sigelphoenix

During last Saturday's Warmakers session, I RPed some conversations for Sae that were really interesting for her character development, so I decided to write them into fic and inflict share them with others. Much of this story is just a glorified transcript of the conversations I had in person with other players ... thought I'm not sure why it ended up so dang long.

As a side note, following this adventure, Sae took the feat that allows her more daily uses of her invisibility power. I hadn't planned it this way, but it worked out rather neatly.

Title: Gestures
Characters: Sae, Ichiro, Reika, Gunnar
Warmakers Adventure: 16
Word Count: ~5100
Summary: Unexpected events teach Sae a few new things about friendship.
Notes: Thanks to jack_grimm and ratzeo for both the original conversations, and for help as I was transcribing them into fic form.

The trip to the moon is long, tense, and restless for Sae. She hates being cooped up inside the shuttle, anticipating the showdown with Filge and Team Beta but unable to do anything except sit and wait. There is little room to move, and no chance of getting any training done.

At least Reika is managing to find some space for herself and Ichiro - or at least that's what Sae assumes, when they disappear together for hours at a time. She suspects it's a product of their magical abilities, to be able to find somewhere hidden from the other six Guardians. Or maybe it's just sheer willpower.

Sae makes a determined effort not to have any thoughts about finding any sort of hidden spaces with Gunnar, except maybe a few, and that's only when boredom wears her down and makes her easily distracted, so it's not her fault.

Most of the time, she tries to focus on the mission ahead. She feels stronger now than she was the last time they faced Filge, or the last time they were on the moon. She hopes for a decent battle this time, with no more chances for Filge to hide behind innocent hostages; she hopes Team Beta will either choose their side or get out of the way.

At one point, as she is checking through her gear to make sure her weapons are in place, she finds a folded piece of paper tucked away in her bag. Everyone else is focusing on other things and not looking at her right now, so she opens it up and looks at it, for the first time since she received it.

There is nothing on the paper except for three kanji, written in blood and burned in place by supernatural energy. The first is Sae, the same character for "serene," "cold," and "skillful." The other two are regular, common kanji, ones that she is familiar with reading all the time, though not written next to her own name: safety and promise.

Not words she would have expected to receive from any of the Guardians besides Reika, and perhaps least of all from Ichiro.

***

Ichiro was not Sae's first choice.

She'd wanted to talk to Reika after they returned from the White House, to get more information about the supernatural creatures they had just battled, but her sister was locked in a meeting with Gunnar and didn't look to be coming out anytime soon. So she turned to the team's other source of information on the supernatural.

When she opened the door to his room, she was greeted with a flurry of activity: books open, bizarre energies floating in the air, and Ichiro himself poring over text and scribbling notes. He even had that freaky wing of his unfurled, scrawling something illegible in the air with glowing energy. She half-expected to see a cauldron bubbling in the background.

"I, uh, can come back later," she muttered, pressing her back to the door. And thinking to herself, Really, Reika?

Ichiro shook his head, waving her in. "No, come in."

Sae raised her eyebrow at the swirling, glowing air above the boy's head. "I just ... wanted to ask about the difference between devils and demons ... make sure I know when to use my new weapons. It'll be quick."

Ichiro lifted his head, looking at her directly for the first time since she had entered. He gestured quickly, and the books, notes, and energy all vanished. The wing curled back into his shoulder and out of sight. "Would you like some tea?"

Sae stared at him.

"Tea?" he repeated, and started making some. Sae found herself taking a seat without really knowing why.

As they drank their tea, Sae asked her questions and Ichiro answered them. She was relieved to find that he didn't start rattling off a bunch of esoteric magical terminology. And this time there were no convoluted metaphors about blueberry pancakes, thank god. His explanations did get a little weird, particularly when he started talking about how to tell when an enemy was preparing a magical maneuver - she could swear he quoted a poem at her, though her literary knowledge wasn't good enough to tell - but she generally followed along.

"Your sister could probably explain this all in about ten seconds," he said at one point, and she agreed; she would ask Reika later for clarification. But at least she wouldn't have to ask for a full explanation. She was a little confused - as she'd expected she would be, trying to learn about magic - but she didn't feel totally lost or stupid.

She was pleased enough that when Ichiro requested her participation in an experiment, she obliged. But the first thing that he asked her to do was use her invisibility trick.

Sae hesitated; she could only fall into shadow a few times before she used up whatever inner power allowed her to do so, after which she needed to rest the ability for a substantial amount of time. She certainly tried to do it more often - sneaking up on enemies who couldn't see her was extremely useful - but she'd never been able to. After the fight with the vrock at the White House, she knew her power was all used up for a while.

She told this to Ichiro, and then he looked at her for a moment, a strange sort of appraising expression on his face. "Just ... try," he said softly.

A defensive retort rose to her lips, but before she could say anything he'd turned away, focusing on making another pot of tea.

Well ... why not? she thought. He wasn't looking at her, so he wouldn't see her try. And the back of a teenaged boy was much less intimidating than the face of a devil. Just because she hadn't been able to do it in the heat of battle didn't mean she couldn't do it now, in a quiet room with no one to see her.

She inhaled; focused; exhaled. And her body slid into shadow.

"I did it," she murmured, so quietly Ichiro probably couldn't hear.

But he looked up at her, and he must not have been able to see her, because he smiled and said, "Excellent." Then he did ... whatever it was that he did to use magic, and something exploded in a flurry around her. Something ... pink.

They were sakura petals.

Really, Reika?

"This is what the team will see when we fight an invisible enemy, so we won't be fighting blind," Ichiro proclaimed, not mentioning anything about the sakura. But he did wave his hand and make them disappear.

At this point, Sae was sure they were done, and was about to leave when he said, "I have something else to ask you," and the tone of his voice had changed.

Uh-oh, she thought.

"Your sister is mad at me again, and I don't know why."

Uh-oh, she thought again. She didn't like the idea of getting in the middle of Reika and Ichiro, since the last time that happened she somehow managed to sign away dating rights to her sister. Besides that, she and her sister felt so differently - not just about which boys they liked, but also about what kinds of relationships they had with those boys - she didn't think she could give Ichiro a useful answer.

Thankfully, this time she honestly didn't know what had happened between Reika and Ichiro, so at least she had a plausible alibi.

Ichiro accepted her excuse - or at least he was too distracted to care, because he was muttering to himself about Reika. Then, without warning, he turned to Sae with an intensity in his gaze that made her lean back from the table. She had the sudden feeling that she was about to get wheedled into something, and she wasn't sure what.

"Tell me what it was like growing up with Reika."

Well, that wasn't so bad. She couldn't see anything in that demand that would get her to give up her sister's rights again, at least. Besides, if Ichiro wanted to know more about Reika, that could only be good. It might help him understand her better.

So she started talking about their childhood - leaving out, of course, sensitive details about their father's job and exactly why they moved around so much. She found herself talking more easily than she would have expected, and for a moment she was reminded of what it was like talking to Miya at the hot springs, when the other girl listened attentively and just let her talk.

Sae wouldn't have expected to think of Miya and Ichiro in such similar ways, but the boy was paying just as close attention to her, keeping his focus on her and not interrupting.

She faltered when she got to the part about what it was like to change homes every year or so. She made a comment about Reika being much better at making friends than her, and suddenly the conversation felt too personal, too much about her instead of her sister. Especially since she still had no idea how much any of the Guardians besides Reika had become her friends, except for Gunnar who had told her that one time - that one time, the memory of which still made her heart beat faster. Miya was a sweet girl who was nice to everyone, which Sae was grateful for; but she still didn't know how to talk to her very well. And Ichiro - well, she didn't know what he was thinking much of the time.

"People didn't stick around, right?" he asked, finishing the thought she'd left hanging. "They often don't."

Sae opened her mouth, didn't know what to say, and shrugged noncommittally. It wasn't that she didn't have anything to say to that, but whatever she thought of felt too personal to share. So she did like she always did and hoped the other person would keep talking.

"I don't put a lot of faith in most people," he said quietly, "and I'm not concerned with saving them. But these people," he nodded in the direction of the other Guardians' rooms, "the ones who are close to me, are the ones I want to protect."

It was perhaps the first time Sae had heard one of the others say something like that, something which was so close to how she felt. She didn't share that feeling, not even with Reika, because she was afraid it was selfish - and it probably was, but the generosity that Reika and the others displayed towards random strangers always seemed tiring, too much sacrificed for people who didn't care about them back.

"I ... that ... " she said dumbly. "... Yes."

Despite her incoherence, Ichiro seemed to understand her sentiment, and nodded. He leaned forward on the table, steepling his fingers. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked.

Suspicion returned with a prickly feeling. She didn't like the way the light was reflecting off of his glasses, masking his eyes. "Yes ...?"

Ichiro flipped open the laptop on the table, tapped a few keys, then turned it to face Sae. Various numbers and spreadsheets crowded the screen before her, and it took her a moment to comprehend what she was looking at. This was some sort of business information ... no, information about several different business. Seven, in fact.

"One for each of the Guardians," Ichiro told her. "Each of you is the CEO of one of these."

She turned to stare at him and barely managed to not say, "You're cracked." She wasn't sure she kept her face from expressing the same sentiment, though.

Ichiro had a thing for excessively huge gestures, and she didn't really understand why.

"Each of you will be taken care of," he said, turning the laptop back and snapping it shut. "Because we take care of each other."

"Okay ..." she said slowly, not sure what he was going on about.

"Sae." Ichiro looked up at her over the rims of his glasses, doing that thing with his gaze that made her feel like she was under a spotlight. "These people, unlike most other people out there, are safe. Among us, you are safe."

Comprehension dawned with a suddenness that made her stiffen, every part of her body tense and alert. The spotlight feeling continued - Ichiro still kept her pinned with his gaze - and she barely kept from squirming in her seat.

And yet ... despite her self-consciousness, she felt, perversely, a embarrassed sort of pleasure at what he said. His words were a direct, explicit inclusion of her as one of the Guardians. The way he assumed so easily that she belonged with them made her feel ... warm.

"Before, I never thought I would have friends. Never thought I'd have family. This, in a very, very, real way, is a family."

Perhaps, she thought, feeling the ever-present voice adding, but ... behind it. But I'm ... it said.

He did not let her protest. "We will keep you safe," he said.

Her face felt suddenly hot, and she dropped her gaze to her teacup. She wasn't sure if she felt nervous or doubtful or scared. There was a rope she was hanging on to, and she was afraid it would shrink to a thread if she held onto it too hard.

"I know one in particular who will, at least."

Why would you -

"You will come to no harm, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise, while I draw breath, should I be able to prevent it. This is my word. This is my promise."

Sae stared hard into her teacup, focusing her eyes on the reflections of light off of the pale green liquid. She bent her head toward the table so the tears fell straight down her eyelashes into her lap, rather than down her cheeks.

Times like this, she wished she wore her hair down so she could let it fall forward. Her face felt very exposed at that moment.

Ichiro was still talking, but now any pleasure she felt at his words was overpowered by discomfort, and she could only think, Leave. Leave. Leave.

"I should go," she said, keeping her voice quiet and neutral. Put her hands on the edge of the table and pushed her chair back without looking up. "You can keep working on your spells."

"Sae."

Her fingers tightened on the table. She didn't say anything, as if pretending she hadn't heard him would somehow make him let her go.

"Look at me," he says, and for a second she considered not obeying, and just leaving the room.

It would be easier if he had said it less quietly, or less gently.

Sae took a deep breath and raised her head. The quick movement jostled tears from her eyes, making them slide in blatantly, shamelessly glistening tracks down her cheeks. She clenched her jaw and stared straight at Ichiro, daring him to make fun of her.

But he didn't. He just said, "It's okay now." Looked her in the eye and did not laugh.

Sae turned away and walked over to sit on the edge of Ichiro’s bed. With her back to him, she wiped her face clean with quick swipes of her hand, blinking quickly to make sure her eyes remained dry. By the time she returned to the table, she knew her eyes must be red, but she felt more in control.

"Okay," she said, and gave him a nod. He returned it, and then reached for something in his bags.

She saw that it was a knife, but instead of jumping into a defensive position she remained sitting. Ichiro had never been violent to her or the other Guardians. She trusted him that much.

She was still a little surprised when he put the blade to his own hand. She'd seen him do something like this before, but it was still weird.

She watched him - and he moved slowly, so she could - as he sliced his palm from finger to wrist, letting the blood pool onto his skin. With his other hand, he took out a sheet of paper. Deliberate and almost ceremonial, his movements instilled a calm in her that pushed out the remnants of her earlier distress.

Making his finger a pen and his blood ink, he wrote, and she read. Her name. His promise.

A gesture, a flash of flame, and the marks were burned onto the paper. "My word," he said, and handed it to her.

Sae took the paper in her hands. The gesture was, once again, overly complicated, and also a little grotesque. But it was also the most personal one that he'd ever made to her. She folded it carefully.

She didn't know what to say. If Ichiro had anything else, she didn't find out, because a knock came at his door. Gunnar entered, and Sae's calm dissipated like Ichiro's magical sakura, leaving something raw and vulnerable.

"Um," she said. "Bye." And she fled.

***

The following morning, Nadav was found dead in her and Reika's room, and earlier concerns seemed small in comparison. The next few days moved very quickly, as the Guardians were swept out of Washington D.C. to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to undergo intensive training for their trip to the moon.

Only on the last night before their departure did they get a chance to relax. It was the American Fourth of July holiday, and even though only two of their number were from the U.S., they all got the day off to have a brief vacation in Tampa Bay.

Tampa Bay meant the beach. And the beach meant swimsuits. Sae thought she would get out of it - she hadn't bothered to pack a swimsuit when she went to UNARMED, after all - until Reika presented her sister with the bikini she'd bought on a shopping trip with Kyoko a couple of months ago. And it would certainly fit - that was the problem with having a twin.

Besides, Reika insisted, "Gunnar will like it," turning Sae's face a flaming red that matched the bikini nicely.

Sae still couldn't bring herself to walk around in nothing but very bright, very small bits of spandex; she liked her body, wounds and all, but she was still embarrassed at the idea of revealing it to hundreds of strangers. Before they left for the beach, she put on a t-shirt and cropped pants over the bikini. She didn't have any visible scars on her arms and lower legs, so to outside watchers she looked like a normal teenaged girl.

She wasn't the only one covering up - Reika covered herself with cute, yet decidedly non-revealing clothes, and Gunnar was looking rather ridiculous with his usual turtleneck sweater and long pants. The others were not so self-conscious; even shy Miya wore a bikini as she splashed around in the ocean, and Ichiro - Are those flaming ducks? Really, Reika?

Sae hesitated, unsure whether to join the others, or just stay with Reika. But Reika waved her away, saying that she was going to go rollerblading, and told Sae not to worry about her scars. "Just go and have fun," she said.

"But what about you?" Sae asked, and Reika shrugged.

"I can't show these," she said, and lifted her hands, which were covered by elbow-length gloves.

"But ..." Sae floundered. "If I go out there, you should come too," she said, a weak plea that Reika deflected easily with a bright smile and a shake of her head.

Sae chewed on her lower lip. Reika never did do what Sae told her to. She had no chance of out-talking her sister; she never did, especially when Reika turned that impenetrable cheery demeanor on her. So she just did what Reika told her to, slipping out of her outer clothing.

Watch me be brave, Reika, she thought. And if you want to, you should too. We aren't ugly, screw anything the rest of the world might say.

The run to the water's edge was a little frightening, but exhilarating.

***

That night, Ichiro did something big and crazy again, somehow managing to get a small beach reserved for their own personal use. Hulking hired bodyguards patrolled the perimeter, while would-be groupies tried to charm their way inside. Sae, having dried off and gotten dressed again, sat near the bonfire and watched the spectacle.

