capeandcowllogs | peering through mirrors in foreign places

Entry tags:

peering through mirrors in foreign places

WHO: Ruka and Blue
WHERE: Moonybase
WHEN: Thurs, March 25, mid-afternoon
WARNINGS: God it'll probably be oozing sap by 3 replies idek
SUMMARY: Time to figure out if this old Blue is new Blue; WHAT BETTER WAY TO FIND OUT THEN BY STARING AT SMALL CHILDREN.....
FORMAT: No

How was he to approach this?

Several people had approached or called out to the Soldier in the brief time that he had arrived, some more desperate than others. It was unsettling, alienating. To be so welcomed and so familiar to such strangers...

There were explanations, of course, some more extraordinary than others. He couldn't speak to the truth of the things said over the network, but his first days on the streets were quite educational; he was hardly the only one in this situation. It was either that...or an elaborate web woven by machines grew more intricate and bound him tighter as each day passed and he accepted his abduction. There seemed little he could do about it, but a Soldier without purpose was no Soldier at all. Blue sought something he could grasp and understand.

Those memories and experiences that he didn't share seemed to be all available to him. It was troubling to think about, let alone attempt to approach. Who was truthful? Was it safe, even right? Those people knew him by sight and sound, but he had nothing in return. It needed to change. Even if it was true, and the Blue they knew was not him, then did he not have the responsibility to distinguish himself to them and put their anxieties (and his) at ease?

And he was alone, even in Yusuke's apartment. If these people really were friends, then...

Blue stared down at the strange little device in his palm and the numbers therein. He'd only been able to label a few, and of those...he wasn't certain which to approach. Who knew best?

Eventually, though, his scrolling left him at "RUKA". She had not been amongst the majority that reacted so loudly; rather than insist their acquaintence, she offered help. A name, a place to be found...A place he, or someone like him, had resided. It seemed the best start.

He gave a tentative text, announcing his intention to arrive. Perhaps it would be inconvenient, and he would have to wait longer. Part of him hoped for that; what was he going to end up finding when he pursued this?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ruka was at home when she received the message, catching up on weeks of schoolwork she had missed from being rendered a comatose toddler and, later, disappearing entirely from the City. She was honestly a little surprised: with what sort of reception she had seen this Blue receive on that post, and how he had reacted, she was not sure if she had ever expected him to answer, after the first few days of silence. She fired back an answering message, agreeing to the meeting. Remus and Edgeworth were both out, and Rua was spending almost all his free time preparing for the Duel Monsters tournament.

Adjusting her gloves as she descended the staircase, Ruka tried to empty her mind of her memories of Blue, so that this one would not be overwhelmed should he look into her heart. She didn't know precisely how strong either of their psychic abilities had been, but having once been overwhelmed with his memories merely from touch...

Waiting downstairs within range of the front door, Ruka could only hope that this meeting went well; that she could, possibly, forge new bonds of friendship with this Blue.

Teleporting wasn't an option in this city, where all places were foreign and many of the streets moved and blended together into a big blur of corners and shops that may or may not've been one place or another. He had an address, certainly, but he couldn't visualize it at all. Therefore, he had no choice but to take to the street, picking a direction and following the increase and decrease of building numbers. This went on for twenty minutes to no avail, gradually becoming anxious. It was becoming apparent he would have to ask for help, but...he glanced towards the more congested blocks with dismay.

It was unavoidable. Blue approached several people to mixed reactions, most more helpful than he expected, shrinking away from the dark glares, as if peering through his disguise. It was another thirty minutes before he found himself on the street listed, and another ten to walk down the block and stand before the house. His chest was tight; there was no reason to back away now.

Standing before the door, he closed his eyes. There was but one person inside--the Ruka that he had spoken to before, no doubt. A calm presence, though tentative, as he was. Blue drew a long breath, rapping his knuckles on the door, gently at first, growing with the need to be heard.

At the knock, Ruka released one long, last breath, like a cloud of memory and sensation to be blown across still plains. Locking as much of it away as she could, she rose, and was at the door before the knocking could get too loud. The deadbolt sounded loud to her ears when she unfastened it, and the door heavy as she pulled it open.

The man on the front step was not the man she had known, and for her preparation she is not bombarded with memories of their time together. She remembers merely a flash of the face she had known, somehow both older and younger and more open, before that too was locked away in the depths of her heart.

"Welcome," she said finally, smiling, and as she stepped to the side she pulled the door open wide with invitation.

She was...smaller than he had anticipated. A child with such a calm, composed demeanor...Had he not heard the lilt of her voice over the network, he would have assumed to have met someone much older. Blue's expression gave away his surprise, blinking once as he regarded her. Guilt, then, for imposing on someone so young. Was this really not the right way...?

"Hello," he replied, barely audible. He hesitated a moment more, lingering outside before moving indoors as indicated. Such a spacious interior...it was deceptively sized from the outside, he noted. But...

There was nothing familiar here. The realization sat like lead in his stomach, turning his head and looking back down at the girl, uncertain of how to speak next. She had closed her mind; good girl, she must know her way around psychics. But it left him with nowhere to go, where to start.

"I'm sorry," he said at length. "For intruding."

As she closed the door behind him, Ruka let out a small sigh, shaking her head. "You don't have to apologize. I invited you, didn't I? Besides," she added, "you could never be an intrusion."

After all, technically, he had more of a right to live here than she did.

She led the way into the living room, where there were couches better suited for conversation than loitering in the foyer. "Would you like anything to eat, or drink?"

"No," he replied, "thank you." He couldn't think of eating. Following behind at a slow pace, Blue stepped carefully into the room, glancing about. Still nothing. He should have, by all accounts here, right? And though he was certain of himself and his century out of human hands, somehow...he'd hoped to have some memory sparked.

"Nothing," he murmured, letting his hand trace along the back of a chair before stopping, looking over at her. "I--someone...perhaps me...Was here before?"

As Blue looked around, Ruka knew better than to hope he would suddenly turn with a mind full of recollection and becoming "his old self" once more. He was not the first of her friends to die and return with no recollection of having ever been here, and there were countless others from alternate worlds or so forth with such radically different identities and personalities. She'd been one that had resented those new versions, but, after seeing just how radical a change a person could have, like in those two Bruce Banners, or the different versions of Phoenix, Ruka had finally come to terms with those differences.

But, even if those bonds she made were damaged, and bent, but the comings and goings of alternate versions of the people she cared about, even if those people could not see or recognize those bonds... she had protect what of them was left, and forge new ties as well as she could. It was what allowed them to—

Shaking herself clear of those thoughts, Ruka sat primly on the seat of the couch adjacent to Blue, her gloved hands cupping firmly on her knees. "The other Blue," she said with a small nod, before finally looking up to meet his eyes. "Do you want me to tell you about him, or... would you rather see?"

Blue sat down carefully after she had, straightening and looking back at her, scrutinizing. The ebb and flow of hope and rationalization moving like water through the empty air, apparent like a scent or a color he could precieve without seeing, hearing, or the other tactile senses.

He gave a gentle sigh, gaze dropping in consideration. Words were just words on the network; he couldn't visualize or understand what they understood. Words here, face to face, came with the gradual notions of places and feelings, though without initiative, Blue could not place them. And since the words alone did little...

"If you would allow," he replied, looking back up, "I wish to see."

Ruka bowed her head, shoulders relaxing in relief. Where would she even have started, if he'd wanted her to tell him a story of the other him? What even did he want to know, specifically? She wasn't sure how much of what she knew would be useful.

"Not all of it is good," she warned, rolling her gloves off her arms and plucking them from her hands; for a moment, jagged scarring was visible on her right arm before her long sleeve covered it once more. Ruka laid the gloves on the arm of the couch, and with a deep breath turned towards Blue, offering her open palms in a gesture he should understand, but could not understand the full extent of.

"But, whatever you wish to see, I'll show you, if I can."

As his gaze drifted downward to her outstretched arms, Blue noted the scars with an unspoken concern. It was etched on his brow, however; his mouth creased into a deeper frown, not only contemplating his own anxieties, but why and how those marks were there. No harm would come to her from this, would it? It didn't seem possible, but then, this place was certainly having a good time proving him wrong. Still. He would know if it hurt her.

