Scene #8902:

Owner	Pose
Lilian Rook	Lilian is aware that her girlfriend has already invited Meika out to some other private location for some other private talk just yesterday. She's even aware of the contents, lensed through Tamamo's abundance of caution, good manners, and reliable care. The fact that she feels a little bit bad about dragging Meika out twice in a row, just before her birthday; before it's all over; as if she's commanding a heavy price of Meika's last, precious moments; is not written not unclearly in the look in her eyes and the coiled tension in her back and her arms, held idly around herself, even from the moment Meika arrives. Tamamo had cutely mysterious directions. Lilian has a smartphone mapping point set in the middle of gentrified Lampport, of all fucking places, near some shitty upscale community center. The total opposite of secluded, private, natural, Lilian waits for her in surroundings that she clashes with just by existing. Loud, busy, gaudy, artificial, crassly energetic, open to all eyes and ears; even sitting at an outdoor dining table-- rather, on the edge of it, disrespecting the faux-expensive patio glass surface-- in a nearly empty built-in café lot doesn't make Lilian and her personal vibe any less of a fish wildly out of water. Even she doesn't actually like it. Rewearing yesterday's outfit is insanity; it's perfectly ordinary, from an objective perspective, but it feels deathly exposing for her. When Meika slides in close, to the same table, the noise isn't quite so horrendous as she'd expect. The cars don't feel too close, and the table parasol shades away most of the sun. No one is looking at her; few people aren't busy walking, driving, or going in and out of the center, and out of those actually eating or relaxing in the shaded lot, the only ones even looking in her overall direction are boys staring at Lilian in an utterly pedestrian way, and a couple of vaguely unhappy middle-aged women leering for different reasons at her. "Apologies, Meika. For calling you out somewhere like this." Lilian says as she approaches. "Especially when I'd found somewhere nice, last time." A reminder that she has no sketchbook on her; or at least not in her hands. Her bag is left separately on the table. "Please trust me that it'll make sense in a moment." Lilian says, not even trying to disguise the sound of expecting Meika to never trust her again in her life. "So . . . first . . ." Lilian looks to Meika, then subtly looks away again, thoughtfully watching her ear rather than her lips. "It's really tomorrow. Isn't it? In a few hours, this won't even matter. It doesn't feel real. Tell me it is."
Meika Kirenai	Walking through the bustling town center, it's far from distant to Meika's mind what she's skipping out on, not being home. Another weekend gone without a word to anyone at all, in a manner that's become quite usual for her. By her best estimation, hazy from lack of sleep, it's Sunday- so she's missing chores, missing Mass, missing the one night a week her whole family has to spend at the same table with each other. Missing fights, maybe, and missing names if they take turns for the worse. Not that she'd have a place alongside Cobalt, Love, or Justice, even if she was in Kagoshima. Meika looks atrocious. 'Worse than normal' is her normal. Same outfit since friday, and about as long since she last got rest. Hazy eyes, and a yawn that won't stay stifled for more than a few minutes. The times any mall-cop esque security guard at the local overpriced soap stores and their ilk bother to ask 'Are you lost?' blend together with what they're only thinking, for how hard it is for the magical girl to distinguish. When Meika makes it to the table, and sets herself down, it's closer to watching her crumple than anything like 'relax'. The slight bit more quiet is immensely helpful, for her, and she just sits, staring at the table surface for a long moment before showing recognition of having even heard Lilian, before- "It's- it's fine, here. Lots of places like it. Just a city." Her talking at all breaks through how silent her motions had been, unconscious and unnoticed to her. A hand unclenches- from around a small plastic lighter, it seems, which then gets tap-tap-tapped against the table surface, a fixture point for her to stare at. "I figured it'd- it'd make sense. Y-you don't seem to do things for stupid reasons." he lighter-tapping stops after a moment, and her hand retreats closer to herself. "I- I trust you on that," she clarifies, the previous less-focused ramble seemingly having not passed some internal retroactive censor. I'm here because I do, aren't I? It's not like I don't still have that pistol. 'It doesn't feel real. Tell me it is.' The look Meika gives instead of an immediate answer is blistered-over with an aching sort of pain, like she'd wince if anything about it felt acute. Eyebrows just-barely furrowed, clearly chewing on the inside of her lip, the knot that feels like it's blocking up her esophagus heavy enough to hurt. The worst part is the obvious slight confusion, as to why anyone would need to ask, when looking at her. "... It doesn't feel real." She parrots those words, a tremble to her voice. Hands squeeze white-knuckled to the material of her messenger bag, placed on her lap like a proxy for a shield, or a stuffed animal, or anything that steadies to cling to. "It doesn't. B-but I guess it is, right? As far as... I get to know? You'll know. I won't. Is that good enough?"
Lilian Rook	'Y-you don't seem to do things for stupid reasons.' Lilian sighs weirdly, gazing off into the distance. A local park. "Then I've truly been too good to you." she says. Not regretfully. Or frustrated. Something else. Disappointed in herself. 'You'll know. I won't. Is that good enough?' "No. I just wanted you to say yes, and mean it. It'd put my mind at ease." Lilian says, so easily that it's just matter-of-fact. "I like certain things. I hate risks, even though all I ever do is take them. I wish things were exciting when they're safe, and I wish they were safe when they're exciting." She idly pushes her hair. Down today. Loose on her back. When she slides off the table, Meika can glimpse some of the gorgeous half-back tattoo glinting behind its sway, in the window of the halter top. "Well, if we're both wrong, and you do remember. I'll have to deal with the consequences." Lilian takes a deep breath, and poises her fingers as if to snap them. In Meika's sleepless haze, it almost seems like she sees §double§, but Wrong. "Breathe." Lilian says. "And hold it. Ask questions after." -----[snap]----- It's still Lampport. Without the black box, the wishes of the mediocre masses can no longer be amplified into reality, but the land itself was always chosen for being stretched thin and permeable to the substrate of stories. This location; the place Lilian had first broken everything; is still scabbing over. In a few weeks, perhaps, it won't be. It shrinks day by day. But returning here the next day; and then each week after; had been Lilian's Sunday chore ever since. Meika is subject to a silence far more perfect than any she's ever made. Pristine. Absolute. The quiet of it feels like recognizing hard vacuum. She should start asphyxiating. Right now. She doesn't. It feels bad not to. Breathing out is like firing a gunshot in a library. There's no point to using magic. The thumping of her heart is audible. The blood sloshing through her body conducts through her bones and into her ears. The magic of sound, itself, subtly distorts the air around her; displacing it into a way it then freezes; muting her own sounds only renders them visible instread. A boy's leering stare at Lilian's waist from behind remains fixed on empty air. The car behind Meika is parked in the middle of the road, its single driver catatonic in his monotonous drive home from work. A cloud in the way of the sun stubbornly refuses to move; the moment of cool shadow is completely frozen; forever, maybe. Like God no longer wants to even check in. Lilian turns around, locks eyes on a teenager with a smartphone trained on her, grinning without blinking, gormlessly toothy and enthusiastic, surrounded by his gaping friends, even as she approaches. The sound of her pinching the phone and sliding it from his grip is so minute, and yet it sounds like rustling fabric by Meika's ear. Checking the frozen frame of video capture, Lilian's lip curls, and her hand squeezes. The crack of shattering plastic is like a bomb going off. She turns back to Meika, and tosses the broken phone away like trash. Deftly aimed, even without looking, it falls, falls, and hovers just above the ground, directly below the teenager's empty hand. Slipped and fell. Even the fragments will splatter out, in a blink, too fast to notice, forever from now.
