bunnyhopped | (riverview) inbox/open post

Thats fine. Should only take me that

[Flying lion helps with that. He would indeed take Black over to the river]

[ And the mech helps, too; it took Hana a little longer than the fifteen minutes she'd promised to actually arrive - if nothing else because she looked in the mirror to get dressed to meet Shiro and was mildly horrified at what she saw. Some freshening up had been in order.

It wasn't difficult to find him, at least, because of Black being hard to miss. Only a few minutes later her mech touches down along the riverbank near the Black Lion and its Paladin and Hana emerges from it in rather simple getup, mostly covered by the baggy blue hoodie she was wearing with the hood pulled up over her head and everything. If she had bothered to put makeup on, it wouldn't have concealed the bags beneath her eyes - but she hadn't so they and her exhaustion were plainly visible on her face. Still, she managed a small smile as she approached him. ]

Hey, Shiro.

[Shiro honestly didn't care that she was late. He had flown out to the river with Black and sat on the back of the lion while he waited. He was wearing a sweatshirt as well as though it were cold or he was trying to use it to protect himself.

As she arrived and she walked over, he turned to her. He looked probably just as tired as she did. He hadn't really been sleeping and he'd been trying to occupy himself with things to keep from letting his mind drift. But that was hard.

So here they were]

Hey. Care for a seat?

[Yes, using the lion for a seat]

[ She frowned when she could see how exhausted he looked, but she also knew that she couldn't call him out on it given that she felt as tired as he looked, too. No one was having a good time lately, it seemed. At length she just tilted her head to one side curiously. ]

If Black's okay with that, sure.

[ She would go ahead and take a seat next to him, unless the lion would say otherwise. ]

[Shiro was definitely not having a good time. These nightmares were keeping from wanting to sleep, from wanting to be around people. They were difficult]

He's fine with it.

[Black even lowered a bit so that she would have an easier time climbing up onto his back. Once she was seated, Black raised up again, standing perfectly still and looking out towards the river.

Shiro took a few deep breaths before he started speaking]

It's been hard... ever since that mission to Kerberos.

[ She gave Black a little pat on his back as she settled in on top, as an unspoken way for her to thank him for making things a little easier for her. Then she was silent; Shiro had been the one to want to talk, but she would let him do so at his own pace. There wasn't a point in rushing him, anyway. She didn't have anything to do for the day and ... this was better than her trying to stay up playing games and failing miserably. Her eyes needed a break from the screen and being able to look out into the scenery around them, at the running water and the trees and sky, was much better. When Shiro started speaking, she kept her gaze out onto the river. ]

Mmm.

[ She just hummed, which was her usual response to most anything as of late, but she did it to let him know she was listening. Of course it'd been hard. She remembered him saying he'd gotten abducted, remembered him saying the arm was the Galra's work - and now she'd practically witnessed it all happening, too. She wouldn't have expected him to say things had been easy, not at all. ]

You've been through a lot.

[As strange as it was, Shiro had never really admitted that what he had been through had been hard. The others had kind of picked up on that, but it was never his own words. It was like they knew, but it was off limits to ask so at the same time, Shiro never volunteered. He was the leader of Voltron; he couldn't show them that he had problems.

But now, as he sat there with Hana, it was Black in the back of his head telling him that he needed to talk to her, talk to someone. And he knew it was right]

The Galra are a society that seems to function on survival of the fittest. So they throw a lot of their younger, more capable prisoners into their arena to fight to the death. I saved my teammate Matt from fighting and defeated the opponent they had wanted him to fight, but that was probably what got their attention in the first place.

[That he had survived]

[ She already didn't like what she was hearing. Not because she thought worse of Shiro for it, but because she didn't like what it implied he had to go through. He... had to fight in this arena... to stay alive. That was the conclusion she was coming to.

Unknowingly, her hands balled into fists in her lap as she fixated on a particular spot on the water where the rocks made it spring and bubble up. When she next spoke, her voice was devoid of any of the usual chipper, almost squeaky air to it that she usually had. ]

So you fought in your friend's place... then they made you keep fighting?

I apparently didn't earn the nickname "Champion" among the Galra prisoners for nothing.

