'Kay, back to our regularly scheduled 'Karma and Heathcliff slowly suffocating themselves in their lonely bubble' :D
Time for the holidays in Alfheim!
so you run, through shadows you roam, seams undone by the love you thought you could own - Soldatino (Paola Bennet)
o0o0o
"Hey."
Half shadowed by the leaves of the ancient tree they're sitting in, Heathcliff tips the book back against his chest and looks up with a questioning "hmm?" Meanwhile, Karma makes herself more comfortable in the tangle of branches that they decided to call home for a night out in the fields.
"Who is she?" she asks, propping her feet up, her posture belying her more solemn tone.
Confusion flickers across his face, and she plucks a leaf idly. "You said you met her in college. She was the one taking care of your real body. You said you couldn't understand why she loved you. I just realized that you never said who she was."
"Ah," is all he says at first in comprehension.
She watches carefully as his gaze flickers away, her curiosity piqued already by the mere presence of a reaction, and she prods, "Is she also a nerd for old gothic romance? Is that how you met her?"
He rolls his eyes at this. "Not quite. We worked in the same lab for about six years. She was a core part of the SAO team, and yes, she thought Wuthering Heights was interesting too."
"Aha, I knew it," Karma snickers, and he closes the book, looking almost nostalgic.
"I don't know when exactly we started dating, because we saw so much of each other while working long hours in the same lab on the same project, but it was probably a few months after we met. She helped with a lot of the technical aspects of SAO, but I would never have thought of a lot of background features without her input as well." Softly, he admits, "She made the virtual world so much more real."
Karma listens, fascinated. It's almost like that feeling you get when you see your teachers outside of school; they're the same person, but they seem somehow different in another context.
She can't help but wonder what this woman was like, and how she saw him. And she knows that whatever their relationship was, he took it seriously, no matter what he felt or didn't feel; he never did anything halfway. Still, she was important to him—that much, Karma already knows.
"Really?" she says aloud. "Like in what ways?"
He hums softly, contemplative. "Well, she helped me write a lot more variety into NPC scripts and interactions-"
"I can believe that."
At her tone, he narrows his eyes in mock suspicion. "...What is that supposed to mean?"
Karma leans forward slightly and gives him a look. "It means that I can believe that your antisocial ass probably didn't know the first thing about natural human interaction, so of course someone else had to do it for you."
In response, he reaches over to rap her lightly on the head with the corner of the book. Ignoring her indignant squeak, he continues, "She also programmed avatars' physical reactions to emotions almost all by herself."
Karma can believe that too. She sure as hell knows that he didn't do that himself.
"What was she like?" she asks.
To her surprise, a smile tugs at his lips briefly. "Pushy," he says dryly, but he sounds more affectionate than irritated. "The first thing she ever said to me was that I needed to 'get out more', or else I'd 'waste away in front of my computer'-"
Karma cackles.
"-and just when I thought I'd finally gotten out of her telling me that sleep was in fact a necessity, I met you-"
She falls out of the tree laughing. "I like her already," she wheezes, wings buzzing as she clambers back onto her perch, still grinning.
Heathcliff snorts quietly, long fingers toying with the edges of the pages. "You would like her," he agrees, something inexplicably soft in his voice. "I've always been able to see a lot of her in you."
The remnants of her amusement linger in an absent smile as she fiddles with the leaf in her hands, starting to neatly tear it down the stem. "Is that why…"
"Why I took you in so readily at first? Perhaps in part," he admits with a shrug; like her, he seems to be far away, and she wonders if he too is thinking about that moment in time when everything changed—for better and worse. "But you're different too. Very different. Especially the you right now."
The me that's more like you, you mean?
"Did she know about the death game?"
Heathcliff shakes his head. "No one knew. As a matter of fact, when SAO began, she came to my cottage to kill me, or probably at least turn me in," he admits, smiling faintly like this is ancient history, just some little lover's spat, or a tiny misunderstanding to laugh about now, and Karma stares.
