go on, i can wait.

;~; you don’t have to be so nice to me, yanno.

it makes me feel all fuzzy in my gut.

3 word starters / accepting!

      it wasn’t difficult for vincent to dissociate himself from there here and now. despite his willful inclusions ( or being the outright cause ) in such chaos and mayhem, some of it managed to burn an image into his brain that took a long while to scrub out. those moments were a lot like a full computer lock: the frozen everything that even had the sound repeating itself in the same infinite loop that made every hair stand on end. of course he was silent in those moments, but it always took a pressured nudge to break him out of them.

      the hard restart.

      lucy’s voice broke through the somewhere out there set of mind and though the command itself didn’t register he did find her with his cold eyes. it took a moment for him to unclench his jaw, too. but when he did his voice was uncharacteristically soft.

3 word starters / accepting!

      his mouth went dry at the defeat in rathma’s tone. it was such an odd situation for inarius to be placed in: a higher being, the creator of sanctuary and former warrior of the high heavens. he’d slaughtered innumerable demons with an arc of his sword and rallied himself to the most noble of causes at the whims of the angiris council. there were very few things that stopped inarius in his path, that created an achilles’ heel so notable that it knocked the prophet off-kilter and kept him there.

      his children were one of those sore spots.            specifically, rathma.

      far be it from inarius to even display a measure of softness, but when his children were in pain he felt that. the defeat was like a war hammer caving his chest inward. he came to stand, tall and sturdy, beside the nephalem with one long and thin hand pressing gently between his son’s shoulderblades.

      “ no, rathma. you haven’t. ” balance. that’s all his child ever strode for. how could someone seeking such an honest measure of the scales even dream to claim such an error? inarius’ brows knit in consternation. his tone was quieter than normal, “ you’ve ruined absolutely nothing. ”

tension prompts / accepting!

“ our  muses  are  mistaken  for  a  couple  by  someone  else .” 

      their missions always seemed to intersect, somehow. ada wong had a habit of popping up in the middle of the dirt and grime with not so much as a fleck of dust on her, not so much as a hair out of place. she’d smirk that smug smirk at leon and proceed to stick her fingers into the middle of an already fucked up situation. but that’s the way it worked, ever since he met her in raccoon city.

      seldom did leon see her outside of a fringe apocalyptic setting, but make no mistake: he was working. and if he had to guess ( and it really didn’t take a genius, did it? ) so was she. except this time they weren’t surrounded by hordes of the infected, it wasn’t in the dead of night or in some country struck by disaster. they were in the middle of a corporate building, glass windows everywhere, in broad daylight. was he dreaming? pinch him, please.

      leon brushes willful hair from his face and crams his hands into the pockets of his leather riding jacket. ada is small beside his towering frame ( but he knows better than to assume her height correlates to weakness in any fashion ) as he falls in step beside her. as always, ada looks fantastic. leon just looks tired.

      “ what are you stealing this time, ada? ” he keeps his voice down, speaking almost through gritted teeth, and when he notices one of the corporate women looking at them when they pass he offers a tight smile. it doesn’t reach his eyes.

      it’s only when the third or so person glances at them a little too long that leon realizes he’s walking a bit closer to ada than necessary ( he’d argue that he doesn’t want to be overheard in his accusations of her work ). when she stops to thumb the elevator call button leon is still so close, and ada only smirks up at him as a response to his question.

      a plucky redhead stops a short distance from them, waiting for the elevator, too. a beat passes before she speaks, “ i’m uh — sorry if this is random or whatever. you guys are really cute together. ”

      what. leon’s shoulders tense, eyes shoot to the woman in accusation, ( is that a bit of red burning onto the apples of his cheeks?) but ada only wraps a slender arm through his own and pats his shoulder. her voice is cool when she speaks.

AERITH. 

RENO SHAKES OUT his baton one final time, wincing when even more sludge flicks its way from the baton to his shoes. This is the worst. Turk suits are like their pride — and he’s no exception. This suit is an extension of himself, a weapon and a defense, and some monster literally just exploded it’s internal organs—

DEEP BREATHS, RENO. Today is shit, but tomorrow has the opportunity to be the shit. Hopefully. At least after his shift is over he can swing by the office and— hmm. Actually. He’s going to have to weigh the pros and cons of making his fellow Turks suffer with him, or dodging back home and hoping this doesn’t make it anywhere that isn’t his report to Tseng.

