tampered | Log ; ONGOING

Log ; ONGOING

When; November 12th, Night
Rating; G
Characters; Ophelia

contractorly
Summary; Stargazing is better than Gut-eating.
Log;

In reality, promises meant nothing for Contractors, they were merely words thrown around for the sake of keeping up appearances. What were promises without emotion to back them up? But if it was a way to keep Ophelia quiet then he would play along, just like he always did.

The trek from the City to the edges of the Pool was lengthy, but even with a telescope case slung over his back, it wasn't anything that really fatigued him. When finally spotting Ophelia in the distance, Hei stopped, and up went his usual front of feigned smiles and soft-spoken mannerism.

"Ophelia!"

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Ophelia had been listening.

She liked being outside, she'd spent most all of her life outside. As a child, in those barely remembered blurs of life as a human, she knew her home had been in the forest, with her life revolving around it. And ever since she'd become what she was, had the Organization cut her open and sew her up with monster parts, she had never once set foot in a true home. She had her quarters in Sutafu, that barren rock room, and she'd camped in abandoned towns, but never in a village, around people.

So she still wasn't comfortable around large groups of people, wasn't comfortable in the City, only would enter it's borders if she was accompanied by someone she could latch onto in a childish manner belied by her fearsome reputation. But, still, she preferred outside.

Crickets, keen ears could point in each one's direction, could point to the whippoorwill in the bush forty feet away, could have thrown a hand out and pointed at each noise and identified it. So she had heard Hei coming, smelled him coming in the crisp, wet wind, small, seemingly harmless body tucked back against her naked sword, stuck hard into the dirt by the so called Drowning Pool.

Slowly, one eye, bright silver, cracked open, and lips split into a small smile, much calmer today than previously, luckily enough in one of her rare soft moods, the swings of which were unpredictable and violent.

"Hei~"

Hei couldn't remember when it became so easy to fake a smile, that familiar tugging at the edges of his lips, those wide grins accompanied by the sometimes meek lilt in his voice. If one were to look closer, to observe him from what common belief deemed as "windows to the soul," it would betray that ever-present smile on his face. They were empty, dark pools leading to seemingly nothing -- no glimpse of a soul nor even the slightest hint of the emotion that one would expect with such a smile like his. However, his front worked every time, and that was all that mattered.

"It's a nice night out tonight, isn't it?"

He approached closer, tugging the bag onto the ground and opening it in almost almost immediately to pull out the stand. It would take a few minutes to set up, but he expected that the set-up would perhaps be as interesting for Ophelia as would be observing the stars.

"It's always a nice night." Ophelia blinked, stretching out over the naked steel of her blade with a whining grunt, eyes squeezed shut. "This place has good weather." Claymore did not get hot, nor cold. Rather, their bodies were so resistant to harsh conditions that she could stand in a blizzard, stand in a desert, with no adverse affects, making a night like this ridiculously mild.

"But is it a good night for stars?" Honestly, she'd never bothered looking up much, they were just stars. Ophelia had always spent her life looking forward, to her next kill, to getting stronger, the next Awakened Being to chop up, all to find the One-Horned One.

"I wouldn't know." She supplied helpfully, reaching out to pat the creature at her side, laying down obediently. Her pet, something eerie in the fact that it seemed she patted nothing, merely hair that didn't give way to her palm, the beast's barely there breathing lost among the songs of crickets and nocturnal rustling.

"... What's that?"

"Except for our most recent snowstorm, it's been surprisingly pleasant."

On the other end of the spectrum, Hei had always taken the time to gaze at the stars. It his one solace from the chaotic happenings of the world, and the thing that reminded him of those calm nights before her smile had vanished with the stars.

"It can be too bright in the City to see them clearly, but on clear nights like this, you can seem them clearly."

Hei's head tilted towards Ophelia, an eye-brow raised at her sudden movement toward something that was seemingly not there. He wasn't one to question other's behavior on a regular basis, so he merely pushed the thought aside.

"It's a stand for -- " he opened the bag once again, now lifting out a much larger object of a tube-like shape, " -- this."

"And what's tat?" Ophelia asked, genuinely didn't know, was curios, in the same manner than children were curious, wide eyed and inncent.

Odd, that she could be innocent when she had killed so may people, when not a day earlier she had played her games with the child he had once been, draw one drop of blood an I'll tell you, when she had no idea in the first place.

the Claymore breathed, took in his scent and nodded to herself. That was definitely the same smell, no mistaking.

