Scene #8448: The Crummy Middle Part Of Figuring It Out

Owner	Pose
Xion	Xion didn't quite know the full depth of the situation with Lilian, didn't understand exactly what was going on, or who to blame, or what to hit. The easy answers didn't come quickly, or at all. The monster didn't rear its head and the tornado never touched down. People were just hurt, hurt because nothing happened, or the right thing didn't happen, or even just because something inside them caused them pain because. But Xion knew, when Lilian was silent and the monster stood over her and smiled, what to do. First, she texted a certain other friend. > Hey Haru. > I have a problem I think you can help me with. > It's really important. > Yes or no: > Could you come eat a burrito with me? A resturant map link follows. To the second receiver, the tack is a little different. > Lilian, I'm getting some food with a friend. > Do you want to hang out? > He won't make it weird. > I sense that you could use a burrito. > It's my magic power of also wanting a burrito. At ROBERTO'S (By the Sea), Xion sits at an outside table, a stone bench with a flat-sanded pebble-pressed concrete seat and tabletop. The center is doughnut holed to accomodate a slightly rusty metal umbrella with a sun-bleached canvas top. The resturant's walls are mostly glass, with a front door and a kitchen door, a square little building with a sandy plot between it and the sidewalk, a two lane coastal road that drops on one side down into beachside scrubland and sandbars, and on the other, is a parking lot that features Roberto's. Xion, dressed in a black short-sleeved t-shirt, red baseball cap, and a pair of jeans with red Converse-alike sneakers on, sips from a truly large horchata while she waits, sitting underneat the single outside table's umbrella with her back leaned against the table, legs crossed and waiting.
Hamada Haru	Haru flips open his phone, which is not as antiquated as it appears because it's an advanced Riotrooper buckle, and glances down at the messages. He replies quickly: > Sure. "Make it two," he asides to the vendor in front of him, unaware that he's going to meet more than one person. A moment later he's finished paying and tucks the taiyaki away in his jacket, to become moderately malformed during transit. When he arrives it's on the back of a motorcycle only moderately modified from the one he rode as Kamen Rider Tetra, powering down in his absence without the need for keys. He's dressed as he usually is, which is to say completely inappropriately for any sort of outdoor heat, but he doesn't change his manner of dress for practically anything, so that's no surprise. But he does take one look at the giant horchata and goes to get one himself before settling down opposite Xion. "I have some mildly squished taiyaki too, if you want some," he offers. There's not so much a conscious decision to avoid the topic of whatever problem is imminent as a broad understanding that Xion will bring it up when she brings it up and there's no sense simmering on it.
Lilian Rook	Lilian has shot down requests to hang out already. Drinks from Candy, talks from Ishirou, gifts from Kukuru, visits to Persephone, an endless slew of third degree friends from school wanting to get in on whatever is happening. She's been with Tamamo precisely once, gone with Eleanor and Sabrina for a short trip became it too uncomfortable to bear, and ignored a barrage of calls from Arina and Satsuki for dubiously work-related outings. But Xion is different. Xion could arrive at her home any time. She has the visitor's pass and the old abandoned room that connects close enough to the Corridors. Xion notices some things that nobody else does, even if others fly by her. So Lilian has to assume that if Xion is asking her to go somewhere, it must matter that she not be home. She has to try once. At least to say she did. Lilian arrives ostensibly by foot, though that largely isn't the case. Despite ghosting through most of town, she looks more uncomfortable than even that time at the theme park, practically holding herself as she walks. Plain sneakers and faded jeans-- too tight at the upper and too loose at the bottom-- blend unassumingly into an urban setting, but it evokes a sense of blood-chilling wrongness on her of all people. The dark-green too-big hoodie ruins it anyways, completely inappropriate for a summer beach. She's already sweating, a little, visible on the little glimpses of her neck. Tying her hair in a too-tight compact swirl marks an unsuccessful attempt to minimize its length. She still hasn't smoothed the asymmetrically missing centimeter. The gauze has been downgraded to a square plaster on one cheek, the other side removed to show a healing scab. Only the hairpin remains in place, or was maybe put back recently. The ghost of an uneasy smile flickers at the corners of her lips when she sees Xion, but she stops dead on sighing Haru. The look she gives him is dull and fearful, but it doesn't feel like a personal basis. More like two is an intimidating number of people, and guilty self-awareness of the terms they'd last met on. "Hello." she says lamely to Xion. "I don't . . . I'm not hungry. Don't worry about it." She gently lowers herself to the concrete bench, two feet away, settling her eyes on the umbrella as a neutral point. "Hamada." She can't think of anything else.
Xion	When Haru rolls up off the coastal road on his motorcycle, Xion looks up from her phone with a curious smile, and is rewarded with the man on the bike bringing extra food! Turning on the bench, the noirette offers a cheery wave and a knowing grin when Haru passes her to hit up the desk (staffed by an obviously high white guy with sandy carrot top hair and the smell of a surfer), and come back with an Extremely Large Horchata of his own. "Hey!" She greets vocally, mildly bright, excited in recognition to see him roll his leg off a bike and saunter in. The gait of someone who rides holds particular, because their stance is naturally a little wider. "I'll do takoyaki too. I didn't want to order until everyone got here, but I knew I wanted a drink." Xion begins, pivoting to lean and sit crosscornered to Haru - on the lookout. She doesn't wait long, before Lilian shows up. Her soft smile remains, same as Haru got, with a hint of concern, and then approval. "Hello yourself, Lilian. I think you've met, but this is Hamada Haru - he's between other names right now, but I don't think you've really hung out. He really helped me during Twin Peaks, though. And with my Rider problems." She turns to Haru, equal in her introductions. "Haru, this is Lilian. She's one of my best friends, and someone I've trusted with my life on several occasions. I have a room at her house, but right now it's a bit..." The Nobody becomes delicate, crossing her hands before her chest and mouthing 'N G'. "So I thought we could talk together here, instead. About getting through the crummy middle parts of where we're at." Back to Lilian, Xion gestures over the road, as a car nrrrryoms by. "And if you're not interested in eating, we can sit on the beach? But I bet you'd like Hamaica, it's this cinnamon hibiscus drink that the place makes, and it's sweet and floral and spicy. Ever had some?"
