paradisalogs | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Gale (

ino)
What: Impromptu date night?!
Where: Casa de Guts at first, then ... somewhere else!
When: Tonight!
Rating: Probably not above PG13

Now that the excitement from Tokyo had died down, and things had settled back into the usual daily routine ...

Ino was, well ... bored.

It would be easy to complain about it all over the journal and whine until someone decided to take pity on her and entertain her in some way, but she knew better. That was just the kind of talk that got everyone around here in trouble. Careful what you wish for, as they say.

Fortunately for all involved, she's quick to come up with another idea. It's getting fairly close to their year anniversary, and they haven't been on a real date in awhile, so -- why not go out and do something fun and interesting with the love of her life?

She rolled over on the bed, setting her journal to the side to look over at Gale.

"Hey, I've got an idea."

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Gale had been sitting by the window, watching one of Crowley's cats chase the other away from the bird feeder... so clearly, Ino wasn't interrupting anything earth-shattering when she spoke up. He couldn't help but smirk, though. Living in a house full of smart-alecks for almost a year had rubbed off on him pretty thoroughly.

"On a scale of one to ten, how frightened should I be?"

She sat up on the bed now, looking a little amused.

"You shouldn't be frightened at all, unless you find the idea of going for a walk scary."

"With you? Never. With Crowley? Always. But I have a feeling you weren't going to suggest that." He stretched, glancing over to the corner where he kept his shoes. "Where were you thinking of going?"

"There's a place I want to show you."

She hopped up from the bed, reaching for her belt full of supplies and weapons. It might have seemed odd to the ordinary person that she never left the house unarmed, but after being here so long, she'd learned it paid to come prepared at any time. Unlike home, there was never any telling what could be going on just outside the castle or the city.

"Besides, we haven't really done much lately with just the two of us, you know? It'll be fun."

He took the hunting vest she'd given him from the rack where it hung and checked his pockets. Even without Ino's influence, he would have been the same; just as prepared for anything. It still struck him, even after all this time, how different they could he while still remaining almost painfully alike in some ways. "You're right, we haven't."

Pausing after shrugging the vest onto his shoulders, he leaned down to kiss her. "I think we're overdue. So, is this new place a surprise?"

She can't help but grin when she gets a kiss. Honestly, if it were a few years ago, she might have taken that little display of affection for granted, but now? She's learned to appreciate every touch and every kiss, because she can never know which will be the last. But although that used to depress her ... these days, she lets it be a simple, happy reminder of everything she loves about the guy she never would have met otherwise.

"A surprise ... hmm, yeah. It's in the forest, but I don't think you've been there yet."

She hopped around him to open the door into the hallway, glancing back to indicate that he should follow.

"A place in the forest that I haven't been? Okay, now you definitely have my attention." Grinning, he followed her out into the hall and down through the house.

"Then again, I haven't had a good, long walk around in a while. I got so busy with the renovations ... and then the repairs after the earthquake ... and then everything else happened ..."

"I said I don't think you have. I'm gonna be super embarrassed if you knew all about it already ... "

She slowed her step a little once they made it down the stairs, moving to intertwine her fingers with his.

"It seems like Paradisa really wants to keep us busy lately, huh?"

Sometimes Gale wasn't certain how they managed to fall into step with each other with such a significant height difference between them, but somehow it always happened, anyway - and most of the time it was effortless, to boot. He couldn't help but smile to himself at the thought of it, and gave her hand a squeeze.

"Yeah, seriously. I can't remember the last time it tossed us around this much... Was it ever crazy like this before I got here?"

She moved to open the door, letting the both of them out before turning to lock it behind them. Not that a lock would stop any more ... unsavory intruders, but at the very least, if any townspeople thought to rob the place, it'd probably keep them at bay.

"Honestly, this is a lot more like how it used to be ... it seemed like before recently, the castle was kind of slowing down." She looked up, a bit of a thoughtful pout on her face. "In the past, though, we've even had a month where almost every day was a new weird event."

"Every day?" He chuckled, though it was more out of surprise than amusement. One of Crowley's cats threaded its way around his ankles as they made their way through the yard, and he paused long enough to bend down and scratch it between the ears. "That must have been tiring, having to get used to something different every day. Were they all just small things, or did people actually get hurt, some days?"

She smiled down at the cat, watching as it rubbed its face against Gale's hand.

"It wasn't serious stuff. It was more stuff like ... randomly feeling like proposing to the first person you saw, or finding cake lying around everywhere ... oh, there was a day where all the guys in the castle had to do anything a girl told them to."

She snickered, remembering the last event fondly.

