You realize the longer you wait, the greater the risk you run that those things happen. Those demons don't care about your comfort and preferences. Hearts are wild things before their urging.
[ And here she was doing so well keeping an appropriate distance. She pauses a moment, looking at those words on her screen. Turns her gaze to one side and takes a longer sip of her drink. ]
I think I could have worded that differently probably. They've troubled me more than enough for me to want to tear them out of the sky many times over now.
[ But that's a very different sort of conversation she won't trouble Rohan with at the moment. She's actually going to take a moment to consider her curses across the board. ]
My changes during Cordis have been physical in nature. There haven't been any marked changes in my personality. I haven't had to worry about the timing of the cycles pressing me into a confession or anything like that is what I meant.
[ He's perceptive. She knows that. It's one of the things she appreciates about him, one of the reasons she enjoys sitting with him on their bench at the park and watching, listening to the world around them with him. She can watch him watching others, watch him work, and it's fun and fascinating to watch him go. See how he interacts with the world so wide-eyed, curious, and attentive to detail. It's more than talent, it's a whole way of viewing and interacting the world and others and she loves that even when it's turned on her, when he sees, reads what many more would miss, preoccupied with their own troubles.
Does that mean you have something to confess?
Setsura lets herself sink a little further down into the comfortable heat of the tub and those fluffy bubbles now. Puts her polished drink atop the tray to the side and simply reclines a moment. There's a simple answer to that question and then there are the various complicated factors surrounding her situation, which is different than Rohan's on many more levels than they are similar. It's why she hadn't chimed into his post. Not shyness, fear of discovery, or -- ha -- shame, but those various dimensions of difference, nevermind their levels of experience concerning the subject matter, the numerous avenues down which she could take him from the present moment into her past.
Even then, there are other things she's been thinking about, considering, turning over quietly. After all, she is a hanyoukai and so very "other". In fifty-four years, she's barely aged a day and that's been an issue taken by even the humans she loved the hardest, and she loves humans. She won't ever stop loving them, oddly fragile, yet resilient, short-lived beings that they are. They are so much, but --
But Rohan didn't ask all that. That isn't his problem, it's entirely hers. He merely asked her a simple question that sees her heart, wild thing that it is, flutter at the very thought. She reaches quietly to steady that wild, foolish thing, deep violet gaze turned down, and sighs softly. The corners of her mouth twitch upward just so. ]
[ He feels for her. Probably more than he'll ever really articulate to her or know, but he knows. He knows what she means when she says it because that is how it feels. How it always has felt, even when he didn't put a word to it. It was as if the decisions were being made without him. His entire self had decided for him that this person would be the object of every ounce of his affection, and he'd never have those feelings if it weren't for her. She would get every bit of that from him. And, he was left in the dust - the last to know.
And every moment he lives with that knowledge, the more and more he can see everything that led him here. And maybe that is why what Setsura says makes him feel for her because the moment you catch up with what the rest of you is doing, the harder and harder it is to stop - even if you wanted to, even if you tried.
He knows what it feels like. And he thinks of Reimi before he messages. Thinks of the choices he's made to simply be closer to her - and he'd do anything for her. And he wonders if that is why Setsura could so accurately tell him what it felt like. What each moment was like when you just want someone so much that you can't imagine existing without them.
Or maybe she isn't there yet. Rohan doesn't know. But there is something. And she's helped him, maybe even when he wasn't ready to hear the help. ]
And the rest of you is just learning this fact, isn't it?
I got an inkling during Iris, but I had to put it aside. At that time, there were more important matters. I couldn't afford to be distracted.
[ Not like that, so she'd redirected her focus and kept it through the triple moons until after Lewin was ho -- no, at the house, until after he'd returned to the house and he was safe and they talked. She'd gone shopping for some particulars in Caihong after that, grabbed a few things on the way back, and settled in to perch nearby while he recovered because, between the two of them, she was better equipped to handle any combat situations that might have arisen given the cyclical nature of things in this place and she'd had some things to put together, music to listen to, some lunches and snacks to prepare for the week. She'd had things to do. She does now, but she just wants to sink further and further down into the tub, maybe submerge her head under the water long enough that she remembers to breathe properly.