Another hesitant moment later, and with a soft exhale Blue reached over, gently settling his hands over hers, curling his fingers around her small wrists. Contact was like a harsh shove or violent tug, pulling his senses out--or, perhaps, those things that weren't his to him. Like he had experienced with Claude, the unguarded mind was all sound and fury and directionless sensation and memory. Here, though, there was an unexpected restraint. Walls, in a sense, like the most sound Mu. There would be no accidental invasion of thought here.

Blue could get his bearings immediately, closing his eyes to the physical world.

Show me.

Ruka's mind, having been tied since early childhood to a world now beyond her reach, had shaped itself to mirror that place—a meadow, an empty crag, a dried river slowly replenishing, a decayed forest growing over anew. A realm within the territory of her heart, it was the gateway to any journey into the depths of her memory.

They did not stay there long: at Blue's command, there was a blur of motion as the world reshaped around them, the quiet echo of voices—
So long as there is memory, there is a connection. As for the rest...
It is unclear.

But even if the future is unclear... it will always be there, and the things you're working for will be, too.

The surroundings settled, and it was as though they had gone nowhere at all; the scene returned once more on this house, fleeting glimpses of people and events blurring together. It was difficult to remember the first time she had seen the other Blue, met him, so many months ago; moments of passing one another on pathways, smiles, quiet seconds, but none lasting long. Their features were indistinct, motions unsure, fluctuating. Fragments of voices hung in the air without mouths to form the words.
I wonder, though... How much time will pass—
The memory world grew dark, shadows long and thick across the scene, intangible blankets that somehow shrouded every facet, blurring on the edges of an imprecise recollection.
—before memories from the other world become clouded and vague.
The scene dragged across the darkened house, to where an only slightly younger Ruka hovered around the living room's entrance; dressed in bedclothes, her hair was down and loose around her face, eyes bright and fully awake. The scene was dark, but the other Ruka had her attention fixed across the room, where the other Blue stood, his back to her. Silhouetted by slow-approaching dawn, he'd seemed so much larger than he was, taller and stronger and imposing, but, somehow—

Even though we lived in the same house, we weren't very close, back then, she said, or thought, as the other Blue slowly turned to greet and apologize to the other Ruka, as they both turned to watch the brightening sky in silence.

He was sickly, like I used to be when I was younger. He spent a lot of time resting in his room. We didn't see each other very often, but...
I have not seen a sun rise in many years.

It was almost Mu-like, Blue realized, as he was led through echoes and faded images. No violent thrust into color and sound like the unchecked minds of humans that caused such anxiety; active as he was, he did not need to force his way anywhere. She knew what to find.

Blue as spectator had a transparent visage in the mind, a pale ghost that touched nothing, only observed, listened, and felt beyond tangible touch. He braced himself in that dim room, eyes fixed on the back of a head with pale hair. Was it really...?

The other'd turned, and if it was a mirror, it was tired. Blue saw his face unchanged in physical form, but there were years in the eyes. Many years. The sun came and went on Ataraxia, and even trapped in the Shangri-La, Blue had strength to stand outside and watch. Was this person really just different, like suggested?

Sickly.

Why was he ill?

I never asked. For as different as it was, Blue's frailty had reminded her too much of herself, and how much she hated never knowing why she was the way she'd been; how could she have asked?
I would like to believe that there are memories too strong to ever be forgotten, but...

But... I don't want to forget the ones who are the most important to me.
The memory turned and shifted elsewhere to the house, though not far; from here it was easy to see where Ryou Bakura arrived, appearance and clothing and lighting fluctuating between half a dozen points, or more, but all following the same pattern. Ryou looked tired, and a little worried, but he usually did not falter between his arrival and knocking on that door. Her own feelings and memories surrounded him like a cloud: worry and relief, gratitude and debt, a sense of making right. He was a healer: one who restored vitality and strength to those from whom it had been taken.

The Porter brought him to this world twice. I barely knew him at first, but the second time—
What's waiting for you in your world?

... Nothing.

Nothing?

