ahappylie | Appointments & Messages

[Steve flinches in surprise, his pencil coming to a stop, poised just above the page. He'd been so focused that he hadn't noticed someone approaching him. It's a rare enough occurrence that he's left momentarily stunned, blinking up at the owner of the voice. His eyes take in long hair and delicate features. A women? It's hard to tell, and their voice seems almost ambiguous.]

Uh...no. It's mostly just a hobby. [Now. Before the war, the army, he had been going to school to become a professional artist.]

Oh, that's too bad. [He always enjoyed getting that rise out of people he surprised and it showed on the mischievously childish smirk on his face. With a light spring to his step, he hops down from the fountain's edge and takes a position sitting close to the foreign man, looking over at his book.]

You have quite a talent. I suppose you do this often?

[Steve isn't sure what to think as...his new companion makes themselves comfortable right next to him. Apparently they're not going to leave anytime soon. He's not entirely bothered by it; he's had people stop and watch him sketch before.]

Thank you. I did. I mean, I used to. This is actually the first time in awhile I've picked up my sketchbook.

[Souji reaches over, completely ignoring Steve's personal bubble (sorry there pretty man), and points to the drawing.]

Any particular reason why? It seems you enjoy it so much.

[If Steve leans a little out of his way, it's nothing personal. Just an automatic reaction to someone he doesn't know getting a little too close for comfort.]

...A friend of mine was sent home about a month ago. She was a big supporter of my art. After she left I just didn't feel like drawing much. At all. It was just a reminder, you know?

[The moving away doesn't bother him, but rather than move back, he turns his head to look at the stranger in the eye. Eyes tell a lot about a person and while he wouldn't do this to someone he knew well, he felt far more comfortable staring into the eyes of unknown entities. It was a challenge, trying to figure them out. Souji tilted his head slightly, hair falling to the side.]

...Was it the art gallery owner - Pepper Potts? [He knew her - she'd worked for him at the Welcome Center.] Did you know her very well?

[His eyes widen in surprise briefly as he looks at the stranger. Maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that they knew Pepper. She had been very social and vibrant in her own way. Making connections with various people.]

Yes. I think so. We're from the same world but I hadn't met her until I ended up here. We had...friends in common.

The strange talkative man with the funny beard? [Because that's the only 'friend' of Pepper's that he knew. While he hadn't known her very well on a personal level, their relationship had been quite public.

But that also means this man had lost a considerable number of friends recently, then. Souji pulls his hand back and looks at the drawing again.]

It's been difficult for many people lately with all the disappearances. I'm sorry to hear that you were affected.

[He's startled into a laugh before he can stop himself.] You must be talking about Tony. Yeah, he's one of them.

[He looks down at the drawing in his lap. It's only half finished and very rough, but it would be easy to spot some recognizable faces. He's finished Pepper, Natasha and Bucky.]

I appreciate that. But it's all a part of being stuck here, isn't it? Eventually you lose someone.

[Souji smiled faintly, trying to keep up his happy façade. He knew what it meant to be stuck here and what it meant to lose someone. No one here really remembered some of his friends now - the very people who had started the Welcome Center in the first place or even his friends from home. Shinpachi had been here longer than any of them and yet he was gone and now forgotten by nearly everyone, save for Souji. With Haruhi gone, that was just one less person to ever know that Shinpachi had existed.

Souji looked back to the drawing and tapped the paper above each portrait one by one.]

As long as you or someone else remembers, you can never really lose them.

[He swallows hard. The thing is, while he misses his friends, most of them will be back home once he returns. He knows in his hear that he will them again, whether it be tomorrow, or in a month, or two years down the line. But Howard and...Bucky. They're the people he'll never get back. Who are lost to him forever.]

That's one way of looking at it, I suppose. It just feels lonely sometimes, being the one left with the memories.

It always does, but sometimes the memories come back to life here and you have a second chance.

[Yes, it was lonely. He knew how lonely it could be, and how lonely it would be. His future was set for him, he knew he would only go back to sorrow and death and an unfulfilled life and purpose. He knew all of that, but he still couldn't let it get him down because there were people like this man here who were suffering. Two wounded souls couldn't mend a broken heart, but one who covered up his grief with smiles always could. Souji pointed to the pencil.]

May I?

[That's the one thing that keeps Steve from completely hating this place. The fact that it's the only place that can return to him people he thought were lost. It's a cruel reality, but it's all he had to hang onto. The idea that he could one day see Howard and Bucky and the Howling Commandos again.]

Oh, sure...[He hands the pencil over to Souji with a curious expression.]

[Souji smiled and took the pencil, holding it more like a brush than how it's supposed to be held. In an untouched corner, he draws a portrait doodle of Sasurai and Martel, then below that of Hijikata, Ayumu and Shinpachi. The drawings are simple, nothing more than mere sketches and not even measuring more than a few inches in height. He smiles faintly and then hands the pencil back after he's done.]