AERITH’S CHEERFUL VOICE brings him out of his thoughts, and he resists the urge to scowl again— his suit. His lovely, lovely suit— before he turns to face her. Tries not to let the disgust show on his face when the dirt on his suit brushes against bare skin.

THE URGE TO SCOWL lessens when he faces her— she always has that effect, somehow. There are very few people in the world whose irritation can withstand Ms. Gainsborough’s enthused smile, and Reno sure as hell isn’t one of ‘em.

SO HE LETS OUT whatever irritation he’s feeling with a sigh, shoulders slumping slightly. “Yeah— the suits a lost cause. I’ll need to get home to change before my next shift.”

HIS GAZE SHARPENS. “Speaking of— this stays between you and me, Princess. I’ll never live it down, otherwise. And then you’ll have a crying Reno on your hands.”

A PAUSE. Reno is teasing her, mostly. Mostly. “You don’t want to make me cry, do you, Princess?”

      “ when we get out of here, i can try and clean it up for you? ” her inquiry is genuine, her head even canting slightly to the side as she presses gently. she did urge him to beat the snot out of the slum monster, it only seemed fair that she foot the dry cleaning for it. she’s content with chatting the turk up, but perhaps not here, however. instead she wraps her thin fingers around her staff once more and gives the elbow of reno’s suit a soft tug. come this way. “ but we should leave, now. unless you want to fight some more? ”

      and maybe he does. who knows. aerith only knows what the rumors of the turks are, nothing concrete. and she isn’t one to judge based off of hearsay --- no, reno seems nice enough, even if he is indulging her hero fantasy. she settles with forging her own opinion on the man and his mysterious organization. not shinra --- she has opinions about them, but the turks themselves. he was, after all, a person ... and people deserved a fair shot.

      letting her fingers slip from his sleeve, the flower merchant backpedaled away from the scene of reno’s fight, her wide smile still ever-present. “ i wouldn’t want to make you sad, nope.  but something tells me that you need more than just a ruined suit to cry. or a spoiled reputation. ” her chuckle is soft, and when she turns back to face the proper direction it’s with a soft spin. “ i promise not to tell anyone about what happened. it can be our secret, okay? ”

She moved into the room now, hands clasped as she looked over his form. It wasn’t a skill often expected of warriors, much less older wardens who spent most of their time in the wild, just as Ruby herself wasn’t expected to be able to lift a sword, much less use one. At least neither of them were disappointing anyone with these shortcomings, right?

“You don’t like it?” She asked, tilting her head to the side and judging his stance. “Or do you not like your lack of skill surrounding it?”

      he sighs through his nose at the frustration, though it’s eking away as the moments pass. by the time his visitor is in the room it’s fleeing wholly and blackwall relaxes a bit --- at least his shoulders are less stiff and defensive. his eyes scour the veil covering her features, and while the question is surely at the tip of his tongue he’s at least controlled enough to keep it from coming out. he’s seen more curious things in his day --- and pressing into the obvious is not a weakness of his.

      “ both, i suppose. don’t have much a use for it, until now at least. forgive an old man for being disappointed in his inability to learn quickly. ” he’s hardly that old, but he sure feels it.

❛ do you? there’s our connection then. he is all about money, isn’t he? valuable is probably a compliment in his book. ❜

          her answering laughter is quick and quiet, but the smile remains as she empties the rest of her glass and pushes off the counter towards him.

❛ well, i can always combine the two, if you so desire, mr. greco the banker. can i call you charlie? your official title is a little long. ❜

          it’s less of a walk and more of a saunter when she finally moves towards him, holding her hand out for a handshake.