Hamada Haru	It's been a while since Haru and Lilian have been meaningfully proximal. All the most 'recent' contact has been based on radio chatter, and most of it secondhand at that. He only loosely knows that something is going on in that corner of the cosmos. The first memory that bubbles to the surface is a moment where he had to tell somebody that Lilian wasn't really a murderer. He can't even remember exactly who he had to say that to, or what the context was. A spike of agitation passes at the fact that he had to say it at all. The beaten-down disposition of the woman is more than enough to give him a "wrong" vibe, though. It's just not what she was about the last time they met. His memories slide to visiting her house with the cluster of people who went there, of talking to her maid -- what was her name? -- and settling on a deep discomfort with being there. Disgust. Agitation and guilt at frightening somebody as an intruder. Leaving. He doesn't vocalize a greeting at first, raising a hand to wave at Lilian instead. It's not until she explains that she's not hungry that he says something: "I believe you, but you look like the hungriest person in the world right now, too." Haru is about to correct Xion on the difference between taiyaki and takoyaki but ends up just taking the wrapped fish-bread with red bean paste filling out of his jacket pocket and sliding it across the table. It's obviously not octopus, but there's no need to be weird about it. Deciding that it's deeply rude to bring snacks only for one person, Haru produces the second taiyaki and pushes it over towards Lilian. "It's fine if you don't want it now. I can get it any time." //I thought we could talk together here, instead. About getting through the crummy middle parts of where we're at.// This elicits a bit of a sour look from Haru. He sips on his own comically enormous horchata, staring flatly across the table at a space firmly between the two of them. There aren't that many people he would entertain this from, either. But after sulking about it for a few moments behind the shield of his very large beverage, he tips the straw away from his lips. "It IS... pretty crummy, isn't it."
Lilian Rook	"We've met." says Lilian, clipped and nervous. "I'm glad. That he's been helping you out, I mean. You . . ." Her tone veers guilty. "Deserve more people on your side." Her gaze wanders down the length of the umbrella pole. A faint, unintelligible noise at Xion mentioning her home. "Sorry." she whispers. Lilian follows Xion's gesture out of habit, tracking the car given nothing better to do. Anything but make eye contact. "Okay. If that's your recommendation. That sounds nice." Fishing around in her pocket for a second-- the gesture itself looks clumsy and unrehearsed, when she'd always been so precise about her bag-- she produces a credit card and just hands it on over. The credit card is replaced by taiyaki in her hand; she'd accepted it without really realizing, numbly moving on automatic reflex. She has to stare at it for a few seconds to process that it's there. "Oh. Thank you." A few more seconds are necessary to process the rest. "How does anyone 'look hungry'?" Unenthusiastically, she takes a bite of the taiyaki, more or less out of ritual. It punctures and dents softly at too points before the rest deforms. She flinches for a moment before chewing and swallow. The twitch in her eyes looks like the kind you get when the saliva glands painfully kick in after a long absence. "I don't know what you mean." Lilian says to Xion, staring at the pastry in her hands. "About the crummy middle part. That means there's an end, doesn't it? This is . . . just another part. A thing that happened and I'm dealing with and maybe one day making up for. If it's crummy, then it's because I brought it on myself." Her fingers curl into a fist on her lap. "I don't understand. Everyone, for years, they all wanted me to finally take a fall. Face the consequences and be humbled in the way I thought I earned. And now when I actually earned it, they're all pretending to be my best friend. Faking like we're really close, when they don't really know anything about me. It's just a few people. You. Phony. Tamamo. Rita. Petra. Maybe Angela, a little bit. But half of those don't want to look at me either. Not all of me. They just want me to be alright. And that's nice, but . . ." "Maybe I shouldn't be, this time."
Xion	Xion expects fried octopus, and instead gets a sweet pastry! While savory is a favorite, as most bold flavors are, Xion has an unreal sweet tooth that only softened slowly over long periods. Now, she only gets the normal syrup shots in her coffee drinks. It's a big step. "Oh hey, that's new. Thanks, Haru!" Xion appreciates the pastryfish before taking a bite and immediately emitting the classic 'umai!' reaction, without saying the words. She simply understands the appropriate way to appreciate the food. There was no need to be weird about it - it's good! Xion took two chances, with her friends, and rolled very dangerous dice for a better world. People that needed allies and a way forward needed to know they were not alone, and also... That there was help. Building networks took burritos, but if people wanted large drinks and pastries instead, then that was what would be provided. Sliding off the bench to smile and order a drink, the noirette is gone for a minute, safely just through a bit of glass while she tries to get the attention of the extremely debilitated clerk. When she returns, it is with a more normal sized beverage and a tray of garlic-cheese-cilantro-jalapeno fries, settling the tray at the table. "May-be you shouldn't." Xion agrees with the gentleness of fingers picking up broken glass. "I didn't. And Haru didn't either. Because you know now, right? That... What's on the other side of it isn't what you expected. But we've changed, too. And the middle part I'm talking about is the part where you're not good any more. And maybe you weren't ever good, but you were stable, and now you're not stable any more. Now you're uncertain. Well, it's a good time for change, right? Trying something new. Seeing what fits now, seeing what doesn't. Like that drink." Hamaica is a beverage that is sweet first, but served with a large portion of ice. The hibiscus flavor is likewise strong, floral and flowery before it is fruity-sweet. Spices, cinnamon forward, have the very very mild grain quality of bits of pepper and cinnamon that do not make it into solution. On a hot summer day, it hits like cool adrenaline to the stomach.
