guillotineroom | Tarot memory share [Cerberus]

Entry tags:

!cerberus

Tarot memory share [Cerberus]

The room you enter this time is an ostentatious fortune tellers tent. Colourful silks drape the walls with intricate golden constellations embroidered on the ceiling. Various crystals, candles, magic 8 balls, and other superstitious sundries are scattered throughout the tent.

In the centre of the room is a table with ten chairs around it, and three cards laid out for you:

CHARIOT, DEATH, MOON

[ RULES | TURN-IN ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ She shuffles through the deck until she pulls out the Sun card, holding onto it for a moment before offering it to Minato. ]

You're in the middle of downtime, which already feels like a rare and precious thing. Part of it is an enforced thing--your leg is in a brace, but it doesn't really hurt; it's more of a dull throbbing ache than anything truly painful. It's just a precaution, because resources are limited. But you're bored, and you've already read until your eyes feel like they're going to fall out of your head, so you're out on a walk. It's a slow process, and it's not like there's much to see: you're wandering through long, featureless white-walled hallways, and the wide window panels only show a bleak snowy landscape.

But you find your way to your destination, a space you'd been shown when everyone had been trying to evaluate what remained of Chaldea after the explosions that took out so much of it. When you push the door open, you step into fake sunlight. It's a greenhouse, warmer here than anywhere else in the whole base. There are rows and rows of open-air shelves lined with tiny green shoots, and pots of flowers that somehow, in spite of everything, are thriving.

You navigate around a corner and there you find him: a gentle-faced man who looks to be in about his thirties, with pale strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a high ponytail, and soft green eyes. He's dressed in a doctor's white scrubs, kneeling by a row of plants. When you approach, he turns to you and smiles, warm, and waves. Ritsuka! Come look.

And when you do, you see that what he has are a few straggly little strawberry plants. They could fit in your hand with space leftover, and some of their leaves are brown at the edges, but there are also some tiny, tiny white flowers, and--as he nudges a leaf aside with a finger--some miniscule green buds.

They look a lot better than they did, you say, and you shift your temporary cane so you can lean for a better look. Maybe you'll get to have another strawberry cake before we're done with all of this. I'm still going to make you go to a proper bakery with me someday.

He laughs, an oddly breathless sound. Someday in the future, you'll look back on this and realize why he sounds like this; as it is, right now, it makes your silly little heart skip a beat. It's just nice to think that there will be an end to this--someday, the world will go back to normal, and when that happens, you want to do your best to stay in touch with everyone here. Including him.

(Maybe especially him, but that's just a silly crush, and you know it. But for now, you're happy just watching him smile.)

We'll see, he says. But I was thinking of letting Mash have them. She's never actually had strawberries before.

He rubs the back of his neck with one gloved hand as he says it, bashful, looking at you sidelong like he wants your approval. He looks like a man desperately hoping to please his beloved spoiled daughter, not a girl who's barely had any sort of experience with the wider world--the good or the bad--and you can't help but smile.

You should have saved a slice for her, you say, and when he sputters, you nudge him again. I think you should let her help with these. We grew tomato plants when I was in elementary school, I bet she'd like it.

He looks surprised, then thoughtful, and then smiles again. Good idea, Ritsuka. I think it'd be something good for her--thanks for the suggestion.

For a couple of seconds you fidget, unsure of how to deal with any sort of praise (you're not used to it; you have lived your entire life up to this point being unremarkable and unremarked on; no one has ever praised or complimented you except in the most casual and general ways--nothing specific like this), and then you clear your throat. You're getting your gloves dirty, you say. Jeeze, Doctor, couldn't you have worn like... actual garden gloves?

Eh? He looks at his hands, at the muddy smears across his white gloves, and grimaces, his body language going mournful. Ah, I just washed these...!

Be more careful next time, you say, but you're laughing. For right now, in spite of everything, you feel pretty good about everything.

[ he accepts the Sun with even more reverence than he held the Death card before, and then closes his eyes to just let the memory really soak in.

It's cute, and sweet, and that laugh he gives feels achingly familiar and Minato wonders, but he doesn't really think he wants to pry about things like the circumstances surrounding this man's death.

He asked for happy memories for a reason. Isn't that the best way to keep someone's memory alive? ]

... Thank you for sharing this with me. He seemed so... warm and bright.

He was ridiculous.

[ But she says that fondly, if a bit wistful. ]

He was one of the smartest people I've ever known, but you wouldn't be able to guess by talking to him... just a total KY when he wasn't forgetting things.

[ oh my god. That description gets an amused snort out of him. ]

Ah, one of those people... Mm, well, between him and Da Vinci-san and you, it seems like your personalities all balance out really well, from what I've seen.