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@homura-navarro
"𝐢 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞," 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐮𝐭 "𝐬𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞," 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥 "𝐬𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞," 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐚 𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬
[ W A R D E N . homura navarro . ENIGMA 30 . void openings ]
biography ✘ skeleton ✘ rivalishq ✘ ask ✘ pinterest
fadedarcade:
“you really think i’m that stupid? a void opens up in the middle of my home and it’s not the guy whose superpower is void summoning. oh yeah, sure, it’s my fucking ghost dad doing it,” her voice cuts through the air, strong and sure, and filled with venom.
that was the first time she’d ever referred to harold as ‘dad’. she didn’t have time to analyze that.
she shoves him; sending him towards the wall. then she stalks up close to get in his face, snarling, “i’ll say it one more time: shut that shit down. now.”
✘
Yeah. It kind of does sound ridiculous when Arcade puts it like that.
With the push, his back thumps into the wall, not hard enough to be painful, but sudden enough to be shocking. From what he’s been told, Arcade’s power is pretty terrifying, and yet, Homura doesn’t have it in him to be scared. He’s had too many emotions today, done too much talking. He’s all burnt out. When she gets in his face, all he can summon is a vague wariness. He probably should be scared.
“I’m on suppressants,” he admits, voice low, gaze averted. Whispering, because he hasn’t told his siblings yet. Even though it’s not really something to be ashamed of. “It... takes a lot of effort to do even a tiny void. I couldn’t do it in my sleep. And I didn’t do it deliberately.” Homura grits his teeth, and forces himself to meet her gaze. “I don’t know how your dad’s power is persisting this long. But it’s his. It has to be.”
fearcd:
It is odd, to succumb to slumber in a place that had once supposed to be the enemies territories. Odd, but not entirely unpleasant. Instead, Julieta almost feels hopeful. It is unlikely that she will do much more to broach the gap between teams, but at least there is hopes for the other members of her family that want to do so. It is too risky for her to bridge the gap by telling the former Oculus team her identity, the life she has built for herself hinging on being yet another ambulance chaser and not anybody important. She is glad that Zephyr might get the chance to keep their friendship with Blitzbang.
Sleep finds her easily, tired as she is with the day’s events, but so does awakening. She has always been a light sleeper, trained by drills from Gorgon as well as her own paranoia, so as soon as Zephyr starts screaming she is out of the bed and putting the mask over her face as she rushes out.
It is surprising to see the small black hole in the middle of the hallway. It is horrifying to see Homura raising for it. The image of a younger Homura disappearing into a whole superimposes itself in front of her, and she is reacting before she can even thinking, a hand reaching forward and pulling him away from the black hole by the back of the shirt.
“What are you doing?” She hisses, voice breaking as real fear enters it. “Do you want to be absorbed by it?”
✘
Homura stumbles as he’s pulled away, taken unaware. It’s not exactly a leap to assume that someone would yank him back from getting too close, and if he’d been thinking properly, he would have been making bets on which of his siblings would flip and pull him away first. But he’s... distracted.
“It won’t take me. Not yet.”
He can hear it singing. Not audibly, he doesn’t think anybody else would be able to hear it. Aside from Zephyr, maybe. But his own voids have a song to them, a low, mournful note, the faintest of howls. Everybody else always said it just sounded like air rushing in. To Homura, it sounds like music. This one does too.
With a wrench, he forces his mind back to the present. He blinks, like he’s waking up, gaze tracking over Julieta, almost surprised to see her there. Surprised to see everybody else in the hallway, gathered around the black hole, discussing it in low, terse voices.
“This isn’t mine,” he tells Julieta, expression pinched. “It must be the Headmaster’s. But... I have no idea how it’s still here after his death.”
ofreaps:
“Hey, you,” Gabriel calls out to Warden— who he assumes is Warden, he hasn’t memorized them by masks— and beckons him with a wave. “What one’s your mutation?”
* . 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑 — @homura-navarro.
✘
“Uh.” Well, this is awkward. Homura goes still, like a deer that’s found itself in the headlights of a car, even if that car isn’t so much barrelling toward him but just kind of waving him over.
He swallows, hands moving in aborted sign language before he drops it. All of the talking he’s had to do today is more than he’s done in years, and it’s exhausting, but it looks like he’s going to have a lot more conversations on his hands tonight. “It’s... that, actually.” Homura points a unsteady hand at the black hole. “Sort of. I didn’t do that. I promise. We classified our powers differently. But I can do the same thing.”
fadedarcade:
@homura-navarro
“what kind of sick joke are you pulling here? shut that thing down immediately.”
✘
“I’m not doing that!”
But as soon as the protest leaves his mouth, he pauses, because Homura’s... pretty sure he’s not doing that? The suppressant gives him a weird numbness where his awareness of his power is, and though he can still make small voids if he struggles through the haze of the serum, it’s different now.
So. Maybe it is him. Probably not. But maybe.
“At least, I... don’t think I’m doing that?” Homura grimaces, gaze going everywhere except for Arcade, falling on the little black hole looming in the hallway. “It... must be something the Headmaster left behind. But... I didn’t think that was possible.”
when: 12:52am, feb 3rd where: the hallway, oculus manor
⸻ ⸻ open starter for both oculus and enigma
Homura’s not sure if he slept or not. He’d retired early, earlier than most, and one of his siblings had had to do the talking for him in asking Mr. Moe where he could stay for the night. The bed was too soft, the house was too quiet, and he thinks he’d lain in that strange, half-awake state for some time, his thoughts drifting on the verge of dreams, exhausted but unable to fully sleep.
Zephyr’s calls hadn’t immediately roused him; they’d blended right in with the conversations playing in his headphones. Someone else had come into his room to get his attention, worry clear on their face. He’d donned his mask, and left his headphones behind.
And now, as he stands among the group observing the black hole in the hallway, Homura can’t help but smile. Memories flash behind his briefly closed eyelids.
Harold showing him his power, gentle explanations, the void openings never bigger than a coin.
Tearing open his own void, a massive wall of black to protect his siblings. Vertigo spinning in his head as he tumbles toward it.
This black hole. This hallway. This late night, just past midnight, moonlight filtering in through the windows. These blurred faces, worried and shocked and confused. This ravenous void, ever-growing.
“I’ve seen this before,” he says dreamily, reaching out, hand hovering just close enough to feel the faintest pull of the black hole.
elianavarro:
there’s only so much that alcohol can do to make the day tolerable. at least there’s gin, and from what it appears to be, it’s top quality, with hints of coriander, the sort of brand that she’s never quite seen on shelves back in the states, so she’s already taken the liberty of pouring herself a glass or two, or three. there’s no point in counting anyway. what she can do is hope that gorgon won’t see her and try to chide her as if she were a foolish adolescent again. she’s heard it all before, cautionary tales, reprimands, admonishments, but there’s not much that she can do, or rather wants to do about it. change always begins with a want of some sort. the rest is a lie. eliana is her own stygian void. the pusher, the punisher, and the lost one.
she sees homura inside of her head first, evidently weary and all by himself on one of the benches in the courtyard, which makes the task of locating him a lot easier than she thought it would be. she’s been talking to him for the past eight years now. little conversations, drunken tête-à-têtes, subtle soliloquies. he’s heard it all. she used to talk to him all the time. it’s just that six months ago, he finally started talking back. she still wears the same golden heart locket with the picture of the two of them as teenagers inside, and she nearly lost it two times, first in madrid, and then new york, but in the end, it always stayed safe with her, unlike a good majority of her personal belongings.
precariously, she takes the first step, uncertain what to do with both her arms and legs as she almost starts to flail around, ready to turn on her heel and cower in shame. does she even deserve a moment for atonement? before answering her own query, she rushes towards her brother with sudden bravado, pulling him into a hug and reaching to cradle his face first. “you’re real.” i didn’t just make you up inside of my head. she doesn’t think that he’ll understand. that he’ll actually know what she’s talking about. no one usually does.
“well you know me, i’ve never found an excuse to wear something boring.” she mutters, averting her attention back to homura’s quip as she takes a seat on the bench, leaning forward slightly to rest her head on his shoulder. “what are you listening to? can i hear it too?”
✘
He’s been hearing her voice for the past six months -- sometimes in calls, sometimes over text when his voice fails him -- and yet, it’s so strange to see her in person. Her joyous smile makes him blink, deja vu washing over his mind like tangled static, throwing him back into the nothingness for a brief moment until he’s snapped out of it by her arms around him. The contact is like a shock to the system, something he’s gone so long without that his brain doesn’t know how to process it anymore.
But she withdraws soon enough to settle down next to him, and Homura reaches up to take his headphones off. Everything’s so quiet; the courtyard has no noise to it other than the occasional rustling of leaves, the occasional sound of far-off traffic. He twists one of the earpieces of his headphones, turning it 180 degrees, and offers it to her, holding the other one up to his own ear again.
The recorded conversation is still going; it was fifteen years ago, and they had training in ten minutes, but all of them were sprawled around the living room having eaten too much pizza and not wanting to do combat training. Homura’s own whining voice was higher back then: puberty, but mostly the lack of T, and he hadn’t properly started vocal training.
“Remember this?” he asks Eliana, smiling. “We wound up trying to convince Gorgon we’d all gotten food poisoning from the pizza. They didn’t buy it.”
pheromonials:
She learned this when she was twenty: that people tend to flock towards the epicentre of grief like moths to flames. Her father’s death had triggered plenty of people to suddenly reintroduce themselves in her and her family’s life, offering stories of the man they hadn’t spoken to in years, pretending to share in the sorrow when there wasn’t really any chance that they could. This reminds her of that. She wonders if he brought a casserole, like they often did.
Mila stares at Harold for a moment, who would surely berate her for her poisonous thoughts and barbed-wire words, but well, she had never been very good at heeding his advice. “But knew of him, I suppose?” Of course the other did, presumably the same way they knew of Gorgon and Bloodhound.
Grief is ugly, so why some flock to it, Mila doesn’t get. It only makes her resentful. “You are. Walking around with your masks, grieving all anonymously when you could do that by, I don’t know, sending out a tweet with the designated hashtag. It’s not like this is the only place you could go to pay your respects, after all.” Her gaze rips from Harold onto the masked figure. If every person touched by the Headmaster’s kindness was to be here, the house would burst at the seams.
“But yes, he was a good man.” Better than she was, better than these Enigmas could ever hope to be. Mila has very little interest in discussing the fine details of her feelings on him with this stranger, though, she finds. “So, who are you?”
✘
She’s right, this isn’t the only place that Homura could have come to in order to pay his respects. But, well, he doesn’t have a twitter account. Before he ‘died’, it was just starting to get big. Now everybody has one. It’s weird. Maybe he’d have one too, but he doesn’t exactly have a lot that he can talk about.
Also? He... kind of needs to be here so he can sneak into Harold’s lab at some point and steal the rest of the power suppressant serum. He’s got enough to last him a little while, at least, but Harold never told him the exact formula, so once that stock’s gone, Homura’s going to be in trouble. He does feel kind of guilty about what he’s going to have to do, but he knows this place well enough. Enough to be sneaky.
He manages a wan, self-deprecating smile, not bothering to reject anything that Charmer says. She’s allowed her viciousness. On today, of all days, she’s allowed to be that. Homura can take it.
“Warden,” he answers. He doesn’t know how much they know about the Enigmas. Does she know of them individually, their powers, their skills, their public history? Or does she only know them vaguely by codename? “I’d tell you my real name, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you. I haven’t exactly been around much. Also, I think Gorgon would kill me.” He pauses, thoughtful, recalling Gorgon’s state during the funeral. “Do you think... they had history?”
fcarmongcr:
Julieta watches as Homura signs, head tilted in though as she processes his word with the weight they deserve. She can see what Homura means, the idealism on Harold’s every action. The Enigma has been trained to be the opposite of the Oculus team, after all, it is not odd to have held despairing opinions of the man, when they were told of the harsh realities of life. And yet, part of her had always admired the bravery that it took to allow the world know that he was a mutant. All she had ever done is hide, and she doesn’t believe that will ever change. The idea of showing her face, letting the world know of her mutation and what it means — The members of Oculus are far braver than she will ever be, she can admit that much, even if she does still align her ideals more with Hollis than with them.
Tell me about it, she signs back, thinking back at the scene. If I hadn’t been crying already, I would have begun crying when I saw that.
As a defense lawyer she knows intimately that justice is rarely white and black, but when you are in the spotlight, it rarely leaves times to explore the shades of grey. That is a dangerous thing, for the Oculus members that keep working for the justice system. Operating in the U.S. both as a lawyer and a vigilante had made witness what went behind the scenes, how racism, xenophobia and classism were embedded into all areas of society, and how when you were at the top, seeing those subtleties was nearly invisible.
Unlike Homura, she had never thought of the Headmaster as idiotic or soft, but naive? That was something she could have agreed on, when she was younger. Now, she isn’t as sure, hesitant to place a descriptor upon a man she never met.
A man that Homura might have met, if his change in impressions were anything to go by.
I am glad he helped you, she finally signs, holding her curiosity back, despite wanting to ask Homura how exactly the Headmaster had helped him. With how she had treated him as children, she didn’t have the right to ask. Not if he didn’t volunteer the information first.
✘
Homura thought he’d been vague enough with his wording that he wouldn’t be implying the truth -- unfortunately for him, Julieta is more perceptive than he’d allowed for. Which is his own mistake, really, because she’s always been perceptive. She’d always known how to get under his skin.
He blanches, eyes widening, hands trembling as he blurts, “I didn’t know him!”
And he can’t quite bite back the grimace that unfolds over his expression, guilt at the lie twisting in his gut. Harold had helped him so much, and he... he can’t tell anybody. Should he tell anybody? Harold had only kept it a secret because Homura had begged him to, because he’d known that the Oculus kids would get mad and the Enigma kids would feel betrayed. He’s so sure that’s true.
...Mostly. He’s mostly sure it’s true.
“I meant...” Homura starts, and finishes in ASL, he helped a lot of people. The Oculus team. Others.
It’s not the smoothest recovery. But it’ll do.
I think he helped the world recognize that mutants aren’t all just freaks and monsters, Homura continues. The Oculus team were like... picture perfect in the media, right? And I saw that as shallow at the time, but I think it actually helped.
steelbuilt:
people often spoke about the feeling of having the rug pulled from under one’s feet in moments like these, but homura’s words carried implications far more agonizing than that. they felt as if all the punches and shots and cuts her steel armor had taken but whose hurt it had never registered were suddenly dealt to her right now, without warning and without her power to protect her.
but it was the guilt to homura’s words that proded and twisted, knife-like, more than the words themselves. still, as she tried and failed and tried yet again to take in the image homura now, with bags under his eyes and hair longer than she remembered, it became clear as day that the one holding the blade was not meant to be him. no, the handle of the blade would be where it was supposed to be, cocooned in her own hand.
not your blade. not your fault — she so desperately wanted to say — but mine.
the buzzing of her phone in her pocket almost startled her, like she hadn’t seen homura taking out his own device seconds ago. the swirls of the characters displayed on her screen blurred in her view as small, pained tears welled up in her eyes.
“i-interrupt?” luisa asked, the word wrapped around a single dry chuckle. she sounded hurt, but she was more incredulous than anything else.
“no, no, we–” she sniffled, turning briefly to the side as if that would help her regain her composure. luisa had never imagined that the list of people she had failed and wronged would include her brother, but now that it had caught up to her, it wasn’t something she knew how to fix. “i was supposed to be there, i had to be so you wouldn’t pushed and… and i wasn’t. a-and then you got thrown into that awful place and— fuck, i’m– god, i’m so so sorry.”
✘
Not wanting to interrupt their new lives is only one of the reasons that Homura had stayed away, and it’s currently the easiest to verbalize. He’s not sure how he’s going to explain the other reasons, but he’ll have to eventually. Sooner or later, he’ll have to say I’ve been in England all this time with Harold Knox and I know that’s kind of a betrayal. He’ll also have to say my power was out of control and I didn’t want to be around anybody I loved because I was terrified the void would kill them. And then, lastly, also, I just couldn’t imagine how those reunions would go and I’m too different now and I didn’t want to disappoint anybody.
He’s only managing to give Luisa a tiny portion of his truth right now, and he hates it. He wishes he could just say everything. He’d never had difficulties with conversations before. He’d infamously, around the Enigma household, been the guy that wouldn’t shut up. Now he can barely spit out five words in a row.
Luisa’s immediate blaming of herself makes Homura’s heart sink like a lead weight, his gut twisting with his own guilt. “No,” he forces out through a throat that feels like it’s wrapped in barbed wire, tone surprisingly strong despite his whisper, “it’s not your fault. Please don’t blame yourself.”
He’s had six years, plus another two, to think about it, and he’d known that Luisa would blame herself. She’d always been there for him, standing strong and unbreakable. He hadn’t been able to properly imagine just how painful it would be to watch it, though.
“Blame the people we were fighting. Or blame me for opening up such a huge void and not watching my back,” he murmurs, hand shaking as he dares to reach out and put it on Luisa’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “Either way. I survived. Maybe blame doesn’t matter.”
rainenavarro:
The arm extended to console their brother is slowly retracted. They stagger back a moment, staring down at their shoes, pants, the black ensemble they were no longer used to wearing. A consistent thought nagging at the back of their mind about how they should not be witnessing him in that pose – defeated, tired too it seems. It is easier to look at him when he sits, but no less unsettling to see Homura so different.
“I’m good,” Raine blurts out in turn, forgetting they are at a funeral and forgetting that the newfound weight in their chest might mean something. They are at least glad Homura wants them there. It is almost comical how awkward this is as they throw a look around them as though they can expect a pamphlet on speaking with an ex-dead brother to blow in on the wind from any direction. It does not.
“How are you?” They finally realize they should return the question as their gaze returns to their brother. A strained smile pulled up briefly to account for their slip up before they see no harm in voicing their concern, “have you been okay? Haven’t seen you in awhile.”
✘
Haven’t seen you in a while.
Homura blinks, owl-like, before he does something he’s entirely unused to doing these days: his lips curl in a tiny little grin, and even if the noise is brief and cracked and little more than a huff of air, he still laughs.
“Well. You know how it is. Getting sucked into the void kind of impacted my social life,” he replies, feeling so much like his old self for a brief second that it kind of hurts, but in the best kind of way. Eliana’s calls are the only ones he’s been answering these past two years, and he’s getting pretty abruptly hit with the realization that he’s an idiot for avoiding the rest of his siblings. Well, no, he knew that already. But two minutes with Raine and he’s already feeling more connected than he has in a long time.
He should have done this so much sooner.
“I...” As if in revenge for that brief moment of normality, his voice goes and vanishes on him, drying up in his throat. And he doesn’t know if Raine knows ASL, so he goes for his phone instead, texting them.
[homura]: i’m doing better now [homura]: i’m sorry i didn’t talk to anybody [homura]: it’s hard to explain [homura]: but it’s really really good to see you raine [homura]: :)
@elianavarro
It’s an hour or two into the wake, and Homura’s already had multiple conversations, which is... well, multiple conversations with multiple people in one day is more than he’s had since before he got kicked into his own void. He’s had to talk to former Oculus members and offer his condolences and sit through their confusion about why he’s even here. He’s talked with a few of his siblings, all with various reactions about the fact that he’s back and actually interacting with them.
It’s exhausting. Homura loves his siblings, he really does, but he’s already weary, bone-deep, just from forcing himself to speak. On one hand, it’s worth it. It’s so good to see them again. On the other hand, now he needs to nap for a million years.
Surreptitiously, he makes his way outside into the courtyard for some fresh air, and for some silence. Or rather, his own form of silence, which is the exact opposite: ears straining as he listens to the wind and the leaves rustling, the traffic from the nearby street, and the voices playing through his bulky headphones, an old recorded conversation between his siblings from years ago. This one was mostly just whining about how none of them felt like training that particularly weekend, and trying to come up with schemes to get out of it.
Slumped on a bench, he cradles his head in his hands, breathing through the panic he can’t seem to stop feeling. But the sound of a footstep breaks through his concentration, and Homura tiredly looks up. It shouldn’t surprise him to see Eliana in a veil. That’s just the kind of thing that she’d do. But it still makes his chest hitch in silent, sudden amusement that almost startles him. She’s always been good at making him laugh, both before and after the void. Maybe that’s why hers had been the only calls he’d answered.
“Eli,” he says hoarsely, and he manages the tiniest of smiles. “I like the outfit. Good choice.”
fcarmongcr:
She waves the apology off, a kind smile forming from underneath her face mask as she does so. She almost wants to rip it off, to let him see that she doesn’t mind the mistake, but above all, she fears the thought of giving too many clues of her identity to others. She might not be an internationally recognized lawyer, but if anyone were to stay in New York City long enough, they would recognize her. That is a risk she cannot take, not when she has been able to build so much for herself in the last few years.
“No need to apologize, the mistake is understandable,” she says, knowing that it will be a surprise regardless of her previous gesture. Ten years ago, she would have taken any opportunity to overreact. And Homura had been long for longer than that, at the height of her pettiness and at the time her lashing out had been at it’s worst. She has long grown past that, but she knows she can’t expect others to believe so until she has shown proof.
Yes, she nods at she signs, her lips twisting in thought as she thinks back to their parent’s tears earlier. But perhaps not as odd, if we think about Hollis’ tears. It a way, it makes sense they knew each other, once upon a time.
The oldest and most visible of mutants, it would not be a surprise if Hollis revealed that they shared a torrid history the teams hadn’t been privy to. Being a mutant is a lonely thing, after all, and finding each other might have been a blessing for the two. A blessing, that is, until it turned into whatever caused the intense rivalry between the two. It’s no coincidence that when the Headmaster got a team, so did Gorgon, after all.
✘
Homura’s not so good at people these days. He used to be great at figuring out what people were feeling, but after six years of nothing, he can’t bring himself to look people in the eye anymore, he can’t hear the nuances of expression in people’s voices because his ears are too busy wincing at the sound. He’s gotten better in the past two years -- he can actually stand and talk and be present -- but he doesn’t know if he’ll ever get back to how perceptive he used to be. And yet, he can still tell that Julieta is... different.
She’d waved off his apology. Called his mistake understandable. There’d been no snapping, no blame, no pointed remarks. It’s a far cry from the Julieta he knows, and it’s pretty shocking.
It’s been eight years, and as far as he can tell, the Enigmas have been split for the majority of that time. Has her time away from the family allowed her to change, no longer being perceived primarily by her mutant ability? Or is she just going easy on Homura because this is the first time they’ve seen each other again? Old instincts make him worry it’s the latter, but... he really, genuinely hopes it’s the former. For her sake.
It was strange to see Gorgon cry, he admits in sign. I used to think the Headmaster was an idiot. A soft, naive idiot. But now I... he... he did a lot of good. He helped.
fadedarcade:
It’s easy enough to say that Jac is absent-minded at the moment. Absent being the key word. Some part of her left when she heard the news about The Headmaster. Perhaps grief is feeling a part of yourself die along with the person you loved. She thinks maybe it was more of her than she’d be able to recover from. She felt as if she were constructed out of grief, like it was sewn into every fiber of her. Harold wasn’t even a good dad. He wasn’t her dad at all. Maybe that’s why she felt so stupid crying over a father than never truly claimed her.
When the plate topples from her hand she doesn’t even feel it. It’s only the blur of motion as the other person disappears and reappears in her periphery that jars her from her contemplation. “Oh, uh, thanks,” she says to the person staring at her through the mask. As she takes the plate, there’s a moment where she just holds on to it and looks at them. Locking eyes, not to establish dominance, but instead to observe and reassure. She’s surprised by the kind gesture, and while she doesn’t fully trust it. If it’s earnest then she’s grateful. If it’s not then she appreciates a tactic that at least starts out favorable.
“No,” she says, “I’m not. This is a wake, remember?” Her tone is not aggressive or facetious, it’s plain, almost pleading. A statement of fact that’s begging everyone in the room to remember the loss. She didn’t want there to be one moment in the day where minds shifted to the spinach puffs or the Monet on the wall. No one was allowed to forget why they were here.
Jac smiles softly, the closest thing she’ll give to an apology for those words. “Just pay your respects and we can all move on with our lives. I’ll do the same when it’s your turn for this nightmare.”
✘
A little flicker of a grimace crosses Homura’s expression, but the chance to correct the misunderstanding is too fleeting for him to grab. He’d only been asking if she was okay after dropping the plate, if she was, in that moment, physically okay and not about to collapse out of sheer grief. But Arcade hears the question differently, which he supposes is entirely understandable, even if it makes him come off like an idiot, asking if someone is okay when they just lost their... whatever Harold was to them.
Across the room, there’s a portrait of Harold on a table, surrounded by flowers, and Homura finds his gaze swinging to it yet again. Arcade’s suggestion that Homura will live through the same thing, it makes him think of Gorgon and Bloodhound, of course it does, but right now, he thinks of Harold.
“He was a good man. He...” Homura starts, and stops, shifting awkwardly on his feet, jaw working as he tries to force the words out. He has so many things he wants to say, needs to say, but he knows he can’t. Saying them would create chaos, and he doesn’t want to disrupt the wake.
Instead, he offers: “I, um. Didn’t think so when I was younger. Team rivalry, I guess. But then he... I came to realize how much he just wanted to help mutants. Didn’t matter who they were or what they’d done.” It’s so much talking, and it’s hard, but he forebears. Swallows harshly, and repeats: “He was a good man. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
steelbuilt:
something inside of her cracked. what, exactly, was unclear — had it been her heart, she thought she would have realized. then again, luisa thought she realized a lot of things, but were that the case then her life wouldn’t revolve around chasing after mirages like it currently did.
“but–” the word left her lips an incredulous whisper, the pathetic fragment of a protest that didn’t know what to grasp for. she allowed for some room between them by pulling away, hands insisting on resting on his shoulders one moment more as she looked at him in the eye.
“the door of you room–” in hindsight, there was perhaps a giveaway: the door of homura’s childhood bedroom, found one night to be open one inch more than luisa remembered it in the morning. that house had become her purpose ever since her siblings ceased being it, how come she didn’t notice? “that was you?”
still, if that one inch had sparked the slightest bit of hope between her ribs, the record of unanswered calling out had snuffed it out. between homura’s accident and now, there had been hours and hours of trying to reach him through the team’s earpiece and walkie-talkies. there were years’ worth of luisa nagging gorgon about homura’s whereabouts followed by requests to keep her update should those change. there were yearly cards written to him on christmas, on his birthday, on national siblings day, all slid under his door.
there was that ‘ but ’. but… she had called. she had called into the void — a void that, to this day, she believed had never answered because it was unable to, and not because it had, instead, not wanted to.
✘
“That was me,” Homura admits lowly. Harold had flown with him back to New York to allow him to get some of his things, and he’d sneaked into the house in the early AMs. Harold had told him the Enigmas had disbanded and moved out. It had seemed empty, but well kept, and so he’d suspected someone was still there, but he hadn’t been sure. He hadn’t wanted to find out. Eventually, he’d found out that it was Luisa that was still there. He thinks Spectacle told him, maybe.
He opens his mouth to continue, and finds that nothing comes out other than a rattled breath. His voice has abandoned him in the wake of emotional chaos, of not knowing where to start, and he knows it in the way his throat clutches so tight he can barely breathe. Instead, he pulls out his phone, and he texts her.
Their last text is eight years and two months ago.
[homura]: thank you for the cards [homura]: i’m sorry. sometimes i find it hard to talk. this is easier [homura]: i [homura]: i found my way out of the void two years ago [homura]: i didn’t know how to tell anyone [homura]: everybody had moved on. became adults. got jobs. got real lives [homura]: i was so happy for everyone [homura]: i didn’t know how to [homura]: interrupt that
His grip tightens on his phone, glancing guiltily at her.
[homura]: i should have told you
pheromonials:
The wake is more tolerable when treated as a networking event. There are interesting people here, to be sure – politicians with fingers in different pies, socialites that could boost her image as she boosted them – and if Mila took them at face value, ignoring the loss that tethered them together, it could almost be bountiful. Almost, of course. Not-nearly.
And then, these enigmas — literally. What good was an exclusive, closed ceremony when there were masked strangers? If there are two responses to grief in Mila’s world, then their presence makes her want to choose anger over numbness. A certain level of indignation on the Headmaster’s behalf, which she would realise was wholly misplaced if she spared a second on self-reflection. Unfortunately, it had often been the Headmaster who made her look at herself more critically and now he wasn’t here to hold that mirror up.
So, anger. Steps taken towards one of the Enigmas, staring at the picture of Harold Knox. His eyes might knock the breath out of Mila if she looks too long, so she looks at him in stead after noting that whoever chose the flowers had good taste.
A squeak seems to come out of the masked’s mouth and Mila files it away, ammunition for if she becomes venomous. If. It seems tasteless to fight in front of the portrait of the Headmaster. “Thank you.” The nod she gives is polite. She doesn’t say that this is the strangest thing about English: the apologising for things not ones fault. Her head cants. “Should I offer my condolences to you as well or are you just here …” The sentence threatens to trail off as she shifts her balance from one heel to the other. “To be part of the decor?” A pause, then a small smile: “Either way, thank you for coming.”
✘
Despite himself, despite his panic and the fact that he’s barely holding himself together in this horrible overwhelming room, Homura almost laughs. He breathes a soft little noise, a tentative smile there and gone again. He definitely wouldn’t serve as good decor, he knows. Not the type of decor that Harold Knox seemed to favor; elegant and made to be admired. No, he’s much better suited as decor that sits out of the way, unobserved.
“I didn’t know him.” It comes out almost like a question, tone tilted up at the end. Homura’s never been all that good at lying, and this is probably the most obvious lie he’s ever told. He clears his throat. Tries again. “I didn’t know him.” That comes out... a little more believable. “No condolences needed.”
Guilt swamps him so hard he almost sways on the spot, dark gaze darting away, unable to stay on the portrait of the Headmaster any longer. He focuses on the flowers instead. They’re nice.
“I’m sorry if we’re... distracting,” he offers, barely louder than a whisper. Because he’s seen the glances that the former Oculus team is giving the former Enigmas. Some curious, some dubious, some annoyed. “But... I think it’s only right that we pay our respects. We had our differences. But he was a good man.”
rainenavarro:
Honestly, Raine has not had to attend a funeral in a long time. Not since they were a teenager. Not since… it didn’t matter. The point being they had no idea how to act. It was not like Harold Knox would rise from the dead like the term wake might suggest.
They had followed Homura outside. For what reason, Raine was not entirely sure. There certainly was something about the crowd inside that made their skin crawl. The truth was that Homura had been a phantom for so long; the kind of hallucination that meant the more they reached, the farther he actually was. Not that Raine knew how much they cared for their brother other than the odd gut-wrenching feeling when his name popped up in passing.
The sorry he offers is ignored; they have no idea what he has to be sorry about. “Don’t worry about them,” they advise, a surprising calmness to their voice even when they did not recognize Homura’s. He had aged; his voice was no longer squeaky and pre-pubescent and neither was theirs. Raine would not dare bring up that this is the first time they have spoken in person in years.
Their approach slowed until a hand is hovering over his back – in case he might not want to be touched. They simply could not bear watching Homura’s exit and pretending like they did not care, even when they did appear rather scrutinous. Their eyebrows furrowed, a death stare contained in their eyes and yet they say, “it’s really crowded in there. Are you alright?” Then, after another beat, “Do you want me to go? If you want me to go, I can go.”
✘
“No,” Homura manages to blurt out, panicked, grip tightening on the fountain’s edge so hard he hears his own bones creak. “Stay.”
He doesn’t know how to even begin talking to Raine. Before, he’d always found them so easy to talk to. They’d been sweet and loving, even if their head had been in the clouds a lot, and he’d often needed to repeat their name a few times before he got their attention. Homura had always teased them for having a hard shell and a gooey interior. It’s been eight years, they’ve gotten into their thirties, and it’s likely they’ve changed as a person -- but that isn’t the problem. It’s not that Homura thinks it’ll be hard talking to Raine because of Raine themself.
No. The problem is him.
“It’s... crowded,” he agrees weakly, a tiny little self-deprecating smile on his lips. He never would have minded a crowd before. He’d loved a good crowd, before. But that’s just one of many things wrong. Exhaustion sweeps over his expression, his shoulders slumping, and he turns, lowering himself down to sit on the stone bench carved into the side of the fountain, head hung.
Where does he start? How does he explain? “How are you?” Homura finally asks, and feels a bit ridiculous asking it, such a normal question in the face of reappearing from the dead and seeing his superhero sibling again. But he has to start somewhere, right?