Hamada Haru	//How does anyone 'look hungry'?// Haru takes a deep breath. The answer to that question is deeply uncomplicated despite being a bit convoluted in explanation. The thing that came to mind when he saw Lilian was that she looked like somebody with a fever. So when she said she wasn't hungry, what he thought she meant was that she didn't have an apetite. But, because she looked feverish (after a fashion), he lept to the conclusion that she probably didn't know whether she was hungry or not. In the absence of that knowledge, he assumed she would be hungry. "Don't know. You'll know it when you see it," he says, because it's easier than explaining his entire stupid thought process. //And now when I actually earned it, they're all pretending to be my best friend.// Haru leans back on his segment of the bench and looks up at the umbrella. "I'm here because Xion asked if I wanted burritos. I've heard people talking about you, but I don't know what about. Some of the things they said were stupid, as usual. I didn't catch the rest." "... But people, are more willing to forgive somebody for being wrong, than for being right when they didn't want them to be. They didn't want to watch you 'fall', that's too messy. They just didn't want to watch you succeed," he decides. He runs a finger along the exterior of his drink, tracing semi-mindless lines in building condensation. Lilian is at least spared a lot of small talk between Xion's departure and return with her drink and fries, because Haru isn't the greatest at things like that and isn't going to pretend to be. "... You can't make somebody 'be alright', really... it's like catching a cold. Once you're 'not alright', you have some being sick to do. That's the middle part..." His eyes flick from the umbrella above to Xion. Though he doesn't vocalize it, the 'Right?' is implied.
Xion	Haru's look is met with a quick and immediately agreeing nod from Xion, the Nobody following along closely and affirmatively 'mm, mm'-ing along with the metaphor. Haru uses the metaphors of sicknesses of the body, of physical experience. "Yeah. That's right. You've got to clean the engine and recover." Xion can't help but smile, because she goes for the car engine metaphor. "If it's an ache because you're doing bad lifts, you have to change the way you pick things up. If you... hurt, because the name you use, or the power you wear, isn't one that fits you, you can't just keep using the name, right?" "That's why I stopped being the 'Hero of Everyone's Heart'." Xion admits, solemnly. "But that doesn't mean I've quit being the hero of yours." Both of them. "And even though you quit being Kamen Rider Tetra, Haru... You're the sort of Rider -- the sort of man who I think deserves the title 'Kamen Rider'. I just asked you here for burritos, but..." Xion falls into the cheesy fries with plucking fingers and a soft voice. "You're already saying the words I was a little too overwhelmed to say. So, thanks for coming, even if I played a tiny trick on both of you so we'd all get a little help."
Lilian Rook	'May-be you shouldn't.' Lilian, almost simultaneously, flinches at the condemnation, and releases a small breath of relief, but still visibly in that order. She takes a long draft of the drink handed to her to regather herself. The slip of her sleeve under gravity exposes bare wrist; the wristband is no longer there, for the first time in a year and a half. Breathlessly, she manages a half-hearted, but ostensibly genuine, "That's good." 'you're not good any more. And maybe you weren't ever good, but you were stable, and now you're not stable any more.' "I don't even know about being good." Lilian admits, without a shred of reluctance. "I know I never was inside. I was trying my best, but everyone knew my heart wasn't in it, right? Is that really good enough to expect something? Or is . . . should I only have expected 'avoiding punishment'? Was I always just treading water." She stops and shakes her head. "No . . . yes, you're . . ." "That's . . . fair." She almost spits it out, with deeply unwilling emphasis. As though she'd spent a while (maybe she had) trying to find insightful fault with it, and couldn't; the angle is more or less airtight. "The last time I wasn't-- stable, people got hurt. And I patched it up after; I sealed the crack, and we all went on pretending that was enough. But we all know, right? Everyone was just waiting for the relapse. Measuring to make sure they weren't in the path this time. They never stopped treating me like a dirty bomb after. So if I'm going to be unstable again, the least I can do is keep away from everyone." This time she has to stare out into the waves, allowing herself to be settled by the rhythmic rumble of water to say the rest. "I don't like them enough to hold it in. Not anymore." 'They didn't want to watch you 'fall', that's too messy. They just didn't want to watch you succeed,' Another period of dull-eyed contemplation. "That's probably closer to the full truth. There are people who wanted it, and who still want it, but most of them probably . . . They know I started behind, and they started ahead, and they can't stand that I'd catch up, never mind pass them. But that's sort of worse, isn't it? When they don't hate me enough to make it okay to hurt them, but they'll never let me be. I wish they'd all just be my enemy. I wish it was just me and a few friends and the whole world and everyone else in it were such trash that I'd trample all over them and not feel a thing." 'Once you're 'not alright', you have some being sick to do. That's the middle part...' Lilian slumps over in her seat. Elbows on her knees, drink gripped loosely between her fingers, eyes on the ground; it looks strange just to see her without perfect posture."I'm so tired. Of this. Of them. Of everything." She croaks. "Years of working harder than them, holding it in, sticking to principle, thinking of others, taking responsibility; being the one who can be trusted, the one who handles everything no matter what, got me, what?" "They love talking about me, and boasting that they know me, and they're so smug about not being on the wrong end of me. But where are they all when I need them? Whenever I set a boundary, they violate it without a second thought. Whenever I step up and set an example, they fuck around like teenagers and leave everything in my lap. They rampage around without a second though, only ever gratifying themselves, because I'm there so it'll be alright. They never hold anything in. They never hold themselves accountable. It's always me; always me apologizing, always me making amends, always me me me, learning about and managing and maintaining and caring for everybody else."
