onepassingnight | Which Habits to Keep and Which Habits to Break [Open]

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Which Habits to Keep and Which Habits to Break [Open]

Just because Howard knows he's dreaming doesn't mean he can wake up. He tries, reminds himself, this is a dream, pinches himself in the dark, but he stays where he is, kneeling in someone's backyard at sunset. Dirt up to his elbows, and he's burying human body parts, except they aren't really body parts. They're more like pieces of oversized dolls than anything else, no blood or anything. But definitely flesh. Clean flesh.

He sits back on his heels and starts to dig the dirt from under his fingernails. His hands hurt, his shoulders are tense, and there are still so many pieces left to bury. He can't quite explain why he's doing it, except that there is some oppressive sense of dread if he stops. It's starting to soak in now, so he picks up a disembodied hand and tosses it into the shallow pit.

There are all sorts of things in the pit; alcohol bottles, baby toys, a t-shirt with a spatter of blood down the front. He squints and tries to remember how all these things got here, then figures it's irrelevant and tosses an anklebone in. The sun's setting, and he has to get all of these covered or else he starts over; the strange logic of the dream dictates this.

It's hard work, and seems an unfair task for someone of his meager stature, and in the dream he's exhausted and starving again. His skin hangs away like the sails of a ship. He sits back on the dried, yellow grass and runs dirty hands over his face - he can feel all too clearly the sockets of his eyes.

But there isn't time to waste energy stressing out about what he can't change (the task, the hunger, the fact that he's not yet awake) and so he gets back to digging.

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A pair of hand-knit pink mittens go in next. They land softly. A painting of a peaceful, frozen landscape clatters to the ground. The canvas tears as it hits some of the other debris; it must have been thrown with force.

Howard didn't toss these things there. Instead, there's a young woman with blue hair, dressed oddly in a modified sailor uniform covered in black markings. She stands tall over the pit - a pit now, she thinks, and not a hole anymore - and watches them fall with an inscrutable expression that seems faintly irritable.

She wants them gone, wants to erase them, but some might say these are things that never disappear: gifts, symbols of friendship, memories, no matter how buried in this subconscious dream. Indeed, each castoff object inches the whole mess closer to the top of the pit, where they could boil over and spill out everywhere. Dark eyes, too dark to precisely be natural, flicker towards the man across from her.

"The dream dictionary I consulted says that burying objects in a dream is either a cover-up, or hiding one's true feelings," the woman says, though an odd smile hovers at her lips that suggests she's not taking these words seriously, half mocking them at the same time. She asks the set-up question, "Do you believe it?"

"Why's your hair blue?" Howard barely glances up as she approaches, so involved in covering up a piece of hip. He guesses he shouldn't be surprised, since these sorts of things tend to just happen in dreams, but he realizes that he doesn't recall having dreamed in color before.

He licks his lips and sits back, examining the newcomer. She's not made of parts, so he's probably not supposed to bury her. "Maybe. But these aren't my feelings, these are someone else's."

As for a cover up, it most certainly is. He recognizes this backyard. It's where he covered for his best friend's murder. Normally he wouldn't say anything, but the dream world has a way of loosing tongues.

"I'm burying a little kid."

A thin silver charm bracelet drips through Mercury's fingers and trickles towards the ground. She ignores the question about her hair, which is as natural as his.

It's really no business of hers. But somehow, the thought of a child buried here feels wrong, more out of place than an adult. She becomes more serious again.

"Why is a child buried here?" she asks first. There are many reasons that could be true, from a loss they find painful and wish to put aside, to darker acts that deserve to be accused by these pitiful remains. (And if he says he committed them? What would she do?)

"It's complicated. He died in an accident, but it'll look like a murder to everyone else here, and the punishment for murder is death."

Neither of these are a hundred percent true, but true in spirit; the kid did die from an accidental blow during a physical assault, and while the punishment for murder is exile, Howard knows his best friend doesn't stand a chance outside the town.

"It's not my fault."

Also not a hundred percent true. He grabs a handful of dirt and sprinkles it over her charm bracelet and his bloody t-shirt and the pieces of kid, almost as if religiously.

"And you still didn't tell me what's up with your hair."