That's right…
This woman was the one taking care of his body while he FullDived. She had countless chances to put an end to things—if not by killing him, then by turning him in to the authorities while he was in the game and vulnerable in real life.
She had so many chances to do something to set them all free, to save four thousand lives-
-to put an end to a beautiful grayscale world. To prevent so many of them from finding themselves and their family in the darkness.
To stop Karma from finding love where she least expected it.
And Karma realizes, just like that, that she's really too selfish to resent her after all.
"And?" she prompts, barely audible.
"She was too soft." He reaches out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with an almost warm smile, and she tenses; the action feels almost as though it belongs to someone else in a different time, but he doesn't seem to notice. "You would've done it in an instant. Even back then, you would've, I think. You were always able to make the hard choices."
Karma lets out a long breath. "You say that, but only because you've never known a me that didn't know you."
Even now, she's not sure he fully understands how much she's changed, and how much of that is because of him.
Shreds of a leaf dissolve into shards of light as she lets them pour through her fingers, and she leans back. "I think I would've liked to meet her."
"You would've loved her," he agrees fondly. "If there was anyone who could keep up with you besides Asuna-kun, it would've been her...You are not cruel, not by nature, but she would be kind in all the ways that you are not."
Karma swallows hard, clenching her hand into a fist and breathing in deep. Cruelty may not be in her nature, but without anyone to hold her accountable, it's too easy to push her into it.
To distract herself, she picks another leaf, begins to slowly shred it as well. "Did you love her?"
For a long time, the night is filled with nothing but the wind. With anyone else, Karma would interpret the hesitation as a definitive 'no', especially with a question like this, but she knows that nothing is ever so cut and dry with him.
More shards of light are drifting from her hand by the time he responds, his voice low with uncertainty.
"What exactly is love?"
Karma stares at him for a long, long, time, and he sighs quietly, his gaze far away.
"I know it's different for everyone. They feel and act upon it in different ways. But isn't there something that they all have in common? There must be, right?"
It's sort of funny that she doesn't really have an answer for him; perhaps deep down, she's thinking, shouldn't her presence here, next to him, be enough of an answer in itself?
In her silence, he keeps talking, almost to himself.
"I've read countless books and articles over the years. Everyone has a different definition; some of them overlap, but none are the same." He looks almost somewhat troubled by this, this lack of a concrete blanket answer. "Some say it's about putting others before yourself. Others say it's sacrifice. Some talk about how it's the journey rather than the destination." Silver eyes turn to her. "What do you think?"
She holds his gaze, thinking. Most people wonder this question in the course of their life, she's sure. But a majority probably don't think to truly investigate something so nebulous, instead pointing to an example as an explanation. How does one strip love down to its bare essence?
"I don't know," she finally admits. "It is different for everyone. They're all right. But only sometimes. And only in some ways. Love isn't really something you just summarize in a few words. You can express it a million different ways, but at the end of the day, it's everything that you can't put in words. That's what makes it so…" Searching for a word (contrary to what she just said), she finally lands on, for lack of better choice, "...miraculous."
"Then what do you think?" he presses, insistent. She would find his interrogation odd, if she didn't know exactly why he's so determined. "If everyone has their own version, then what is yours?"
Don't you know? It's you.
She wishes she had the courage to return the question.
The night stretches on for several sleepless hours before she can finally come up with something mildly coherent-sounding.
"I still think," she finally says out loud, measuring each word carefully as she shreds another leaf, "that love isn't something you put into words. But since you're so insistent on me trying…" The light shards pour through her fingers. "I think love is, amongst other things, finding ways to make the ordinary extraordinary."
It made a civilian into a soldier.
"To make the impossible possible."
It made Natsuki into Karma.
"All for the sake of someone you care about."
All for him.
"I would die for someone I love-"
She gave him her life along time ago anyways; he still hasn't given it back.
"-but I will do anything to be able to live alongside them."
This is living, isn't it?
