I think it does matter, though, moreso than it might seem. That's why it's bothering you; it wouldn't be, if it were just nothing.
[She leans toward him a little, bumping shoulders with him before reaching to turn over the second card in the spread.
Once, upon seeing the card she turns over, she might've been surprised or even a little upset. In this spread, at this time, in this place with this question, she's hardly even surprised.]
Of course it'd be the Tower in the next position. If the Four of Pentacles represents the situation we're in at the moment, then this next one represents the problem facing us — the one thing that, if it were resolved, would settle the question you asked in the beginning.
...The Tower is about sudden changes and upheavals. It's about disrupting one's security, upsetting one's stability. It's...a setback. Something we'd had being damaged by forces beyond our control — like the tower being struck by the lightning — and something we'd counted on falling down unexpectedly, leaving us to start from scratch.
I suppose in a way it's a good sign, these first two cards. If it's this accurate so far, it's likely the rest will be as well.
[Dave considers that pseudo-optimism, picks up his hot chocolate for a long sip, puts it back down, and then cozies up to Meridiana even more adhesively, wrapping both arms around her middle so she can use both hands, not unlike how she held him earlier.
He's still chewing the money question over, why it bothers him so much. And he thinks he knows: the fifth week, when the provisions they'd relied on had been poisoned and taken away so easily, because they had no control over it. And further back, Bro and their kitchen full of lethal weaponry and not much else, the years he'd learned to 'forget' food around his room so he could always find something to snack on, just in case.
Greed and control. Maybe Meridiana already made that connection. She knows him well enough. Dave rests his cheek on her crown and sighs a little.]
If this is distracting, elbow me in the pancreas. I'm just trying to prepare my body to get read like hell all over again.
I'm sure I haven't even the slightest idea where your pancreas is, to begin with.
[It tickles a little, the way he snares her with his arms; even now it's always a little strange to feel things that make contact with her midsection, after years of corsets acting like a barricade and months of shame making her loath to think about the things that had been done to her to keep her body alive.
She reaches for the third card, resting her fingers atop it, but doesn't flip it just yet.]
This one will be about the past. Not just strictly things that led up to this moment, but things in the past that may be influencing things in the present — likely this one won't come as too much of a surprise, either.
[Except that she is surprised when she turns over the Queen of Wands, having evidently been steeling herself for something else.]
...Oh.
[She flushes a little, casting her eyes low.]
You're...do you recall this card? How the court cards sometimes mean particular people? This one is me...
[Oh, no. She's cute. Dave huffles a laugh and snuggles onto her more securely. Congratulations, yet again, on bagging a koala for a future husband, Meridiana Everett.]
Yes, cards, Meridiana kind of influences my present as well as being an important figure from before on account of being with me through a bunch of things, and also being here now. Keep it up.
[Even seeing the card representation of Meridiana entwined in his life cheers Dave up. She has that effect on him, always.]
What's it mean, though? I mean, of course you influence me, and if you weren't here I'd probably have gone off the rails entirely when I showed up. But obviously I'd situate you in our present rather than the past.
Well...it might mean a few things, really. Likely it's more than one.
[She hums softly, tapping the tips of her fingers together while she basks in the comfort of being snuggled and tries not to let it distract her too much from the task at hand.]
The most straightforward is likely that...well, your fears and your need to control the situation we've found ourselves in, that's being influenced by...something that happened to me in the past. Perhaps...a desire not to see history repeat itself.
[The way she brings it up is roundabout, which is honestly probably as much for her own sake as it is for Dave's, all things considered.]
But in another sense, the question you asked was, "what do we look for, to know we're safe", and — well. You chose me. I'm —
[She hesitates, thinking of his reactions to Dirk and Giorno, how she'd moved to mitigate their tensions, how she'd tried to protect him.]
It's a double-edged sword, I think. You're more afraid than you might've been otherwise because of me...but you think you're stronger than you might've been otherwise because of me, too.
[He's not really going anywhere or even moving, but it still feels like he has to slow down to digest everything she's saying. They're heavier truths than before. But eventually:]
Yes.
[To either. To both.]
There's things you can do that I can't. And... there's things you do, for me, just by being here, that I'd fall apart without. So... if one of us has to be here, it's good that it's both of us. As a team.
[They're each other's knights. Each other's handmaidens. He remembers being with her after every trial like that.]
But yeah. I don't think I can go through anything like that again. And I wouldn't want you to, either.
[She shakes her head, turning away from the cards for a moment to transition from simply being held to clinging a little more properly.]
