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[Sometime between the 24th and the 25th (and who can really say which day or which hour with the endless darkness looming over them), a package is placed on the step of Inigo's residence. It is soft and bulky, of moderate size, wrapped in thick paper and tied with a string. A small card has been attached, with words inked in a vine-like script:]

For the warmth you've given me. Take care, Firefly.

- Iris

[Upon opening the gift, Inigo will find a long woolen coat, a shade of blue darker than his hair. It is warm and loose-fitting, perfect for layering, with a set of hazy iridescent buttons sewn down the front. If he's able to identify them by sight, they're made of abalone shell.]

[ It takes a little bit before Inigo truly realizes what this gift is about.

Not that he doesn't appreciate it right away. Of course he does. This is Inigo - he doesn't ever expect anything, so just a coat as a sign that someone is thinking about him means a lot to him, and it also means he actually properly bundles up a little bit more when going outside, compared to how sloppily he'd do it on his own accord..

But it's after a few days that he realizes something. Maybe it's the way the buttons catch the light, reminding him of something.

It's a shocking realization, and Inigo only barely manages to keep himself from running off to Blue's shop. Instead he takes out his device, sending off a half-panicked: ]

Can we talk?

[ Please don't let him wait for the answer, Blue, he is BUZZING with so many thoughts and feelings right now! ]

[Blue takes the lack of immediate response to say that her expectations were on point: That barring any resemblance in skin or hair or demeanor between herself and that child on the beach, it would render the connection impossible for Inigo to discern. Which isn't to say that she thinks him unintelligent. It would simply take a giant leap of imagination to say that child was her, one that most people wouldn't think to fathom.]

[Still, the gift was important; and the message she left him was as sincere as she knew how to be. Even if he doesn't understand it.]

Of course. What is it?

In person.

[ The reveal is still hitting him, which doesn't help. It feels so heavy on his mind that he feels like he can't just discuss it over text like this.

He needs to see her face as they talk about it. It doesn't even matter that Inigo usually prefers hiding behind text to hide his own emotions. He'll show them to her, just as long as he's actually getting some answers here. ]

If that's alright?

You don't even have to go anywhere. Just let me know where you are, and I'll come to you. Right away.

Is it that dire?

[Unfortunately, there's any number of things that this could be about. This is, after all, the boy who ran breathless to her shop to make sure she was alright after a few minor disturbances. But on the off chance that he does have something important to discuss (or something private to her nature), she'd rather not have that conversation over something as vulnerable as a text message.]

I'm at home. You should know where that is by now, I hope.

[ There's no response to the message.

Not even necessarily on purpose. Inigo doesn't mean to be mysterious or anything like it. It's just that he wants to see Blue as quickly as possible to talk about it, and in this case that means running over to her house. Without a moment to spare. So not even a moment to shoot her a message back.

So by the time there's a knock on the door, and by the time Blue opens the door, she will be greeted with a familiar sight. Inigo - indeed, wearing the coat he was gifted - completely out of breath once more. Considering the sheer speed at which he must have ran over right away, it's no surprise he's so out of breath. ]

Your gift. [ He manages between pants, looking up at her despite the way he's trying to catch his breath with his hands resting on his knees. ] Your gift, it-- It was you.

[She can guess by the lack of message that she'll have a visitor soon. All she can really do is wait.]

[So when Inigo arrives on her doorstep, he won't have to wait long for an answer to his knocking. She takes a step back from the door, about to invite him in to rest himself--when his reason for being here tumbles out.]

[To her credit, she doesn't flinch. It isn't the first time her hand has been tipped; though maybe the first that it's been her own doing. And for what?... She's not even sure. To recapture that feeling of being a little girl again, warmed by the promise that she wouldn't be alone when she needed it most? Garden had left her (by necessity of course, she understood the decision), but this boy had promised her a reprieve from feeling... Broken. Lost. Abandoned.]

[And yet, she weathers that look from him, and the intensity is searing. Her lips press, her brow furrowing to the slightest degree. The words that make it past her lips aren't the ones that she wants, but they're the ones that come easiest:]

The coat was a gift from me, yes. Did I not sign the card?

You were the girl.

[ For as dodgy as Inigo can be at times - both to protect his own secrets and in order to not step on people's toes and hurt their feelings - this time he seems pretty direct. He stares at Blue, not hesitating to say the words. Though that might also be since he has a limited amount of words he can force out in between heavy breathing.

But the thought is so forefront on his mind right now that the words tumble straight out.

She was that girl. That girl on the beach, so alone, crying--

His heart aches, and not just from the way he ran over. ]

I didn't-- [ Wheeze.

The girl didn't look like her, he thinks. Of course he didn't know. And she hadn't mentioned anything about it either, and he has so many questions, and, and-- ]

I had no idea.

[She says nothing to his claim after testing the waters with that deflection. He does seem to know what it meant, and with little uncertainty in his conclusion. She's done this song and dance once before with Cat, and where did she end with that? A lot of wasted protests, when it was simply easier to be truthful. This secret is hardly even a dangerous one--just uncomfortable. Vulnerable. She feels a little like some night creature with her urge to scurry out of the light, to seek out the safety of dark spaces where she can't be so keenly observed.]

[She still doesn't respond, but there's a a more resolute press to her lips as she takes him by the shoulder and pulls him inside. If this is the discussion he wants to have, she won't have it on her front porch in earshot of any passer-by. The door clicks shut a moment later, and after a half beat of hesitation, she turns to look at him again.]

You weren't meant to. Not really.

[Her chest feels uncomfortably tight. She can't say this wasn't how she planned to disclose this, if only because she had no plan at all. After another beat of silence, she glances to the couch to the left of the door and motions for Inigo to move in that direction.]

Take a seat, and say what it is you want to say.

[ Inigo looks a little surprised when he's suddenly pulled inside, but it's a testament as to how much he trusts Blue that he doesn't protest out loud or try to resist the movement. Instead he just obediently follows her, and when she asks him to go sit down, he does as much.

.. still wearing his coat, considering that he didn't even have time to take that off with how suddenly all of this happened.

When he sits, he's quiet for a moment at first. Something about his gaze seems like he's concentrating as he looks at her - since Inigo is thinking. He came here with a realization, but not with a thought out plan of what exactly to say. And being pulled inside means that his brain needs a moment to adjust, to think, before he parts his lips to say-- ]

I just-- Why did you look so different when you were younger?

[ Of course there's more to say. There's so much more to say.

And Inigo's main interest doesn't even lie within this question. It's just that this part of it is so baffling that his brain needs it addressed first, before he can get to the true heart of the matter. ]

[Of course that would be what preoccupies him most.]

[It's funny, that he could so easily look past a glaring contradiction to his assumption without trying to slot his own sense or logic into place. She could always ask, of course. See what he makes of that situation. But that too feels like a drawing out of a painfully boring strand, a squabbling over a few points here or there when the match is already lost.]

[She can at least withhold her dignity from whatever happens here.]

[Her eyes travel away from him again, fixing on the fire that burns in the hearth at the center of the room. Ordinarily, she would be preparing tea to treat her guest with. Instead, she only stands more stiffly than usual, just past the door, having made no move to join Inigo on the couch.]

It's the nature of who I am. I can hardly be expected to travel through so many worlds and times without the ability to adapt myself. I wear... different faces for different scenes. Different roles.

[She dares a small glance back to him, trying to gauge his reaction.]

Is that all?

Oh.

[ It's a soft little 'oh.' There's some old information here, and some new information, all mixing together. Of course Inigo already knew about Blue's powers, but the part about different roles is new.

What sort of roles? Did traveling through time have something to do with her duty? Did she have to pretend to be someone else to not mess with the time stream? Inigo had been wondering before if he would have to do that, until Naga reassured him that it was fine.

He could ask about it. A part of him wants to, taking in the answer relatively calmly by Inigo standards, but also curiously.

But he knows there's something more important here. Especially with the odd way Blue is acting. It's not like she's the most emotional or openly affectionate person Inigo knows - far from it - but standing there so stiffly and awkwardly isn't like her either. It's almost as if she's scared of him. Or of something here, at least.

Inigo gets up from the couch he was sitting on. He takes a step over to her, then another, until he's standing in front of her - looking over at her with soulful, kind of worried eyes. ]

What are you so worried about..?

[What isn't she worried about?... The question feels absurd, even more-so with Inigo standing again and looking at her like that. Does he have to be so sincere in everything he does? Isn't that exhausting to maintain for him, when she knows what doubts likely churn behind those eyes?]

[She could weather his questions with cool detachment, heart of ice as she is wont to be. But his concern is something else. The proverbial blade slid between the dragon's scales. A little girl again, eyes full of tears and him promising her secrets and safety.]

I have a lot on my mind. That's all.

[She turns away from him and those soulful eyes, crossing behind the fireplace to head for the kitchen, thinking of the relief that a task will be. Tea sounds like a lovely idea, actually. Anything to set her hands to work. If he wants to stare into her eyes like that again, he'll have to climb into the sink basin-- But only after she's done filling her tea kettle.]

Did you have other questions, or no? You were in such a rush to get here, surely your curiosity can't be spent with just that.

[ Inigo could just sit down again, especially since it's the sort of thing a guest is expected to do while their hosts goes off to make tea.

And yet he doesn't. Making tea is nice, yes, but combined with Blue's behavior-- It feels like running away. And the idea of anyone running away from him because of some sort of.. what, maybe nerves, almost, feels ridiculous. Surely he isn't something to be nervous about.

So he follows her into the kitchen. It doesn't even matter that her gaze isn't turned on him, with Blue being busy with the tea and all. He just wants to be able to see her while he asks this. It's important. ]

.. Are you afraid of being vulnerable in front of me?

[ He isn't sure if this is it. It's not a statement - it's a guess, one possibility for the behavior Blue is showing right now.

And maybe it's a little bit of projection too. Inigo acts like this when there's something he doesn't want to talk about, when he's afraid of showing too much. Blue is very different from him, but maybe some things are just universal, no matter who you are.

(But what else could it be? She already told her about how she can change shape, so what about that girl would bother her otherwise? That girl who had seemed so lonely, who had been crying. Expressing emotions he's never really seen Blue show.) ]

You don't have to be. I'm just-- I'm only glad that I could help you back then.

Inigo.

[It's not often (or ever) that she uses his name, and certainly not with the warning tone that accompanies it here. She speaks out of instinct, a creature cornered and baring its teeth... But the human piece in her knows he doesn't deserve that. She exhales tension with her next breath, but so much of it remains tangled up in her shoulders and back. Tightness lingers in her chest and her throat.]

[She nearly forgets to turn off the water, catches the mistake and pours a little out of the kettle to give the rest room to boil. Then it goes on the stove, and she's left without anything to occupy her again. Only Inigo, and the ghost of a little girl haunting her.]

You don't understand. What that meant to me.

[What it means to her now, to still hold onto that memory. How does she grapple with the shattered pieces of her reasoning--that there had been no other option but to leave her to fend for herself. Garden must persist. Weighing the whole operation against the life of one child... It wasn't even a question. It was natural selection. Survival of the fittest. The standard operating procedures reflected that. What tree wouldn't drop a diseased limb to preserve itself? What lioness wouldn't select the strongest of her cubs to feed and sacrifice the rest? Garden could not be compromised. It made sense.]

[Except to that little girl, who only understood that she was hurt and alone and scared.]

[Blue doesn't look at Inigo, giving the kettle of water her full attention. Absently remembering another time when she had defied proverbs to watch water boil, and wondering what Red would think to see her now. Would she laugh?... Would she be jealous?... Would she be proud?]

[Her words come a little more distantly than before, each sentence clipped with a heavy silence between that speaks to the difficulty she meets in voicing them.]

I'd never been alone before. I'd never not be alone again. Yet for that brief moment, I had hope where I'd had none before. It's not so simple as saying that you helped me.

[ He's quiet at first, staring at her face while she's looking away. Almost as if the boy is looking for some sort of sign of-- of something.

When he speaks up again, his voice is a little softer. ]

You're right. I don't understand.

[ There is still so much he doesn't know about her, after all. So many things she has never told him. So many things he was too polite - and too mindful of how much people sometimes want to hide certain things the way he does too - to ask her about.

Puzzle pieces he's missing. Ones that are necessary to complete the picture of the girl he met back then and the Blue that's standing in front of him right now, giving that kettle a look no being has ever given a tea kettle before. ]

So.. please explain it to me. I want to understand. I didn't say anything to that girl that I wouldn't say to you as well.

I don't need the reassurances you gave to her.

[She hasn't, not for a while. She's no longer afraid like she was before. The idea that she might be alone--that she is alone is less a terrifying prospect and more a simple truth. To save her sanity, she gave up any hope to change that a long time ago.]

[But he still professes that he wants to understand, and she... Despite everything, she wants him to, as well. Hope isn't as easy to shake as she made it seem.]

[But where would she even begin? With Red, it was easier is so many important ways. She had understood the nature of what she was, the drive that pushed them both to excel in their field, the raw freedom that absolute isolation had whispered to them, even as it stripped them bare of everything that made them strong. With Inigo, she would have to start at the beginning. Worse than the beginning, really. He asks her to guide him blindly along a path, telling him only where his feet should go and nothing of the pitfalls to either side.]

[Garden really would kill him if she knew, and her as well. But Garden isn't here, and he intends to disappear regardless. And she's done worse things than this.]

...Imagine a tree. Thousands of years old, its great branches spread so tall and wide that it would be impossible to number them. Every manner of bird and animal makes its home in those branches or under them, a whole world sustained by this one tree.

There are flowers that bud along its branches. They grow, bloom, then wither again. The tree takes back its nutrients when the flowers are spent and grows new flowers in return. Sometimes the flowers are plucked. Those are lost, but the tree will survive. [A brief pause, and then with conflicted emphasis:] It must survive. Everything depends on that.

So imagine a small bud, freshly green-- And suddenly it grows sick. There is no cure; it must be discarded. The tree can't afford to take on this sickness as well. It is impossible to explain to a child the concept of the... greater good, so to speak. [A bit laughable to call Garden's operations that, but she rolls with it.] Of cost and risk analysis. I had no one to comfort me. All I knew was that I was sick, and then I wasn't; but I was still alone.

...That was how I remember it, until suddenly there was you. It's not that you helped me. Every other event still played out as it did before. But you can understand, I hope, how much it would mean to someone five years old, to have a hand to hold when they were scared. Even if it did nothing else but that.

[ He does understand the last point she's making in the face of the metaphor.

But the metaphor does something else. It leaves a nasty taste in Inigo's mouth. The more he turns the words over in his head, the more he feels like there's something wrong with it. Like there's something there he just can't accept, no matter how much he thinks about it. ]

Even if it's for the greater good.. It still can't be right to leave a girl that young all alone.

[ Maybe some might consider it hypocritical, considering Inigo - and his relatively young life - had to be snuffed out too in order for a better future to exist.

But he feels like that's different. His friends were there with him, for one. And most importantly-- He got to make the decision himself. Nothing was forced on him. He chose this. ]

There should have been someone there with her. Actually someone there with her, back then. [ Not just Inigo trying to fill up a gap that he was much, much too late for. It still matters, sure - to her, to him - but a part of it rings hollow in the face of that knowledge. ]

[Blue smiles through the tightness in her throat, but there's no humor in it.]

Too great of a risk.

[It always came back to that. She can't imagine that Inigo would sacrifice the future of a whole society to comfort one child... but his insistence that something could have been done touches her deeply. She can't agree-- but she wants to.]

She still still had her parents, though they weren't connected as she was. They'd spent their whole lives being separate, unaware that their daughter had spent hers being part of that greater whole. Until she wasn't.

I can't describe to you what it felt like, to be stripped bare of that. To find that everything I was suddenly stopped at the tips of my fingers. To be conscious of how small and fragile I was, that I was a word that meant something terrifying and wonderful and new.

[She looks down at her own hands, contemplating that time and the surrealness of it. Being not Garden or Gardenee, but some new thing broken open from the absence of the greenness that had always surrounded her. A sense of identity that had been so foreign to her, but now felt so integral. Even if there were a chance to go back now... She doubts that she could.]

But I can tell you that there was no need to leave someone with me. I wasn't expected to live, rendered rootless as I was. I was... considered an anomaly for defying those expectations. No one knew what to make of that.

You do realize that saying you weren't expected to live only makes it worse, right..?

[ He isn't sure if Blue does, especially with the way she's talking about all of this. It's true that some parts of it are a little difficult for Inigo to wrap his head around, given that he has no idea what it's like to be part of a greater collective in that sense. To not be an individual. It sounds like that is what Blue is describing, but Inigo doesn't even know if that's possible. Like multiple bodies sharing one mind?

.. like the Risen, he thinks, but he immediately discards that thought. Imagining Blue as one of those things gives him chills in the worst possible way. It doesn't help though that the only example he has of a hivemind is the one controlled by the god trying to destroy his world. ]

You say I did so much for you, for that younger you, but.. [ His voice trails off, and Inigo shakes his head. His eyes almost look kind of wet, like he's about to cry, but is holding back the tears.

(Maybe it's that hard to imagine Blue in all these different ways, especially her younger self. Dead. Part of a hivemind, which doesn't feel great either. He just-- He just wants to see her as her.) ]

Do you realize what it would have been like if you hadn't stopped being part of that? I-- I never would have met you. You. No one in this place would have. All the marks you have left on people just as Iris wouldn't be there.

[ He swallows. ]

I think that would be a far worse reality.

[She doesn't mean for it to sound worse. It's an immutable fact to her, not some hypothetical that he torments himself with. She smirks a little, dry and bitter humor finding her again and she doesn't know if he sees that or not, but it doesn't last. She doesn't know what to do with these feelings he gives her.]

