Leap of Faith [closed]

[knifewithnoname]

Who: Little One, Devero, Koumyou Sanzo
Where: Carriage N meeting room A
When: Month Orchestra, day 2
What: A long awaited talk
Warnings: There will be talk of death, violence, child assassins, child death and probably other difficult subjects here.

She is very nervous. Even with Devero's help she knows that this was going to be a very difficult meeting to have but she knows it is important. She has thought a lot about Sanzo and his offer and Diagad and what it all meant. Her mind never sits still about it but all that had happened was that her and Sanzo had not really spoken for months, which was stupid. Before all this Sanzo was someone she liked a lot.

She still likes him a lot. That's the problem. She has put a lot of thought into this meeting as well. She had bought honey cakes and baklava from the train shop and has also made a huge pot of tea. She picked some things up from being bonded to Mami at least, difficult conversations were always better with tea and cake.

She's also hired one of the meeting rooms. They are soundproof, they only let the people in who are registered there. It's as much privacy as she can manage on this train.

As for what she is going to say, she's barely slept the last few nights thinking about it. She likes Sanzo. She wants him to like her. She wants Devero to like her too. But... He had said she could decide what she was to him and that's a big choice to make.

She's not good with family. She only ever had her sister and...

Well that's the whole problem. She's hidden her true self since stepping onto the train and it's exhausting. But she can't let herself care for these people and lie to them. Not because lying was bad. She's not that far fallen.

But because if they find out, it will be bad. And she doesn't want that. She doesn't want to open her heart for someone to drive a dagger into it.

So she will tell them. Now. So they know. If they take it badly. Well that could ruin everything but... Better to know now than wait until the next time their mind are shared or they walk each others dreams or any of the other things that could burst open her whole life here.

She sits. Waiting. Trying not to look like a little girls whose whole world could come crashing down around her ears.

Comments

[subcircuits]

"Of course not!" Devero says immediately (and a little overloudly). He closes his eyes to recollect himself, then continues, "Buttercup, what you did... you didn't have a choice. Not really. If there's anyone to hate, it's the adults who-- made you do what you did."

(In that hesitation is a world of stronger language, of that volatile and impotent fury that he's controlling himself from expressing again.)

"I could no more hate you than I could hate Koumyou for almost killing me when he was a little boy for a day," he adds, looking sidelong at the priest beside him.

Or for the thousands of people that Koumyou has killed in all the years of his torturously hard life, he doesn't explicitly say. But it's there anyway, unspoken but present.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Of course not," Koumyou agrees, if a lot less vehemently. "I'm nowhere near that big of a hypocrite. I'm still perfectly willing to be your adoptive father, if you want one. Or just your friend. Or nothing at all."

That was the choice he'd given her after Diagad, if in vaguer terms. He'd liked having his kids in that illusion. Both of them.

"I admit I would have hesitated before Diagad, but only because I didn't want to... basically replace Kouryuu? But he liked you enough that he told me I'd better look out for you, if not in those exact words. Something-something 'the little twerp'."

Which he'd probably called her in the illusion, but had seen no reason to stop once he was out. Permission given to his father from multiple angles, for someone fluent in Kouryuu-ese. Which, of course, he very much was.

[knifewithnoname]

She looked between them both. They didn't hate her. Strange. Weird. They should. But they didn't. She was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

She tilted her head as he explained how he would not want to replace Kouryuu but that Kouyruu had wanted him to look after her.

She wrinkled her nose. "He did be being the twerp." It's fond, she had liked him. She missed him. Even if she had never really gotten to know the real him.

"I would no want to be replacing him. I can no be being him. But I did no never be having a father. I do no be knowing where me and my sister came from but we do no be having parents."

So she had no one to replace.

[subcircuits]

"I know what that's like," Devero says softly. "My parents never claimed me. They wouldn't even sign the info release that would let me know who they were. They didn't want anything to do with me."

As old as this wound is, it still hurts, and he has to look away for a moment. But then he looks back, from Buttercup to Koumyou and then back to Buttercup.

