Splinters of memories [Complete]

[lingeringscent]

Characters: Mio Amakura, Zetsu
Setting: Fairy Bedroom
Time: Day 003, post-Exploration
Summary: Mio explains her ghost hunting tools to Zetsu and prods him about his past.
Warnings: Possible cuteness and fluff.

Comments

[weeatbodies]

The irony of his contrasting positions hadn't been lost on Zetsu by any means; still though, it felt a little awkward to talk about. He'd managed surprisingly well with Koizumi, when they had discussed the subject; Koizumi was smart and perceptive, and willing to pry, and Zetsu had been.... defensive, he supposed. Pushing the boundaries of their relationship. At that point, he hadn't been sure just what would happen, and had tested Koizumi's willingness to tolerate him with the story of his (in his mind, at least) biggest crime. He was more comfortable with Mio now than he was with Koizumi then, enough so that he didn't feel the need to push anything....

But that meant he didn't have the defiance to take the edge off of the fear that Mio would be disgusted the way he hadn't been. There was more to lose, here.... But he still felt uncomfortable with the idea of just outright not answering her question. He trusted her, didn't he? And she trusted him. Mio at least deserved to know who and what she had put her faith into. "If you've seen venus flytraps before.... well, they eat insects. They catch them inside, snap shut, and digest them." His leaves twitched. "A plant that's much larger, with proportionally stronger acid.... it can digest larger prey, more difficult things. Cloth, meat, bones...." She might have remembered the way the cookies had vanished when they had been adhered to the insides of his leaves.

"Most of the time, a hunter-nin gets rid of a body by summoning animals to eat it, or incinerating it. But they wanted the job done as fast as possible, so they encouraged me to just.... cut out the middleman and not bother summoning anything, save my energy for other tasks." He wondered if she'd start getting sick. "I was part of a small team in one mission, and we tracked a missing-nin a long way out. The rest of them didn't make it. The reason we don't leave corpses is so no secrets about where we're from are passed into hands that shouldn't have them, and I didn't think they would want me to allow that to happen--if I had brought the bodies back all that way, I could have been ambushed and lost them. And it seemed disrespectful to literally throw them to the wolves...."

He smiled wryly. "I didn't know what else to do.... So I did what I'd always been told to for the criminals. I ate them myself. They didn't like that when I told them what happened. If I had known they would be so upset, I would have tried harder and figured something else out, I guess."

[lingeringscent]

Mio'd never seen a venus flytrap herself, but she knew a little of how they worked. Her eyes were drawn as his leaves twitched, a temporarily distraction, but otherwise gave his story her full attention. It took her a moment to get what he was hinting at and her eyes moved down as she did. Still, she listened, ignoring the urge to become sick as the mental image worked it's way into her mind, forcing herself to reserve judgment. But really...was it so bad? She'd already seen corpses, countless corpses crammed into a large room. So many bodies...

Was it really bad as that? As the countless slash marks, that things attempts at grabbing her? The missing arms, the blood? The sheer amount? She still shuddered thinking back to it, and then almost laughed as she tried to compare the two again. Of course she didn't, because laughing at that moment would have been rude and more than likely hurtful as well...but when she gave it a second thought, it seemed so stupid. Getting rid of a dead body...she didn't think it was an enjoyable sight, but they were dead. It wasn't even comparable to what people did to the living, it probably wasn't even worse than what ghosts had done to her...it probably wasn't even worse than what she and Yae had done to their respective sisters.

He'd only done what he was thought was right, too...she knew that. She knew that because she felt it. It was hard not to get emotional as she thought on that...but she managed, simply thinking. She wasn't sure how long she'd spent considering this, probably less than a minute, but likely long enough to let him know that she was thinking. Eventually she looked back to him, expression soft, perhaps even sympathetic for reasons he couldn't understand, but not disgusted, not even critical. Knowing how he'd felt, what he'd went through, knowing what she'd seen...she couldn't bring herself to be that way. "You did your best, right? You did...what you thought was right, didn't you?" Even if it didn't mean much to anyone else, it meant something to her.

[weeatbodies]

Looking away, shuddering.... Zetsu's heart silently sank as he watched Mio figure it out and process the story he was telling her, He waited for a gasp or cry, or some other expression of disgust, coherent or not, or even just getting up and leaving.... And yet somehow, it never came. Like Koizumi, she seemed to be thinking rather than pushing him away. Whatever she thought of him, she wasn't letting anything show but gentleness, and the knot in his stomach unraveled with a swell of relief and gratitude that might have been embarrassing if it hadn't been so surprising.

"I it was the best thing to do.... maybe not the right thing to do, but as right as I could make it.... I thought they would be happy and that I had handled things professionally." He hadn't thought.... well, he hadn't imagined good intentions could lead to such a shitstorm back then. Mmm, but he had been young and stupid.... Sometimes he thought the only part that had changed since then was youth. How could you tell the latter, after all?

[lingeringscent]

"I know..." She said, voice hushed and a little regretful, not seeming to realize that there was no way that she should have or could have known even after the matter. But of course, she did know. "You did what you could, so..." She spoke as though it absolved everything, and perhaps in her mind it did. She nuzzled against him again. She'd definitely noticed the shuddering before, the way she looked away, which might have been what brought her next statement about, "You're still just you, so...it doesn't matter to me what you've done in the past. Even here, I...I'll forgive you no matter what happens."

It felt awkward saying that. Mayu'd said it more than once and Mio knew exactly why that was now, or so she thought. It made her wonder if she'd just marked herself for death as well, but the girl didn't want to think about either of those things and so she tried to move closer, looking for some small comfort. She hoped her next question wouldn't bother him too much as well, "Before that...were you close to your parents?" She probably knew the answer to that question already, but she didn't understand it, not knowing the details. She wondered why it was, she'd never felt any kind of closeness with her mother. Her mother had taught her several necessary things, but...there had always been that distance. "...What was it like?" After a few moments she hastily added, "U-um, you don't have to answer that if you don't want..." She was guessing it might be an uncomfortable subject and truthfully, she wasn't entirely sure what to expect, even if he chose to answer.