station72 | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

CHARACTERS: Joshua and anyone
WHERE: The Red Coast, barracks.
WHEN: Anytime in days 28-34.
SUMMARY: Sick jams.
WARNINGS: None yet, but I have great faith in y'all's ability to make anything horrible. Will update if needed.

[ The really awful thing about their disguises is the sheer number of things you can't do in public.

Usually, Joshua would take off and find a convenient spot outside for this kind of thing. Fresh air. Nice views. It's not exactly the way to perfect zen (mostly because there is absolutely no such thing for a mind like his), but it's something. Not happening, while they're on Hyrypia. So he does the best he can. He waits for a time when the barracks are pretty empty.

But if you're still around, or you just happened to pick now to come back, you're greeted by the sound of a harmonica.

He might take requests, if you're not a total douchebag. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

My sister taught me.

[ It's...not really a topic he's going out of his way to avoid, not the way he used to, but it's the first time he's brought her up here, regardless, and the thoughts that find their way to the surface of his mind are probably all the explanation necessary for why.

(That same song, a warm smile. A pool of blood.)

But hey, it's totally not a big thing for him and we're totally acting all normal here today, please and thank you. ]

She was a lot better at it than I am, honestly.

[ She tilts her head. What a dreadful, ghostly thing to carry on. She doesn't imagine herself being quite so reverent of the instrument with such a memory. Then again, she is all too aware that other hosts approach such emotions differently than she does. ]

I wouldn't know the difference.

[ Good or ill.]

As long as you find it peaceful.

[ There's a lot he managed (or was forced) to let go of (at least for a while), but the harmonica was the one thing that he couldn't get rid of, even when he shed everything else that made him feel human. The last remnant of my human heart, he'd called it when he gave it to Estelle. I won't be needing it anymore.

Except he'd been horribly wrong about that, and she'd just chased him across Zemuria to give it back to him and tell him that he was being an idiot who was just afraid to admit that he still had feelings.

Which she was completely right about. ]

I'm not sure if "peaceful" is quite the word for it, but...

[ He's not sure what else he'd go with, either. It - stirs things up, down below the surface of his emotional lake, but despite the fact that it gives him feelings (which are the very definition of not peaceful, for someone as bad with them as he is), it's always been the thing he goes to when he's feeling uncertain. ]

[ She reaches out, laying a hand on his head lightly. It's interesting, watching her own coping mechanism -- emotion buried deep beneath -- in someone else. She has no desire for him to open up to her. He was this way for reasons all his own. But... she would also like to express her solidarity.

She runs her thumb lightly over his forehead. ]

That's fine.

[ It's the kind of gesture that would've been right in line with Karin's actions, and even if Ilde is very different from his sister in some ways (Karin was dark hair and all the warmth of the sun), it's enough to catch him off guard for a moment. A sudden ripple, a rock tossed in the middle of the lake.

It passes quickly. He buries it again. ]

[ She takes her hand off of him, as calmly as she placed it there, and then takes a seat. ]

Don't let me interrupt you.

[ He never goes out of his way to find an audience, but he doesn't balk at having one, either - it happens often enough, and it's not a bother or an embarrassment. What's the worst that can happen, someone tells him he sucks?

(It's not like he doesn't think much worse things about himself all the time.)

So he nods, shifts the way he's sitting just a bit, and resumes. Something else, this time, with a little less baggage attached than the last one. (Though perhaps not without any at all.) ]

[ She has not been exposed to music for long. There was a very particular kind of ritualistic dirge that she knew well from her time in the Burned World, but anything beyond lamentation is still fresh to her. As she lets her mind rest, she finds the harmonica palatable, clear metallic notes in strong shapes.

She sits back on her hands and daydreams about the shape of the music. The notes rising and falling in pitch and clarity, like stars bursting and falling in a shimmering waterfall...

She lets her breathing align to his, lets the wavelength of her mind align to his. Not so much invasive as settling herself in as a mirror which reflects his music back into the void. ]

[ There's not much ritual or formality in the songs he knows. Folk songs, mostly; first in Erebonia, then in Liberl, the bookends of his life before and after Ouroboros were always in rural places. Music not for the big moments, but all the ones in between.

In places as quiet as Hamel and Rolent, there were a lot of moments to pass, and so he has plenty of songs to go through. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only