Scene #7939:

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	There's only one place to return to after all of what happened in (the other) London, and it's certainly not the boxy facility in the back of the Haitian mountains. 'Home' is a place Tamamo has revisited many times over the past few years, and one that has increasingly come to feel like it for Lilian ever since. Of course, she has to be (well, she allows herself to be) lead in with an arm around Tamamo and exhaustedly hobble up the stairs, as the adrenaline has long since worn off and her injuries are rather extensive, but she makes it. Too tired to even stop to strip her battlesuit off, Lilian insists on doing it carefully and properly in front of a mirror; and she will only ever use the scratched mirror in her own room. Broken inserts are gingerly removed before the rest, the melted leg portion peeled away with the odd sensitive hiss, so she can examine the ballistic bruises and second degree burns between her neck, elbow, and thigh. She still won't look at the leg she was pretty sure she stopped feeling for a while.
Tamamo	Tamamo has made her own home. She's made two, in fact, but the guest room she's taken over is still the one that keeps her closest to Lilian, and that makes it the more important. One hardly need mention any of those places she'd once lived. There were quite a few, and not all on the same side of the sea. Only occasionally does she wonder what sort of monsters finally destroyed the middle kingdoms, after she'd left. But right now, as has been the case for some time, she's focused on Lilian. Her talismans are plastered like she was trying to seal a demon, certain over-protectiveness, yet unable to restore what should have been quite simple. For her, who had instantly repaired the damage of being blasted through the back of her chest, restoring a leg lost to a magical explosive shouldn't be so difficult. And yet, here it remains, as it was, already 'restored,' yet still concerning. That is all to say that she's being constantly, worriedly fussy, insisting on helping Lilian up, helping her with her battlesuit, marking every other little wound she has with a salve that tingles for a moment before it numbs to forgetability, and finally herding Lilian to sit down and start looking under the cast-like covering of talismans to get at her leg. Tamamo can tell, immediately, that the magic hasn't worked in the way she'd expected it to. But she still has to look. She has some other methods of analysis, mortal magecraft of old traditions that bear no relation to her blessings, and others ways to look, spirits to question and threads to trace, but one thing at a time. Even in her current state, she knows that trying to do too much at once is carelessness, and she can't have that, when it comes to Lilian's health. "The worst you have received from battle, did you call it? Perhaps I should be glad you have gained none worse."
Lilian Rook	Lilian suffers through the fussy medical attention of the one person allowed to touch her all over, bravely holding her breath with each sting of a freshly prodded injury, working down the list. She is more than grateful to flop onto her bed after, though she seizes herself from lying on her back while the salve is still wet, if only just in time. "Yeah." she sighs, all the formality slipping out of it in a room with only Tamamo. "I . . . Specified that, because I've had worse. Just not from a fight." A few bleary seconds go by. Lilian's eyes widen incrementally; she rubs her face. "Oh, you meant-- never mind." She still won't look down. It's not clear why. Below the blast line, her skin smoothly crossfades from its extremely fair complexion to its polar opposite, becoming a sort of soft, semigloss black that belongs on a freshly inked page, not a human body. Deceptively, it seems almost partially transparent, like if Tamamo stares at it long enough, her 'night vision' will adjust and see the dim outline of a room within. Traces of dusty gold remind her of kintsugi, if cracks could form like cloudy ripples instead of sharp geometric edges. It's still warm to the touch. Soft, but as if it were beneath a perfect layer of skintight metal foil. She can't feel a pulse. "It feels fine, Tamamo. Better than fine. Honestly, the part of me that hurts the least right now. I'm sure you did a great job."
Tamamo	"I meant your physical injuries, though if you wish to speak of others..." Tamamo pats down her work. The salve doesn't need very long. She is very good at what she does. If there was anyone in the world better at the task of healing Lilian Rook, she'd be shocked and guiltily jealous. "I imagine you do not. There, you may lay yourself down, now, as you please." Lilian's reassurance simply isn't effective, regarding her leg, for Tamamo. "It does not hurt at all, if that which can feel pain is removed, but this, even more so, would be concerning." Tamamo works her way down, from that transition area until she settles on 'the big toe' as the inevitable target of a testing pinch. "The colors, of course, remind me of that magic I have seen you use, but for this to appear on your body... Lilian, I would not seek to alarm you without cause, you know? But for such a transformation to occur, and while you were not even using that black and gold magic, it is not something that should be ignored. If my charms have been insufficient to fully restore you, and I cannot discover the reason, what if something more should occur? Or..." Tamamo has to cut herself off, then, to sit next to Lilian, and visibly calm herself. Visibly, though she takes such pains to be unreadable, in public. It's only the two of them, after all. It's safe, in that respect, if not 'a safe situation,' in other ways. She takes Lilian's hand in hers, laces their fingers together, feels her pulse, reaches for the place the limb would have been blown off and looks into-- --a vision from which she momentarily returns. "The tree? The thing taken from it, why would that...?"
Lilian Rook	"N-no." Lilian sighs. "I don't want to talk about it." A beat. "I'm sorry. It's not about you or anything. I'm just . . . tapped out." Her pulse really jumped there, now that Tamamo can feel it. "No, no I can certainly still feel it." Lilian wiggles her toes as if that demonstrates it somehow. "I'd recognize the feeling of your skin anywhere, you know. It-- hey!" It's surprisingly difficult to pinch her at all. Doing so requires a certain thinness and elasticity of material. Somehow, that almost feels as if it were the point. That the replacement would be harder to cause any pain to. "Don't pinch me just to prove it!" When her magic is mentioned, Lilian's excitement slides off her face again. "Ah, this?" Extending a fingertip, she channels a flickering conflagration of vantablack blots and infragold sparks, audibly sizzling like a fuze until she claps her fist around it. "That's . . . That really never came up, did it? It's . . . Nobody taught me it, I just sort of figured it out. I think it's actually . . . It feels most like time magic. But it's more like . . . I just use 'that' and 'magic' at the same time. Like engaging multiple muscles. Or thinking two things at the same time. It acted up in that Decompression Chamber too." Then her face blanches. She can never even begin to maintain a poker face around Tamamo. "How should I know?"
Tamamo	"But if I did not pinch you, how would I know you can feel a pinch? And oh, my, is it rather... tougher? It does have a feeling like metal, as if armored. While I do not at all mind seeing you in armor, I would much rather it be the sort that can be removed." There were at least two points during that in which her tone entered the 'about to ominously giggle' range. "Oh, I had suspected it something self-taught, but to think it was... ah, no, that does follow, cleanly. I see, it relates to the same ability, or rather, the same association and relation." Tamamo's gaze slides uneasily, her tongue held, not speaking of... something else. "It is unfair to ask, I know, when you cannot find the answers, yourself. There is some instinct, some dream, some old, forgotten wish, some drive that may be yours, or may be only of one with whom you connected, and it is the only explanation we have, that meager description of feeling without understanding, for what those 'trees' are, and why they are important." She doesn't let go of Lilian's hand. Tamamo's grip is firm. A little too tight, even. A little shaky, until she rests her other hand over top. "I would like to see the other two, though Sakura-chan--" She pauses, just a moment, a smile tugging at her lips as her head tilts, and eyes slide to the corner. "--do you suppose she is watching?" The mischief in Tamamo's eyes goes unexplained, passes, and she returns to the topic at hand. "I should like to see those other two, if for no other reason than to find what points of commonality we may, that we should better understand your own. I shall say this, as well, and please, I beg that you take it to heart." Tamamo leans, not quite slumping, but resting with her head touching Lilian's. "That 'tree' scares me. The way it drew you, and that unexplained need to be near it, and what came of it, frightens me. I can only imagine you leaving, somewhere, far away, or else, ceasing to -- but no, that is enough. Would you... please, be careful with yourself? If there were even a chance it would take you from me, I would wish to do everything in my power to destroy it." The lack of euphemism in her speech is unusual, but she says that without emphasis, in honesty without forethought.
Lilian Rook	"Why do you need to know if I can feel a pinch?!" Lilian whines. "Metal, is it . . ." Lilian trails off, drawing a tense breath when described as 'armour', and letting it go a as shaky giggle at the end. "Well, you know how I am about knights. The ancient family set is unfortunately a little too large for me." Flopping down on her back, hair fanned out underneath her, arms sprawled above her head, Lilian sighs absentmindedly. "What comes to mind for me is . . . it makes perfect sense, for someone-- something shattered and put back together. Doesn't it? Damage is part of history. History is part of the whole. Even harm can be an important event." A long, difficult silence passes. "It's not a forgotten wish. I didn't forget. Not one day." Feeling Tamamo's hand shaking over hers finally drives Lilian to sit back up, placing her other overtop those and looking into her eyes, wearing her best, softly tired smile. "I've been thinking about them too. Ash and Oreshnika, right?" Her face reddens after. Her arms and legs squeeze themselves together. "She'd better not be. I haven't exactly done a sloppy job when it comes to scrying and my room you know!" she huffs. "If it even is scrying. We know what her wish was. We know which Tree is hers. But we don't really know what her power is, do we?" Lilian reaches one hand up, to hold the side of Tamamo's face when she speaks so frightfully plainly, but it falls just short, so that only her fingertips trail hesitantly along her cheek. "I'm sorry. It-- . . . If I'm being truthful, I'm more than a little scared of it too. I thought . . . If I didn't show it, it wouldn't spread. But I suppose that was a rather childish hope. I've just been . . . I've been rather selfish, keeping all of it to myself, haven't I? Especially from you. It's too easy to leave things unsaid, when you're so impossibly kind as to not ask. It feels like taking advantage of you sometimes."
Tamamo	"We know that she watches things thought hidden. We should draw a sign, perhaps, reading 'good girls should not see this,' and keep it at hand." She's trying to joke, and the teeth show in her smile, but her eyes are squeezed shut, and there's a tear at the corner. Tamamo quiets down. More neutrally, "Perhaps we truly should." A longer, difficult pause. "You know... that I wish only good for you. You know that I love you. For that, there are things that become difficult to say, or difficult to ask, for fear that I might hurt you. There have been so many, many things that--" Tamamo's breath catches, the start of a sob. She laughs, quietly, sadly. "I know she only said what words she could, to hurt me. That 'Blueberry-Princess.' They only hurt because they were words I had thought, myself. There are so many things I had, perhaps... done wrong. There were so many people who were hurt, because of me, and it was so hard to bear. I had thought I had overcome this, there in the Lodge. For some moments, I suppose, I had. A willingness to be selfish is freeing, and yet, the fear that it may hurt another remains, still." She sniffs. "Can I ask something selfish of you, Lilian? Can I ask of you to keep yourself away from all parts of that tree?" Even if this hurts you? "If only until... some other matters settle."
Lilian Rook	It's so clear that Lilian can feel Tamamo's pain. Awkward, stressful, teary and half-contained, it doesn't take any of her abilities to know it. To feel it strike deeply at her heart. She smiles, and she laughs, but it is in the way that girls are taught to do. The smile and laugh of feeling distressed, not knowing how to cope, making herself small and hoping the storm passes. "I . . . Tamamo, I think if that were true, Sakura would know better. I'm certain she knows what is and isn't appropriate to see. And if she were the type to ignore it, I don't think a sign would help, would it? She . . . I'm sure she's a good girl. I can feel it." "I can feel it as much as I can feel how badly she was hurt. I know she's good, and I know she has her own clock eating away at her too. So . . . so let's not worry about that. It'll already been hard enough to unthink it." Lilian's faltering hand regains its drive at the sound of that sad laugh. It slides back up and cups the bunrei's cheek, its twin gently lifting up to match it across, so that she can hold Tamamo at just the angle she can look right into the depths of her eyes. Her voice lowers to a near-whisper, heavy and fried. "I know . . . I know, and it makes me think I'm just terrible sometimes, that I keep leaving you with the burden of asking anyways. Knowing you won't. Feeling safe and guilty at the same time. It's . . . I'm sorry, it's not fair to you." Her voice turns hard-edged when Blueberry's name is spoken. Lilian has been able to muster empathy for a shockingly long time, all things considered, and now her reserves are spent. Her throat convulses weakly, face pale, lips contorted into an unhappily withheld snarl. "Yeah. She wouldn't have said them if they wouldn't work. That's how reverse causality is. She'd have found something, one way or another. I didn't lie to Arthur. Not exactly. It really is just . . . an emotional hack. Say the words that make the most important person stop functioning. A sequence of sounds that inflict pain in combination." "What she said about me . . . is . . . it's-- . . . it's something I've . . . I've thought it. I hate it. I don't accept it. But some part of me came up with it. She doesn't know what it means. It's just pain, Tamamo. If--" Lilian swallows hard. There it is again. That look as if she's about to be sick. "You're not allowed to feel bad about it. You don't believe her about-- . . . about me . . . right? You know I've never lied to you about who I am. Don't you? You know this is the real me. So you should know better than to believe her about you. You know you'd never hurt me. You deserve everything Tamamo. Not just my love-- you deserve so, so much more. More than I could ever give you." Lilian exhales. She looks awful. "And even if you did, I'd forgive you. Even if you killed me, I'd believe you had to." She is braced, clenched from jaw to middle, for what Tamamo is about to ask. The look in her eyes betrays that it wasn't what she expected. The quiet grinding of her teeth betrays that it's nearly as difficult, for other reasons. "I . . . It's not what you're thinking Tamamo, I-- . . . It's not like that." The whimper that follows is one from someone who knows she has no choice anyways. "You know that I can't say no to you. Even . . . Even if it's a little bit cruel, if I won't even explain why it is, isn't it just my own fault? I can . . . for everything you've done for me, I can at least do that. Okay. I'll figure it all out." "It'll be okay. I promise."