I'd rather be with you. Even if it's harder, or more dangerous. Because I'd fall apart without you, too. I always did, a little bit, when you and Silver would go away. A bit of me would always be gone, until you came home again.
[She muses then, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, how different and astonishing it is from everything she'd once known, to hear Dave make a decision like that so impulsively and yet so sincerely. Once upon a time there was an expectation that something like that would be her duty, not her lover's; it would be her role to change her life to better suit his mood, and not the other way around.
She's so lucky, she thinks. She'll never take for granted how fortunate she is, to be alive and to have this.]
Only if it's for your sake, too. Only if it makes you as happy as it'd make me.
[Because it would, of course. She won't try to conceal that; it'd be disingenuous to, anyway.]
With things being what they are at the moment, it seems we'll have the chance to try it out for the time being, won't we...?
We were so very spoiled all along and never knew it, with the five thousand Flareons.
[And with the part about being together. They're spoiled rotten on that, too, and it feels majestic.
But eventually she comes back around to the cards on the table, and when she flips over the next one, it's less deliberately and more with a kind of lazy contentment born of a lot of snuggling.]
Oh. That's a good sign — you've drawn Judgement in the future. Judgement upright, in particular, is a good thing to see in a spread like this; if the Tower was about a change beyond our control that took us back to the beginning, of sorts, then Judgement here is about a change that creates something new and wonderful. It's...finding peace, absolution. Making a change for the better, finding a new direction. Opening yourself up to a new possibility.
[She hums a little, tipping her head as she finds the words she wants.]
If the Tower is the fire, then Judgement is the phoenix reemerging from the ashes, as it were.
[He does, but also he likes that Meridiana likes it. Honestly, Meridiana could read their cards without explaining things to him, and in the meantime, he'd read Meridiana and come out with about the same emotional reaction, anyway.]
I guess I wasn't really looking at this place as, like. A hotbed of opportunity. You know? It seemed so... I don't know. Barren. Like people weren't meant to be here.
[But that sounds creepy, and he shakes his head.]
Sorry. Probably I was just wigging out because it wasn't home and thinking extra negatively about the situation.
[Four cards in, and the reading's already changing how he views their circumstances.]
...You weren't the only one who was afraid, Dave. You're still not.
[And she's back to leaning heavily on him again, like a cuddle vampire, soothing her own ragged nerves with familiar things like his warmth and the soft fabric of his clothes against her skin.]
It's why it's good we're doing this, isn't it? It's...helpful. It's showing us things neither of us saw ourselves, isn't it...?
[Dave firms his grip around her, supportive and solid, and reaches down for a moment to grip one of her hands. His fingers weave through hers to make something stronger of both of them.]
We're not helpless. We got our eyes open. A Seer and a Knight of Time, that's a pretty damn near unbeatable combination, together. [He rests his closed eyes in her hair. All he can smell or feel is her scent, the warmth of her small, living body.] And I got no intention of being anything but together. You?
None whatsoever. Together is the only thing I want to be.
[And for a while, that's all that they are, until at length she rouses herself from the dreamy contentment of being together and reaches for the next card in the spread to flip it over.
The tone of her voice is changing, too; she's less reading at this point and more just talking, turning over the cards like their faces are old friends instead of somber omens, recalling their meanings like fond memories instead of harbingers of doom.]
Mmm. The Three of Cups in the above position — that one is our goal or aspiration, the best outcome of the situation. What ought we to seek or work towards? The Three of Cups says it's...community. Like we all were at the bed and breakfast, the lot of us — about being together with others, and having the support of friends all together to face our challenges and find our safety.
[Frowning, Dave opens his mouth to protest; his first reaction is to note that they can't have the community they had at the bed and breakfast, all their friends and family and fellow survivors. The people who get it not because they've scrutinized him and Meridiana so well, but because they were there. Because they're the same.
But that's not it either, is it? That's not even how their collective at the bed and breakfast started. They'd had to learn each other, and it's only time that brought them where they are.]
So... it's telling us to make friends?
[It aches in an itchy way, like picking at an almost-healed scab, to think about doing that all over again, but he sees the logic in it. Even if he doesn't want to re-learn how to trust strangers in a strange place, he sees why, according to some objective ABC family perspective, it's probably a "good thing."
His thoughtful hum sounds more doubtful than eager, but he doesn't complain outright, at least.]
I think so...but there's another card further in that's meant specifically for advice, so I think it's less a direction to make friends and more...