Lilian Rook	Lilian slowly looks up, placing her dulled gaze somewhere equidistant between Xion's and Haru's heads. "They look away when I'm hurt and they ditch me when they should do something, they lose their shit if I snap at them, and-- for fuck's sakes they can't even name so much as a hobby I have. Petra was right about them. This isn't what I wished for. This isn't my turn. But I don't get to wish for any better anyways. Because after all the months and years of ignoring me and taking me for granted and treating me like a psychopathic killer, eventually, the mask slips, and I crack, and I show them all how ugly I am inside, and then it's all justified; I deserved it all along, and I have to beg everyone else for forgiveness. I have to meet them all the way, so they can do it all over again." "I don't know what to do. About being the worst person alive, but always the best in the room somehow. This time I think I really went too far. There's a limit to how much I can blame everyone else for making me . . . 'not stable'. I'm still responsible for whatever I do 'unstably', aren't I? Nobody would make that excuse for me. It only feels like . . ." This time, she slowly tilts her head back to stare into the clouds. anywhere but the eyes. "They want me back. Not 'okay', just 'back'. Because now I'm not there to clean up after them, and I'm not there for them to parade around. They don't really care what's happening to me." "They knew what happened to me-- what still happens-- a year and a half ago. We had a big fight about it. And at the end of the day, they all agreed it was fine and I went home again. Because we all agreed I deserved it." "Sorry. For talking so much. It's just . . . a lot. I don't know how you make that better. I don't know how I can live like this forever."
Xion	Xion sees the flinch and, easingly, places a hand on Lilian's sleeved arm. She listens, because Lilian has to expel the words as bile, spit them out, force them from herself and be heard by others. "You shouldn't just be alright. You shouldn't just climb back on the teetering pillar and try to make it stable again. Because... I'm sorry, Lilian. I think I figured it out, but it takes too long to do." Since Lilian's eyes drift away, Xion follows her friend's gaze out towards the ocean, and nudges the fries closer. Since Haru is across, Xion rests her eyes on the man, and his comical horchata. "Your 'heart' was in it, but you can't live a lie without being a liar, and you can't live a hypocrisy without being a hypocrite. It's really dumb, actually, but... I think the messy truth is that you shouldn't be what you aren't, and you can't force yourself into being something that you're not forever. It causes too much damage, hurts too much." With a squeeze of her hand to Lilian's arm, still looking towards Haru, Xion tilts her head and smiles sadly. "There's this beautiful girl I know who could be anything, and was incredible at everything. She wasn't that way because was was just naturally given anything, even if people thought that, because that's what people who have things but don't work hard to keep them and improve them think having things works." 'how ugly I am inside' "You were responsible for being this incredible person by choice. You can't be the worst person alive, because you chose for this long to be everyone's hero. And everyone agreed. And everyone relied on you." A long pause. This one is at Haru, Xion asking him to confirm, a shared 'right?' going the other way unstated. "They want 'Lilian Rook' back. It'd be convenient if 'Tetra' was still eliminating problems. It'd sure be nice if the hero of 'Everyone's' hearts would ignore one for everyone else's. And the masks get heavy. And the but-I'm-not stacks up." "You've been telling me since we've met, Lilian, that it's hard to wear the mask you chose. And I thought, okay, I'll help make the mask's work easier. But that wasn't what you were telling anyone, was it?" Xion sighs, and closes her eyes, leaning over her horchata to take a loooooong sip. After, it's really obvious. "It was that you wanted help making the mask easier to wear. Or just, a different mask. Something else to be. Well, okay. It wasn't fine, and they won't have you back. They shouldn't. But we all deserve to live, and to wear masks that don't hurt unbearably."
Hamada Haru	"I don't want to think about core driviar," Haru remarks, only half-jokingly, because the power of the internal combustion engine as a source of Kamen Rider powers gives him a headache as a concept even if Tomari Shinnosuke wasn't a point of agitation for him. The vague hint of amusement mostly recedes back into the depths of his mind and expression when the topic of names and powers that don't quite fit, though it's so subtle that it's probably easy to miss. He still doesn't really know what to do with himself in a lot of ways. //... even if I played a tiny trick...// Haru makes an acknowledging, decisively affirmative noise and a vague gesture with his left hand that probably has the same meaning. He's perfectly fine with being 'tricked' in this way, evidently. After a moment or two he ceases drawing on his cup. "... 'Being good', and 'doing good in spite of not being good', whatever the reason there is, if the result is that good was done, does it matter that much? I don't think it does... and I don't think the recipients of false goodness do, either," he says, though there is the faintest twinge of uncertainty. Haru doesn't know the minds of others the way the other two does. He still has space to have anxiety about it. "It changes the cost, for the person. In that regard, I would say... 'faking it' is more noble than simply being naturally good. But if that person never makes back the cost of it all..." He doesn't finish the thought, instead shifting in his seat to follow Lilian's gaze out towards the ocean. "... That's why, I ask to be 'paid'. It's not as if... anybody in the world has the money to afford me. But if they're not willing to do at least that much, I know exactly how much they're taking my existence for granted. Like less than pocket change they found on the street." //But that's sort of worse, isn't it? When they don't hate me enough to make it okay to hurt them, but they'll never let me be.// A thoughtful hum rumbles in Haru's throat. He taps a finger rhythmically against the top of his drink, unable to suppress a certain amount of fidgetiness. "I think... everyone has a certain amount of softness inside them. Some people eventually throw it away. But most people, even if they get tired of it, just pad it so you can't really find it... and then, a certain amount of pain in somebody else around them will bring it out. An acquaintance in the hospital, or at a funeral. And we only have so much softness to go around, even then. The kind of people 'we' are always around, they're not the kind with a firm grasp on that softness. It only comes out when that 'pain threshold' everyone reacts to is reached, and recedes just as quickly. But still, we need that softness to be people." "And in the end," he continues, "it's the hardest part of us to make stronger, because the parts of us that we need for surviving would rather have clear dangers that can be ended. In all the worlds, I don't think there's a single person who didn't deserve better than we all got." "Rook," he turns to look at her properly, "one thing that Kamen Riders have always done is express feelings and conflict directly, in combat. That didn't mean 'killing your ideological opposition', but it did mean fighting it out if it came down to it. There's a certain amount of holding back we need, but... you don't have to hold it ALL back, at all times. Bobby needed to be slugged. I needed to take a risk in a sparring match with Xion that I had no business winning." "If being the perfect one takes more than you have to give," Haru's gaze turns towards Xion when she prompts him, "then stop giving that much. If you can't live like this forever, then live another way. It's like 'they' say-- put your own oxygen mask on before helping others." His tone shifts just enough that it's actually plain that he deliberately tried to make a joke, there. It doesn't really suit him, but he seems to think that it was needed on some level.
