paradisalost | a dustland fairytale beginning

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a dustland fairytale beginning

Who: Asuka & Zelman
What: a not!date.
When: some weird hour sometime todayish.
Where: in town.
Rating: PG-13 (probably)

They've done this a hundred times before, on a hundred different days. The waitress that works there probably knows them by first name and last. They usually sit in the same spot and order about the same things. There's a kind of funny irony in how they go there to avoid repetition and boredom around the mansion of the castle, and yet this in itself is just another cog in the monotony machine.

But it's a delicious cog. ...Delicious milkshake, rather. The cog is metaphorical.

"What a pain," Zelman complains, as that is what these outings are for, "The annoyances are all locked up or shipped back... but now the place is quiet as the grave. The residents never fail to disappoint."

He takes a not-particularly-threatening drink of his milkshake through the bendy straw. Chocolate. Whipped cream on top. With little sprinkles. He's allowed, okay?

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"Some of them left this morning on another trip," she says, stirring around the contents of her own shake. Strawberry, naturally. After a few seconds, she tacks on an "I guess," because she doesn't like admitting to paying that much attention to the rest of the world. They're not worth her time.

"If anything, I'm sure we'll get some panicked reports of an attack out there. Oh, big surprise."

She rolls her eyes, like she has hundreds and hundreds of times in this same place.

He hums a note of recollection--yeah, the trip started today. He knows all about it, of course, but can't bring himself to care very much.

"I hope it's big." It's an offhanded comment, in that way that means his mind is busy running on two different tracks, "Like something out of a Japanese monster movie. Though, given where it is, the undead are more likely."

Asuka shrugs. She really doesn't care--the point behind going out into the world is to learn more about it, and the reason most want to learn about it is to unravel it and find a way to leave. That's something she has no interest in at all.

"If they all got eaten, I bet no one would ever go out there again. Not for a while, at least." She takes a sip of her shake, thoughtfully. "Or maybe the rest of the morons would run out there after them. They've been going out there for how long? Nothing's really come from it."

"They find new people, but no one has anything helpful to say..."

Which is something that bothers him. He kind of wants to go out there himself, sometime--he must be more competent than whatever group keeps bringing back empty observations. But he never would, not without his powers.

He gets quiet for a moment, pardoned initially by his eating a french fry but quickly without obvious cause or reason.

"We've been here a while now, haven't we?"

"Hm?" She looks up from her shake, then to her bare wrist--when did she last wear a watch?--and then to the clock hanging over the nearby counter.

"We haven't even been here an hour."

"No, no. Not that." He waves his hand in that dismissive, aloof way that he does, returning to the present. One train of thought.

"I mean here, in Paradisa." He shifts in his seat, leaning his head up against his palm, "To be fair, though, I think our trips here have climbed into the triple-digits. I'm almost surprised they still let us in."

She also shifts in her seat, resting her back against her chair instead of slouching over the table. A silly misunderstanding, but she's immediately cautious. Who knows where conversations like this could lead?

"My four year anniversary is next month," she says, briefly glancing at him before the frost on her glass becomes much more interesting. "It seems a lot longer than that."

She's not sure when it happened, but it was getting difficult to remember a time when she didn't go out for milkshakes with a vampire. Tokyo-3, both the good and the bad, were becoming a faint blur, and Germany even moreso. She was fourteen when she first arrived in Paradisa, and was now about to turn eighteen--something that seemed so far off as she went through the motions at school with Hikari.

He isn't sure why he brought it up. They normally don't talk about these things--hell, they usually avoid these things like the plague. But it's been bubbling away at the back of his mind here and there for a little too long.

"That means I'm not far behind," he muses, watching her stare at her glass. "I can't decide if it feels long or short."

"It should feel like nothing to you." She's not making a jab, not really. With hundreds of years under his belt, what was one? Four? Fourteen? Hell, her entire almost-eighteen years was nothing. It's not a new thought.

She hits eighteen before she hits her four year mark, and with eighteen comes something she's pretty sure he's forgotten about. The memory itself is foggy, forcefully blurred by her mind to cover up the embarrassment of awkward confessions in the game room. But she remembers what he said with surprising clarity.

Not that she'll bring it up or anything.

"It should, shouldn't it?" If it's not a new thought for her, it's an ancient thought for him. That's the silly thing about time. People assume it's nothing, but a year is still a year. Even if you've lived a hundred of them.