She's going to punch JJ in his stupid shoulder when she sees him again. Having her imagining Lewin calling her like that, how happy she realized it makes her, like now. She shakes her head rapidly. ]
But my situation isn't the same as yours and I don't want you getting the idea that is. You should be concentrating on figuring this out for yourself and making a proper decision.
[ Rohan recalls those moments. The way she looked on camera, the way she called him hers. The fact that she noted to him, even, that he was important to her. But all of those things, they didn't necessarily mean she had feelings for him. Her Lightning. She is right when she says they're not the same. Rohan's been numb to the idea of getting close to others for most of his life. Or all of it that he remembers.
And, well, maybe it was also because he knew, somewhere, that he'd be okay without her ever returning those feelings to him - as long as she stayed close to him anyway. For all of his efforts not to do it - it was hard to not see Reimi as everything good. She gave him his life. And he had convinced himself, and told her, that nothing she could do to hurt how he thought of her. And that was true.
So it's only natural that it'd be different. He didn't necessarily they'd really be similar. But the feeling? He knew it. He could recognize it. He knew what it was like, and he'd have to know more to see what was going on in Setsura's head.
Whatever she'd share, of course. He wouldn't dare use his ability on her for something like this. ]
Of course it isn't the same. And I didn't think this absolved me of trying to find out how I want to approach this.
[ A game plan. He needed that to approach this. Maybe he'd produce some short manga - 4 panels, probably - to help him better figure out what he needed. He's sure that's not what most people do, but for him. ]
You and I are different enough that I didn't think it would be, either. But you need to be fair to yourself. You deserve to have what you want.
[ What she wants is to hold onto this small, unexpected happiness as long as she can, to make Lewin as happy as she can while she can because it's not like they were going to have forever even before that realization had dawned as she'd walked the streets of Lunatia searching for him during Iris. Her heart swells and bobs with that honest answer to some distant question and she sighs yet again, shaking her head, giving a reddening cheek a good, firm smack.
"You're too tired," that's what she wants to tell that foolish thing. "Rest a little longer and maybe someday --"
Someday what? She'll choke on that heart of hers long before that. Hasn't she learned? It's big, bigger than she wants anyone to know, and wild. Even its cage can't keep it. It will absolutely leap into her throat with feelings that don't, won't quiet and when it all disappears before her eyes, she'll be left standing here with regret upon regret.
Probably.
Breathe, it's -- no, he's here. Calm down.
Iris began some two weeks ago and she's only been looking this in the face for a few short days now. There are only so many things she's certain about. ]
That's my line, you know.
[ Couldn't have said it better herself, she thinks. Selfish is the proper way to live. Everyone, everything lives some kind of selfish or it dies before the desires of some other being in some unkind way. That is nature. There's nothing wrong with wanting to live and pursuing that desire earnestly. She has where so many wish she'd fail, but to hear those words returned to her so many days after she gifted them to him takes her aback. Makes her heart twist in its cage as she draws her knees to her chest in the tub and shoots a half-lidded glance at her device. ]
It isn't love, but [ but, she echoes, and there's a small, slight smile for some reason, ] it's pretty stupid, huh?
[ Like wanting to peel on top of Lewin and bury her face in his chest right now. Her face is red? The bath was hot. Just let her stay there for a bit. He doesn't care and she's tired. ]
[ Maybe it isn't love, he notes. But it's something. And it's important to Setsura. Therefore, Rohan cares at least a little bit about it. As much as he can care about someone else. Being close to others has never been particularly easy. Personal relationships weren't too important to him, though. Not before at least. But here, there were a couple who had found their way in. Setsura among them.
