vatheon | 06: suddenly friendships

Entry tags:

06: suddenly friendships

Who: Shiro and The Dolorosa
When: March 3rd, during the day
Where: In the shopping area
Style: prose
Status: closed

After several days of serious talks with his roommates and brooding about said talks, Shiro finally decided to go out and try to clear his head a bit. He didn't have a specific place he hung out yet, since he hadn't been in the city long enough to find a place of his own. So, he just wandered the city, walking around while trying not to think about the things that were stressing him out.

It didn't work, of course. It never did. Talking with people he trusted, that's what helped with his problems. The only issue with that was that the only person in the city he trusted enough to confide in wasn't the kind of person to talk about personal problems with, which left Shiro with pretty much no options in the "go talk to someone" category. That left walking and brooding.

Of course, if someone is walking and brooding, they're likely to not pay attention to the people around them and miss the fact that the person in front of them had stopped walking. Which was exactly what had happened, and Shiro of course bumped into that person. He started to mutter an apology as he looked up, but that apology died on his lips as he continued to look up. Damn, that person in front of him was tall!

That troll, Shiro quickly corrected in his mind as his eyes were drawn to the horns. He had met trolls before, but he didn't realize how tall they could be.

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When one is walking and brooding the last thing one might expect is for the person in front of them to suddenly stop. Conversely, when someone is pausing to make sure they're going in the right direction down an unfamiliar street, the last thing they might expect is for someone to suddenly bump into them. The troll jumped slightly when she was hit, turning around to see who her assailant might be.

Shiro was, perhaps, just lucky that she was one of the more good-tempered trolls.. and that she immediately recognised him.

She smiled, noting the way his gaze was drawn upwards and giving him a moment before clearing her throat. The Dolorosa was on the tall end of the scale for a troll, though the Grand Highblood was alarming even when put next to her (of course, he was alarming regardless). "Hello," she said, more than pleased to finally meet this human in person. "I apologise, I am slightly out of my way and a little lost. Are you alright?"

It wasn't until The Dolorosa turned around that Shiro finally recognized her. The horns should've been a dead giveaway, all of the trolls he had met had different ones, but he had been too busy gawking at how tall she was to notice.

That was another thought to add to his pile of brooding thoughts. Shiro was used to being towered over by other men, but rarely did he face a woman who was taller than him.

"Yeah," he said, recovering from his moment of being stunned, "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."

Still, he was glad he bumped into her, of all people. There were some people here who would have started a fight over it.

She chuckled gently, a small smile showing pointed teeth, and bowed her head slightly in response to his apology. By now, she'd grown used to being stared at on account of her height. At least, it was usually her height. It seemed that most people here were used to trolls by now.

"That, I could see," she responded, that smile still playing about her lips. "Your mind must be somewhere far from here."

Or, she assumed so. After all, she was quite hard to miss.

Even if Shiro hadn't been used to trolls yet, he came from a world full of demons, so seeing someone with horns and fangs really wasn't that unusual. It usually meant trouble, but it wasn't startling and new by any means.

"Yeah, just thinking about the worries of an old man," Shiro admitted, though he spoke freely as he said it. The Dolorosa appeared to be old enough to understand that everyone had problems, so he had no problem admitting that he had his own. It helped that it was really easy to speak to The Dolorosa, for some reason.

"But enough about my problems, you said you were lost?"

Certainly old enough, and with many of her own problems too, but like Shiro, it was rare that she could find someone to express them to. There were those she loved and trusted, but she would not wish them to worry about her.

At the question, though, there was a flicker of surprise then another quick laugh as she shook her head, more at herself than the inquiry. "Only a little. I am still familiarising myself with this place." The bridge of her nose wrinkled as she smiled almost playfully.

"May I impose upon you to lead me to more familiar surroundings? Perhaps we might talk on the way."

It's not quite the distraction Shiro had been looking for, but it'll work. He can't resist chatting up a pretty lady anyway.

