Scene #8874: Burning Coal

Owner	Pose
Strawberry Princess	"I'm not supposed to be here. Don't say 'Onyx Witch'. Just let yourself in. The church isn't locked." Tallahassee, Florida, USA - 6:45 PM It's one of those big American Protestant ones, as pretty and as empty as a cardboard box, all beige with a dainty cross on top. It feels somehow gaudy despite the lack of color. Why would they lock the doors? What is there to steal? Folding chairs? The piano if you're ambitious. The big double-double doors (made for the Sunday rush) open into a lobby though, not the worship atrium. White popcorn ceiling with flickering fluorescent lights to beat down on green scuffed carpet. Nobody's here but Onyx, lounging in the receptionist's chair off to the side, munching on mints from a jar on the desk. It doesn't feel like anybody else has ever been here. Her little blasphemy against adulthood (that's someone's job to sit in that chair- she's fidgeting with someone's floral pen!) would be harder to forgive if this place at all felt holy. Outside the hot weather is balanced by the stiff wind. In here the AC makes it feel cold like an operating room. Crunch, munch. "Hey."
Meika Kirenai	Leaving town really is a lot easier now. Even when shes' not planning to, the thought that there's so much less reason not to crosses Meika's mind whenever she's even close to the warpgate at all. When she does plan to, it's the only thing there's room for in her mind until she's through- that the only reason she'd really have to stay, and the only reason she'd really have to come back, burn up like pages in a bonfire in days she could likely count on her fingers and toes. . . . . . Meika flinches as door shuts harder behind her than she guessed it would. It's still silent, but the pressure buffets. Boots tread in-line against old carpets, shadowless with the direct lighting, like something feels incomplete, a part of reality not-quite-finished, not yet meant to be seen by anyone. She shouldn't be here, either. She shouldn't be here, this city, this world, this anywhere. That part feels familiar, at least. Without even unhooking her thumb from the strap of her messenger bag, Meika waves with the fingers of her left hand. Her mouth opens, closes, and opens back up again. "... Hey. Been a..." That's as far as she gets before awkwardly, clumsily, pushing a sweat-clumped strand of hair from off her face, away from her eyes. There's no red hair ribbon in it all, not anymore. It's not tied up at all. It looks like it's been months since she trimmed her hair, herself, with dulled scissors. "It's really quiet, here. Is that why?" Meika doesn't make any much effort to approach the desk, to get nearer. Eyes trace the walls for any bulletins, tacked-up congregation newsletters, to have anywhere to fix her eyes onto but the other magical girl. Meika's free hand thumbs at the cuff of her letterman. A long-sleeved jacket, even in the heat. "We're going to get in trouble, right..? If anyone comes in at all." "Is- is that okay? I don't want to d-drag you out somewhere, only to make everything worse than- than I already did, t-that's what I..." She's still uncomfortably still for how much she's fidgeting, uncomfortably distant for how much she's spilling out, and uncomfortably loud in how quiet her voice is. She pauses, and turns properly towards Onyx, finally. Shut up. You don't even really know her. The fragment of a smile taut on her face is worse than no expression at all. "Ah- um. R-right. Where are my manners. I- how have you... been?"
Strawberry Princess	Jeans, black undershirt, loose white windbreaker, hair re-dyed lately to nearly hide the blonde roots. She's keeping it together. "Yeah. Been a while." Onyx drops her mint wrapper and lurches forward to slide over the enclosed desk. The abused office chair creak-snaps, if Meika lets it. Her eyes scan hair, then drop to the jacket. "You look awful. What happened to your arms?" Mercilessly sympathetic hipshot. HAITI MISSION TRIP Extended Sunday School! Raising Collection for New Nursing Mothers Room GLORY AND LOVE! SATURDAY SERVICE Nativity Casting OpeniDon't Miss Easter ServApr 22 Talent Show! Witness To your Secular Friends! Somehow the bulletins on the corkboards make it feel even less lived-in. Onyx rubs her arm uncomfortably, not quite sure how to deal. With Meika, or in general. She deflects with action like always, turning on her heel and walking down a side hallway. 'Follow me' is implicit. "Nobody's gonna come. And nobody's gonna know. And if they did what are they gonna do? Yell? It's fine." "I've been me." She's punctuated by the crunch of shouldering a chintzy metal door open. Now the hallway isn't even carpeted, isn't even lit. "So not the worst." She hits one more door's push-bar with her outstretched hand, and it opens to a bare wood staircase that looks badly not-up-to-code. The sound of howling wind outside gets louder as she climbs. "The special spot's right up here." She doesn't ask 'how are you' just yet because she's not an idiot.
