Scene #8877: Apple Tree Island

Owner	Pose
Liza Grier	When Liza had said 'two weeks', she'd meant it. Not that she was planning on it. Not that she'd be mad at Rita if she took longer. Only a little bit to hold Rita to something. A promise she'd be reluctant to break. Liza had meant it most as a promise to herself. She'd needed Rita to hold her to it. That after two weeks, she would move on. She was scared she might wait forever. Apple Tree Island is a miracle; everyone knows that. An island in a world of infinite sea. Less know that it's a miracle on top of another one; that humanity had won at all. Liza herself had spared time at the drawing board, on this, burning pieces of sleepless nights on the bomb for when the Busan's failed, on the weapons she could throw away to beat the Queen, on the beacons and their payloads to rescue Rita when the worst happened. And in the end, she didn't even go. She couldn't figure out how to get it to the bottom of the ocean intact, she didn't know anything about the Leviathans, and wishing she'd asked didn't fix it, and she had to watch Rita sleeping in the pool one night to admit to herself that she'd never fight to win, but only to protect her; that she had no duty to that world, or its people, that held a higher place inside of her than Rita coming back. She'd let Petra live for weeks, just to allow there to be one more trusted friend by her side. Two weeks is already enough time for rumours to circulate that she was dead, but she still couldn't make herself go, for knowing that her head would be back here and not where it needed to be. Liza hasn't had to sit and wait and powerlessly meander through her day to day until there's nothing left to do; not since before the Syndicate. Her hardsuit has sat around long enough to gather dust on its stand. She wears clean clothes as if they were drenched in barely tolerable sweat. Her fingers are red and raw, nails chipped from overuse. Drinking at her usual pace, with twice as many hours in the day, had made her start feeling sick. For the first time in a decade, she doesn't sleep well anymore. Rita leaving a message for each day is what keeps her on track at all. Waiting for each one becomes her most compelling reason to get out of bed. She replays them before going back to it; a reminder that Rita meant to come back, or else she wouldn't have left them. Having run out of every possible task to do in the bay, now she just smells like aquarium cleaner and petrichor. The fish are a distraction that she's suddenly taken to well, along with Little Bota. She hasn't had so much time to garden since ever. Resisting the urge to land at Apple Tree Island days within days of its formation, Liza narrowly listens to better sense, and only puts it down on the coast at the exact, agreed-upon date. Disembarking in her current state, she practically vanishes into the crowds of labourers, slightly less striking to see than Kana and dressed more appropriately for shifting girders around under the hot sun; though she avoids the latter to some extent. Meandering through town without much direction, the biggest hope she dares cling to at the moment; working her way up carefully over time, is if anyone knows of Rita doing anything after the battle. Then, if anyone is heard from her. Then, if anyone has seen her. Then . . .
Rita Ma	"... You'll be seeing me tomorrow. I'm jealous of you for that, Ms. Grier. For me it's still two weeks away. I miss you already. ... I love you. Goodbye." https://youtu.be/R-P05FMnFMM The island is beautiful, even by ash-muted daylight. There's a deep blue hole at the center of it. People circle around it, wearing footpaths into volcanic dirt, but the caldera hasn't scabbed over with a bridge. People built houses, but they're all still too clean and empty to be called homes. There's a memorial up on the hill, across the way from where Liza lands. Is Rita's name on it? Would it be? The hole in the island's like a gap in your teeth. Everyone's happy, or they're unhappy in small ways, but something's missing. Your tongue keeps finding it. What is it? The people here are warm and kind, but they look at Liza's ship- and at her, before she anonymizes herself in the crowd- with the murmuring ambiguity of a newborn fawn. Their routines aren't worn-in enough for violating them to be either bland or panicking. As big as it is, that looming apple-tree is fresh green wood, and when the wind blows it sways. But she doesn't make it far down the island's main arteries. "Ms. Grier!!" Like always, it sounds like her, but the words pass through Liza's head without touching her ears. It's the radio station one notch over. Something beautiful glimpsed through fog. More importantly than that, Rita sounds like her heart's in her throat. She looks like it, too, when she stumbles out the doorway of a seaside house and stares at Liza like she's seen an angel. She's wearing her white dress still, which means she isn't wearing anything, but both her eyes are-- and there aren't any tentacles-- and her neck-- The sparse crowd parts, murmuring and baffled, for Rita to jog down the street and throw her arms around Liza, head hitting chest a little higher than it used to. Her arms squeeze tight. Her chest shakes with feeling. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she says, muffled into Liza's shoulder, and her hand slips down Liza's arm to embrace those raw fingers. A little gasp of relief wracks her. "I-- I won't do it again. Ever."