Lilian Rook	"I have a lot of theories, Meika. About what magic means to people. Magical girls, in particular. Magic born of wishes." says Lilian. It's the first time that tone comes out just for her. Like Meika is worth finally taking seriously. Like Meika isn't worth being kind to. "I've thought about what it means for a girl's heart to manifest 'a power that controls sound', you know. Perhaps you should think about that too. The sort of situation you're in." Lilian speaks as she paces back to the table, trailing her fingertip over the glass as she circles it. Her gait relaxes into lightly improper sway. Her fingers don't leave oil on the glass. "Don't lie to me. Don't bullshit me. Don't trail off. Don't end your sentences with 'yeah'. If you can't speak a human language then I'll just pull it out of your brain." says Lilian, looking at Meika in a way that conveys the awareness of her entire face, for maybe the first or second time. Funny. It's hard to really see anyone else's faces as 'a person's face' right now. "Are you coming to the facility on Tuesday? Are you going to take what you've scammed me for seriously? If you do, what are you going to do about Kayoko? She'll hate it, once she finds out."
Meika Kirenai	'I just wanted you to say yes, and mean it.' Too late for it to matter, the answer key already turned over, "... Yeah. Tomorrow. S-so nothing now matters. Nothing for the past five years does. I can't- I can't feel it, or something. But it's tomorrow." Eyes unfocus, the lighter stuck between her hand and the messenger bag twists its plastic shell, with faint-quiet cracking squeaks. It's well-used enough that it nearly lacks the butane pressure for any to leak out of the damage. 'I'll have to deal with the consequences.' There's that same little delay between hearing and making sense of words, before a slight-confused look of worry crosses back over Meika's face. "Consequences..?" She repeats, blind to what's coming yet. Eyes struggle to track Lilian's motions, but she's more reliant on other ways than looking, anyway. She blinks- it's not really the sun catching her eyes, even if something's off.Huh, that almost looks like- Thoughts drift, like freefall, to the height of the Walpurgisnacht, as if instinctual fear got tripped by looking at ropes too similar to snakes. There's no real time for her to gasp, just take a breath and hold, before- Abject silence. Closer to nothingness than she's ever felt. For how loud and wrong it feels to even have a heart that beats, the first shift in her expression seems like sickness, not even fear. Awful, aching cognizance of details she hates, the momentary feedback loop worsening for lack of other stimuli. For a split second, as has become habitual, with any sort of disruption or inconsistency, she worries her powers left early. Really, she's just feeling powerless. Everything else off comes secondary. Still sitting, an unsteady thought almost urges her to get up, too, but that still-remaining gut fear only further cinches her down to the seat she's in. Awful red eyes track Lilian, they have to, the sound-shaped echoes she's more used to relying on are useless and amputated. Even still, it's awful and awkward to feel like she's staring. Hearing the phone break makes her reel like it was someone's neck. 'What's going on' would be a pathetically useless thing to say, and so she doesn't- but it's still painted all over her. The only real answer to that comes in silhouette, by how at-ease Lilian seems with it all. 'Perhaps you should think about that too. The sort of situation you're in.' "Situation? Here- this?" Its messy, difficult to enunciate, like an uphill battle. "Or... with, everything..?" No fitting schema assures her whether this is a lecture or something else. The difference in Lilian's tone is palpable. "... You're saying that like it means something bad, doesn't it?" Softer- not settled, at all, but trying, trying and failing for everything to not be so sickeningly overpowering in the stilled air.
Meika Kirenai	Whatever effort she'd been putting into constructing words not-so-harsh, not not so sickening to form with a mouth made of muscles and blood, fades away into returning Lilian's gaze. Fuzzy, hazy, it's a fight to not crumple back up more. "On Tuesday. I'll be there. I don't have anywhere else to be." She really doesn't. "I don't want to think that maybe I wouldn't be. I- I'm not going to think that. I'm serious-" An unconscious sniffle, the motion to cover her face with a sleeve cuff makes Meika herself flinch. "-Serious. I'll be serious. I'm- I'll make sure. Whoever has- has my face, come tomorrow, I won't let her not." "I don't- I don't know what Kayoko would do. If she hates it, then- then she can hate me. She already does. But I'll be out of her way, and it's not like she tried to stop me leaving, this time." A small little pained expression. "She's my sister. My teammate. I- I hope she won't hate it. But I can barely keep up with her like this. I- I've been trying. I can deal, sometimes. But- but I think I'd be helpless, if... she- she did anything." "... She'll be home, though. I know I won't be- be welcome, there. I'll be eighteen. Maybe just being gone is enough." Meika doesn't sound unconvinced, she doesn't sound like she's lying- she sounds worried that the best shot she's thought to rely on still feels flimsy, and she's pouring guilt at the seams for even thinking this way, about family. Were it not for the cusp of tomorrow looming, it's a surefire guess she'd not be saying any of that, about her.
Lilian Rook	'... You're saying that like it means something bad, doesn't it?' Lilian seats herself at the edge of the table again, but this time with her feet touching the ground. Palms on the table, her back to the parasol, her gun holster is slightly visible where her skirt rides up her thigh. It doesn't improve the way she looks down at Meika without tilting her head. Not with the frozen sliver of light cutting across her face, just below her scan. Eyes amidst shadow. "You're both so annoying. All you do is ignore everything I say and try to figure out if I'm angry with you." Lilian says. She hasn't blinked yet. It's offputting. "Well. You're a little better than your sister. Every so often you choke out something you really mean." She stops to brush back her hair. It's the only thing that falls normally here. Even Meika's lighter hangs on its corner, when she lets go of it. Like the eerie opposite of those NASA videos. "But I really can't stand how impossible it is to have conversation with you." 'On Tuesday. I'll be there. I don't have anywhere else to be.' "Try again." 'Whoever has- has my face, come tomorrow, I won't let her not.' "That's better." There's a subtle shift in the fry laid into Lilian's voice. Someone might call it relief. The rest would call it sinful. "I'd prefer that you tell me you want it, but I'd be shocked if you're capable of clearly wanting anything." 'I can deal, sometimes. But- but I think I'd be helpless, if... she- she did anything.' Lilian shifts against the table. A little arch of the back. A thoughtful drumming of fingernails against the glass. They're painted; beautifully, and unacceptable in church. A slow, measured breath out, easier than bare tolerance. Easier than any noise she usually makes."Finally. You admit it." Lilian says. That such a relaxed purr can still sound sad on someone's behalf feels wrong. "It's fine, Meika. I mean it. I'm not going to wait for you to ask for help anymore." says Lilian. She stares directly into the sun the entire time she says it, only looking back down at Meika after. "If you can't defy her, then I'll just deal with her when she comes." Lilian removes her weight from the table. It stays slightly bent, just a little, at the angle that supported her weight. "When I let you go home, you'll pack up. You'll be ready to move before 'it' happens. You'll report in on Tuesday. Company housing is arranged." She begins to pace. Every click of her heels is the loudest ruler Meika has ever heard smacked against her desk. "You'll let Kayoko see you off, and send a few letters and make a few video calls to satisfy her that you're fine. That'll last some time." she says. "You'll work on your magic, regardless of what you want. If you make yourself a problem, you'll start seeing how frightening adults can be. Not like your shitty parents or that apathetic goblin Kurokawa."