I no longer live in any world but here.
—He had already passed away.

As Ryou slipped silently inside that door, there was a ripple of color beneath and behind the darkened night of the house, short, indistinct, but punctuated with a voice—Soldier-!—that Ruka had never heard. With effort she forced the bleeding images back before they overtook what control she did have, and the world righted on the threshold of that closed doorway.
The means to stand against destiny—
They are the bonds between people—between friends.

Even with Ryou helping him, his condition got worse, and worse. After a while, he stopped coming out at all. He was on his deathbed.

Do you still want to see? Him, and what memories he passed on?

Before him, the door remained firmly closed.

A dozen questions came to mind as he watched the world change, but all were kept to himself. Blue recognized the boy. Bakura. He'd been the most eager and earnest of the people who'd claimed to know him. With good reason, it seemed; he had said they were good friends. For such a thing to be confirmed...it weighed heavily on him. How cruel and unfair to those who knew this person to be beset by the face of a friend who cannot look back with regard. How like the world he knew, where childhood dreams and memories are clouded out and eradicated to empty space for adulthood. All of it was so...wrong.

He took in all that worry, hope, doubt, and that shock of fear at the sound of his title, hardly echoing before the way was shut.

Dying. But how?

Yes, Blue pressed, feeling the urgency of being on the threshhold to something great and terrible. I must know. This person...If he's really--

If that's truly who I am...

Or what he'd become? Was that at all possible? There was nothing to be certain of anymore. Dread clutched tightly him like the cloak around his shoulders. But he had to know.

The door opened to night, and darkness, and only fragments of shimmering distant city light illuminated the way. There, Blue laying on the bed, pained and weak, fatigued, almost withering, like leaves hanging tight to the branches long past autumn's command to fall. There, beside him in silhouette, sat Ruka, their bare hands holding onto one another, silent and intimate.

The world duplicated then, splitting along perceptions. In one layer was Ruka's memory of the moment, two people in silence in a room, but in the other was his memory, where that Ruka observed his past. The bedroom and the city lights were dwarfed, engulfed in the sudden universe that expanded beyond what any walls or galaxies could hope to contain. Of all the images in Ruka's mind, these were the clearest, the sharpest, the most detailed. Those two, above that gray world—

Look at how far you've come with your own power, Jomy-!

Blue's sight was pulled from the delicate night to a darkness contested by the glow of a whole world. Not Earth, not this Earth, not the far-away Terra he and his kind sought--

Ataraxia...!

Was that really enough to assume they were the same? The sight and sense of that planet was brief as Blue found himself staring back at a frightened, green-eyed child. He did not know him, but...

This one is a Type-Blue...Like me.

Another Type-Blue...It was possible, but he and his friends had never saved one before. Did this mean-?

Blue reached for that memory, as if touching it would divulge more. Anxious, desperate. Please, is there more--

William, Zel-?

The names he asked for were not ones that Ruka had learned, or faces she knew, but the memory moved on, focusing on that boy. The other had watched him, observed him, some untapped spark having drawn his attention—the images became more disjointed, more erratic, jumping from a theme park backwards to his final moments with his friends and family, anxiety and sadness accumulating around every encouraging word, to—

The machine in the dark, and him, and—

Don't let go of your precious memories, Jomy!

Blue strained, trying to look back at what had flashed by so fast. Sounds and names and so much pain, all rushing in a disjointed line where time was of no consequence. He spied William--so much older!, and thought he heard Zel's voice in some far-away discussion, echoed and veiled by closed eyelids. He wanted to much to know if it was truly them, or...that it would be them, still there, still safe. He feared the voices of turmoil and disaster that seemed to sound all at once, having no glimpse of just what and why--or who. But he felt that notion of familiarity, that those were Mu. What was happening?

There was a woman with her hands on his face, eyes closed and mind open to more than any other he had known before. Who-? Just brief flickers of places, emotions, sounds...She would smile a second, then wring her hands as tears came the other. And she kept re-emerging in that mess of memory. Such importance. Who are you?

There was heat and fire and a sudden jolt of pain, so sharp and searing that the Blue as spectator nearly reeled away as the memory did. Some pale, stern face at a distance...

