behold, already on the long parades

[payback]

Day: 1
Characters: Hisoka soukahisoka, Rin cutest_avenger, open to Alice newestqueen
Summary: A meeting between old friends. Or... something.
Status: Closed | Incomplete

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[soukahisoka]

Hisoka had been listening for Rin's voice, and upon hearing it, he pushed open the door and poked his blond head out. "Here," he called softly from one of the suite doors at the farthest end of the hall.

He'd given Alice paper and crayons with which to occupy herself while Rin and Hisoka talked, even drawing out his name's kanji for the child to trace. Somewhere along the line, he'd missed lunch, then forgotten about dinner. He still wasn't hungry, or couldn't distinguish the base animal feel of hunger from the raw and roaring emptiness Tsuzuki's loss had left behind.

The pleasantry of stating "Come in" seemed excessive, too much effort by far; Hisoka merely held the door open for her to enter, and shut it once she was in the room, returning to his seat on the bed. His green eyes were as shockingly bright in his pale face as ever, having lost the vagueness that had plagued them once.

[payback]

Rin gave him a quick once-over as she moved into his room and, after a moment, folded up so she sat on her heels on the floor. Hisoka looked well, at least physically - and he was cleaner than he had been on their last meeting. He looked as though he'd shaken off a fog. Perhaps the same one Rin felt she had just entered. He didn't look happy, but he looked - clearer. Keen. It was good to see that.

Still, she didn't have much energy for beating around the brush. It was a relief to see him, in a way. To reinforce his presence and his physicality. Hisoka was - important to her, and all she had, really.

Rin folded her hands together and looked away from him. Pitching her voice low, so the intercom wouldn't pick her up, she said "Cross didn't forget his first stay in St. Edelweiss. Sokaro helped him escape, and he made it into a mountain village before he was put back in."

[soukahisoka]

Hisoka stared at her, although Rin wasn't looking at him. It was an interesting fact, but why mention it now? "I half thought Edelweiss was in some hellish void. A demon's illusion, or something," Hisoka admitted quietly. "Although I doubt a demon would bother to illustrate the details of some quiet mountain village. Why are you telling me this now? He isn't even here." Hisoka glanced aside at Alice, although she seemed happily occupied.

[payback]

"He got as far as a mountain village," Rin shrugged. "I guess there were people there. And then, when he bedded down - then when he woke up, he said he was back where he started. It was a secret I kept for him." She shrugged again, tiredly, and looked back to Hisoka. "I'd prefer to keep it private, between us, in case he shows up and wants to have it secret again. But when you listed off the names you said he didn't remember, and I figured... well, I just wasn't... comfortable leaving you with a discrepancy."

"Anyway, there's that. I suppose it doesn't mean much now, but also, before... Shira... well. Do you remember Cell 30?"

[soukahisoka]

"I can keep it to myself." Hisoka looked out the window briefly. Although the sun had set, the moon silhouetted a palm tree ripe with fruit. "Not that it matters, now. At least I should be able to keep that fact in my memory. It bothers me, forgetting how people died, but remembering their names is more than I hoped for after Kojiro took my notes."

He stared at his knees for a moment, and shook his head. "No. Not especially."

[payback]

Notes, pages, books and the fragility of memory. Rin thought for a moment of Matt, Hisoka and herself in the library, all of them hunched over the same table, reaching for new pieces of paper with inkstained fingers, spewing out time and time again the same list of names... Hisoka's elegant cursive, Matt's cramped, small handwriting, her own neat round script. All the pages they'd left throughout the rooms and halls... maybe even still there, wedges in crevices and cracks, yellowing slowly as they aged.

Or maybe St. Edelweiss had never existed at all, except as a shared nightmare.

She wished she had a copy of one of those lists. Written by Matt, would have been best... something of him. She had nothing of him. Just memories, which had proven flimsy.

"The quarantined cell," she said, more to her hands than to Hisoka, remembering. "They told us it was off limits. Well... I took a few other people, and we - explored it."