Ichiro himself wasn't in any shape to gloat, because somehow he'd gotten alcohol and quickly started bellowing drunkenly about talking to Reika.

Sae sighed; if he did it while drunk he'd just make Reika mad again. So when Miya volunteered to use her magical healing on Ichiro, too quiet to be heard over the boy himself, Sae took the other girl's hand and marched her toward him.

They were too slow, however, as Gunnar stepped forward, hefted Ichiro by the ankle, and used his absurd strength to fling the other boy into the ocean. Sae tried to yell at him, but was drowned out by the ensuing commotion as Miya ran to the water, Ichiro tried his drunken best to meet her, and somehow Rex got himself involved in what she was quite certain was not a helpful way.

Gunnar barely gave Miya a chance to cure Ichiro before he proclaimed, "We should leave them alone," and gathered everyone who was near Reika and Ichiro - Miya, Kyoko, and Sae herself. Gathered them up, so their feet didn't touch the sand, and they couldn't defend themselves when he threw them into the water too.

Sae's indignant yell was lost amid the splash.

Without thinking, she fell into shadow, becoming invisible to normal eyes even as she emerged from the water. Started running straight at Gunnar.

Gunnar's arms came up to block her, but she was too fast to catch and his head snapped back as her invisible fist hit him in the jaw. Even with a direct hit, she couldn't get much force behind her punch, and she doubted it even got through his thick skull. It still felt good.

Instead of just accepting his punishment, though, Gunnar actually fought back. His massive hands darted toward the general area of her ankle, ready to grab and toss her back into the ocean the same way he had tossed Ichiro. She dodged his grasp more out of sheer outrage than grace, and whirled on him just as she felt her control over shadow dissipate and her body popped back into visibility.

"You deserved that!" she yelled, glaring at him.

Gunnar didn't yell back, though, or even try to toss her again. Instead he sighed and looked away, and the unhappiness in his expression made her stop short. Her eyes narrowed into a squint instead of a glare, as she struggled with his sudden mood change.

Why is he so miserable? Just because I hit him? He's the one who threw us into the water, even though he's the one who sat by himself on the beach as if he were scared of the ocean, while everyone else actually went out to have fun -

Oh my god, he's jealous.

"You're j -" she blurted, before managing to clamp her lips together. For once she wasn't going to react to a weakness in Gunnar by poking at it.

Even though she didn't say anything, though, Gunnar turned to leave anyway. She hated how dejected he looked, and she ran after him without knowing quite what she'd say, just clinging to the advice Reika gave her about being Gunnar's friend. She could do that. Maybe.

"Hey!" she called, and thankfully, he stopped at the sound of her voice. "Why don't you just ..." She gestured mutely, silenced by embarassment at the idea of telling him to take off his clothes. "Um, you know, go swimming yourself?"

He looked unimpressed at her suggestion. "I'm not exactly inconspicuous, Sae."

"No one's here to notice," she protested.

Gunnar cast a meaningful look at the beach beyond the borders of their secluded little area, where people crowded the shore in a boisterous, celebratory mass; and Sae faltered. "Well, they're not that close by ... Over here, it's just us, and we ..."

Dammit, what was it that Ichiro had said to her? About how she was safe with the other Guardians, even if the rest of the world cast her to the wayside. She wanted to share that reassurance with Gunnar, that promise of belonging ... but the words sounded so much prettier from Ichiro than they did right now, sitting heavy and jumbled in her head. Trying to repeat them would be about as effective as her trying to repeat the words he used in casting spells. She just didn't have the magic.

She could only think of one thing to do, and she felt her face heat up at the idea. But she did it anyway, raising her T-shirt to expose her scarred abdomen, left uncovered by the red bikini.

"You're not the only one who has scars, okay?"

She kept her gaze pointedly turned away from Gunnar's face, afraid of getting distracted by wondering what he thought of her, or possibly her head exploding with embarassment.

"Those aren't very noticeable, Sae. No one would look twice at you."