[All the marks that she had left on people... Did they even matter? It just seemed... inconsequential, to her. A few lives touched in the wake of her passing, no different than her work for Garden. A whole life that will disappear once she leaves, footprints pressed into the snow that anyone's shoes could have filled, had they not been hers. The echoes of those steps will reverberate, but she won't see them.]

[Neither will he, and the hypocrisy is the boldest thing about him. Is this what ghosts do now? Haunt each other with threats of their impermanence?]

[The silence stretches long enough for the kettle water to bubble, finally prompting movement from her to take it off the stove. Perhaps if she had turned to look at Inigo then, she might have seen how close he was to tears. Maybe she would have kept her next words to herself.]

If that's how you feel, then you should know... There is no Iris. The marks that you laud me for, most of them have been fabricated.

[A beat of silence follows.]

Does that cheapen your sentiment of me?

What do you mean?

[ The question follows quickly after her own. Not even because he doesn't have an answer to what she's asking him, but because the answer depends on this.

Especially when he never knows for sure what Blue means with these things. Is she making an actual point here, or is this yet another strange way she seems to think about things that are actually very simple? Despite the fact that he's pretty emotional about this entire topic, his first assumption isn't that she's been lying to him this entire time.

He doesn't think so. Being around her-- It's never felt fake. Not like that. So doesn't it make it so much more likely that this is her making things too complicated for herself? ]

Haven't I said before that I'm not as kind or selfless as you think?

[At least twice, she's almost certain. He can't really be so confused about it, when she warned him several times. She takes down two cups to pour the water with the tea, though her hand pauses briefly on the second one.]

[She tries not to think too deeply how she might not have company in a few minutes... It would be rude not to serve him while he's here.]

I am, at my core, an actress. There was no role laid out for me here, so I invented one. A name that I fancied, a few traits that would be well taken by the people here... And Iris was born.

[Though "born" feels like a stretch with how much of herself started leaking into the role. Less a full life spun out of the ether, and more a mask to conceal her identity.]

...It was only meant to be temporary. But the fact remains that Iris is not real.

[ Inigo doesn't react right away. It might make the reason for the silence a little difficult to determine to Blue, especially when she isn't even looking at him when she's saying all of this. It means there's nothing to be read off his face without a visual of it.

Only a moment of lingering silence before Inigo speaks again. ]

.. so what?

[ It's not entirely dismissive. Inigo gets why she thinks this is a big thing to confess - and it is, in a sense!

But she's saying it in a weird sort of way. Like she's dreading something. Like she's pushing him away, or worrying that it's pushing him away.

Like he wouldn't understand. ]

Isn't that just a thing people have to do sometimes? [ He thinks about his sister pretending to be Marth. He thinks about how he'd do the same - casting aside his name and identity - if it was for the sake of something important enough.

Maybe it helps, the fact that he had already been letting go of it a little so all of that could go to the new Inigo. The one who deserved it. ]

Even if it's not your actual name, it's still one you chose. If you want to be Iris to me, then you can be Iris. [ Okay, maybe this isn't entirely a full case of chosen new identity and all that, but leave it to Inigo to interpret this in the kindest way possible. Of course he would. ] I don't need to know your real name to be your friend.

[He might think he's being kind, but even kindness can feel like a knife in the ribs. So what?... It's only everything to her. It's only her whole existence compressed into bustling euphoria and suffocating loneliness--losing herself in the role that she's given, accepted and loved; and then discarding it like a shadow once the job is finished. Because at the end of the day, that isn't her. She is a dandelion seed, a tumbleweed--and the bonds that tangle people together have never touched her or rooted her to any one place. She doesn't expect someone with their own life to understand her isolation, not even someone who has forfeited it; but she thought maybe... Maybe one ghost could understand another. How much it matters to be known, to be real, to be seen.]

[She exhales her disappointment, tempers the illness crawling in her throat, smooths out the bitterness into something more level.]

...Should I want such a cheap thing?

[Maybe not all of the bitterness, then. She tried.]

It's not my intention to be cruel; I suspect neither is it yours. There have been thousands who have loved me for my roles, firefly. When the costume is removed, the woman underneath is less than a stranger to them.

...I was hoping you would be different. But if Iris is what you want, you can have her.

[She's done her due diligence in warning him, at least. And maybe that's what he wants: someone bound to disappear like he is. Someone he won't have to worry about.]

[She could almost be okay with that. Almost.]

⚔ ic inbox for labyrinthum

Gift giving~

too late, i'm turning it into a thread!!!

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