rassera: (Insult me again)
Kaneda Shotaro [金田 正太郎] ([personal profile] rassera) wrote in [community profile] maskormenacelogs2016-01-01 03:35 pm

I can move mountains, I can work a miracle [OPEN]

WHO: The residents of Nonah 05 + YOU!
WHERE: Nonah, Residence #005
WHEN: All month long (January)
WHAT: Nonah 05 open log for January Shenanigans
WARNINGS: Obligatory Bull and Tetsuo warnings apply.


Starters will be appearing in the comments. If you want something specific from any one person (Kaneda [personal profile] rassera, Tetsuo [personal profile] iamtetsuo, Bull [personal profile] rideme and Ken [personal profile] amadaman), feel free to drop them a line and ask! Otherwise, feel free to add your own starters for the whole household or individual residents as you like.
amadaman: ((p3) 086)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-14 03:01 am (UTC)(link)
Eh?

[The smile disappears like it was never there. One blink, and it falls, and Ken almost looks like he's showing less emotions than Minato does.

Then comes crashing the sadness again.]


I... I'm staying with Aragaki-san right now.
amadaman: ((p3) 031)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-14 04:00 am (UTC)(link)
[He sees it, and it tears into him. He feels his heart get clutched tightly by an invisible fist, and he remembers Maya's words. Kaneda would be happy if he talked with him.

Would he be?

He averts his gaze.]


If I'm around... Tetsuo-san will be upset. You finally got him back.
amadaman: ((p3) 003)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-14 04:15 am (UTC)(link)
[Kaneda doesn't argue. He knew he wouldn't. Both of them, and everyone who knew anything, knew how strained things were with Ken and Tetsuo. He'd been advised to leave the house a few times before.

Ken's voice is quiet when he answers.]


I promised myself I'd help. I have-- I have people who'll take me in.
amadaman: (Default)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-14 05:23 am (UTC)(link)
[Ken lets himself be guided. Just yesterday he had started yelling at Maya around a bunch of people. With Kaneda, he cares even less. His shoulder is small in Kaneda's hand and it shakes just a little as they start to walk.]

I dunno. As long as I need to?

I considered just moving.
amadaman: ((p3) 085)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-14 08:17 am (UTC)(link)
[Ken continues walking even after Kaneda stops, so he ends up a couple steps in front of him, standing without turning to face him. But his shoulders are hunched and his hands are clenched into fists, so seeing his face may not be necessary to figuring out his expression.

He feels the dam inside him, damaged from all the hits it took from the past few weeks, start to quake, straining against the pressure inside. He had held on for so long. He wasn't trying to be self-sacrificial; he genuinely believed that this was for the best. But there's Kaneda, trying to pull him back as usual.

Trying to keep him anchored even as he tried with all his might to let himself be swept away.]


... It's not like I wanted to leave, [he says, and the words that follow come spilling out.] It's not like I'm leaving because I want to. That house used to be where I could go and be okay, but it's not anymore.

[His voice shakes and comes out a pitch higher, his throat tightening -- no, he doesn't want to cry -- as he says what he'd been thinking for a long time now,] Even though I was there first.
amadaman: ((p3) 141)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-14 10:05 am (UTC)(link)
So what?

[No, don't look at him. Kaneda's hand grips him tightly and holds him in place, but Ken brings his own hands up to cover his face. Both his shoulders and his voice shake now and he can do nothing to control it. Kala-Nemi does nothing to stop him now, spinning silently in the back of his mind as he thinks about all that has happened. All the nights he spent sleepless while Tetsuo screamed two doors down. All the days he tried to hide how he jumped at the ruckus he and Kaneda made. All the bruises he hid after Tetsuo shoved him around, the times that he had things stolen from out of his hand.

He lost his uniform and only had patches of it left, and now he's sleeping on somebody's couch. And Minato knew, now. Minato had found out. Kaneda got Tetsuo back and suddenly Ken found himself without a place he felt safe or a purpose to drive himself forward for.

He could've pushed it all back. Wrapped it up tight and hid it deep in his heart. Kala-Nemi would've helped him. She would have hid it inside her like she had done for him many times before. But Kaneda's hand is warm and his voice sounds so pained, and this voice had saved him so many times before and Ken had missed it so much. it had been so long since he let himself talk to him.]


So what? [and the first tear falls from behind his hands to disappear into the dark around them.] You never get what you deserve. How hard does someone have to work to get what they deserve? [His voice breaks at the end into a sob.] I just wanted somewhere to belong. I finally had a home.
amadaman: ((p3) 038)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-15 08:32 am (UTC)(link)
[Ken never wondered, even for a second, if the sanctuary he found in that house will last forever. He knew down to the very core of his being that nothing ever lasted. And nothing in the house had ever been permanent. Piper wasn't even around a month. Rose disappeared before he learned anything more than her name. Emma was gone quickly, too, with only a few cookie sheets in the kitchen to remind them of her existence. And now Charlie was gone, and so many people went in and out of the house that the magic guard he put around it was almost pointless.

But Kaneda's eyes had softened then. He had the look of a man who'd finally seen the end, and Ken had stumbled upon it once they all stumbled back to Nonah: Kaneda and Tetsuo calling each other's names softly, without the anger that used to be there, as things should always have been for them.

Things were the way they were supposed to be, and Ken, who knew the pain of losing what was important, also knew more than they did the joy of having that important thing. Didn't they deserve that chance after all that happened? Maya's laughter soon joined their noise, and when Ken realized that he wasn't a part of this scene, but only listening to it happen from the other side of a closed door, he couldn't help but feel that that was it. This was not his place anymore. Kaneda and Tetsuo will not heal if he's there.

But Kaneda is still here, right now, trapping Ken almost with the way he holds him. He squeezes his eyes shut against the press of more tears, tries to ignore the way he strokes his hair. A lot of people did that for him, just as his mother had, but he doesn't want that now. How could he tell himself he's okay if other people are seeing right through him and offering comfort? He's fine, he's fine. He knew this was how it was going to end before he appeared in front of Kaneda that day and declared that they were going to take down Pan.]


How can you say that? You know-- you've got to know why he kept hurting me. As long as I'm near you Tetsuo-san will get upset again. He doesn't want me there, but you need him. I can't... I can't win against that. [His voice grows quieter still and shakes, no longer holding on to the composure Ken always tried to have.] What Tetsuo-san has with you... I lost that the day my mom died. And I--

[He doesn't want to spend another day wondering when the next blow will come. He doesn't want to spend another day fearing that Kaneda will see what happened and still try to save Tetsuo, as he had when it happened in November. He doesn't want to see the looks on Jaime and Minato's faces as Ken still defended Tetsuo, even as he cut out the only salvageable piece of what little he had left of SEES and threw out the rest. Tetsuo only took away from him, and Ken still can't bring himself to take anything back. But if he lets go of everything, there's nothing more to be taken, right?]

I don't want to go through what he put me through again.
Edited 2016-01-15 08:34 (UTC)
amadaman: ((p3) 035)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-15 01:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[The words Kaneda wanted him to listen to don't come. Ken's face is a mess as he waits -- it's shiny with tears and his eyes are puffy and red, and there's an emotional look there that had simply been missing for the last few months. Ever since the time he cried to him in September and especially following the time that he was ported out, Ken's emotions had been fading, receding further and further into the back of his mind. Now they're back, like the flood of tears had finally pushed them to the front again. His brown eyes which were full aside from the faint glimmer of determination are brighter now, and they're wide with confusion, sadness, and a bit of desperation as he looks almost pleadingly at the boy before him. Whatever words Kaneda says now, Ken will hang on them like a lifeline.

And though the words are never spoken, Ken suddenly get a feeling he knows what they were supposed to be. It's almost like Kala-Nemi is whispering in his ear to tell him, the way they just occur to him the way they do. And it's Kala-Nemi's presence that puts something in motion again like a piece of clockwork falling into place after a long time of being broken.

In many stories, characters find someone to be their one and only over the course of the plot. A lonely man finds someone to trust; a woman surrounded by many friends finds the most special of them all. Ken had read many such stories, and some people might say he found his, too, then cast a glance over to the boy with the blue cap he often spent time with. But Ken would secretly disagree; to Ken, his one and only was a woman who died years ago -- the person who had tirelessly raised him and unconditionally loved him, someone he'll never get to see again, someone he loved like he would never love anybody else. Ken's one and only, and the person Ken was a one and only to, no longer existed, and Ken had instead started to learn what it meant to accept lots of people into his life. He'd spent the last year learning what it meant to be loved by a lot of people, and what it meant to love a lot of people, and he'd found happiness in that.

As the tears continue to roll down his cheeks, he raises his hands to Kaneda's shoulders. His arms follow, and he takes a step forward to close the distance Kaneda opened as he wraps them around his neck. Kaneda's straight black hair pokes at his face before he hides it against the collar of his jacket, and he finally lets out a breath he was holding.

What Tetsuo had with Kaneda, Ken lost the day he lost his mother. He was born knowing who his one and only was, and he lost her before he gained anything else. He never wanted to shove his way into anybody else's space, and he had fought hard, harder than anybody expected of him, to make sure that these people didn't experience the same fate he did that night even if it meant losing one of the most important things he gained. He charged on knowing that the ground was crumbling beneath him, and he'd known that it was since the moment he realized that it was Tetsuo he tried to kill in August.

And just like when he tried to run away in August when he first sensed the end approaching, Kaneda was here to pick him back up. He fists his hands in his shirt like he had done many, many times before, and nods, once.]


I can still be with you?
amadaman: ((p3) 157)

[personal profile] amadaman 2016-01-19 07:27 am (UTC)(link)
[There's a quiet gasp into Kaneda's shoulder. It's the sound that comes right before someone's about to cry, and Ken's just the same. Kaneda's embrace -- his warmth, the sound of his voice, the sound of his breathing, the faint beat of his heart he thinks he can feel through their coats -- wraps around him like a cocoon, shielding him from the harshness of the winter around them.

It melts away the wall Ken had built around himself these past few months. He had secrets to keep and fights to fight, and after people like Crane and Pan, he couldn't feel safe to let his guard down. He was vulnerable; Ken knew that well. But here, with Kaneda, he can be safe. And he doesn't have to leave his side.

Brothers... that's what they think we are.

Kaneda is not the only person to treat him like family, nor is he the first. But in this moment, he's the one giving Ken this love when he needed it the most, and his are the words that knocked right into him as his shell was crumbling. The dam holding back Ken's feelings doesn't stand a chance.

Kaneda will hold him. Kaneda will be here. Shinjiro and Minato, his mother, are all dead. They're already gone. One day, he'll part ways with Kaneda, too. But he's here right now, and he's safe, and it's knowing that he'll still hold him together that allows Ken to finally fall apart. The soft gasp turns into a soft, mournful wail and nothing can stop his tears now.]