He imagines what he might be if not a Marine, late at night in his bunk, when sleep decides to dangle itself just out of his grasp. He’s spent years beating back the comments of nepotism due to his relationship with Sengoku, proving himself. Rosinante doesn’t like to think he’s working on his father figure’s whims, because how could anyone turn away from the opportunity to do good?

It’s not guilt, and yet, it is, two contradictory halves, because Rosinante is, as he’s finding, good at wearing layered hats. He hasn’t been a Celestial Dragon for many years, but he’ll never forget the privileges that tore his family apart. He’s making amends as much as he’s coming for Doffy.

His clumsiness works against him every day, with legs that never seemed to stop growing when he was a teenager. Maybe he’ll never be a top foot soldier, but he’ll never stop trying, never stop throwing himself forward. Rosinante’s cleverness and will will see him a spy in the coming years, while he toils now in the training yards, on scouting missions. @a11sunday is often his partner, as if by rights karma alone sewed their paths together. She’s disgruntled most often, but he sees through the veneer.

“I think you like when I’m your problem,” he tells her cheerfully, knowing full well she could easily dump his body in the med ward and make him someone else’s issue to fix. Rosinante groans when the next step pulls at his aching side, pushing him to lean harder on her. “This wasn’t officially sanctioned.” He jerks his thumb at his actual partner, unloading supplies from their ship, “So what’s your excuse?”

looks like it's my lucky day.

He makes it so hard in all his raw earnestness. @logosmanteia is perfectly imperfect and real, all sharp edges and wide-grinned enthusiasm. He’s unfiltered and unchanged, and she takes notice of it every time they talk. Denji doesn’t give in to his devil, or his boss, or the odd irritants that sprinkle throughout the average day. He asks the world to meet him head on.

She wants it for herself, and that’s half of it, in getting him to trust her. Reze can count on both hands how many times she’s forgotten herself mid-conversation, listening instead of plying him to give another piece of his attention. Another piece of his heart. She can’t remember the last time she had a friend that didn’t simply disappear, or want something from her in return.

She should hate him for it, how every shitty instance in his life hasn’t broken his spirit. If she’s honest with herself, she does, gulping deep breaths when alone to stop her devil from breaking through her skin and ruining everything.

“Yeah?” Reze smiles, lips pulling into a beam that barely crests the magnitude of his usual ones. “I’ve been hoping someone would go with me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a concert, you know. Sad. But I couldn’t have found better company!”

Her ears fill with static, bracketed by the sound of blood pounding a heavy beat, adrenaline and death fighting for her fate. The gods have left her, quieted their voices, letting her body drop after playing at the heavens. She feels empty and used, save for the fire burning across her face. A conduit for the gods can only last so long, and she pushed her ability, wanting so goddamn bad to show that she’s worth something beyond marriage.

Grade 1 was just in grasp before control slipped from her fingers, and then she was watching her body be piloted from within the far crevices of her skull, not Kami, but something different, darker, a whisper of the names she’s spent years studying and communing with, taking her shape. It’s a face that will plague her for years to come.

Shoko’s face cuts through the noise, the faint outline of her sharpened by the sound of her voice. Did they bring her back to Tokyo already? Or did they send @2econdlead and the others out to find her? Once again, a thought that would otherwise send Utahime grumbling. Her juniors picking up after her. It only sinks the knife in deeper.

“I guess you better get to work then,” Utahime grunts out, and whether it carries the bite she intended (not Shoko’s fault, not really) or falls flat, she doesn’t know. The ground is beginning to stretch its fingers toward her, asking her to let go. “You’re the only one that gives a damn anyway.”

it’s another thing entirely why she’s in her witch form for most of the movie, beyond the cute factor, since charlotte/bebe is so popular. i’ve theorized that it’s b/c the girls knew sayaka pre-witch and didn’t know nagisa, and i guess it’s easier to handwave a cute creature in a world full of witches than a rando child. anyway

They exist on a spectrum of great highs and low lows; a nearness so close he can count the thoughts swimming in her eyes whenever his breath skims her lips, and distance so far it creates an itch beneath his skin, fighting the anger at opening himself to humiliation once again. He never knows when the pendulum will strike the other way, can only hope, secretly, that it’ll rest long in one direction, but it always sparks like a change in the weather. He smells the tension before he feels it.

He doesn’t expect @ambitiouslyher to chase after him, as much as he might want her to. Nina is an immovable force most days that he revolves around, that he flocks to, a dog that likes to lick his wounds. She always meets him step for step, but occasionally she steps out from behind that carefully cultivated desk, out of the office and away from her empire, much as she does now, finding him bleeding out on his bike. It’s not something he’s given much consideration, surprisingly, whether she has people following him.

Their relationship has always felt lopsided that way — a give and take with different hands being dealt, different tells the other refuses to give without fight. Nina gives in fractions and Jason is hardheaded until the end.

“I’m not owing you,” he replies evenly as she lugs his too big body inside her safe house. He doesn’t remember making the drive, and that only affirms that she lives under his skin, the way in which she’s rewritten his memory. Nina isn’t comforting, but she’s familiar. “And I know you don’t do charity,” but it feels good to sit, even as he thinks, humorously, that she might actually kill him for bleeding out on her couch. “If you’ve got a First Aid kit, I can patch it up.”