"I may have never had a dad," he says, "but I still know Koumyou's an excellent one." And then his expression goes a little sharp and a little teasing. "You wouldn't have fought me so hard over the illusion if that wasn't the case, hm?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"And I was abandoned at a temple as an infant," Koumyou chimes in, to commiserate. Just a bunch of people with unknown blood relatives in here. Probably not that uncommon on the train, though.

He shoots Devero a sideways glance at the bit about the quality of his parenting, and demurs, "Well, I don't know about that. But that's why there's so many options for this choice."

The priest wouldn't have found it strange if dealing with him would just be too strange, after all that. He's never had a high opinion of his value outside of murder. Koumyou's very good at murder.

[knifewithnoname]

Neither of them knew their parents either. Both had been abandoned. She had no idea if her parents had abandoned her. Maybe. There were plenty of abandoned children in Gauig. She had no idea how her and her sister had come to be at the inn. She had never asked.

And Devero was right about one thing. If Koumyou wasn't so great it wouldn't have been so hard to throw away the illusion of a life as his daughter.

"I do be knowing about it." She told him. "You did be being good at it. Kouyruu did be thinking so."

He had stuck around, even after he had stopped believing the illusion.

[subcircuits]

That makes Devero smile, and he nudges Koumyou with his elbow. "Even if you can't believe it when I say it, can you believe it from the kids you've actually been a dad to?" he asks gently.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Well, no. Koumyou's immediate thought is that Buttercup and Kouryuu had never known anyone to compare him to, so he still might be very lacking.

But he's not going to dump his insecurities on the kid across the table from him, no matter the outcome of this little meeting.

So, he falls into a familiar pattern, smiling a dopey smile at them both.

"Well... I suppose I must, huh?"

[knifewithnoname]

"Yes." She might not have had a father or a mother but she had had guardians back in her world. She hadn't been completely on her own. He was better than all of them.

So they had all agreed he would be good at it. So had she made up her mind? Surely this wasn't just her choice after all. He was a person here as well.

"I did no never be being anyone's child before so I might be messing it up as well."

[its_dad_sanzo]

"That's a risk I'm willing to take," Koumyou notes, still determined not to push, but also trying not to keep his cards as close to his chest as he would normally by default.

He's not sure how messing up being a kid of his would work, exactly. Kouryuu had been quite a spirited little shit... and he'd actively encouraged that in him. Buttercup's been willing to listen to him about things from the start, albeit perhaps only due to his being a high priest. This would just add another reason, wouldn't it?

And sure, she has her own opinions and personality, but Koumyou wouldn't try to stifle that any more than he had with his son. Guide, perhaps, but not stifle.

[knifewithnoname]

A risk he is willing to take. He would not mind, he knows now. He knows what she is. He knows what she has done and he is still willing to take that risk.

He is one of the strangest people she has ever met and yet... Something draws her to him regardless.

"You do be being a risk I do be willing to take as well."

He was. It felt a little like cliff diving. Air rushing past, trusting in the gravity drive Priestess Lightning had given her. Hoping that she would float before she hit the floor.

[its_dad_sanzo]

Oh, what a good tactic that is, even if Buttercup isn't perhaps aware of its ramifications to the Sanzo. Him being a risk she's willing to take, and all. It acknowledges he is one, even if she might not be aware of all the reasons.

"Well," Koumyou lifts his tea and takes a sip, with the hand not holding his long, elegant pipe. "I suppose there's nothing stopping us from choosing to be father and daughter, then."

Although, she had gone out of her way to make it known just who she is, and has been, and why. Koumyou realizes he should perhaps do something of the same, so she knows what she's signing up for as a parent, here. If they do this.

But he has no idea what to even make known. Perhaps that in itself is a start.

"I think it's only fair I lay out some details of myself as well. I know I'm... aloof, often. Hard to know? Distant. It's not something I usually try to do anything about, anymore."

The moon is the moon, after all.

"So if there's anything you want to know, whether now or later, just ask. I won't be offended."

[knifewithnoname]

Nothing stopping them. Nothing at all. She stared at him for a long moment, still in shock at how he had taken her confession, what he had told her in return and what they could now agree on.

