capeandcowllogs | Oh sweetheart, put the bottle down...you've got too much talent.

Entry tags:

† !—dropped characters—! †

Oh sweetheart, put the bottle down...you've got too much talent.

WHO: Anzu Mazaki and Fakir
WHERE: Fakir's roof.
WHEN: This evening, late.
WARNINGS: Fakir being himself. Anzu being herself.
SUMMARY: After Anzu finds Fakir being...well, himself, she refuses to let him be himself. IE, she goes to see him and hopefully beat the emo out of him. And maybe nag to join him on his quest to help Mytho.
FORMAT: Para log! With TL;DR~

It wasn't the first time that Anzu had gone out in the middle of the night in the City. Certainly it wasn't the most intelligent thing to do--if she wasn't as self-sufficient as she was, she would have certainly stayed inside and questioned her sanity that she had considered such an idea in the first place--but she had done dumber things. Like immediately listen to a rather suspicious dancer that she had admired, or go to a theme park owned by someone who wanted her best friend dead.

Either way, this wasn't the first time, nor was it the last. Luckily for her, she told Yuugi she was just going to go out for a run. Feeling the speed kick up under her feet, she moved towards where she had seen Fakir...that one place where she knew that he would be...

...Come on, where was he...

She glanced from house to house, from place to place, eyes fixed towards the roofs--

and then--

Anzu spotted him. Or what seemed to be him...it looked like him, sitting a rooftop with his gaze out towards the distance. Though it truly was hard to tell...

"Fakir!" She called, as though to see if that truly was him up there.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, that earned a familiar-sounding, "Gah!" as the figure three stories up glanced left, right, and finally down.

Anzu let out a small sigh, and then smiled a little. That was him, all right. And from that sound, he at least was himself. Somewhat.

"I am coming up!" She called, glancing around. "Wait a moment, okay?"

But how to get up? He was high up, on a roof, even. She could run inside the apartment building, but she wasn't sure that her speed would do well for the neighbors, especially if she had decided to hit a wall. It was bad enough that she had almost run into a few lightposts on the way over; she still wasn't good with turning corners, yet. Combine that with her own strength, and that could cause a few good imprints in walls...

Come on, come on...there has to be something...

And yes. There very well was something. A few feet above, and to the right, there stood that very something that could easily bring Anzu over to her destination...

If she lived in the building, that is.

"Oh GREAT," she mumbled, glaring at the fire escape. The storm drain was too small to climb, and was made out of a weak material, besides--one wrong move and she'd crush the thing under her fingers...easier than a fire escape...And as far as she could see, there was no window close enough to jump onto and scale the building, using it as momentum.

...So it had to be the fire escape, huh?

How did she...

...

She stared at it a moment, before deciding that no, facepalming wasn't the best approach to solving this situation, especially as an idea did, in fact come to mind.

She took a few steps back...more than a few, a good bit, to give herself a running start. She'd never done this before, so there was a high chance that this would fail if her angle wasn't perfect...

And then she ran.

And jumped.

Pleasehitpleasehitpleasehitpleasehit

She threw her hands out in a flash, eyes wide open as she reached for the bar to the stairs, coming fast and probably hard if she had hit it full-on.

comeoncomeon--

Palms touching the bar she pushed herself forward in a near-somersault, swinging over the bar and landing on her feet on the stair grate, luckily not hard enough to break through...though certainly hard enough to leave a little bit of a dent.

...Only a little, luckily.

She stood there a moment, holding her chest, heart pounding in her ears. But it was only a moment before she ran up the stairs of the fire escape, careful to keep it at a quick but human speed, rather than the speeds she was not used to.

It was only a matter of time before she hopped up on the roof, throwing Fakir a wave as she moved towards him.

Any trace of depression and self loathing in Fakir's mind had been soundly wiped out by his confusion and astonishment at Anzu's sudden arrival. He didn't get up, but he did eye her quite curiously. Trying to act affronted at the intrusion, now, seemed a little pointless.

"How the Hell did you get up here?" he blurted.

"I jumped onto the fire escape, and then climbed up." Anzu said. "I not used to this sort of thing, but it is useful."

Who knew that speed powers could come in handy? Though really...the stair was a little dented...she should probably make amends for that at some point.

Letting out a breath, she sat down next to him, laughing a little.

"I guess that is strange, yes?"

"A little," Fakir said as he directed his gaze back out at the neighborhood. It must be her power, mustn't it? She must be some kind of monkey girl.

