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Who: Merem Solomon

expiatrice
What: Merem decides that he and Ciel need to have a good, clean chat about her future.
When: September 3rd
Where: Church
Rating: PG just to take care of minor violence

Merem was rather disturbed. Oh, he never wore it where someone could see, even Ciel. But he was definitely thinking of a way to avert this rather negative emotion. As usual, it spawned from Ciel. He didn't much care for policing her activity but every so often, he had checked up on her. For the record, he wasn't pleased by what he had seen.

All of that revolved around Ciel going native. That had come close to happening once, he will admit. He found it interesting then but Ciel did end up recovering. A second time wasn't so fun and this time, it really would interfere with her duty. Though, it wasn't the duty that he cared about. It was the conflict that came with it. Ciel needed to be reminded of what she actually needed to do. She couldn't make her own decisions on these things. The girl was a tool to be used by the Church and nothing more. Friends, lovers, all of that ruined the picture and gave Ciel steadiness that, in Merem's opinion, she didn't need.

The question was how to break it to her. Too softly and she wouldn't take it seriously. Too hard and she just might walk out on him. He needed a logical base, a solid backing to make sure that Ciel saw the logic. The reasons why she was chosen for this type of duty and not anyone else. Then, after those were introduced, he could push Ciel in the correct direction. The same direction that Merem usually walked, despite the fact that Ciel was convinced that he had grown soft in his time here.

So here he waited, sitting in the back room of the Church. Who knows if Ciel was making cookies or doing some other foolish thing that he wouldn't appreciate. He didn't care much. What he did have was patience. Ciel would show up here at some time and when she did, he would start in on her. No sense in treating her like a baby.

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If Ciel was to be asked, she'd say that matters have been less eventful ever since Merem's second return. Maybe the fact that they no longer lived under the same roof contributed, despite Merem coming over quite often. Or it might be that she's just had more to preoccupy herself with since the previous year, what with the Church having grown more crowded than just her being there on her own during most days. She's had other members of the clergy from different worlds come by before, but none ever lasted past two to three months... until then.

So aside from making fun of him for his devotion to Arcueid Brunestud and goading him about his relationship with Yuki Nagato, to which whether she's serious or simply kidding remains a mystery that none may ever come to know the truth, she'd dealt with him with significantly less than she's ever had during his two previous stays. After all, Merem was always the same, as his kind tended to be. If she's got other matters to busy herself with, he was negligible until whenever he decides to make his presence well known. As traumatic as Mayfield likes to make its experiences be for its inhabitants, the likes of them are hardly ever affected. No situation so far has ever required them to cooperate either, so there was no issue just continuing on their separate ways. It's not like they had much in common, to begin with.

Either way, she was simply finishing on folding some sheets upstairs before noting his pressing presence in the back room on the first floor. It may have taken her a while longer than usual; she's had a few things to occupy her mind these days, what with the portals appearing around town, Grey's letter, and so on. ...Huh. The last time he approached her was to set up his little observer's club (and did that even exist anymore? She knew they lost 'members'), but the feel this time is distinctively different. Chalk it up to a colleague's instinct, hm?

She doesn't bother with trifles this time. There won't be cookies or tea. It'd be a waste anyway, given that she now has regulars who'd willingly wolf down anything she makes. Besides, Merem is...

Merem.

She IS going to finish the laundry completely before sauntering into the back room, however. He can keep waiting, like always. Once she DOES make her way in, she'll be sealing the door behind her with a subtle barrier before coming to stand near a chair. It's 'peak hours' right now; any talk with Merem is a talk she needed no one else to accidentally intrude upon. As far as any outsider is concerned, the door she just used doesn't exist, and no one else is at the Church right now. Is she being overly cautious? ...No, this is just part of their usual protocol.

Hm.

"Back to your waiting games again. What do you want this time, Merem?" The voice is as emotionless as her stance, spoken by a figure that he no doubt would like to keep as is no matter to whom else it may address.