Lilian Rook	'Your 'heart' was in it, because you can't live a lie without being a liar, and you can't live a hypocrisy without being a hypocrite. It's really dumb, actually' Lilian tries to laugh, but her best isn't good enough. It comes out dry and exhausted, as if she doesn't have the strength to lift her chest. "I can't tell if you mean that living the lie made it part of me, or whether just being so deeply invested in the act makes it no different from the thing behind the scenes." But her fingers squeeze the cup in her hands so hard that the nails dig into the plastic; she hadn't cut those, though there's neither paint nor polish. "Sorry. I don't like-- I know how you meant it, but I hate that sentence. 'Forcing yourself to be something you're not. Even if I'm not 'good', I think I still have the right to choose not to be 'the worst'. Perhaps I don't really know all the things I'm not, but what I am is . . . complicated, and, molten, enough, that . . . I think there's still room for me to decide it." 'You were responsible for being this incredible person by choice. You can't be the worst person alive, because you chose for this long to be everyone's hero. And everyone agreed. And everyone relied on you.' After a longshort pause, Lilian looks vaguely in the direction of Xion. Inches beside her head. The closest she's come. "Rita said something sort of like that. If you'd say the same thing, I suppose I have to take it seriously." she says, a little of her usual clip returning. "I . . . 'the person who'd choose to do this' isn't something I'm not. Consistent. Serious. Principled. Conscientious. I think . . . wearing those things, isn't too hard. The part that doesn't fit-- the . . . dysphoria, is . . . where I pretend to care and love and want to help and make people better. I just don't. Not many of them. And it strains so much to sweat and bleed trying to improve them; to give them the tribute of love they demand. I didn't know what else to do. They'd 'get' me even less if I didn't. That's the peace offering, between everyone and myself. The thing that keeps the violence in check; mostly mine, for their sake." 'But that wasn't what you were telling anyone, was it? It was that you wanted help making the mask easier to wear.' Lilian breathes out slowly through her nose. She takes a dull, second bite of her taiyako, chewing it to pieces and swallowing again, with a thoughtful look about her. Enough to take another sip of her drink, too. Then, with the misty air of recalling something she said long ago, phrased in paraphrased monotone rather than the original utterance's cracked and unstable tones, "'I'm sick of being told how strong I am. I just want it all to be bearable. Being strong makes it a little easier.'" A beat. "Yeah." "What do you do, when you're always enduring, and always trying to deserve, and everyone tells you that's good; that it's your redeeming quality? What do you do when you're enduring and deserving and they all suddenly say 'no, not like that'?" 'It changes the cost, for the person.' Another attempt at a laugh. This time, it's meant to be dry on purpose, and Lilian has more practice with that. "You got it so quickly. The difference is how hard it is to do. How much it exhausts you and how much you wish you didn't. And exhausting things that you hate doing are hard to keep as habits, right? It takes one skipped day, one bad week, to lose your grip on it completely; and then it's so, so hard to get back."
Lilian Rook	"The practice is supposed to make it easier. The power is supposed to make it less exhausting. Being strong makes you less frightened and less exerted. That's the conclusion I reached. And it was sort of working. But that just makes the habit easier; someone can still come along and pick at the loose threads and slowly unravel the whole thing. And now I know that everyone will just watch. Anyone could have done anything to stop it, but they all decided 'what's one more thing on Lilian's shoulders?', and I suppose that was my limit, after everything else they heaped up there." 'That's why, I ask to be 'paid'.' "I always thought that was clever." says Lilian. He could imagine that tone of faint and unbegrudging pride of hers, if she were less tired and glassy-eyed. "Of course, I asked too. And not for much. I suppose the difference was just that . . . people would always say 'no' in the end, and then I just . . . let them. Because it hid in that middle place, between 'just endure it and move on' and 'they deserve to be hurt for it'. I never knew how to get it, in the end." "Tachibana won't fight for me, Estevez won't keep his ego in check, Catio won't stop scheming, Parsons acts like I'm a science experiment, Padgett, Newman, Doe, act like I'm their personal abusers, Hearthward won't treat me like a person, Ishirou won't treat me like I'm sane; the list just goes on and on. all the people I help won't budge one centimeter, and all I've ever asked for is they treat me at least sort of normally; like they do everyone else. And I don't know what I can do except . . . well, force it out of them. And that's more like . . . I don't know. The old me? The Lilian Rook that came before 'Dame Commander'." 'And we only have so much softness to go around, even then.' Lilian hisses through her teeth. "Yeah. I know. Everyone was head over heels to bathe Petra in it when she was hurting. But never me. Not a drop of it. And you know what? She hates it. She hated it because she was hurting on purpose, and they kept getting in the way; smothering her transformation and trying to kill the Petra they wanted to be; and because it was only for her, and no one else. Only certain kinds of pain count, no matter what you owe them. It's fucked. I hate it too. I think I hate them alongside her." 'Rook' Lilian shifts uncomfortably to almost look at Haru. 'There's a certain amount of holding back we need, but... you don't have to hold it ALL back, at all times.' "Xion and I talked about that too." she says, two degrees too lifeless to quite sound as guilty as she wants to. "I don't know how. Because it's always been life and death. It always was and feels like it's always going to be. 'Lilian' is only worth anything as long as she always wins, and holding back means you might not. If I push on someone and they don't break, then that lets them think they're stronger than me, and then it all gets so much worse. I never learned to talk with my fists. It's not okay just to get my point across; it has to stop. And because I don't know how, I can't, and if it's too far below deserving 'everything I have', then I just have to endure it." "I thought, back then, that the answer was to trust people. To think that someone would get it, and they'd stand up, and care enough to tackle it so I don't have to do everything. Like I do for them. But that was a fucking mistake. Trusting people to be there for you sounds nice only until you try it."
