estoria | [open] And as you know I have a gigantic heart

Entry tags:

[open] And as you know I have a gigantic heart

Who: Rise Kujikawa and OPEN!
When: 7/19-7/23 (IC) aka event-time!
Where: Various prompts
What: It started with a goat. Then it all just went downhill from there. AKA Rise Kujikawa and the mysterious memories event.
Rating/Warning: N/A for now, will update if needed

[It started with a goat. Honestly, at first she thought that she'd dreamed it, that maybe it was just an extension of the white feathers she saw in her dreams recently but no. She wakes up and there sure is a wispy little goat at the foot of her bed. She stares…and the goat bleats flatly at her. It's a sad-looking thing, but as she tries to get closer it seems to disappear immediately.

Wow. That's weird.]

A.) is for Academy

[It's a normal school day. With everyone back from the dead and her worries a little more at ease, she can concentrate a little easier. It's quiet in the Study Hall period of the day and she's working on some homework when she spots the goat out of the corner of her eye…approaching a wastebasket. She hasn't realized it can't change much of the world around them, but she'll get that memo as soon as she gets up and stealthily tries to approach the animal.

Of course, the goat suddenly moves and it startles her and her arms suddenly pinwheel as she yells, trying to balance on her high heels so she doesn't bite the dust. Are you going to catch her? Let her fall? Fall with her? Sorry about all of that.]

B.) is for Bad Places Rise Shouldn't Wander

[This goat is seriously way more trouble than it's worth. She's not sure where it came from or why it's in such poor condition, but she's taken to following it around the colony to make sure it doesn't get too far out of her sight. It's for that reason she doesn't even realize she winds up right in the middle of the Pleasure District. The goat's paused, and if it's possible it gives her a knowing look despite its lack of real expression.

(Is it possible that this goat knows about her dungeon?)

She ends up in a staring contest with the goat, narrowing her eyes when she realizes she's standing in front of a love hotel.]

Don't even think about it. [She sure was talking to the goat, but it's not that hard to overhear her.]

C.) is for Cafe

[Everything is exhausting. She's sprawled over a chair almost ungracefully and that goat hovers around near her feet, but at least its not moving. On occasion, she'll be writing neat lines in a notebook and sipping her tea, though she frowning in concentration. There's an extra chair at her table though. Feel free to ask if you can join her or even be nosy about what she's doing, she won't mind.

On the other hand, if you're a friend or even someone she recognizes, she'll look up and smile brightly before pushing the chair out with her foot.]

Hey, over here!

D.) is for Dancing Games

[Sometimes Rise likes to play games. Sometimes Rise likes to use the game station to practice and when she gets bored of dancing in her room this is the next best thing. However, she's found at the game center today in front of one of the dancing games, and as she watches the colorful arrows fall across the screen she's continually missing and whines in frustration.]

Ugh, come on! This should be really easy! [And it would be…if she actually remembered how to dance. It's like all memories and coordination have left her and she's left trying really hard to fix that. Help her? Challenge her? Question her?]

E.) is for Everything Else!

[If you want to run into her while she's out shopping, at work as a model/karaoke star/tofu connoisseur, or if housemates want to do apartment shenanigans here you go!]

[ooc: ALSO if you have a preference on your type of memory please let me know! Otherwise I will be randomizing. Thank you!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Leon steps out of his own shoes and immediately heads over to the far wall, behind the couch and near the kitchen, where there's a console table with a drawer he never opens and guests tend to have the decency not to snoop in.

He opens it now, after spending a few quiet moments just staring down at the tabletop.

He doesn't call Rise's attention to it, or nod her over, or anything like that. She can come peek if she wants, or make herself comfortable and he'll bring over what he's got to show her. It doesn't matter to him, and he's too caught up in his thoughts to even address it yet.

As for the fox, it slinks off under another table to curl up out of the way and watch them, with a sleepy sort of wariness.]

. . . You saw how things ended up and all. All that from before—they executed me for what I did . . . 'cuz those were the rules of the game. 'Course I went on trial first. They had to prove I did it and vote on me being guilty. That's in the rules too.