The sounds splashed together and rippled into that darkened chamber where that blonde boy was, and himself...Exposed before a looming and unpleasant shape as the memory called. A mechanical voice hummed and seemed to vibrate to his bones. He didn't know that shape, but he knew what it meant automatically.

It's the exam...It's changed. Stronger. It's...

She had little control now over where the journey turned. These memories were not her memories, and many of the images, the people, were ones she would never know, never see, could not understand from mere glimpses. The woman she could recall—Physis—but everything cycled out so fast at Blue's command that she couldn't redirect the flow. They were back at the machine, with another layer of input from the other Blue himself in that other place. Some force, some strength of will connected the two in an instant, almost violent, giving the boy, Jomy, his chance to escape, before the memories moved forward.

Soon it was repetition. The scenes played out again, no slower than before, but Blue watched and felt in earnest, utterly engrossed. It was a grand jigsaw that he could only fit a limited number of pieces to, and the rest was empty. A half-blurred image, in a sense. The familiar and unfamiliar were blended and tied tightly together, and when Blue watched closely again, he saw fists pound against a concave window at men in white coats, pale hair and red eyes reflected. Then he knew, almost certainly...

He left that scene, withdrawing and passing through that door that was opened for him. Violent scenes dimmed and quieted with the softer until it was gone, and Blue's fingers slid away from Ruka's wrists, dropping to hang limp as his forearms lay propped on his lap. He sat quiet for a moment, eyes unopened, closing off all sound to him.

It passed, and his eyes opened, looking straight ahead with a vacant, placid expression. When he blinked, stray tears fell silently and unregarded, and he said nothing, merely dropping his gaze to his hands.

There were only quiet sounds, once the connection was severed; the hum of electricity, of soft breathing, the settling creaks of an old house. Ruka's eyes, only partially open, do not hold tears. Sadness, and hurt, and something else, but her tears are held back behind the last dam.

When she spoke into the empty air, her voice was quiet, and trembled.

"There's one more," she said, and for that weakness there, too, was determination. They had come all this way, and he had wanted to know everything. This final piece...

"Memory, I mean. The last one."

She did not ask if he wanted to see it, did not question if he would take it. While his hands had fallen away, hers were still held out, somehow steadier than she would have thought. Whatever he had wanted to see, she would show him, no matter how terrible.

Blue's gaze flickered up at her words and he was once again not the only person in the room. The realization that it wasn't just him watching, that she, too had seen and felt. Moreso than him--they were locked in her heart, mementos from her past and...his future? His expression watered to something softer, brows furrowing with his mix of guilt and sorrow. Looking down, her hands still presented to him, unmoving.

Without a word of protest, he reached over again, setting his hands over hers. Again his eyes closed.

I will know it.

There was less gentle guiding now, the mental barriers she had put up now breaking down; she was no longer hiding this, the final piece.

The scene changed to a bedroom, though not the one from before; it was Ruka's room they came to, again the dead of night. The past-Ruka here was not sleeping, instead sitting in the mostly-dark, the only light coming in from open blinds. There were no stars; only city pollution and a fraction of the moon illuminating the room.

It was ordinary to her: sometimes nightmares struck, and sometimes it was too painful to return to sleep immediately, or to risk running into Edgeworth or Remus downstairs in similar straits. Instead, she sorted cards over the covers: familiar, comforting, and hollow.

It was as she moved to collect a couple of these cards that her right hand suddenly clutched at her chest, breath trembling past her lips, eyes wider in the darkness. Her motions then would have made little sense to either version of Blue: with her left hand she tugged up the sleeve to her right arm, to stare at the jagged scarring below her elbow. Exposed for longer, its shape was more visible, even in the dark: a hand, or claws, talons, distinct and straight, looking more like a branding by hot iron than anything else.

The other Ruka stared at this mark for a long, silent moment, but with a shake of her head she dismissed it, turning then to a bedside table, ripping into a drawer and withdrawing something familiar: a communicator, like every other forced resident of this world received.

The room was quiet, save for the quiet click of buttons as she searched, the glow of the screen's light discoloring her face and throwing her expression into soft relief.

