(Untitled)

[roseimbroglio]

Who: Asellus (roseimbroglio) and Ildon (blackwingprince
What: Ten years' reunion.
Where: Dorms, somewhere?
When: Orientation, day 2.
Warnings: Mystic antics. Lectures, probably. Sellz is an ingrate. :(
Rating: PG?

Comments

[blackwingprince]

And there she was, laughing - at him, although there was nothing terribly unusual about that. There had always been something about him that Asellus apparently found terribly funny, although he'd certainly never known what it was. And as vexing as it was, and had always been, there was a measure of considerable relief to hearing her laugh again. Not simply because it meant she was well, and happy(again, a relative term, judging by their earlier discussion), but because Facinaturu and the ten years he'd spent looking for her had seemed a bit darker without it. Mystics rarely laughed, for one reason or another, but Asellus had never been shy about it.

He wondered, absently, if he looked any different to her; certainly not as different as she looked to him, of course, but...ten years of searching, almost without pause, would take its toll even on a mystic. If he were any thinner, any paler, he would never have noticed, but Asellus might.

Any physical changes Asellus might have undergone, however, were secondary. The most obvious, and most irritating, was that she'd clearly forgotten any trace of the propriety he'd tried to instill in her back in Facinaturu. Waltzing into his room as though she had every right to be there, calling him...no, that name was too far beneath his dignity to repeat even in his own thoughts. Clearly humanity had scoured away her proper manners, which Ildon had to reluctantly admit she'd have very little of even before she'd left, in spite of all his best efforts.

"Lady Asellus," he greeted her, with just enough of a sardonic twist to the title to call her attention to the fact that she was acting like anything but. No one could really pull off condescension like a mystic. "I wouldn't know about starvation building character, but you look as though you haven't even been eating enough to have anywhere to store character if you should acquire any."

[roseimbroglio]

Her smile twisted into something almost savage in its amusement; for a moment, she could feel a rising darkness, which she shoved down as she donned an appropriately sheepish face. "Well, I didn't want to spend much, and as natural causes and starvation really can't kill me... I think..." She shook it off. "Anyway, you didn't answer my question. How are you? Wasn't your hair longer when I last saw you? Maybe I'm forgetting..." Amusement and teasing was lost in the enthusiastic, puppy-like grin as she examined him, reddish-violet eyes quick and darting. "Is Rose doing well? Is Rastaban? Has Zozma found a reason to escape the Chateau again?" The redheaded Mystic might have been something of a bad influence on her, she was willing to admit. But time had done more than any bad influences could to her; the muscle-memory bows and curtsies and gracious movements were still there, a bit, but her tongue was uncultured and her voice brash again. It was like she'd never defeated Orlouge at all.

She would have had the grace to feel ashamed of this, if she had cared. But she'd become somewhat thick-skinned, her delicate sensitivity-- learned from White Rose, who had made Asellus behave simply through admiration-- carefully shielded from the outside world. She felt older, standing beside him. She felt more a Mystic, though she didn't act it.

[blackwingprince]

"I wouldn't know," Ildon said, entirely honestly. It was rare for mystics to be uninformed about much of anything - they too much time to acquire knowledge not to know a great deal - but in this case... "You're the only half-mystic there has ever been. What you can and can't do is not entirely certain. But I wouldn't recommend running risks in hopes of finding out."

How was he? It was a rather odd question, at least when put to a mystic. So little ever changed in Facinaturu that it was rarely a question worth asking, even if mystics had ever been much inclined to small talk. It was a very...human question. Still, after ten years, it wasn't entirely unjustified. "Better, now that I've finally tracked you down," he replied, with a faint upwards turn at the corners of his mouth. "I was beginning to wonder if I'd lost my touch. My hair is the same length it has always been." He paused briefly, ticking off the questions he'd been asked within his head in order to answer them in sequence. "Rose is well, although understandably worried about you. Rastaban is even more out of sorts, and less than pleased with me for losing you and taking so long to find you again. Zozma wanted to be the one to go find you, but it was fairly obvious that he just wanted the excuse to get out of Chateau Aiguille, so I ordered him to stay behind and went in his place. That almost certainly means he ran off as soon as I left, of course."

[roseimbroglio]

Her smile was soft, wistful. "Rose always was a worrier. I should have taken her with me, kidnapped her like I did the first time. It would have given you a heart attack, I bet." But the roughness is gone, replaced by the look of someone who was once lost and has realized how to get home. "I'm sorry if I started any trouble with you and Rastaban. It was just very important to me, and I didn't want to risk a hold-up. And then, when things went bad..." She trailed off. "Well, I've an idea of what I need to do now."

"You know, though, that Zozma would have found me. It just would have been up in the air as to whether we both would have come back."

[blackwingprince]

"On the contrary, I would have been less worried because she would have reined you in a bit." Ildon studied her face. Her expressions, her demeanor, even the sound of her voice...he'd forgotten how much they could change, and how quickly. It was almost as bewildering as when he'd first met her, after so long apart. But he was relatively certain that even ten years ago, her current tone would have been unfamiliar to him. "And I imagine Rastaban will forgive me easily enough now that you've been found. But I was the one he asked to look after you, after all, so it was on my watch when you vanished from under our noses." In truth, most hadn't held him personally responsible - and Rastaban had likely only done so in his own consternation, not due to laying any real blame upon his lover - but Ildon himself had insisted upon bearing the full weight of the responsibility for what he considered to be his failure, and the ensuing search.

After a pause, he added, "I'm glad you've found your path again, even though I suspect it doesn't lead home." No; that would be simple, and Asellus had never made things so easy for him. Yet somehow he felt no resentment at such thoughts.

Ildon couldn't quite hold back a snort at the mention of Zozma. "Why do you think he wasn't sent? Although I wonder if he hasn't been keeping an eye out for you, wherever he's run off to."

[roseimbroglio]

"Obviously I'm not the only one who was slacking," she nudged him, that grin back. Serious mood was inappropriate and quite frankly uncomfortable; her issues were her own. She wasn't planning on sharing her thoughts with her retainers; there had to be some semblance of privacy for her. Besides, those memories were best like stolen wine: sweet and consumed in secrecy.

Privately, she was sure her path would lead home. The real question, then, was whether his home was the same as the one she was inexorably headed towards. And whether Zozma knew about it... she had always thought that Zozma and Dante would have gotten along well. And she wondered at her 'miraculous recoveries' along that path. It was possible, she thought. But unlikely. Zozma had always let her make her own mistakes.

[blackwingprince]

"So it would seem," he replied dryly, although he saw little true humor in the matter. A decade-long search, compounding his initial failure, was something he considered rather serious indeed...but at the same time, it was difficult to deny her amusement. It had always been a rare and precious thing in Facinaturu - a bright, cheerful light in the eternal darkness of Chateau Aiguille. It had pleased White Rose, charmed Zozma, and Ildon...well, he doubted he had been as affected as either of the other two, but he still liked to see it on some level.

[roseimbroglio]

"...Ildon, will you trust me when I say that I'll come home eventually?" It seemed to come out of nowhere, but Asellus had always held Ildon and White Rose's trust tantamount, when she could be bothered to ask it. She knew they wanted her back. She understood why. But she couldn't-- not yet. There was far too much she had to do, first; first and foremost of that was to gain the closure that she hoped would keep her from growing bitter and cruel enough to keep those she loved in cages, as Orlouge had done. Much as Rastaban insisted they were different, she knew, perhaps better than anyone, the similarities between them.

[blackwingprince]

"I trust you," Ildon replied simply. Asellus was trustworthy, when it came to that; if she said that she would do something, she would...sooner or later. "But that doesn't change the fact that 'eventually' may not be good enough. Facinaturu has been without a ruler for a decade now, and the court in chaos, with at least two of your advisors out in the human world preoccupied with searching for you rather than tending to their duties in Chateau Aiguille. Many have simply returned to sleep rather than deal with the uncertainty of Facinaturu without a Charm Lord, while others angle to fill your empty - some say abdicated - throne. And both you and those of us who advise you have lost considerable standing in the eyes of both your mystic and human subjects for what is considered your indifference to your people, and our failure to either instill a sense of responsibility in you or, at least, to keep track of you." His lips pressed, briefly, into an even thinner line than usual. "At least White Rose is well-liked for her kindness. One of the reasons I've been pursuing you all this time is because I am barely able to show my face in court for the disgrace this has brought me; if even Rastaban chastised me for losing track of you, you should know that the others would not be nearly so kind. At least having finally found you will quiet the comments somewhat."

[roseimbroglio]

She hadn't really thought that far ahead. It was sobering, to say the least-- and though even Asellus would admit that her methods and mode were selfish a lot of the time, she was stricken when she heard the effect it had had on the ones she held close. "I had thought," she began carefully, "that a decade or two would be but a blink to the Mystics."

