Zeno

For most people, this was probably a worrying trait and one that was most definitely not normal at all. Yet, when one considered the underworld they both came from, was it any surprise that people tried poisoning Noah Simmon's only daughter? Emiya simply smiled the detail off as if it were no big concern.

"Not that I would think you'd do that," she clarified. "I'm just saying that you could cook me a boot and I'd happily eat it and say it was delicious."

One would think Emiya was used to eating only the best of the best; after all, she was technically a rich girl. Best clothes, best gadgets, best food -- it should have been the norm, yet she just chose to live simply. It was more to her taste, even if expectations were otherwise. She'd always been a calm person who didn't need much, though perhaps this was why people thought she could be treated badly...

"Are you sure you can do that barehanded?" she asked, having watched Zeno carry the prickly cacti pads with no rpotection at all. Despite her wanting to help carry after getting to prune under his guidance. She was concerned he may hurt himself. But he got them to the kitchen with no issue, so she supposed her worries were for nothing.

"And I would never do something as uncivilized as serving you a boot, Miss Fujimaru," he said, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a sly grin. "I assure you."

While he wanted to tell her to simply sit back, allow him to prepare her a meal, he had the distinct impression that any protestations would be fruitless. He supposed it would be better for her to learn a hands-on approach. With a small sigh, he snatched up one of the cactus pads and laid it out on the cutting board. "You can use whatever tool you wish to hold the pad as you remove the spines," he explained. He held it in his hand easily, as this was how he had grown accustomed to working in his kitchen. The ability to heal from nearly any and every injury meant accidents in the kitchen didn't bother him in the slightest. "Take your knife," he took the chef's knife in hand, "and begin scraping off the needles in the direction opposite their growth."

Zeno demonstrated this for her, taking care to move slower than he would normally. "Now, all we need to do is trim off the sides and the bottom like so, and then we'll give them a rinse."

Her roan coloured eyes, once puffy and filled with tears were now curving up in a gentle joy and sparkling as Zeno talked about his cacti.

Emiya absorbed the knowledge he shared like a sponge, barely containing her sudden spike of energy and excitement. If she had still been bothered by the bullying at her school, then Zeno's impassioned talk about his pet plants definitely turned that sadness around. Enraptured was the best way to describe her as she held the fluffy robe around herself, following behind Zeno.

At his behest she felt along one of the pads, smiling all the while. She pressed down on it, feeling at the flesh and while she was no expert, she did feel that it was giving a bit more than she was used to. It was a good distraction from the topic of marriage and bullies.

"I love them. They all look pretty healthy. I'm sure they're happy to be your plants," Emiya stated. Still touching one of the cacti that was going to be harvested, she gave it a little double tap of appreciation. "Thank you for growing so well and letting us have some of your pads."

Was it strange for her to talk to plants? It probably was, but Emiya was quite comfortable now in acting casually. No need for a performance.

Zeno walked her through his pruning process, talking all the while. He was unused to having someone he could speak to as himself, not the puppet the Connections had created and molded, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he worried that he was oversharing.

And then he'd glance at Emiya and notice how she had finally relaxed. It had hurt him to see her distraught in such a manner, a feeling he had encountered before but always shoved down. Empathy wasn't a priority for someone like him, and yet, somehow he always found he had a deep well of it within himself.

He gathered up the pads as they pruned them, uncaring that the spines were digging at his skin as he did so, and beckoned for Emiya to follow him back to the kitchen once he deemed they had enough. He'd heard once that chicken soup cured everything, a ridiculous figure of speech, but Zeno did just find a new recipe he wanted to try, and he did have some chicken breasts in his fridge that needed to be cooked.

"Do you have any allergies?" he asked as he set the nopals on the counter before going about collecting his cutting board and chef's knife. Zeno smiled at her, ever the gracious host. "I should warn you, I've never cooked for another person before."

And yet she looked at the lump of wet fabric almost tenderly. There was a lot there that would be lost, she thought. All those years of effort and work to make it, in her maintaining her health so she could always fit into it.

She just sighed those thoughts away, before putting on a gentle smile.

"Oh, am I going to be trying one of those cactus meals you've been talking about?" Emiya asked, eyes filled with curious amusement now. She did recall his promise to her. "Will you be making it yourself? Or shall we make it together? I might want to learn how to prepare it myself one day."

He flashed a smile at her before he began guiding her towards his second bedroom. It faced the south and due to the large floor-to-ceiling windows in his penthouse, it got near-constant ambient sunlight throughout the day. This room functioned as a sort of makeshift greenhouse, much more pristine and orderly than the ones she operated out of on campus, but Zeno made no judgments of her. She was working outside for the most part, and he had had absolute cleanliness deeply ingrained into him since birth. They were just... different, in that aspect.

"I'm sure I have plenty that are ready to harvest. I'll walk you through the entire process. It's very simple." Against the window, inside of a horizontal planter that stretched nearly the entire length of the window, was a thriving colony of prickly pear cacti. "This was the first plant I started caring for. I first experimented with transplanting cuttings I took from it. That's how I ended up with all of this," he said, gesturing at the custom planter he'd had made for them. It was both functional and aesthetic, as should be expected from Zeno, of all people.

"Unfortunately, the fruit is not yet ripe," Zeno said apologetically as he pulled open a drawer in a little rolling cart of supplies he kept in one corner. Retrieving a pair of simple, sturdy shears, he pointed with them to the little green knobs atop several of the pads along the highest points of each cactus. "They'll turn magenta when they're ready." He then pointed to different pads as he walked her through how to pick the perfect ones. "This one is still too firm, this one too old to be worth eating, but that one is tender. Go on, feel between the spines."

A quick Zeno sketch because I haven't drawn any fan art in a very long time, but also I love him ❤️

—

some kind of evil science

based on one of my sims screenshots lmao

Zeno was the first successful clone of that son to successfully bond with the T-virus. It's unknown why the clones themselves have issues bonding with it, though it's likely a kink with gene expression from the cloning process itself, yet the Connections are reticent to test anything out on the original. They believe it's not worth the risk to the original, as they can just make as many clones as they would like.

(This means that there are possibly other Zenos out there, possibly even under the same name, possibly not. They're never aware of the other, if they do exist.)

indie | semi-selective | 21+

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