Lilian Rook	Lilian meanders her way to the outdoor café bar, not far enough to give Meika respite, and just helps herself to a drink from behind it. She mixes it herself, right there on the counter; right in front of the clerk. It's rebellious for all of the few seconds Meika can believe she's ignoring them on purpse. It's something else when she figures out that Lilian doesn't even notice they exist. "Like me." This time she leans on the bar. She isn't done with mint juleps, apparently. She swirls the glass, looking into the ice for nothing in particular, then slams it back in one go, holding up her finger to command Meika's silence until she's done, and then to wipe her lip, sucking the last off her fingertip. "Because you're not a child anymore, Meika. You haven't been for a long time. And I'm very, very tired, of playing your good little soldier of righteousness." It's almost worse that she throws change on the counter before leaving. Just stealing the drink would have been better. Paying for it anyways is some sort of arrogance too alien to comprehend. Prowling back towards Meika, Lilian says "Come Tuesday, once your sister, your parents, your school, your shitty little anal-retentive church, have nothing to do with you, I'll have won. You'll be mine. And you'll be a magical girl, too." "Happy? You love Petra, and you hate my guts, so I figure that you should be."
Meika Kirenai	'You're both so annoying.' Meika's cable-tense expression and frightened posture both measurably soften, despite the words and despite the gaze. She still looks rattled, uncomfortable, unhappy- but it feels like a concession of common ground, still, even if brought about in part by its own expectation. 'But I really can't stand how impossible it is to have conversation with you.' "I hate it too." It's a pressing awfulness, and has been for year after year after year, the feeling that all communication is strangled, from her, to anyone. Ironic, for sound and words to fall so cleanly under her purview. "I- I notice it. I do. All the time, everyhwere. L-like I can't understand, l-like every answer is twisted up from how it's supposed to be, like there's nothing I can ever say. I hate it. I don't know what to do." '... But I'd be shocked if you're capable of clearly wanting anything.' That same expression as before, the pained, uncertain frustration and confusion, eyes point down and left, teeth clamp around cheek skin. "Nothing's clear enough." The most drastic motion she takes, while everything stands so hauntingly silent-loud and still, is just to slide her bag away, and pull her knees up to her chest, heels perched on the edge of her seat. For how slightly-tall she'd be to real peers, and for how she still brands herself an athlete, Meika really is scrawny and small, were it not for the bulk of the coat she's trying her damndest to dissapear into. "I- I do want it. Want what it means. To- to be there, to be me. But it feels like a lie to speak for- for after, as if I know what that'll be like. I don't like lying. But I still mean it- I won't let her not, I'm making sure of it, I want- I want to be there." The tap-ap-tap-ap of drummed nails echoing takes far more of Meika's focus than she can help, like sudden cul-de-sac fireworks. The tone Lilian takes about Meika's sister, overriding that, makes the magical girl feel so hollow she's not sure how she hasn't imploded yet. No agreement or argument comes to mind, beyond feeling like she's misstepped somewhere. "... I hope you don't need to." She's not sure, even in the back of her mind, whether it's better to hope more that Kayoko just not interfere, or whether to make sure herself that help isn't needed, and it's not something she gets much time to think on between idle scattered sleep-deprived wondering on how Lilian doesn't just go blind, looking up like that. Instead of following Lilian, finally, Meika's eyes just flit around the structure of the just-bent table, the wrongness of that static change, but it's not like her vision is pulling much legwork when eeach clack-clack heel impact makes it feel like she'll white-out, from noise, or expectation of incoming pain. She has to blink to focus again- effort, messy, more direct to have to think about than she'd ever like.
Meika Kirenai	'And I'm very, very tired, of playing your good little soldier of righteousness.' Listening to Lilian's illustration of events-to-come, and watching her at the bar with half-disjointed idea of what she's even doing, Meika doesn't even speak up until those words are uttered, and she's a tone more fuzzy herself when she does. Looking Lilian's way again has her seeing double- only, though, from misted-over eyes and refractive lensing. "... Playing?" Whatever hollowness from before amplifies, to the point it's almost physically painful. Tangible embarrassment alloyed with dread. It's painted across her face. "It's too late for any of this to matter. Why did it have to be? Any- any of this. It could have, right? It would have. I- I wish it could've. I'm- I'm sorry." The tremble to her face is messy, arrhythmic, and matched to the tremble in her shoulders. Eyes don't get more than misty- even if she's felt like she's been coming apart at the seams for weeks. 'Happy? You love Petra, and you hate my guts, so I figure that you should be.' Somehow, the empty, hollow ache eating at Meika gets worse. "S-sorry, I'm sorry, I- I don't. I don't hate you, or your guts, or- I- I'm not even a good liar. I know I'm not." Sharp inhale, sleeve cuff wiped across eyes. "I'm not being- being nice. You said that last time. I wasn't, then, either. I- I guess that's past mattering, too. This all is. I don't know how to say it how you'll believe, but- but I don't want you to think that. I don't." A stillness, and then a tiny, shaky head motion, unsure if a nod, or a shake, or just acknowledgement of the rest of what Lilian said. 'Happy' is an overstatement of possibility for right now. Instinct and ambient pressure, both, make the present trembling worse as Lilian walks closer. Her eyes squeeze shut- "... Right. You'll- you'll have won. I didn't know that's- that you wanted to, or something. It's... all set in stone now, right?" It's not, but she's trying to pretend. Quieter- as quieter as it goes, "I can be happy with everything being set, now. Or close to it."
Lilian Rook	'I hate it too.' 'Nothing's clear enough.' 'I want to be there.' "Oh my god. Gross." Lilian, fractionally less sober, laughs at it. A low thrum of disgusted fascination at the back of her throat, dying down as soon as the perversity loses its charm. "That's what it takes? Being told that you're completely intolerable and you have no redeeming characteristics? Are you actually some kind of fucked up masochist like Petra?" Why would she have to explain? They both know Meika relaxed just then. Petra's name goes by without elaboration. Spoken like an pejorative. "Creep. No wonder you don't have any friends." Conversely, that sounded like a joke. It isn't a funny one. '... I hope you don't need to.' "Honestly, I do too." Lilian takes the same place at the table again. It bends, subtly, as if its skewed angle were its natural state. Now it visibly tilts under twice her actual weight. "I know she's a controlling little liar who doesn't comprehend a word I say, just like you, but you know what Meika?" Lilian gestures in Meika's field of view, over her knees. Eyes up. She should be able to do that. The tilted table now leaves her at eye level with Lilian's chest instead of her waist; her apathetically disappointed expression isn't much of an ask to look up at. "She genuinely adores me. At least, her image of me. She believes I can help you. She's terrified of my disappointment; that's why she fucks me around all the time. I haven't been hospitalized for trying to save her from spiting me, so if I didn't feel much, much sorrier for you, I'd put her above you." When was the last time she blinked at all? At the counter. Her fingernail taps her cheek in though, dangerously close to her eye. Right above that scar. She definitely got it from a blade. Couldn't she have it erased? She's gone to Meika's school looking like that. "Unfortunately for me, my sick, idiot soul can't look away from girls who are being kept from being what they need to be to live. You've certainly taken advantage of my weakness well enough to know." '... Playing?' "Yes. Playing. You didn't really think I was perfect, did you? I'm only the best of the bad lot that you attract; nothing more." 'It's too late for any of this to matter. Why did it have to be? Any- any of this. It could have, right? It would have. I- I wish it could've. I'm- I'm sorry.' "Shhh. I don't want your apology." The sounds is firm. It demands silence. The sound is soft. It's perversely comforting anyways. Lilian means both. "It being too late to matter is the point, Meika. God is about to hit your reset button, which means nothing I do right now matters. Your hurt feelings go away tomorrow. Whatever image of me that I shatter is flawlessly smooth again." Lilian gestures lightly towards her messenger bag, and a tissue is summoned nearly to her hand. Magic things. Until it's dabbing at Meika's bleary eyes, one at a time. Then Meika feels the §hands§; one on her cheek, delicate and soft and lukewarm tender. Lilian's are nowhere near her. "Why wouldn't I take the perfect opportunity to stop holding it in, just for a few hours?" She feels a §finger§ disobediently brush her lip in the moment the tear-streaked tissue is hurled away-- now part of the captive diorama, six feet from the ground.
