[Owls] /valentine's day gifts

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

All it was was a card with an equation. The answer was a certain room in Hogwarts. Enclosed was a request to solve the equation, then go to the room.

Matt was in there covered in ice cream toppings and waiting.<




I figured you'd want something more brutal than chocolate.
So Ofdensen got him sugar skulls and a digital recorder.



In the end, she was too shy to give the cake to him herself, so she just owled it.

Comments

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

Mio's sniveling presented a minor yet welcome distraction from pain. Lezard turned his face toward her. With his glasses off -- they had been shed at some point, likely mashed somewhere under the pillows -- his eyes would appear larger than usual, though their focus would be unaffected.

He stared at her back. Was this going to happen to him, spreading from the first marks outward ... ?

"Mayu is dead," he reminded her, dully.

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

"But I saw her! In the abyss! She was fluttering around waiting for me!" Mio began sobbing in earnest.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"A ghost, an apparition. You killed Mayu and she is dead." Lezard had no mercy. The spreading tattoo on Mio's back simultaneously fascinated and horrified him -- fascinated him, because under other circumstances he would have appreciated the effect; horrified him, because he felt its twin growing upon his own hide, albeit more slowly and with less visible stain. "Whom will you kill next, my lady?"

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

"I don't want to kill anymore!" It was a familiar cry from the lost village, and now Mio fully understood the meaning. Curling up in a ball, Mio said, "I don't want to."

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"You 'don't want to'?" Lezard laughed aloud. "Look what you are doing even now."

He held out his arm, showing her where the bare skin bore the snake-and-holly tattoo.

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

Mio looked up and her eyes widened.

"I don't know how I'm doing that! I never asked for you to get cursed!"

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"Are you entirely certain? Be certain, before you offer such assurances." Lezard was not well. This much would have to be obvious. "And does it really matter what you want?"

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

"I don't know, I don't know!" And she genuinely didn't. She had no clue that dreaming about Lezard one time passed the curse on to him.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"Don't you?" His jaw clenched. "What do you know, my lady? What purpose do you serve?" Certainly not much of a purpose in his bed, thus far. He had had other preoccupations; he had not devoted time to seducing her, and she spent so much time sleeping, and to tell the truth, she could be rather boring for a person like Lezard. The spark of bitter wit that enlivened Steff was utterly absent from Mio.

He had kissed her, once, for his amusement. Look where it got him.

"Would you like to have a purpose?"

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

"I stopped the Repentance..." Mio whispered. Even if she did kill Mayu, it did have a purpose. She nodded again at Lezard's question.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"That was your purpose; it is fulfilled; you are finished. You have not much time remaining, I think. Each time you sleep, you remain asleep longer; soon there will be nothing but sleep, unwaking. I doubt that Hogwarts' enchantment will bar that. It will merely keep your body alive."

There was a certain grim satisfaction in saying this to her, making her understand it. He refused to accept that he too could now be doomed; the contamination was indirect, surely, since he had not been involved himself in Mayu's death. There had to be a way out for him. At the same time, his ire at Mio was undiminished by the likelier possibility of his own survival. She had no way of knowing he had better chances than she. She knew nothing.

"How can you help me at all? What use can you be to me? In what time remains to us, I think, you owe me whatever you can offer."

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

"I don't know. I just keep sleeping, and following Mayu in my sleep, and...and..." Mio hid her face, ashamed at admitting this. "I just want to forget."

Mayu's memory wasn't worth it if she haunted her dreams.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

Her shame meant nothing to him, if shame was what caused her to hide her face that way. "Forgetting would not change your fate," he said, cruelly -- and incorrectly. "Do you think only of yourself? Do you care at all for what you have done to me?"

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

"I don't know what to do! You're the mage!" Still tearing up, Mio got out of bed and picked up her shirt, putting it on.

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

"You're the sacred twin who underwent the ritual that caused all this," Lezard retorted. He could not believe the girl's gall -- blaming him? "I do not even come from that world. You cannot transfer responsibility the way you have transferred that curse of yours." He stayed where he was -- he didn't have to get up. Back in the waking world, his sorcery was potent once more.

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

"Look, nothing I read about the ritual ever mentioned anything about dreams or tattoos. My hair was supposed to turn white. That is all. As far as I know, no other Remaining ever went through this."

That's because she doesn't know about the Osaka twins.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? But I can't help you if I don't even know what's causing this."

[arrogantmage.livejournal.com]

With Steff he could argue for hours, and the arguing was exciting, fueling itself. This argument with Mio ceased to keep Lezard's attention for very long. He let himself fall back against the pillows. Whump. "Go eat your cake, then," he said. Die for all I care.

[mio-remaining.livejournal.com]

Mio chose to leave instead.

Once she was out the door, she leaned against the wall. Clutching her sister's charm to her chest, she whispered "Mayu," before going to the common room.