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cuz i'm an albatraoz . ( closed )
Who: heine rammsteiner ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beissen & rin matsuoka jawdacity
When: ic: day before the waterworks?
Where: gardens
What: one dumb angry idiot teaches another dumb angry idiot how to hold a knife
Rating/Warning: ... one dumb angry idiot teaches another dumb angry idiot how to hold a knife
[ even as heine tracked his steps to the location, apprehension clung to squared shoulders like a bleary cloud. he doubted he took the quickest route to get to the damn leafy area, and had taken enough wrong turns to be thoroughly irate at the lay of streets but surprisingly, his arrival was still generally timely.
more luck than refined planning, heine falters upon the entrance to the gardens, sudden tension wrought as steel against artificial vertebrae, and his hands are buried deeper into his pockets. he's never seen a place so green before, and when he stalks into it, searching for either the clearing or the shock of contrasting maroon against the rest of the earthy tonality, his expression is kept stiff.
it was hard not to look and listen to the ambient sound of it all, and until he actually registers it enough to force steady breaths, they come shallow. too many memories, or too many broken promises, all culminating in one big failure. (why should he be seeing this, when the two people that wanted to the most would never be able to?)
so he passes fingers along the white bandage on his neck, and smooths the high collar of his coat. the chain to his gun sways with each step, even if the noise isn't loud, it embodies comfort. comfort attached to the triggers of guns and perhaps that was the exact embodiment of him.
he, of course, hadn't put tremendous thought into how he was actually going to impart his wisdom ( h a h ) on the kid. he brought his knife, his guns. he'll see where rin is at. heine wasn't going to teach theory, because he had little capacity for it when it came to fight -
- he finds the clearing, and a moment later, whether rin was just coming around, or already waiting, the only form of greeting heine provided is pivoting his shoulders towards him. ] Ready, then?
[ the way heine directs his gaze is specifically to rin. the green nature of his surroundings wouldn't be distracting in the long run, but the current lethargy was making it hard to entirely drop his discomfort away. ]
beissen & rin matsuoka jawdacityWhen: ic: day before the waterworks?
Where: gardens
What: one dumb angry idiot teaches another dumb angry idiot how to hold a knife
Rating/Warning: ... one dumb angry idiot teaches another dumb angry idiot how to hold a knife
[ even as heine tracked his steps to the location, apprehension clung to squared shoulders like a bleary cloud. he doubted he took the quickest route to get to the damn leafy area, and had taken enough wrong turns to be thoroughly irate at the lay of streets but surprisingly, his arrival was still generally timely.
more luck than refined planning, heine falters upon the entrance to the gardens, sudden tension wrought as steel against artificial vertebrae, and his hands are buried deeper into his pockets. he's never seen a place so green before, and when he stalks into it, searching for either the clearing or the shock of contrasting maroon against the rest of the earthy tonality, his expression is kept stiff.
it was hard not to look and listen to the ambient sound of it all, and until he actually registers it enough to force steady breaths, they come shallow. too many memories, or too many broken promises, all culminating in one big failure. (why should he be seeing this, when the two people that wanted to the most would never be able to?)
so he passes fingers along the white bandage on his neck, and smooths the high collar of his coat. the chain to his gun sways with each step, even if the noise isn't loud, it embodies comfort. comfort attached to the triggers of guns and perhaps that was the exact embodiment of him.
he, of course, hadn't put tremendous thought into how he was actually going to impart his wisdom ( h a h ) on the kid. he brought his knife, his guns. he'll see where rin is at. heine wasn't going to teach theory, because he had little capacity for it when it came to fight -
- he finds the clearing, and a moment later, whether rin was just coming around, or already waiting, the only form of greeting heine provided is pivoting his shoulders towards him. ] Ready, then?