Meika Kirenai	"Fight last night." That's not fully a lie, but it sounds a little like one. It's an unconscious fidget to adjust her cuffs again, to scratch at the band-aids on her fingers. No bare skin below the neck is everyday practice for her. No argument to looking awful, though. She already knows. "Doesn't hurt." That part's a lie. Watching the office chair snap right back to plastic-wobbling position takes a solid moment of Meika's focus, like something else having motion or tangibility is alien. Expression flat, red eyes piercing, if life had stage directions they'd say something about malice and daggers in this action, but for that second her thoughts just feel scattered and blank. "This is your church, right..?" she asks, gut-figuring the only reason 'yell' is the consequence at-hand is if anyone who even could come by would know Onyx. Following is easy- but if not for Meika's words, or looking back her way, it'd really be impossible to tell she was even behind the other girl. Kind of like being followed by a ghost, over your shoulder when you look back, but all-too easy to put out of mind if you don't. There's no sound in passing as Meika rips one of the notice papers off a tackboard. She rolls the pushpin between her fingers, not looking at it, and crumples up the bright construction-paper into an ugly little ball, just to hold. "... That's- that's funny. I haven't even been me, f-for some of the time. Aha. That's part of what I- what Chevalier Rook thought I should..." There's no audible exhale as she blows air out of her nose, like hearing a half-funny joke. But it's easy enough to hear her drum fingers along the bare wooden banisters of the staircase, even amongst the growing outside whine. Violently, closer to the top, she jams the stolen pushpin into the wood of the railing, until even the soft metal can slide between grains and stick there. It's a red one. Of course she picked a red one. "Right up here?", she asks- parrots, really, just to say something, like if she didn't something might just drown her out. "Can you tell me why it is? Special? Why- why here..?" She asks- this time, so that something else could drown her out.
Strawberry Princess	"Huh?" Onyx looks back with one foot on the stairs, vaguely startled by the phrasing of 'her church'. "Don't know. Got dragged here on holidays once or twice. It's been years." She pounds up two flights of stairs like a dance and then shoulders one more door at the top. The wind bangs it open. Daylight and warmth flood in, along with a view of the roof. It's the kind covered in loose multicolored pebbles over tar paper, smelling like asphalt or a day at the beach. The plastic cross casts its shadow forward. Onyx kicks up a spray of them for fun, then struts out into the light, arms out to say 'here we are'. This is a new kind of sanctum. You're 'not supposed to be here' in a completely different way than you're 'not supposed to be' in the church: this is somewhere no-one goes at all, a perspective on the town beneath that hardly anyone thinks to get. It's practically like flight. "This is why it's special," she says, crunching forward and bending down. She straightens back up with a piece of gleaming metal between forefinger and thumb. A bit of some kind of munitions or wreckage, scattered in with the pebbles. Onyx smiles lopsidedly. "And this is." 'Lil ever tell you what I did in Tallahassee?' 'I was already going to Hell for sure.' A little secret altar to how life goes on. Onyx trusts the message to get across. She throws the metal back without seeing where it lands- it wouldn't be special here anymore if she kept it- and walks to the edge, sitting down on the raised lip with legs crossed. "Haven't been 'you', huh," she finally says, while unslinging the slender carrying case from her back. She unrolls it just enough to dump a couple of condensation-slick cans of beer out onto the ground. "Haven't seen you at the Human Template place either. What's up, Vermillion. I know you didn't give up."
Meika Kirenai	"Oh. Right." The startle gets reflected, worried she missed something obvious. "It's... funny, almost. I can't remember the last time I didn't have to wear a dress to church." She sounds relieved. The push-bar clack echoes like soft thunder, if not literally, in feeling. Meika blinks a few times at the sudden onset of brighter light, and shields her face as she catches up the last few steps. Rooftops and high places pull gentler at the weight that feels like it's always tugging Meika downwards. Stepping foot onto the crinkling gravel- even letting her footsteps make sound -is an immediate shift to another way of being. It doesn't matter if there's not a cloud in the sky. It still sounds like somewhere, maybe far, far away, thunder is crackling. There's a little motion Meika does- hands in her jacket pockets, just out on the rooftop, she spins three-sixty degrees, looking out at the space. It's not something she's prone to when she's inside- a little mental mapping of her surroundings when there aren't walls close enough to otherwise feel the shape of. She looks more comfortable after it's done. "... Oh." Meika swallows. Her eyes fix on the little metal scrap until it's lost out in the flat sun-heated surface. Nobody even cleaned it up. It's just like this forever, now. "Been years. You still came back here." Meika hesitates, at the roof's rim, before swinging up to sit on it. Her limbs seem stiff, moving awkwardly and uncertain. Instead of facing inward towards the roof, or right at Onyx, she positions both her leg to dangle off the edge and stare out at the surrounding town. She's quiet, but fabric and rubber scuffing against rough roofing material isn't silent. A hand comes out of her pocket holding a cigarette box, out towards the other girl. It only seems fair, after the wrongdoing that any of this is, to offer out a wrongdoing herself. "... Yeah. Maybe. I don't really know how much of that was a joke, really. It doesn't- it doesn't feel like one. I don't really have much left. Time, or..." "Maybe more time left than pages, really. For all the good that does. I've just got the one." It doesn't sound like she's saying something metaphorical, even if 'pages' makes no sense without context. "I-" "Did- did Chevalier Rook- Miss Lilian, did she ask anything of you? When she chose to help you?" Meika's heels thunk against the side. She grabs one of the slippery beer cans, and cracks it open. "She asked me not to do something. Not to go somewhere. And- and then I did. And people died. People got- I hurt people. S-some of them might've said it wasn't my doing, a- a monster's why, was in control- but I still had to see it all. And it wouldn't have happened if- yeah." Her shoulders shrug, and then slump. The fizz of the beer makes her want to cough. "Lost three weeks there. Don't- don't know how long it really felt. Family thought I'd-" She cuts off, sharp. The balled up paper from earlier, its soft-green material, gets brought back up out of her other hand, and- violently, again -tossed out off the rooftop. "What makes you so sure I didn't? I'd bet everyone else disagrees. For- for all giving up or not even fucking matters."