He placed the tube on it's proper stand, adjusting it's position so that it stared directly at the stares. With one hand, he ushered Ophelia toward the eye piece.

"The stars are too far for us to see them closely -- at least for humans," he spoke, as would a teacher instructing a student, "But with this, we can see them at least somewhat better. You could call it the opposite of a magnifying glass."

It was strange, in a way, sitting so calmly next to the one that had only a day ago had pressed on him such fear. She had seemingly been the devil in what he had assumed to be hell. Though much like him, it seemed that she also possessed a dual nature.

Ophelia cautiously approached the telescope, skirting around it like a skittish animal, glaring at it just in case it decided to attack. Nothing i her world was like this, no one in her world tried to look at the stars like this. No one cared. There were fields to plow, for humans, markets to shop in, children to look after, and animals to feed. For Claymore, there were always yoma to kill.

Who had time to look at stars?

"... What will it do to me?" She asked with a childish purse of her lips, croached down and hunched a bit, looking up at the telescope, to the stars, and back to Hei, something of a pout in her expression.

There was a laugh in response, a short, melodious thing that hinted at amusement towards Ophelia's defensive attitude toward the inanimate object. It was like teaching a child the workings of a foreign objects, inquisitive nature and all.

"The telescope won't do anything to you. It's like a rock or a piece of wood; it can't move on it's own."

Hei raised a finger to point at the lens, then turned to lean closer toward Opehlia. He was close enough to whisper in her ear, far closer than his personal bubble would usually allow -- "Look, Ophelia. You wouldn't be able to imagine such a sight."

It was far too quiet a night to be speaking out loud.

Ophelia had never had any respect for personal space, and she blinked innocently, followed his finger to the lens and pouted a moment, considering. Her eyes were silver as all Claymore's were, and they reflected the light from moon and stars in an eerie sort of glow, slowly scooting over until she crouched before the telescope lens, tentatively closing one eye and looking through the focus.

Suddenly her vision leaped and she almost got motion sick off it, before her keen eyes sharpened again and the stars lept into view, before suddenly the sky was right there and her mouth fell open in surprise.

"The stars got close..." She murmured in awe, hips wriggling a bit in barely contained excitement, blinking and withdrawing to turn and regard him with wide-eyed shock.

Hei responded once more with a slight chuckle, though this time it was accompanied with one of his typical sheepish expression. With a hand raised, he ran his fingers idly through his hair as though uncertain about how to respond.

“They only seem closer, they’re still up there –,” he moved his finger to now point at the sky, “ – far, far away from us.”

Maybe, if he closed his eyes for a moment, allowing those ever-present thoughts of Pai to settle; he could pretend she was her, instead of the Claymore that sat beside him now, that it was her that he was explaining the stars to, as he had so many times before.

"Ophelia, have you ever seen a shooting star?"

"A shooting... star?" Ophelia mumbled over the words, occasionally pausing between syllables to sneak peaks back through the telescope, an amused little smile tugging at the corner's of her lips. She though hard, and it was blatantly evident, as all her emotions were, worn plainly, like the furrowing in her brow as she tried to remember.

"A shooting... star..." The Claymore whispered, her eyes closing. They fell, from the sky, right, they-

"Yes!" Her eyes shot open, the still eerie glow of quicksilver, laughing and clapping her hands together in excitement, but it died quickly, suddenly, like a light that went out, when she remembered the rest.

"A long... long time ago. With some... one I can't remember." Her gaze, capable of the manic lights of insanity, and this, this sadness, settled on the lake, on the reflections of the night sky within it.

"... I made a wish.

"A shooting star is the light that escapes whenever God opens the lid to the sky. If you make a wish when you see one, God will listen to it."

The phrase was spoken faintly, breathless words inflected with a perceptible sadness, a sadness that, for Hei, was only reserved for certain memories. It was the sadness that followed thoughts of her smile, of her soft voice asking questions of the world -- Why did stars fall? Why was the sky blue? Will you always be there for me, Onii-chan?

But they were only memories; she still existed, didn't she? Inside him, they had said.

"...What sort of wish, Ophelia?"

He wondered, even with her nature as it was, did Ophelia also have someone she longed for?