Liza Grier	The missing element; the hole of familiarity; bothers Liza the entire way over the hill. Which is deeply unusual, she realizes almost immediately, because whenever she puts boots to dirt or shore or promenade plate, she is already immersing herself in something unfamiliar anyways. She has always only ever 'come back down to Earth' just enough to make sure she doesn't lose sight of what it feels like to live there. She should feel like something is out of place anyways; unsteady for being here. It strikes Liza as she enters town and shrugs off a few stares that this still isn't quite like that. No matter where she looks, she can't identify tension. No one is worn down, nothing is worn in, there are no overseers, no rule-keepers, nothing is changing hands according to ritual and law; nothing has been forced into place, to work a certain way, because that's how it works 'best', and will work that way forever onward. At least yet. It strikes Liza a little after, that this must be exactly what it looks like in the weeks after she leaves. She's never really come back to check. The only thing she doesn't stop to think about is whether or not she'd heard it. Whether it was real, or imagined, or whether she heard it with her ears, just in her head, or intuited it with something else altogether. 'Ms. Grier' is enough. Her hands pull free of her pockets, fingers catching the edge of a handgun grip and slipping free without drag. Her eyes jump up from the ground forty feet ahead of her and into the crowd, scanning past however many astonished faces she has to. Even a hallucination would be enough. An imagined glimpse of Rita down a brand new alley, or on an empty doorstep. Liza's trudge lightens into swift marching, and then an urgent jog, towards where she heard-- where she thinks the voice came from, until-- "Rita!!" Liza realizes she's stooped slightly too low at about the time she's already squeezing Rita to her chest. She's notices that her balance is too far forward once she's already lifted Rita right off her feet. She startles softly at Rita's eyes only moments after she has her hand on the back of her head, and can no longer see them. The knowing that Rita is different now, after those two weeks, had gone right under the tires, when the need to catch her and hold her and never let her go again had come tearing through. "No . . . No no come on, Rita. You're . . . You're still here, right when you said, and, you kept your promise, so don't say sorry to me." Liza's arms hold Rita's back tightly enough to pull her up to her tiptoes. Her face rests on the top of her head, feeling stinging hot, where it can't be seen. "You did it. Everything went like we wanted. You did it and it worked and you really came back and . . . I need to be saying thank you, so don't say sorry. I want to say it first, that . . ." Her fingers catch in the loose eddies of Rita's dress. Liza's swallow is audible against Rita's ear. "I listened to all of your messages. And all the fish are fine. The space whales too. And Little Bota grew, I think. And your room is still clean, if you ever want to use it again. And-- I guess the freezer's empty, so I'm sorry I didn't do much all this time, but I'll take you anywhere you want to go. If you want to go. I'm just sorry I didn't ask. Didn't know anything I didn't have to. So thank you, so, so, so much, Rita, for meaning it. Thinking about me while you were coming back."
Rita Ma	The little tidal pool of people gathered-round ebbs back, not recoiling but receding. The focus of attention isn't on Rita or Liza but the embrace between them. Who is that to their little angel, to bring her so much joy? Someone laughs warmly. But only those two, leaning out the window of her house, seem to get it. She beams knowingly, and murmurs a few words to him, and then he smiles too. 'That's her.' Rita is a not-so-little ball of shivering feelings in Liza's arms. Most of those reassurances she can't respond to, except "Don't say sorry. Please don't. That's not fair." It's all she can do to absorb them. There are so many textures to her trembling: the little quivers of high-strung joy, the adrenaline shakes, the wracking not-quite-sobs. 'if you ever want to use it again' is what jars her. The trembling parts. Blearily, tearily: "Huh?" "Of... of course I do, Ms. Grier." Sniffles, then a bubbling laugh. She uses tippy-toes to touch the ground, and lays her hand on Liza's cheek to look up at her eyes. "Can't you put the ship here? So we can all be together? But even if you can't..." Five days ago, Rita stares into a mirror in a sunken ship's ballroom. She's given herself back hair, hands, a face. Now she touches her eyelids' inner corners, and decides to let herself cry. "I want to be with you forever." Her voice creaks as she buries her face back against Liza's body. There's a slithering sound, and cool wet things that Liza called 'gross' a hundred lifetimes ago wrap around her to express more affection than arms could alone, in broad daylight, in a town. And the people shift or murmur or pretend not to stare, but she doesn't seem to notice, and no-one screams.
Liza Grier	Liza has never seen 'those two' before in her life; she's heard plenty about them from Rita, their names seldom, but never once laid eyes on a picture. It takes no time at all to guess who they are, and feel shockingly confident in her gut. For a second, Liza is back at college, holding hands with someone's 'precious little girl' and freezing in the headlights in the terrible moment of being caught. The fact she remembers it at all is surreal. She murders people regularly; she can't even say 'for a living'; why does she suddenly feel overwhelmingly conscious of where her hands are? Why does she suddenly care to look at them at all? Never mind searching their faces for their thoughts. She can't figure out what's put her off her guard so badly until she puts two and two together and realizes they're both smiling. Liza Grier tries to not go red. That'd be ridiculous. 'Can't you put the ship here? So we can all be together?' Liza takes refuge in the closer activity of talking to Rita. Holding her up, aiming her words down, she can shelter in the precious bubble of closeness; their own little world; that the two of them create together. Neither the sun nor the stares can get her here, even without a hardsuit. "It is. Right now. You know I can't leave it. There's a billion people who want me dead. That's why i don't live in one place." Liza says into Rita's ear, throat hoarse, punctuated by a silent hiccup that turns into a quiet laugh. "And I want to let your family have some peace for once. So if you're serious about coming with me, then I have some figuring out to do. Can't go weekdays and weekends. Too predictable." The rest of her words are sublimated into a faint huff of astonishment when Rita goes so far as to hold her in that way, too. Her arms slide tighter around Rita, so that her fingertips can brush the grip of her handgun at her waist. Her eyes rove around the crowd. Her other arm tenses around Rita's back, ready to pull her away. Nothing happens, and Liza doesn't know what to do with herself because of it. The energy has to go somewhere, and so it goes into an embarrassed-apologetic kiss to the top of Rita's head. Wait. Come on. Too many people watching. Find something else to break the ice. ". . . So that's what 'Kana' looks like, huh?"
Rita Ma	A little shaky laugh bubbles up from Rita's chest, pressed against Liza's body. One tentacle twines softly around Liza's forearm and places her hand on the small of Rita's back by gentle, tender force. "It's okay," she thinks, just as Liza definitely doesn't blush. Another tentacle curls over Liza's hip, to hide the fact that she reached for her gun from the crowd. The air today is too gentle for tension like that. The villagers from Union Busan looked softly awed or warmly knowing; those from New York and Benin swung towards awkwardly uncomfortable. But they've all had time to get used to it- to her. "We'll figure it out," Rita says, cheek squished against Liza's collarbone while she looks up. That exaggerates her sappy smile. "Maybe I'll make a new 'Devil' to hide you, or... I don't know. But I want to be with you. And I want to be with them. And..." Her cheeks tense, trying and failing to stop tears from overflowing her eyelashes again. Deep, aching relief. Two weeks apart from one. Two years apart from the others. Having both at once, even for a moment, is an unbearable miracle that squeezes her heart. "And I'm not going to be picky. Not after everything. However it turns out, that's okay." Clammy squirming slips behind Liza's knees, under her butt, around her back. Then, hardly tensing at all, they lift Liza uup off the ground, turn her horizontal, and deposit her in Rita's waiting arms for a princess carry. She laughs, mischievously eyes-shut, and a tentacle covers her lips just like her hand would were it free. Another strokes Liza's cheek. "Mmm-hmm! Isn't Kana amazing, Ms. Grier?" she says, while carrying Liza towards the dreaded meeting with the in-laws. The two of them practically glow, then duck back inside. Then Rita looks down thoughtfully, lips squishing. A thought dawns for the very first time. "She kind of looks like..." ". . ." "Ms. Grier? Are you two from the same place?"
