voidtreckerexpress

Entry tags:

A Talk

Who: Gyousou and Taiki
Where: Greenhouse carriage
When: Fiddlesticks, Day 26 night time
What: Taiki wakes up in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep he seeks out a peaceful place. His king finds him. They have a talk that they really should have had two months ago.
Warnings: Frank discussion of one character killing another for non malicious reasons. It will be quite heavy. Also spoilers for Twelve Kingdoms. We will add extra things as they come up

Taiki woke into darkness. What exactly had woken him was unknown, but fear twisted inside him as the remnants of the nightmare fled his mind. He adjusts to his surroundings, alone. Not even ghostly arms around him. Alone...

But not alone. He can feel the presence of the king, almost larger than the cabin itself and for a moment he just lies there, letting it calm him.

Still sleep has fled. In such a way that he can tell it won't be easy to drift off again. He sits up in bed and reaches blindly to grab his hoodie and the book he's been reading. Then, careful to not disturb his roommates he pads barefoot, silently out of the room.

He lets his feet guide him towards the greenhouse and the kouji that grew there. The greenhouse was dark. He turned on the torch on his SCA and found a space against the glass to lean, pulling his hood up and positioning the light so he could read.

Creatures of the Void was perhaps not the most reassuring book to read in the middle of the night, leaning against glass that led out into the utter blackness of the void at night. But it was fascinating nonetheless.

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Gyousou sleeps lightly nowadays. Not so lightly that the tossing and turning of his roommates disturbs him, but enough to note a door opening, or the murmuring of a nightmare. Tonight, as he blinks blearily awake, it's the former. Two glances show that Kouri's jacket is gone but his shoes are not, and that the two women are still deep asleep on the opposite bunkbed.

A third tells him that, actually, it's his own hoodie that's been taken, and he sighs under his breath. Amused, but worried at what that says to the kirin's state of mind as he left. It's not too cool at night, though, so he doesn't bother finding his other one. His sleeping robes are thick enough. He slips out just as quietly a minute later, and elects to try walking up instead of down. Finding Kouri in the greenhouse is entirely unsurprising.

He has half noticed that his hoodie is big enough for his knees to fit under it as he sits against the glass reading, but he hasn't thought further than that.

Gyousou is quiet but a king cannot sneak up on his kirin, even if he tried. Taiki's head snapped up from the book the moment he entered. "Lord Gyousou? Did I wake you... I'm sorry..."

"Better to be awake than asleep and ignorant of what troubles you," he rolled one shoulder in a wry shrug. As per an increasingly familiar habit of theirs, he sank to the floor opposite the kirin, and leaned against one of the heavier planters. It would bear his weight. Had, in fact, every time before that he'd come to watch the kouji and the Void's light playing over its sturdy branches.

He paused, and his smile went from wry to something sharper. "Or of what troubles me. Neither of us are sleeping well, I fear."

He placed the book to the side as Gyousou approached him and sat down in what had become his accustomed place when they sat next to the kouji.

He isn't surprised that Gyousou isn't sleeping well either. How would he? When so much must be playing on his mind.

Taiki is silent for a moment. This is his job, part of it at least. To hear the troubles of the king and advise. But it is a job he has barely done. He had been a child, his advice small and without understanding of the bigger picture. Then he had wasted so much time. Now they were here, wasting more time but at least they were together.

Taiki is used to speaking truth at powers that don't want to hear. He is used to arguing with those who despise not only him but the kingdom itself. He has advised Asen more than he ever advised Gyousou and that knowledge is uncomfortable within him.

Part of it is that being around Gyousou makes him feel safe, he feels almost a child again but that cannot come with ignoring his responsibilities.

The other part comes from the fact he already knows the only solution and his heart aches with it.

"You should speak your mind, Tai-ou."

The address, the title, settled around him like a mantle, and he exhaled, shoulders straightening, brow smoothing out. He only needed to think for a moment to get his thoughts in order.

"After the ambush at Tetsui, I oft doubted that I had the blessing of Heaven. I considered ways to end my life, that you might be free to choose a new king..." He smiled mirthlessly. "However, I naturally had no way of knowing if you were free. If you were a prisoner, chained by obligation, or if you had been slain, and my doom approached unseen. No, with so little information, my living was the better path for Tai."

He paused, to allow Kouri to speak if he wished.

He listened, not moving from his position as Gyousou spoke. They are hard words to hear. He often thinks of Gyousou as someone who is exceedingly confident, who has all the answers. Sometimes he doubts he needs a kirin at all.

But hearing, of course he had doubted when lost after the ambush. Of course he had despaired when he had been lost alone, unknowing of the fate of his kingdom or people.

"It would perhaps been better if I had been slain." He shook his head, "I whittled so much time away on earth, not remembering anything. I knew something was missing but..." He stared at the kouji for a moment.

"They wouldn't allow me to die. Lady Risai and the others. Even though it was the simplest way of fixing things. They said that my return brought hope and we had hope of finding you. That living was the better path for Tai." He echoed Gyousou's words quietly.