Lilian Rook	'This all is. I don't know how to say it how you'll believe, but- but I don't want you to think that. I don't.' "I don't believe you because you lie to me, take advantage of me, disobey me, keep secrets from me, break your promises to me; you keep going behind my back, you can barely look me in the eye, you do things you know will hurt me, and come crawling back for handouts after." No, Lilian is defintely more than fractionally less sober. She's picking up momentum as she goes. "And the thing is, those things don't even make me hate you. They piss me off a lot, and they make me disappointed in you, but even now I'm still helping you, aren't I? I've helped people who did worse." It can't be that much. The closer and more tightly Lilian circles this topic, the more she picks up speed. It isn't a dread, sickly unburdening like Rita's. She's accelerating towards it because it's hard to pull back from. "I'm more disgusted with how sorry for yourself you are. And I don't fucking believe you because you don't know anything about me." There it is. Meika can hear the instant something cracks. "Get it through your fucking head that I have been lying to you about who I am this entire time because I'm the only one who even cares enough about you to do it!"
Meika Kirenai	Exhausted, bleary, and so far out of familiarity, Meika looks like she's been punched, by the unknown words and associations Lilian throws back. Implications don't land, but tone and disgust do. Everything on-edge, choked up, afraid. That all-dulling pressure, as if it's hanging right behind her eyes, of having done and said something horribly and terribly wrong, misstepped and heard the landmine click, makes it hard to tell if shut-tight eyes are even why she can't seem to see. "No, that's- I d-don't even know what you mean-" Her face gets covered up by forearms, knees still tight to her chest. Half to hide, half as if to shield. 'Gross' and 'creep' are terms she has no argument against, unjustifiably- they echo in tandem with other voices in her mind, built on a foundation of shame-reinforced expectation, any reason her mind could construct for why they fit is backfilled. Any now-vanished relief stems more in common ground, and no longer waiting for a shoe to drop. Not that she's capable of finding words right now. You sounded less like you were lying. That's it. That's all. Why can't that be all? The table creaking, again, moving, again, still catches her off-guard for how guarded she's shifted to being. Frustration, fear, throat-burning bitterness bubble up as she manages to peek an eye out behind her arms. Still as-if-shielding, as-if-hiding, Meika's hands pull where fingers wrap around ragged strands of that ghost-like stark white hair. '... But you know what Meika?' Sour, trembling gaze raises up and up, from above her knees, from out past her forearms, the thoughts racing behind it a roiling mess of 'I already know what you'll say', of 'she's better, anyone can see', of 'screw you for making me hear it again', that all fade in their aching loudness when Lilian's words start up again. "I don't want to be felt sorry for." The words clash with her posture, her tone, and the general misery of having to look at her. She's claimed that before, all the time, paradoxical to how much she's still aware pity is one of the only saving graces left. Paradoxical to how it feels to prey on it. pansi(160, "... R-right. Yeah.")] Eyes try not to trail away, and still do. 'You didn't really think I was perfect, did you? I'm only the best of the bad lot that you attract; nothing more.' 'No, not really' wouldn't be a lie, but it would be dishonest. It's painted across her face that she believed enough of it to feel that proximity and honesty would be inherently staining, from that blind bitter standpoint of all-infected guilt Meika carries with her every time she steps foot outside. 'Shhh.' Meika can't call up the silence demanded, here, even as the distorted shimmer of trying- having been trying, sits hanging around. Honestly, with the extent of it, it makes nearly visible sense that it's closer to a default state, that not doing so is what takes manual effort. She sits as still and quiet as she can, anyway. "R-right. It doesn't matter. D-doesn't fucking matter." It's eerily fitting that her stomach feels like she's on a roller coaster's freefall, for how the sense of being locked-in to a fate, and for the sense that it'll wind up back at the start, for better and for worse. It's haunting that Meika isn't freed of that, that everything she does and says still has a fraction more existence than anything she hears or sees. Aimlessly scowling off at nothing, she-
Meika Kirenai	She flinches, hard, at the tissue she hadn't been tracking the motion of, brushing across her eye, She pulls back, and freezes, despite the softness. It's worse when it's a hand on her cheek. What- don't touch me, please, I hate it, I- Fear and discomfort, an entirely poisoned-down reaction to that phantom contact, results in her lurching back and covering up her own face with a hand, looking around and seeing nothing. Distortions blur around, signs of uselessly calling up magic she can't even use, here- nothing meant to hide or silence, though. As hazy and disoriented as she is, the intent across her mind and face was that she'd reached for the same trick she made sea monsters pop like water balloons with, reactive contact-harm akin to pulling a gun on nothing. She stills, as the tissue winds up discarded, distant, the sensation stopping. There's no outward questioning. Meika thinks she jumped at nothing, something made-up and imagined, and anything to it just a symptom of how tired and nervous she is. 'And I don't fucking believe you because you don't know anything about me.' Oh. Meika's hands grab her own opposite forearms, around her knees, tight enough to bruise were they not already. That reasoning makes enough sense that any hope of reply gets blocked out by the bitter knot tied in her throat. It's tighter feeling, too, for picking the tells of insobriety out from raised-voice anger. Meika is better at it than she'd like. 'Get it through your fucking head that I have been lying to you about who I am this entire time-' Not all of it is a surprise. Meika's not dull enough to miss some of the lying, to have seen through little bits here and there. Some still is, even if her eyes don't go wide, her mouth doesn't gape, no direct expression of it supercedes her wilted worry. She opens her mouth, as if to say something- '-Because I'm the only one who even cares enough about you to do it!' And shuts it, fast enough to clip her tongue, to hear teeth clack, to make audible her wince. A sharp inhaled breath comes before she can spit words out again, muddying Lilian's words with the echoes of superficially similar claims, but she's nodding before she can pull those apart. "...'Kay. Okay. M- I'm listening." Her hands squeeze tighter into her own forearms, eyes pivot and bore holes in the discarded, still-floating tissue. It stings to feel lied to. She gets that there's a purpose. It stings worse to try and trust that that care is there, despite everything Meika's done to spite it. The easiest thing to trust is that if nothing matters now, what's the point in lying? She nods again, shallow, still scared. "... I don't know you, then." Less a denial, less a brush-off, but a call-out of being disoriented without a zero-point. Eyes pivot back, but can't sit still in the ambient nervousness. Shoulders rise and fall. "I- I trust you. But I don't get it. I don't get why caring and lying have to be the s-same thing like that."
