#WAUGH.... HWAGH!!!!!

[dnangelic]

what was there ever to do but laugh ? gaiety was a guard ; it tended to well-serve him . so long as he could still conjure up all sorts of falsities and absurdities and frivolous flights of fancy , then the dragging weights of an inescapable reality snapping at his heels and hounding him for lifetimes could still readily be fluttered away from , if only just for a moment . so could he too gradually , comfortably disappear --- the great phantom thief was , after all , at least partly a magician , and members of the occupation seemed to have earned the right to their titles only as soon as they could transmute dull cloth to doves and pull snow-white rabbits out of pitch , empty spaces .

spinning plates , smoke and mirrors , balls and chains and drowning birds in locked up boxes --- look , his tricks ! his nonsense that defied logic ! of course the grandiosity of his display would still struggle to entertain a rough-and-tumble cynic and skeptic , the sound of everything seemingly beginning to crash and erupt around him just as readily as sakura's voice snaps and roars .

he halts ; freezes abruptly at the declaration ---

--- snatched out of his spectacularly building show , out of his thoughts , and thrown abruptly into the cold with the light still licking at his feet . he watches haplessly as a weight smashes onto the stage of his thoughts like a loose-dropped pulley setting free a one-ton fist , or a teetering light that had finally fallen and splintered wood , now left weakly blinking .

dark . just dark . ( ... do you even know what you're saying ? )

owlish , shockingly awkward , even afraid --- it's a mercy that he's taken a place beside her turned away , sakura therefore failing to bear any witness to the strange mixture of emotions each fighting for a turn on just one face . what about his dereliction ? his ruin ? the state of her uniform and any answer regarding it had become the very least of his blazing concerns . she's shuttered everything and he remains in the leftover silence , thinking --- thinking --- trying to think --- coming up with nothing in his thoughts but a numb buzz and the dull , smothered-seeming pound of his heart .

( what ... just what the hell are you talking about --- ? )

how could someone have felt so far away even while they were just right behind him ? if he weren't a coward , he could have turned ; brought his touch to sakura and bridged them by her side , the shoulder --- but he knows , be it by his own discomforting temperature or her own hackling habits , that he shouldn't have ; that his excuses carried far more weight than simply being excuses , the rest of him trapped in a frenzied , dizzying spin .

if only he could have laughed again , and yet its servitude felt broken . shattered . any sound now would have only been a mockery , not only of itself but sakura and his words to her . so he merely listens --- staying still , basking in the irony of what must be , he thinks , a shared affliction , despite their stark differences . even if he were the first to say , then she still might have been the first to demonstrate ---

' that so ? '

his own voice is no smaller nor larger than it's always been in retort . it gently cradles sakura's own , the soft mewl of it wrapped by his usual lyrechord carry , absent of malice ; empty of mischief . did she truly even think him a person ? a proper human being , whose presence --- opinion , bore any sort of legitimate worth ? and not what thing he truly was ; live mask and inherited character , a shadow bound to its immortal role , now stripped to whatever it was that was left , this hungry empty ; this stark nothing but a drowsing cherub and discontent .

still , even the sensation of a bruise could birth from the press of something happy . words are clutched at ; he wields his silence and the slow , low speech of his voice carefully .

( --- so were you . ) ' then i guess ... to something like me , you've only ever been just "sakura," too . '

his eyes shut . he wouldn't entertain anymore ; there was nothing left to be said . and yet even so , somewhere in the midst of the heightened emotion wearing off into a collapsing exhaustion escapes one last phrase . as simple , demanding , and cherishing as :

' goodnight , sakura . sleep well . '

“Grrr, damn you, why’re you laughin’ at me!?”

As much as that expression is...surprisingly, actually, kinda nice on his features (he looks genuinely pleased that Haruka said what she did), his amusement serves to do nothin’ but piss her off. Him jumpin’ up and outta the way of her fist is mildly irritating—she expected that!—but she’s practically comfortable with it at the sound.

Because who the hell is he to doubt her and her abilities—!!!

“My name isn’t a damn alias, anyway, and I’m not some stupid detective!! You’re over there creatin’ random crap to believe like always—!!”