Edited 2007-11-16 00:23 (UTC)

Ophelia looked up into the sky and wondered if her eyes were actually seeing the stars.

She checked the telescope to be sure, leaned over and looked through the lens before looking back at Hei. She wore a somewhat vacant expression.

"I don't believe in God." The Claymore answered. How could she, when she'd been cut open and had a beast inserted into her, to live like that, to warp and twist like that?

But she scooted closer, far beyond violating personal space and more like invading, had no respect for it, laying her chin on his shoulder and sniffing at his hair and neck, almost bestial in that aspect, eyes lidded lazily.

"I can't remember what I wished for, Hei." The woman called Silver Eyed Witch murmured. "I thi- I know it was really important." She inhaled again, a sense of smell beyond any humans, and smiled wistfully.

"You smell like him."

"I don't either."

And it was the truth, even if he had once had an entirely different opinion. What reason was there to believe in a God when the heavenly bodies themselves had disappeared? The stars and the moons gone, only to replaced by pathetic renditions of their prior forms. Perhaps age-old phrase should be changed for modern times: "If you see a shooting star, it means that someone out there has died, someone that nobody probably cared for."

Never minding the rare moments during missions, direct contact meant that a fight was imminent, and so his instincts nearly reacted accordingly.
His shoulders immediately tensed upon contact, hands shooting to his sides for the knives that could have been there if he had come prepared to fight. However, he managed to save face by setting about his usual nervous tone.

"A-ah, Ophelia-san -- I didn't realize I had a smell..."

Her sword still lay strapped on her back, easily reached, but she didn't reach for it, nuzzled the side of her face into his neck and breathed again, her eyes fluttering between closed and half-open, lips curled into a smile.

"Everyone has a smell. Everything has a smell." Ophelia crooned, breathing in his scent. It reminded her of his.

"Grass smells like grass, and rain smells like rain and people smell like all sorts of things. I've got the best nose in the Organization, you know." She bragged a little bit, seeking approval, encouragement, coddling, something she wanted from her brother, in that little part of her that remained that human child from that day, running for her life and letting her brother gamble his for hers.

"Smells good." Her breath settled somewhat and she sagged against him, eyes drifting up.

"... Stars don't smell, though. Kinda pretty, maybe."

It was then that realization set in. This coddling and clinging, peculiar behavior for a grown woman, no less a half-monster that could raise her sword to strike down another without a bat of an eye. It was like she was looking to him as a child looks to a parent or as a sister looks...to her brother. Had he subconsciously been playing the role of an older brother? Or maybe it was an air about him that caused such a reaction? It was surely a role he had been born to play, more than that of a cold-hearted Contractor and fumbling Li Shenshung.

"I'm glad I smell good to you then, Ophelia," another smile, this time genuine in it's sentiment, "A compliment coming from the best nose of the Organization, I assume?"

He then raised a hand to pat the Claymore lightly on her back. A small motion, but a rare one considering that it came from Hei.

Barely noticeable, she trembled, wriggled a little happily and smiled softly, letting her eyes close all the way. She didn't much like humans, but... he smelled like him, and so maybe it was okay. And there was something dangerous about him, below the surface that intrigued her, just like the knife beneath Nnoitra's smile and the darkness beneath Nisei's. That sort of thing drew her like a moth to a flame, but with this one, it was more than that. It was the brotherly feel, the guidance, the warmth, also barely there but she could see it and she wanted it.

"Mm!" Ophelia nuzzled again, humming happily and squirming closer. "Do stars make Hei happy?" She asked, breathing him in as she spoke, a calming smell that made the normally excitable Claymore more limp and compliant, less violent.

There wasn't any need to mention that the stars had fallen, nor that pleasant nostalgia wasn't the only thing that came from gazing at their imitations. The mood was serene, somewhat comforting in a way that hand grown nearly alien to the Syndicate agent. It wasn't anything he wanted to interrupt.

"They remind me of...good times."

Now that he thought about it, Hei didn't mind playing the role.

"Mm..." Ophelia wasn't really listening anymore, tucking herself closer and closer inch by inch, until she was as close as bodies could be, really, breathing in the scent of brother-ness.

"Good." Bold, always forward and never respecting others' space, she squirmed herself to pay her head on his shoulder, half in his lap, and suddenly and inexplicably when limp, body sagging and breath slow and deep.

She was asleep.

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Log ; ONGOING

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