soul_logs | [Closed] trophies for their trifle

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[Closed] trophies for their trifle

Characters: Kotetsu & Kerrigan
Location: DOGS building
Rating: PG
Time: April 9th, late afternoon
Description: Kotetsu attempts to not be a hastily-spoken jerk for once. Results are yet to be decided.

Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid.

That seemed to be the only word going through Kotetsu's mind as he meandered his way through the office of the Watch, both completely aware of what he was doing there but also wondering why he'd put any effort in being there and looking in the first place. He'd probably get kicked, or punched, or shot. Or worse. Who knew what sort of training Kerrigan had on her side in order to turn Kotetsu into a sad pile of mush.

Ugh, could he turn back? He really wanted to, but as Kotetsu continued his walk through the office with the weight of his mirror in his pocket, he knew he couldn't turn back. This was it, he'd finished screwing up. He was going to apologize for all those conversations he'd had with her that had been completely ruined on his part, and try to fix things before he got himself into a deeper hole, one that would probably get him into trouble sooner or later.

...if only he could figure out where she was.

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She might have been wounded, but her eyes worked just fine and even at this distance, the sensation of shy admiration seemed to drift over her way. The smile gave the man away, and she raised eyebrows again when it seemed that the tangled web of Sternbild just got worse and worse. So, this man knew the father before the fall?

"I haven't met the man personally, but he seems to have quite an impact on the city you are from," she said, trying to be at least a little bit more grudgingly conversational. "You knew Yuri then as a child?" She didn't let her curiosity show.

"So you protect people by being a Hero," she finally said after some silence. "That doesn't seem so different from your partner. He does it too, does he not?"

"To put it in plain terms, he was pretty famous when he was still a Hero. Lots of people liked Legend." Kotetsu in particular, even when Legend's popularity had started to decline... in fact, now that he was technically deceased, even with the knowledge of what had happened during his downfall as a hero, he couldn't help but still hold some type of respect for him. Being able to speak with him in person and actually see the sort of person he was had assisted in that somewhat.

Of course, his relation to Yuri still held a lot of unknowns for Kotetsu, and he shook his head. "I never met the judge when he was a kid. Didn't even know Legend had a son. Back then, heroes were always meant to keep their real identities a secret from the public, so no one ever knew anything about their families. I always thought it was better that way. Y'know, just seems safer to keep them out of the spotlight." But that was a line of values that Kotetsu wasn't meant to go into, and he left it at that.

At the mention of his partner though, Kotetsu slipped out of his dazed reminiscing and focused his attention back on Kerrigan, though he appeared a little conflicted on what to say. "But, that's my job, yeah. And it's Bunny's job too, but he didn't have the same reasons I did that made him want to be a Hero too."

"Yuri said he retired, so I take it his fame went down after he left active duty?" She knew of the events that had involved Yuri, but she was curious if there were more events that Kotetsu knew about. She wondered if the man in front of her was aware of some of those events, but she doubted it.

Nodding a little, she sat back to try to get more comfortable, rubbing at the bandages around her neck. They itched and she found them annoying as she couldn't drop her chin much. "My, my, BREW brings all manner of surprises then. To be fair, those two don't look much alike aside from the eyes and cheeks," she said thoughtfully. "Everything is better from the shadows."

She noted his conflict and found it interesting. "What are his reasons then if not to serve and protect, hmm?"

With his fingers laced together, Kotetsu leaned forward and propped his elbows onto his knees, his mouth hidden behind his hands as all he did was nod at first before speaking up. "Yeah, that's usually the norm. People come and go in the 'Hero business'," There was a distinct bit of sarcasm at the mention of the last two words. "One minute you're at the top and the next you're at the very bottom. If you're lucky, retiring just means that you don't have to deal with all that gossip and news about what you're doing and how your life is going."

And Kotetsu already knew how Petrov Sr. had dealt with his declined popularity as Mr. Legend, but he wouldn't dare mention it, his eyes glancing up at Kerrigan. "I dunno, I can kinda see it myself, but maybe that's just 'cause when you find out people are related, you look for the similarities."

As he shrugged, Kotetsu's hands lowered as he bit at his lip for a moment, unsure of what to say. He knew Barnaby had no problem with admitting anything about his personal history, but Kotetsu preferred for it to be something he mentioned himself instead of something that Kotetsu shared to others.

"...something happened to Bunny's parents when he was a kid. He's a Hero because he's trying to find the person who did it."

She thought that his emotions were more guarded on the subject, but given that he had to be closing in on his forties soon, he must be close to retiring as well. She suspected she knew where he was in his rankings, though Barnaby seemed like the type young women would take to. "And how is your life going aside from being overprotective of your only child?"

The way he glanced, she knew what he was thinking or she had a very good idea. Her own gaze reflected back at him as if to say 'I know what is on your mind', but she simply sat as pleasantly as she could. "I suppose so. I'm sure they are more reflected in their personalities."

Raising an eyebrow, she dropped her hands to her lap and the corner of her lip turned up in amusement at his choice of words. "Vengeance hardly seems like a noble reason to join a special group of people bent on saving people from harm."

Kotetsu couldn't help but feel that the question was almost meant as an insult of some sorts, or at least a subtle attempt at a meager one, but thankfully Kotetsu was more than assured of his answer and thus didn't even bother to react to it aside from crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in the chair, raising an eyebrow. Kerrigan, you need to work on your people skills.

"Aside from the overprotective thing, I'm actually doing great. Before I was roped into helping with this whole war because of a weird cube, I was actually pretty happy with my life." A small hint of a surprisingly content smile crept over Kotetsu's face, only for a few seconds, as he thought back to the last moment he lived before being brought to Death City. "Happiest I've been in a long time."

However, that wasn't a conversation he was meant to have at that moment, and after coughing into his hand, the smile was gone, and Kotetsu's voice continued on neutrally, or at least as long as it could with him discussing his partner's troubling past. "To be honest, I can't argue with you there, but when you go through what Bunny's been through... somehow, even if you can't accept it, you have to understand it, even a little." Kotetsu glanced away, his eyes and even his voice almost cold.

"When you're a four year old kid, watching your parents get murdered right in front of your eyes on Christmas Eve, it's hard to want anything other than revenge."

Well, she supposed that his admitting being good was something beneficial to working. One had to enjoy their job, particularly in an environment when it was all forced for a war effort. Certainly they weren't required to participate, but there was no escape so doing nothing was a wasted effort.

"And you don't seem so bad off here, aside from chronically putting your foot in your mouth or getting the shakes around your idol," she remarked simply, the corner of her lip quirking a little. It was a gone a second later so it was hard to tell if it had even better there at all.

The information that was revealed hit a little too close to home, but she had thankfully been readjusting her shoulder, so the grimace would surely be associated with pain, right? She set her jaw and nodded her head a little in reply. "Yes, I suppose that you're right. Depends how you were raised after that too, I'm sure."

Kotetsu's lips pursed just the slightest bit, the only sign that she'd struck another chord with him, but he found more amusement in the rather obviously seen reaction he always tended to have when he spoke to Legend than anything else. "Could be better, but it's not much different than how things usually are for me." (The foot-in-mouth thing didn't need mentioning, even though it was true, but not like Kotestu would admit to it outright).

However, after rubbing his fingers over his mouth, he was back to a rather neutral facial expression, his eyes darting toward her at the hint of movement, but of course, he merely took it as a sign of her injuries. Something that somewhat bothered him, but he'd already gotten his point across earlier that she was better off getting out of that stuffy office and back to her own place to rest.

"...Bunny's life didn't get much better after that. It's all I'll say." More than twenty years of hell is what he could have expressed it as but Kotetsu already felt as if he'd said too much. However, once he realize what he'd said, Kotetsu rubbed at his chin wistfully, eyes narrowing in thought. "--no, that's not right. Bunny's life didn't get much better after that, until he finally became a hero. And then we met. That was about three years ago now."

No, she suspected that his foot entered his mouth just as much back where he was from as it did here. It wasn't, after all, a skill one picked up when traveling across space and time or they'd all do it. She wondered if he did it as often with other people as he tended to do it with her.

She wasn't leaving, at least not yet. She had work to do, even if it pained her to do it. At least he wasn't nagging at her again. She took that as a peace sign for them.

"So his meeting you apparently propelled his sad isolated existence into something worth living, huh?" She was all too familiar with living a life of pure hell, so she supposed she could understand. However, Barnaby was still too... normal to be a walking time bomb. Just a traumatized man with a need for revenge.

Kotetsu chuckled lightly for some reason, even if he knew that the way the question sounded could very well seem as if she couldn't quite believe what he was saying, that he was merely sugarcoating his partner's situation and everything that had happened between them. Making himself look good, giving himself so much credit for helping out this poor young man who lived his life for only revenge.

"It sounds like that, doesn't it?" Distractedly, Kotetsu began to fiddled about with his hands and fingers, eventually focusing on his wedding band.

"You probably can't tell that that's how things are with him, and there's a good reason for that. Bunny and I aren't from the same time right now. He's at least two years behind me, which means that's two years of changes that he doesn't know about." Kotetsu's eyes focused on Kerrigan, and he wasn't sure of whether or not to tell her anything further about the gap of time between himself and his partner, but he figured there was no need for it. Heck, he supposed she might not even care much for the details.

"But you've gotta believe me when I say that the Bunny I know, after those two years, is way different than the one you know now. More different than the one I met three years ago. I'm not gonna say that because of me, his life's perfect, as if I 'fixed' him or anything, but... he's kinda actually happy. And he hasn't been happy for a long time."

She suspected that they were from different times, mostly because it was hard to come by two people who were. BREW had a tendency to just grab whenever and not always the most convenient timing for anyone. In fact, sometimes it was the most inconvenient timing possible. She had to wonder if that had been the case for Barnaby.

"So he has two more years to go in order to be less stuffy then," she remarked dryly. At least he was easy to make blush, which held her from making too many comments against him. Bugging people was just a way to get by when she was forced to remain in the city. "Kind of happy?" That was a novel concept.

"Well, so long as he blushes when I make fun of him, I don't much care how much he changes." She shrugged and winced a little at the action.

The timing had been incredibly inconvenient initially, because Kotetsu not only hadn't been prepared to deal with that old personality of his partner's when he hadn't seen it for two years, but ever since they he had discovered the whole problem, he knew that there were things he would always have to hide from Barnaby until he returned home. However, with the brief months that followed, the two of them had actually started to get along, slowly and gradually. They weren't quite at the point where they were meant to be, but things were better.

Of course, things would be much better if Barnaby could stop being so stuffy, as Kerrigan brought up, and it was enough to make Kotetsu grin, which was followed by a warm, amused chuckle at the later statement. "That's a dangerous habit to get into, I should know! Sad to say that it'll probably be a little harder to get away with after two more years; don't think that Bunny doesn't know how to take a joke by then and throw it right back at you, but at least he's way less stuffy. I think it's a good exchange."

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[Closed] trophies for their trifle

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