twiststheblade | Gym-time

Gym-time

The problem with working ut 'au natural', as it were, is the lack of resistance. Miho isn't much of a one for weights training, and her stretching routine uses nothing other than her own body, but every now and then it's nice to have something that will fight back. And, lacking an opponent, at least something that will resist. She assumes that the gardeners, and some of the other patrons, might have something to say if she started beating up the trees.

The gym, however, has punch bags. So, she's squared up against a heavy hanging bag, and a dull, fast

-thunk-

-thunk-

-thunk-

sounds out round the room. The bag quivers on its ropes, but it isn't going anywhere. She's fast, though, obscenely fast. And accurate. She has to remind herself that, unlike when she is sparring with the air, the bag cannot stand up to repeated hard blows on the excat same square inch of fabric.

It is possible to burst a punch bag. It's difficult, but it can be done. And she thinks that she might find herself rather unpopular if she covered the floor of the gym in stuffing. So she bounces lightly on the balls of her feet as she strikes, moving around the bag.

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Suitably warm now, Goldy sets the weights on her machine of choice, and then seats herself at it. She just rests her hands on the grips initially, and then stoops to adjust the seat height a little.

"I am guessing from that look that your time with her hasn't helped with your immortality issues at all."

"I don't really have immortality issues, you know," she says, shifting so that she's sitting in lotus, facing the machine.

"I have mortality issues. And it's not even that I'll die and you won't. It's that one day I'll be sixty. And you'll still be young."

Goldy holds off from use of the apparatus for a few moments.

"So what? If I was mortal then I would probably be dead by that point."

"You can't have it both ways."

"I," she says, again, "will be old. And you will be young."

She just. . . doesn't get it?

"Yes. Okay. That is how it is going to be," Goldy agrees. "And you will still be you."

"Are you afraid that I will stop loving you?"

Admittedly, Goldy doesn't do much to stave off any impressions of shallowness that she may give over. But she still looks a little offended by the implication.

Miho sighs. It's worse than that, almost.

"No. I'm worried that you'll keep loving me. And that you'll feel sorry for me. And. . . Oh, I don't know. It's stupid."

"You are right," Goldy replies curtly.

She tenses herself and brings the pads together, then releases them slowly. The stack of metal clanks gently behind her.

"It is."

—whirrr—

"You know I'm... not the pitying type."

—clank—

Turns out that Miho couldn't have broken one of the punch bags. Because the vicious, spinning kick that she launches at it, from a sitting start, rips the top rope loose of it's ceiling stud, sending the bag thudding into the floor. The rope would have gone before the bag. As indeed it did.

"Pity."

Goldy hesitates before pushing the third rep, eyebrows jumping up at the display of violence.

"Easy, girl!" she exclaims.

"I was not," through gritted teeth, "Asking for your pity. I was asking for your understanding, which you are obviously not going to give me. I don't want you to tell me it'll be fine, I don't want you to make jokes, or flutter your eyelashes at me or just fucking disappear into someone else's bed, I would like to FUCKING TALK."

She's breathing a little hard, and her hands are balled into fists at her sides, but she's also crying. And if Goldy has learnt anything in her centuries of life, surely she knows that heart-sore teenage girls are rarely entirely rational.

Eyes narrowing into a steely gaze, Goldy releases the arm pads and lets her hands drop onto her thighs.

"Fine."

Her previously cool tone is now downright icy.

"Talk."

Miho just looks at her, biting her lip. Eventually, it bleeds. So do her hands, where her nails cut into her palms, though that is hidden in her fists.

And Goldy looks back, expectant eyebrows on a hard dark mask. When it becomes obvious that nothing is going to be forthcoming, she purses her lips disfavorably.

Finally.

"It's difficult."

She sits, or, more accurately, sinks to the ground. Even this dejected, her posture is perfect, her kneel exquisite. It's been beaten into her, after all. It's second nature.

"I was the ultimate doll. Not allowed to be anything other than his toy, perfect, unblemished. A tool, not a person. And then. . . I ran away. But I didn't know how to be anything else! I was a whore and a weapon, that was all."

She takes a deep breath, dashing the back of her hand angrily across her face, brushing away tear-drops that are clinging to her eyelashes.

"And then I came here. And. . . It was okay to be me. But I had to learn who I was first and I . . . I still don't know that I have it figured out."

She won't cry.

"But I do know that I love you. More than anything in the world. I don't want your pity. I need your patience. Please."

It's nothing she didn't already know, or at least have an inkling about, but the effect of the words is palpable. Goldy's uncompromising set wavers for a few moments, and then softens slightly. Her gaze falls to the floor as she assimilates the confession and request, and forms a response.

"I have been patient. Uncharacteristically so."

There's still a bite in her voice, but now it's more like a chilly Fall breeze than an Arctic blast.

"I know who and what I am."

She looks back up, cupping her cheeks in her hands, and finds Miho's eyes.

"I'm intolerant. I'm bolshy. I'm a bitch. I'm not cut out to be in love, and yet I undoubtedly am. I'm not cut out to be a doting girlfriend, who is understanding and compassionate and always around when she's needed for a hug or kind words. However, with you, I have really tried to be."

As poor as those efforts may seem in retrospect, she has truly been giving a hundred percent.

"And apparently, that is not good enough."

Miho sighs, and pushes her hair back from her face with both hands.

"I guess.. . No, I know. I don't know how relationships are meant to work. The only thing I've ever known was total possession. My father killed my mother because she wanted to take me away from it. And then he turned me into what he wanted her to be."

Boy, is this hard to talk about. It might not be news, but it's a difficult thing to just set out in black and white. It's like peeling off a bandage to poke at a wound that's barely healed.

"The only thing I remember, all my life, is having no existance apart from him. That I existed solely for his pleasure."

Another sigh.

"I guess this is a stupid, clumsy way of saying that I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm getting everything wrong."

"I think we have already established that this is all new territory for both of us. You're not the only one who is fucking up."

Her face twists in grim resignaton.

"I just... don't think I can offer, or provide, what you need right now."

And maybe she doesn't actually want to. She's fed up with the moping—the moping about uncertain circumstances that aren't even going to occur for forty or fifty years. And in her mind, those circumstances are still better than those which most mortals get to enjoy.

"Not properly. To do so would be to change my very nature."

Quietly, "are you breaking up with me?"

"No."

"I'm just telling you how it is."

The ball is in her court, essentially.

"I see."

Suddenly, her hands are very, very interesting.

"I love you."

She looks up.

"And, you know, maybe more importantly, I like you too. And I'm not going to lose you because of my own stupidity about something that can't change and, really doesn't matter."

She smiles, a little.

"The only thing that really matters is you."

"I appreciate that."

Unfortunately, Goldy cannot echo that sentiment. She does manage a glimmer of a smile though. Compromise is good.

"The situation is not ideal, and I'm sorry for that. But what relationship is ever perfect?"

"We seem to have mutual liking, and respect, and love."

She wonders if that is enough, but there are no outward indications of such doubts.

"It seems crazy to bog ourselves down in worries about the future. Especially when the future is so flimsy in a place like this."

"Then we see what happens."

There is a part of Miho that is well aware that this is never going to be what she wants it to be. There's also an awareness that part of something is still something, and all of nothing is still nothing.

She'll take something.

There's a nod and a fuller smile.

"Deal."

There's a twinge of regret at the choice of word once it's out in the open. But, again, it's not evident on her face. Hopefully Miho won't think too deeply about it, because she didn't mean it that way.

It's still a curious choice of word, perhaps, given that Goldy is quite aware that she hasn't actually compromised anything herself.

Miho isn't stupid. And is occasionally given to epiphanies. Perhaps she's realised that if Goldy hasn't changed her behaviour by now, she isn't going to. That either she can't, or she won't and that maybe? That's okay.

Perhaps she's stopped expecting her to change.

Perhaps this is the first step towards something that could be healthier for both of them.

Perhaps.

Perhaps, indeed.

After a few moments of somewhat resolved silence, Goldy reaches for the handles of the pec deck and starts to pump the pads again. She doesn't really have anything to add on the subject.

"You had better fix that punching bag," she notes without segue, "or Raph's going to be after you."

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