Lilian Rook	'You sounded less like you were lying. That's it. That's all. Why can't that be all?' Meika doesn't say the words out loud. It doesn't matter. Perhaps it's in her eyes. Perhaps she muttered it without realizing. Perhaps this world is so quiet that Lilian can even hear her think. The least plausible possibility is that it was coincidence, when Lilian says "I haven't told you a single lie about you, Meika. You just can't stand not being torn down. Your brain starts melting out of your ears if it's been too long since someone's said something nasty about you. Don't fucking give me credit for it." 'I don't want to be felt sorry for.' "And I don't even care if that's true." Lilian continues on as seamlessly as if Meika's thoughts and her words were the same thing. Without a hitch. "At least if you said that out of some misplaced sense of pride, I might respect it. But we both know that you're so habituated, so addicted to punishment, that you go insane from anxiety when someone around you has a shred of humanity instead." Lilian leans forward far enough to squish her elbow into her thigh and lean her chin into her palm; a little closer, a little lower, running less on manic energy and more and more on unbottled, thorn-edged sincerity. "No one with a heartbeat could be blamed for feeling sorry for you. And I hate that it's just Petra and I. Every fucking day I see you out here, I see a girl crying for help, trying very, very badly to silence it, and that clumsy, amateurish attempt to smother her pain somehow being enough to fool everyone else." Lilian's lip curls. Her eyes narrow from the bottom up. For an instant, she really does looks like- "It makes me sick. You want help. I know it. Petra knows it. Onyx Witch knows it. You took it when it was offered, Meika, because you needed it. You just don't think you deserve it. And I want to puke at how everyone else agrees." Sighing. That's a good sign more often than bad; or at least, better than this. The look in her eyes softens, just a little. This isn't just an angry tirade after all. That makes it somehow worse. "When you were removed from the Paladins, I remember storming into Kurokawa's shitty little office, surrounded by 'worried' allies, and when I actually tore into her, apart from Tamamo, everyone sat by and let it happen. Like 'there was nothing to be done'. Too afraid to help you. Because you're complicated, and miserable, and make it hard for them on purpose." She lied about that before. Meika had prompted her, hope in her eyes, when Lilian suggested there was a fight, and Lilian lied that there wasn't. '...It's painted across her face that she believed enough of it to feel that proximity and honesty would be inherently staining...' "You couldn't possibly taint me, Meika. You were seventeen. Everyone else might be a fucking child, but you should have thought better than me. I'm too old, too strong, have too much heart, and too fucked up anyways for you to even leave a mark on." Lilian looks at Meika, for just an instant, as if something hurts. "You're not evil, Meika. You're just a shitty, toxic teen going through it." '...As hazy and disoriented as she is, the intent across her mind and face was that she'd reached for the same trick she made sea monsters pop like water balloons with, reactive contact-harm akin to pulling a gun on nothing....' "And don't try to kill me. I'll win." Lilian says it like it's nothing.
Lilian Rook	'...'Kay. Okay. M- I'm listening.' "Finally." Lilian sighs. The angry momentum she was building up goes cold. "Finally." Her inertia doesn't decline at all. It's only the heat behind it that tempers down. "You really meant it that time. For the first time." she says. "Because nothing matters now, right? Just for now, we have no more reason to lie to each other. I'm so happy you get it." The most sickening thing is that she sounds like it. Lilian moves-- almost gently-- to rest her back against the table parasol, sliding back over the top of the table until her knees are flush to the edge, just for that little bit of support. Staring at the sun again. If Meika tries, it doesn't even hurt here. It's not allowed to. 'I- I trust you. But I don't get it. I don't get why caring and lying have to be the s-same thing like that.' "Because of where you are. Every lie I've ever told you . . . no, just most of them, but all the ones that matter; they were all for the sake of getting you away from there." Lilian says. "To make your sister trust me. To make your parents not pay attention. To make Kurokawa leave you to my hands. To get those eyes and ears that are always on you, cooking you alive, off you." Her head turns in Meika's direction, hair sliding against the cheap metal pole. "That's all I know how to do. I don't know how to fix things like magic. But if I could get you away from those people, I was so sure that things could start getting better." A dry laugh-sound bubbles up from her throat. "It had to be better than what the others were doing at least; confronting you and quizzing you and criticizing you all the time. Telling you 'just get better' and leaving you." Her eyes wander restlessly in the vicinity of Meika's face, but not without seeing. "Someone like me wouldn't be allowed to help you. My special talent is just that I can fake it." They make contact only briefly. Sick, furious, pitying sparks of mingled resentment and empathy that can't last for more than instants at a time. "Come on. You don't wonder why all the Elites you meet are like this? I've been here for five years. I've met the normal ones, Meika." What does that mean? What does that even-- "Everyone you know is a delusional abuser, an adult child, or some fucked up queer, because that's who you go looking for." Bottled up anger. Most of it is justified, for once. A little tipsy. Only enough to take the inhibition down. Hair-raisingly resolute. There's no point backing out of it now. Holding it in has been unbearable. Sharing it at all is desperate. Meika should know that without asking. "I was worse when I was a lot younger than you. I was failing school from the moment I started because I couldn't care. My parents beat the shit out of me since I was nine. My first boyfriend tried to kill me. My teachers hated me. I had no friends until I was fifteen." This is different. The way Lilian talks to Meika now is different from every other time she's ever heard. There's no up or down to navigate by, now. Just the terrifying freefall of all of it being utterly without consequence to say.
Lilian Rook	"God didn't bless me. My magic grew from inside me; I made it. Forget you little pranks and gossips, Meika; I used it all the time, every day; to go places I wasn't allowed to, steal things no one would give me, cheat at school, hurt the kids my age, lash out against the adults, and get away with all of it, because no one ever knew. And long, long before I was eighteen, maybe from the moment I knew who I was, it felt like that or death." A moment of pure contact. "God didn't give me a clean little time limit to get it all out, either. I could have burned out at any second. Ceased to exist if I stopped fighting back. Onyx Witch said I was 'a temporary person' and she was right." "I don't fucking understand you. You let everyone treat you like a freak because you sneak out and break the rules, but it's mostly to fight evil and save lives. Maybe because you smoke, or you stutter, or act weird around girls. You're so desperate to stay 'you' that I can smell death on you; that's why I chose you, Meika; but you're just . . . happy enough to wither away; just fucking . . . wilt and die for lack of light." "You should have brainwashed your parents with those powers. Kayoko should be scared of you. Kurokawa should be gone and replaced. Drop should be dead. You don't have a single fucking spark of life in you at all. That's why I'm too much for you to handle." There's no reason to lie, and no reason to exaggerate. Lilian, that Lilian, says it with conviction. "But I'm all you've got, now. So things are going to happen my way." Completely in defiance of Meika's flinching urge, earlier, to fight back; she must know exactly what she's doing; Lilian leans over to grip Meika's chin between her finger and thumb and force her undivided attention. She blinks, visibly, for the first time. Her tongue runs across her lips, followed by a bracing exhale. "The girl that shows up on Tuesday is there because I conned everyone around her. If 'you' ever come back, then it'll be because of me. One of those fucked up abusive queers you hate. No other reason than being the one who fucks men and can lie when she has to." Lilian speaks with her voice just low enough for the miniscule proximity. "And Tamamo. And it's great. I'm done with boyfriends. I'm proposing to her. This year. Because I'm happy like this. I broke every rule, hurt everyone who got in my way, I changed my career, my friends, my home, my lovers, my name, my--" For just an instant, Lilian glances away. For one or two words, Meika hears her sound disgustingly vulnerable. Smoothed out by the end of a sentence. "--body, and I got away with all of it. I survived. I'm an adult. I'm 'a magical girl', according to you. And I'm happy, thriving, moving on with my life and winning at everything. No one can tell me to do anything, and I get everything I want. The girl in the drawing is going to live, and it's going to be me, 'one of those people', who saves her." She should release Meika, right about now, but she keeps her grip for just a little longer. "Tamamo told me that you showed her how you 'transform wrong'. She told me that you were horrified and ashamed of it. So while we're at it: I never told you that I've been trying to transform wrong all my life. That 'tattoo' is the magic that makes it so it doesn't happen one moment and stay that way forever. Because I hate being what the Refulgence wants, and I hate being good, and I hate God for making me the way he did, and one day I'm going to kill him."
