tushanshu_logs | so long as you come home at the end of the day [July, catchall, open]

Entry tags:

so long as you come home at the end of the day [July, catchall, open]

Characters: Raine Sage and OPEN
Date: mostly after 9th July, as attitudes will differ markedly before and after
Location: Many places: special mention for apartment in Earth, Healers' Guild in Water
Situation: lots.
Warnings/Rating: hold on to your feels, Raine's misplaced her husband. warnings updated as things change.

A | Healers' Guild | Open

Before the ninth, business is as usual; Raine is brisk and efficient. After the ninth, she makes a level attempt to throw herself into work, at the Guild long hours and busy more often than not. She may be found in her office, sometimes awake, sometimes passed out over her desk with the door ajar; down in Solomon's old laboratory space, sifting through his research; or with patients. She seems more tired, and she smiles less frequently, but she doesn't do her job with any less dedication.

B | park in Earth sector, later in the month | Open

When the familiar surroundings of her apartment get too much, and she's been nudged out of the Guild by coworkers, Raine walks, takes herself out to watch people and keep herself moving. Often she stops in a park, a little ways away from the more traveled areas, and sits to meditate, pale light glowing under her and at her fingertips. Focusing on her magic helps: it won't abide distraction, and she gives all her attention to the clean peace of mana and light, rather than emotion.

As a result, she will be easily startled.

C | Wildcard??? | Open

D | apartment | Sheena

Raine allots herself a few days, not so much to work through the loss as to try to hammer out the nuances of working around it. It may not be the best strategy, but it's what she has. She's not oblivious, all the while, to the food that appears while her remaining roommate disappears, but it takes her some time to actually catch Sheena in the apartment.

On Sheena's day off she taps on the closed door of the room, frowning slightly to herself. It's beginning to seem like Sheena's avoiding her, and if something's wrong with Sheena, Raine would prefer to address it now, before it becomes something worse.

[ooc; if you'd like to plot, hit me up via pm or

makaricrow. c: other than that, let me know specifically if you need Raine before the ninth for some reason, since her attitude and mood will differ drastically before and after.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bakura doesn't need the announcement, nor Raine's summons. The instant Solomon's essence faded from Keeliai, his ghosts were aware of it. They raised a cacophony, unheard by ears but ringing across other planes, furious and screaming, and nearly driving the thief to a knee as he tried to separate his own thoughts from the howling maelstrom in his head.

Thankfully he'd been in his rooms, not in the dojo proper. "Wanen seger-tn, aakhu-i!" Bakura groaned, initially unsure what had prompted this extreme reaction.

Then, of course, he'd checked the network.

He didn't go immediately.

But Raine would find him in the doorway at one point in the evening, just watching, silhouetted in the backdrop of lights from the other room and unmoving.

Raine stayed at the Guild later than was her custom. She should go home, she knew, should eat and sleep and talk to Sheena, but the thought of an empty bed struck her every time she turned her thoughts that way. So as activity slowed in the building she stayed there, turned her attention to old notes on magical theory and, when she proved unable to focus on that, to counting their inventory of herbs and other reagents.

It was at this endeavor that Bakura found her. Raine should have felt his presence before she saw him, but evidently she was distracted enough she didn't. She caught sight of him when she turned, jars in hand. "Bakura," she said, her tone one of soft surprise. But she stopped there, momentarily frozen, unable to find what to say and unable to read Bakura's expression.

Bakura and Solomon had always known parts of each other Raine couldn't quite; she thought, rather, that in their way they had loved each other, though certainly neither would ever have put that word to it. So Bakura had lost something great today, too, and with that Raine did not know where to begin.

He stepped wordlessly into the room at her notice, still faintly damp from the drizzle outside. In the backwash of the room's lamps, mahogany eyes were old, and tired, and sad, but he crossed the room to stand in front of her and tucked her into the crook of his shoulder, herb jars and all.

"Oh," Raine said, a small, lost sound, and she leaned into Bakura, cradling the jars in one hand. The fact he had no words to offer spoke volumes in and of itself.