[ the way heine directs his gaze is specifically to rin. the green nature of his surroundings wouldn't be distracting in the long run, but the current lethargy was making it hard to entirely drop his discomfort away. ]
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heine had braced himself against the knife, waited for rin to go through the motions and the thoughts and held fast at the initial reaction of stepping back. it's not what he was here to teach.
he was rewriting instinct; no, that wasn't it because if that predominant reaction of bite or be bitten had not already been there, if he had not already seen it, he would have never conceded to start this damned routine.
smoke and blood. it's what he's made of more than flesh, and his breath is barely there, steady against the rabbit pace of rin's.
a momentary silence before he laughs, a catchbreath and it's somber, sedate but honest and he casts his eyes down. without realizing it, he finds the slender flower again, blinks at how the petals were now bent, folded, lost. they must have trampled it in their training. ] Yeah.
[ white fingers against whiter cloth around his neck, and red eyes scrape against rin's posture again, note how he loosens but it is in firmness of his decision.
good. ] You'll - ah - you'll do fine. [ said in the most sloppiest of appraisals ever, from someone unused to anything even marginally sentimental, human.
which is why, after all of this, he almost yawns. this was, whether obvious or not, good progress. it was proof that this wouldn't be a waste of time. more than that, for reasons why left unexplored, heine was almost content with accepting his unofficial position of teacher. it still felt broken, fragmented against the rest of him but...he didn't mind. ] Ah - I'm hungry.
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rin's hands are still shaking, but he shoves them in his pockets. or almost does, then he remembers the knife. blood on its edge.
a breath turns into three. rin crouches down, wiping the blade on the grass. some has trickled into the groove of the knife and already begun to congeal; rin has to make two, three passes to remove all of it.
the smell of it remains, thick and bitter. another new constant in this new life.
a glance at his cerevice shows that nearly an hour has passed — he's exhausted, more than emotion keeping the tremble in his hands alive. the knife is folded back into its handle and stowed in rin's jacket pocket.
it'll take awhile to acclimate to the new weight. the blade is much heavier than he'd expected it to be. ]
Yeah.
[ his hands are loose fists in his pockets. he's looking away -- across the park, into the horizon. somewhere past the scant trees, the ripples of the lake, haru and makoto are probably walking home from work. a reason to keep going. ]
I'll cover your ass this time. What kind of food do you want?
[ he's not so great at saying thank you. this should be enough. ]
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rin's hands shake as he wipes the edge clean, but heine is sure it's still stained in his mind. he'll get used to that, too. heine is too fucking damaged to realize that it would be better if he didn't (that whole humanity crap that gets tossed around from time to time), if hands still shook when you take a life. when you threaten one.
hands in his pockets, and he pulls the zipper of his jacket closed, over the tear in his shirt.
what a weird place he found himself in, he thinks, and when rin looks to the horizon he looks to the green of the trees. the offer is as much thanks as he needs - he's better at accepting or declining than wielding pleasantries. he probably wouldn't know them even if it hit him square in the face. ] Mm - pizza.
[ his diet is very balanced and very healthy, rin. as an athlete, you will certainly appreciate it.
a longer pause, and more staring at the leaves. ] Where you're from, you have a lot of shit like this? Ah - gardens, I mean?
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something a normal person wouldn't wake away from. rin's gaze lingers — heine's odd coloring, the shuffle of his step. the animal quality of his stoicism in the face of pain.
it strikes rin, for the first time since they started all of this, that heine truly is from a different world. perhaps as different from rin as the flamines that supposedly wiped out everything that he'd known and loved.
he's drawn from his musings when heine continues. rin dusts off his trousers as he stands. an errant thought - he should have offered the knife back to heine.
well, he hadn't asked for it. ]
Yeah?
[ the lilt of a question is confused rather than mocking; rin follows heine's gaze to the leaves - ordinary leaves, by any measure - before looking back at him, eyebrow cocked. ]
Wait -- you don't?
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though technically, he doesn't even need to eat, even if it is a technicality he decides to keep to himself. he'll still crave a pizza.
heine had, from his very first arrival, resolved to not think on the destruction that had inevitably overtaken his world in virtue of him being here. he knew, in the recesses of his conscience, but had never acknowledged it head on.
and as always, he lingered in the past instead.
lazily, red eyes move from the green-browns to rin then to look ahead of him. a roll of his shoulders, muscles loose and stretched and lacking in adrenaline. ] No. Not really. Definitely not something this big.