He fell silent after that, sitting in place with his legs folded under him. Despite the peaceful pose, he hardly looked at ease. His hands were held tensely in his lap, and the too-bright ambiance of night in a huge city made the tired and tightly drawn features of his face all too visible.

If Anzu knew that he'd thought of her as a monkey, he might have received a good punch on the back of the head. As it stood, she didn't know what he said, so all was well.

She watched him quietly a moment, studying his features. He was always so tense--even when he was being 'calm', or 'relaxed'. He was most relaxed when he was dancing, or when he was simply sitting down, enjoying the quiet...though it was the opposite here. He looked tired, drained. Anzu herself had a bit of a tired look to her, but that was more the worry of the past few days, when she was too sick to get up and she knew that something was wrong with Mytho.

"You need to talk?" Anzu asked, brown eyes fixed on him with a calm, but searching expression.

Fakir remained silent, as if he hadn't heard her. Yes, of course he needed to talk. There were many people he needed to talk to, and he was fairly convinced that Anzu wasn't one of them.

He resented her, in a way. For pushing and pushing her way into his life, and for reminding him, at times, of a friend who'd recently been removed from his life. He appreciated her for those same reasons, but he was far from prepared to admit it.

"What would we even talk about?" he finally asked.

"What's bothering you." Anzu said, after a moment. "That would be good start. You cannot tell me there is not something wrong."

Anzu knew that she was walking on eggshells, but sometimes you needed to jump over the eggshells to get to the chick who was hiding themselves beyond that. She wanted to make the leap, not step around...and she knew that Fakir was putting up a good defense. She wanted to help him; no, she needed to. Even though they had only known one another a short time, she'd grown attached to him...even grown to care for him, like a little brother. Him and Mytho both.

And big sisters worried about their little brothers, and protected them.

...

As much as his defense was high, his body language was also obvious. No human was that tense when nothing wasn't wrong; Anzu was certain of that.

She just needed to find out what. And how she could fix it. She knew that Mytho's disappearance was part of it, but there had to be more than that...There had to be something else.

"Isn't it obvious?" Fakir nearly snapped, his gaze flicking over in her direction as he spat the words. "Mytho is missing. He's in a state of mind where he might hurt himself. And there's nothing I can do."

She sat unaffected by his snapping--she'd expected such a response, after all--but it was the content that affected her.

In fact, her eyes had widened a moment, before growing serious as she watched him, gauging his reaction.

"...Might hurt himself? Why would he do that?" She asked. She had to be careful what she said--he was guarded--too guarded. She knew that if she moved too hard, he would clam entirely, and then he wouldn't be any help to her OR Mytho. "What happened? I know he disappear, but you hiding something. I need to know if I can help."

Again, the initial response was silence. After a moment, Fakir sighed and closed his eyes.

"You don't know anything about us, hardly," he said. "Maybe you should."

...he was willing to open up to her? Finally? He was finally willing to tell her all these things that she had been unable to understand, back when she had first met them?

...He was finally willing to let her in? Anzu was not about to waste this opportunity.

"I want to know." She said, softly. "You and Mytho are my friends. I want to be able to help you. If I do not understand, then it is hard to help, yes?"

"Hn," Fakir murmured, eyes still closed as he mulled over all the things that needed explaining. He could hear the eagerness in her voice, and it annoyed him as much as it made him feel at ease telling her these things. Slowly, he opened his eyes, and began with one of the dafter details. "Mytho is a character from a fairy story. I'm the living reincarnation of a dead character from the same fairy story. Neither of those statements is a metaphor."

...So she's friends with two characters from a fairy story? Well, one character and one incarnation?

...

.......................

If Anzu hadn't spent enough time in this world to get used to things going straight to crazytown, she might have found something a bit wrong with Fakir's head. What spindles putting people to sleep, super powers, and crazy villains and time travel will do to a girl.

Even then, it was still a little hard to swallow. Even with Yuugi's puzzle, the Other Yuugi, and everything that happened in her world...

Who'd have thought that there would be a world more batshit insane than her own? Anzu wouldn't have imagined it, if she had still been at home...

"What character were you?" She asked, though really, she couldn't believe she was HAVING this conversation. "And what sort of story was it? It was a fairy story, but what kind of fairy story?"