Strawberry Princess	"Scene of the crime," Onyx says, but she gestures up at the unscarred sky. Not down here on Earth where ordinary people walk with the rubble. That must be part of the beauty of it. She's popping the tab on her beer just as Meika throws the crumpled paper past her. "My last chance to be human. Or it felt like it. Some people probably died. Guess I don't know. And now nobody knows my face. And it's okay." The wind whips her hair around her face. She turns to dangle her legs over the edge so she can take a sip. A pause passes, longer than Onyx should really take to think about what Meika's saying. A pause for her feelings to settle. Or maybe for Meika's. When you blow over an empty bottle, sometimes it thrums. The wind blowing through the cross and down across the streets of Tallahassee whistles hollowly the same way. The sun has set behind the tall buildings uptown but not behind the horizon, and their shadows reach out. The moment is light, and when Onyx takes the cigarette, words bubble up from her chest without any weight behind them. "I could kill you." She pounds back half her beer, hoping the cold will weigh her down a little more than that. Heavier, realer. "Ah. But you wouldn't take that. Would you? You're a dipshit. Slapping Lilian's hand. But you're not that stupid. So there's part of you that wants to live." "She didn't ask me anything. But she sort of did. 'Don't do that again'. Without saying it, I knew she was asking that." Onyx swishes the half-empty can, and if she hasn't been given a light, sparks a little black flame at the cigarette's tip. "'Don't do that again'. Do you want it that bad?" She's asking if Meika would go back and beg.
Meika Kirenai	"Part,", Meika echoes. She pinches a cigarette between fingers busy drumming on her own beer can, her other hand pulling out a flimsy little lighter. "Is part enough? Especially if it's the part that doesn't deserve to live? Is it fine if I wish all the parts that shouldn't die, did?" "Was it? Your last chance to feel like that?" There's a sharp noise that doesn't faze Meika in the slightest- like ceramic bowls cracking on tile, like tree bark shattering as the sap beneath it freezes. Small superficial cracks spiderweb into existence on the roof's edge, far from structurally destabalizing. Meika's dangling heel taps against the building, and the sound rings out again. {"How do you even tell?"} That same shift, like the peeling-back of an all-pervasive dialtone. The same whispering Meika was so absolutely sure would seem so wrong, vile, perverse the first time they met. {"What if it's already slipped past?"} Smoke stings in Meika's eyes, when they finally turn back anywhere but out towards the slow-setting sun. There's no tears. Nothing like that. Her face still twists up like she's in pain. "I- I'm trying, not to. But I was trying not to." Soft, she exhales- it feels almost like every breath escaping past her lips is filled with needle-like barbs. "I- I think, when she offered, when she looked at me, she saw someone better than I am, and thought she'd be able to help her." "And- and that's my fault. I guess I believed a little, for a while, that at the end, that's- that's who'd walk out the other side. I wanted that to be true. Part of me needs it not to be." The beer can sloshes. Bitter and just-cold-enough to remind her she still has a mouth with skin and nerves, still a pulse, still a mind. Jury's out on if the reminder is welcome. "I guess you haven't seen her. 'Chevalier Vermillion'. You haven't really seen me, either. That's- that's fine." She empties the can, and puts it down beside her on the ledge. Her legs tuck up in front of her, even as setting sunlight robs the reflective sparkle from her far-too-red eyes, her far-too-white hair. "You're right. I- I wouldn't take that. I still want it that bad. And I'm still scared that doesn't matter."