Memory split once more, strangely; the center remained on Ruka on her bed, staring at her communicator, but like projection, what she saw had grown out from beyond that little screen and overtaken the wall behind her, across from them. Flat walls were overtaken by trees, the dark night sky, and two figures.

And, behind them, the third.

On the bed, the other Ruka had dropped the communicator, hand covering her mouth as she trembled and shook at the video; on the wall, those two spoke candidly and harassed the man they had strung up in the trees, abused, not yet deceased.

Kel'Thuzad... it's still moving.

Indeed, my lord.

As the video played, and the subsequent cries and screams of reaction poured out of the communicator, some voices familiar and named, some unknown, and as the other Ruka's hands curled into fists in her covers as she tried so hard to not give into temptation, to not feed those creatures with her own broadcast of turmoil and loss, emotion seeped into the memory from the recollection. Like slow flood waters it came, inches of dark coldness rising from the ground.

The Lich King, and Kel'Thuzad. The so-called ruler of the undead in his own realm, who flung open the gates to the underworld. This was just their "message"

The slow-climbing emotion was palpable, seeping into the memory, bleeding over into Ruka's voice, stern and hard, growing cold.

But for all those threats, no one accomplished anything. They haven't been brought to justice. They haven't been stopped. That deadly sickness, that pushed people past death and brought them back— that was them.

Sorrow. Anger. Sadness. Love. Self-loathing.

Hatred.

The reason people want you to be that man... isn't just because he was a friend, or someone dear to people. He was a good person with a good heart, who wanted nothing more than to help people.

And we failed him.

Soldier Blue was no stranger to torture and death. The laboratory on Ganymede was a nightmare to any child with the Mu factor. They died on tables with their minds broken and eyes wide, and nobody bothered to calm their features as they were bagged and sent away to places unknown. Most already weak of body, many suffered more than just the mental probing. And when Blue had finally had enough and he let himself take command...so many had died. In those memories, so many...

It didn't matter how often he had known these things--they were always horrific. The memory, her memory, of this quiet night broken by such a thing...Blue saw himself. It was him, wasn't it? Or...it would be? Grasping at it was impossible at the moment. He felt a cold chill, dreadful and sharp along his spine, watching and feeling those things she had felt then and there.

Only when she had said people did he realize the sounds bubbling underneath. Cries of outrage. For him. Familiar sounds from the unfamiliar people that called his name with hope and recognition...

It was too cruel.

Externally, Blue's hands twitched, shifting and curling fingers around hers tightly. He bowed his head low to them, a shield against the pained expression he now wore.

In the outside world, her hands were shaking before he readjusted his hold, and the tears she had fought to keep back rolled down her cheeks in slow, heavy rolling drops. Within her mind, however, she pulled them both out of that awful scene, out of all the awful places. The scene shifted once more, dissolving, before returning to that beginning forest, empty of all life save one dark bird, impossible to spot. There could be no conflict in this place; all those lingering dregs of frustration and hatred bled away.

"I'm sorry," she thought, or said, in both places at once.

Blue's mind pulled away from that place, back to himself and taking all that he had learned with him into his heart. Even forcibly far away, with her hands in his he still knew her emotions. Brave girl, pure soul...why did she have to endure such things? Then, why did anyone? His tears weren't for himself, or...that person that had his face; he mourned for her and those people that called them his friends and allies. And that's what they truly were, weren't they? Even if those memories were not made with him--yet?

What was he supposed to do? Was his presence only salting a wound? Or...?

His head lifted eventually, blinking the blur away and exhaling painfully at what he saw. "Such strength," he murmured, lifting a hand to carefully brush her cheek dry, expression soft and apologetic. "You've done so much good for me. Ruka."

Physical contact like that— Ruka wasn't used to it. Unlike Rua, she rarely cried around anyone, including her brother. With a family that was never around back home, it had taken her time to adjust to that sort of presence from her guardians. When Blue touched her face, wiping her tears, she looked up with wide-eyed surprise. It was something the other Blue had never done—nor had he ever had the opportunity.