Ah - it's always cold. Don't think anything like this - [ weak? natural? kind? ] - would last long. A big part of the city doesn't even have a sky.
[ a shrug, to emphasize just how average such a thing was to him. it wasn't that he was being particularly wordy, but it was a comparison drawn and over and over it was hard to even picture a different environment.
yet here he was in one. mostly unimpressed. ] It's just different. [ it's never just, but it is significantly easier to put things so plainly. ]
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that said, rin's generosity is easily accessed when trades involved races in the pool are involved. what say you, heine?
rin doesn't even know where the pizza joints in this place are, but he can vaguely remember passing a few brightly-lit parlors down by the arcades in town. so, that's all you need for a smorgasbord of worldly delights: get your world destroyed, never see your family again, kiss your dreams goodbye.
maybe it's working out better for heine than it is for rin.
he feels immediately guilty for the thought. that's not the kind of person he is, no matter that current circumstances have stripped flesh and marrow from his bones.
what a life. no sky, no stars. no early-morning jogs with the sunrise as a backdrop. sympathy isn't what rin's feeling, but it's a grittier feeling, one that he wouldn't be able to explain even if he tried. ]
What's up there, then?
[ rin gestures towards the sky. tellus itself is lacking in greenery, all of its plant life limited to the gardens.
but the sky — at least that's a constant that rin can trust in. ]
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and he will not be getting into any pool races, thank you very much. not that he will have a choice in the days to come
foreshadowing.heine has left tellus unexplored, for the most part. he knew of the brightly lit district, of the odd job he had caught here or there that lacked enough consistency to become anything close to routine. there was little delight to be had in this brave new world, though it was alright with him al, the same. if he had to, his feet will learn the routes even if his mind will not care enough to.
perhaps in that respect, rin's thoughts should come guilt free. perhaps heine was better equipped at handling destruction and corpses and ruin even if that was not entirely true.
another flinchglance up at that sky. ] Well, there is a sky. But that's at the Above- ah. There are two levels that are primary.
The Above, and the Underground. It's as it sounds. [ He doesn't mention the Below. and even though he's seen the sky enough times, cold and crispy and clouded, it will always bear a bitter aftertaste, right to the very core of when he saw it first.
it was what is was. there should be no pity. he hardly knew anything else. ] Underground's just got - a high ceiling.
[ a pause, and a step wider to avoid another stray flower beneath his heel. he would rather not touch those, as though the veins of the delicate petals held lily's memory in their sinews. ] Lots of this would be new to a lot of people.
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rin leads the way out of the gardens, missing the clean air immediately. it's not that the rest of tellus isn't kept hygienic -- it's just that the gardens with their effluence of greenery boast air a little sweeter than that of the rest of the city.
it's difficult to imagine what heine's describing. it sounds -- suffocating. there's nothing rin likes better than visiting the beach. floating in the shallows, the sun overhead.
gardens. trees. running in the sand. is all of that new to heine?
has he ever even seen an ocean?
he can't imagine living like that. let alone being born into a world like that. never knowing anything different existed. no wonder heine had been so mesmerized by the gardens. ]
So I guess this is... kind of an upgrade for you. Excluding the - [ a flick of his wrist to encompass all of tellus ] - forced participation part.
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heine follows in stride. though follows is not entirely apt when it comes to strays, and he is no exception here.
solid concrete beneath his heels instead of softer earth and it is easier not to think back on the hushed rustle of leaves, that specific scent of air that has more oxygen than smoke, even if it is as artificial as the rest of this place.
it is impossible to imagine the sights that rin has seen; oceans, and sand between toes. how obscure.
he stares ahead. ] Don't know about that.