Strawberry Princess	Onyx Witch drags from her cigarette. She coughs halfway through the inhalation. It tumbles to the warm concrete below. It's been too long. "Fuck." "It's always," she says, "your last chance to feel like anything," and the long shadows of tall buildings cast a shadow over Tallahassee in that second that they never exactly will again, "so lie to her." Her heel taps the building's edge too. She dares it to collapse. Something's making her mad and she doesn't know what, and her face squirms with the effort of figuring it out, and balled fists puff her windbreaker's pockets. Onyx seems like she's about to say something. Then she stands and throws the beer can. It hits asphalt wetly two hundred feet away. "And, and 'deserve to live'. Horseshit," she says while staggering back from the edge, either a little mad or furious, for different reasons than people are always mad at Meika. "Says who. Says who. These people?" The wind howls past her again, fluttering hair and swallowing up her breathing-out. "'Want it bad enough'. That didn't mean wish and rot. It meant do what it takes. Call her." "Call her, or I'll--" Her eyes tighten. "Or you won't live to get better. Ever."
Meika Kirenai	"Y-yeah. I'll call her, I'll-" There's a small little twist, as the urgency in Onyx's tone and expression make Meika flinch. It's almost instinctual, lacing magic back into her words, trying to stitch them just backwards enough into the other girl's memory to register as something she's already promised to do. Of course her first action is to try and defuse percieved danger. Her second action, in contrast, is to feel a horrifying sort of relief at a still-forming thought. Aluminum cracks in Meika's grip. The folds make edges sharp enough to break skin, and still she crumples it like it's softer than air. There's a few moments still before any blood would drip. Her hand f-f-flickers at the edges, and she holds it there. "... Yeah. I guess says those people. Or anyone who'd..." As Onyx gets up, Meika's head half-lolls over to the side, so she can still watch her move around the rooftop, not that she needs eyes for that. Eventually, breathing shallow, nerves far tenser than the dull look on her face shows, Meika swings back over to stand again on the roof, dropping the now-bloody can off amongst the pebbles. Maybe it's just a trick of the light that the outline of her hand still doesn't look right. "It's fine, though. Don't worry about it. If I listened to that enough, I don't think I'd be here." Her own motions are stilted and wrong. Her footfalls aren't unsteady, but they are arrythmic, rubber-on-crunching-rock. It's like a parody of that earlier centering spin- a twist on one boot's toe, and a kick, to scuff at the rooftop, to send a small spray of little rocks flying. "I can lie." Far from the best assurance for what words cross her lips afterwards. Nor, really, for what was before. "... Couple weeks. Don't- don't worry about how long. If you see someone who looks like me, talks like me, keeps te same name- but isn't, that's-" A hitch in her breath. Her heartbeat is racing, and not a soul can hear it. "I don't know if you'd be able to tell, but it doesn't matter if you guess wrong. Be- be mad at her like that. Like this. Not- it's not like you owe me a favor, so I guess I'll be in your debt. Say that you'll- I- I need that reassurance. She doesn't get free of it, get out of it all, unscathed." "I'll- I'll do what I've got to, if that's... I'm trying to. To make it work." Meika takes another drag from her cigarette, paper warping from the pressure of her fingers, and tosses it to the ground. Her heel turns it to a smear. "I can go further, if I know she'll pay for stealing my face, if she does. Less to do myself. That's-" "I guess it's motivation, too. To not let her. I bet you're scary." Meika's scared. It doesn't stop her from saying 'scary' like it's a good thing. Her chest rises and falls, unsteady, and finally, her eyes lock back to the rooftop below. "I'll owe you for that. For this, too. I'll figure out a way to pay it back."
Strawberry Princess	Onyx shrinks. "I do though." The shadow of the chintzy cross lays over her, big as a tree. "I do owe you. You seemed like me. Still sort of do. That's been nice. For once." She tilts her head back and breathes like the beer-can crack-hiss. The shadow oozes down her brow and over her eyes. A pause hangs before the judgement. "I'll make her like you. My gift to me. Don't worry about paying back." Lips droop, exposing teeth. "Or maybe I'll shoot her," Onyx lies. The sun is going down. The sanctum stops being one. Forbidden things are more forbidden in daylight. It's just a rooftop full of rocks. It's just a parking lot below, and by morning the beer's evaporated and someone's picked up the can. Onyx turns to leave. Her thumb hitches the carry-strap of her weapon like a school backpack. She kicks the roof door, which doesn't open inwards, and kicks it again, and it does. It's a good feeling. "Hey," she says, and turns not enough to show her eyes. "Actually. Fuck walking back. I'm flying. I'll carry you." It's just a convenience. Which is another way to do a favor for someone she's not sure she hates.