So, he'll accept what she says about it not being love because he has no reason to not believe her when she tells him that. And, if it is - she's saying it isn't because either she doesn't know or doesn't want to talk about it. He won't be pushy. He's in no place to be since he can barely keep it together when he thinks about trying to tell Reimi what's going on. ]
And that's my line, Setsura. Though, I see what you mean.
[ Because it wasn't stupid. It wasn't stupid to him that Setsura cared about someone. So maybe Setsura had felt that way when Rohan said it to himself. But, with Reimi - it's so much more.
It's not about being selfish only to him, though. It's that he doesn't know if he's ready to know if someone feels that way about him here and now. And he knows, once he crosses that bridge, you can't return from it - at least not without using a means he'd prefer not to. It's not like it hadn't crossed his mind. ]
[ Like her heart, foolish thing that it is, is hers. She loves it for that reason even when it's trying to choke her out and put holes in her body because it wants to leave and make a home in someone else, live with them. And it's such a wild thing. It barely listens to reason if it hears it at all. The fact that she's already living with Lewin isn't enough. It's insistent and it trips and falls all over itself about him at the worst times and it's hot and passionate, not weathered and changed like the seasons through years and years. Jumping into her throat, dropping into her stomach, hurling itself against its cage until her bones feel bruised and sore and she aches.
"It isn't love," she'd only just typed, but she isn't sure about that and she hates being uncertain for any lengthy period of time. Ranpo had said he knew exactly how she felt about Lightning, so how the hell didn't she? How'd -- and her fingers are twitching -- she miss this? She looks at her hand and wonders for a brief moment if she really did. Because she knows. From the very beginning, she wanted to hold onto that hand of his. Grasp his other, train both his eyes on her, chase this, take this as far as she can as long as she can. She wants him, she always has. She does. Enough to reject the honeyed words of a puppet, to fight, to chase him down, to stop him when he snaps, to promise to keep him from smashing this boring world to pieces even as she clutched at that tiny bit of distance she established when that doll first told her that he didn't, couldn't care. He doesn't, she knows, but she does and even now she wants to chase this, all of this. To know him more and more, be with him. If it wasn't love then, that it could be now, is that really so surprising?
And just like that she hears a certain master detective's words in her head again.
"Ignoring it won't make things better. There's never going to be a 'better time' to address it with someone like him."
But it's not so simple, she thinks. Because neither she, nor Lewin are most people and that is something to be considered before her heart's urging. She'll clutch that pitiful distance a little more tightly, a little longer in the face of these feelings because there are things she needs to know, figure out.
Hn. ] But I suppose it's fine if I should happen to care a little.
[ He uses the word because he feels like he wants her to know that he's actually taking her feelings and words in to consideration here. That he cares about what she feels because he sees her as his oneesan. He sees her as family. And Rohan doesn't use words like this or have feelings like this lightly. He's never considered anyone family before. He barely considered his own like family after seeing and feeling the way they treated his experience after August 1983. ]
Have you ever felt like this before? I haven't. I don't know what to expect. But maybe you have preconceived notions as to how things should work.
[ Maybe that's why she's reluctant. Or maybe that's why she readily understand exactly what it is. ]
[ As though she's only ever been good at caring a little. Really, who was lying to at that time?
But she doesn't miss it, Rohan's careful use of that word. He's conveying very specific things to her right now and she reads them with exceptional care. That question, though, that's a loaded one. Sees her lean back as she considers not if she should answer, but how. ]
How it should work and how it actually does aren't necessarily the same thing. Like I said, hearts are wild things and they don't always agree with the mind. The desires of those two things can easily run counter and you would think your rational mind would easily win out, but the heart is powerful when it moves, when it's moved. Even the most experienced, seasoned person may unexpectedly find themselves in a bind.
Trying to define or relegate the feeling to a single word or set of words is misleading, detrimental, too. Affection of any sort can wax and wane. A lot of people come into this idea that attraction, that love should always feel a particular kind of way and become distressed when it begins to change. If there is a constant, it is that it may remain what it is at its core and a person has to consciously realize that. That isn't always easily done.