"Sure," he said, and he indicated to one of the nearby streets as he said, "That way leads back to the Plaza, if you like?"

He wasn't sure what they would talk about, but there had to be some common ground between them somewhere.

She glanced off down the street, giving a small nod. The Plaza would be as good a place as any to get her bearings from. Next time, she'd have to be more careful.

"Thank you." The troll gave an 'after you' gesture, falling into step beside him when he moved off. "Have you been busy since we last spoke?"

Shiro nodded, and then he started to walk, though he kept the pace relatively slow so that The Dolorosa could keep up. "Relatively busy," he admitted, "There's half-a-dozen teenagers living where I live, and there's another dozen or so I gotta keep an eye on besides that. It's hard, being the responsible adult."

But he said that with good humor. As hair-tearingly difficult as it was to mentor kids sometimes, it was one of the few things in his life he was actually proud of, and he couldn't see himself doing anything else.

"What about you," he asked, "Been up to much?"

Keeping up wasn't a problem, not with her height, but the slow pace was nice. She had nowhere to be, in any case. A low sound of amusement left her as she listened to him speak, head slightly bowed and head cocked so she wouldn't miss anything. She could understand the difficulties of children, having been placed in a very unique position amongst her kind. There was nothing that quite compared to flying blind in parenting in a society where such a concept was utterly alien.

"Ah, me?" One shoulder was lifted, then dropped. "Nothing of note. It seems that many people remember me from my last visit here. I have been reacquainting myself with some of them, and meeting some of my own kind that I never before had the chance to speak with."

"Last visit, hmm? So you've been here before?"

Shiro hadn't been told that some people could leave and then come back. He thought it was a one-time-deal kind of thing. But then again, it makes sense that people could come and go. If they could be brought here once, then why not more than once?

Except for himself, he realized suddenly. If he went home, he wouldn't be coming back here.

"I have been told as much, though I have no memory of it." From what she had worked out, it seemed that her last visit had also been from an earlier point in her life, but she had no recollection of time spent here nor a break in her own timeline.

"But people remember me, and they have been quite courteous."

It sounded strange, for someone to go somewhere with no recollection of it. But then again, it was painfully easy to tamper with memories. Whoever was reviving them, they could have altered memories as well.

"That's fortunate," he said finally, "Even if you don't remember it, others can. Though it is curious, I wonder why memories would be tampered with here."

It made him think of the awkward situation he had been in here, where one of his closest friends had a different recollection of how things had happened in their world. Could that be the result of memory-tampering as well?

It sounded just as strange to her, but people definitely remembered her and things she'd done, and she didn't see the use in implanting memories of someone like her into people purely for the sake of it.

"I have not yet come across anyone who recalls previous time here, but perhaps there are some. Perhaps I will make enquiries." For her own personal interest, if nothing else, though she wouldn't object to sharing her findings with Shiro. Speaking of which.. She looked over at him again, thoughtful.

"It interests me that we have not met before now."

Shuro just shrugged at that. "I haven't been here that long," he admitted, "Only a month or so. There were a lot of people here I didn't expect to ever see again, and I spent quite a bit of time repairing bridges with them first."

Even though he was smiling, there was a hint of sadness to his voice. Meeting these people again was both a happy and a sad occasion.

"Only a month? I had thought longer.. you seem so settled here." There was a faint frown as she said that, a momentary slowing of her pace as she looked away from him to think. Just as quickly, though, she pushed it away and lighted a hand on his shoulder.

"You have had no difficulties, I hope. I know that for myself there were people I did not wish to lay eyes on again." Not that all of them were the same now.. though some of them hadn't changed.

"Truthfully, most of 'em weren't so tough. But there's one person, she's been dead for fifteen years. I never expected to see her alive again."