Seemingly oblivious to the turmoil in her head, he sits back with a soft hum, seeming to digest her words.
"Then let me ask you this," he continues, and she glances at him, curiosity piqued by the challenging tone of his voice. "If love is supposedly the epitome of selflessness like so many people say it is, and human nature is naturally inclined to selfishness, then does that make love the antithesis of what we are?"
Karma blinks, baffled for a moment...because no. Of course not. What is a world without love? She wonders briefly if he's asking for the sake of it, just to provoke some conversation that requires thought, to force her to defend her point like a debate teacher might-
And then she realizes that it's much simpler than that. He is asking a question because he doesn't know the answer; he really isn't sure.
"No," she decides, almost laughing a little at the irony. "We are not just one thing. Love is a part of human nature too. And love isn't always selfless."
o0o0o
As the sun rises, Karma picks up the thread they left hanging.
"So what happened to her?"
"Her…? Oh. She was likely taken into custody for aiding and abetting a mass murderer," he says, sounding completely indifferent, and adds, "But I implanted a microbomb near her heart. It should give her a plausible defense."
Karma glances at him, surprised but not really (although, she hadn't expected a computer guy to be a surgeon?). "Oh. So that's why she stayed with you for two years?"
But he just shrugs matter-of-factly. "No. There was never a way to set it off, and she knew it."
She blinks, now truly surprised. "...And she still stayed."
There's a strange look in his eyes, one she recognizes; it's the same one she saw every time she looked in a mirror for over a month. He's trying to figure it out, combing through the past two years just like she did, trying to logic his way through this enigma of emotion.
"Yes," he eventually says. "She still stayed."
Honestly, the microbomb being fake surprises her more than it would've if it was real. So he knew he had her cooperation from the beginning, ever since the failed attempt on his life that wasn't even really an attempt at all...and he still went out of his way to give her an out when it was all over.
As much as he was able to, he belatedly gave her another chance to rebuild her life that he had torn apart.
Not exactly an unfamiliar story. Hopefully she isn't making as much of a mess of her second chance as Karma did.
At her soft huff and wry shake of her head, he looks at her, brow furrowing. "What?"
Karma gives him a look, the same one that he likes to use on her when she can't seem to look past her own nose. "You're pretty dim for a genius."
"Did you love her?"
She thinks she knows the answer, even if he doesn't.
o0o0o
The Pooka towns might be her favorite, in all honesty, directly competing with the grace of the Undine capital Parasel. Everything's just so colorful and garish here, decked out in lights with music playing always. It's like everyone's partying twenty-four seven, and while the party scene isn't Karma's favorite, she won't say no to an occasional break to wind down.
And the town itself looks like a carnival. Tents with swooping ceilings dot the flat ground with no particular color scheme or order, resembling enormous flowers as the two of them coast overhead. A huge cluster of pavilion tents in the center of town appears to be the leader's quarters and a general base of operations for the faction.
What's more are the pine trees and the baubles decorating them, ones far too intricate and pretty for real life, and the music, this faction's trademark, dancing through the winding, sprawled streets of Sondref. It takes her a moment to notice that the music follows a distinct theme, and comprehension dawns.
"It's Christmas," Karma breathes out in a pale cloud of realization as she lands, boots sinking slightly into the soft, fluffy snow.
All around them, couples walk under the lights, hands held tightly. Friends move in packs, some of them already inebriated, and the laughter harmonizes brightly with the music as the lights pulse to the beat of the drums.
They'd been friends for so long that Karma and Megu's family would always get together with some other family friends and throw a Christmas party, breaking out all the good food (and alcohol, for the adults). The gifts varied year to year, but Megu's gifts were always Karma's favorites.
Megu was pretty excited about getting to spend Christmas together again, Karma thinks, feeling a little morose in a distant part of her mind. For the past two years, she'd apparently spent it by Karma's bedside in the hospital. Is she doing it again today? What about her parents?
