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Tired, but okay. [ Even days after the power was back and normalcy ostensibly resumed, it was hard to catch up on that sleep debt, particularly when Lune didn’t sleep well to begin with. She hadn’t taken any real injuries during the blackout: the main harm done was that bone-deep exhaustion, her magic ebbing low from over-use, her faith in the stability of this entire city shaken.

All of that that is going to take longer to shake off. ]

My car is dented, but still working. I was mostly— [ A pause, trying to remember how to phrase this word, which flex of fingers to express: ] Worried.

[ Lune knows she can speak out loud, of course — but there's something comforting about seeing Kenji's signs after the past week. The weight of performance sloughing off Kimiko's shoulders, the ability to sink into her own language rather than having to keep up with someone else's.

Worried, yes. That makes sense. ]

Me, too.

[ Shoulders remain tucked together, the hallway spread out around them. ]

I'm glad you're safe. I meant to check on you in person, there was just— [ A pause of her own now, fingers flexing with uncertainty. ] So much going on. [ And a lot of drama. ]

Of course. A lot of danger.

[ So many things had gone wrong over the course of that week, and there were so many reasons to be derailed, blown off-course. Lune tips her head back against the wall, and there’s some faint frustration etched in the sag of her shoulder against Kimiko’s. ]

I tried to text you. I think my phone still isn’t working. I want to get a…

[ She hesitates. Flex of fingers, fishing for vocabulary yet again. ]

Radio?

[ Radio is a very useful term for two kids in the involuntary employee of child-trafficking terrorists, so obviously there's a sign for it. Kimiko doesn't hesitate to share it with Lune, going through the simple one-handed twist of a word.

For the radio, Kimiko doesn't have much to offer. It's a good idea, right? Lune is smart, so anything she says is probably a good idea. ]

Do you want to come in? I'll make you some tea.

Yes.

[ This is one of the things Lune likes about the sign language: what with her still-growing vocabulary, there’s less hedging, less polite padding. She doesn’t have the fluency to talk in circles around a matter, so she cuts right to the heart of it instead.

They rise from the floor, and it shouldn’t feel as monumental as it does. Kimiko has extended the invitation to come over, several times; and Lune’s always found some excuse, some exceedingly sensible-sounding reason, to defer and put it off and only drop her friend off as far as the threshold. Lune’s never stepped foot inside. She could, in fact, count on one hand the number of private homes she’s visited in Panorama.

(Three, and one of them is her own.)

But hot on the heels of the blackout, with the aftertaste of fear still acrid on her tongue and hollowing her out, she decides some adjustments might be needed. Perhaps it’s worth knocking yourself out of your rut, pushing out of the comforting tedium of predictable routine, and taking a little risk —

Even if it’s just this: crossing the threshold of an apartment with a friend, coming in to have some tea and seeing how Kimiko and her other two roommates live. ]

[ With a smile, she clambers nimbly to her feet. Unlocks the door, ushers Lune in with a friendly gesture; a flat, tilted hand.

The place isn't terribly impressive. The flat grey carpet, off-brown countertop, and cheap wallpaper are fairly reminiscent of any motel room. There's a kitchen table with a few chips in the glaze, the legs. An unfolded convertible couch with sheets and blankets, pillows spread out, more unmade than made; a very neatly made ex-hospital cot with the frame covered in flower stickers tucked up against the far wall. The privacy of a bedroom, where Kimiko sleeps. A small bathroom, somehow shared by three women. An open window, a smattering of mismatched mugs, a fridge covered in magnets. On this side of cramped, maybe, but lived in, far from sterile.

Immediately, Kimiko introduces Lune to step one when entering an Asian household — take off your shoes. Telegraphed by leading by example, with a meaningful glance over her shoulder if needed.

The kettle is filled a third of the way with water, flicked on. ]

That's my room over there. [ Indicates a closed door. ] Do you want a snack? We have muffins and oranges.