Liza Grier	The one thing Liza can't question is Rita's touch. She might freeze up in the gaze of Rita's family, or find her weapon under the stares of a gentle crowd, but it's already too late to react to Rita's tendrils curling around her by the time she even thinks about it. Her hand goes with Rita's guidance, bearing all the loving grace of routine in 'where it is okay to touch'. She eases her touch away from her gun more for recognition of Rita's utterly serene comfort than anything else, and uses that arm to hold Rita around the back of her neck instead. Both hands on her, Liza remembers to breathe for the first time in weeks. 'We'll figure it out,' "Yeah. We always do." says Liza, without 'I'. "You know, some people say all the time that I made a bargain with the Hellish powers. Might not be bad to cash in on the charges and make nice with a Devil." she says. The laugh that comes after is a little awkward and dry, but heartfelt. 'And I'm not going to be picky. Not after everything. However it turns out, that's okay.' Liza's arm shifts around Rita's neck, closer, letting her rub her eyes on the back of her hand, just above Rita's head where she can't look up. "You get to be picky." Liza says, her voice hoarse. "You're never, ever picky about anything Rita. You don't owe me anything anymore." Liza isn't often surprised, so the sound she makes at being lifted is quiet and unpracticed; more of an unsteady breath than anything else. She automatically adjusts her center of gravity with the muscle memory of a long-time spacer, leaving her arm around Rita's shoulders to secure herself, and then definitely turns a shade of something in the pink spectrum at being carried off in the middle of the crowd. Her eyes are determined to remain locked on her knees. 'Ms. Grier? Are you two from the same place?' Liza blinks. "How could we be? I wasn't born on Earth." A second passes. "What? She looks like that, and you just noticed right now?"
Rita Ma	The little crowd disperses when Rita moves on, tidal pool subsumed in the flow. That doesn't stop the comments from evidently-familiar passersby. "Oh, is that the happy couple~?" "Sonia, be normal." "Pppth." "Huh. Don't tell Foid." The ash-filled sky tints the sunlight and makes the rays stand out. The beating of waves on rocks, and the rustle of leaves in the wind, is gorgeously lush. Being carried by Rita- held safe, with nothing else to focus on- lets that beauty ooze into the heart. Thinking about Kana is for melancholic yearning. Thinking about Liza is for the bright and happy present. The wires just don't cross. Until now. Liza can almost hear the short-circuit desperately crisping inside Rita's head when they finally do. "Well, she's short and you're tall." Bzz. "And she used to have one eye..." Bzzzzzz... "And you're great at cooking and she's bad at it so--" Her eyes scrunch as her unwinnable position dawns on her. Then she smiles and leans forward to interpose her face in front of Liza's knees, and the combination is dangerous. "If I 'don't owe you anything', I don't have to answer that, Ms. Grier." Yet another tendril reaches out to her house's front door, but that young man pulls it open first, and reveals a gorgeous little home made from odds-and-ends, sheetmetal and stone and green. The table used to be a wire spool; a rusted sign forms part of the wall. Kana looks over her shoulder from a makeshift stove. "Hey. We've heard a lot about you," Bota says with a heartrendingly fond smile. Rita giggles. "It's almost dinner. Have you got time?" He holds out his hand to shake, with little scars all the way up to his rolled-up sleeve, but Rita doesn't set Liza down. His hair exactly matches the mouse.