[His voice is both tight and—defeated. Here he is, actually saying all of this, for the first time in the many months since it happened. It's new, and he doesn't know yet how it feels to talk about it. That's something he'll learn as he goes, he guesses. Right now, everything still feels terrible . . .

But she knows he wouldn't. She believes him. Right? There's some hope after all, buried in all the garbage. Maybe, for the first time, he can have this conversation.]

[While it would be easier to sit away from him and let him have his moment, she does follow him to the table and hovers behind him, staring at the drawer but not into it. Whatever he has to show her must be important.

The goat's practically following in her shadow, stumbling along as it hovers behind the pair of them. She doesn't know what he's thinking, really, but then the pieces fall into place. A trial for a murder. An execution for a sentence. What kind of a school was Hope's Peak that those were the rules?]

...there was a game where you had to murder people?

[Leon slides the drawer open and begins to pull things out of it. It feels like he's watching someone else do this, or maybe that he's moving his hand through the use of strings from somewhere else, outside. He has to concentrate on placing each thing on the tabletop, feeling how the weight of each item settles onto the table under his hands.

The knife, first—the same one that was in the memory. He sets that down quickly, his brain faintly alarming at him from somewhere else: don't keep that in your hand. Don't ever hold it around Kujikawa. Don't process how the handle feels in your fingers. You'll make her run away for good . . .

Then a handful of ceramic shards: the mask he'd been given during that one shitty thing that had happened a while ago, the one where you couldn't get rid of these things and couldn't break them and then they started to change and you couldn't do anything about that, either. His is shattered now, into large, still-identifiable chunks, each one stained with bloody fingerprints the size of a teenage girl's.

And then a small electronic device, something like a smart phone, turned off at the moment.

Then he pushes the drawer closed, without lifting his gaze from it, or moving his hands from the pull.]

Yeah. This stuff is . . . CERES gave me all this, 'cuz they think it's real hilarious what we went through. What happened to me—it's just a big joke to them.

[The words come out flat and measured. Emotionless—

But then something twists inside him, and he feels here, suddenly, in this place, in his own body and apartment with a friend he doesn't want to lose, and he finally lifts his eyes to look at her again, color rushing back into his face, eyebrows creasing with sudden urgency.]

—I didn't want any of this! I didn't ask for this! Not then and not now! I didn't want this shit to follow me here! I didn't want you to find out! I didn't wanna be locked up in that place! I don't, I don't want any of it, but—it's all right here! It's not fair!

[She doesn't respond immediately as she examines the items from her place behind him. She listens, understanding immediately that he's not faking this and that he really is panicked by everything that's happened and how hard this must be to tell her. She doesn't take a step to take any of the items from the drawer, but she doesn't take any steps to walk away either.

It's not fair. That part is correct. She catches his eyes and frowns lightly, wondering the best way to ask for further explanation.]

I'm not mad. [It's the first thing she says. She's not mad that she's finding out this way.] And CERES doesn't even seem to care about things that hurt us. [She's definitely eyeing the knife, and seeing how it looks clean she looks at the mask and the device instead.]

You killed her because she tried to kill you. But why? What kind of game says you have to kill people at all?

[The fight goes out of him; he slumps, coming out of his spell to run a hand through his hair.

Okay. Okay. He can have this conversation. It's beginning to feel like just another hard thing he has to talk about, not . . . what it was before, whatever that was. A hazy mire he couldn't wade into without getting stuck. There's a way through this: forward.

She's holding out her figurative hand for him to help him through, and it breaks his heart.

There's nothing he actually needs to do with the knife or the mask; he just needed, for some reason, to show someone they were there. But the e-handbook, that he needs. So he picks it up, gives her a tired, defeated, but deep-down hopeful look, and turns back to go over to the couch and flop down. This time, he watches to make sure she follows, nods her over.]

. . . Look, you gotta understand it's real hard for me to start at the beginning 'cuz I don't remember the beginning. Did I ever tell you that? I'm 19, I guess, but the last birthday I remember, I was turning 17. In my second year of high school . . .

In my third year's when all this started, but she took those memories out o' me. I just remember the Mutual Killing. That's—the "game." . . . Pretty screwed up, huh?