Now they were lost again. That hope was gone.

"I'm glad they advised you thus." His tone left no room for doubt. "To do otherwise would be to discard the great pains they took to bring you home. However..."

He, too, watched the kaihaku shift in the faint motion of a vehicle underway. "I cannot help but feel that every moment, we travel farther from Tai. From our world, and the reach of Heaven. Will we wake one day and be mortal, having crossed some unknown border? Do the people's struggles grow with every day we stay here? ... Simply put, I find myself uneasy about my decision to board the train."

That was true. He hadn't thought of it that way at the time because he had been full of suspicion. He hadn't known who to trust. Who might have been working for Asen. If bringing him back had just been a way to give him to Asen.

But he had been thankfully wrong. There had still been those in Tai who remained loyal to their king.

"I am not sure what would have happened if we had not." He said softly, staring at the kouji still. "I doubt we would have been released so easily. But ever moment we are here we leave Tai to its fate. Asen's anger won't have cooled to have us both disappear." His eyes filled with tears, because he could only imagine, had imagined far too many times, the scene that followed them somehow vanishing from their world.

That square had been full. Many of those who were still loyal had arrived there, it had been full of citizens who had chosen or been forced to bare witness to their king being judged.

And it had been full of Asen's soldiers.

He had seen far less, with eyes clouded by exhaustion and ill treatment, but even then he had seen the stirrings of a riot and heard the start of dissidence. Even if he hadn't, he would have expected it. The best possible case would be the people overthrowing Asen, but he doubted it was possible. Not without either of them to serve as a rallying point.

"No matter how admirable the goals of this mission might be, our duty will always be to Tai. Our lives... Kouri, if we were free to do as we wished, I would enjoy nothing more but to adventure with you into the unknown. But we are not."

He looked from Taiki to the huge windows arching over their heads, and his expression twisted with bitterness. "Although I fear now that our deaths may not even be an option."

If they were free to do as they wished this wouldn't be such a bad place. He would follow Gyousou anywhere and the idea that Lord Gyousou would wish to travel with him, spend time around him even outside of duty, that made his heart swell.

Even as it was filled with great sorrow. Because that was not how it was. They were not free to choose, they had a duty bigger than either of them. Tai was in danger every moment they were away from it. It would be in danger even if they were there, but at least they would have a chance. With both of them far away, even the small hope that had brought people to the palace's courtyard, in a last desperate attempt to make things right would be gone.

It had been easier, before he had been reunited with his king to contemplate death. Lord Gyousou's death driven by Taiki's death, allowing a new kirin to find a new king and salvage Tai.

He has to admit that now Gyousou was here in front of him, rather than being a memory, it was a lot harder to think on.

And that was before they took into consideration what had just been said. "People return, death is not final. I am not sure that the heavens would even know."

Could they reach them here? There can never be two kirin, or two kings. So without permanence, would death fix anything?

It was easier for Gyousou to think on, the past seventy years having seen their fair share of falling kingdoms and doomed kirin. He had never thought that they... well, there was a great deal he hadn't thought of, wasn't there?

"I was led to believe that other worlds are beyond Tentei's reach. Therefore, we must decide whether we trust the forces that govern here," he decided. "If we have simply been spirited away, will Tai remain in chaos, with Asen as its king, now free of the burden of a kirin's conscience?" A glance down, at the bracelet - watch, SCA - still on his wrist as always. "Perhaps we owe it to Tai to die, even if we then return by some unknown mechanism. A symbol, a show of intent. But I would not do so if you felt it futile."

He doesn't know. There is so much they don't know. They don't know where they are, they don't know if they can be sensed by the gods here. When he was in Hourai, even cursed and defiled as he had been it had not been enough for another kirin to grow on the Shashinboku.

"We don't know if it would be enough but that doesn't mean we should try." His voice was soft as he stared at the kuoji. He was quiet for a long moment as he tired to find words to put his thoughts in order.

"The closest we would be able to tell, would be if I were to die, if the gods can sense that, if they still hold any power over us then you would follow eventually."

He doesn't like it, because it's a risk. So much can change so quickly. Surely here they were in a place where people returned from death. But the death of a king could take a year after the death of their kirin, if things changed. If they ended up elsewhere, if they found themselves in a place where the regular rules of death were the norm.

It was a huge risk. And even apart from the personal, where the very idea of losing Lord Gyousou feels like his heart is being torn out of his chest, there is a practical side as well.

Right now he knows where his king is. He doesn't know where either he or Lord Gyousou are compared to Tai. But if he were to lose Lord Gyousou, he would be without kingdom or king. He would just have to hope another kirin had been born.

And without knowing that for sure, even if it seemed the gods had registered his death... Would Tai be saved? Or would they be dooming it even further?

So much is unknown. "The best we can hope for is that the gods can reach us, at least in some small way and I do not return."

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A Talk

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