[CLOSED LOG] Phantom Limbs
WHO: Kankurou & Temari
WHAT: If one of them had been cliche enough to say "this is not the last you'll hear of me", they'd have been right.
WHEN: A long time ago. >__>
WHERE: Kank's theatre
WARNINGS: i don't even remember anymore, but probably cursing and angst.
NOTE: .......why the fuck did I put Action Thread on the first time? DX
Kankurou shook himself out of a nightmare, still feeling the bite of sulphur char the back of his throat. He coughed reflexively, snapping a curse as his knee popped a strange way and shot pain up to his hip like a lit firecracker. The nightmares were easy enough to handle with a couple shots, but alcohol took money and his social worker frowned upon that mightily.
Something about integrating him into regular society. Something about medication reactions. Something about him being stronger than that. Then again, little Miss Social Worker, with her neat leaflet of degrees and her neatly parted hair, had never fought against the forces of hell. Bitch didn't know anything about how bad bad dreams could really get.
Kankurou's temples throbbed dully with a gathering headache. He got up out of the chair he'd fallen asleep in slowly, listening to his various bone-sinew configuartions pop and snap back into their favored alignment. Favoring his non-bashed knee, he stumbled down the stairs in hopes of finding something to beat the shit out of the drums sounding off between his ears.
Even Temari liked to get out sometimes. Occasionally.
Sometimes she picked up her coat (different shades of greens for camouflage, even if in a city that sort of jacket only made you stick out) and slipped into it quickly, the weight of those pamphlets reassuring and scorching in her pocket. Sometimes she took them out and lay them on the stairs on her way out of the church. Girls just want to have fun, she remembers, and hums a little tune to the sunlight.
She passed an old building, one of those monsters that remained even when there was no more use for them. Tear them down, was Temari's opinion. They had once been beautiful, and seeing these beauties decay was worse than anything else. The decay of lovely things...there was nothing more painful. Maybe it was curiosity that drove her inside, maybe it was the knowledge that she could just burn it all down so easily if she wanted to. Maybe it was the desire to do so.
In any case, she stepped inside, and the smell of age attacked her senses. She covered her nose with her sleeve, and realized that she smelt worse than the building. Temari put down her arm and walk inside, appreciating and hating the quiet.
Hating it more. "Hello," she said to the walls, the dying specimen of better days. "You're not looking so good."
The soft female voice echoed up the stairs in notes like filmy bubbles, popping against his unshaven face and scabbed knuckles. Kankurou's brow furrowed immediately---visitors, tresspassers; they were the same thing---wondering if that sprightly blond humanitarian had come back to pester him again. She'd made that kind of threat before she'd danced off with her suspicious headaches, he remembered, and he couldn't decide if he liked the thought of a regular golden-head cluttering his doorway or loathed it.
"Oi!" he barked, wondering why it was that he'd gotten two of these intruders in one damn week. He took the rest of the stairs two at a time, boots thudding a heavy rhythm against the flattened and old red carpet. "Th' hell're you doin'? We're fuckin' closed."
The voice was a jolt, and it sent her tumbling back into things she'd prefer to keep buried. His voice was ragged, angry, and it reminded her of him. She took an instinctive step back. Temari didn't want to remember him, not down here on Earth. In heaven, everything was deja vu. Where had she not been with him? On Earth, there were her own memories to make, even if most of them consisted of people telling her no, no, thank you.
"There's nothing to steal," Temari argued (even a bit taken aback, it was her first reaction). "This place is disgusting. You should be happy that anyone's even wasting their time in coming to this dump." It wasn't as if she lived in a dump, or anything. It wasn't like her church was falling to pieces. It wasn't like she was choking on dust every time she moved.
Anyway, she was leaving. He didn't need to be an asshole about it, though. Temari turned, ready to head towards the exit again.
Kankurou turned around the corner, only just catching the woman's blond head as it turned away from him. His stomach knotted instantly, clawing and impatient to be sick.
There was some line of some movie he'd slept through that'd asked the protaganist if he thought he'd be able to recognize himself if he saw him in another life. In the bare half-second that he saw her and the recognition hit, he knew the answer: even when cut off, you always feel the ghosts of your limbs. A third of his soul was turning its back to him, and his heart was clamoring in his chest in an effort to pull him towards it, enfold it, claim it again, make it right, put it together. Fix it.
"Y-you," he managed to croak, his voice coming in a dusty squeak.
He didn't know how he knew, he just did.
And that chill came over her again. His voice, it was like a scratch down a chalkboard, but...better. No, worse. Better.
Temari, she saw everything in shades of grey. That was worse than seeing everything as clear cut black and white. At least with black and white you knew where you stood. She felt her feet struggling to balance on that precipice all the time. Just as she felt her feet now turning, facing him.
And there he was. It was him. His wasn't a face she would forget in a hurry. It was different, though. Then again, Earth changed things once believed to be forever. She wondered how those whiskers felt.
Temari didn't take a step away, not did she take a step towards him. "K..." she began, and choked. There were questions, of course, but no way to ask them. She frowned, and swallowed her shivers. "Me."
He could hear his heartbeat throughout his body, deafening to the very tips of his fingers.
He could barely look at her, so he stared at her feet instead. Booted, rising up into ankles and knees and hips. He'd dug his fingers into those hips, once, feeling the hard surety of bone beneath the supple stretches of flesh. When they'd come together physically, it was like being whole again, like in the beginning when Good and Bad were clearly outlined in their chosen colors and it was so easy to see the difference.
Kankurou had never thought he'd see her again. He'd been convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. That was a part of his punishment, wasn't it? To rot here on earth while she stayed up Above and their bastard third piece permeated the space Below. Those were the terms of his imprisonment.
He shook visibly. "What're you doin' here? Tauntin' me?"
Temari flinched, a little hurt, but mostly angered by his reaction. He's seeing her for the first time in...Temari isn't a fan of keeping track of time. But it has been a while. And the first thing he does is accuse her.
She opened her mouth to argue, and then it hits her. Things haven't changed. Well, they have, but Kankurou hasn't. He was always fighting with her, except when he wasn't. They were at each other's throats more than was normal. It hurt, that things could so easily settle into a pattern again. Temari let out a sharp bark of a laugh, dry and barely amused.
"Because that's my purpose in life, Kankurou. I exist merely to torment you. I didn't even know that you were...here." She glanced around distastefully, letting him know how little she thought of his current abode. "You're as self-centered as always.
"I'm fine, by the way. Thank you for asking."
Of course he was still self-centered. He'd been humiliated and demoted. Was that supposed to magically make him into some kind of charitable soul? Did she think he was under the false illusion that so many of the flock suffered from---that he thought enough good deeds would earn him a ticket back home?
Despite all appearances, Kankurou was not an idiot. He knew there were no take-backs, especially considering the lewdness of his crimes.
Don't leave me here, he wanted to beg as her shock fell into ice and apathy, lashes shadowing the brief clarity in her dark eyes. Don't let me die alone.
"I dinnit mean it like that," Kankurou snapped instead, hackles rising to match hers. "I figured you'd know I was fuckin' here; it en't like I c'n mask myself worth shit anymore. I'm human."
His eyes were so human now. Maybe hers were as well. That thought scared her. Was she as easy to read? Because with one glance she could pick out his fear, his surprise, and his bitterness.
Then what did you mean? she wonders. Does the sight of me really bring you that much anguish? Instead: "Do you really think...I didn't want to find you." Temari left it at that, scratching the side of her neck nervously.
"Maybe...could we sit down somewhere? Unless you still want me to leave. I mean, since you look so busy and all..."
"You weren't s'posed to find me," Kankurou replied instead, his throat closing down around the irregular shapes of the words. "I en't used ta entertainin' company, so...I don't have much of a setup," he said dismissively, turning towards the staircase he'd come from. His shoulders suddenly felt so, so heavy. It felt as though his lost wings had been replaced by lead weights.
He had to be breaking some kind of rule, letting her in this way.
What were minor rules when they'd already broken a big one?
"I'm not used to finery. I'm not going to ask you for something to drink, or anything." Temari followed him, staying a good distance away. Yeah, they'd broken a rule once before, but that didn't mean the experience had to be repeat. It would...it would waste what he'd sacrificed. It was make the blow he'd received null and void. So she kept her hands fisted inside her pockets, and watched him move.
You don't realize how much you miss something until you don't have it anymore. Cliches were painful and Temari tended to avoid them. Unless they bit her in the ass, like now.
Just a touch. Maybe a hug. Would that be so horrible? Maybe.
"So. Why here?"
Kankurou was far from being in the mood to mull over what he'd lost after the advent of his Fall; what he'd gained was pale and sallow by comparison.
He'd slipped from angelhood into being a raging, sour, homeless drunk. He had every reason to be depressed, he assured himself every time he went to bed with the smooth weight of a half-empty liquor bottle between his un-calloused palms. It was easy enough to make himself believe, easier still with each bitterly hot swallow.
Depression was not something he liked to think about, but he'd watched too many movies about too many losers whose expressions mirrored his own. Being human sucked ass. Kankurou figured the whole reason God was fond of the skinny, powerless not-monkeys was that endearing kind of helplessness they boasted.
"Why not here?" Kankurou asked flatly, shaking hands sunk deep into his faded jeans' pockets. "Rent's free. People don't bother me much. I got as many movies an' buckets of popcorn as I c'n plow through in whatever time I've got left. It en't so bad for a mortal existence."
She raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. He had once been an Archangel, this pathetic excuse for a human being, and now he was claiming that he was happy with popcorn and movies and beer? She doubted it. How could someone who'd been so much come down to be so little?
Who did she think she was, exactly? Where was she residing that was so great and wonderful. What was she doing with her time? She was still and Archangel, and she was in the same Damn boat, wasn't she? She smelt like a God Damned dumpster, because she'd spent far too much time in that alley waiting to jump out at people on the sidewalk with her Jesus tirade. They were both spoiling, they who had once been sweet, sweet milk.
Temari shrugged, and glanced around to avoid looking at him. "It's ugly. There are better places that are rent-free." Like my church, for one. It's falling down like london bridge, but it's a lot prettier. Gives me the illusion that I'm still an angel worth a Damn, too. But that was a far cry from asking him to come visit her, so she changed the subject.
Or tried to. Nothing was coming to mind. What on earth could she say to him? Maybe...she should just leave.
If a lion woke up one morning as a mouse, cold and hungry and still feeling the residual strength of a feline in his paws, he would know what it is like to fall from Archangel to Hobo. Kankurou looked at the ceiling in order to avoid looking at her---glance at and glance away, a complicated dance, sweaty fingers and rapid heartbeats for all the wrong reasons.
Sweet milk and spice, the remnants of three-in-one, they had broken and spoiled. He could taste it in the back of his throat like bile.
"I dunno if I want you ta come back," Kankurou rumbled quietly, the words sticking in his throat. "Dunno if I c'n stand this, Tems."
Words were like whips, tips sharper than swords, if wielded correctly. Kankurou held the weapon of his tongue awkwardly, but occasionally he'd get a shot in. This was one such a occasion. Temari didn't dwell on his 'dunno,' but rather on the fact that she was...she was hurting him. And she wasn't stupid; she understood how painful it probably felt for him to see her like this. Didn't he know it burned her, too?
But she'd been dwelling on the same thought, hadn't she? Turning around and not glancing back over her shoulder for a last, Damning peek...Sounded like Orpheus. Damned to Hell, and here she was, daring the depths, but she wasn't sure if it was to get him back. Temari had forgotten to figure out how to know what she wanted long ago, and it wasn't coming to her now. She wanted him, and she didn't.
Everything was a heat-of-the-moment decision, and it could end badly or well. Life, even for an angel, was made up of 50-50 chances. "Then don't," she replied, frowning. Tems. She took a step forward, as if to reach out to him, and then two steps back. No. Goodbyes were messy and difficult and wholly unnecessary. Who needed closure when you could just...leave?
And so she did.
WHAT: If one of them had been cliche enough to say "this is not the last you'll hear of me", they'd have been right.
WHEN: A long time ago. >__>
WHERE: Kank's theatre
WARNINGS: i don't even remember anymore, but probably cursing and angst.
NOTE: .......why the fuck did I put Action Thread on the first time? DX
Kankurou shook himself out of a nightmare, still feeling the bite of sulphur char the back of his throat. He coughed reflexively, snapping a curse as his knee popped a strange way and shot pain up to his hip like a lit firecracker. The nightmares were easy enough to handle with a couple shots, but alcohol took money and his social worker frowned upon that mightily.
Something about integrating him into regular society. Something about medication reactions. Something about him being stronger than that. Then again, little Miss Social Worker, with her neat leaflet of degrees and her neatly parted hair, had never fought against the forces of hell. Bitch didn't know anything about how bad bad dreams could really get.
Kankurou's temples throbbed dully with a gathering headache. He got up out of the chair he'd fallen asleep in slowly, listening to his various bone-sinew configuartions pop and snap back into their favored alignment. Favoring his non-bashed knee, he stumbled down the stairs in hopes of finding something to beat the shit out of the drums sounding off between his ears.
Even Temari liked to get out sometimes. Occasionally.
Sometimes she picked up her coat (different shades of greens for camouflage, even if in a city that sort of jacket only made you stick out) and slipped into it quickly, the weight of those pamphlets reassuring and scorching in her pocket. Sometimes she took them out and lay them on the stairs on her way out of the church. Girls just want to have fun, she remembers, and hums a little tune to the sunlight.
She passed an old building, one of those monsters that remained even when there was no more use for them. Tear them down, was Temari's opinion. They had once been beautiful, and seeing these beauties decay was worse than anything else. The decay of lovely things...there was nothing more painful. Maybe it was curiosity that drove her inside, maybe it was the knowledge that she could just burn it all down so easily if she wanted to. Maybe it was the desire to do so.
In any case, she stepped inside, and the smell of age attacked her senses. She covered her nose with her sleeve, and realized that she smelt worse than the building. Temari put down her arm and walk inside, appreciating and hating the quiet.
Hating it more. "Hello," she said to the walls, the dying specimen of better days. "You're not looking so good."
The soft female voice echoed up the stairs in notes like filmy bubbles, popping against his unshaven face and scabbed knuckles. Kankurou's brow furrowed immediately---visitors, tresspassers; they were the same thing---wondering if that sprightly blond humanitarian had come back to pester him again. She'd made that kind of threat before she'd danced off with her suspicious headaches, he remembered, and he couldn't decide if he liked the thought of a regular golden-head cluttering his doorway or loathed it.
"Oi!" he barked, wondering why it was that he'd gotten two of these intruders in one damn week. He took the rest of the stairs two at a time, boots thudding a heavy rhythm against the flattened and old red carpet. "Th' hell're you doin'? We're fuckin' closed."
The voice was a jolt, and it sent her tumbling back into things she'd prefer to keep buried. His voice was ragged, angry, and it reminded her of him. She took an instinctive step back. Temari didn't want to remember him, not down here on Earth. In heaven, everything was deja vu. Where had she not been with him? On Earth, there were her own memories to make, even if most of them consisted of people telling her no, no, thank you.
"There's nothing to steal," Temari argued (even a bit taken aback, it was her first reaction). "This place is disgusting. You should be happy that anyone's even wasting their time in coming to this dump." It wasn't as if she lived in a dump, or anything. It wasn't like her church was falling to pieces. It wasn't like she was choking on dust every time she moved.
Anyway, she was leaving. He didn't need to be an asshole about it, though. Temari turned, ready to head towards the exit again.
Kankurou turned around the corner, only just catching the woman's blond head as it turned away from him. His stomach knotted instantly, clawing and impatient to be sick.
There was some line of some movie he'd slept through that'd asked the protaganist if he thought he'd be able to recognize himself if he saw him in another life. In the bare half-second that he saw her and the recognition hit, he knew the answer: even when cut off, you always feel the ghosts of your limbs. A third of his soul was turning its back to him, and his heart was clamoring in his chest in an effort to pull him towards it, enfold it, claim it again, make it right, put it together. Fix it.
"Y-you," he managed to croak, his voice coming in a dusty squeak.
He didn't know how he knew, he just did.
And that chill came over her again. His voice, it was like a scratch down a chalkboard, but...better. No, worse. Better.
Temari, she saw everything in shades of grey. That was worse than seeing everything as clear cut black and white. At least with black and white you knew where you stood. She felt her feet struggling to balance on that precipice all the time. Just as she felt her feet now turning, facing him.
And there he was. It was him. His wasn't a face she would forget in a hurry. It was different, though. Then again, Earth changed things once believed to be forever. She wondered how those whiskers felt.
Temari didn't take a step away, not did she take a step towards him. "K..." she began, and choked. There were questions, of course, but no way to ask them. She frowned, and swallowed her shivers. "Me."
He could hear his heartbeat throughout his body, deafening to the very tips of his fingers.
He could barely look at her, so he stared at her feet instead. Booted, rising up into ankles and knees and hips. He'd dug his fingers into those hips, once, feeling the hard surety of bone beneath the supple stretches of flesh. When they'd come together physically, it was like being whole again, like in the beginning when Good and Bad were clearly outlined in their chosen colors and it was so easy to see the difference.
Kankurou had never thought he'd see her again. He'd been convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. That was a part of his punishment, wasn't it? To rot here on earth while she stayed up Above and their bastard third piece permeated the space Below. Those were the terms of his imprisonment.
He shook visibly. "What're you doin' here? Tauntin' me?"
Temari flinched, a little hurt, but mostly angered by his reaction. He's seeing her for the first time in...Temari isn't a fan of keeping track of time. But it has been a while. And the first thing he does is accuse her.
She opened her mouth to argue, and then it hits her. Things haven't changed. Well, they have, but Kankurou hasn't. He was always fighting with her, except when he wasn't. They were at each other's throats more than was normal. It hurt, that things could so easily settle into a pattern again. Temari let out a sharp bark of a laugh, dry and barely amused.
"Because that's my purpose in life, Kankurou. I exist merely to torment you. I didn't even know that you were...here." She glanced around distastefully, letting him know how little she thought of his current abode. "You're as self-centered as always.
"I'm fine, by the way. Thank you for asking."
Of course he was still self-centered. He'd been humiliated and demoted. Was that supposed to magically make him into some kind of charitable soul? Did she think he was under the false illusion that so many of the flock suffered from---that he thought enough good deeds would earn him a ticket back home?
Despite all appearances, Kankurou was not an idiot. He knew there were no take-backs, especially considering the lewdness of his crimes.
Don't leave me here, he wanted to beg as her shock fell into ice and apathy, lashes shadowing the brief clarity in her dark eyes. Don't let me die alone.
"I dinnit mean it like that," Kankurou snapped instead, hackles rising to match hers. "I figured you'd know I was fuckin' here; it en't like I c'n mask myself worth shit anymore. I'm human."
His eyes were so human now. Maybe hers were as well. That thought scared her. Was she as easy to read? Because with one glance she could pick out his fear, his surprise, and his bitterness.
Then what did you mean? she wonders. Does the sight of me really bring you that much anguish? Instead: "Do you really think...I didn't want to find you." Temari left it at that, scratching the side of her neck nervously.
"Maybe...could we sit down somewhere? Unless you still want me to leave. I mean, since you look so busy and all..."
"You weren't s'posed to find me," Kankurou replied instead, his throat closing down around the irregular shapes of the words. "I en't used ta entertainin' company, so...I don't have much of a setup," he said dismissively, turning towards the staircase he'd come from. His shoulders suddenly felt so, so heavy. It felt as though his lost wings had been replaced by lead weights.
He had to be breaking some kind of rule, letting her in this way.
What were minor rules when they'd already broken a big one?
"I'm not used to finery. I'm not going to ask you for something to drink, or anything." Temari followed him, staying a good distance away. Yeah, they'd broken a rule once before, but that didn't mean the experience had to be repeat. It would...it would waste what he'd sacrificed. It was make the blow he'd received null and void. So she kept her hands fisted inside her pockets, and watched him move.
You don't realize how much you miss something until you don't have it anymore. Cliches were painful and Temari tended to avoid them. Unless they bit her in the ass, like now.
Just a touch. Maybe a hug. Would that be so horrible? Maybe.
"So. Why here?"
Kankurou was far from being in the mood to mull over what he'd lost after the advent of his Fall; what he'd gained was pale and sallow by comparison.
He'd slipped from angelhood into being a raging, sour, homeless drunk. He had every reason to be depressed, he assured himself every time he went to bed with the smooth weight of a half-empty liquor bottle between his un-calloused palms. It was easy enough to make himself believe, easier still with each bitterly hot swallow.
Depression was not something he liked to think about, but he'd watched too many movies about too many losers whose expressions mirrored his own. Being human sucked ass. Kankurou figured the whole reason God was fond of the skinny, powerless not-monkeys was that endearing kind of helplessness they boasted.
"Why not here?" Kankurou asked flatly, shaking hands sunk deep into his faded jeans' pockets. "Rent's free. People don't bother me much. I got as many movies an' buckets of popcorn as I c'n plow through in whatever time I've got left. It en't so bad for a mortal existence."
She raised an eyebrow disbelievingly. He had once been an Archangel, this pathetic excuse for a human being, and now he was claiming that he was happy with popcorn and movies and beer? She doubted it. How could someone who'd been so much come down to be so little?
Who did she think she was, exactly? Where was she residing that was so great and wonderful. What was she doing with her time? She was still and Archangel, and she was in the same Damn boat, wasn't she? She smelt like a God Damned dumpster, because she'd spent far too much time in that alley waiting to jump out at people on the sidewalk with her Jesus tirade. They were both spoiling, they who had once been sweet, sweet milk.
Temari shrugged, and glanced around to avoid looking at him. "It's ugly. There are better places that are rent-free." Like my church, for one. It's falling down like london bridge, but it's a lot prettier. Gives me the illusion that I'm still an angel worth a Damn, too. But that was a far cry from asking him to come visit her, so she changed the subject.
Or tried to. Nothing was coming to mind. What on earth could she say to him? Maybe...she should just leave.
If a lion woke up one morning as a mouse, cold and hungry and still feeling the residual strength of a feline in his paws, he would know what it is like to fall from Archangel to Hobo. Kankurou looked at the ceiling in order to avoid looking at her---glance at and glance away, a complicated dance, sweaty fingers and rapid heartbeats for all the wrong reasons.
Sweet milk and spice, the remnants of three-in-one, they had broken and spoiled. He could taste it in the back of his throat like bile.
"I dunno if I want you ta come back," Kankurou rumbled quietly, the words sticking in his throat. "Dunno if I c'n stand this, Tems."
Words were like whips, tips sharper than swords, if wielded correctly. Kankurou held the weapon of his tongue awkwardly, but occasionally he'd get a shot in. This was one such a occasion. Temari didn't dwell on his 'dunno,' but rather on the fact that she was...she was hurting him. And she wasn't stupid; she understood how painful it probably felt for him to see her like this. Didn't he know it burned her, too?
But she'd been dwelling on the same thought, hadn't she? Turning around and not glancing back over her shoulder for a last, Damning peek...Sounded like Orpheus. Damned to Hell, and here she was, daring the depths, but she wasn't sure if it was to get him back. Temari had forgotten to figure out how to know what she wanted long ago, and it wasn't coming to her now. She wanted him, and she didn't.
Everything was a heat-of-the-moment decision, and it could end badly or well. Life, even for an angel, was made up of 50-50 chances. "Then don't," she replied, frowning. Tems. She took a step forward, as if to reach out to him, and then two steps back. No. Goodbyes were messy and difficult and wholly unnecessary. Who needed closure when you could just...leave?
And so she did.