"There you are."

He gave a smile to Ciel. While waiting, he had grabbed a cup or five of tea. There was no enjoyment in drinking it but there was a sense of minor superiority involved in keeping himself occupied while Ciel was otherwise doing absolutely nothing while they were talking. If there was an advantage to be taken, Merem was absolutely sure to use it. Securing his side of the argument would need it.

"What do I want, what do I want?"

A fickle question. He wanted Ciel to give up her emotional relationships to everyone and continue on as she used to. He wanted Ciel to stop acting human and acting more like the monster killing monster she was supposed to be. He wanted a cold hearted killer.

That was, of course, not a way to start off a conversation.

"This is more about what you want."

The atmosphere instantly chills. She quickly looks down at him with sharp blue eyes, and while she certainly didn't visibly bristle, something there... definitely flinched.

Alarm bells all over.

He might as well opened the conversation with exactly what he's wanted. Turning the question back on her is the same damn thing.

She crosses her arms, her expression dead and -- guarded just a bit, is it?

"Isn't that a meaningless inquiry, coming from you."

Merem sets the cup down and spreads his hands out in a disarmed gesture. No need to get snipping, Ciel. No need at all. He's just here to talk and not do the terrible, awful things he usually does. Well, that's not totally true.

"The fact is, Ciel, you aren't a burial agent anymore. Do you understand what I mean by that?"

His meaning was a bit obvious. It wasn't that they were not at the Vatican doing churchly duties. It was that Ciel was getting out of the mindset of one and, in turn, endangering herself.

Edited 2012-09-04 03:44 (UTC)

After his last little escapade though, he'll have to excuse her for being wary.

Her look falls flat.

"Ah, there's no way to reach headquarters and nothing worthwhile to hunt. You were initially here before me. What prompted the sudden reflection that in a place like this, the likes of us have indeed ran out of work?" She replies drily without batting an eyelash. He can be as obvious as he wants to be. Even if she understood the true meaning, he'd be an idiot to not expect an answer like this. After all, is this not the truth, also?

Merem does enjoy to draw out conversations. Especially when it gives him a chance to sip at his tea, which he does now. But the good part is that she didn't leave when he brought that up. With that, he feels quite a bit more confident about the discussion.

"You've seen the latest happenings around town, yes? Of course you have. I don't even need to ask that. You're wondering, when should I go into one of these?"

He waits for an answer. Merem has a good idea what Ciel is going to say but he wants to hear it from her lips first.

She gives a quiet scoff.

"Has the sun risen from the West today? It's unlike you to take concern over the various shifts that this town undergoes."

He should also know that she can stall quite a bit when she puts her mind to it...

Edited 2012-09-04 04:27 (UTC)

"No use dodging the question, Ciel."

Ciel could stall a bit but Merem had all of immorality to waste. If she was waiting for him to get impatient and go away, that was certainly the losing tactic to take.

"When did you plan on entering one? Oh, how about I answer that for you. When your friends go in."

Her eyes faintly narrow. ...It's like his transparent threats inside Einnashe all over again.

"What are you trying to get at?"

She doesn't affirm or deny his claim. He doesn't need to be given any hints that this subject has indeed been preoccupying her, ever since the first one's appearance 2 days prior.

"What I am saying is that the time your friends enter will not be the proper time for you to enter."

Merem shook his head at Ciel, losing his smile. He was done making fun and, instead, was here to slam a few facts at his opposite.

"Your duty is not to run around willy nilly protecting your objects of affection. Your duty is to find where you will serve humanity best and sever the root of the issue. Do not forget that, Ciel. As much as you enjoy your newfound comrades, you are still a tool of humanity, just as I am. If Narbareck ever discovers that discrepancy in you, you had better hope you don't have the insane immortality you possess right now. That way, it would end quickly at least."

...

She can feel something grit in her. He's assuming things, he's wrong on many levels, but at the same time.

