[ action post for Hojo ]

[tracedmemories]

[ Shelke has been listening and watching Hojo's actions as of late, uncertain of what the future will bring. She keeps her insecurities to herself, however, spending most of her time curled up on the couch with her phone in hand, idling away on the network for lack of anything else to busy herself with. What will come will come, after all. She

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[moralmisconduct]

[Once upon a time he was content with waiting, it being an inevitable part of the games he played with life. Now, plans scattered, illusions in disarray, and the world he built in ruins around him, the uncertainty in waiting is agonising.

He finds her curled up on the small sofa, a misplaced doll in this chaos. Truth be told, he still doesn't know why he even mentioned Shelke's presence to Rufus Shinra... He does know he wants to keep her close - but, merely as a security measure against another potential betrayle, or because...]

Shelke.

[...she is the reminder of a past when he was much greater, much more than the shell of a man he is now...?]

I will be rejoining Shinra soon.

But you...

[He hates hesitation, most of all in himself. But the words don't come easily to one who is unpracticed in such forms of conversation. Stripped of the barbed wires they are usually wrapped in, his sentences are loose and raw. Malformed.]

You are free to do whatever you like.

[tracedmemories]

[ Shelke's hand stalls over the surface of her phone, trying to take in his words. The sound and quality of his voice, the hesitation-- His behavior is anomalous to his usual self, and she finds herself trying to understand it without success. Slowly, she brings her gaze up to meet his, brow furrowed. She finds herself swallowing, studying him. More than that, she looks right past him to the days that have passed between them. From first hearing his voice upon his return to the phone call of only days ago, of him commanding her to come to him because he knows, as she does, that this is the only place she will ever belong.

To seeing him into the Mako chamber. To carrying him back out. To her conversation with Lucrecia. To his drunken tirade and the sound of his voice as he asked why she stayed.

To her own answer.

Then she lowers her gaze quickly again, entering her authorization code to shut down her phone. ]

...how soon do we leave?

[moralmisconduct]

[He is taken aback, and the surprise shows on his face for the briefest of moments before he has time to replace it with his usual expression of apathy. It is not until she gave her answer that Hojo realises he had expected it to be...different. And, as to why he was prepared for Shelke to be overjoyed at the chance to leave him, he cannot fathom himself.

She had come to him. She had needed him. But it is clear their respective roles and circumstances have changed more than either of them could have ever foreseen, and his shadow power over her is now almost nonexistent. Hojo sees this, but does Shelke? Another question he cannot answer. Another question he perhaps does not want an answer to.

For, if she remains with him not because of her fear, her attachment to the past...

Then...her reasons may be more baffling than he can afford to cope with right now.]

Rufus Shinra will contact me with details later.

[And, stands pausing between intentions, loathing himself, loathing her, before lowering his head.

I'm glad....We may need to