A scorching love that burns with the heat of a passionate summer may have began like a gentle blossom in a warm spring and cool into windy, colorful autumn. It's no less a love than it began, but it is different.
[ He reads her words again and again. He processes, takes it slow, as he usually does. But he settles on a simple answer. He doesn't really have any reference points to understand it fully - having never been there, but he takes her word for it. Because why shouldn't he? She's been very honest with him and his questions and concerns. ]
I understand. You're clear.
[ Expect that things can change, but that doesn't mean that the feeling is gone, even if it's different. That much, he can handle. He's even watched his own shift just a little. ]
Truthfully, I don't want to color your expectations too much with my own experiences even though I know you're intelligent and discerning. This is a new experience for you, after all. I wonder how you'll describe it years from now?
[ But that's years away and right now, he's still figuring things out. He isn't the only person between them with things he's figuring out either, but it wasn't her intention to leave him to walk the path without so much as a guide when she revealed it to him to begin with a few days ago and that hasn't changed. ]
But if you do find yourself with questions, you know where to find me.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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It would be impossible to avoid then.
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You know... you talk like you really, really know what it's like.
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The moons haven't troubled me so.
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[ Setsura, he knows they trouble at least someone else in your life... ]
So none of those impulse control problems, that sort of thing?
[ Well, if she wanted to derail the boy, she may have for now. ]
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[ But that's a very different sort of conversation she won't trouble Rohan with at the moment. She's actually going to take a moment to consider her curses across the board. ]
My changes during Cordis have been physical in nature. There haven't been any marked changes in my personality. I haven't had to worry about the timing of the cycles pressing me into a confession or anything like that is what I meant.
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But... [ There's those words, he notices something about them. ]
Does that mean you have something to confess? I mean, it reads like that to me.
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Does that mean you have something to confess?
Setsura lets herself sink a little further down into the comfortable heat of the tub and those fluffy bubbles now. Puts her polished drink atop the tray to the side and simply reclines a moment. There's a simple answer to that question and then there are the various complicated factors surrounding her situation, which is different than Rohan's on many more levels than they are similar. It's why she hadn't chimed into his post. Not shyness, fear of discovery, or -- ha -- shame, but those various dimensions of difference, nevermind their levels of experience concerning the subject matter, the numerous avenues down which she could take him from the present moment into her past.
Even then, there are other things she's been thinking about, considering, turning over quietly. After all, she is a hanyoukai and so very "other". In fifty-four years, she's barely aged a day and that's been an issue taken by even the humans she loved the hardest, and she loves humans. She won't ever stop loving them, oddly fragile, yet resilient, short-lived beings that they are. They are so much, but --
But Rohan didn't ask all that. That isn't his problem, it's entirely hers. He merely asked her a simple question that sees her heart, wild thing that it is, flutter at the very thought. She reaches quietly to steady that wild, foolish thing, deep violet gaze turned down, and sighs softly. The corners of her mouth twitch upward just so. ]
My heart seems to think so.
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And every moment he lives with that knowledge, the more and more he can see everything that led him here. And maybe that is why what Setsura says makes him feel for her because the moment you catch up with what the rest of you is doing, the harder and harder it is to stop - even if you wanted to, even if you tried.
He knows what it feels like. And he thinks of Reimi before he messages. Thinks of the choices he's made to simply be closer to her - and he'd do anything for her. And he wonders if that is why Setsura could so accurately tell him what it felt like. What each moment was like when you just want someone so much that you can't imagine existing without them.
Or maybe she isn't there yet. Rohan doesn't know. But there is something. And she's helped him, maybe even when he wasn't ready to hear the help. ]
And the rest of you is just learning this fact, isn't it?
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I got an inkling during Iris, but I had to put it aside. At that time, there were more important matters. I couldn't afford to be distracted.