[She hums under her breath, looking for the words she wants to fit to the idea she has in mind.]
It's more that if we had them, it'd fix the question. Don't you think? Because they're like us. If we had that, everything would be different...which I suppose means that a great deal of the problem we're facing is that, at the moment, we don't.
[Dave rolls that around like he would a jawbreaker on his tongue, then nods.]
Yeah. Yeah, it would. I mean, even if everyone else was the same and we still didn't know them, if we had, like. Just one more person. Silver, or Ryoji... yeah.
[It's not like they're fighters like Tucker or Wash, but those two are the ones they've been living with, the ones who, like them, decided, when they had nowhere else to go, to go there together.]
Silver would...he'd take something like this as badly as we are, I think. Oh, not this again, for one thing, but...
[She doesn't finish the thought, but she suspects she won't have to, since Dave will likely be able to do it just as well for himself — that Silver would take one look at the free-for-all that is the grocery stores and the abandoned shops and their wares, and he'd decide that one house wasn't nearly enough. He'd fill one, and then move on to the next, just in case.
And yet, in his way, Silver would be more prepared for this than any of them. Silver had always been the best at surviving. It's why she'd been so shocked when he'd turned up as a ghost right on her heels.]
I wish he were here too. Or Ryoji, or both of them — but even just one. Good things come in threes, isn't that how the saying goes?
That would be nice. Two by two, through and through.
[She leans up to nuzzle lightly against his jaw, just for a second or two, and then goes to flip over card number six.
It's very apparent that her predicting is getting calmer and more laid-back by now; she's turning over the cards and following them to her own conclusions all in the same smooth motion, and letting go of some of the Fortune Teller Theatrics™ that she so often has otherwise.]
Mmm. The "below" is the Three of Wands. Below is about the subconscious, the hidden. It means thoughts of what's underlying our current situation, and the Three of Wands is about...expansion into the future. It's about looking past boundaries, as we see them. And it seems...the greatest "boundary" facing us is the need to feel safe, isn't it? So I think what the Three is saying here is that where it might be our inclination to only focus on the short-term, that might just as well be a folly. We mustn't forget the long-term, either, no matter how compelling it might be to ignore it in favor of the other.
[Dave frowns, opens his mouth, shuts it without saying anything--a Christmas miracle, or an oddity, anyway--and resettles in their seat again, like getting comfier might bring the cards' meaning into focus.
Eventually he sighs.]
I think. I don't totally understand that one.
[Babe, tasukete.]
I get the concept, but I don't know how to apply it in our case. Think of the long-term... beyond safety?
[He'd been thinking of the future--their future--before they'd arrived here, of course, but that's. Complicated, now.]
I think...mmm. Perhaps it's meant to say something like, "one mustn't sacrifice opportunity for safety". Or at least, one oughtn't do that without careful consideration of everything else.
[She pauses, chiming in with a sigh of her own.]
...Take Giorno, for instance. He frightens me a little, from how...familiar he is, in some ways. Some of his bearing, that is, and some of his...just something about him. So, perhaps I might feel like avoiding him for that. But if I do, I might miss out on far more than I realize, for the security of not feeling...pushed past those very narrow boundaries.
[He's pretty something, Dave's not sure what. Like a lead actor commanding the stage with his very entrance, except all the time. He can't help but remember a certain man climbing up on the table for a speech. Purple Hamlet.
He thinks, Meridiana dredged all that up again for a reason. And that reason is, as uncomfortably familiar as she must have found Giorno, she knows, too, that Dave felt the same way. Wound like a spring-loaded mousetrap, ready to snap shut on the interaction as soon as he got too close.
If Meridiana's going to be brave about it, how can Dave do anything less? How can he ask her to face that struggle alone? He gathers her more closely, but here he is, just proving her point: He's stronger with her here, but more afraid, too.]
Yeah, okay. I get you. [He makes the admission quietly, then releases a breath through his nose.] Also, he's our next-door neighbor now, so he'd be pretty hard to avoid either way. I just.
[He thinks over his words, then forces himself to relax. Yeah, she's got him, here.]
...Well. At least it's not such close quarters as the hotel, even so...
[Neighbors is something different, fundamentally, from effectively dorm-mates. Living on the same block is a big departure from living in the same hallway.
But for a little while she doesn't really say anything; she just leans against him and sort of basks in him, nebulously gauging all his smallest fidgets and tells with a mixture of her own natural empathy and her long familiarity with his habits and mannerisms.
Eventually, though, she sits up and wriggles lightly out of his hold, in favor of pivoting and clambering up to sit in his lap outright instead of merely leaning on him.]
I know.
[She wraps her arms around his shoulders, weaving her fingers through the hair at the back of his head as she thinks of tattered red armwarmers and a pale face across the trial circle from her, how he'd run to her and longed to save her and she'd slipped through his fingers on a fatal technicality anyway.
Safety, first and for always. No one could survive a murder game and not come out feeling that way on the other side, of course.]
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[She leans toward him a little, bumping shoulders with him before reaching to turn over the second card in the spread.
Once, upon seeing the card she turns over, she might've been surprised or even a little upset. In this spread, at this time, in this place with this question, she's hardly even surprised.]
Of course it'd be the Tower in the next position. If the Four of Pentacles represents the situation we're in at the moment, then this next one represents the problem facing us — the one thing that, if it were resolved, would settle the question you asked in the beginning.
...The Tower is about sudden changes and upheavals. It's about disrupting one's security, upsetting one's stability. It's...a setback. Something we'd had being damaged by forces beyond our control — like the tower being struck by the lightning — and something we'd counted on falling down unexpectedly, leaving us to start from scratch.
I suppose in a way it's a good sign, these first two cards. If it's this accurate so far, it's likely the rest will be as well.
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[Dave considers that pseudo-optimism, picks up his hot chocolate for a long sip, puts it back down, and then cozies up to Meridiana even more adhesively, wrapping both arms around her middle so she can use both hands, not unlike how she held him earlier.
He's still chewing the money question over, why it bothers him so much. And he thinks he knows: the fifth week, when the provisions they'd relied on had been poisoned and taken away so easily, because they had no control over it. And further back, Bro and their kitchen full of lethal weaponry and not much else, the years he'd learned to 'forget' food around his room so he could always find something to snack on, just in case.
Greed and control. Maybe Meridiana already made that connection. She knows him well enough. Dave rests his cheek on her crown and sighs a little.]
If this is distracting, elbow me in the pancreas. I'm just trying to prepare my body to get read like hell all over again.
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[It tickles a little, the way he snares her with his arms; even now it's always a little strange to feel things that make contact with her midsection, after years of corsets acting like a barricade and months of shame making her loath to think about the things that had been done to her to keep her body alive.
She reaches for the third card, resting her fingers atop it, but doesn't flip it just yet.]
This one will be about the past. Not just strictly things that led up to this moment, but things in the past that may be influencing things in the present — likely this one won't come as too much of a surprise, either.
[Except that she is surprised when she turns over the Queen of Wands, having evidently been steeling herself for something else.]
...Oh.
[She flushes a little, casting her eyes low.]
You're...do you recall this card? How the court cards sometimes mean particular people? This one is me...
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Yes, cards, Meridiana kind of influences my present as well as being an important figure from before on account of being with me through a bunch of things, and also being here now. Keep it up.
[Even seeing the card representation of Meridiana entwined in his life cheers Dave up. She has that effect on him, always.]
What's it mean, though? I mean, of course you influence me, and if you weren't here I'd probably have gone off the rails entirely when I showed up. But obviously I'd situate you in our present rather than the past.
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[She hums softly, tapping the tips of her fingers together while she basks in the comfort of being snuggled and tries not to let it distract her too much from the task at hand.]
The most straightforward is likely that...well, your fears and your need to control the situation we've found ourselves in, that's being influenced by...something that happened to me in the past. Perhaps...a desire not to see history repeat itself.
[The way she brings it up is roundabout, which is honestly probably as much for her own sake as it is for Dave's, all things considered.]
But in another sense, the question you asked was, "what do we look for, to know we're safe", and — well. You chose me. I'm —
[She hesitates, thinking of his reactions to Dirk and Giorno, how she'd moved to mitigate their tensions, how she'd tried to protect him.]
It's a double-edged sword, I think. You're more afraid than you might've been otherwise because of me...but you think you're stronger than you might've been otherwise because of me, too.
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Yes.
[To either. To both.]
There's things you can do that I can't. And... there's things you do, for me, just by being here, that I'd fall apart without. So... if one of us has to be here, it's good that it's both of us. As a team.
[They're each other's knights. Each other's handmaidens. He remembers being with her after every trial like that.]
But yeah. I don't think I can go through anything like that again. And I wouldn't want you to, either.
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[She shakes her head, turning away from the cards for a moment to transition from simply being held to clinging a little more properly.]
I'd rather be with you. Even if it's harder, or more dangerous. Because I'd fall apart without you, too. I always did, a little bit, when you and Silver would go away. A bit of me would always be gone, until you came home again.
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[It's like a sigh or a prayer. A little bit of wonder; a little of relief, and love. He rests his temple against hers.]
Then I quit. I'll go to school full-time and stay with you.
[As easy as that.
'I swear when I grow up, I won't just buy you a rose / I will buy the flower shop and you will never be lonely.']
Soon as we get home, I'll tell them.
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She's so lucky, she thinks. She'll never take for granted how fortunate she is, to be alive and to have this.]
Only if it's for your sake, too. Only if it makes you as happy as it'd make me.
[Because it would, of course. She won't try to conceal that; it'd be disingenuous to, anyway.]
With things being what they are at the moment, it seems we'll have the chance to try it out for the time being, won't we...?
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Well, it doesn't look like school's a thing here, either, so it looks like my entrée into formal education's on hold. Again.
[Because he can't get enough contact, ever, Dave links his hands together in front of her and kisses her hair.]
But yeah. I always want more time with you.
[That's why he asked--why he will ask--why he's asking if she wants the same. A lifetime with him.]
Even if we gotta spend that time here instead of cozy under five thousand Flareons.
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[And with the part about being together. They're spoiled rotten on that, too, and it feels majestic.
But eventually she comes back around to the cards on the table, and when she flips over the next one, it's less deliberately and more with a kind of lazy contentment born of a lot of snuggling.]
Oh. That's a good sign — you've drawn Judgement in the future. Judgement upright, in particular, is a good thing to see in a spread like this; if the Tower was about a change beyond our control that took us back to the beginning, of sorts, then Judgement here is about a change that creates something new and wonderful. It's...finding peace, absolution. Making a change for the better, finding a new direction. Opening yourself up to a new possibility.
[She hums a little, tipping her head as she finds the words she wants.]
If the Tower is the fire, then Judgement is the phoenix reemerging from the ashes, as it were.
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[He does, but also he likes that Meridiana likes it. Honestly, Meridiana could read their cards without explaining things to him, and in the meantime, he'd read Meridiana and come out with about the same emotional reaction, anyway.]
I guess I wasn't really looking at this place as, like. A hotbed of opportunity. You know? It seemed so... I don't know. Barren. Like people weren't meant to be here.
[But that sounds creepy, and he shakes his head.]
Sorry. Probably I was just wigging out because it wasn't home and thinking extra negatively about the situation.
[Four cards in, and the reading's already changing how he views their circumstances.]
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[And she's back to leaning heavily on him again, like a cuddle vampire, soothing her own ragged nerves with familiar things like his warmth and the soft fabric of his clothes against her skin.]
It's why it's good we're doing this, isn't it? It's...helpful. It's showing us things neither of us saw ourselves, isn't it...?
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[Dave firms his grip around her, supportive and solid, and reaches down for a moment to grip one of her hands. His fingers weave through hers to make something stronger of both of them.]
We're not helpless. We got our eyes open. A Seer and a Knight of Time, that's a pretty damn near unbeatable combination, together. [He rests his closed eyes in her hair. All he can smell or feel is her scent, the warmth of her small, living body.] And I got no intention of being anything but together. You?
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[And for a while, that's all that they are, until at length she rouses herself from the dreamy contentment of being together and reaches for the next card in the spread to flip it over.
The tone of her voice is changing, too; she's less reading at this point and more just talking, turning over the cards like their faces are old friends instead of somber omens, recalling their meanings like fond memories instead of harbingers of doom.]
Mmm. The Three of Cups in the above position — that one is our goal or aspiration, the best outcome of the situation. What ought we to seek or work towards? The Three of Cups says it's...community. Like we all were at the bed and breakfast, the lot of us — about being together with others, and having the support of friends all together to face our challenges and find our safety.
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But that's not it either, is it? That's not even how their collective at the bed and breakfast started. They'd had to learn each other, and it's only time that brought them where they are.]
So... it's telling us to make friends?
[It aches in an itchy way, like picking at an almost-healed scab, to think about doing that all over again, but he sees the logic in it. Even if he doesn't want to re-learn how to trust strangers in a strange place, he sees why, according to some objective ABC family perspective, it's probably a "good thing."
His thoughtful hum sounds more doubtful than eager, but he doesn't complain outright, at least.]
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[She hums under her breath, looking for the words she wants to fit to the idea she has in mind.]
It's more that if we had them, it'd fix the question. Don't you think? Because they're like us. If we had that, everything would be different...which I suppose means that a great deal of the problem we're facing is that, at the moment, we don't.
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[Dave rolls that around like he would a jawbreaker on his tongue, then nods.]
Yeah. Yeah, it would. I mean, even if everyone else was the same and we still didn't know them, if we had, like. Just one more person. Silver, or Ryoji... yeah.
[It's not like they're fighters like Tucker or Wash, but those two are the ones they've been living with, the ones who, like them, decided, when they had nowhere else to go, to go there together.]
I'd feel better. Safer.
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[She doesn't finish the thought, but she suspects she won't have to, since Dave will likely be able to do it just as well for himself — that Silver would take one look at the free-for-all that is the grocery stores and the abandoned shops and their wares, and he'd decide that one house wasn't nearly enough. He'd fill one, and then move on to the next, just in case.
And yet, in his way, Silver would be more prepared for this than any of them. Silver had always been the best at surviving. It's why she'd been so shocked when he'd turned up as a ghost right on her heels.]
I wish he were here too. Or Ryoji, or both of them — but even just one. Good things come in threes, isn't that how the saying goes?
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[Who cares if it's the number of death in Japan? Ryoji's Death, too, and he's great.]
Eight wouldn't be bad, either. More than that and we'd need a bigger house.
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[She leans up to nuzzle lightly against his jaw, just for a second or two, and then goes to flip over card number six.
It's very apparent that her predicting is getting calmer and more laid-back by now; she's turning over the cards and following them to her own conclusions all in the same smooth motion, and letting go of some of the Fortune Teller Theatrics™ that she so often has otherwise.]
Mmm. The "below" is the Three of Wands. Below is about the subconscious, the hidden. It means thoughts of what's underlying our current situation, and the Three of Wands is about...expansion into the future. It's about looking past boundaries, as we see them. And it seems...the greatest "boundary" facing us is the need to feel safe, isn't it? So I think what the Three is saying here is that where it might be our inclination to only focus on the short-term, that might just as well be a folly. We mustn't forget the long-term, either, no matter how compelling it might be to ignore it in favor of the other.
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Eventually he sighs.]
I think. I don't totally understand that one.
[Babe, tasukete.]
I get the concept, but I don't know how to apply it in our case. Think of the long-term... beyond safety?
[He'd been thinking of the future--their future--before they'd arrived here, of course, but that's. Complicated, now.]
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[She pauses, chiming in with a sigh of her own.]
...Take Giorno, for instance. He frightens me a little, from how...familiar he is, in some ways. Some of his bearing, that is, and some of his...just something about him. So, perhaps I might feel like avoiding him for that. But if I do, I might miss out on far more than I realize, for the security of not feeling...pushed past those very narrow boundaries.
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[He's pretty something, Dave's not sure what. Like a lead actor commanding the stage with his very entrance, except all the time. He can't help but remember a certain man climbing up on the table for a speech. Purple Hamlet.
He thinks, Meridiana dredged all that up again for a reason. And that reason is, as uncomfortably familiar as she must have found Giorno, she knows, too, that Dave felt the same way. Wound like a spring-loaded mousetrap, ready to snap shut on the interaction as soon as he got too close.
If Meridiana's going to be brave about it, how can Dave do anything less? How can he ask her to face that struggle alone? He gathers her more closely, but here he is, just proving her point: He's stronger with her here, but more afraid, too.]
Yeah, okay. I get you. [He makes the admission quietly, then releases a breath through his nose.] Also, he's our next-door neighbor now, so he'd be pretty hard to avoid either way. I just.
[He thinks over his words, then forces himself to relax. Yeah, she's got him, here.]
Safety's still the first long-term investment.
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[Neighbors is something different, fundamentally, from effectively dorm-mates. Living on the same block is a big departure from living in the same hallway.
But for a little while she doesn't really say anything; she just leans against him and sort of basks in him, nebulously gauging all his smallest fidgets and tells with a mixture of her own natural empathy and her long familiarity with his habits and mannerisms.
Eventually, though, she sits up and wriggles lightly out of his hold, in favor of pivoting and clambering up to sit in his lap outright instead of merely leaning on him.]
I know.
[She wraps her arms around his shoulders, weaving her fingers through the hair at the back of his head as she thinks of tattered red armwarmers and a pale face across the trial circle from her, how he'd run to her and longed to save her and she'd slipped through his fingers on a fatal technicality anyway.
Safety, first and for always. No one could survive a murder game and not come out feeling that way on the other side, of course.]
I love you, you know.
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