It's nice, to see Yuri again. She was one of Shiro's students, and he's always happy to see his students, even the bratty ones. But he's never quite gotten over the guilt of everything that happened with her, which can make it difficult to talk with her.

That almost made the Dolorosa pause in her steps. She faltered, but kept walking, letting out a little chuckle.

"Not long ago, you told me something that drew similarities between us. I believe that you have just touched upon something else."

Shiro noticed the falter in the Dolorosa's pace, and her words made him curious. "You've come across someone long-dead as well?"

The similarities between them were almost frightening.

She nodded once. It wasn't something she was fond of thinking on. The memory was still so fresh even after so long that it hurt to recall it. "I have," she murmured.

"Signless. My little one. I watched his death and carried the guilt of it with me for countless sweeps until my own found me, and brought me here, where he lives again."

Oh. It was her kid she had seen killed.

Shiro wasn't really sure how to respond to that. In his case, it had been a student of his who had died, not one of his kids. And as painful as it was (because really, his students were like his kids in a way), he couldn't imagine what it would be like to watch your own child die.

"I'm sorry," he eventually said, "That sounds terrible." It's something he always feared seeing, but thankfully had never come to pass for him.

"It was.. but we always knew that our story's end would not be a happy one." She smiled at him, regardless, and shook her head as if to clear it of the memory. While it wasn't one that would ever leave her, she could at least push it to the back of her mind.

"But, still, I would not have changed a thing."

The Dolorosa let out a quick, steadying sigh, then closed her eyes for a moment, carefully tucking away the hurt that had come into her expression. It was quickly cleared, and she shrugged one shoulder.

"Tell me, Shiro, what is on your mind? You do not strike me as the kind to bump into people in the street."

Damn. And here he was thinking that Dolorosa had forgotten about that in all of this serious talk.

But somehow, he found it difficult to come up with a convincing lie around her. Normally he was pretty good with coming up with a story on the fly, thanks to years of hanging around with the lie-smith himself, but those talents were failing him at the moment. Instead, he just sighed, and started to relate his worries in a somewhat condensed version.

"With me and my boys, our story was the opposite of yours: I was the one who died, instead of them. In our world, I held a pretty important rank within a certain organization, and I wasn't expecting to die so young so I left a lot of things unfinished. But my boys, they're from a time long after I've passed, so hearing about the mess I left behind is...troubling."

'Troubling' was the nicest word for it. Shiro had nearly lost his temper when he hard heard just who had replaced him and what he had done to Rin.

It wouldn't have been something she would have pressed, but she found herself pleased when he didn't turn her enquiry aside a second time. Of all people here, she had found that Shiro was one that she related to the most closely, with the similarities between their lives despite having lived on different planets, in wildly differing societal structures.

"I see.." She frowned as she turned that over in her head, making sure she understood. The Plaza was getting closer, and she'd rather not have this conversation end abruptly. "But you could not have known.. few of us have the luxury of planning for our deaths."

The troll paused, then lifted a hand to place it lightly on his shoulder. "Continue?"

"I know, but I thought I'd at least have until they were all grown up..."

Shiro sighed. There was no use in worrying about the 'what could have been' and 'what he should have done'. It was done and over with, and all he could do was help Rin and Yukio as much as he could here.

"In my world, there's humans, and then there's demons. Barring a few exceptions, the two races don't get along that well." The Dolorosa would have needed that quick background to understand the next part of Shiro's story.

"Rin and Yukio's birth father is a demon. Yukio looks human, so he doesn't get a lot of grief about it, but Rin is very obviously a half-demon. He's got enough demon in him to scare off most humans, but he's got enough human in him to be ridiculed by full-blooded demons. His life isn't going to be an easy one, even with his brother there to support him."

Shiro was never worried about Yukio. Yukio has a good head on his shoulders, so he will be fine no matter what. It has always been Rin he was worried about.