Lilian Rook	I't's like 'they' say-- put your own oxygen mask on before helping others.' A thin stab at a smile briefly fixes Lilian's expression into something more like a wince of pain. "If I don't try to be perfect, and don't try to give everyone everything, then all the hate is going to come out. I'm going to treat them like the extrusions of the putrid background radiation of culture that they are, and they're never going to be able to stand it. But honestly . . . Yeah. Maybe that's fine. Petra even said so. That they ran their tab too high and too deep and they don't deserve any more. It'd be a relief. Just to hate them and not be perfect for them, until they earn it back, or I stop caring." "But there was one time, a long time ago, that I tried to see to my own mask first. Because I was asphyxiating. I don't regret doing it; I'd have died without it. But the cost of it was that I wasn't able to help anyone else. Struggling for my mask hurt the people I loved so badly that they never recovered from it. I doubt it'd be any different here."
Xion	"I've taken enough thin strips of Krim Steinbelt's dream that the language comes to me quickly. Even if, in the end, I resented Tomari, and I wouldn't be the one to smile at him..." Xion agrees, resting on the topic. "... I didn't hate the Roidmude for being shaped by a pumping, burning, dirty, rough, powerful sort of heart. And I didn't hate Shijima Go, for taking his time around the track. I wasn't always kind to the driviar Riders, but together, I'd like to think we made a better world." Nodding, Xion lifts her hand to pull at cold cheese fries and pickled jalapenos atop, it's the sort of thought that lingers in her, clears in her before she moves on. And there is a lot - so much that it could wash away anything else, could be greater than the ocean, for water is simply heavy and choking, and this clung like acidic miasma. Expellation was required. And, like the glimmers of words that lined up, true things that Xion felt, that Haru felt, that were said out loud and needed no psychic or hidden fairy knowing to detect. 'And in the end... it's the hardest part of us to make stronger...' 'In all the worlds, I don't think there's a single person who didn't deserve better than we all got.' 'Tachibana won't fight for me, Estevez won't keep his ego in check, Catio won't stop scheming, Parsons acts like I'm a science experiment, Padgett, Newman, Doe, act like I'm their personal abusers, Hearthward won't treat me like a person, Ishirou won't treat me like I'm sane; the list just goes on and on. all the people I help won't budge one centimeter, and all I've ever asked for is they treat me at least sort of normally;' That's it, isn't it? The answer. Despite the heavy topics, as Lilian speaks and Xion moves her hand back to be present at Lilian's side, Xion smiles at Haru because she is proud of him. She is proud of herself for pulling this little trick, and she is proud of Lilian for having all these words to come out, to place in a row. Xion moves as she did once at the shores of a forest island, unbidden and unasked for, but intuiting what she hopes is a need and embraces Lilian, resting her chin on the other woman's shoulder. "There's more to that saying. Don't let this beat your hope to death for the final time. Don't you remember? 'Before helping others'. That saying, the airplane saying, is always said assuming there's people there to help you, still. It's not a lesson to be selfish - it's a lesson in compassion. Work on yourself. And we'll reach out and help, because we get it too. And, it wasn't a waste. You're not the worst person." Her arms hold tight. "You could name five people, five people you met because you tried so hard for so long, and sent out kindness into the world, with your calls for help, and some listened, didn't they? And you didn't list them all, either. So that thing you said can't be right." "Probably Haru, too, right? If Angela makes the list, I bet Haru does too. So let's figure out this mask situation together. I didn't stutter or mean anything weird when I told you - twice - that I wanted to hold your hand and see what color we made. What you can take from this is that Lilian isn't always right, and doesn't have to be, because she's got at least a few people to help figure it all out."
Hamada Haru	//If you'd say the same thing, I suppose I have to take it seriously.// "Two said. A third agreed," Haru corrects, to reinforce the point. He's not seeking 'credit' here, he's simply not certain that this was observed, and it seems like an important point to him. A lot that follows... he doesn't really know what to do with. His mind is a little fuzzy, not uncomfortable, but certainly not properly connecting. There is no easing away of a 'desire to help', but there are gaps in understanding how to do that. //What do you do when you're enduring and deserving and they all suddenly say 'no, not like that'?// But that question causes something to slide into place. It is years previous and there is a bloodied woman lying on the ground with a ruined belt. He is panicking and trying to figure out if he can even safely move her. It is a fork in the road where both paths lead to the same outcome-- it just didn't matter. Some small while later there is a suited man with a box, the Tetra driver housed inside. "Sometimes," he says, "you learn the language they're trying to communicate to you in. Sometimes you learn that they weren't trying to communicate to you at all, and it was all just a performance for an audience you couldn't see. Sometimes you never find out which one it is, and you just have to live with that." It's a grim thought, and one that Hamada Haru can only have because he's still not certain that if his failures within Rider Services were his own or somebody else's, or if they expected more or just implied it and let him run off on his own little self-destructive adventure hoping for the 'problem' to resolve itself, both in him, and in a defective belt. He takes a long sip on his horchata, which his mind starts to fill in as a 'horchata of sadness' to try to make the slightest bit light of the difficulties that are being navigated here. After awkwardly draining a good quarter of the drink, he looks back towards Lilian, "I don't know most of those names. I'm disappointed to hear that Tachibana is one of the people not helping, though." //And because I don't know how, I can't, and if it's too far below deserving 'everything I have', then I just have to endure it.// "Some things can't be defined for you. But it comes down to defining... let's call it 'gears' of yourself. Fourth gear is everything you have, and first is about a quarter, and you have to decide how much something deserves," Haru fishes a mini-notepad and pen out of the inside of his jacket and tears out a scrap of paper to divide into quarters. Each is labeled a number 1-4. "Under 'one' you might put something like... 'insulted something dearly important to how I live my life'," he says, scribbling that down. "Where 'four' is a fundamental threat to the mode of existence you're willing to live with. Once you've defined a trigger condition for each 'gear', you can define what special properties you have that you're willing to escalate to in each 'gear'. You have an organized way of thinking about certain things, so I think you should be able to come up with a theoretical framework. Implementing it is... starting a gym routine." //I don't regret doing it; I'd have died without it. But the cost of it was that I wasn't able to help anyone else. Struggling for my mask hurt the people I loved so badly that they never recovered from it.// Haru smiles, bitterly. He's not comfortable giving a clearer 'yeah, me too' because he doesn't think his situation was as severe as Lilian's, but there's some ambiguous commisseration there. The image of Kamen Rider Prima bleeding out on the ground lingers at the surface of his mind.