Lilian Rook	She practically shoves Meika away when she sits up, glamorously brushing back her hair into order like nothing happened. "I said before, that I believe in 'magic that comes from wishes' being tied to the user, remember? You and your sister fuck around with light and sound because you're desperate to be perfect and invisible and unnoticeable, don't you? That magic came from wanting to shape yourself to be presentable for Sundays, and maybe make a few other people look bad too." "Think about what it means for me to have magic that controls time. And abandon your fucking delusions that you can do anything at all to hurt me. I do anything I want to anyone at any time for any reason and no one stop me because no one even knows."
Meika Kirenai	'I haven't told you a single lie about you, Meika.' The "Oh." that escapes her lips is as chock-full of apologetic embarrassment as the sound can take. '... And when I actually tore into her, apart from Tamamo, everyone sat by and let it happen.' Frustration and anger bleed out from the motion of her inhale. It's such a departure in framing from how she thought, how formulaic and how-it'd-have-to-be it was, to get revoked as she did. It's not the same sort of hope that's in her eyes, now, but it's something close to reassuring or vindicating, to hear, finally, even if it's soured. "Just- just you two." It's impossible not to remember months back, sitting in a company lounge, and hearing Petra outline specificially who amongst the Paladins Chevaliers seemed trustworthy, seemed worth relying on, each time it winds up the case. 'You're not evil, Meika. You're just a shitty, toxic teen going through it.' Her urge to protest any of that, in any direction, gets stifled by the situation. It's hard to shape them out in her head, and she mirrors that look of something hurting- before her eyes twist down and away, her hunched up posture tightens. She lets a breath out, though, and a quiet little nod. '... They were all for the sake of getting you away from there.' Sharp, sounded- her inhale comes with the same distorted flickers around her. It's like being plunged under the surface of cold water to hear, the reconfirmation and elaboration of why. Spelled out clean and pretty, and sensible enough even she can nod along. "... Tuesday." It's hard to sound hopeful, and it's not like it feels like she, herself, will see it through- but trusting a plan and seeing it laid bare bring different levels of certainty. "... It worked." 'Come on. You don't wonder why all the Elites you meet are like this?' '... Because that's who you go looking for.' It's only around then, that Meika's eyes bother looking up at the sun, and how it can't hurt, to free up the portion of her racing thoughts from freezing from knowing there's eyes boring down near her. "... Kind of thought it was- was coincidences. I guess it doesn't matter, if it is or isn't. Whoever winds up--" Eyes back towards Lilian, but barely open. "I don't know. Some make more sense." It's a while after the words are spoken before her thoughts stop twisting it over. 'I was worse when I was a lot younger than you.' Hushed stillness, and not an interruption dared, even to flinch at the times she's faced with eye contact, throughout the vented explanation.
Meika Kirenai	'... Wilt and die for lack of light.' 'You should have brainwashed your parents with those powers.' The way Meika slumps, instead of flinching or springing to a defense, ought to read as slight agreement. "I- I thought it was a test, what God gave me. Something like that. T-too easy, too clean. I still did, sometimes. It's easier than thinking, messing with that all, it used to come out without trying, but easy things- things like that, wrong things, were meant to be worked against. I failed anyway. S-stupid. It wouldn't have been worse." Another tick down for her powers sitting active by-default. Just like that silence, manually counterracted, just like her overhearing, just like how even Meika doesn't always notice when small objects she's standing near chip and crack from muffled resonance, how every now and then there's that little flicker of light where she's less than perfectly solid. Great efforts to adjust down to something normal, and she's not even very good at it. The rest of that all passes over with similar resigned agreement, a little stir of worry the most beyond it. There's not room for lying, and it'd feel like one, to try and say she didn't think she was a corpse still-walking. There's that nervous guilty fear in her eyes, still, Meika doesn't stoke it. "Yeah. Y-your way." Bloodshot bright-red eyes look so unfitting and unnatural when they open as scared-wide as they do, the moment Lilian touches her face. She doesn't flinch, her muscles are held tight instead, just a passive tremble and the normal kind of silence, for how awful and loud that is, with the world frozen. Her eyes swap between Lilian's, and her mouth, as if she had to read lips to know what was being said. Emotions cycle to surprise, not horror, if that was expected of her. Like some of it makes sense or fits with details she's tried to ignore or forget, curtesy of over-hearing, or side-glance noticing things she wasn't meant to, but having thrown any musings out on principle. 'Because I'm happy like this.' Surprise still rests in her expression, the fact that there's no point in lies making this another chisel blow at the idea that someone could be happy, like that. Damning, maybe, to let thoughts dwell as they do. 'The girl in the drawing is going to live,' It's there that real tears well up, and spill over, for how still and silent Meika stays. She tries to move her mouth to make words- it's a struggle, it's a losing one, too on-edge, too paralyzed by how her chin's being held. I think I could've used up the drawing you gave me, like all of mine, but it seems so horrible that it'd be gone too, with tomorrow, if I did. I don't want to lose it. I don't know how to feel about it, still.
Meika Kirenai	'She told me that you were horrified and ashamed of it' Still in the realm of not-quite-moving-enough to speak words out loud, the roiling worry bubbles out into similar thoughts as before, tied intrinsically with how she views a lot of the rest of her magic- At best it's a test, right? Something to strive not to want- and even that chokes up, quickly. The sound cracks, rough, when she says words aloud again. "Forever? B-because you wouldn't want to go back..?" The closest guess she can reach to, drawing from her own understanding. That's where the horror and shame stem from, for Meika. It's almost visible in her tearstained eyes. It's just close to a push, but Meika reels, unbalanced, from Lilian's release. A hand raises up to her own chin, as if she's expecting damage, or something like it, to have been left behind. The sounds she makes when daring to breath sound choked, and- "T-that's not what I wanted. If it came from that- from wanting that, wouldn't it be easy? I didn't want to be the girl in the drawing." There's a little fidget, as she grabs back at the discarded already-cracked lighter from how it'd not-quite hit the table, squeezes it, squeezes, squeezes- "I f-first found out I was- was a magical girl, in an attack. That's how it happens. I don't know why, but I- I've always thought that Temptation was after me. It wasn't that girl in the drawing, who killed it." "I wasn't thinking about Sunday school or dressing up nice, during that. Not at all. Maybe if I had been, I wouldn't need the drawings. But I wasn't. I was thinking that it felt like flying."