[ And it wasn’t needed at all: both of Lune’s parents had been Asian (although where had, say, their great-grandparents come from before the Fracture? don’t worry about it!), and so she’s already leaning over to unlace her boots at the entryway and step out of them, setting them neatly off to the side. ]

Muffins, [ Lune answers, and looks around the motel room. It’s a little bigger than her and Sciel’s, in that there’s at least a proper bedroom attached with a door, but it’s also more cramped from three people all living in each others’ pockets in such a relatively small space. She can’t imagine sharing that many roommates long-term. She’d been so guarded about her personal space back home, even with her own family members. ]

How did you get the room? [ she asks, smiling. ] Rock paper scissors? Combat?

[ For legal reasons, this is a joke. ]

I lived here first.

[ At some point, she'd found Furiosa sleeping in her car and nearly getting an axe to the face by a creep. At some later point, Lucy had been sleeping on a bench. In winter. But Kimiko prefers it to living alone; it's easier to sleep with the noise of comfy than it is with silence.

A cheddar jalapeno muffin is cut in half, one half slid over to Lune. Green tea is poured into a pink mug with i'm the smartest person i know emblazoned on it in dramatic black script. This is also passed to Lune, of course. (Kimiko's mug is black, unornamented, but turns a bright shade of red as it gets full up with hot water and a layer of heat transfers into the ceramic. Yes, she chose both deliberately, out of respect to Lune's curiosity and mind powers.)

Once the few groceries she'd brought in are put away, Kimiko settles at the table. ]

Wanna "hear" a crazy story? It's long, but I might need a friend's perspective.

[ The choice of mug elicits a small smile, looking down at it — perhaps Lune ought to indulge in more whimsy in their choice of kitchenware back home, too — and she laces her palms around it as she joins Kimiko at the table, letting the green tea warm her hands. (They tend to ache a little sometimes, the chroma twinging into her joints; the warmth helps.) ]

Yes, of course.

[ The day that Lune ever refuses a crazy story, you can probably rest assured she’s been body-snatched. ]

[ It's crazy, as said. Crazy and interpersonal, and more than a little private — but what's the point of having such a wise bestie if not for things like this? There are times when she feels more comfortable with Lune than anyone else here, finding solace in their uncommon resemblance.

A sip of tea to warm her throat before she starts, and then—

Lune's hands get to rest a bit, Kimiko's don't. She starts with a basic bit of context. A man, my friend, older. Pushing mid-forties while she's barely thirty. John, Shield. Someone she's often been partnered with at the Dome, the recipient of frequent stage beatings followed by 2AM dinner courtesy of their favourite burrito stand. Little details are shared, handed out like they're small. He was the first person she taught any signs to. He bought her the spider necklace she always wears. He had people; she didn't. That was the first crack.

A break, another sip of tea. There are times when Kimiko's fingers tense slightly, caught between one word and the next. Trying to make it make sense.

The illusions of the train are hard to qualify. Kimiko pauses, promises Lune she'll try to explain the mechanics of it in detail later. Tells of an unlikely white dress in her closet, made of lace and fantasies, and how it followed her through a sequence of fake lives. Fakes memories.

They were married, they acted like it.
It was a hotel room, they were alone, so — obviously —
I told him, out loud, stop—

The sign for audibly speaking isn't easily confused. Fingers fanning over the throat, it's its own thing. And it's used here, now. ]

— and then they got into a fist fight.

[ By the time Kimiko reaches this point in the story, she's indelicately slumped in her chair. ]

It was only two hits before I stopped it, but still. Why are men so dumb sometimes?

[ There's more, of course. But she'll let Lune try to get a handhold in everything she's shared so far. ]

[ New as she is to the Diadem, Lune’s experienced some small diffusion zone oddities, oddnesses here and there, but nothing on such a major scale yet. Even the blackout itself wasn’t so unusual, when you get right down to it: mechanical systems do fail. Machines break down. The power goes out.

This, however… mon dieu. It’s a lot— the idea of fake lives and fake memories feels uniquely disquieting, because at least Sirène had dangled their own histories in front of them as bait, and not woven something new. Hadn’t painted someone else’s story over yours. She stares at Kimiko’s hands, attentive, taking it all in. Told him out loud prompts a faint double-take from the woman: a blink, a hesitation, before she has to re-focus in order to keep paying attention to the story. Since Lune hasn’t pried too deep about Kimiko’s muteness (a rare thing, a small piece of privacy and grace granted by a nosy woman who usually never hesitated to ask), she hadn’t even known Kimiko could talk.

At the first interlude, once Kimiko slumps and waits for some response, what Lune settles on is: ]

Who’s ‘they’? The other stupid man.

Edited (nitpicking) 2026-04-17 00:06 (UTC)

[ Describing Bucky Barnes is not an easy thing to do. Kimiko gives it her best try. ]

A friend of Shield's from home. I think.

[ The dynamic, more than anything, reminded her of M.M. and Butcher with their edges frayed, unwrapped electrical wires dipping into puddles of water. Ka-boom. Not — not friends, not friendly, but... comrades, sometimes. Sometimes less than that, but never nothing. ]

Or a teammate or something. I don't know.

[ Hard to describe. ]

He thinks I need protecting. Old-fashioned, I guess? He reminded me a bit of my dad. I keep having to remind him I'm not helpless just because— [ Her fingers jerk toward her throat. ]

They can be so annoying when they’re trying to be…

[ ‘Old-fashioned’ is the phrase she could echo from the flash of Kimiko’s fingers, a compound noun assembled from two other useful words, but she decides to supplement aloud: ]

Chivalric. Gentlemanly. Whichever.

[ And then Lune tilts her head, surveying her friend over the edge of her mug. There’s still a concerning angle to this story, however, one which flattens her expression into solemnity, her mouth a thin sharp line: ]

Did Shield stop when you said no?

[ A nod, a flick of the fingers. ]

Yes.

[ It never even occurred to her that there's a world where he wouldn't have until Lune asks the question, signing carefully over her mug. For all the horrors of Kimiko's past, she's never been in that sort of situation; the lines between yes and no have always been clear, sharp, understood, not crossed. If anything— ]

He thought I was his wife. He was thinking of her, not me.

[ If anything, Kimiko would have been taking advantage if she let it continue. An ugly situation dressed up in lace and dress blues, turning her stomach ever. She can't imagine ever touching him again. ]

As soon as I spoke up, he stopped. Figured it out.

[ Something in Lune finally relaxes. Okay. Good. She’s not going to have go out into Panorama to hunt down a man named Shield in order to set on him on fire. Which possibly makes her just as guilty as the others in terms of being protective over Kimiko, but ah, fuck it.

The worst hadn’t almost-happened. That’s better. ]

Good, [ she says. Then, idle curiosity: ]

Is Stupid-Man interested in you? Is that why he fought over you?

No!

[ At least, Kimiko fucking hopes not. She's fairly confident that he's just, well, weird and carrying around archaic notions of impropriety. He looks at her, sees nothing but a tiny girl who can't speak for herself, so he speaks for her. It's mildly infuriating; she's forced to push the idea of adding one-sided romantic feelings out of her mind before static noises take over. So, a little push to the word, fingers moving decisively. ]

Definitely not.

[ In truth, his actions have a much stranger genesis. You hurt her, he'd shouted, knowing nothing — ]

He thought Shield was cheating on his wife with me. [ Technically true, which — ugh. This is such a mess. ] And I think it's just something they... do. Like how brothers fight.

[ Lune busies herself with another sip of her tea, another nimble few bites of the muffin before resuming. ]

Makes sense, I guess, [ she says, although she doesn’t know actually know how brothers fight. Verso had a sister, Sol only had sisters, Gustave only had sisters. There was some sibling-style bickering between them, of course, but there was a slightly different tenor to it.

And as existentially complicated as this train-story is, with false memories and wives, it does seem straightforward in the more significant ways: Kimiko had taken care of herself, hadn’t needed this other man to step in for her sake. So… ]

What did you need my perspective for?

[ Lune’s question, in turn, leaves Kimiko a little confused. Why wouldn’t she want Lune’s general opinion on this mess? Obviously, her best-looking and most eloquent friend would have a vast pool of romantic and/or nebulously interpersonal experience to draw a helpful opinion from. Kimiko imagined a situation where Lune would go, ”ah, just like that one time when I—” and provide an impossibly helpful and prescient anecdote.

Not that she flounders for more than a second or two. Her throat moves as she swallows a mouthful of muffin. ]

There’s more. I ran into Shield during the blackout.

