bookmarking | leaf 011 [text; action for Goldenrod; past midnight]

Seven and Lotus are gone.

[Ten minutes pass before she texts another message.]

If you could contact one person from your world right now, who would it be, and what would you tell them?

[Private to Santa]

I've got an extra Eevee. [The last one had been given to June.] Want him?

[People who are out at this hour or who decide to go looking for a pink-haired girl will find Clover strolling toward the radio tower, obviously wanting some real alone time. Her long pink hair is down, so no pigtails tonight. That jacket is buttoned all the way up to her ribbon, and she has thrown a coat over everything. While she's still in a skirt, her legs are in pale pink leggings. Gear in hand, she just walks idly on, a downcast expression on her face.

There is much on her mind...not only Seven and Lotus' disappearances, but also Snake, her older brother. It felt like an eternity since she had discovered that he was gone. Probably three months, more or less? And she was beginning to miss him again.

Actually, she always missed him. She had friends in Johto, sure, but...no one could ever replace her brother.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

miniworth

[He struggles to stay on his knees on the bench, determined to stay taller than her for this moment--taller, to be the bigger and stronger one just for now.]

It's okay to feel weak, sometimes. It's not wrong to be weak. [Oh, what would his sister say if she heard him now? What would von Karma say?] No matter how much you cry, as long as you're in Johto you won't find yourself back in any sort of strange room. I promise.

[He wonders for a moment if there might be another difference in their pain. Was Clover's longing for something she could still reach different from his and Ken's longing for the parents they could never have? Was it any different, any more or less painful? Two different kinds of loneliness...]

You won't have to be alone here.

From:

4leafcleaver.livejournal.com

[Clover doesn't let go, crying but managing to speak between bouts of weeping and wiping her eyes. If she closed them, she could almost imagine that she was back home, hugging her brother for some reason or other. She rests her head on his shoulder - perhaps if she was still her usual bubbly self, she would have made some sort of joke about him being taller than her for a while.

She felt a little guilty; here were two boys who had suffered greater losses than she (and hers was a temporary loss, even), and she was the one being comforted. They were the ones promising to keep her safe, to take care of her. Was it selfish of her to cry for a brother she would see again someday, when Ken and Miles had more to cry about?

Clover's resolve to be the strong one (for her brother, for her friends, and for herself, remembering the leaf words) was great...but it was rapidly crumbling. No, actually, now it was a pile of rubble.]

If either of you need to cry...if either of you need me for anything, I'll be there. Just like you and Ken were there for me when Light left.

I know he's waiting for me back home, but he's out of my reach...like we're on opposite sides of a mirror and when I stretch out my hand toward him, all I feel is glass...

From:

miniworth

... It's hard, to have someone on the other side of the mirror. [He hugs her a little closer. His mind is running a mile a minute to keep talking. To keep her talking. To let her get her emotions out so they don't eat away at her from the inside.]

My sister used to be here, too. She was ten years older than the girl I know back home. She fought a lot with Ken and I, and we had started the relationship here terribly. She disappeared almost right as we started getting along better... so I think I know. [His sister, little Franziska, is still in Germany. The one piece of family he's lost that he could still pick up. He would never have the chance for that relationship with thirteen-year-old Fran again, but he knows he would see some version of her when he returns home.]

I think I know what it's like to hit that glass. We're living in the same house now, you and I and Ken. We're going to have to rely on each other. So I know. When you're feeling better you can go back to acting like our older sibling.

From:

4leafcleaver.livejournal.com

[Clover wasn't fond of the thirteen-year-old Franziska, but who was she to judge? That feisty girl wasn't her sister, after all - and they had only spoken once or twice over the network. Still, she knew Miles probably missed her, even if they weren't siblings by blood like Clover and Snake.]

At least things with you and your sister turned out okay, even if Johto had to be a jerk and cut it short. Even though she was sort of different, she's still your sister, right?

And...and we'll always help each other out, no matter what. Like family.

[That's right. By assuming the role of the big sister, she was essentially treating Ken and Miles like family. A second family, different from Snake or her parents or anyone back home, but family nonetheless. A family she would do her best to always, always remember.]

From:

miniworth

She is a sister whose world I may eventually destroy, in the same way that my own was.

[So he had hoped (tried to fool himself, to some extent) that maybe the two of them would just be stuck here forever. They got along. She made Ken miserable at first, but by the end of their few months together Miles and Franziska weren't fighting with each other any longer. He would probably lose all of that if, in the future, he ended up arresting Manfred von Karma, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to think about such losses.

(Not that any of it mattered now, he thinks to himself, since he was aware of--and had accepted--the fact that he would have to risk losing everything for the sake of pursuing the truth.)

Aside from her and her family, I don't have anybody back there. It makes me very happy to have you and Ken to call my family here.

From:

4leafcleaver.livejournal.com

[Clover raises her head slowly. That first bit didn't make sense to her at all.]

But...why would you eventually destroy her world?

From:

miniworth

... I don't know for sure if it would happen. [Because for him to be sure about it, he has to be sure that the people who told him about this were not lying, and those people are gone, now.]

From:

4leafcleaver.livejournal.com

...

Then you shouldn't have to worry about it so much. I don't think you'd ever do such a thing - no, I believe you would never do that.

[She doesn't know what he's been told about his relationship with Franziska, but frankly, Clover doesn't care and means what she just said. Miles, after all, had helped keep another little sister's world stable.]