Almost four years... feels like a long time. If this were a city on Earth, he would probably move somewhere else within the next year.

"Maybe it's just you. Making it drag on..." He smirks, kidding. Clearly kidding. It's second-nature to try and poke at her a little. She's been with him all four years, though he doubts she remembers what he promised her near the beginning of it all...

She knows he's just joking around, but her face is already contorting into an annoyed frown. Now she looks at him, sweeping her foot under the table to attempt to kick him in the shin. She's done this hundreds of times.

"I'm the best company."

He narrowly avoids it, scooting his leg to the left, just looking more and more delighted with the situation.

"You've certainly been interesting company."

"Just admit it. I'm the best." She smirks, shoulders relaxing a little now that the topic is lighter. "I'm your favorite."

He thinks momentarily of a sarcastic, 'you're my something all right,' but he decides that she'd probably take it the wrong way. It could dredge up weird misunderstandings.

"As if there was much competition around here." Which is kind of admitting that, yes, she's probably his favorite. He drinks more of his milkshake.

She lets out a short laugh. "That's why I keep you around. You're slightly less annoying than everyone else."

... which is her also sort of admitting he's her favorite, too. Communication, they're great at it.

"Of course I am," he says, smugly. It's more to what she probably meant that in is towards the words that literally came out of her mouth.

"Though, on occasion... I'm still a little surprised you've stuck around. The castle must be more interesting than the mansion when there's no havoc being wrought." Not that he would rather she leave--just that it still surprises him that she hasn't distanced herself after four years of putting up with him.

It was a good thing to wonder about. There weren't many people that Asuka could say that she knew for any extended period of time--her father and step-mother at home, and then... Zelman, here. That was it.

"I've had enough of people and their crap," she says with a little sigh. Despite her feelings of inadequacy, and desire to prove herself (to whom?), Asuka had seen enough in her life to set her for the rest of it. Maybe other people would use it as drive, but for her, it was a wall. One she just lacked the will to conquer on most days. She was tired of people, tired of their petty problems, tired of hearing about them being better off than her or wanting to go home or any number of things.

"... I could say the same thing to you, though. You have to be bored."

Enough of people huh? That makes laugh a little, melodious. It's funny--he can remember saying something like that hundreds and hundreds of years ago. He really must be a bad influence, if she's starting to sound like him.

But it's comforting, too. He leans back just as she's doing, looking a little more pleased with the whole conversation.

"I've been bored for centuries," he admits freely, snagging another french fry while he thinks of what that would mean in the grand scheme of things. "I prefer the space, and no one's thrown a door at my head in ages." Yes, he's still bitter about that.

"As for you," since he imagines that's what she was really getting at, "I have the benefit of not having to play a game to speak with you. That's what really gets boring--the same game over and over."

"I doubt many people stick around you to get past that point." Sometimes she's a little more observant than she seems--and she remembers their earlier conversations. Those were games. Then, over time, they became friendly. Comfortable.

This is what they became. For a vampire and a teenage girl, she figured a while ago that people ultimately treated them the same. Meaning they didn't stay around that long, for whatever reasons. So maybe that's why the two of them stuck around--that commonality.

She's glad, though, that she's not boring. It's not like she tries to be interesting, but sometimes she does wonder...

He remembers their earlier conversations too. Sometimes he finds himself longing for them like a case on nostalgia, but all things considered... he could find those games somewhere else. What he's found with Asuka isn't so easily replicated.

"Not many people are deserving of it, either." He says, but leaves it there.

There's a small, smug smile on her face. Her confidence in her self, and this her relationships with others, often wavered, but right now it was good to hear that and know it.

"Exactly."

"So. Here's to sticking around?" He slides his milkshake forward on the table. Silly, but they don't exactly have the traditional wine glasses you'd need for that sort of thing.

His lips quirk into something closer to a real smile, though slanted and not without recognition of irony. "If not that, then perhaps as a fuck-you to the rest of the morons around here."

"Like usual." That sort of smile elicits a more sincere one from her. If half the population ended up getting killed, mauled, or simply just sent home in the next day--Asuka wouldn't care at all. As long as they stayed, it was fine.

She pushes her drink forward to touch his. "To sticking around."

It's silly. Silly but comforting, so she supposes little promises like this are worth it.

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a dustland fairytale beginning

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