At his words, Ruka smiled for the first time since he arrived, bashful and more honest, and she shook her head slowly. "No, that's not me. I'm not strong like that."

His hand hesitated a moment before moving away. It really wasn't his place to touch her like that, was it? He was different. Both hands retracted to his lap, folding in a silent promise not to reach out again. At her words, he, too, shook his head gently, briefly.

"You hold so much in you," he said. "It seems cruel, unfair. But you are strong, and...you didn't need to share these things with me, as I am. Yet you did."

Again, she shook her head, either unwilling or unable to accept the label. "But that's not my strength," Ruka insisted, leaning forward to cover some distance caused by his retreat. "The reason I can hold so much, it's not because I'm strong, or brave, or anything like that. It's everyone supporting me, and protecting me. Our bonds... that's the strength you're seeing."

Memories of people flitted through her mind, many faces from many worlds, some not even human—but after a moment they stopped, when Ruka's hand let go of her right arm, no longer cupping over the hidden scars.

"The reason I let you see those things... the reason I shared those memories with you, it's because... you're the only one who can understand what it was, that was left with me. And even though it was painful... it will help you, won't it?"

A vague smile tugged at the corners of his mouth at what she had said. How could he argue her down when, if tables were turned, he would've said the exact same thing? The urgent need to give her something in exchange for all that pain she held on his behalf...as if...

As if he had known that he was going to die. How strange.

"Yes," he affirmed, nodding his head. "I want...I want to understand what it is that drew people to me. That keeps them attentive to me, even..." he glanced back down at his hands, "even like this."

He went quiet a moment, mulling it over once again.

"...I don't know if there's any way I can be sure, but...that person you know..." He trailed off again, looking back up. Warily, "I believe it's me. A...A me that I will become."

And I'll die here.

For a moment, Ruka tilted her head a little to the side, examining him—the way he sat, how he spoke, the small expressions hidden in his face. With this quiet contemplation, after everything she had shown him, she wondered, what stood out to him the most? What from his own "home" struck the greatest chord? What from this realm weighed most on his shoulders?

Almost none of it had been good, as far as Ruka could tell.

"... it doesn't have to be."

Watching his fingers curl and the fabric of his gloves bend with it, Blue almost barely heard her. But her words were like a faint chime, still calling him to attention, and Blue looked back up, regarding her once again. He wasn't a scientific mind; those theories about multiple, even infinite universes were things he had never put to thought, so engrossed with the state of his own. Here and now, though, he'd gotten many a faint migraine from considering such things. Who was to say what was right? And how could be be certain that it really was him in those memories, and not some...alternate world with similar cirumcstances?

Doubt and concern clouded his features, eyebrows pinching with the thoughts that passed and left him with no answers. "I suppose that could be so," he said, slowly, still trying to reason it all. "Knowing one's future gives one an insight into changing it, but..." Would knowing all that now eradicate the Blue she remembered? Then wouldn't those memories cease to exist? Another confusing chain of thoughts. He shook his head of it. "No one can be certain of such things."

"Yes, you can," she retorted, shaking her head. "If the future couldn't be changed, or if destiny were all that powerful... why would there ever be fighting? Why would there be laws, or justice? If you don't... if you don't think it can be changed, then... what do you live for?"

Her own path was defined that way: what destiny required, and what destiny she and the others could not let come to pass. Even so long later, she remembered the island-city of Satellite, and their shared vision, of the geoglyph of fire. How could she forget that shared terror they all felt, at the sight of a destruction that had not yet come to pass? And having stood in the center of two of those destructive Nazca markings, and seen all the lives sacrificed to feed a preordained battle she had already witnessed, foreseen, how could anyone allow a future like that to stand?

All the promises she had made, the people she swore to protect, and all the bonds of friendships she built up here in this world—weren't they all ways of defying that dark future?

Ruka shook her head again, more firmly. "Even if you and he come from the same place, or share parts of the same past, that doesn't mean his past has to be your future. Your future... that's your choice."

The reasons why people fought...why there was order, justice, such virtues...Blue's life led him to believe it was not so much for the future as it was for changing the present. Superior Domination, a hope for the long-term security of mankind, implemented to hastily organize and fix the devastated state of humanity when they fled the ravaged Earth.