"My hair is blue for the same reason yours is dark. It was always like that." This, it turns out, is fifty percent true. Mercury's hair has always been blue. Mizuno Ami's is dark like Howard's.

If she makes allowances for some leeway with the explanation she's received, Mercury still doesn't challenge it. Accidentally going too far is something she's all too familiar with. So is death. She had her reasons for both, some petty and vindictive while others were unavoidable.

No, it's something else that bothers her in that distant way now. "If it's not your fault, let whoever did it be the one to get their hands dirty here. Why should it be you in their place?"

"Naturally blue hair isn't a thing where I'm from. I'm not convinced it's not a wig."

He pauses and bites his lips, then sticks his thumb in his mouth and chews on his nail. "Would you just let someone you care about resign themselves to death? I'm saving someone's life."

Which should make him feel good, but doesn't. He glances down at the items in the pit again. The charm bracelet looks so childish to him, like something he'd see on the playground.

"I don't need you to be convinced for it to be true," the blue-haired girl rejoins. It's not defensiveness. It's because she's already had enough of trying to persuade, trying to justify, trying to convince others, a long time ago. And she's far more sure of herself these days (about some things).

"More importantly," she says with a nod towards the pit, where the childish bracelet glimmers accusingly back at her, "What makes that person worth saving to you?"

Apparently 'caring about them' did not register as enough of a reason. Or maybe she's just looking for something more.

Edited 2012-07-18 00:46 (UTC)

"What's it to you?" Unlike Mercury, Howard does sound defensive - because he is. He's convinced by now that Mercury's some figment of his subconscious trying to bring unspoken, unexplored feelings to light, and there are some feelings he'd rather leave submerged.

Maybe she was right about hiding feelings.

"What's with the bracelet? I never seen that before in my life, and this is my dream, so I want an answer." This is also his attempt to turn the conversation on her, because he's tired of being on the defensive.

It's nothing to her; nothing she can name, anyway, and so she lets the question of saving people go unanswered.

The bracelet. It's her turn to be displeased.

She tells the truth, but not all of it. "It was worn by my enemy," she says, and she doesn't mention that she has a double of it, that in fact the bracer on her wrist is the bracelet transformed. "Until I defeated her."

Not a child's after all, then; and indeed, though it looks it, the size is fitted for someone older, perhaps a teenage girl.

Or perhaps the one in the pit is somehow hers, with everything she hates about it finally thrown away. (If she had never had to become a soldier, would her fate have been different? And why had she fought, for so long, for the sake of people who never saw her as herself, but only wanted that warrior, and felt free to lie to her and hide the truth from her?)

"She dead?"

Mercury's lack of horror regarding him burying a child leads him to believe that she comes from a life or death sort of place too. But then, if she's his subconscious, or a figment of it, that's to be expected, right? His subconscious isn't a pretty place.

He leans back again and slides his legs out from under him, so he's sitting cross-legged on the ground. Absentmindedly, he tugs at the dried grass.

Before she gets a chance to answer, he adds, "you guilty?"

Is she dead. Are you guilty. They're such simple questions, but nothing simple is ever easy.

"Not her," Mercury says finally. The one who's dead didn't have a bracelet. She had a locket instead.

Are you guilty when the person you killed would have destroyed the entire planet if she'd lived? When it had to happen, no matter how fate changed, because that battle wouldn't change (except to leave you the one dead instead)? Are you innocent when that has nothing to do with what started you down that path?

Are you guilty when the blood on your hands comes from monsters, creatures with minds bent on tearing apart even more people, creating more victims, and destruction in their path? Are you innocent when they were nothing but victims used by the true enemy?

"Innocent or guilty, it's already done." This is an unsatisfactory answer, but it's the best one she has for herself, too.

"Beautiful non-answers, Blue." Howard crosses his arms and stares out at the yard, all those body parts and toys. The setting sun gives everything long shadows.

"I didn't ask if you were innocent. I asked if you felt guilty."

Blue, huh? A part of her thinks they're not close enough for him to use a nickname with her, and that he certainly doesn't have any business asking those types of impossible questions.

But they've already come a bit too far to say that now. Instead, she introduces herself. "I'm Mercury; call me by that."

"Whether I'm guilty or not, does it matter? I wouldn't change what I've done." Maybe that means no, she doesn't feel guilty. The things she may not like to look at would have still happened. And thinking too much about that is a path to madness.