It was easy to rest her head on his shoulder; harder to hold back tears threatening to well up, as they'd been doing off and on whenever she paused too long to think that day. Like this the loss hit her all over again, and Raine trembled faintly with the effort of containing it. Perhaps she needn't. Bakura, of all people, knew loss.

Still, she thought, if she truly stopped to grieve it would be difficult to start anything else again for some time, and there was work to be done, and pity was a difficult thing to bear.

He lets her stay like that for as many minutes as she needs, and when he feels her start to move again, he takes the jars from her hands and sets them on the desk.

"They'll be here later," Bakura said, and 'later' instead of 'tomorrow' or 'three days' or however long.

"Come on. We'll get some food on the way."

Raine made a vague attempt to reach for the jars even when he took them from her -- there were things to be doing! -- but she had neither the energy nor the wherewithal to argue with Bakura right now.

They would be there later, as he said.

The mention of food made Raine recall she hadn't eaten all that much today, and was doing a terrible job of being a good example for those people she most often harangued to take care of themselves. Fewer in number, now-- no. Focus on Bakura. "On the way?" she said aloud, frowning slightly even as she trailed him.

"To the dojo," he replied, as if it were the most logical conclusion in the world, in a tone that was not stern and yet left no room for objection. "To stay, as needed. And don't start coming up with excuses, you'd do the same or pushier about it, don't say you wouldn't. I'm not the fruit basket type."

Raine choked on a laugh, and it was a startled sound. She hadn't been expecting to find anything to laugh about for some time, but the thought of Bakura turning up on her doorstep with a fruit basket, just as she once had--

It was unique. "All right," she said, because she couldn't argue, didn't want to be in an apartment that would be less a home without her husband in it. And after all she trusted Bakura, didn't she?

She wasn't sure she could eat, but she... should try. "It seems you've thought of everything," Raine said, and rubbed a hand across her eyes, to blot away any tears that had escaped her will. "I'll follow you. All right."

"I always think things ahead," he replied offhandedly, but after a moment's hesitation, amended the comment. "Although I didn't plan for this, seba-rekhet. You know as well as any that he may yet be back."

"I knew," Raine said, shaking her head. "That this was the more likely outcome. Even if we had forever, it was more probable that I would outlive him. And yet..."

She had hoped. Oh, how she had hoped.

"Even if he comes back, it may not be the same him," she said then, low and with a little difficulty. But she stopped there, as though continuing would be too hard, and sighed, and looked away. "...where did you plan to stop?"

To that he had no answer, because it was true. "More come back with their memories than without," he replied finally.

He named a shop which was on the way to the dojo and which was known for doing remarkably good stuffed sandwiches, a sort of kedanese pita. As long as they weren't given free rein to put in whatever struck their fancy, the meals were filling and easy.

Bakura felt like he should somehow be doing more, and yet... he actually knew very little, about fielding grief. Normally, anyway.

"...That's true." It was a scant hope, but it was one, and Raine resolved to hold on to that one. It wasn't impossible.

At his choice she simply nodded -- she didn't know if she'd be able to eat, but logically she needed to at least try, since the mortal body relied on input to convert to energy, and it would be exceptionally foolish to hinder that process for grief's sake.

Raine trailed Bakura in relative silence, more passive than she ever generally was in her day-to-day life, but it wasn't all that long before she abruptly spoke up. "Will you-- talk to me?" she asked, unconscious mirror of a favor he in turn had asked her many months ago. "Anything will do."

And talk to her he did, switching idly back and forth between languages as the translation magic of Tu Vishan allowed. The dojo was quiet, emptied of its patrons (he rarely did that, so when he made everyone clear out, they knew not to protest) and the back half apartment equally somnolent.

Raine had dropped off to sleep at some point, sitting on the couch; Bakura suspected it was the first time she'd slept since Solomon's disappearance. He'd put a blanket atop her, taking up residence in one of the chairs instead, working through the dojo's ledger. One of his bookkeepers, Penny, had disappeared. Right now, the thief was simply using it as an excuse for something to do.