"That's pretty much every day around here, anyway, isn't it?" He joked, as he disentangled himself from the cat and pressed on toward the little gate he'd built to keep the animals in. "Not that I'm asking for anything that crazy any time soon, but I wonder why it hasn't done things like that more often? If it gets more reactions, and that's what it lives off...."

"Ha, ha," she said, nudging his side when he poked fun. Very funny, Gale.

But his question gives her pause and makes her think. He had a point, but ... "I'm just as in the dark on that one as you are. Maybe it's to throw us off and let people get comfortable?"

"Maybe, but... I don't know, if we can be 'comfortable' with dinosaurs, I'm afraid to think about what it considers uncomfortable." He shuddered a little as they turned onto the path that led to the forest. "Though, some of the stuff I've heard about from before I got here gives me the creeps."

"There are a lot of things I'm glad you missed," she replied decisively. Which was true -- there had been too many incidents where Gale would have absolutely been in harm's way, and her without any way to protect him. "Although there's been dangerous things more recently, there were plenty of world changes and other events in the first few years where ten or twenty people died before it was over."

It didn't sound like that many people, but given the small size of Paradisa's population, it had actually been pretty significant.

"That's awful," he spat, glancing over his shoulder at the castle on the horizon as he squeezed her hand. ".... But maybe .... Maybe that means it's learning. Maybe it isn't doing that as often because it doesn't need to?"

"Maybe," she said, though the more cynical part of her thought that maybe it was just saving up for something truly awful in the future. But she squeezed his hand back, treading through the town towards the forest.

"Or maybe it's afraid. It knows we know at least one way to destroy it, if it comes to that."

"It got torn down, you said, right? ... How did that even start? I mean, I can't imagine someone just said, out of the blue: hey, let's try and tear it down...."

The light filters down through the trees, dappling everything in patches. Not for the first time, he wishes he could enjoy the full effect of it... but the castle took his colors away, and everything is washed out. In that moment, wishing he knew what color Ino's eyes really were, he feels like he knows a hint of what would make someone want to tear a building apart brick by brick, himself.

"I don't remember the exact details, but the castle had started brainwashing everyone into believing that they had always lived here ... people started moving into town and distancing themselves from the people who weren't already under the castle's influence."

She remembered running through the halls, trying to find someone with a semblance of sanity left, when -- bam, she'd been struck by it too. And then, somehow, they'd been saved ...

"From what I could see in the journal, it seemed like someone noticed that the castle wasn't regenerating when they knocked something over. And they theorized that it was focusing all its energy into the brainwashing it was doing. So they started trying to break it apart, hoping that would force it to divert some of its energy into protecting itself."

They press deeper into the forest, and the sounds of the town fall away completely, twigs and leaves and birds the only other sounds beneath their conversation. Gale finds himself automatically breathing easier ... He never realizes how much the forest relaxes him, even here, until he's back within it again. The contrast isn't as stark as it was in the Seam, when he'd gone into the wild to find space and light, to escape the dark crush of the mines... but it's still there, somehow. The forest will always mean freedom, to him.

"You never told me it did that to you," he points out, quietly. It's easier, here, to pack away his anger, especially at something he hadn't even been present for. "Has anyone tried it, since?"

Edited (tenses, arrrrgh) 2013-08-09 21:43 (UTC)

"No, the same circumstances have never come up." she replied. She paused, squeezing his hand again -- after hearing him point out that she had never told him about how that event had affected her, she felt a little guilty.

"A lot of things have happened in the time that I've been here. It's hard to talk about them all."

"Then you don't have to," he assured her, looking briefly up to the sky. The breeze.ruffled his shirt against his back, and he was reminded of the scars there - the ones he'd asked her to leave, when she'd healed him all that time ago. He knew how it felt to not want to tell a story, how some things healed better when left alone.

"So are you going to even give me a hint about where we're going?"

She didn't say anything back to his assurance, but she appreciated it, nonetheless. Though there are some things she doesn't mind bringing up, there are others that are hard to explain and harder to relive. She wants him to know, eventually, but when the time is right.

She grinned up at him when he asked her for a hint. "Alright ... a hint. What we're looking for is something that looks naturally made ... but it's actually manmade."

"Must have been a lot of work, then, to make it look natural," he mused, eyes already scanning the forest. He'd gotten used to the way all the greens bled together and out into an odd sort of olive-tinged yellow, telling the leaves apart more by shape than by shade, or by the way they felt between his fingers, but it would be tough to tell false foliage from real with his loss, if it was made well enough.

"... Will I still be able to tell what it is when I see it?"