[Everything deserves a second look and understanding before passing judgment. It doesn't match up with the Leon that she knows and it's for that reason she realized she needed to breathe and take a step back. Like his execution and his death, she can only imagine it's hard for him to talk about.

Then again, could she talk about it if their situations were reversed? Probably not. She watches him carefully even as he walks away to the couch, and when he looks at her she follows quietly as she settles on the couch next to him. She's pressed up into a corner of the couch, eyes narrowing in thought.]

...no, I don't think you ever did. [She got the impression that maybe something had happened back that day at the water park when he didn't explain just how long it's been for him, but she never could have imagined that. The fact that he's actually two years older than she figured also doesn't entirely bother her. It just brings up more questions.] Who's "she"? And what's this about Mutual Killing? [And what's with your little handbook there, Leon? It's clear from her tone that yeah...yeah, she thinks it's pretty messed up, too.]

[He's next to her, but not close enough to be pressed up against her side, and he doesn't close the distance. That inch or two of space feels like a chasm right now. Who knew a lack of contact could feel this powerful? But if he closed it . . .

It feels wrong, so he doesn't. Instead he fiddles with the device, turning it on, his eyes focused on that rather than Rise; his brain, though, is barely paying attention to what he's doing with his hands. This conversation takes up most of the juice he's got.

There's too much. Some of it he only knows because the others told him. Where does he start?]

"She's" the one who pulled all of that. She's the one who locked us up. She put me in that machine! She made us—

[His voice breaks, and he flinches at the sound. That was . . . an attempt at starting the story. It didn't go very well. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, how stupid . . .

Leon closes his eyes hard for a second. When he opens them, he's got the device on and open to the list of student IDs.

Okay. Start there. He takes a deep breath.]

—Forget it. I mean—I'll get to that. Look, in my third year of high school, that's when I got scouted for Hope's Peak. That's . . . you saw it, but it wasn't always like that. It used to be this dream school where you only get invited if you're the best at what you do, and after you graduate, you're totally set for life. Like—a celebrity. We were celebrities. It's a huge friggin' deal gettin' invited there! They picked us 'cuz we were the best . . .

[He hands her the device so she can flip through the profiles of the 78th class.

A few of those people might be familiar. There's Leon, obviously, and a few more that might stand out from either Leon's memories or around Cerealia.]

Edited 2016-06-19 05:02 (UTC)

[She still doesn't have any idea what he's talking about, who "she" is and what machine he's talking about or anything like that, but she knows it's not fair to push him into speaking faster. She hears his voice break and she's quiet again, hands curling in her lap to resist touching him. Her goat's come over to the side of the couch, making a noise that she ignores as she focuses on the device instead.

She was right in what she's assumed Hope's Peak used to be. A school for the top-tier students. She got that impression due to Leon's baseball skills and the things she'd heard from him, but the fact that this somehow isn't the case now disturbs and unsettles her. She takes the device, starting to thumb through the profiles. She seems to stop on Leon's for a moment before she goes back, hovering on Togami's and lifting her eyebrows.]

Hey! I've met him before. [She looks up suddenly, startled by this.] He asked me about my Persona and how to obtain one for himself. He's kind of a jerk...[But the words don't have a lot of bite to them. Now that she knows Togami must have gone through the killing game, too, she's a little more sympathetic. She also stops on Kirigiri's profile.] And I met her a few days ago, too. [It's when she gets to Maizono's profile that she stops completely and reads. And reads. And reads...]

...Super High School Level Idol... [It's a questioning sort of tone. And suddenly she understands a little more.] She was like me?

[When she pauses on Togami, he leans over to look, though he still doesn't touch her; he's careful not to. There's not even any reason to peek. There's no one else she could possibly be talking about recognizing other than Togami and Kirigiri—but he's compelled anyway, staring down at the screen.

And he snorts under his breath when calls him a jerk, though he doesn't interrupt her to say anything on that topic. I told you before you wouldn't like him . . . I called it. Of course he'd had no idea at the time, and neither had she. So he wants a Persona, huh? Leon files that away for later. There are a lot of weird thoughts he could be having there and would rather not have right now.

