reach the residents

[ximilian]

● ● ● REACH THE RESIDENTS

For any questions you want to ask Viveca or Degar and receive an IC response, please direct them here. Please indicate in the subject line who you are trying to contact.

// VIVECA

Hi, what can I help you with?

// DEGAR

Today was gonna be the day, but they'll never throw it back to you. And by now, you should've somehow realized what you're not to do.

▶ NAV

Comments

[vivecai]

Hm — backgammon?

[ but several of them at once, of course, with the numbers on one board being added or retracted from those of another according to a complicated set of rules.

and while she sets that up, she listens to the story — one might not expect him to be great at telling stories, but he is, and after he is done she is silent for a long while, so long that he might suspect she is not going to answer at all — ]

Ah, [ she says then, a half-syllable that sounds a little choked — but so short is that that if it were anyone else than him, it might be easy to think it imagined, as then she continues in a normal, level voice, ] An interesting story... it could be one of warning, if it didn't have the daughter's devotion to her mother.

[ and certainly it illustrates his background well — the importance placed on family, on remaining filial. ]

[blackfire]

（ once the boards are set up in the app, he rolls the first of two die to decide who will go first, and lands on a four.

if he notices the slight schism of emotion in her voice, he does not give any indication of it, simply continues — ）

I suppose that is the nature of fables — to demonstrate what could be, and what is, and where the two might overlap for good or ill.

（ another pause, and then, softer — ）

You would have liked mine. Uchiha Mikoto. She was a powerful kunoichi （ of course that's the thing he would note of her first — ） and a tender mother. She was always very good-hearted.

（ he knows how broken it was for the loss of uzumaki kushina, bearing witness to that grief in the weeks following the kyūbi attack. but he never witnessed her saying an unkind word, or being cruel. he does not flinch from his last memories of her, but there are times he regrets them just the same. ）

[vivecai]

[ perhaps surprisingly, her answering roll is even worse, giving him the first go of it. there's a half-laugh at something he says at first, there, though it's hardly a funny sentence — instead, she seems to laugh at something that only she picks up on.

and then, softer than she's ever sounded, ]

I believe that. [ she would forgive you, she thinks, she loved you very much. she doesn't say it; he knows it already. all the words would bring is unnecessary pain. ]

[blackfire]

（ one day in the not-too-distant future, itachi is absolutely going to look back on this moment and likely laugh himself.

instead, in the interim, he shifts the first of his pieces to differing points off the back of that first combined roll. he shakes his head very slightly as his fingers hover over the last of the checkers he intends to move, and then: ）

You'll have to tell me about yours, one day.

（ bc irony. ）

[vivecai]

[ she rolls her dice, then, and with a huff indicating she's unsatisfied with the result, starts moving her checkers.

her answer takes a moment. ]

... maybe. [ and then, with a soft, fond tone, ] You'd like her, too.

[ because alexandra is everything that viveca wants to be, kind and genuine and with morals and a sense of justice strong as the earth. but she's got some of her father in her, too, and her edges are dangerously sharp where her mother's aren't; it makes her pragmatic.

(quite deliberately, she prefers that choice of word to something else it could just as well be.) ]

[blackfire]

（ he is not accustomed to anyone speaking of him as one worth liking — so he has no response to that. his silence is contemplative, encompassing. it seems perhaps he might speak, by the faint variation to an indrawn breath, but silence prevails.

he simply continues the game. it spills well into the small hours of the morning, nearer than not to when he customarily rises, and as the last of the checkers are borne off, he suppresses a yawn. ）

We will have to continue this another time, Viveca-san. Perhaps you will indulge me with a game of Shogi?

（ there's a faint trace of warmth there, like a stone that's been left overturned in the sun, and has carried its heat into the spell of night. but then, he disconnects. ）

[vivecai]

[ she, of course, feels no fatigue, and has not been rushing the game — less for not having consideration of itachi's need to sleep, and more because she trusts him to tell her if he wants to stop. he's not someone who'd appreciate being coddled needlessly. ]

Sure. [ her answer is feather-light, pleased. it's a selfish thing, to spend time like this, but she enjoys it too much to let it go.

she'll speak to him later, then. ]