When Raine stirs, he'll have moved to the kitchen, the sounds of domesticity drifting back to the living room.

It was something to focus on; something that wasn't the emptiness of knowing her husband and partner wouldn't be waiting for her when she returned home. Raine followed him through what languages she could, cajoling her tired mind into making sense of the words she remembered.

She barely even noticed when she tipped sideways on Bakura's couch, dreamless unconsciousness claiming her soundly.

In the morning the sounds of Bakura cooking woke her, and for a moment, all unaware of where she was, Raine thought it was Solomon, risen before her and taking the kitchen over before anyone else, especially Raine, could get to it. Then she pushed herself upright, and the blanket slipped off her shoulders, and the blessed obliviousness that sleep had brought went with it.

Raine spent several minutes there with her hands cupped together, tracing the shape of her wedding-ring over and over again. Finally she stopped herself with some effort, and got up to fold the blanket.

A little while after she headed into the kitchen, orienting on the sound of cooking and the familiar touchstone-feel of Bakura's mana. "Thank you," she said, when she was in the doorway. Her voice was rough, but serviceable. "It... would have been very difficult to be at home, last night. What are you making?"

"The kedan call it ec'hat," he answered, cracking another egg into the bowl. On the counter were bowls of the local variants of flour, rough grains, and something that looked like orange raisins. "I don't know if there's an equivalent in your world or in mine. They come out in little cakes though, and you dip them when you're ready to eat."

He purposely didn't comment on her mention that the night before would have been difficult for her at her house, because he knew that she didn't need him to remark on it. She would have done no less, were the positions reversed. She had done no less, in the past.

"There's coffee," he added, nodding at the mugs ready on the counter, since his hands were covered in egg and meal.

"Genis would know," Raine said, rueful. It would be a day for contemplating losses, wouldn't it? She went into the kitchen proper, paused for a moment to look over Bakura's shoulder at what he was doing -- it certainly looked credible -- and she was about to offer to help when the offer of coffee distracted her.

Immediately Raine brightened, if fractionally, and crossed to the mugs instead, lacing her fingers together around one and bowing her head to inhale. It smelled perfect. Of course it would.

She appreciated Bakura not commenting; or, at least, she thought she did. She didn't doubt she'd been heard and understood, but she rather thought it was equal measures kindness and his own general discomfort with expressing positive emotions explicitly. At the same time...

Raine was quiet for some time, leisurely drinking coffee and taking heart in the unfamiliar surroundings: a kitchen in which it was not easy to turn and expect to bump into her husband. "I still have something of his for you," she said at length, electing finally to charge at the subject head-on. "Something he was working on for you." She wasn't sure where she'd put her notebook, but this was a safe topic to focus on mostly, wasn't it?

"About the Dreaming," Bakura answered, neither statement nor question. Solomon had said that he would continue working on the portals, with the intent of helping Bakura's ghosts... the thief couldn't think of anything else that it could be.

"I can get it when you're ready," he replied. "That information isn't time sensitive."

At least, not to the degree that he'd inflict upon Raine having to dig through Solomon's effects so quickly if she were not ready to do so yet.

"That's correct," Raine agreed. She considered it -- Bakura would not make the offer if he didn't think she might need it -- and before long conceded that she might.

It would be difficult, to walk into Solomon's laboratory and not recall that he should be there, and how she had last seen him there. Even thinking of it was more difficult than it should be, and Raine had to rub at her eyes for a moment, abruptly irritated with her own lack of self-control.

"No," she said at length. "No, I need something to do, and Fletch has been taking some of the labor of the Guild off my hands. I want to help, and it will be... better if I'm busy." She pressed her lips together till she trusted her voice again. "In any case, I believe he may have been on the right track."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

so long as you come home at the end of the day [July, catchall, open]

C.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

TIMESKIP

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject