( aefenglom inbox. )

[supersoldier]

( TEXT | VOICE | VIDEO | ACTION )
[ x ]

Comments

[anbu]

[The reply signals enough, even in its brevity. What has transpired between them demands a deeper discussion, or at least deserves it, but it has not been within either of their natures to surrender to that easily. The bare vulnerability required is better given to calm and rational control, a dismissal of this place's whims and its capricious moons.

How would it go if he broached it? An apology, perhaps, like last time. Forgiveness. Acknowledgment that they were not themselves.

He wonders whether the pattern will continue with this specific man. And why him, when there are countless other Mirrorbound here, all equally complicit to the twin moons and their altered states? What is it that has become so compelling? Questions for private consideration.]

Good, then, that you have kept busy.

[Better than the alternative, and how he himself has felt - idle, frustrated... cold.]

I've noticed a number of disappearances recently. [...] My brother among them, as well as the two he was Bonded with.

[supersoldier]

[Is it comfort, falling into the same routine? The same cordial cut of conversation? Or is it a sort of willful ignorance on both sides, the inability to speak more deeply on something that neither know how to hold in their own clumsy hands?

It doesn’t matter, what matters now is that the conversation continues, and that normalcy is settled between them again. There’s comfort in that, though perhaps that same comfort is upended with the news that Itachi brings him.]

Your brother?

[A pause, measuring his reply. As plainly as it is stated, text siphoning out emotion as it often does, he knows there must be weight behind it. One does not lose an anchoring point — from what Sephiroth can gather, in what they’ve spoken about — without feeling adrift. He has felt it, too, when the world sunk in beneath his feet, groaning under the weight of a new truth. He wonders if it's much the same feeling, that nauseating twirl in the pit of one's stomach.]

How long have they been gone?

[An assessment, perhaps, of the other’s state. Deeper than mere exchanged greetings.]

[anbu]

[The question is not difficult to answer. Factual, if nothing else, and it causes his mind to search back over the days to catalog some measure of time. Has he been counting? It hadn't occurred to him to, because with Sasuke gone, the length of days matter less. Yet he hasn't forgotten the date. However hazy this world had become to him afterward, he hasn't forgotten the morning he'd woken up to find his brother missing from the house. He’d known almost immediately it would be permanent.

So he simply supplies:]

A week.

[At least for Sasuke--the other two vanished shortly after, but this feels irrelevant to clarify.]

I admit, I have other intentions in contacting you. You're currently Bonded, correct? To how many?

[supersoldier]

[A week. He wonders, in that stretch of a week and now, what he had felt -- what he had thought, if he searched for that missing connection. It is hard to say with text being as stripped of intonation as it is, but the request is telling on its own. Itachi has lost something; a Bond, yes, but more than that.]

Two.

[Sephiroth can provide a piece that's gone missing, but only a fragment. Still, he knows what this prefaces.]

You're seeking to replace the one you've lost.

[anbu]

[He isn't surprised when Sephiroth follows the direction of his words without any further hint. The other man has had a way with that since the beginning - perceiving his mind, even its vague intentions and darker corners, with little need for prefaces or explanations. Then again, the honesty he's given to Sephiroth over the months is an unusual allowance, as well. There has been no need to lie as he might with others. Faced also with what Itachi has learned about the other man in-kind, that impression has only heightened.]

Yes. I will understand a refusal and wouldn't require a reason for it.

[He doesn’t know Sephiroth's feelings toward the Bond itself, but he respects any decision.]

This is not something I take lightly.

[supersoldier]

I know it isn't.

[It hardly needs to be said. They may not share a Bond (yet, it would seem), but Sephiroth knows the semblance of Itachi's personality -- for the both of them, this is not something that they take lightly, and though it's of no pressing need for Sephiroth, it's hard for him to ignore the plight of someone he considers-

A friend? Or something like it.]

A refusal on my part would mean the eventual destabilization of your body under the growing burden of magic. I wouldn't stand by and watch that happen.