[Shiro looked down at his hands]

A lot of it still a blur. Like I know it happened, but I'm not sure the details. I know exactly how I defeated Myzax because we had to fight him again as a robeast, but most of the fights... I know fought them, but it's like my mind doesn't want me to remember.

[Which was entirely possibly]

The fact that I survived somehow attracted the attention of Zarkon's witch, Haggar. She directly claimed responsibility for having experimented on me. In the memory, that thing you saw. That was a druid, one of her underlings who do her bidding.

[ Her brows knitted together and her teeth clamped down on the inside of her lip as she listened. He couldn't remember details; that told her a lot of how horrible it must have been, for his mind to have since blocked him from remembering things entirely.

Shiro had been a fighter in such a setting, an arena. If she thought about it more, she'd think about how he must have had to fight so hard to survive against beings he didn't even know existed when he'd first left Earth, how he must have had to do some awful things to stay in the right.

But all she could think about was how the Shiro she knows was such a kind, gentle person - that didn't dserve any of what had happened to him. Who was still such a kind, gentle person in spite of what happened to him. Her gaze shifted and found Shiro's hand - the one on his prosthetic arm, looked at his fingers and the joints and how all of that was alien. ]

Was your arm... one of their experiments on you?

It was. Haggar confirmed she was the reason for it and Sendak commented about it as well. Mostly that it wasn't the latest model. Which considering Lance was able to shoot the "latest model" off Sendak's arm, I don't know how much better it is.

[A weird aside there. It brought him some odd pleasure to know that despite having the better model, the paladins were still able to capture Sendak, though not without some bruises from fighting him]

I don't actually remember how I got it. Something I remembered from Ulaz was saying the Galra took my hand so I think it was something they did specifically.

[All of these were terrible memories, what he did remember. Intermixing them with things that were pleasant, like the memory of Lance shooting off Sendak's arm despite being badly injured made it easier to deal with]

[ Hana hadn't known what to make of Shiro's arm, really, when she first saw it in action when the communal housing building was fire and then again when they were on a mission together. She supposed that back then, she thought it was cool. But to know now that he didn't remember how he got it, that it was something forced on him by his captors...

It wasn't that she thought it was sick, or disgusting. She didn't know him until they both ended up in this reality and to her, that prosthetic arm had always been a part of him. Of her Shiro - the Shiro she knew.

But it did worry her. ]

Does it hurt you? The arm. Does having it hurt you?

[ Without thinking, her fingers reached toward his forearm, almost like she was reaching for his hand— only for a moment, before she realized what she was doing and pulled her hand away. ]

Ah, sorry.

[Shiro couldn't deny that his arm was useful. He had used it plenty of times to protect himself and the other paladins. To take down enemies and help the others. But it always had a darker side to it. A pained side that came from it being his choice.

In the many nights he had been kept awake, he wondered what the circumstances of his hand were. Had they really taken it or had he been injured, lost it, and they had used the opportunity presented to them? Could he, at any point in time, agreed to this? Could he have agreed to be a pawn in their games? This was a question that haunted him.

But it was recently, talking with Keith and with Hana that he was starting to realize that none of that changed who he was.

He looked over as she started to reach for his hand before pulling back]

No... it's okay. It hurt the first time I activated it, but not anymore.

[ Her gaze stayed on their hands, close to each other but not quite touching. And her heart ached for him; she didn't know how he came to have his arm, and it sounded like he didn't know, either, but— it was different from, say, Genji's circumstances. Genji had been on the verge of death - she knew that now more intimately than she ever would otherwise, having experienced the memory of his slaughter at the hands of his brother essentially firsthand - and he had prosthetic limbs and cybernetic implants because they kept him alive. But Shiro... it wasn't that way for Shiro.

That... really hurt, somehow, knowing that. ]

I'm sorry, Shiro. That all of that happened to you.

[ She finally looked up at that moment, her eyes finding his and hers were sincere. ]

But, you know - just because they gave you that arm doesn't mean it's a bad part of you. [ She was trying to draw similarities between Shiro and Genji, now, because she knew what Genji had gone through and she knew that he was at peace with himself now. And she was going to hope that Shiro would be too, in time. ] They gave it to you, but you can make out of it what you want, right? Like when we rescued people from the fire.