"I was the knight," Fakir replied quickly, the words coming with surprising ease. At times, it had been difficult to recount and consider the story he had loved so much as a child. Now, though, it was just information to share. "Mytho is the prince. The prince loves everyone so strongly and so purely that he would give up his life to save even animals. In turn, he is loved by everyone around him." Fakir's voice grew somewhat wistful at recounting this - he had liked that part of the story, and idolized the perfect prince. More so than he ever had the knight.

He was silent for a moment before continuing, somewhat graver in tone. "A monster raven threatens the prince's kingdom, demanding that the prince give up his pure heart for the Raven to eat. Because the prince doesn't want harm to come to his people, he goes to fight the Raven. His knight, who had followed him to battle, leaps up to defend him from the Raven, only to be cut in two by the Raven's talons before he can strike." For reasons known only to himself, he reached up to rub a twinge out of his shoulder as he continued. "The story never ended properly; the author died. The prince and the monster were locked in a battle that could never end, until finally... until they left the story itself the prince used a spell to destroy his own heart to keep its power from the Raven, and to seal the Raven away..."

A prince, a Raven, and a Knight...

Somehow, the Prince and the Knight made her think of Yuugi, and herself, in a way. Yuugi, the gentle-hearted prince, who would do anything to protect everyone around him, even do something so stupid as get himself into danger, or lose his heart.

Then there was herself. The one who trailed behind him, watched out for him, protected him. She'd kept the bullies away as best she could, and did everything to support him--

Though in the end, the Other Yuugi had replaced her in that, hadn't he? Some protector she was...She couldn't even prevent him from falling asleep. Sure she'd saved him from the curse, but...

...No.

This wasn't any time to think about herself. Or of Yuugi. This was about Mytho and Fakir. And the Knight and the Prince.

The Prince who gave his heart to protect his people, and the Knight, who--

...Died.

The Knight died to save the Prince. He was cut in two--Fakir was the Knight. He was the Knight who ended up dying to save his Prince--Mytho, who was his dear friend and companion.

If the characters jumped out of the story, then...

Wouldn't that mean--

No! A story could be retold! Even if the outcome was supposed to be his death, every future could be changed. Nothing was absolute--Fakir could prevent his own death, and even then...

She didn't voice these thoughts out loud, but the sadness in her eyes as she watched him told Fakir that they were there, and the realization was quite evident.

"Then the Raven? Who is the Raven? Mytho is the Prince, you are..." She paused, and her voice grew sad a moment. "...The Knight, so there must be a Raven."

"Rue, the girl who follows him around," Fakir said bluntly, his resolve returning as the psychosomatic ache ebbed away.

~~I think.~~

"Mytho destroyed his own heart. He shattered it to pieces. Because of that, he had no emotions until several months ago."

Rue...Anzu was vaguely aware of her. She'd heard the name, and had seen a girl with that name in Dance class. She knew that there was something between Mytho, Fakir, and her, but she hadn't been able to sense what. It wasn't her business, but it was plain and clear that Fakir and Rue weren't fond of each other.

...but that was why? She was the "Raven" who wanted to steal the Prince's heart?

Somehow, she wished she could have known sooner. Maybe this Rue had something to do with Mytho's disappearance? If she was the raven who wanted his heart, and Mytho was gone, separated from his Knight...

And because this was a fairy story set of logistics, Anzu wasn't going to comment on how it was unrealistic for a heart to get shattered and have someone still be alive.

"If his heart shattered, how did he regain emotions? Did he somehow get parts of it back?"

"Someone returned them, piece by piece," Fakir said with restrained calm. "Not all of the pieces. And Rue took one, the piece that held his love, and stained it with Raven's blood. That's what's eating at him now."

Love, stained with blood...Why would the Raven, who wanted him dead, take that piece of his heart? Was it to destroy him?

But then why would she just follow him around like she does? She doesn't openly try to hurt him in public, just...follow him, and give him strange looks, if she remembered her correctly.

Why would she...?

...

Something clicked in her mind. It was a wild guess, but it seemed right. At least...right as far as a sane explanation went.

"So Rue was...in love with him? Is that why she took that piece?"

"Was, and still is," Fakir said, his tone quite matter of fact. "She's stated herself that she did it because she wanted him."

Because of love, she had hurt the one she cared about most, and had sent him in this misery. Because she wanted him, she wanted to hurt him.

...As much as humanity was flawed, sometimes filled with dispicable villains and evil people...