[ nonchalance, always. it's fine he wants to say. he wasn't sure he liked all the greenery. ] There's a few people who would probably like that stuff more. [ wouldn't it be were? there were people and now there weren't? technicalities. ]
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at least it's something. better than heine reaching for his wrist again, better than the split of flesh under his blade.
rin flinches in a muted crack of his spine. he relaxes in the next moment, trying to reaffirm his composure. not while heine's here. the weakness comes later, when he's alone, when no one's around to see and judge him for it.
yeah, maybe he came from a world that boasted sunsets and ocean tides. maybe blood isn't yet an accessory he knows to wear.
but he'll do it. he has to.
so rin refocuses, trying to pick up the thread of the conversation. ]
Thinking about friends?
[ a question lightly posed, friendly rather than probing. ]
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not his own, mind you. over exaggerated views of his own abilities are an honest flaw that he still refuses to understand.
rin had limitations. the same ones badou had (maybe more, due to a lack of his own berserk snap induced from nicotine withdrawal and automatic handguns) ; he's drawn the comparison over and over because that is the nearest thing he has in his memory.
he doesn't flinch at rin's question, but he wants to. friends? did he know what those were? would he know?
but no. he was thinking of lily. giovanni, too. his inhale scrapes too shallow. ] No. [ denial is easiest, as it were. no! not friends. or no! not thinking about that. rin's tone does not stink of intrusion, or the pressing need for answers. it's why his own voice slips a quiet sigh. ] About promises.
It doesn't really matter, though.
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if he measured out his contribution to the scale, it would likely tip in favor of those broken. not by intent, perhaps, but such a simple measure never takes intent into account.
he wonders if that's why heine blurs at the edges when he speaks of such things. like he's becoming incorporeal with the weight of his memories. rin has to stifle the urge to reach out and sling a heavy arm about his shoulders, just to remind him -- you're here now. in the present. ]
You should start a collection.
[ once rin is struck with an idea, rarely can anyone quiet his burgeoning enthusiasm. ]
I mean -- of seeds. Plants that don't need much sunlight. We can do some research.
[ the we is spoken without thought, heine included in rin's circle of friends by default. it's how it is, now. ]
If anything's still out there - and if you make it back - you can keep your promises to whoever you're being so secretive about.
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and yet he fell into that dream the hardest back then, did he? so willingly showing his belly before it all went under in agonizing blackred.
he knew better now, didn't he.
but that is how he has always been, ever since bishop picked up a broken piece - a blur of white edges, paperthin and fading from then and a never-fully now.
for a moment, heine stares, moves a question into distant eyes and frowns. the idea was almost laughable and there is so much ease in the inclusive manner rin gives that it is...unsettling. ] Right. And what do you see me doing with those, anyway? [ do you see him being a farmer? tending the garden in soil-stained gloves and a smile? the hell was the point in that?
he'd kill the thing and it would just be his luck. a glance at his hands, long steady fingers ghostpale and clean. only in visual.
had he fulfilled his promise? had he set them all free? maybe things like them would only truly be free in that very singular way. a torn end of an artificial life. ] No. I can't. Going back anytime soon won't change them being long dead.
[ long dead but alive in the haunt of his memory. in einsturzen's twisted clones that look too much like lily.
maybe he would be able to keep his to naoto; we are each other's last resorts, and all that. but that was what his promises should only be for. bullets and carnage. ]
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it was a stupid suggestion, all things considered. even if heine wasn't who he is.
one thing rin can be certain of: whatever heine seems to believe about his relation to the deceased, they'd been friends. or something like, anyway; their deaths have left an imprint on heine of such clarity that even rin's untrained eyes can pick it out. ]
Sounds like you're still carrying them around.
[ rin's murmured response, though he doesn't expect a response.
it's what he feels about the spirit of his father, now dead longer than rin had known him. it's hard to let go of death when you can see your own hand in it.
not that rin had any hand in his father's death. but he'd certainly been the reason his father had been forced into the life that he'd lived. a fisherman, lost at sea. when he should have been an olympian on the international stage.
rin doesn't know anything about bullets and carnage, but he has an inkling about loss. ]
Grow a pot of bright red roses for yourself, then. Enough exposure to color and you might grow out of the albino look.