She turns it back on him. "Are you guilty?"

He's not feeling especially creative now. 'Blue' it is, although he may test-run 'Snowcone' as a nickname later.

"No. I'll call you what I want." Politeness never got him nowhere. He's not about to extend it to a stranger needling in his affairs. He raises an eyebrow at her assertion that she wouldn't change what she did. "Doesn't matter if you wouldn't change it, you can still be guilty."

He stares down at his hands and wipes the dirt on his knees. "What do you think?"

"By hiding it for him, you're also part of it," Mercury points out. Howard shares in whatever guilt exists here. "And even if you call it an accident, someone is still dead."

This may seem like a somewhat harsh analysis, or certainly a moral one, but really it's just her own guilt: whatever her reasons, those events still happened. She can tell herself the reason makes a difference, but maybe it doesn't, especially when the motives are all mixed up.

"I'm always a part of it. That's what you get for having your fingers in everything." As if to punctuate, he starts chewing on his index finger.

"At least I'm admitting it." While Mercury isn't denying anything, she's also dodging around taking any sort of verbal responsibility, at least so it seems.

To Mercury, it's the opposite: She's said plainly what she's done, and she knows what she is.

But she doesn't shrink from it. It doesn't overwhelm her and leave her paralyzed like it would have a few years ago, or if she'd been stopped sooner.

It's something far more buried than even this pit could accommodate, something deeper and best left unexplored, something rationalized away a thousand times to keep her on her path forward.

"And so?" she challenges Howard. Admitting it, words, all that means so much less. "What will you do?"

"I'll keep burying it. And then I'll forget about it." He casts a hand out at the backyard. "We don't exactly got a lot of choices here, do we?"

There is no flourishing in this parched landscape. There is only survival. You don't get to live without guilt, and should be lucky to be living at all. Lucky to still have his friend, murderer or not.

Nothing to do but force the guilt down, with no hope of washing it away.

"Then you should already understand what I said." It's not a matter of passing responsibility, of shirking it. She claims that much. It's the simple fact that no guilt, none of that vague feeling that she doesn't like how things turned out, will change any of it.

So there's no use asking those questions.

"Then maybe it's time for you to go, if you're not going to help." He gestures to all the pieces in the field. "I've got a lot of work to do."

A second passes, during which she might refuse. Instead, as the moment passes, she treats the dismissal flippantly.

"Good luck to you, then!" she calls over her shoulder as she turns to go. He'll need it, to cover all of this.

Kanda had seen his share of crazy being an exorcist but an akuma that hoarded bodies of his victims like this wasn't normal. Then again, akuma never left body parts so this guy was obviously human. How disgusting.

"You mind telling me what it is you think you're doing?" He questioned, blue eyes narrowed. He didn't move his hand to his sword but he was ready for it if he had to. This wasn't right.

"Uh, digging a hole to China, dumbass."

Howard raises an eyebrow but doesn't really look at Kanda, because he's too busy disposing of a torso right now and the starvation's deeply exhausted him. He continues sprinkling dirt onto the bloodless chunk until he actually does bother to glance up, and then he scrambles to his feet. "Whoa, a sword? Really, man?"

Whether or not Kanda's reaching for it, the fact that he's even approaching, armed and looking irate, sets off Howard's panic buttons.

The fact this guy was giving him attitude wasn't neccesarily going down well with Kanda. He obviously didn't know who or what he ws talking about but he wouldn't kill him just yet. There was a lot more to this story that wasn't being said. When the guy turned back and reacted to his sword, he figured he had a little advantage here.

"That's some change." He responded, watching him in scrutiny. "I'm not going to repeat myself." Answer the question.

"What, do you think the answer's going to change if you ask a second time?" Some expression very akin to a sneer works its way over Howard's face. "I have work to do here. Leave me alone."

He grabs another handful of dirt and tosses it, rather than sprinkles it, onto a dismantle rocking horse in the pit.

Kuja watches, calmly, from above the pit. He's not standing, but floating in midair, watching, calmly, noting all the items, especially the limbs. He doesn't offer to help, at least not at first, tilting his head slightly to one side. He doesn't labor in the dirt, not if he can help it. He's not completely unsympathetic. That weariness means something to him. The pointlessness of all this work.