Lilian Rook	'... It worked.' "Yeah. It did." Lilian says. Drained, momentarily, to the point of smoky hoarseness, but with a tone nearly close to an eyeroll. "Everything I do works, and I always get what I want." She sighs. "And it would have been totally painless, too, if you'd trusted me even once. I think my one regret right now is that in a few more hours you're going to go right back to shutting me out." '... Kind of thought it was- was coincidences. I guess it doesn't matter, if it is or isn't.' "It does. Matter, I mean. Once or twice is a coincidence, but much further than that, and it's because the only common factor is you." For a little while, at least, Lilian can talk to Meika like she used to, sometimes. That tone of hard-won experience dripping out as advice she expects to be ignored. "You run into each other, over and over and over, because they sense some part of them in you; past or present. And it's something they want to reject, something that they want to own, or something they want to share in, that draws them to you." A short laugh quietly shakes Lilian's chest, slumped back. "So my encounters were all brittle egomaniacs and grandiose killers, royalty and authority and self-important 'exceptionalists', and now and again, sweet little victims of circumstance." Looking to Meika is a liquid slide of attention. Dry, self-effacing emphasis, rather than study. "Lured in by the smell of needy I was, to feel important and respected and safe, somewhere. And how bitter and hateful I was; all the violence that was ready to pour out of me at any time. Or, sometimes, just the smell of my blood. How much I hurt. How much I hated being me." "They were 'Elites' to me. People who wanted to reject or overcome my fragile ego, or defy my need for control, or challenge and force down my hate for them; because it'd let them deny something about themselves, or beat some other demon by proxy, or heal some stupid fucking inadequacy of theirs. And some people who wanted to connect with me, and care about me, because maybe I'd get it, when they talked too." Frustrated at nothing in particular, Lilian blows aside a lock of hair with a resigned exhalation. "'Your Elites' want to deny, control, or know you, too; for what you are. I wish you'd have figured it out." A beat. A short huff. "Until recently, Tamamo and I were the only ones 'like us' you could even find." There's very little levity to extract from it. 'I don't know. Some make more sense.' "If I ever made sense to you, then you never showed it." Lilian says. "I suppose I'm glad you told me. So maybe a little bit of this matters after all." She closes her eyes. "It'll help me be more confident, talking to the girl on Tuesday." 'but easy things- things like that, wrong things, were meant to be worked against. I failed anyway. S-stupid. It wouldn't have been worse.' "You got guilty and scared once your life started feeling livable." Lilian says. "You really just couldn't bring yourself to believe that I could know anything about it, but unfortunately, I do." The exasperation is plain. Too late to do anything about it, but just in time to vent. "You had all that power, Meika. All that power and you let them beat you with words. Grind you out into nothing with some shitty sermons and being grounded. I get it, but I'll never understand you; not for sacrificing the girl you could have been. I can't imagine not fighting for her."
Lilian Rook	Lilian thinks; for a second, or a minute, or any amount of time at all. Meika's watch hasn't moved at all. Her phone wouldn't work anyways. It takes that long for it to be obvious that Lilian isn't putting something together, but deliberating on whether or not she should say it. She's moved by remembering that none of this counts. "It was once you sister knew, wasn't it? Once she was 'blessed' to be able to see everything you were doing. That's when it started. Am I wrong? You were never as serious about 'the persona' as her." ...Emotions cycle to surprise, not horror, if that was expected of her. Like some of it makes sense or fits with details she's tried to ignore or forget, curtesy of over-hearing, or side-glance noticing things she wasn't meant to, but having thrown any musings out on principle.... ...It's there that real tears well up, and spill over... "Come on, Meika." Lilian tries to make it sound condscending, as she releases Meika's face, but it comes out a little tortured by worry instead. "Aren't I worse than Hearthward? Proudpick? Ishirou and Candelario? Certainly much more than Tokiwa and Woz." She tries to make it sound arrogantly contrarian, but her voice cracks. "Call me a slur. Freak out. Scream. Cry. Huddle up like I'm going to do something awful to you. I'm everything evil and sinful, aren't I?" She tries to make it sound like a dare, but the words tremble with anger. Boldness tainted by old tears. Someone screaming 'go on, pull the trigger', fully knowing she's only nine tenths bulletproof. "So why are you acting like you wish I told you earlier?" 'Forever? B-because you wouldn't want to go back..?' ". . . Yeah. I'm . . . happy, now. With what I've become. Happier, with the idea of what I'm becoming, but . . ." Lilian's slow sigh is shaking. The words rattle in her lungs. She's overspent. Overdrafted her momentum. "It was hard to get here. I feel like I ran a marathon just to reach the starting line, and, there's still so much distance to go." She stops a moment, to rub her eyes with the back of her hand. There weren't any tears anyways. "The urge to stop running, and just, leave. To skip to the part where I'm everything I want, and there's almost no human left; it doesn't go away that easily. So we're not the same. And I don't get you. But I understand enough to sort of hate you, and to still want to help you." 'It wasn't that girl in the drawing, who killed it.' "It was you before they put the chains on you." says Lilian. "Do you think I'm stupid?" It comes out as a little gasp. "That used to be how it was, before you made up 'a magical girl', to be, for Kayoko. I'm one of two whole people in this entire fucking Multiverse who would know." Lilian's fingers wander to the scar again, touching lightly, and then simply fall to tracing the feeling of her own skin, and her own face. "But just because it's something you made up doesn't mean it's fake. Even if it's not . . . perfectly free, and, perfectly 'you', it can still be 'yours'. Nothing says you can't be beautiful while shackled; just as long as they're yours, not someone else's."
Meika Kirenai	'And it would have been totally painless, too, if you'd trusted me even once.' For as little good it does, the wince that flashes across Meika's posture means at least she's sharing in some of the regret. '... And it's because the only common factor is you.' "... Right." Bleeding through her exhaled word is that resignment, Lilian's words matching just well enough with gut-instinct worries. "... A few said stuff like that. Close enough. For why they- they even cared to talk to me, or something. Nicer when they say it, about themselves, than- than share, or own, or something. It's funny that they still say it, if that's what they- yeah." 'It'll help me be more confident, talking to the girl on Tuesday.' "... I- I hope that's good. That it matters. Just a little bit." She bites at the tip of her tongue, where she'd accidentally done so earlier, holding on to the certainty it'll still hurt tomorrow as a petty act of permenency. 'You got guilty and scared once your life started feeling livable.' 'You really just couldn't bring yourself to believe that I could know anything about it, but unfortunately, I do.' "... Yeah." On both fronts. She sounds exasperated, too- it's retrospective, matters less, but it's still there in her voice. "... I got scared. I- I could have, I didn't. Damned anyway. I- I think I remember you saying something about that, h-how if you are, already, there's no worse thing waiting. Maybe it was someone else. B-but I thought I could make it out." 'It was once you sister knew, wasn't it?' Meika's shoulders roll into a small shrug. "Others were watching, too, before. Her being around was- was different. She was different, I think. But she didn't make me do anything. I- I already was." For the indeterminate intermediate time, eyes still track Lilian's motions, not privy to anything but the pressing nothingness of quiet. "It doesn't feel so clean as that- some sort of persona." That wasn't quite a question asked, but she's verbally nodding along, instead of just leaving it uncontested. 'Come on, Meika.' 'Call me a slur. Freak out. Scream.' Thoughts still bubble up from the countless noticed whispers, stories, comments or jabs, ammunition picked up still even just from proximity. It's impossible not to tense up, even after she's been let go of, and the cloud-seeded worries over 'awful' or 'evil' don't hide from showing on her face. Meika's eyes shut tight, her head shakes out a refusal. 'So why are you acting like you wish I told you earlier?' She doesn't manage to voice an answer, beyond how it's written by expression and strained silence. It's not an act. As Lilian starts to show exertion more, Meika quiets up, as if she hadn't already been quiet, and as if it came from some hope of giving space. Bright eyes still bleary, lips tight-zipped.
