birdwithoutasong | Looking up I saw nothing

Entry tags:

Looking up I saw nothing

Who: Valen Arrol (

competitionsmile) and Vasilica Alin
Universe: Original
What: True love
Warning: to be added

Maybe Valen's old enough to know better than to listen to rumors, but it's more the case that he's old enough that he knows that even if most rumors aren't what they seem, they still often make for a good story later, and sometimes what the reality is turns out to be better than the rumor. Which is why when he hears the story of a beautiful ghost in a tower he assures the servant that exorcism is definitely one of his top ten skills and sets off towards the tower that had been described to him. He'd sprained his ankle in his last fight and he's going stir-crazy trying not to head out of town yet, so he agrees because it sounds interesting

He has his bow strapped to his back when he knocks on the door, the rest of his worldly possession in his bag because it's not like he has anywhere to leave them behind. The women who'd hired him greets him at the door, and he pins her with a charming smile. "If I'm free to look around, that's what I'm going to be doing," he says, because if he's going to find out anything, it's not going to be while he's being herded around. He needs to poke his nose where it doesn't belong, because he's sure the ghost isn't going to come out to say hi, if it's even real.

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"Because I'm not really the shoot first type. Or the shoot type at all, when we're talking people." It's not really an answer at all, but Valen is trying hard to cling to the momentary respite he seems to have gotten.

"And because I can listen to myself talk all day, but I don't really think it's as much fun as it is for other people."

He shrugs. "What will it hurt?"

The silence stretches on - not a comfortable silence, he's never had one of those, but an uncomfortable one, until Vasilica lowers his eyes, turns his head away, hair falling into his eyes, over his face.

"...there are no ghosts here," he says, simply, before he turns away again, in a flutter of white silk. Maybe the man will leave, since he'd come looking for ghosts, after all, and there weren't any here.

Edited 2014-05-17 09:23 (UTC)

"Oh?" Valen says, almost automatically, before what had been said truly penetrated into his head. "Oh?" he repeated, a request for greater explanation and accompanied by interest.

Valen's heading up the stairs before he gives himself a chance to think about it, trying not to lose track of the figure before he vanishes. "That probably will make it easier to talk."

There really isn't anywhere for Vasilica to go that would have him be lost track of - the stairs lead upwards to his room, and Valen would be able to catch up to him easily at the door to his room.

"...about?"

He might not be a ghost, but it's easy to tell, even this early, how the rumors had been started, with how soft he speaks, how little, and how still his body language is with nowhere left to run to.

What is there even to talk about, is the ghost of the tone under the words.

Valen shrugs, powerful shoulders raising in a gesture that's awkward for the fact that he doesn't know how to express the sentiment he feels, isn't even sure what it is.

"The weather? Why you're scaring the servants? Whether the servants are scaring you?"

He laughs, something self-conscious and yet real enough, an attempt to laugh off the awkwardness of it all. "I'm pretty good at talking about nothing at all, if that's your preference."

It's awkward, to say the least - awkward between them, and he can see the awkwardness in the other man's gesture. Someone being awkward at him (because of him) is new, and strange, and he glances away for a moment.

"...I don't mean to." he says, his voice as soft and blank as ever.

His hand clutches the doorknob, tightly.

Valen holds himself still, like when he knows he doesn't want to startle a deer, afraid of the moment someone else will go tearing through the forest, or a wolf will.

"I'm sure it's just because they don't you," he says, and he doesn't know if that's an explanation or an excuse or if it's any good at all. "They're the ones who think you a ghost, or at least that's what they told me."

Valen shifts, carefully, running a hand through his hair -- a slow moment, to make it clear he's not about to reach for something else or for the man. "Maybe they were just having a laugh at the expense of both of us."

The moment is a fragile, tenuous one, and Vasilica's silence holds as he listens, glancing away. Of course they don't know him: there was always that gulf of station even before he'd drifted away, before he'd done his best to disappear.

"They forgot that I was alive." he says, finally, and he's still not certain whether it's better that way or not. Or even why this man bothered to find out that he was anything more than a ghost.