Slowly ever so slowly she took a sip of tea. He is hard to know and distant. But she has never seen that as a problem. He is a priest. He holds a piece of a god. How could someone like her come to know someone like him. She can't comprehend that.

But he won't be offended if she asks questions. That was good. She was glad about that. Her mind is blank though, almost fuzzy with relief. "I do no be thinking you do be being too aloof. We did be smushing robots together after all."

No priest she had met before this train would have shared tea with a brat like her. Especially after she had used his casual name by accident.

[subcircuits]

Devero has remained silent as the two of them talk, nursing his tea and trying not to keep his feelings about all of this to himself while things are still undecided. But it... seems like perhaps they're not so undecided now, and a smile blooms across his face.

He leans in to smooch Koumyou on the cheek. "You're a recovering moon, babe," he tells him cheekily. He looks between the two of them and adds, "I wish I could have seen the two of you at that." The robot smushing, and all.

[its_dad_sanzo]

"I'm perfectly willing to get up to trouble with almost anyone," Koumyou clarifies for Buttercup, "but I'm aware I'm hard to really get to know."

He keeps everyone at a distance. Usually.

Not even intentionally, anymore, just by default.

"Next time we have robots to smush, you're invited," he tells Devero. "Some of them even floated when we threw them in the river. For at least a little while."

[knifewithnoname]

She was as well. Hard to really get to know. Because it was dangerous to let people close. Also exhausting. She's exhausted after talking like this, the adrenaline slowly leaving her.

She tilted her head at Devero and nodded. He would be a good robot smusher, he looked very strong.

"Hopefully there will be being more things to be smushing soon." She sighed, the last few missions had been stupid and complicated.

[subcircuits]

"Consider me RSVP'd," he says with a grin. "I understand we'll need to record our observations in a notebook, if we do?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

"Of course, I was told by a very good source that that's what makes it science."

That source, of course, being Buttercup.

"And I know how much you like science, Dev-chan," Koumyou says cheerfully, before telling the girl across the table, playfully conspirational, "Devero has science inside his body. Wires and stuff!"

[knifewithnoname]

She grinned at that. It was true, that was what separated science from chaos. Chaos was good too though, of course.

But her eyes widened even as she felt brave enough to reach for a honey cake.

"You do be having?" She asked him. He doesn't look like a robot.

[subcircuits]

Devero rolls his eyes, but the expression on his face is fond. Given Koumyou's background with regards to technology-- i.e., having none-- he's only ever been charmed by the way Koumyou characterizes his hardware.

"I do," he says to Buttercup. "Would you like to see?"

[its_dad_sanzo]

And Koumyou teases Devero by way of telling Buttercup, "It's really weird."

[knifewithnoname]

"You can be showing me?" Just like that? Even though they were inside him?

She's curious if nothing else and she nods. "Yes please."

[subcircuits]

"It's not where I come from!" he protests indignantly. "Almost everyone has some kind of Implant." Granted, his is about as extensive as you can get thanks to his time in the Guard, but. He's not granting that right now!!!

His eyes unfocus as he looks into the display generated by his Interface. One hand lifts and moves with practiced gestures as he accesses his biometrics. Then he hooks his Interface off of its habitual position on his ear and converts it with a few twists of his hand to handheld mode.

He offers the palm-sized device his Interface has become to Buttercup. On the small screen is a silhouette of a human body-- well, his body, of course-- with a tracery of lines and a scattering of dots visible on it. The network of wires and nodes that make up his Implant looks almost like constellations within his body.

[knifewithnoname]

She wouldn't call it weird, even if it was. Alright she might if it was someone else, but she wouldn't to Devero. It was just his world, if everyone had these implants then it wouldn't be strange for him at all.

She tilted her head and leaned forward to take the small device, looking at the image of him and all the dots and lines.

"They do be being all the wires?" She tilted her head. "What do they all be being for?"

[subcircuits]

"Wires, and transponders," he says. "--Which are little tiny computers that send and receive electronic signals. Most of what my Implant does is read biological signals from my body, turn them into electronic ones, and then send them to other machines, which respond accordingly."