❛ he likes to keep the pretty girls to himself, charlie. luckily for you, i’m not someone who can be kept, it doesn’t suit me. ❜

❛ this means you’re the one with the magic tongue, that’s why your name is familiar. mr. —- tango, spoke highly of you and how good you are, of course. how do you feel about a job interview? you might have one in about a minute, if you’re so inclined. otherwise, i’m happy to go back to awful compliments and wondering how long till you have to loosen your tie. ❜

      “ a backhanded compliment. ” charlie corrects softly, but the details hardly seemed to matter. so long as the books looked good, people wanted him around. but if he came to collect ... that was a different story entirely.

      it’s hard to keep the smirk from his face, so he doesn’t even bother. by now he must look a little smug, but between the two of them it seemed appropriate. “ you can call me charlie. ” his words are, perhaps, a bit breathy. like the purposeful sway of her hips drew the air out of him with a fine curl of a finger. come to me. and it did.

      his handshake is firm, his touch lingering perhaps just a moment too long, and his head cants to the side as she mentions a job interview. of course he’s interested. he could flirt and babble about work all day. “ no, you don’t seem like someone who’d let themselves be kept. i’d be so bold to say it suits you. ” a bold statement for a woman he’s known for less than two minutes, but it feels right.

      and he laughs, mirthful and hearty, “ magic tongue. yeah, something like that. i’d say i’m interested in a job interview, or at least hearing the pitch for one. though i’d caution that my skills don’t come cheap. ” and if she’s here, he thinks that might not be a problem. but there’s a saying about assumptions ... “ doesn’t take a lot to get me to loosen my tie. ”

      “considering recent events,” that he had no part in, but knew deep down they couldn’t be stopped - not even if he wanted to get directly involved, “this decay can be reversed.” not likely. even rathma knew that, but while he stayed stagnant the world moved on. the prime evils made their plans and he was blind to them; trusting sanctuary in the hands of humans. 

the one’s that were saved from extermination so long ago, but now there were others; the very one’s that he believed gone had returned and it came at a price. the entirety of sanctuary past the brink of chaos and  there was nothing he could do to stop it. nothing, but attempt to bridge the cap, and find a way to restore the balance to all things. 

to create a natural order to replace the one that was broken. an order that he wasn’t quite sure would be sufficient, but he was sure that he could come up with a better idea than the prime evils or anyone else for that matter.

“for life on sanctuary always finds a way to survive. i am a testament to that… even if many others who have appeared over the years believe otherwise.” 

      inarius chuckles. a soft sound, something doubting, but he won’t directly cross rathma’s attempt to assuage him. he’s pensive for a beat, considering the weight of the nephalem’s words. it feels like a hopeless cause. and the angel found it far too easy to slip the blame onto himself --- though he was far from innocent in the crisis impacting sanctuary.

      it’s the mention of life finding a way, survival: his son that breaks inarius’ concentration. turning from his perch he finds the other in his gaze, steps closer, and presses a hand to his shoulder. “ i find myself amazed at your longevity. proud. ” even if rathma was always a step out of the circle, inarius couldn’t deny how independent he was. separate, but involved. always in the shade, a pair of watching eyes.

      “ i won’t let it all fall to ruins. not completely. ” but could he do? anything was better than nothing at all, surely. “ i’ve no means to outright fight. and subterfuge seems so cowardly. ” the angiris council would never involve themselves --- not unless it meant dismantling sanctuary entirely. inarius wouldn’t risk it, would never be so weak as to ask. 

      she’s clutching her staff behind the turk’s back, peering over his shoulder as he moves. it’s like a dance --- swinging this way and that, electricity shooting off of his baton and arm in pointed arcs. her eyes are wide and her mouth shaped into a soft ‘ o ’ as she observes his handiwork. sure --- maybe aerith could have tossed out a spell here or there to help, but it was entirely too intriguing to watch him work.

      and despite the grand finale, or the destruction of the front of his suit with artistic splatters, the flower girl finds herself tucking her weapon into the crook of her arm and clapping for his victory. she decided to ignore his biting remark --- she was far too impressed with the waltz to let it bother her. and why should it?

      “ that was impressive! you’re really good at that, you know? ” her smile is bright, even beaming, and she moves to his side --- as if he wasn’t the threat he just displayed himself to be. “ oh, uh ... sorry about your suit. ”