Sae flinched at his response, feeling an irrational surge of resentment. He probably thought he was being nice to her, telling her that she didn't look abnormal; still, his words felt like a rejection, not just of her offer of consolation but also of the warrior pride she felt in her scars.

Trying to be Gunnar's friend was proving just as difficult and confusing as liking him, Sae thought, just in different ways. She needed to say something to him, but she had no idea what. She could walk away, like she'd done with him before; like she always did.

But she wanted so badly not to do that, for once.

She looked at Gunnar standing in front of her, large and intimidating and yet also easily overcome by something like the prospect of his teammates seeing his scarred body.

"This is just ... how you look," she said, even though the words sounded pathetic to her own ears. What she wanted was to tell him was that how he looked was good, at least in her mind. She didn't know how bad his scars were, or how much of his body they covered, but she couldn't imagine any amount that would make him look ugly to her.

Of course, she couldn't say any of this. She wanted to be his friend, and talking about how good his body looked didn't seem like a very friendly thing to say. Neither did anything else she could think of. "I want to see you take off your clothes ... as a friend"? Probably not.

She wasn't made for things like this. Sae was good at studying, dancing, fighting ... not people things. She could work well with Gunnar if they were in battle or training; in this situation, she had nothing.

Unless ...

"Do you -" she began. Swallowing nervously, she pressed on, "Do you want to race?"

"What?"

Well, you don't have to make it sound like I asked you to do something weird, she growled mentally. Honestly.

"A swimming race," she explained, hoping he would stop looking at her like she was sporting an extra limb. "Just you and me."

There was a stretch of silence, and then Gunnar said, "Okay."

Sae managed to keep herself from crowing in triumph.

Sae stripped down to her swimsuit, this time hardly nervous because she was uncovering her body for a physical test; it was almost as easy as putting on armor. Gunnar got ready too - sort of - well, he lost the sweater, at least, though he still had a long-sleeved shirt underneath. They agreed upon an islet as the ending point of their race, and began.

Fueled by excitement and adrenaline, Sae felt like her body exploded from the shore, energy pouring from her limbs as she left the others and the beach behind. It felt so good to be using her strength and skill against, and also with, Gunnar. She would have laughed, if she had the breath for it.

This was her body doing something good, and she hoped, hoped, hoped Gunnar felt the same way.

By the time her hand touched the rock, she'd lost track of Gunnar. Looking around as she tread water, she realized that he was actually a couple of seconds behind her. She'd been so eager, she hadn't realized how much she was ahead of him.

At least it gave her a little time to wipe the doofy grin from her face. By the time Gunnar stopped swimming and looked up, the smile on her face felt normal. Gunnar even seemed like he might, just maybe, be having a little fun, too.

Pleased and relaxed, the words slipped out of Sae's mouth before her brain had a chance to think: "You know, you'd go faster if you had fewer clothes on."

Despite the warm water of the ocean, Sae felt like she had frozen.

"Um," she said, and sank down in the water to hide her face. "We should get back."

Still, she thought, as they swam back in silence, this was worth it.

***

Sae looks up from her piece of paper. Not far away, Gunnar sits hunched by himself, either thinking about the upcoming confrontation, or just brooding.

Maybe he worries about making friends the same way she does, and maybe he would like it if someone promised to take care of him. If only she could pound the message on the paper into Gunnar's head, make him realize that he has friends who consider him valuable. For a second, she considers balling up the paper and throwing it at his head, then decides against it.

Gunnar, for some reason, never seems to understand her attempts to communicate with him.

Quick steps, a muffled giggle, and then Ichiro and Reika reappear from wherever they were this time. Sae might feel more suspicious of Ichiro taking her sister off to secret trysts - regardless of his promise to her, that isn't necessarily a good enough guarantee regarding her sister - if it weren't for the fact that Reika returns from each of these disappearances with a smile on her face.

She looks at Reika's smile for Ichiro, and Ichiro's smile back. Remembers Gunnar's face at the beach - if not a smile, at least it wasn't an unhappy expression.

Maybe, is what she thinks.

Maybe.