In an area resembling a town square, a few Pookas perform a stunning sequence of acrobatics, flipping and leaping over one another in tandem. Light and magic follow their footsteps as they create spells with their acrobatic song and dance.
Karma wonders what Kotori and Haruhi are doing right now. A guilty sort of vindictiveness writhes turbulently in her; she doesn't want to feel right for what she did, but she also wasn't completely unjustified, was she?
With a quiet, frustrated sigh that condenses into white puffs in front of her, she shakes away the thought, or tries her best to. It's Christmas. She doesn't want to be thinking about miserable things, no matter how much of the blame is on her shoulders.
Movement draws her attention to Heathcliff. A hollow, resigned look of bitterness swims in his steel eyes. Their unusually glassy appearance reflects the fairy lights, dull and murky.
"You don't like Christmas," she says, wondering why she didn't realize sooner when they were in Aincrad. While she and the others were busy goofing off, he would always stay far away from the festivities. At first, she just thought it was Heathcliff being aloof Heathcliff, and she shrugged it off. After all, they did look pretty funny making fools of themselves.
His shoulders rise and fall as white dusts his silver hair, burnished in muted colors by the lights.
"Not particularly," he says blandly, and she shivers, cold. "It's a time for family."
The little piece of metal resting on her sternum refuses to grow warm—another glitch in the system, that's all—and the chain feels as though it draws more and more taut with every passing day. It squeezes now, and she swallows hard, struggling to breathe when she imagines a child, standing before a grave in the snow, or curled up alone in his room with only computers and numbers for company.
"You should be with yours," he murmurs, and her breathing hitches.
"I am," she says, more forcefully than is warranted, maybe, but it gets the point across. His head jerks slightly in her direction before he looks away, jaw clenched visibly.
Instinctively, she reaches for him, to her sudden chagrin, and she hesitates, with him none the wiser.
She doesn't pity him, does she? Not after what he did to the world. To her. She shouldn't pity him. He doesn't deserve an ounce of her sympathy, or anyone's.
And still, she empathizes, and she finds herself dusting some of the snow off of his shoulders as her smaller fingers curl into his longer, slender ones. She starts pulling him towards the scent of good food, reflexively summoning a wide grin to her face as he follows her automatically, surprise painted over his features, his hand hanging lifeless in hers.
"Family," she tells him, "is what you make. You might not be able to choose who or where you were born to, but you can always choose what to live for."
And like it or not, I've chosen you.
Whirling around so she can't see his expression change, she resumes walking briskly, looking around with a grin. "So, I'm twenty now, which means I get to drink!" She hasn't been keeping track of the days, but if it's Christmas, her birthday must've passed a short while ago.
She hears Heathcliff heave a long, long sigh as he grasps her hand in return, and relief curls up with a warm purr in her chest when she can hear the bitterness start to seep out of his voice. "Oh, here we go…"
"Our first stop is to find something that tastes like sake, just for Godfree," she informs him, bouncing along on the balls of her feet as she pushes away the fact that he's dead because of the one she calls family. "And then we're gonna go ice skating-"
"While you're drunk?"
"I won't get that drunk. And then we're gonna find some good music and dance the night away!"
"These activities all seem to involve some level of coordination, which I'm not sure you'll have if you're planning on going drinking," Heathcliff says sarcastically, and she beams at him, happy that the dull blankness seems to have bled away from his voice. Funny how stifling nothing can be.
Swinging their interlocked hands between them, she proclaims giddily, "And that's the fun of it!"
o0o0o
Karma's pretty sure she's been scaring everyone she passes, laughing loudly at nothing, talking randomly to herself. Then again, if she was a little more aware, she'd realize that many of them barely seem to react at all, as if the two of them are both ghosts to the rest of the world.
They dance, many times. She missed it while she was in the real world, and even when she was in the virtual one, sitting on the edge of the pubs and taverns sipping coffee, occasionally declining invitations, wishing he was here. And now he is. She probably looked more than a little peculiar, hanging suspended or making odd twists and turns seemingly without the use of wings.