No, some things were far out of one's hand, regardless. It was still the obligation of all to work hard, however; that was what it was to be alive, wasn't it?

But she was determined, and it virtually radiated from her. He couldn't dampen that. In exchange, he gave a soft, warm smile of appreciation. "Perhaps you're right. And these things...they will help. You've done me a great good."

She accepted the smile gratefully, in return giving him one of her own, honestly cheerful.

"I'm glad." And she was; she had seen how confused, and angry, and frustrated he'd seemed when he'd first arrived, and how confusing she knew it would be to arrive anywhere and be recognized by strangers, claiming to be friends. It wasn't their fault, nor was it his; but if, as he said, she had helped him, then perhaps he would be able to form ties with the people who wanted to care about him — this him.

Which reminded her—

"There's one more thing I wanted to show you, I think," she said, and added hastily, "not memories, or anything, but it's upstairs."

He blinked. "Ah...very well." Blue shifted and rose to his feet, stepping aside to allow her the lead.

The path would be familiar, if only for how the rest of the afternoon prior had been spent: Ruka led him up the stairs and down the hall, into the other Blue's former bedroom. It looked much different in daylight, of course, and had taken on the nonoccupational air after nearly two months of disuse. The bed was made, and things were still left in order, but not much had changed since that day in February.

Ruka gestured that Blue follow her in, after she cleared the doorway, and she made her way to one of the dresser bureaus.

Daylight or no, tied into Ruka's familiarity and the memories he had just seen, Blue could recognize the place. It was his room, wasn't it? Or simply the room he had been when Ruka had been given those glimpses into his mind. There was nothing there that would've struck him as outstanding on his own, however. None of these things were his. He stood at the entrance, glancing about before watching her.

After a moment, having found what she was looking for, Ruka closed the top drawer and turned. Approaching, Ruka held out the object in question, in offering.

Another communicator.

"I don't know who all he was friends with, or who knew him best," she said, her gaze drifting to the window rather than meet his eyes, "but most of his conversations should be saved in here, I think. Those people, they might have more answers than I do. If you want to keep searching."

Blue glanced down at the device in her hands. It was only natural that other self would have one, wasn't it...He reached over and took it, turning it over in hand to expose the screen. Much better kept than the one he owned presently, but that's what happens when you drop things from forty stories up. And this thing...had past discussions between others? Him speaking? Then...

"Thank you," he murmured, gently brushing dust off the screen. "You've done much for me."

"You're welcome. I really do hope it helps you. ... But," she paused, biting her lip for a short moment, before cupping her hands together before her.

"But, just because he was another you... that doesn't mean you have to be another him. No matter what anyone else says, don't... don't try to be someone you're not."

While she had come to terms with the fact that this man was still, for the most part, a very familiar stranger (like Yuugi had been, and countless others), she didn't know how the others on the Network would react to this.

... For that matter, she still didn't know what she was allowed to call him.

At that, Blue smiled faintly. It was going to be uncomfortable, he assumed, trying to connect with those that would see it as a reconnect, but...

"If what you have shown me and what I have been told is entirely true, then...he and I are not very different. Still. The only person I know how to be is myself, and that self has to adapt, as he did." For as long as he was trapped in this place. If they were the same, then...perhaps it would not be long? Who knew?

"Strange as this all is," he added gently, tilting his head a little, "I...cannot say it has all been utterly bad. Never would I have believed to have made such friends before. It is not something I should run from."

"That's one of the few really good things about this place, I think. The friends we an all find here, that we'd never meet otherwise."

Bonds overcame destiny; could it be, too, that the potential for them was part of what could bend time enough to allow everyone to meet?

"If there's ever anything else you need, we'll all be here to support you—Rua, and Uncle Remus, and Uncle Edgeworth."

And maybe, she thought, she could get to know this Blue, as well. For as similar as they were, there were differences that she could still see... and she still wanted to be his friend for who he was now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

peering through mirrors in foreign places

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/abuses formatting

*keeps the format police out of this and ENJOYS

kyaa

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