Especially when she pauses on Maizono.

The first time he'd found out Rise was an idol, he'd had a Moment there—but since he's gotten to know her, it'd honestly slipped his mind some. Her noticing it herself and bringing it up is an awkward, unexpected twist in his chest. He stares down at the picture.]

. . . I dunno if I'd say that. "Like you." I mean—I guess I don't really know what she was like. Yeah, she was an idol. Best of the best, that's Hope's Peak. So that was her, too.

[She doesn't care that he's in her personal bubble, and she respects the choice not to touch her. It's for the best now as she tries to navigate this conversation flawlessly. But nobody's handed her a script before the camera started rolling. She doesn't know what to say to him next.]

She must have been really good to get into a school like that. [She pauses, biting her lip nervously.] So there were fifteen of you in your class. [A pause.] Does this have to do with that stupid bear I saw the last time?

[He snorts again, with a tiny bit more humor creeping into it this time. There's not much funny to be found in this situation, but the tension has to go somewhere . . . and right now it's aimed right at "stupid bear." God, it is stupid, isn't it? It's all so insane. It's so terrible he can hardly even face it, and then here he is trying to do just that, and she's calling Monokuma stupid bear.

And it helps. He manages a tiny weak smile as he reaches for the device again.]

. . . Yeah. Actually, there were sixteen of us, I guess. It's complicated and I—y'know, ah, I wasn't around for all of it, but the girl who was behind all that, the stupidass bear, she was in our class but she ain't in that list. This thing's . . . we got this when the Mutual Killing started. Our class, we got locked in with that bear, after she screwed with our heads so we didn't remember each other anymore, and—

[It's easier to show her. This time he brings up the list of school regulations for her, and hands her back the device.

1. Students may reside only within the school. Leaving campus is an unacceptable use of time.

2. "Nighttime" is from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Some areas are off-limits at night, so please exercise caution.

3. Sleeping anywhere other than the dormitory will be seen as sleeping in class and punished accordingly.

4. With minimal restrictions, you are free to explore Hope's Peak Academy at your discretion.

5. Violence against Headmaster Monokuma is strictly prohibited, as is destruction of surveillance cameras.

6. Anyone who kills a fellow student and becomes "blackened" will graduate, unless they are discovered.

7. Once a murder takes place, a class trial will begin shortly thereafter. Participation is mandatory for all surviving students.

8. If the guilty party is exposed during the class trial, they alone will be executed.

9. If the guilty party is not exposed, they alone will graduate, and all remaining students will be executed.

10. Additional school regulations may be added as necessary.]

[It's absolutely not funny, but Rise knows a thing or two about dumb bears. Monokuma might be dangerous and brutal but she's frustrated by him being the one to drag Leon to his death even if he was facing punishment for his crime. The smile helps a little to defuse the tension but she's curious despite herself.

There was a mastermind who'd brainwashed all of them and set some Mutual Killing into motion. Why? She used a bear, she hid herself, she took memories...why? She doesn't get to ask those questions before Leon hands the device to her again with the rules and she begins to read, hands shaking the longer she looks.]

What...what the hell is this?! Anyone who kills and becomes blackened will graduate? What kind of blackmail is that?! [She might throw the device. She's trying not to do that.] Why would anyone do this?

[And that helps, too. It doesn't cheer him up, and it's not funny, but Leon hadn't really thought before about how it would feel to have someone outraged on his behalf—not only his. Angry for all of them. A surge of gratitude rises in his chest, tinged with the heat of his own anger. How dare she? Everything that had happened to all of them, how dare she? What kind of world lets that happen? Where's the justice, huh?!

It's better than feeling frozen over about it. Leon watches Rise's hands shake and feels his own ball into fists, twitching in sympathy.]

Who the fuck knows? —She's sick. She did it just to hurt us. 'Cuz she's obsessed with hurting the whole world as much as she can before she checks out—she already did, that's what I heard, after me, but not until she took out nine of those fifteen people you were just lookin' at and a bunch of the rest of the world too. —That thing you're lookin' at right now, that ain't even half of it! That's bad enough, right? That's what you'd think! But nothing was bad enough for her! She took our families—she took hostages and told us if we didn't kill each other we'd never find out what happened to 'em 'cuz we'd be locked up in that shitty school with that shitty bear for the rest of our lives!

[He pauses for just a second to take a breath, uncertain himself if he's finished ranting, until suddenly he's not.]

—I wasn't gonna do it. I still wasn't gonna do it. You've gotta believe me, I never once thought I was gonna cave in to that until . . .

Edited (why are my typos so bad this weekend) 2016-06-19 21:39 (UTC)

[She's still going through the profiles again, but she's angered all the same especially as Leon goes on to explain this mysterious "her." Someone who just wanted to do this because she was bored and didn't care about the casualties? Doesn't that sound a little familiar. She can't imagine someone who would want to do this to innocent people and she stops on Leon's profile, hand gripping the device tightly.]

Until you had to. [Part of it makes sense, at least.] What drove Maizono-san to doing it?

[She'll address the rest shortly. That's a better question.]

[That throws him off for a moment. It's not that he's never thought about it . . . but he's never thought about it in those exact terms before. His anger chokes off in his throat, and he has to swallow it down.

Of course he knows the answer if he frames it that way, but he's still halting in saying it. It's a new conversation.]

. . . I guess . . . everything? Obviously she didn't exactly tell me, but—before all that, Monokuma gave us all these DVDs that were basically ransom notes. Like I said, she took hostages and told us we'd have to kill to escape the school and find out what had happened to 'em and if they were still alive. Every one of us got one of these things . . . after we watched 'em, Maizono was totally shaken up. I mean, we'd already been locked in the school a couple days and everything and searched the whole place and couldn't find a way out. So all that on top of it? We probably all started havin' the same kinds of thoughts.

[He thinks, for the first time: I can't really blame her.]

[What a scary situation. She tries to imagine what would happen if she were in such a situation, if she had to choose between maybe saving people she loves and killing other people she's locked in a building with. Could she do it? Probably not, but at the same time that doesn't make what Maizono did better.

Of course there's sympathy for what these kids had to go through. Of course she's worried about what else happened inside Hope's Peak after Leon's execution and how things played out, wary of what kind of world he's come from...but that doesn't mean she's also not uncertain.]

There had to be another way, but it's hard when someone's pulling the strings. [Murder still isn't the answer.] There was no way to get your memories of each other back at all?

I didn't even know we had memories of each other 'til I came here and Naegi and Kirigiri told me about it. You gotta understand . . . all of us thought that was our first day of our third year and that we'd never met each other in our lives. I died thinkin' I was still 17.

[It's not an excuse, and he knows it, but it did change how they all acted. He sighs, staring down at the device in Rise's hands. He hasn't actually turned it on since the day he found it here in his apartment waiting for him. There's something eerie about seeing their faces again on that screen, staring out with all the bland neutrality of a student ID photo.]

The ones who survived got 'em back eventually, but I think it took a few months. Togami remembers everything, but Kirigiri still doesn't remember anything. 'Cuz he's from more in the future than she is.

[He spends another tense moment staring down at the screen, then tips back against the couch again, closing his eyes.]

Obviously . . . if six people lived, they figured it out eventually and escaped. So of course there was some other way. —I always believed that. Up until that second! I always thought it'd work out somehow. I never really thought we were all gonna start killing each other. That's—think about it, that'd be crazy, right . . . I never thought somethin' that crazy could really be happening to us!

[She flinches just lightly at the words "I died", if only because she hates thinking about the truth of it all. It's hard to remember that Leon's dead in his world when he's so vibrant here. She can't claim to understand what he's going through, but it scares her that those were his last moments of life. Fear.

She also doesn't like the mention of losing memories but she doesn't say so. Even as he closes his eyes she's reading through the profiles again, trying to imagine which people survived. If six of them lived, there were four others than Togami and Kirigiri.]

It shouldn't have happened. [Bottom line, and she's so angry with this girl, angry with the injustice of it all. That's when she really does throw the device on the table, but not hard enough to break it or anything.] It shouldn't have happened to you guys at all just because someone felt like it would be fun! What kind of an excuse is that!? It's not fair! It's not fair for the people who've died and it's not fair for the people who have to remember it!

[And she would keep ranting...except she's startled her goat by throwing the device and yelling and it bleats angrily alongside her, stomping around and suddenly throw Leon's foot to get away from Rise's flailing hands.

The memory itself at least is quick to fall into. A red, barren wasteland. Seven teenagers and a bear running down a path where a lone figure stands. The figure turns, mockingly applauding the group of them as he turns around and gives them a more-than-amused look.

"Wow. I'm surprised you made it this far."

It may become clear to Leon why, precisely, Rise's so upset about the Mutual Killing. She knows she's never told him what she's really done back home, she's never explained what their Personas are for, but it becomes clear as he views the memory from her eyes. The arrogant, smug detective loudly proclaiming that they're the self-righteous ones.

"I was bored shitless and wondering what to do next… when I discovered this power."

"For crying out loud… why a bastard like you!?" It's Kanji who speaks up, rage coursing through his veins as Adachi shrugs."

"A gift for having to put up with this lame job out in Nowheresville, I guess. I did that stuff 'cause I could. And it got interesting, so I watched."

A beautiful girl with long dark hair in a red sweater suddenly sneers, too. "That's your reason!? You can't be serious…! You really don't care what happens to our world!?"

"Let's be honest. There's nothing great about the real world, is there? It's just dull and annoying as hell. No one accepts that's the way things are… They're just stuck with it because they can't deny it, either. Those who actually succeed in life… They just happen to be born with the magic ticket called "talent." If you don't have it, you can either accept or deny that fact until you die. That's your only choice. Once you realize that, all you have left over in life is despair. The ultimate game over. Wouldn't it be better if that kind of reality was wiped away?

"That's complete BS!" The words come out of Rise's mouth harshly.

As the memory goes on, Adachi continues to needle them and get under their skin, a nonchalant approach to his crimes. It isn't until he becomes shrouded in darkness that things get a little interesting.

"Geeze…don't you remember what it was like when your Shadow came out? It must've been enjoying life far more than you!"

"Be careful! I dunno what's happening!" Teddie warns the group, squeaking a bit as his weight shifts.

"You all saw Shadows as mere monsters, didn't you!? These things move on pure instinct! They go wild because you defy them! You annoying little brats are the one who aren't wanted in the new world!"

Each member of the team speaks up against him, prepping themselves for the fight as "Adachi" writhes under the power of the darkness.

"Here he comes! This will probably be our last battle…let's hit him with everything's we've got!" Rise, sweet, optimistic Rise…is ready to kick some ass.

There's a flash of red and the team takes on its battle stance, Rise in the corner and Leon will notice that Kanzeon's over her eyes. For once, he can see things from her perspective as the Persona scans for the best strategy.

"The world is about to change!" "Adachi" declares. "Your existence won't belong there! I thought I could just leave you be, but you're like a plague…I'll have to get rid of all of you!"

Leon will also recognize Yosuke on that battle field, and he gets the last word in just before the fighting begins. "I wish WE could get rid of YOU, but we'll make sure you pay for what you've done."

And like that, the memory fades in another flash of red.]

[It happens so suddenly. Leon, unable to see Rise's own spirit animal, had been too distracted by the situation and conversation to put much thought into the fact that it surely must exist. That this could happen. Of course it could. When it does, it takes him completely off guard. It's like the world around him just turns off, and this other world turns on; it's dizzying.

His mind needs a few beats to catch up, but it's a long memory, and before too long he's with it, watching it the way he would a movie. (Not quite that way. This is much, much more deeply personal than that.)

He's free this time of the physical effects of having his own animal touched, but seeing this . . . his gut wrenches anyway. It's not like he has any context for this, though he can piece together bits. Shadows. The other world. Things Rise's mentioned in the past, that he didn't fully understand and wasn't sure how to ask about when they could be having a good time instead. But CERES, or rather, whomever is behind this, seems sworn to make sure no one has a good time today—and here this is, this sick reality staring him in the face.

He doesn't know who the guy is, and he can pick up enough to be grateful it's no one he's ever met, or even met anyone like—that he remembers, anyway. His memories of that person have been taken. Was she anything like this? "I was bored shitless and wondering what to do next." All that talk of Despair. Things Leon only knows about secondhand, from those who survived her, but he knows enough to feel his stomach go heavy as lead at the attitude.

(Rise's so cool, in this memory. That sweet, caring, fragile-looking little thing he likes had stood right up to this monster. And they'd won. He knows they must have. She and her friends hadn't let the world change after all—)

And then the memory loosens its grip on him, and he comes out of it with a tiny gasp he can't hold back. The first thing he's aware of is how tense his face and shoulders feel. Had he been clenching his jaw, watching that? It's like being shoved forcibly back into his own body and having to take stock of what it had done while he'd been gone . . .

He works his jaw for a second, and then snaps fully back to reality, turning to look at Rise with wide eyes.]

Kujikawa—

[Somehow in the time it's taken Leon to watch that memory, it's enough for the effects to hit her. By the time he comes out of it she's curled up into a ball on his couch, arms loosely folded across her stomach and limbs pulled in tight. There's a dizzying sort of nausea settling in and she's actually concerned she can't fight it off. The intensity of this memory seems to match the intensity of the side effects.

So. She hears her name and there's only a slight whimper of a response. She's experienced this with other people before to varying degrees, but it's enough for her to say--]

I hate this.

[Oh, shit. Leon snaps fully to attention. She looks miserable. He knows what she's feeling; he'd felt it too, but she looks even worse. The memory he just saw was intense, but he can shove it aside for the sake of the real world for a bit, and right now in the real world Rise looks awful.

He shifts over closer, lifting a hand to touch her shoulder, shoving aside his previous distance along with the memory issue.]

Hey. Hey, hey, you gonna be okay? You need anything? Hey, just breathe, 'kay?

[On the one hand, she's absolutely miserable. On the other, this is Leon and she really, really would rather not look so pathetic in front of him. So even if it's taking a few moments and a hand's on her shoulder she's following his advice and breathing to push down the nausea and everything else.

Some warning would be nice for these things, but she supposes beggars can't be choosers. She remains mostly curled up but she opens her eyes to look at him, not quite connected to the conversation at first before she blinks a few times.]

I'm going to find a way to lock that goat in a closet.

[It surprises him how charming he finds that—grumpy, sulky Rise. Not that he's happy about her suffering, but she's still . . . really, really cute. It's not a side of her Leon gets to see often. And maybe it's a relief, in all of this mess, to see it now.

He laughs and sways forward to press his forehead against her shoulder, because in the heat of the moment, he can't figure out how else to express his feelings; he might grab her up into a hug if she didn't look like she might throw up on him if he tried. It's probably best not to jostle her too much right now.]

Yeah . . . you and me both! You gonna be okay?

[At least someone finds it cute and while she'd continue to be sulky, having Leon's forehead on her shoulder is enough to jar her out of it. She blinks in surprise, a startled giggle escaping even as a hand comes up to rest on his hair. She's not sure if she wants to keep him there or push him away...so she just allows that.]

I'll be fine...this isn't the first time it's happened, but I thought the goat would have learned by now. I can't believe they found new ways to show people our memories.

[You know what? This is fine. He leaves his head right where it is, letting her touch his hair, not pushing for any more closeness than this but not wanting to break the contact, either. As long as he's not driving her further along the road to getting sick on his couch, this is pretty comfortable.

He sighs, though, sobering a little.]

. . . I don't even know who "they" is. Is this even a CERES thing? I'm used to blamin' everything on them, but they didn't shove us into the jungle that time. They didn't shove me into the sewer either . . . we've got way too many people jerkin' us around, huh? I'm sick of it! It's like—everywhere we turn, it's just people screwing us around and trying to manipulate us!

[It's been like that for longer than he's been in Cerealia, too. And now he knows it was the same for her.]

Just like Enoshima. And—that guy I saw in your memory. Adachi. What a fuckin' asshole . . .

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