Anzu couldn't wrap her head around the idea of hurting someone because they loved them. That was oxymoronic, completely the opposite of what love was. When you loved someone, truly loved someone...you didn't want any harm to come to them, right? You'd want to stand by them and cheer them on and take care of them, right?

Was the Raven of such a tainted heart that her own sense of love was tainted as well? Or was it simply infatuation due to the purity of his heart, overshadowing the cruelty in hers? It could be either one...and in the end...

"If she truly loved him," Anzu said at last, "She would not have done that to him. But she is raven, so maybe her heart is impure, and so her love is impure."

Edited 2010-03-17 00:58 (UTC)

Fakir nodded slowly, tilting his head upward to look at the overcast sky. Even in the best weather, he could seldom see the stars in this city. There was nothing look at, only faces to avoid as he pondered the purity of Rue's love. Before seeing her as a child again, he would have hesitated to call it love. But she had loved him once, even if she only desired to possess him now. Somehow, that was more terrible - that she had become tainted as Mytho had. No, more so. Mytho could never become like her.

Tainted love, shattered hearts...if Anzu didn't know those involved, she would have found this some bad shoujo manga, or maybe something straight out of one of those dramas that she'd sometimes find on TV.

She said nothing, looking at Fakir a moment, before looking up towards the sky again.

"Could Mytho be with Rue?" She asked after a moment, voicing her earlier suspicions that had been too inconvenient to state at the time, "You say he is missing. Maybe Rue knows."

"Mytho is terrified of Rue; he wouldn't go to her," Fakir said without hesitation. "Her gambit to make him hers has failed. He's in despair because his heart is rotting away, and there's nothing anyone can do about it."

Despite his cool expression, the calm did not reached his voice, which sounded almost strained toward the end of his explanation.

"There must be something we can do." Though in her tone, there was a small tinge of despair, herself. Mytho was suffering, and it was because of something that she herself couldn't fix. She didn't know the first thing about taking magical heart pieces and making them heal up, purifying them.

Wait. Wouldn't Bakura know something about that? He used white magic...

But purifying a person's body was different from purifying a heart. Mytho didn't need a white mage...he needed a priest, it sounded like. Or at the very least, something that could remove the taint of the Raven from his mind.

But how?

There had to be something...

Fakir shook his head. "Nothing we've tried has worked. What remains of his heart is in our world, and any attempts to remove the blood fail. Or worse, they seem to work, only for it to recover and start eating away at him again."

He stood, finally, resting his hands on the railing at the edge of the roof. His voice was soft, unusually so, but determined as he looked out at the city.

"Duck, the girl who... left. She was from a point in time in our world where Mytho had been saved from the blood. She told us that love could save him, that a powerful act of love would release its hold on the part of his heart that loved. That's all we've had to go on."

An act of love...

This was sounding like the spinning wheel curse all over again. An act of love would break the curse...but did it have to be romantic love? There were many layers of love: Romantic, Family, friendship. Love wasn't just encompassed around one thing.

...

Yes. That had to be true. There was no such thing a an all-encompassing definition of love. There were all sorts of things you could do for a person.

But what sort of thing could she do? Duck had said that an act of love would free him, but was that all? It wasn't much to go on, but it was at least something.

Anzu stood, moving to Fakir's side before she turned around, leaning her back against the rail and looking up towards the sky.

"Then let's go."

"Go where?" Fakir asked, genuinely confused by the suggestion and shooting her a strange look because of it.

"To find Mytho!" Anzu said, determination seeping in her voice. "He has to be somewhere. Maybe there is place nobody has checked..."

She placed a hand on her hip, smiling a confident smile in Fakir's direction. There had to be something they could do. Act of love...

They were his friends. They'd be able to save him. Right?

"And it is act of love, yes? We are his friends. We love him. An act of love should not be hard--and it is what we have to go on. So we should take it and see where it lead us!"

Fakir was quiet a long moment, his expression dull and unreadable. He wasn't exactly moved to silence, however. He scoffed once the moment had passed, shaking his head. She could only smile like that out of ignorance.

"What did you have in mind?" he asked sharply. "An act of love... What, in your mind, is the sort of loving act that could undo something this awful?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh sweetheart, put the bottle down...you've got too much talent.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

it's so good he doesn't know the gears are turning in her head re. Rue

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

funny thing: tere IS a bad shoujo manga of it. not so funny: IT REALLY IS REALLY BAD

W-wow.

no subject

no subject

for definition, see: cliche fairy tales

no subject

no subject