Hamada Haru	A moment later he starts picking at the cheese fries, staying that way until Xion prompts him. Haru looks up towards the pair-- and he doesn't answer directly. But as before, what he has to express is something that he thinks might be needed. "I wasn't a good team member, the last time I was in a team. I'm not going to pretend to have improved much in that way since. I've always done what I thought was right," Haru leans backwards on the bench, hooking his hands along the side of it as if he intended to lean back-- childishly, almost. "Right now, what I think is right is to ask you whether you need back-up in the Paladins."
Lilian Rook	Lilian makes a face when Tomari is mentioned, but keeps quiet. "That's true. And there's worlds I know I've made better. A few I even cared about." She gazes into the middle distance. The fact that her fingers raise to her hairpin is the only hint as to what she's thinking about. "I suppose I forget sometimes. That . . . the legend is the point. Not the acknowledgement of the individual people, but the body of the tale itself." The minute swerve into topics of stories goes unaddressed. Lilian's own inner working of driving-metaphors, buried under layers of facade, stands on its own. She flinches, violently, at Xion's touch, and her breath sticks in her throat. The quiet thumping of her heartbeat takes time to fade, and only then does she regain the ability to breath out. As soon as she does, the weight of touch-starved isolation settles into her back. She gently sets the drink down, and slides one arm guiltily halfway around Xion's waist. 'You could name five people, five people you met because you tried so hard for so long, and sent out kindness into the world, with your calls for help, and some listened' "You know, Xion. When I have to think about it, I suddenly notice that I don't know why that wasn't enough." Lilian sighs, resigned. "One was enough at home. Two more when I went out into the world. One more when I took on my job. And at first, in the Multiverse, just one or two seemed fine." Her fingertips squeeze lightly into Xion's side. "I wonder when I got caught up in watching everyone. When I was afraid Phony was going to replace me? When everyone 'forgave' me and decided I was normal now? Or when everyone lied to Petra and stood back and watched, maybe?" She shakes her head. "It doesn't matter that much. The answer is likely just that . . . once people started with 'it's okay, she's normal now', I got caught up in the pageant of being like one of them as well. The people I can name are, I realize, the people who've always said I'm nothing like normal, and meant it as something precious." 'Two said. A third agreed' "I'll take it for what it's worth." says Lilian. "And it's worth quite a bit. Given that we've never quite been friends, and that you know far less and have much more of an excuse to be wrong, than the people who aren't saying it." Her gaze shifts uneasily. The words sound like guilt and appreciation and an attempt at her signature praise-by-damning-others, all at the same time. 'Sometimes you learn that they weren't trying to communicate to you at all, and it was all just a performance for an audience you couldn't see.' Lilian goes briefly silent. "That nasty girl was never wrong, was she? Calling them hollow and thoughtless and fake was always a step too arrogant and cruel for me, but it sounded so right coming from her mouth. I suppose it isn't that different." 'I'm disappointed to hear that Tachibana is one of the people not helping, though.' "She chose her side." says Lilian. "And I'm disappointed too. That a girl who almost made me believe in 'holding out your hand and showing how you feel' was a liar all along." 'You have an organized way of thinking about certain things, so I think you should be able to come up with a theoretical framework. Implementing it is... starting a gym routine.' This time, Lilian actually cracks into a laugh. It's unsteady, borderline joyless, but it's enough to make her body gently shake, and to make her wipe the corner of her eye with her hoodie sleeve. "God, you're a bit of a bastard aren't you?" she says, smiling weakly. "That's completely unhinged. And I'm so angry that it makes perfect sense." She places her elbow against her knee, and lowers her cheek into her newly freed hand, letting her attention wander into the ocean for solace.