Faces we all hope to see again someday, yes?

[He watches in fascination as Souji draws his sketches. They're simple yet detailed enough for Steve to make out the features of each figure. All of the faces were unfamiliar to him, but that's hardly surprising.]

These are your friends? From home or...?

A bit of both.

[He points to Sasurai.] No one even remembers him anymore. [Then to Martel.] She's been back once or twice, but she never remembers.

[Then he hesitates before pointing to the faces of his friends.] They all went back to fight a war that we're going to lose. [He motions to Hijikata, the face stern but the eyes soft.] He's been here three times. I still wait for a day when he might come back.

[Steve swallows. He knows all abut wars that seem lost. Even the ones you win can leave a bitter taste in your mouth.]

How do you know? That they're going to lose?

Because I am ancient history for most people here.

[He let his fingers trace Hijikata's jawline before he pulled his hands away completely.]

And every person from every world that has some version of us in it has told me that we lose. [He points to Ayumu.] She dies before the war even starts. [Then to Shinpachi.] He survives to be one of only a handful of us that live to see us turned into the demons of history. [He doesn't point to Hijikata. He doesn't want to talk about what happens to him or what happens to himself either.]

It's simply what must happen in order for the world to progress. Not that I won't still fight to win, but I know there is only a slim chance that my future will be any different from what people have told me.

[He's silent for a long time after Souji finishes, processing all that he's said. It's an incredibly bleak and depressing story. What must it be like to know what your future holds before you even live it? What does it take to wake up every morning, knowing you only have a short amount of time to live. While in the village, Souji is guarded from his fate. But for how much longer?]

I guess I would be just the opposite of you. My early life to some would seem just as ancient, even though it's only been seventy years. I was supposed to die. My country won the war. That was supposed to be the end of it. But it wasn't.

Seventy years later I'm found at the bottom of the ocean, frozen within the scraps of the plane I crashed myself. And I'm breathing. Still, after all that time. I didn't age. I didn't wither away. It was like I was left behind by time. [His gaze goes distant.] Unfortunately the rest of the world wasn't spared. I woke up to a world so different from the one I left, with no one left that I still cared for.

[Planes were still a foreign concept to Souji, but the idea of being frozen and thrown out of time...that seems to resonate. He feels that way here somewhat, unaging, undying and just waiting to go back or for something familiar to come here.

But to live through something so horrific... Souji reached into his sleeve and pulled out a small modern ink brush, uncapping it to paint the letters 元治元年 on the paper near his doodles.]

We're both men out of time then. It isn't an easy task laid at our feet, but it is one that we were given for a purpose.

[He uses the brush to draw a little pig made of crude circles and frowny lines.]

It's never easy being the one with the responsibility put on your shoulders. [Souji smiled over at the stranger.] But if you were spared, it was for a reason. The world, although changed, is better for having you in it.

[He watches as Souji paints the letters on the page with curiosity. During the war he had operated out of Europe, bouncing around France and Germany and sometimes Britain. During that time he had picked up bits of the French and German languages. But he had never been based in Japan or anywhere near it, so the letters were as strange and exotic to him as they would be to any other foreigner.]

What does that mean? [He grins a bit at the added pig and the seemingly childishness of it.]

There's not a day that goes by that I don't pray that's true. It's easier to deal with if you belief there's a reason for it rather then it being just a random act. A fluke.

It's easier for me to deal with when I have a purpose. I'm just trying to figure out what that purpose might be.

That's my pet, Saizou. [He doesn't answer about the letters right away. He could have written a different date down, a day that hadn't come yet, but that was something he wanted to keep quiet as much as possible. Rather than answer truthfully, he looks up at the stranger and the haunted expression in his face. A man without his anchor, missing the ties that kept him bound to the world, all of them left behind. Souji wondered if that was what he would look like as the Shinsengumi left him behind to fight the war as he died in a back room.]

Maybe your purpose is just to "be."

[He capped the brush and slipped it into his sleeve.]

It is the hardest of tasks to complete, but sometimes the most important.

You have a pet pig? [Steve laughs, shaking his head. That hadn't been what he was referring to, and something told him that Souji knew that. Well, everyone is allowed to have their secrets. He wouldn't push.]

That sounds awfully...boring.

Everyone asks that. [Souji laughed a little, bringing his hand up to his mouth.] He isn't any stranger than our other pets - a giant yellow bird, a chicken named Fish and a fish named Dog.

Also I wouldn't call it boring. If I hadn't chosen to "be," I never would have met you, now would I?

No, it's just that pigs aren't often pets. Not where I'm from. Not unless you live on a farm. And...you named a fish Dog? [He raises his brows, amusement dancing in his eyes.]

I guess you have a point.

Appointments & Messages

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/continues this thread forever and ever

it will go on and on my friieeeeeeeend

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