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As the night finally began its relentless, recurring consumption of the world around them, evening settling on the landscape and bringing silence and the creeping touch of a winter's night chill lapping at crevices, walls and windows. Even from within, Tatenda's home had the character of a glowing beacon - something beckonning, welcoming, alluring. Barafai had curled up in one corner of Tatenda's couch in the living room, deliberately oblivious to the world around it, comfortable in the circumstance. Meanwhile, Salt's pokéball rested on the kitchen table next to the sink like discarded pottery - albeit not out of disrespect, simply out of lack of flattering place to yet store it, and no self-consciousness to drive seeking one just yet, while other distractions were to be had. Salt, after all, couldn't currently see where his pokéball was sitting; and even if he had a metaphysical bond with his digital prison that let him sense his surrounding in abstract, he'd hardly be bothered. He was in there by choice and nothing could happen to him.
Tatenda's focus is with Jagdish. An amicable discussion over supper's been had so far, on various trivialities - a supper that was Tatenda's charity to the gym leader but managed to feel more like a sacrificial offering made to appease a dragon in a human form. Not an evil dragon, though, rather one that inspires hopes and dreams and whispers promises of protection… but a dragon nonetheless.
“If you look back on yourself… on your life so far,” Jagdish comments, softly, the statement a non-sequitur, cutting through the current, non-committal conversation on the world's advancing technologies like a hot knife through butter. “On what we did to you,” he continues. “If you could go back in time armed with a single-strike omnipotence to change a pivotal moment, what would you change? In honesty and confidence.”
Tatenda blinks for a brief moment, looks up from his glass to Jagdish. His hand moves a little to place the glass back on the table again, since he just took a sip and this gives him a little bit more time to think about an answer.
“That's… a difficult-to-answer question,” he then starts in a low, still pondering voice. “There had been times, when I wanted to undo the fact to have become a gym leader, in other times I wanted to still be this gym leader… - sometimes I thought about a life, in which I never had met any of you, but… that's very seldom.” He smiles lightly. “I would miss a lot of experience and memories, which I'd never had made, if all of this hadn't happened. I think, it's… - hm… - it's okay the way it is.”
He snorts lowly as part of a else unheard laughter. “Okay, at the moment I'm thinking about never having invented this energy-crystal technique.” Again he focuses directly at Jagdish's eyes. “Why are you asking? …is there something you'd want to change?”
A slow, comfortable motion touches Jagdish's head, the most gracefully minimalist shake of his head that he can muster. “I just wonder sometimes,” he comments. “There is a very precise image lodged in my head as to how the Council and my actions affect people. And they do flatter me by behaving as expected and confirming it in conversation, but unsurprisingly, that is largely behaviour either where I am or where I am known to look, be it directly or indirectly, and the conversations are always with… me.” Amusement seems to be touching a deliberately monotone tone, plucking it gently from its attempted mediocrity. “That presents a certain dilemma.” A pause, his gaze reaching up to Tatenda's face, that dark humour presenting itself in its inversion as a luminous crescent on his irides. “As does this one, no doubt; it's not very different, of course. But I prey and wait and prowl, looking for indicators that perhaps our retributive approach has overstayed its welcome.” Another pause, mustering Tatenda curiously. “In other words,” he summarises like one bemused by his own bland rhetoric and was about to eagerly deconstruct it, leaning forward against the table slightly, elbow coming to rest atop it, fingers grasping his own jaw lightly, index and middle finger under it, tip of his thumb against the side of it, rather than the other way around. “Do you think your sentence was fair? I won't hold 'no' against you - you've sat through it, you've moved on to serve us well beyond all expectations, you're a model citizen… you're allowed to speak your mind freely, and I am so very curious.”
The golden veins in deep dark brown are glowing from different light reflections, when the black-skinned man's gaze wanders back and forth between Jagdish's eyes as if he tries to read them out, get any further information about the intention of this so very different topic. As always, Tatenda's eyes show respect, but no real fear. He trusts Jagdish - a fact that others might consider reckless.
“My sentence?” he asks, then begins to smile a little, his glance running down again to his own hands, one of them playing with his glass, slowly turning it around its vertical axis. “Fair is so relative. I think it was at least necessary, like it is everytime.” He takes a deep breath. “Hm… unfair… - well, in parts, yes. Because it was the very last thing I'd expected for getting that far and in the end being punished for something that - from the point of view a circuiter has - every single gym leader does. You see? It's like running up a hill just to find a sign on top that says running is forbidden, instead you have to walk slowly and carefully. Afterwards you realise it's because of the grass you walk on that's otherwise damaged, but this realization may take some time.”