Meika Kirenai	'That used to be how it was, before you made up 'a magical girl', to be, for Kayoko.' Meika shakes her head, side to side- at this, at 'Do you think I'm stupid', at how it all went. "No- no, it wasn't for her. For- for a few weeks, maybe, that was how it was. Maybe less." She chokes up, looking away, before finding the force to continue. "Others were watching. Everything felt flimsy, loose, I didn't know if it'd even ever stop, and- then I figured that out. Made her up. Kept at it, too." A shuffle, still squeezing that lighter as if she wants it atomized. "I told her about it. How to change it. The first time, after I learned she was one, too. Maybe she's m-more invested in the- in that persona, but she still learned from me, didn't she?" 'But just because it's something you made up doesn't mean it's fake.' Eyes roll off to the side, her shoulders rise with the motion of a sniffle. "... Yeah. I- I w-want it to, again. Feel mine. Not just feel dishonest. M-maybe it never did, maybe I just hoped it was like that, but-" Her sleeve cuff comes up to wipe across her face. "I guess that's not my chance. No time left. It's up to- to tomorrow, and so on. There's enough of a tomorrow to call it a chance, right?"
Lilian Rook	'... A few said stuff like that.' "Yeah, I'll bet it was 'a few'." Lilian would snort if she has the energy. She just trickles bitterness instead. "Fuck Berislav. I know he wanted the best for you, but I don't know what he was trying to imply about me." She didn't share that part before. "The rest are just trash. The ones who lie to your face that they care, but have nothing in common and don't have anything to say. The ones that don't even bother to lie are somehow worse. They all think they're so fucking brave and free, but they've never really punched up in their lives." 'I- I think I remember you saying something about that, h-how if you are, already, there's no worse thing waiting. Maybe it was someone else. B-but I thought I could make it out.' "I did. Because waiting is wasting away. Like you did." Lilian says. She isn't sure she said it to Meika specifically, but she knows she believes it. "Sometimes, you have to bide your time for the right opportunity. You have to keep the secret until the right time to tell it. It's awful. It feels like hell, to live that way. The whole point is that you still do what you can, even if you aren't supposed to. What's the point of 'making it out' if you aren't ready to live once you are?" Lilian sighs. "Whatever. There's no point bullying you about it. I decided to save you from withering out. It's done." 'Others were watching, too, before. Her being around was- was different. She was different, I think. But she didn't make me do anything. I- I already was.' "No, I suppose you're not afraid of Kayoko just for being Kayoko. Not that much, at least." Lilian watches Meika for the answer before she can say it; or decline to. "The Refulgence. Isn't it? You used to fight without their supervision. And once they found you, they taught you the right and wrong way to be." 'It's not an act' Lilian's breath shudders in the quiet. Her head rolls towards, then away from Meika. She doesn't know where to look. She doesn't know how to act. Every time she'd played this out in her head, it'd been so much more clear than this. A dozen, a hundred permutations, all crystal, all livable. Meika wishing all along wasn't one of them. It stings worse than if she were afraid. Lilian has her turn to pull up her knees, even halfway, despite the bad position to do it in. A blearly look comes over her gaze, too. Burnt out. Too tired to be resentful. Regretting something stupid. Just not capable leaving it. By her very nature, she can't be. "That's the price of howling disgust and damnation, Meika." Lilian says. "The people you could trust, who could show you how to be, won't expose themselves to you. Only the people who are arrogant enough to think they deserve your special treatment will." Lilian presses her fingers to her temple. Her eyes closed, her chest heaves, and she blinks back the stinging in her eyes. "Fuck you. You weren't supposed to just accept me, after all of this. Why is it okay for me to do it? More, and worse. I spent a year erasing myself to try and be 'good for' some little girl in need, and she wanted the filth the entire time." Lilian barks a disgusted laugh. "The only authentic rebel in the Paladins, didn't. Pathetic"
Lilian Rook	'I guess that's not my chance. No time left. It's up to- to tomorrow, and so on. There's enough of a tomorrow to call it a chance, right?' Lilian slowly lets her hands down from her knee and, gingerly, reluctantly, opens her bag to slide free that same, beloved sketchbook as last time. Somewhere crass and rude and horrible, instead of a tender moment by the sea, but sequestered in a private world for two. "You'll have your opportunity, Meika." Lilian says, lovingly resting the book in her lap. "The girl who'll wear your face is just a dream." Lifting the cover, she flips through the pages in succession. Meika sees her go past the one that was ripped from the spiral. "Some day, weeks or months or maybe years from now, you'll wake up from that dream, and start your life again." There. She stops. Stares. Decides. And then turns it over. Meika isn't anywhere on the page at all. But what's there isn't utterly unlike the thing that Meika can become. It's impossible to quite tell where pencil and ink and minute black paint begin or end. Graphite and metal point and calligraphy brush are woven together by feel; a vivid impression, rather than a definite render. The black is almost holographic. As if Meika could tilt the page this way and that and see shapes in the dark illusory space behind it. The shape gives a terrible feeling of scale, despite having only smoke in frame to compare. Barely humanoid, the silhouette catches traces of ambient light in the deep press of pen and brush, so that it faintly gleams like metal. Extended through the haze on the page, its grasp is shattered towards its terminus, without scattering; to reach out and touch is not to be touched back, and a hold that cannot be broken. The fragments of many other hands, for just as many wants, orbit in a halo through the flowing mass of brush strokes like a smoke-and-ink smear of hair and cloak in motion. Every shade between red and magenta has been crammed into the tight, spiral scrawl of four eyes like stars, and the dreamy, undetailed corona behind it; none of them quite right. A sliver of the page below, like a cut, is left reverently white. Mass without weight, like motion even still, light rendered only as glints and flares; like the arc and and flick and pivot of a sword were more natural, more loved, than the interplay of bone and sinew. Like cold night and breathless weightlessness were preferable to the familiar warmth of life. Two dimensions don't quite try to capture three dimensions, but depict three trying to capture two and more. Everything that can be clumsily gestured at by hand and pen, is. Nothing near as special as what Tamamo had seen of Meika, but exuding the reverent sense of being something special to someone. A return to the frantic scribbles of old, childish nightmares; cleared up, even adored, by the passing of time and the burgeoning of knowing. Talking about something else entirely; something much more normal, nearly mundane, though she makes no attempt to be explicit for Meika's benefit; and yet still, somehow, still talking about 'this', Lilian says, "Even I didn't turn out exactly like I imagined. The image that kept me going was something unbearably precious, but when I found myself not quite there, the funny thing is that I didn't feel like I had to correct course. What became of me; I suppose what's still becoming of me; is a surprise I learn more about as I go, and by living it out, I find that I've like this, too." "I made this; who I am, now. It's something that has so much of 'me' in it that I feel at home in it all the same. However you feel about that girl in the drawing, you can try to be her, or your own version of her, without needing to betray yourself. You'll feel it out, when no one is telling you that right and wrong way for her to be."