"Who has set you to this futile task? Or have you taken it up of your own volition?"

"What's it matter to you?"

Howard glances up and raises his eyebrows when he sees that the newcomer is hovering, rather than standing. Maybe he should be used to the bizarre by now, but isn't quite. He tosses another limb in and shrugs; the question remains the same for both of them.

"You could say I'm curious. Why else would I ask?" He gives a shrug of his own, remaining aloft. He is curious, but he has no further reason beyond that, for the moment, polite enough for the time being. It interests him, the odd labor and the determination of it, in spite of Howard's obvious weakness.

"Why not burn it all?" he asks. To Kuja, this makes more sense than the act of burying--a more complete destruction. Things burned away cannot be dug up later. But then, Kuja has always burned the things he's destroyed.

"Fire's dangerous." Howard sounds like someone who knows that from experience. "Besides, the kind of fire you need to take out an entire body requires fuel, and we're short on that."

Howard can't help but notice that Kuja's going to no efforts to help him out, here, which is a black mark on Howard's opinion of him. "Are you just going to float there watching?"

"You're not short on fuel at all. In fact, you have a great deal more of it than you realize." He doesn't take the "fire is dangerous" comment seriously, as it isn't generally dangerous to him.

"I've already offered to help. Haven't you noticed? But you really should step aside first." Although Kuja, in his usual oblique way, hadn't made the most obvious of offers.

"Is that so?" Because Howard could go into detail about how the temperature needed to really incinerate a body isn't going to be achieved by just this dry brush, but he suspects Kuja is thinking of something else. He gets to his feet. "Do we have to do this in dry grass?"

"There's no need to worry," says Kuja. It's good that Howard doesn't go into detail, because Kuja is conversant with the nature and limitations of fire, and that would be tiresome. His fire is another matter altogether. "I have complete control."

It's true, he does. "Now, could you please stand back?" He's reformed (at least partly) and has no intention of injuring Howard at present.

"I've heard that before." But Howard does as told. He gets up and scoots away, then decides to go behind the fence and watch from there. Chain links won't protect him from fire, but some childish part of him still feels as if a barrier is better than none.

"But not from me," says Kuja, although there is, in fact, some reason to worry when Kuja is in the vicinity, regardless of what he might say.

As to what that reason is, he shortly makes it clear. Magic glows at his fingertips, and then he blasts the pit with an incredibly hot, concentrated burst of fire, blue-purple in color. As powerful as it is, Kuja does control it, and when the contents of the pit are destroyed, the fire winks out instantly, leaving nothing but ashes and charred earth behind.

Howard stares. He doesn't look shocked, but rather impassive. The body parts in the pit make squealing and popping sounds as the fat burns off, then are disintegrated entirely.

Once Howard's seen the job's done, he doesn't stop to thank Kuja - he turns around and runs.

Kuja could easily let him go, and run on and on all he liked, but--to tell the truth, he has been slightly bored lately, so he decides to pursue.

"There's no point in running." He flies ahead, moving swiftly and easily, to land before Howard. He hopes he's not going to flee again, because this could easily become tiresome. Honestly, he could scorch everything within view in a matter of moments; running from him would be futile if he were to become hostile. Not that he saw any point in mentioning that. It would likely do more harm than good.

Howard slides to a stop and backs up, but he doesn't run further from Kuja. His eyes are wide, but there's something calculating and skeptical in his face.

"Why did you help?"

Because no one helps just because they can, and Howard doesn't want to be indebted to someone who shoots fire.

Kuja doesn't advance.

He isn't an altruistic person at all. Not naturally. He is, quite definitely, the opposite. Yet his crimes weigh on him, for all that he knows that he cannot atone for them.

"Why not?" It's true that he could help, so he had, but there is more to it than that. "Lately, things have been tedious, and a moment of novelty was not unwanted. Call it a whim, if you like."

"So why do you need prompting to set a field of plastic body parts on fire?" At least, Howard hopes they were plastic. They might have been flesh, real flesh.

He settles into his shoes a little, not quite as ready to sprint away. "Who are you, really?"

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Which Habits to Keep and Which Habits to Break [Open]

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