[ maybe it's too light-hearted for the subject at hand, but the last thing rin wants is for heine to disappear into the sinkhole that he can sense nearby. ]
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a roll of a shoulder and internalization is returned to solidity, a thing that came quicker, now that the fragile stems were far behind him.
sounds like you're still carrying them around and he knows it's true. but there were no other options, not for him. he can't explain, and he doesn't think he should. that's his boulder to carry and he's gotten accustomed to the weight anyway.
maybe everyone had their demons dragging around. and everyone had their losses. to dwell on it further, to vocalize and clarify is just tedious. instead theres derision towards his look of all things and it's easy to twist a smirk as though the other remarks never even happened. ] Hah, what's that supposed to mean? I'm not colourful enough for you?
[ roses. how odd, to think about actually holding a flower. he'd - rather not, in fact. ] It'd die in a day. Max.
We could place bets. [ unless you want to give him a crash course on plant care. ]
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but he still feels off-kilter.
rin's a problem-solver. when his friends have issues, he does his best to solve those issues. and if he can't, then he makes sure he provides whatever possible to facilitate the cure.
but this - heine - isn't something easily picked apart. he'll let it lie today, but tomorrow, the day after, the day after that, he's going to figure heine out. and he's going to take all those jagged pieces and see how they fit back together.
besides, they're going to be spending a hell of a lot of time together. might as well make it interesting. ]
I don't think flowers can even die that quickly. [ well, considering heine... ] Unless you shoot it. Which doesn't count.
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he does not know many people who will push to the very extent rin will. maybe before, people knew better than to ask questions, and would settle for any halfassed answers given. with rin, heine felt as though his words were always cataloged with a look that was sharper and brighter than he had given him credit for.
it was an unknown thing, the attempt to be understood. the process of talking to someone who understood humanity better than heine had any right to. his problem solving skills too often involved fingers curled around triggers. he'd likely balk at a porblem that couldn't be solved by punching someone in the nose. ]
I wouldn't know. [ well, considering it's heine...rin's observation is terrible correct.] Shooting anything usually does the trick - [ a beat, a curious tilt and a snort. ] - so what do you mean it doesn't count?
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it's different, now. he may not have heine's terrible ability to shift from placid to deadly in a moment flat, but he has a heart -- a heart that wants to understand as much as it has always wanted to be understood. maybe that's just as dangerous.
so he lets the difficult moment slide, though he knows they'll be revisiting this topic in the days to come. in detail or otherwise, he doesn't know -- either way, this isn't the last heine is going to hear of rin's incessant need to know about his friends.
better to smooth a furrowed brow than to let the angry secrets fester. rin knows that better than anyone. ]
You can't bet on your inability to take care of a plant and then shoot it to win.
[ a raised eyebrow in turn. ]
Isn't that breaking some cardinal sin, anyway? "Don't waste bullets on sad cute plants that can't fight back" — ?
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[ a weapon with no purpose. though that is unclear if that refers to him or his guns but maybe that was the key to understanding him. purpose and usefulness written out against the lack of it and some inane urge to fulfill it all the same. give back to the bitch that gave it to him, with the ferocity of a berserker.
heine couldn't speak too much of hearts. or maybe he didn't want to. (it was too complicated, and didn't he have enough to worry about without the need to understand someone else?) ] Why keep a plant, anyway?
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every conversational turn is another reminder that heine is different. that heine's priorities have been flipped to an unrecognizable conformation. ]
I dunno. Same reason people keep pets, I guess.
[ they force you to care about a sliver of life outside the expanse of your own body. life that's wholly dependent upon your ability to care for it.
maybe that's taking it too far. rin raised a puppy as a child, and there were times when he loved her more than he loved himself.
but a plant — that's a symbol. a fragment of green in tellus's technological haze. rin doesn't know how to put that thought into words, or he doesn't want to watch heine's expression lighten with condescension were he to try, so he closes his teeth around the sentiment. ]
You could get a dog instead, if plants aren't your thing. A yappy robot pomeranian.