The response seems to infect Jagdish with a shallow tinge of amusement, a part of him far too used to derisively dealing with opposition - though even in those cases, expressions of venom rarely manifest as anything more than a flicker across his face… and as such, the fact it extinguishes quickly doesn't say much at all. Fortunately, the warmth that replaces it is unmistakably positive. A smile's firmly creased his lips. “Thank you,” he says. “If you were my prisoner, I wouldn't let that analogy stand, mind you, but I suspect that goes without saying. I asked for your opinion and I appreciate your honest response.” Said, he lets his gaze drift, perhaps quietly grappling with the parts of Tatenda's hill that still resonated with reality without discussing it directly. Then the moment passes like sunlight at dusk and he pushes himself slowly up to a stand, gaze sneaking across to Barafai's dozing shape, contemplating the pokémon's existence - and the things it had said about Tatenda in the past, both good and bad… but mostly good.
A light, warm sound of laughter escaped Tatenda's chest, where it releases some fine tension that came up with Jagdish's question and intense look. “I'm… relieved that you don't blame me for it,” he admits with a one-sided smile, then gets up, too, to start clearing the table except their drinks.
Jagdish's gaze lingers on Barafai a little longer, as if he were tempted to walk across and disturb the creature in its doze by running fingers across it affectionately - then decides against it, exhaling soundlessly and stepping through the living room at a slow but steady pace, until he reaches the window pane, tip of his nose only a few inches removed from the smooth surface, gaze cast out at the landscape, a collage of silhouettes and cool gradients as it is. The Valcee expanse cuts off the bottom left corner of the sky at a shallow, barely perceptible angle, and the cityscape ahead and below swims with a busy but quiet light. He tries to judge Tatenda's progress in clearing the table by sound alone - and as the relative silence convinces him that his host is done, he says: “Come here.” His left arm sweeps in a gentle beckon, the words themselves welcoming rather than demanding, marking the instruction entirely optional.
Just returned to the table Tatenda again took a sip of sweet-sour liquid from his glass… - when Jagdish speaks he finds himself staring at the Arbiter, though he is not just seeing this post, but more like the man standing in his living room. His presence feels good, though there is still this hint of excitement and tension, like a scent of danger… maybe.
He blinks and needs a second to understand the words that are spoken to him, then after a moment of hesitance follows the invitation, taking Jagdish's drink with him to place both glasses on the window sill.
Jagdish's gaze falls down to the glass briefly, as if mustering a wholly foreign item in passing, then climbs back up to look at the fading landscape. “I think you and Damayanti were the most influential gym leaders Nightclaw ever had,” he reveals, meaning it as conversational flattery, sincere but without gravity. “They may not remember your face,” he comments, gesturing at the city's jagged outline in the briefest, lightest gesture of his right hand. “But they'll remember your values, whether they realise they're yours or not.”
First Tatenda's eyes rest on Jagdish's, but when his guest looks out of the window, he does the same, listening to those complimenting words that make his cheeks turn reddish - or rather deeper black. His glance focused from that skyline outside to the apparitional reflection on the window glass. “You… - you really think I left that important footprints? That sounds very nice and honorable, but it's hard to believe. I just filled my position.”
“Change is difficult to discover if one's own personality evolves and advances at a more rapid pace, as the line between one's shifting subjective perception and objective differences blurs into arbitrariness,” Jagdish elaborates, glancing out the landscape as if at a slice of frozen time. “Meanwhile, I've had much time to carve away at those parts of me yet undecided and I make a marvellously static sculpture these fine days,” he chuckles softly. “And it sharpens my eye for the fluctuations in the world around me. You've peeled away a whole layer of callused skin from Nightclaw's culture, allowing Damayanti to nurse that raw surface back to health. They remember her… but she might have found a dishearteningly premature end given her personality if you hadn't preceded her.”
A brief moment of silence fills the apartment, while Tatenda thinks about those words - and tries to overcome his nervous flattered state. Finally he clears his throat and smiles uncertainly and still contemplative. “I haven't realised it and… didn't think I was that… mmmh… important to the development of Nightclaw and Damayanti's work.” Now his look jumps directly to Jagdish's real face, not just the reflection of it.
A borderline mischievous tinge has infected Jagdish's smile, his gaze still anchored on the world outside for a long moment of silence - then he turns his head gently and lets his gaze travel to Tatenda's face, regarding him with a flicker of admiration. That seems to be all he's capable of - a flicker of appreciation distorting that outward appearance pleasantly, no more, just the minimum expression of a genuine emotion. Then the delicate fingers of his left hand reach up to that dark face, two of them brushing the soft curve of their backs against Tatenda's jaw, leaving a wordless 'thank you' in their wake.
There is a fine almost secret shiver running down Tatenda's spine, that makes him swallow noiselessly, just his larynx tells it from wandering up and down his gorge. His glare flees Jagdish's look for a second, but jumps back up to face it again.
He wanted to say something, but his mind does not come up with something intelligent to tell at all, just stupid bunches of words with no real meaning but babbling away the nervousness that just grows bigger.
✘ IN PROGRESS