[He closed eyes, lowering his head when she spoke. She had pretty much hit the nail on the head. In the back of his mind, even though it was useful, his arm was the worst part of him now. It make him a monster, like the Galra who had done this to him. He had learned that not all Galra were like that. Ulaz and Thace had helped to save them and the Blade of Marmora were trying to free those under Zarkon's thumb, but there were plenty who didn't care who they hurt. The lives they destroyed didn't matter.

He took a breath before speaking again]

I know it's been useful. I've saved people here, the other paladins, with it and I wouldn't have been able to without it. But its hard...

[To think of it as positive]

[ She fell silent, then, not really sure what else she could say to help ease his mind. She wished she had Genji's wisdom - what would he say in this situation? Hana closed her eyes, too, listening for the running water in the river and the critters around them, thinking back on what Genji had said to her over the last few months that they'd known each other. Nothing rang as clear as day to her as the day earlier this month, at what Genji said to her after she had seen the circumstances around his untimely 'death.'

When her eyes opened once more, she reached for Shiro's hand again - and this time she wasn't going to shy away. ]

You can't let the worst moment of your life define you.

[He really didn't mean to be so negative and under normal circumstances, he wouldn't be so negative, but repeatedly seeing a terrible moment in his life wasn't helping him feel positive about things.

Then she reached over and took his hand. As her hand wrapped around his, he put his other hand over hers, holding onto it. It felt oddly comforting to have her hand over his.

He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath]

I know. I can't let it be the only part of me.

[ Oh, good, he didn't pull away when she held his hand. And when he put his other hand over hers, she found that it felt... nice. Like she didn't feel so alone, all of a sudden. Even though his eyes closed, she offered a small, sincere smile at him for his words, giving his hand - the one made from Galra tech - a gentle squeeze. ]

Definitely not. It's just one part of you and the other parts? They're pretty amazing, Shiro.

[It was weird. They both had issues back home, painful ones which had prompted them to try and avoid sleeping here. But here they were, out in the forest together near the water, sitting on the back of a robot lion. There was not a sole around for miles, but Shiro felt closer to people than he had for a while. Her words brought a smile to his face]

Thanks. It's nice to hear that.

[ And his smile, in turn, gave her some semblance of relief. She wasn't sure how, but it did. Of course she was relieved that she managed to cheer him up a bit, but... that didn't explain the way her heart fluttered at that moment.

Ah, it's probably just her being tired. ]

Of course. That's what friends are for, right? Moral support and stuff like that.

Yeah, moral support. I've definitely needed some of that recently.

[Yes, he'd heard it from Keith, but he always heard it from Keith. It didn't make it any less real, but it was nice to hear it from someone else as well]

You're pretty amazing as well.

[ Even as tired as she was, Hana couldn't help but giggle at the compliment. It's one she'd received from countless many people before - though usually in the form of a comment on a photo or a message typed into the chat during a stream - but it felt much nicer coming from Shiro. She defaulted to a very D.Va response: ]

Oh, I know.

[ With her free hand, she ran her fingers through her hair and and flipped it, although the gesture was a little restricted with the hood of her jacket still up. She gave him another smile after that. ]

You know... I should thank you for messaging me to come out today. I haven't really left the apartment in a couple of days. It's nice to get some fresh air.

[He couldn't help a smile watching as she tried to flip her hair even with her hood up. It was kind of cute]

It's no problem. I was kind of doing the same thing. I'm sure Keith's glad to see me out of the house.

[He turned and looked out towards the water for a moment, putting his free hand on Black for a moment. He then turned back to her]

Would you want to go for a ride? Just a short one. So we can spend a bit more time out of the house.

[ She trailed off into silence too, looking back out to the water again.

When he spoke next, she looked surprised at his suggestion. Somehow, she'd thought that they were maybe going to just sit here and talk a bit more, maybe even part ways and go home soon, but -

a joy ride sounded perfect.

She smiled and nodded. ]

That sounds awesome. Let's do it.

Edited 2017-12-03 04:06 (UTC)

[At the confirmation that she wanted go for a ~~magic carpet ride~~ ride on the lion, Shiro’s smile brightened a little bit more]

Alright. Let’s go.

[He shifted around so he was sitting on Black facing forward, waiting for her to turn and hold onto him. Black was definitely waking up now, tail flipping back and forth in anticipation]

Ready?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject