oneman_onevote | (no subject)

For the fourth night in a row, Trowa's stayed in a rented room at Milliways rather than going home. More pertinently, for the fourth night in a row, Trowa's continued to be in Havelock Vetinari's body rather than his own.

The situation is getting . . . kind of tiresome.

It's been just about four hours at home. Another day and a half here, and Cathy's going to have to start working harder to cover for his absence. But that's her concern, really. Trowa can't contribute much except by getting this fixed.

Pity he doesn't really have many more leads than he started out with. Not much that's useful, anyway.

(Wait a while for it to wear off, he's heard some people suggesting. It's even worked for some other people already, he's seen. It'd be great if that happened soon, but he can't afford to count on it.)

He's up in the rafters again. Listening, half-hidden in shadow, and thinking.

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Duck is bouncing cheerfully through the bar when her pendant starts to feel warm.

. . . which is totally weird, because it's not glowing, not like there's a heartshard around! It just kinda feels - well, maybe her pendant's confused too.

Or maybe it's reacting to the presence of the gem of author's convenience. Who knows?

Duck looks around for a heartshard anyway. Down, around, under the table, and . . . up . . .

Calm eyes regard her back.

Maybe she'll even notice! Although Trowa is, sad to say, not making any particular effort to make that easy for her.

He has no idea if Duck and Havelock know each other. But he does know that her discretion sucks, and that she's not on his list of ideal people to talk to just now.

. . . Although her world is the kind of one where something like bodyswaps would probably happen.

Duck does know Havelock, as it happens! As per one conversation, but.

However, she's a little bit distracted by the need to dive under a table before her pendant sends her into a full-on Princess Tutu change. Clark Kent time!

Ah.

Well, at least it's the personality with common sense.

Princess Tutu somehow manages not to look awkward as she emerges from under the table - first extending one leg, and then dipping her whole body gracefully out into the open.

Vines start to spin beneath her, forming a platform that lifts her gradually higher in an undulating motion.

Trowa waits, impassively resigned.

Once she's level with the man in the rafters, she smiles and holds out a hand.

She knows, now, why the pendant was reacting; knows, too, why it wasn't glowing.

It's not a shard of Mytho's heart that's here. But it isn't Havelock's either.

"I think," she says softly, "that this is not where you belong."

Oh really.

The look she gets from Havelock's cool face is considering.

"I know," says Trowa.

"Would you like to go back?"

She asks, rather than commanding; this isn't, after all, her story.

The thing is --

Tutu's world is weird, and Trowa has no particular desire to go back there, and Tutu is a magical physics-defying ballerina who spends the rest of her time as a preteen girl-duck with no common sense.

But bodyswapping is just as weird and impossible. And Tutu's powers, whatever they are, do seem to work. And Tutu, with her sparkling eyes and impossible vines, leapt between two brawling Gundam pilots and got away with it -- which speaks either to her foolhardiness, or her assessment of her own skills.

"By preference," says Trowa slowly (and only a little warily), and places his hand lightly in hers.

(Strange to feel someone else's fingers against Havelock's, instead of his own, and strange without the thick layer of trapeze-callus.)

That's just a little peculiar.

...As if the rotating vine platform wasn't - but Havelock has been in Milliways for years, and if the young lady sees fit to transport herself so, then far be it from him to judge.

Trowa, with the exception of his sister Cathy, doesn't seem to be on hand-holding terms with many.

He steps forwards a little from the foot of the stairs, watching them silently to see what will happen.

He's not. And it shows in his posture, subtly, if Havelock can read Trowa's body language in his own body. This is not relaxed affection, but the waiting poise of a deliberate choice to trust, for this moment, and not pull away, for this moment.

But Trowa's still standing next to the ballerina on the magical vines, all the same.

He meets Havelock's eyes (or his own) calmly. The silent greeting says something along the lines of well, it's worth a try.

Tutu doesn't seem at all surprised to see Havelock-in-Trowa's-body appear at precisely the right moment.

(Once again, it's helpful to have the power of the author's convenience on your side.)

She reaches out her other hand towards Havelock.

"It's all right," she says softly. "You can come home."

. . . Yeah, she always talks like that.

...Really?

Havelock-in-Trowa's-body doesn't say.

Because Tutu also seems to have the power of being mindbogglingly sincere -- or perhaps he just trusts Trowa's judgement, who knows -- Havelock continues to approach, slow and measured.

(He's not sure about the vines.)

Trowa's (Havelock's) face says: yeah, I know. Without expression.

Trowa's (Havelock's) mouth, however, says: "Her world has a lot of magic." Much of it he doesn't care for at all. But. "She can undo things sometimes."

He's not certain. But Tutu seems pretty confident, so it might work, and in any case he judges that it's fairly unlikely to make things worse.

The vines aren't going to hurt Havelock! They're mostly for helping Princess Tutu to catapult over things in a showy manner. If it helps, they are also covered in pink flowers. (It probably doesn't help.)

Tutu, meanwhile, continues to hold out her hand, her smile and pose steady in a way that's not quite human.

. . . but in a reassuring way.

Fair enough.

He still doesn't trust the vines, but he's been stuck in Trowa's body long enough to feel confident that he can get up to the rafters without their aid.

He takes a fairly safe route -- up the back of a booth first, then he pulls himself up onto a beam. Trowa may be shorter by several inches, but his physical strength and agility are exemplary.

Havelock approaches the pair, gaze level and considering.

Trowa's right -- it's worth a try.

Tutu's hand could be a porcelain puppet's on invisible strings, for all the motion it shows as she waits - eternally gracious, eternally patient - for Havelock to take it.

(It's okay, Havelock; Trowa's not exactly a hulking specimen. If the vines hold Tutu and Havelock, they probably won't have a problem with a little extra weight.)

It's really more the fickle nature of magical plants in general that concerns Havelock more, but he is willing to suspend suspicion long enough to try this.

One more glance at Trowa's expression behind his own eyes, and Havelock cautiously reaches out to the girl in the outlandish costume, and places his hand - Trowa's, a little stronger, far more calloused than his - in hers.

Edited Date: 2010-04-08 05:48 pm (UTC)

Tutu's gentle smile brightens, as she draws her two hands - each containing the hand of a young man, now shimmering with red light - together.

As Trowa and Havelock's hands come together, Tutu steps backwards, releasing them - and not, because in her hands, she holds the glimmering red outlines.

The glowing hand that comes from Havelock is strong and calloused - a soldier's. The one that comes from Trowa is a fine and slender assassin's hand. Tutu holds her hands higher, and then pauses, looking from one to the other very seriously.

"Will you trust me with your feelings?"

She'll need to hold them to send them back where they belong.

Uh.

"If you can send us back to our own bodies," Trowa's translucently glowing form says, after a moment, deliberately, "then I trust you to do."

That's as close as he's getting. Unfortunately for Tutu, one of the core emotions of Trowa's heart is a certain degree of paranoia.

It feels, right now, as if he has no body at all. Which is a slightly more familiar sensation than having the wrong one -- Trowa knows, at least, more ordinary feelings of mental dissociation -- but disconcerting all the same. He monitors the motionless bodies behind them out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn't turn for a better look.

Well.

Naturally.

Havelock is distinctly uncomfortable, but it's only cerebral. There's no pulse to speed up, no rush of adrenaline, only conscious knowledge that this is strange and not right. And also, that this is the best bet they have found in a week.

"I've trusted you this far," he says, voice cool and even. "Please continue."

Tutu nods - and even as she does so, the figures before her condense down to glowing red orbs, resting lightly in her hands.

"Your feelings are your own," she says - it could be a ritual, but it isn't; this is mostly just the way Tutu makes conversation - and with a lift of her wrists sends them flying, like birds, back to the bodies they belong to.

Trowa inhales slightly, his eyes widening infinitesimally, and for a moment that's it -- one might be forgiven for thinking that his body is still frozen and uninhabited.

And then his gaze lifts.

(Just for the slightest instance, this body too was a disorienting change, and that was blankly and horribly unsettling -- and then everything snapped back into place, and he knows every muscle and shift of balance again.)

"Thank you," he says, quietly.

Havelock's weight shifts very slightly, balancing himself on the vines that he can now feel under his feet.

It's amazing, he thinks clinically - no real disorientation, just the difference between one body and another. He rests one hand lightly against a beam, and looks up - first to Trowa, seeing that the exchange is complete, and then at the girl in the strange ballet dress.

He regards her for a moment, and then nods.

"Thank you," he echoes.

Tutu dips a small, graceful curtsey of acknowledgment, as the vines beneath their feet spiral downwards, placing them gently on the floor.

Then, with one bound, she's gone.

(At least behind the nearest table, where Duck can quietly freak out because - what? What? People can switch bodies? That's so weird!)

Yeah, so.

Trowa heads for a more out-of-the-way corner, where he can push up his sleeve and retrieve Havelock's knife that's strapped to it.

They're just about done here.