What good would it do to get defensive? Where would it get her to correct Merem, of any being here? He seriously isn't just playing around anymore. This isn't even like the thinly veiled death threats he threw around back then. He's downright lecturing her about her personal life during the last few months - something that he should by all means have no say over.

...

She doesn't focus on his accusations, though her expression stays firm. ...Hm, of course.

Better than him, she already knew.

'You're getting soft.'

As misled as some of his points may be, the underlying message is one that she understood immediately, and cannot refute. That's why... She doesn't bother arguing back. Not on that point, at least.

"You chose this, Merem." Still, she'll go ahead and complain a bit anyway. Him dogpiling all this on her now is just rude and uncalled for. "And don't drag the director's name in this. You can't well preach to serve humanity to me when you well despise it personally, can you?" Hypocrite, and has he forgotten that not so long ago, she would've welcomed Death and embraced it with open arms? Ciel had, and still does not, possess any regards to her own physical well-being. 'Dying' means so little when you've intimately known it so many times over before. ...Besides, she's already lost her immortality for a while back home, and she still hasn't died for good yet. He really needs to get out of that bad habit, of underestimating the resilience of human will.

His smile inevitably returns to his face, his own little rant over. Merem wasn't going to address his own arguments seriously because he never took the burial agency all that seriously. Mostly because, unlike others, while he was being used by the Church, he was doing what he could to use the Church in return. It was just too bad that the Vatican owned all the cool historical artifacts in the world.

"I serve humanity when it serves me. Seeing them all die would bring me joy, yes, but if I have to chip in effort where I'm supposed to in order to get a hold of my precious artifacts, I'll do it without complaint. Tit for tat. My hypocrisy is on an acceptable level in Church standards. Yours, on the other hand, has gotten a little out of hand. They would be okay by human moral standards but they are not okay by the Church."

Her expression takes on a rare leer of contempt.

"And what is it about this place that falls into any sort of 'standard' that you may be speaking of? This town follows only its own rules and draws in people from worlds all over. If you're true to your interests, you should be dragging things on to maximize the opportunity of witnessing artifacts that others may regain with the passing of time. We've already established that being here changes nothing, proven by how I caught up with you on our real timeline during your third and current stay in Mayfield. I'll resume preparing for Aylesbury once we're done in Mayfield and return home, what else is there to do in the meanwhile?"

"You're getting off topic, Ciel."

Merem shakes his head and takes another sip.

"This is not about me. This is about you. If you think you're safe from the things I have described, this current action can prove otherwise."

Now he just needed to make the offer and and hope Ciel took the hint. Otherwise, it could be for bust.

"Do your duty and enter when it will be most dangerous. Attack the source and potentially save more people than just your friends. The downside is that you can't protect your own friends personally if you can't be with them.

Which will it be? Them or everyone in this town?"

"Ah, that's a problem when there's no worthwhile topic to legitimately discuss." She answers in a hollow tone, glancing back down at him through icy eyes that may not be actually seeing.

Really, who does he take her for? So little 'faith' from a colleague is rather insulting, hah. He doesn't need to tell her such rubbish. 'To save one is to let the ones who couldn't be saved die'. 'Kill a hundred, if it means two hundred can be spared'. She's only gotten too familiar with these ideas ever since her arrival to Mayfield, and if he thinks her current friends and acquaintances did anything to change her views...

Being exposed to powerful idealism only draws more focus to the contrast that it holds against stark realism, doesn't he know?

She made a promise here, but she's also always been quite insightful. It's obvious what'll happen; it doesn't matter how powerful one individual is. If they're soft-hearted and are easy to give in to the requests of the far less capable, they're no different than the weak ones they try to protect. The more one has to hold them back, the least that one ultimately ends up being able to accomplish.

So.

"What the letters requested is a retrieval mission. If your intent is to brief me, at least make the effort of getting the details straight." A beat. "Hmph. Will you be entering the fifth one, Five?"

