Pulling herself together, Koyuki eventually comes back to the embassy. Defeat clear on her features despite the victory of the night she walks through the halls more like a zombie than a ghost. Finding herself quickly escorted carefully to the showers, one that was easily made vacant for her despite the hours, she takes time with herself. Unstrapping herself out of the blood-soaked armor she wore and setting it aside to be appropriately washed and cleansed at a later time. Off in a corner where it steps back at her with a forlorn expression that was becoming of a set of battle-weary armor.

Standing in front of the mirror the woman opposite her was dead tired, her white face paint marred with so much of her own blood and the dark red stains of her dried all across her skin. Standing naked alone in this room with her communicator set just to her side. Bruises lined her body, cuts that were bandaged over and hadn't yet been tended to by the kami's touch and she might not tend to just so she can feel the sting of it all a little longer. Yakumo went to return the relics to their shrine, and Koyuki didn't bother to promise she wouldn't go to see Moriko alone but she knew she wasn't going to. Had she decided on that she would have been there, but she didn't.

Now she was just truly alone, and for the first time in a long time that didn't seem so bad.

Collecting up her communicator, she still decided to make the call. There was something she needed to say. One final note in this whole sordid affair that had to be declared before the song could meet it's end.

Koyuki calls Moriko one last time.

Beeep...Beeep...Beeep...Beeep...

There would be a long string of connection sounds as the communicator would wait for the person on the other line to pick up. It would almost seem to drone forever, more so than last time. However, soon the connection was made and the call was accepted. As usual, Moriko's new habit would be to start these conversations with silence.

"..."

Not absolute silence, as someone was clearly there.

Communicator resting on speaker Koyuki sets it up near the sink, just off to the side on the counter. Water turned on the sound of it running could certainly be heard through the communicator, a subtle hint that she wasn't where she said she would be. Though, it wasn't intentional and just the incidental happening of a woman too tired to care. Laying her hands under the stream red streams of water rush down over her hand and clean little by little gobs of the blood that'd dried there away.

"I would have gone back for you. Back then, if the positions were reversed," she says. Turning her hands over she checks them to see if enough blood was coming off. Adding a bit of soap to the mix she gets the mixture working in, pinkish foam rising. "I still love you, and I don't think I could have ever hurt you if I really tried. Not in the way I wanted to."

Koyuki speaks with a distraction to her voice, a voice that was purely too tired in every way a person could be tired.

Bayushi Moriko

It seemed this time around, Moriko was far too impatient to play the part of a brooding conversation partner. She soon broke her silence, sounding quite tense, perhaps seething with restrained anger. "No. Shut up. Shut up! I don't care! You said you'd be here and you're not here. WHERE are you?!"

There was the sound of feet walking on uneven ground, friction coming from the soles of her boots brushing on the ground. She might have been walking somewhere or pacing around. "You said you'd be here."

Moriko's voice carries a little extra, playing out into this empty space that could have fit five samurai preparing for their day but now only had Koyuki standing at the central sink with soapy hands. Getting them clean enough while Moriko shouts, Koyuki looks into the mirror one last time at the blood covered painted face staring back at her. That woman looking back at her probably should have died years ago and she was still here.

"I realized, finally, that I have been choosing you for the past five year. Every day. Choosing the woman who couldn't choose me when it mattered most. Everything I did built me toward coming here, hoping to find you, and now that I have?" she shakes her head, chuckling briefly. "I'm done choosing women who don't want to choose me, or can't choose me, when it matters most." Koyuki dumps her head into soapy hands, starting to work at the paint, blood, grime, and all else that covered her face.

Stopping once to add, "You should let me go, Moriko. For your own good. Sorry I disappointed you by not coming tonight."

Bayushi Moriko

While it seemed like Koyuki had found some sort of epiphany or enlightenment to get her through the current situation, Moriko seemed to have found no such substance or peace with herself. She was imbalanced and far from cool. This was perhaps obvious in the breathing as she continued to walk, to no certain destination or unable to find what she sought after. Maybe she had thought this was a trick and there was some ambush that was waiting for her. Yes, that must be it. That's what she was planning to do. Koyuki must be here! Somewhere.

"I was going to let go of you! This was going to be it! Tonight!" She would cry out at her, unwilling to see things her way or agree to her reasoning. "You said you'd be here."

"And you said you loved me."

Koyuki leans down into the soap, finishing out the last bit of scrubbing. Nothing on her person to help make this process a little easier tonight she just uses up one of the nearby paper towels scrubbing out the hard to reach places for her makeup. A clean face looked back at her, eyes that held such a distance to them she nearly could forget it was her in the mirror.

"Guess we're both liars," she sighs, leaning down against the sink counter. Looking into the mirror for a second before drifting her gaze over toward her communicator, "I'm going to put in for another transfer, off this planet. Plenty of places I haven't seen yet. We're done, Moriko. What we had? It's finished. I- I hope you take care of yourself," she says, and drifts to silence. Leaving the line open.

Moriko would eventually hear a shower turning on in the background as Koyuki simply proceeds with the process of getting herself cleaned up for the night.

Bayushi Moriko

"I...I..." There was a strange faltering in her voice from those words as her pacing seemed to stop. In the background, there were the sounds of the Grove and the night insects found there. "I did love you, Koyuki! That was never not true! It's just that I..."

Silence followed and she found herself at a loss to explain her actions. Perhaps explain her actions and that part to be true for either herself or Koyuki. Her breathing tensed and she found herself unable to stop herself from keeping in a sob. "You said you'd be here...Please, Koyuki. We have to finish this somehow. I can't let this rest while you're still around. I want to give you some rest. You've been dead for so long on that world, you never made it off and now you're here...I just want you to move on for me..."

Pattering of water running in a shower, the soft sounds of steam accumulating in a room and how it shifts the way sound travels. That was the background to Moriko's plea. There was only that and a presence of silence that fell over the room. Small harsh sounds of something close to her ear sliding across the surface, and then more silence. Leaving Moriko only more time to feel herself, her emotions.

"I'm alive, Moriko," she says, softly. Finding that tenderness they once had with a little more edge, a little more distance. Koyuki sat with the communicator in her hands now, right on the ground which was super unhygienic but she wasn't nearly in the state of mind to care. "Alive enough to have fallen in love with Susumu Yakumo, and to have had my heart broken all over again. You can try and find me. Try and kill me, but I'm flesh, bone, and too tired for this anymore."

Bayushi Moriko

Moriko might have been beyond reason now and beside herself. Her sobs were more audible now and perhaps sounds very much like a woman who had suddenly found her purpose pulled out from underneath her. However, now that she heard Koyuki again, she fought back her tears enough to make herself at least heard.

"NO! You're dead! I know it! You're just a ghost who refuses to die. I know you're not real." Those words sounded familiar, with how they were repeated, she might have been trying to convince herself.

Her voice became more hushed as she sounded like she was pleading with her or begging, wanting to make whatever she wanted to happen. "Please, please, please, Koyuki...Let me give you rest. You told me this would be over. I want this to be over, please. I still love you. You said if I killed you tonight, you'd leave me alone. You have to move on...please, I need you to move on, I need you...I love you, Koyuki..."

"You said you'd be here..." She said, shuddering a trembling breath as she collapsed to the ground, sobbing. Her communicator clattering on the ground. Moriko cried, overcome with emotions that were overburdening her beyond any reasonable sense.









There was another set of footsteps that seemed to walk over and stop by where Moriko was found.






"I'm sorry, Moriko," the person would tell Moriko.

























Kuni Koyuki???

"It's time to go," the person would tell Moriko.


The line would go dead.

Icy wall, Moriko's lashing was easily weathered after such a day.

That pleading, begging, was harder. Tugging at her heart.

Still, resolute.

It was the sound of a second set of footsteps that had Koyuki leaning forward into the communicator she held. A vain effort to try and hear as much as she can, like it would be clearer if she pressed herself more forward and closer. Moriko wasn't alone, but she sounded alone. All of what that could mean. Was she planning to ambush her with an accomplice? No, who would Moriko have for that? Maybe a ronin she'd hired. That would make more se- and then the voice. Whoever they were they called Moriko with such familiarity. Koyuki's throat closed tight as her fingers squeezed the communicator enough they started to hurt.

Then the line went dead.

Everything she'd built, this stony wall that could resist whatever was thrown at it suddenly shattered as Koyuki leaps out from behind it. What could that have meant? Who could that have been? So many questions that she couldn't hope to answer and it was all so much. Too much. Not even having the energy to scream she held to stillness with the despair of a soul committed to a statue for all eternity. Staring down at the communicator in her hands like it had betrayed her rather thoroughly.

With a sudden spurt of fury the communicator is thrown against the opposite wall shattering into so many little bits across the floor.

Like a ghost, a revenant, Koyuki pushes herself to her feet, never coming to a full stand. Stumbling across the way and catching herself on a bench inside the room. Then a wall as she comes back into the shower area. Finally into the shower itself, water rushing down over her and drowning out the surrounding world. Barely having caught herself on the walls to keep from stumbling painfully into them. Slumping down into the center of the stream Koyuki goes still. Then rocking. Then sobbing.

None of this made any sense.

/scene