[ And that had been… not fun at all. Kimiko describes the argument in quick, couched terms; but she will admit, feeling somewhat small— ]

I hated being yelled at.

[ Unfortunately, Kimiko’s friend really doesn’t know anything about how best to wrangle complicated social situations —

However, Lune listens, attentive and solemn. Her mouth twists, dissatisfied at the sound of this fight, vicariously annoyed that this man could help cause such a mess and then simply vanish into the fringes, avoiding her friend.

Although… hadn’t Lune done much the same, once upon a time? Fled her own feelings and abandoned Sciel, refusing to address the messiness of that she’d left behind and didn’t know how to deal with. God, she remembers what that felt like. However, she does like to think that past the age of thirty — older and wiser, more tired, more experienced with grief — she hopefully wouldn’t make the same mistakes again. Is Shield too old for this particular mistake? Hard to tell.

(And she files this other piece of information away for a rainy day, just in case: Kimiko hates being yelled at. A good thing to know, since Lune often doesn’t hold back in an argument; not that she can picture what might drive her and Kimiko into a fight.) ]

Was that your first time talking since it happened? How do you feel about him now?

[ Asked carefully, slowly. Probing for a little more information, trying to get a better sense of it before she even tries to offer a stilted, confused outsider’s perspective on this situation. ]

[ And that's the million dollar question, isn't it? It's very rare for Kimiko to be jumbled up by her feelings; in most cases, she knows exactly how she feels. (Sure, she might spend half the time trying to talk herself out of her feelings, but—) In this instance, she's at a loss. She's in a muddle. It's as impossible as her stupid, stoppered voice. Of course, she discussed this with Gloria, didn't she? Back home, exploring the baby steps of therapy after years of turmoil.

Say what comes to mind. Sound it out. No wrong answer.

A pause; only a slight one. ]

I wish I could go back to the way things were before the train.

[ Of course, that was when— ]

I didn't know he was married. He never told me. [ He wore a wedding band on his left hand; she was too dumb to put two and two together. The humiliation sits in her chest like a lump, like a stone, but her hands shape the next words without much thought. No wrong answer. ] Before, he never acted like—

[ Fuck. Fuck. Her hands freeze, pausing. ]

Edited 2026-04-28 00:40 (UTC)

That’s on him, not you.

[ Quick, jerky movements cutting in when Kimiko freezes. Lune doesn’t have any personal experience with anything near this, but even if you’re worlds apart from each other— presumably if you have a spouse waiting for you back home, you would at least mention it before anything happened with someone new.

(And that thought is rich, coming from a woman who so habitually omits information of her own, but still.) ]

You can’t blame yourself for what you weren’t told.

[ Lune, perhaps fortunately, doesn't quite get to the heart of what Kimiko was on the cusp of. An anxiety skirting around the corners of her awareness, of seeing blond hair, blue eyes, stars and spangles, and—

It isn't fair. It's stupid. She needs to shut it off.

So, something simpler, but no less painful. ]

I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't... fuck someone else's husband. I didn't.

[ — and hoping, desperately, that Lune believes her. ]

[ Of course Lune believes her. She doesn’t have any reason not to. ]

There are worse things, even if you had, [ she points out. With the end of the world on the line, she’d had trouble bringing herself to care about social intrigue back home, the few times she’d overheard drama around the academy, some future expeditioner crying into his wine about a girlfriend straying —

(We’re all dead anyway, she’d thought at the time, too-dismissive.) ]

But I wish he had talked to you about it after. It sounds… frustrating.

[ She doesn’t have the exact flourish or fluency of sign to express this beyond ‘frustrating’, but she tries. ]

[ Kimiko appreciates the commiseration, although she isn't sure she agrees there are worse things. Why does it need to be a hierarchy? She doesn't want to be a homewrecker; that's the beginning and end of it.

It's helped to talk about it, but she's ready to move on from the conversation. ]

Thanks for listening.

[ For the next little while, the conversation drifts from topic to topic; Lune talks about her work, Kimiko listens easily, offering advice when she can (not terribly often) and support when she can't (much more frequently). When Lune finally rises and bids to head home, Kimiko sends her off with snacks. ]

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