It'd be fitting, all things considered.

"Five?" He chuckled.

"Five is too easy of a number. Too easy to use and make use of."

He pushed back from his chair and started walking around the room.

"You know why you're number seven. It's because seven is such a lonely, unlucky number. Just like you. But the number seven has driven so many people into debt but has made a very few people rather rich. If it's the unluckiest number, the only people getting it are the luckiest of the bunch. So I'm here to say that the seventh portal will be the most worthwhile, by the merits of fate."

She raises an eyebrow.

"If you know that I know, you don't have to regurgitate all of it back to me. I'm asking about you, Merem. You hardly ever get involved with whatever that happens in this town." It's followed by a small and nonchalant scoff. "Do you plan on following me - again?"

...And there it is, her indirect admission. She won't deny to have hesitated at first, but...

In the end.

It was obvious from the very start, was it not?

"I think it's time for some fun, yes. Especially when it seems the world is falling apart around us."

The number of times anyone in town saw Merem fight seriously? Zero. Ah, well, he couldn't go all out with his currently limitations but what he had was good enough. If there were any especially large problems, he was the one to handle it.

"The seventh portal then? Assuming there is one."

She'll just toss him a look of mild borderline disgust while she rubs her temple semi-absently. What a nuisance.

"The letter noted seven in total, and one has been spawning in town per day so far. There's no reason why that pattern would break, if things are falling apart as Grey has said. I'll continuously patrol the town before sunrise on the 7th day, I should find it quickly enough directly after it spawns." She gives a small pause, before continuing with disdain in her eyes. "You won't be able to rely on the drone animals, they don't notice the warps any more than the drone people may."

All that Ciel gets back is his tight smile. Ciel may as well not waste the energy to frown because it's not exactly going to bother him in the end.

"I'll be there with you. You can count on that."

"I won't wait for you."

"You won't need to."

At least he was assured that Ciel would do the proper thing now. For the future, he suspected he still had his work cut out for him.

Tch, like there was any doubt from the start. There is such a thing as making connections without losing sight of ~~who~~ what you are, you know.

"Hmph. Should I bring Seven?"

They don't know what's waiting. Unlike Einnashe, as hostile as that environment was, they knew what they were getting into. This time? Not really. So whether the Seventh Holy Scripture may come in handy, or whether she'll be able to resort to sorcery... that's up in the air.

...Hmm, a hassle, indeed.

"What do you think?"

Of course the answer was yes. If she were to go wandering off into the danger zone without a weapon that could do massive damage to weak spots, what was the point?

"It'll entirely depend on the environment and how much I'll need my hands to be free. I entered Einnashe empty-handed, if you would recall."

Don't be so shallow, gosh. Seven was designed for a very specific purpose, and even if Ciel did mod the shit out of it so that it can legitimately blow Dead Apostles to dust from firepower alone, the Scripture was still a conceptual weapon that specializes in countering reincarnation. That's not something that they're likely to run into, but...

Eh.

Funny to have Merem 'insist', though. That's certainly a new one.

"Keep her as a spirit until you need her. No one wants you to drag around a hunk of metal that might end up worthless."

He will be as shallow as he wants. Besides, that thing is a walking armory anyway. Ciel will live.

"I'll still risk running out of ammunition if I don't bring the case along." A non-committal hum of her part as she throws a narrow-eyed glance out the window.

"Running out of ammunition is better than not having her in the first place." Now that's just common sense, Ciel.

Merem is given a true Ciel eyeroll and a dismissive wave of her hand. Okay, whatever. Got it.

"Is that all, then?"

"That would be all, Ciel." Yes, another day of being followed around by Merem. One day, one day Ciel would just accept it as normal.

She already accepts it, doesn't mean she has to like it...

"Hmph."

Without another word, she turns on her heel and makes way to the door.

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pats you for your fail

/kicks

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/reboots open computer :v

>turning off your computer absolute plebeian

i save power you muriken heathen

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