Lies and slander, puttin’ words in her mouth, he’s always doin’ some kinda shit to’er!! Doesn’t it ever get tiring, keeping up with so many false words and things said? Forget all the stories and myths for a second, this seems like the thing that would get most exhausting for’im.

“‘sides, you bein’ the Phantom Thief or whatever doesn’t matter to me anyway!” She snaps, leaning back, ass to heels, for a second before she rises back up to stand. “When you’re here, you’re just Dark, and trust me—that’s more than memorable enough.”

To her, anyway, but that’s kinda her own point: One or two people rememberin’ someone seems like plenty. But, to counter her point, and as she was just thinkin’, she really doesn’t know him, either.

“...but is it that you did or didn’t take my uniform, after all? Start makin’ some sense already.”

Not that it really matters—she can always ask again when she’s more conscious of the fact that she’s wondering about it at all, but for right now, it’s just somethin’ comin’ outta her mouth; somethin’ for her to say as her brain goes on overload to think about just how little she knows about one Dark Mousy.

To be fair, not knowing a lot about him doesn’t bother her; no more than it bothers her that she doesn’t know a shit-ton about the pasts of some of her fellow classmates, which is also pretty much none. Even at times where she finds she’s learning to read between the lines a bit, or at times when he is being genuine but it seems like an accident, she tries not to rise to’em as much as she can—if he wanted her to, he’d find a way to let her know. And even if he didn’t meet that expectation, then fine; he’s his own person, after all, not whatever she or anyone else could conjure up in their heads.

In any case, her point is simple: Her own lack of knowledge about him isn’t something she’ll make a big fuss of. She just... Again, she thinks it’s a little sad that nobody seems to really know him.

Asking him something far more outright than she’s currently done like Would you want people to know the real you? (because ‘Wouldn’t there be too much room for error if you had too many stories?’ and ‘If things get outta hand, then who can really know you?’ are, in fact, way different to her) is counterintuitive to everything, though—if only because, if someone ever asked her that, she wouldn’t hesitate to knock teeth outta their mouth.

At least he’s never as violent (well, as far as she knows, anyway). At least his bobbin’ and weavin’ amounts to somethin’ besides irritating the daylights outta her.

(...maybe one day, though, you can trust me enough? —that’s the type’a thing people gotta earn, though, so she won’t ask that, either.)

“...my fists are perfectly cool, though, I’ll have you know.”

As a matter of fact, they have been for a little bit now; she even stood by, calm as anything, as he lowered himself back into the futon, turned onto his side and put his back to’er and everything. The roll of her eyes is second-nature, when it comes as a reaction to some shit he’s doin’, but the fondness is a bit of a more recent development (not that he’s gotta know that, though.)

(...then again, when it comes to all that’s gone down tonight, he probably already knows. Well, no big loss.)

“But fine; also, you can just say you’re tired, yanno.” She adds on, another shake of her head following just once again fond. “No need to send me to bed.”

Him enacting some kinda bedtime is the least of her concerns, though, so she has no trouble relenting. If nothing else, too, she intends to leave everything there—she turns on her heel to flip the light switch off, turns her own back to his just to do it, but then—

—but then he says that, and it stops her cold.

The fact that it isn’t an unheard of sentiment for her isn’t what makes her do it, it’s the fact that he’s being simple with it. There’s been a million and one caveats to hearing those same words outta other people’s mouths (and she remembers them, remembers every single one, but she has to physically bite her tongue to keep the thoughts at bay), but when he says it, it’s just... Plain.

‘It’s a nice name. Sakura.’

(...am I hoping for anything else?)

...idiot. Don’t do this to yourself.

She flips off the light before she turns on her heel again to walk back to the futon in the dark. Ironically, she’s always been a little scared of it—nobody ever cared to make sure the monsters in her closet didn’t exist—always seeing it as this maw of nothingness that’d sooner swallow her up than anything else, but...tonight, it isn’t so bad.

(If only because the one in her chest is the one threatening to eat her alive.)

She crawls right under the comforter with him, though, and just turns her back to his again, too. Tries, for some time, to not say a damn word. Part of her can’t—if she opens her mouth, there’s equal opportunity for her to cry and for her to get angry—but another part of her can’t not say anything.

“You think so?” If her voice sounds small, that’s not her business. Not much of his, either.

“...you’re the first person to add nothin’ else to that.”