[ Not like that, so she'd redirected her focus and kept it through the triple moons until after Lewin was ho -- no, at the house, until after he'd returned to the house and he was safe and they talked. She'd gone shopping for some particulars in Caihong after that, grabbed a few things on the way back, and settled in to perch nearby while he recovered because, between the two of them, she was better equipped to handle any combat situations that might have arisen given the cyclical nature of things in this place and she'd had some things to put together, music to listen to, some lunches and snacks to prepare for the week. She'd had things to do. She does now, but she just wants to sink further and further down into the tub, maybe submerge her head under the water long enough that she remembers to breathe properly.
She's going to punch JJ in his stupid shoulder when she sees him again. Having her imagining Lewin calling her like that, how happy she realized it makes her, like now. She shakes her head rapidly. ]
But my situation isn't the same as yours and I don't want you getting the idea that is. You should be concentrating on figuring this out for yourself and making a proper decision.
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And, well, maybe it was also because he knew, somewhere, that he'd be okay without her ever returning those feelings to him - as long as she stayed close to him anyway. For all of his efforts not to do it - it was hard to not see Reimi as everything good. She gave him his life. And he had convinced himself, and told her, that nothing she could do to hurt how he thought of her. And that was true.
So it's only natural that it'd be different. He didn't necessarily they'd really be similar. But the feeling? He knew it. He could recognize it. He knew what it was like, and he'd have to know more to see what was going on in Setsura's head.
Whatever she'd share, of course. He wouldn't dare use his ability on her for something like this. ]
Of course it isn't the same. And I didn't think this absolved me of trying to find out how I want to approach this.
[ A game plan. He needed that to approach this. Maybe he'd produce some short manga - 4 panels, probably - to help him better figure out what he needed. He's sure that's not what most people do, but for him. ]
You and I are different enough that I didn't think it would be, either. But you need to be fair to yourself. You deserve to have what you want.
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"You're too tired," that's what she wants to tell that foolish thing. "Rest a little longer and maybe someday --"
Someday what? She'll choke on that heart of hers long before that. Hasn't she learned? It's big, bigger than she wants anyone to know, and wild. Even its cage can't keep it. It will absolutely leap into her throat with feelings that don't, won't quiet and when it all disappears before her eyes, she'll be left standing here with regret upon regret.
Probably.
Breathe, it's -- no, he's here. Calm down.
Iris began some two weeks ago and she's only been looking this in the face for a few short days now. There are only so many things she's certain about. ]
That's my line, you know.
[ Couldn't have said it better herself, she thinks. Selfish is the proper way to live. Everyone, everything lives some kind of selfish or it dies before the desires of some other being in some unkind way. That is nature. There's nothing wrong with wanting to live and pursuing that desire earnestly. She has where so many wish she'd fail, but to hear those words returned to her so many days after she gifted them to him takes her aback. Makes her heart twist in its cage as she draws her knees to her chest in the tub and shoots a half-lidded glance at her device. ]
It isn't love, but [ but, she echoes, and there's a small, slight smile for some reason, ] it's pretty stupid, huh?
[ Like wanting to peel on top of Lewin and bury her face in his chest right now. Her face is red? The bath was hot. Just let her stay there for a bit. He doesn't care and she's tired. ]
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So, he'll accept what she says about it not being love because he has no reason to not believe her when she tells him that. And, if it is - she's saying it isn't because either she doesn't know or doesn't want to talk about it. He won't be pushy. He's in no place to be since he can barely keep it together when he thinks about trying to tell Reimi what's going on. ]
And that's my line, Setsura. Though, I see what you mean.
[ Because it wasn't stupid. It wasn't stupid to him that Setsura cared about someone. So maybe Setsura had felt that way when Rohan said it to himself. But, with Reimi - it's so much more.
It's not about being selfish only to him, though. It's that he doesn't know if he's ready to know if someone feels that way about him here and now. And he knows, once he crosses that bridge, you can't return from it - at least not without using a means he'd prefer not to. It's not like it hadn't crossed his mind. ]
I don't think your feelings are stupid, though.
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[ Like her heart, foolish thing that it is, is hers. She loves it for that reason even when it's trying to choke her out and put holes in her body because it wants to leave and make a home in someone else, live with them. And it's such a wild thing. It barely listens to reason if it hears it at all. The fact that she's already living with Lewin isn't enough. It's insistent and it trips and falls all over itself about him at the worst times and it's hot and passionate, not weathered and changed like the seasons through years and years. Jumping into her throat, dropping into her stomach, hurling itself against its cage until her bones feel bruised and sore and she aches.
"It isn't love," she'd only just typed, but she isn't sure about that and she hates being uncertain for any lengthy period of time. Ranpo had said he knew exactly how she felt about Lightning, so how the hell didn't she? How'd -- and her fingers are twitching -- she miss this? She looks at her hand and wonders for a brief moment if she really did. Because she knows. From the very beginning, she wanted to hold onto that hand of his. Grasp his other, train both his eyes on her, chase this, take this as far as she can as long as she can. She wants him, she always has. She does. Enough to reject the honeyed words of a puppet, to fight, to chase him down, to stop him when he snaps, to promise to keep him from smashing this boring world to pieces even as she clutched at that tiny bit of distance she established when that doll first told her that he didn't, couldn't care. He doesn't, she knows, but she does and even now she wants to chase this, all of this. To know him more and more, be with him. If it wasn't love then, that it could be now, is that really so surprising?
And just like that she hears a certain master detective's words in her head again.
"Ignoring it won't make things better. There's never going to be a 'better time' to address it with someone like him."
But it's not so simple, she thinks. Because neither she, nor Lewin are most people and that is something to be considered before her heart's urging. She'll clutch that pitiful distance a little more tightly, a little longer in the face of these feelings because there are things she needs to know, figure out.
Hn. ] But I suppose it's fine if I should happen to care a little.
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[ He uses the word because he feels like he wants her to know that he's actually taking her feelings and words in to consideration here. That he cares about what she feels because he sees her as his oneesan. He sees her as family. And Rohan doesn't use words like this or have feelings like this lightly. He's never considered anyone family before. He barely considered his own like family after seeing and feeling the way they treated his experience after August 1983. ]
Have you ever felt like this before? I haven't. I don't know what to expect. But maybe you have preconceived notions as to how things should work.
[ Maybe that's why she's reluctant. Or maybe that's why she readily understand exactly what it is. ]
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But she doesn't miss it, Rohan's careful use of that word. He's conveying very specific things to her right now and she reads them with exceptional care. That question, though, that's a loaded one. Sees her lean back as she considers not if she should answer, but how. ]
How it should work and how it actually does aren't necessarily the same thing. Like I said, hearts are wild things and they don't always agree with the mind. The desires of those two things can easily run counter and you would think your rational mind would easily win out, but the heart is powerful when it moves, when it's moved. Even the most experienced, seasoned person may unexpectedly find themselves in a bind.
Trying to define or relegate the feeling to a single word or set of words is misleading, detrimental, too. Affection of any sort can wax and wane. A lot of people come into this idea that attraction, that love should always feel a particular kind of way and become distressed when it begins to change. If there is a constant, it is that it may remain what it is at its core and a person has to consciously realize that. That isn't always easily done.
A scorching love that burns with the heat of a passionate summer may have began like a gentle blossom in a warm spring and cool into windy, colorful autumn. It's no less a love than it began, but it is different.
[ She pauses now. ]
Am I making sense, Rohan-kun?
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I understand. You're clear.
[ Expect that things can change, but that doesn't mean that the feeling is gone, even if it's different. That much, he can handle. He's even watched his own shift just a little. ]
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[ But that's years away and right now, he's still figuring things out. He isn't the only person between them with things he's figuring out either, but it wasn't her intention to leave him to walk the path without so much as a guide when she revealed it to him to begin with a few days ago and that hasn't changed. ]
But if you do find yourself with questions, you know where to find me.