But once she's had a sip or two (or three, or maybe a little more) of something that smells very much like sake, she finds it hard to care anymore—not that it was difficult to ignore in the first place.
"Stop—stop laughing," she snickers as she unsteadily pushes herself up from the ice for the dozenth time tonight.
Heathcliff, who's sitting on a bench on the bank of the frozen pond, rolls his eyes at her visibly. "I was not." He seems to be in a better mood than before. Well, he seems to be in a mood, so that's a good sign.
"You totally were!" she shrieks, accidentally making a passing couple jump and nearly wipe out, and she dissolves into another fit of laughter before almost falling back down herself.
When she's drunk, her attention span is apparently nonexistent, so Heathcliff has to steer her through the crowds with one hand firmly around her shoulders, or else she'd run off and get lost at the first sight of something that even remotely catches her interest. After he gets her to order and drink some coffee, she starts to feel somewhat more alert.
"Not that it makes you any less drunk," he adds dryly.
She giggles, a little bit of coffee sloshing out of the cup and onto the ground, and she absently licks away a droplet sliding down the side of her cup. Right now, she can't bring herself to care about any of the thoughts that have been plaguing her ever since she logged herself into Alfheim and found him waiting for her; it's wonderful.
It doesn't matter, none of it matters, not right now, not in the bright fairy lights and the festive music and the buzzing of conversation all around them, only growing stronger as the hour grows later. Heathcliff patiently listens to her wax poetic about the way snow clings to tree branches, and the pattern of the jewels in that one fairy's necklace, and a million other things in between. The alcohol loosens her tongue.
"Why did you want me to go back to the real world after Aincrad?"
She knew it couldn't be that he didn't want her to abandon Asuna, and Uzala, and the rest of her family. That was part of her reasons for accepting, but it was not part of his reasons for offering. Callous as it is, she is well aware that he does not care about them, at least nowhere near enough to care about her relationships with them.
So why would he send her, broken and bitter, back to a world that caused him so much pain? Because he didn't do it out of any sense of spite, or ill will, or malice towards her. It's just not in his nature; he would've never done anything that would hurt her simply for the reason of hurting her. That much, she knows, and she's not sure which one's worse. Malice isn't easy to bear, but it's simpler, easier to accept and move past. But indifference is complicated.
She recalls him saying something about selfishness; she remembers every word of that conversation. She doesn't doubt for a second that he did it for personal gain, tangible or not, because he's always been like that. They're all like that; it's human nature.
Holiday themed music blares cheerfully in the background. Leaning against his shoulder, she can feel his hum like she can feel the drums through the earth; the realness of this virtual life is astounding, and she's sitting next to the man who made it all. It takes her breath away each time.
Finally, he takes a deep breath. "...Because you're broken like I am." He made her that way. "And while I didn't have a chance anymore, I thought you did."
Past tense hurts more than it should.
"You wanted to see me live in a world that ruined you, no matter how much I would struggle," she whispers, staring blankly across the frozen lake reflecting fairy lights.
And she let him down, didn't she?
"You were the one who said yes."
It's fine. It doesn't matter. She couldn't do what he wanted of her. It shouldn't matter.
Why does it still matter?
"I need another drink," she huffs, standing up a little unsteadily; I don't want to care right now.
He's still sitting there when she gets back; somehow, they never lose each other in the crowd, like a compass pulled to a lodestone; after all, she's made sure that he's never going to leave her again. She unceremoniously plops down on the bench next to him again, feeling buzzed.
"I can see why it's fun to be drunk," she admits, unconsciously snuggling closer. "Everything seems more insignificant. It's nice not to care so much for once."
She cares too much, really. About everything. Still does. The alcohol takes the edge off, but not by much.
"I suppose it must be," he murmurs distantly.
