and done. There was plenty to recall and feel ridiculous about already.

He was rather content - rare for him lately. Of course, the feeling was rattled when he at last opened his eyes and realized he was being stared at. It straightened him right out, blinking, glancing over his shoulder to see if she was actually looking at something else...and unless that something else was just more trees, no such luck.

He looked back with a puzzled look.

Of course, by the time Zelgadis looked back her way, Terra had already directed her attention quickly elsewhere, cheeks reddened. She was a little embarrassed to have been caught staring, especially with the sort of reaction he had.

Well, for a few seconds. With some pause, and trying to get back her resolve to actually ask, she couldn't help a curious side glance his way, even if her vision were obscured mostly by loose bangs.

Zelgadis' head snapped back straight ahead rather fast, shoulders up, heart skipping a beat. What the hell was that? Maybe he made a weird face (his face was always weird now, but).

He looked down at his hands, as if they knew what the hell to do. They didn't.

The song of birds and of insects in the trees, that had before seemed a gentle buffer for their silence, now seemed a great deal louder and more pressing against Terra's ears. She felt unusually anxious, though she wasn't immediately sure why. Because she was worried for how he'd answer? After all, maybe this whole thing was something a normal person was supposed to understand without having to ask. If she asked, he'd probably flip out that she hadn't figured that out on her own, then she'd have to explain why she hadn't, and that wasn't really the sort of argument she wanted to get into today.

Oh, there was chocolate on her hand. Her thumb rubbed at a stain on her index finger while her head tried figuring out whether it was worth asking or not.

So the both of them were suddenly a little under their age, almost normal. Casting aside the magic abnormalities and all the strange circumstances that led to them being out there together, that is. A little younger in years and nobody could find anything (aside from the above mentioned) strange about the awkward, fast glances and muddled assumptions.

Not that either of them knew that was perfectly normal for anyone twelve to eighteen, of course. So Zelgadis was fighting off panic mode, hot under the collar and by no means able to formulate any coherent statement that didn't already sound dumb in his head. Sitting there staring at his shoes like a moron was better, but only slightly so.

Stupid, stupid. Abby's advice wasn't bad, but...Abby kept saying boyfriend, girlfriend and Zelgadis wasn't that delusional about his situation! At least, he was rational enough to separate his crazy thoughts and reality for the most part.

So he should just keep his trap shut and keep cool. Yeah.

Yeah...

Even if, by some miracle, someone were to sit down and explain just how utterly normal this situation was, Terra wouldn't be inclined to believe it. She didn't understand most of her emotions to begin with, and the rest were ones she was so utterly bad at identifying, she had convinced herself that she wasn't physically capable of experiencing them.

Denial: one large root to their mutual forest of awkward interactions.

"Uhm..." was a struggle to get out, fingernails scratching at spots of dirt on her palms for something to do. Are you going to spit it out or not? Terra opened her mouth again, glancing his way—but once again balked.

Why was this suddenly so difficult? It wasn't like she wanted to talk about how she died, or Illidan, or how Zelgadis had found her after setting a tornado loose in her apartment, all topics that deserved anxiety. It had every right to be a simple conversation, so why wasn't it?

Maybe it'd be better to ask later? If she needed to ask at all. The answer might present itself without her needing to throw out her questions, and it wasn't like they wouldn't see each other for a long time once they went back. He was still letting her stay with him, after all. That, at least, made some sense in her mind, but this...

Her teeth made a quiet click for closing.

"Huh?"

Zelgadis practically spoke over her, fast as his reaction was. He gaped, blinked, then let himself sit a little less stiffly, exhaling when she shut her mouth. Back to the ground, ears and face burning. Wow. He was an idiot.

Her shoulders tensed and, were her nails sharper, she might have cut her palm open for how hard she scratched at the sound of his voice. Sheesh, she didn't even have to say anything for things to get weird. This wasn't the sort of atmosphere she wanted, either; she had to say something.

"I just..." she started, keeping her face turned toward her hands—away from Zelgadis.

Again, Zelgadis' head whipped over at the sound of her voice, holding his breath. He realized what he was doing rather quickly that time around, exhaling and de-perfect-posturizing again. No wonder she kept biting her tongue; he looked ready to spontaneously combust each time she said something.

He tilted his head away and down just enough to still be able to see with both eyes, mouth tugging half a frown.

"Just?"

Would it be better to drop the subject or just spit it out? Terra continued to waver over her response, but finally released a nearly inaudible sigh, resolute.

Even if she wasn't looking in his direction, Terra had to fight an urge to hide her face in her hands when she spoke. "... wanted to say thanks." At that, she really wanted to hit herself in the face - it wasn't what she'd been trying to say at all, but she couldn't backtrack on it and go where she'd been aiming. Not that she'd want to take it back, since it was true, but not where she'd been intending to go. Maybe she just needed to stop over-thinking it.