She nodded, taking in that little piece of information. While 'demon' means something a little different to her - the Demoness comes to mind - she can at least get the idea from the rest of it. Humans were strange, she thought, and she was getting that impression more and more from every interaction she had with them. It was just a credit to their species to have people like Shiro in it, who certainly gave her a good impression.

"He must have had a difficult childhood," she responded softly, thinking on her own little one. He was ridiculed, too, by so many who knew of his blood colour, but it had always been something she knew would happen, something she'd tried to protect him from for as long as she could, then warn him about when protecting him was no longer an option.

"Are they angry with you?"

Shiro shook his head at that. "Not at me, specifically. He's not the type to hold onto an anger like that. Knowing him, he's angry at himself."

He doesn't remember much about his death, since he was possessed for part of it, but he does remember the look on Rin's face when Shiro chased Satan out for good. It's one of those things he would never be able to forget, no matter how much he tried.

"I suppose it's more my problem than his. He has a good life here, and he was making due back home. It's good to know that he's alright, but at the same time I can't help but feel useless, since there's nothing I can do to help him now." Shiro was a father, through and through. He wasn't so concerned with dying so much as he was with how his boys would make it after he was gone.

They really had to stop having things in common. The Dolorosa was only more and more surprised with every new interaction that she had with this human, that their lives could have been so similar in so many ways. She nodded in sympathetic understanding.

"We can only do our best for our children, Shiro, for as long as we are able." It feels strange to say - she's still growing used to that idea of 'family' as humans would understand it. "No one can ask more of us than that. We have been given more time here, and we are lucky to be able to spend it with our loved ones."

Her hand alights on his shoulder again as she speaks gently. "It should not be time spent on regrets."

That actually got a little bit of a laugh out of Shiro. "You know, I was just telling someone that same thing," he admitted, "I guess I should follow the advice I give, huh?"

Still, it was nice to hear someone else say it to him. It made him feel a bit better, like a weight was taken off of his shoulders. "...Thanks. For listening, I mean."

"If you are going to give such advice, then it might be to your benefit to believe it," she said, smiling as he laughed. That was much better. She nodded then, happy to have been able to help him.

"It is what.. friends are for, is it not?" It was a tentative suggestion - this human thing called 'friendship' wasn't as alien to her as it may have been to other trolls, given her unconventional life with Signless and his companions, but she had never really had a name for it before. She felt a kinship with Shiro, and felt that they were friends, despite this being their first physical meeting.

She was right, to be sure. Friends did support each other when they were feeling down. Shiro was just more used to being the one doing the supporting, rather than being supported.

But it felt alright. For some reason, talking was a lot easier when it was the Dolorosa he was talking with. "Mmm," he said, nodding slightly as he did so.

By that time, they were in the plaza again. "Well, here we go," Shiro said, taking the change of topic easily, "Recognize where you are now?"

She looked around, though it wasn't without a hint of regret that she realised he had done exactly as he said and taken her to a place that she once again found familiar. Still, she nodded and smiled, letting out a relieved-sounding sigh.

"Yes, thank you. I must admit that I am a little embarrassed at getting myself so easily lost. I have enjoyed our talk, though.. Perhaps I will see you again soon."

"I look forward to it," Shiro said, and a moment later he added, "Ah, but hopefully next time we can talk about less depressing things. I don't want you getting the wrong impression and thinking that's all there is to me."

He would have liked to have an excuse to stay longer and chat some more, but it sounded like the Dolorosa had things to do, and he didn't want to keep her if she was busy.

"I already have the highest opinion of you, you need not worry about such things." She smiled, lifting one corner of her skirt in a little half-curtsey. Shiro was definitely her favourite human.

"But I do not want to keep you. What's that phrase.. ah.. don't be a stranger?"

Aww, that gave him a warm fuzzy feeling right there.

"Heh, alright. I'll message you sometime." Sometime soon, even. He liked the Dolorosa, she was a very kind person. He definitely wanted to get to know her some more.

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06: suddenly friendships

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