Perhaps anyone else would have been bitter, but his voice is still that same blank serenity.

He hasn't run again yet - he holds himself still, still and still, but this is the bravest he's been in (ever) a long while.

"That seems difficult to believe." Valen says it without thinking, without breaking the fact that his eyes feel transfixed onto Vasilica's face. He might not know the other man either, but that doesn't mean he doesn't want to.

"I'm sure I'll never forget you."

Although he does hope that he won't have to rely on faith or memory alone, to see him every day but never talk.

Of course, it would never work like that for Valen.

Why would it seem difficult to believe? He's been haunting what should have been and was never his home for what has felt like his whole life. And he's certainly at a loss with someone /staring/ at him.

No one stares. Except this man. No one remembers he exists, except this man.

"...You-" You can't not forget, because everyone else forgets, like he was a swirl of snowflakes that faded into the storm.

(Vasilica doesn't know what to do, faced with a man who is certain he won't forget him.}

"Why?" he finally asks again. Why do you say that? "Everyone does."

Perhaps Valen's staring can be forgiven, for it seems a certainty that if he were to look away from Vasilica, then the other man would surely vanish, or even do something as mundane as simply run. Either way, he'd then be gone, and that isn't what Valen wants.

He doesn't lie, and he hadn't lied about his thoughts of Vasilica.

"If I were a religious man, I would say it's because you've touched my soul. But I'm about as religious as I am superstitious." And Valen knows that isn't an answer, but he's not sure what a better one might be.

"So I suppose it will just be because I have no desire to." If beauty must be transient, the memory of it may not be.

His expression doesn't change, though his cheeks darken with a blush. It's a door, an option, something he could choose (a way out), and-

"I-" he begins, hesitantly. But he doesn't take the way out: instead, he runs, slams his bedroom door in Valen's face and doesn't open it.

It's something he doesn't forget. Even after he dies less than a month after he met Valen (dies alone in the darkness, leaves a fragment of his heart behind) and lives again and leaves the tower, with a new name and a new family who actually loves him and a purpose, he doesn't forget.

(Even Valen, wanderer and passing through, might have heard of his death. How Vasilica, fourth child of Lord Alin, had died. His eldest sister lit a candle for him. May the Seven judge him fairly. Beautiful, broken, flawed and pitiable, not to be remembered or mourned.

Except while Vasilica died, Mira lived.)

Three years, maybe four. Enough time to find himself, stitch the pieces back together, to figure out who Mira is, to learn to be someone else. To learn his purpose and how to use his powers and know what he is. Three years, maybe four, and he meets Valen again, a chance-meeting at an inn one night. Dressed differently - he still has white hair, and white skin, but he's not wearing white robes that make him look like a ghost but darker colors that actually look good on him- and carrying himself much more confidently (still gracefully), but still looks much the same otherwise. It's enough to throw people off, even those who would have known Mira when he'd still been Vasilica Alin - Vasilica never looked anyone in the eyes, after all, and never spoke in complete sentences.

Mira's trying to pick his way through the crowd, which isn't an easy task given that it's raining, when someone jostles him - and knocks him, and his harpcase, right into Valen.

“Excuse me—” Valen murmurs, ready to apologize regardless of the fault because this crowd is too full and it comes down to no individual’s fault, except, indeed, Valen’s choice to stop in for a pint.

Any further response dies on his lips, though, as he looks at what — who — he’s actually bumped into.

He swallows, eyes transfixed on the other man, terrified that if he looks away this will all turn out to have been an illusion.

“And this time, are you a ghost?” He truly has never forgotten, himself.

He's initially too startled to quite process who he's bumped into, murmurs a hasty apology - and then recognition hits him, just as Valen asks if he's a ghost this time.

Mira sighs, quietly. With anyone else, he might have lied, might have tried to pass himself off as someone else. With anyone else, he might have done any of those things - and has, even to his own former oldest brother. But Valen isn't quite 'anyone else', because he's never forgotten, either. He's never forgotten his kindness to a broken, fragile boy.

"No," he says, quietly, resting his instrument case on the table. "Maybe I should have been, but it's...complicated."

Valen’s eyes haven’t gotten any narrower by Vasilica confirming it, and questions swim in his head. He’s not sure what to say, and if he had a room in this inn, instead of just a table, he would have asked the man up there to talk in private. Instead he’s going to make do with the fact that Vasilica hasn’t run away from him yet this time.

“I didn’t know you were alive.”

A pause, and then, “I would have come back.”

Mira can see that the other man's eyes are narrow, and can't really blame him. Not with how he'd died and come back, when that wasn't exactly a common occurrence. Not with...everything that had happened.

"...I know." he finally says, and sighs. He does have a room at the inn, because he'd planned to stay here. And the explanation he owes the man? Will have to be in private. "Come upstairs with me? I'll talk with you more there."

"Yes." Valen's smile is carefully charming and aimed at no one at all as he downs what's left of his drink. He figures that he'll need it.

And then he starts to move, prepared to follow the man who has to be a ghost, and yet who also can't be one.

Mira leads him upstairs: the room he'd gotten for the night was spartan, with one small bed (no insects, though: he'd paid extra just to be certain of it). and what few possessions he has are tucked away in his pack, which is set out of the way in a corner.

He closes the door behind Valen and turns to face him. "I should start from the beginning, shouldn't I?"

"That's generally a fairly good place to start." Valen is all charm and smiles, but that's because right now he's feeling deeply unsettled, so he's simply retreating to what he knows best.

Besides, if there's something he remembers about Vasilica, it's that he deserves to be charmed.

The smile Mira gives him in return, as he sits down on the bed, is sweet and sad around the edges. If Valen is unsettled now, he's certainly going to be unsettled once the explanation starts.

"Less than a month after we met...I died." alone in the dark. "Normally, that would have been the end, but...it wasn't quite. " he's pretty clearly trying to find the words. "...I'm not certain how much attention you pay to religion, but you've at least heard of the most common stories? About how the Lady turned her eyes from the world but in Her mercy sent Her Seven Messengers to watch over us?"

Valen takes his seat, trying to keep some distance because he doesn’t want to scare the other man away and doesn’t know how his own reactions are going to go. He’s patient, nodding slowly.

“I’ve heard of it, yeah. And if we’re talking resurrection or ghosts I can guess that religion’s part of it?” If he doesn’t generally believe, if he tends to think there are other reasons, well. He’s not about to accuse Vasilica of lying to him.

"What the church doesn't teach or acknowledge is the nature of the Seven. A steadfast denial." Mira says. It makes their job easier...or harder, in some respects, to have that misunderstanding. "Besides simply messenger gods...they incarnate in mortal vessels, who are born and live as ordinary people, unknowing of the power they carry in their heart, until they die."

He pauses, for a long moment. "...So, then, you can see why I'm alive, now, even though I died and my sister lit candles for me. May the Seven judge him fairly. And I'll stay like this until I inevitably die again doing my job."

Delicate lips quirk into a bitter smile. "I wasn't exactly supposed to tell you about this, but you deserve the truth. Please don't spread it around."

Valen's brow might crease adorably, but it's still very obvious that he's confused. "I think you might need to run that by me again."

Wait, he can help a little with the part that he's confused by. "You were a god? Still are, or are more?

"You're still Vasilica, though, right? I mean, you obviously remember me."

"Of course." Mira says (that crease is cute, though it's a bit weird to think of an older man as being 'cute'). "I'm still me: I'm just more now then I was, with more magic and the memories of my predecessors." he pauses, for a moment, and gives Valen a hesitant smile.

"There's a lot of stuff from before I would have wanted to forget, but you weren't one of them. The only thing that's really changed is my name, for...perhaps obvious reasons. I call myself Mira now."

"Mira." Valen repeats it carefully. "Do you prefer that?" They're likely only going to talk to this one time, but Valen can change how much he thinks about the man.

"And are you... Do you feel better, in your new role?"

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