She pondered this for a moment, then continued. "I can't leave here now. But soon-- probably in a few months-- is a spring vacation. Would it be acceptable for me to go home and set up a short-term regency until I fulfill my promises here? How do you think that would go over?"

[blackwingprince]

"It would be, under most circumstances," Ildon replied, with something that wasn't quite enough of a movement of his shoulders to be considered a shrug but was likely meant to convey the same meaning. "But consider that Facinaturu had been ruled by Orlouge for millennia before you removed him from power. In that much, at least, Rastaban was right; we had remained stagnant, unchanging, for so long before you arrived that time might as well have not existed for us. Then you appeared, obliterated all we knew and were accustomed to...and then left us to it, leaderless. Few mystics knew how to adjust to a Facinaturu without Orlouge, much less one without any Charm Lord at all for guidance. You destabilized the entire social structure, one that has been in place for so long that even the oldest of us scarcely remember any other to fall back on, and left nothing in its place. What did you expect to happen? Of course there was a backlash, and those mystics resistant to change blamed those who seemed to be responsible - myself, Zozma, White Rose, anyone who helped you overthrow Orlouge and who failed to see you remain after him to take his place. And you yourself, of course. Rastaban holds enough status that he has mostly escaped unscathed, particularly since he largely aided you through me, though there are those who blame him for my actions simply because they seem to believe he should have reined me in."

He fell silent briefly, his lecture dying off as Asellus presented him with her idea. "It's short-sighted and arrogant," he said finally. "For you to be gone ten years only to return to set up a puppet ruler so that you can run off again - and assuming you have full right to have any say over the rule of Facinaturu when you ran away from that very responsibility for over a decade - is pure hubris. It's something Orlouge might have done." He smiled, thinly. "As such, it will go a long way to reassuring your subjects. It will work, whether or not you like the reasons why."

[roseimbroglio]

Well. It wasn't ideal, but it would do, until she could finish what she needed to get done and get a plan in order. It would be a hard path, but she'd walked harder and really, this was going to be best for everyone. The first step in making a plan was never easy, after all.

"Well, I guess that'll have to do," she sighed. "It's better than nothing, and it'll give me time to... write a speech, or something."

[blackwingprince]

"It's better than nothing," Ildon agreed dryly, holding back a remark about how nothing was exactly what she'd left them with the first time. Yes, he resented her running off, and mystics could hold a grudge for, quite literally, forever, but he finally felt as though he'd gotten the point across, and thus there was no longer any point to flogging the same dead horse.

Which meant a change of subject was in order...and Ildon had never been much good at small talk. After a long pause, he said, somewhat awkwardly, "Are you well?"

[roseimbroglio]

She paused, considering the question. Was she? Now, she supposed, she was. At least, in comparison to how she'd been. He'd noted her lost weight; that was really the barest of it. There'd been a lot of loss in the past decade, most of it not physical. But even so...

"In a manner of speaking," she finally settled on, her expression dubious. "I'm alive, anyway, and that's a far sight better than most, I guess."

[blackwingprince]

"That's not much of an answer," Ildon pointed out, a faint frown marring his preternaturally pale features. "'Alive' isn't the same as 'well'." After a pause, he added, "Is this what you were referring to earlier?"

He'd gone to some lengths to familiarize himself with human technology once he'd finally tracked Asellus to the school, having had every intent of settling himself in there and waiting her out if she refused to return to Facinaturu immediately(which, as it turned out, he'd been entirely correct about). Being able to use the internet - and really, even he had to applaud human ingenuity for its creation, if not necessarily its content - had served him well, as he wondered whether she'd have told him as much about the man she'd cared for in person as she already had, or if she'd even be willing to discuss it with him now. She'd always been less reserved than a true mystic, but he was well aware that this was an intensely personal subject and he had never been the sort of person who inspired enough confidence in others to prompt their opening up to him. White Rose would have been better, and he wondered if perhaps he shouldn't have settled for simply finding Asellus and then sending the princess for the actual task of coaxing her back.

...Ildon stumbling across two girls one cup is the best image ever.

[roseimbroglio]

She just nodded, shifting feet. There was an awkward, human feeling to the whole mess, and she couldn't shrug off the insidious suspicion that she should be stronger than this. But she shook it off, stiffening her shoulders. She'd already told him about what she was willing to; he could probably imply the rest.

"Any more searching's gonna require a lot more connections than I have. I should just let it go. Just gotta get over this bump." Her expression clearly said that she was dubious as to her ability to do so, but she'd never been very good at hiding her thoughts on her face.