Lilian Rook	"The Thirteen-- it's not as if I had any objective reason for them. I simply had faith in the people who wrote them. And as I've grown up, from that closed-off and nasty teenager, I've re-learned almost every single one; and that's only made me appreciate them more. What's a set of four, slot into it, to modulate? It was always about guidance-- the cold and bright rules that stay fast when your heart is racing and hot-- and it was always about contract-- the marks and flags that tell everyone exactly what you'll do, and make it 'fair'. It seems obvious, in retrospect. I almost feel-- no, I do feel a little stupid, that I'd be so . . ." "Frightened of myself, that I wouldn't trust me to follow them." Momentarily, she contemplates something Haru had said just earlier. "More than that, it was so important, from the very beginning, to . . . limit what people can extract. In a defined way. Because when you don't . . . they wring even 'the Hero of Everyone's Hearts' dry." 'So let's figure out this mask situation together. I didn't stutter or mean anything weird when I told you - twice - that I wanted to hold your hand and see what color we made.' 'Right now, what I think is right is to ask you whether you need back-up in the Paladins.' All at once, Lilian has to remember where she is. The cold, sickening gravity of it all settles back in. She'd gotten carried away, in lofty dreaming of 'from now on' and 'when I see them', but the non-negotiable pull of 9.81ms^2 binds her to Earth once again, where there'll be no more spreading of wings. "I'm leaving." she says. "I have to. It's not-- I don't have a choice. Petra-- what everyone did to her, and made her do to me, and what they did to and didn't do for me, and . . . Ishirou's death-- it broke something, and I crossed a line, and I . . . hurt her, in, ways that aren't . . . that a normal person wouldn't. And even if she doesn't . . . even if she thinks it's okay, it isn't. And the fact that everyone else is okay, and shittier for the grace-- especially Ishirou-- isn't either." Lilian takes a deep, rattling breath, bracing with the pale look of a viscerally ill patient. The words can only come out like puke, because they taste too foul and are lodged too deep to be anything else. "Someone close to me knows enough. And he's convinced of a lot more that isn't real, too. And it . . . I don't have an argument. I shouldn't have put on my mask. I'm here now and I'm not okay and nothing is right. And I've already done so much that I shouldn't, and made those people so miserable when I owed them better, that I just . . . he can burn it all down, everything I have, if he wants, and I don't . . . I threw away the right to say he shouldn't a long time ago. Not the one person in the world who has every good reason to hate me." "And . . . still being here, still trying to be a part of things, just puts them in danger, and then it's my fault. Like everything else is. So I have to be home to keep them safe. To clean up my mess, and not let it get any worse. Because my friends want to help, and they want to hurt the people who hurt me, and they just don't get that they deserve to hurt me." "I'm sorry, but that's it. And it's my fault. Even if I stayed here, they'd only fire me, once he pulls that trigger. What do I say? 'Sorry, I went crazy, please be patient'? And I'm not the victim, either. I was, for a while, but now she is, and I'm the monster. I'd rather leave things as the Lilian people remember, and let them feel bad about it, than give them the satisfaction of being rid of me." "I'm really sorry. There's no fixing the mask now. I got frightened and sucked out all the oxygen and that's all there is. But thank you for speaking to me. Both of you. At least, being able to make sense of it after the fact, kills me a little less."
Hamada Haru	//God, you're a bit of a bastard aren't you?// "My parents never married. Bodyguard romance," Haru explains, with a little more genuine amusement than his previous joke. "But you framed it that way first. It only made sense to follow through on the metaphor." What follows is a lot. Even in the days that follow, Haru will still be fully processing it. But in the moment at least, he knows what it all means to him: "People aren't only the worst thing that they've ever done. And you can't balance it out; acts exist in isolation. A life can't actually pay for a life and a death can't actually pay for a death and a hurt can't pay for a hurt. If you have to leave them, then you have to leave them. Let me know if things change. As things are..." He shrugs. There is a gentle implication that he might just Show Up unannounced. Flipping the "gears" note over, he scribbles a number. "If you need it," he pushes it across the table and stands up. "And for what it's worth, I'll never be Tetra again, either. Making a new mask, sometimes that's just what you have to do. Even if it isn't done. Be seeing you, Lilian Rook, Xion." Grabbing what remains of his horchata, he hads back to his motorcycle. It rumbles to life a moment later, and then angles up into the sky, its engine noise vanishing into the distance.
Xion	Xion isn't guilty when she holds onto Lilian, having not been pushed away and denied when she laid a gentler touch on Lilian before. She made a leap, she knew, a reach, but pulling people back from the edge means holding them. The touch-starved slackening is the confirmation Xion needs to lace her fingers around the other side of Lilian and hang on. "Never wrong. Always right. Black and white, true and false, simple and easy, but... I think you lose sight of it, don't you?" A little hiccup of something like humor, hope, and helplessness all wrapped up in a knot emits from Xion. "The real Lilian changed and grew. Those rules you were proud of, I was worried that they'd turn on me, remember? But by the time I asked, it seemed a little silly, didn't it? Because I changed too. And the masks we wore to find out more about each other weren't untrue." Releasing one hand and keeping the other hooked about, Xion goes to steal some of the fries that Haru had gotten to, finding the man across - the troubled once-a-Kamen-Rider - exactly who she had envisioned when she imagined him in this space. It is there in her, a relief, a joy of the images lining up, the one set brick at a corner of a cleared lot that implies four walls, a roof, a door, perhaps windows, things within and without. Something real and sturdy. "You were offered something, a dream that sounded right to me, and sounded right to you, and sounded right to the world. That you'd be your best, and try you hardest. A mask that said if you were just perfect a perfect world would also be given to you. But that's not true. And it never was. It didn't help you breathe." The Paladins. Of course, the Paladins. Xion eats a fry with a furrowed brow, and nods to Haru. "Thank you, Haru. For coming, and for talking, and for sharing. I wouldn't have said everything you said, wouldn't have thought of it. You... mattered, coming for burritos." The noirette flashes a smile, just a knife-edge of white past her lips. "Even if none of us ate any. The fish was good!" And inventoried for later, where it wouldn't decay. "And I'll be seeing you. The mask you wear, the one I came to rely on, you still have with you. A little rough, a little sharp, but the kind of person who can care for a stranger across a table." She ends with a nod, watching him go. The Nobody remains, besides Lilian, on the sun-warmed stone bench. She wants to be silent, but there's the occasional car and the rhythm of salt water that marks the passage of time with combustion and crash. "There are a few right things." Xion eventually gets to, after her time to compose herself. From the 'vomit', which has the miasmic character of ejecta just like real bile to Xion, and from battling difficult and new feelings of her own, she takes a moment to be stronger. But she gets there. "They're there, and I know they're there, because there's no part of me that wants to die, but I was willing to chance it to help you. Not because you lied, but because you showed me your truth, and I showed you mine. There's almost nobody else that's even close to understanding me like you do, and it can't be because you're a liar, or wrong, and it's not because you're just right all the time." "If it's a fight, I'll win it with you. If it's a problem, we'll solve it together. And if we need a few more people, then we'll just start getting more help." Xion offers one more one-armed squeeze, and then steals a sip of Lilian's drink off the same straw mischeviously. "If that's your fault too, then a whole burrito's going to be your fault if you're sticking around. Or we could just sit on the beach, for a while. Whatever you want." Xion encourages softly, and leaves it at that.