The place under his arm is perfect for her...and yet, she knows it would be all wrong if he wasn't Heathcliff. If he was Kayaba instead, thin as a rail and all angles and bones, nothing solid, insubstantial.
Does it matter? They're both real, aren't they?
She wants it to not matter, but she's not nearly that inebriated.
Between the two, one of them brought out the best in her and one brings out the worst, and only one of them lets her keep pretending like this.
o0o0o
With the quietest of clicks, he nudges the door shut behind them with his foot, his hands occupied, and blinks a few times in the darkness of the room. The illumination from outside the window proves to be sufficient, though, and with ease born of practice, he sets his precious cargo down on the bed and pulls the covers up over her snugly.
"Merry Christmas," he murmurs to no one in particular.
Out of habit, he kneels down at her bedside and brushes his hand across her forehead, pushing some strands away; a furrowed brow follows the trail of his hand as her expression twists in her sleep, and he stiffens, quickly withdrawing his hand as her eyes flutter open.
She frowns owlishly at him, lifting one hand to rub at her eyes. "What?" she asks very succinctly.
He could've laughed at her so unabashedly grouchy tone; instead, all he can do is stare at her for a long, long time. This...isn't supposed to happen.
"Nothing," he finally says. "Go ba—go to sleep."
Wrinkling her nose at him, she makes a small noise as she curls her hands into the covers. The way she burrows herself further back under them, pulling them around her head until all he can see are her eyes, would be comically endearing if it weren't for the look on her face, the one she's trying to hide from him, the look of a child scared to close her eyes for fear of the monsters under the bed (or inside her head).
"Are the nightmares getting worse?" he asks; the discomfort on her face squirms unpleasantly in his chest.
"Not really," she mumbles. "Not better either, though." Her eyes, a bright ruby red on this avatar, peer at him in glazed distress. "You keep leaving."
There's a whine of accusatory hurt in her voice, and he forces himself to breathe.
"The dreams aren't real," he tries to reassure her; he doesn't have a clue what he's doing anymore. "I am."
Something brighter starts to swim in her ruby eyes, but deeper, the fear and the grief refuse to relinquish their hold; she's struggling to fight them off.
"You are?" she breathes, her voice crippled with broken trust like a phantom pain, and he grasps her hand, just as she did for him before when he didn't want to fight.
Keep fighting, he pleads with her; what exactly it is that she's fighting is something he would rather not dwell on, but he knows that if she gives up (again), it'll destroy them both.
Leaning forward, he plants a kiss against her head; speaking as gently as he can, he reminds her, "I'm here to stay." He'll not make the same mistake twice.
If anything, the disquiet pinching her face deepens, even as her eyes slide shut (as if in resignation) and her fingertips curl against his palm.
"I know."
o0o0o
I got lost while the sunlight was painting us gold; I got lost hoping that we would never get old - Dawning of Spring (Anson Seabra)
I fall into your arms; I'll be safe in your sound 'til I come back around - Someone You Loved (Lewis Capaldi)
How come I'd never listened to 'Someone You Loved' before this? Excuse me? It's so good? O.o
Also, has anyone read Percy Jackson? 'Soldatino' is a song written for Nico di Angelo, and it's so beautiful. The line means something a little different for Nico than how it applies here (honestly, a lot of these lyrics mean different things than they do in the context that I'm using them XD), but I thought the words fit. :)
And hey, that was Rinko they were talking about in the beginning! Seriously, there's not enough content in this fandom for Rinko, especially with how big a role she played in SAO right from the start! I read through the light novels and watched whatever of Alicization is on Netflix mostly just looking for wherever Rinko showed up, to be perfectly honest XD I have Many Feelings about her, and I love her so much, probably because I got so attached to Heathcliff by writing Retribution and this (and also because I have a tendency to get strangely attached to side characters).
Speaking of which! I've posted a new SAO fic :D It's called 'Two Years' and it's about Rinko and her two years spent during the SAO incident. It's got similar overall vibes to this one :D Anyways, just some shameless self-promotion, because I can :P