sheep go to heaven; goats go to hell

[willowed]

It's been weeks since Nuriko was discovered at the cat café and she still hasn't spoken to anyone about the encounter. The holidays have been too much, too loud, too busy for her to focus on anything more than doing a good job at work and coming home to make the space comfortable for Rin during the difficult time. With school on break, she's afraid of leaving him to his own devices for too long, unsure where his thoughts will take him.

When Christmas passes, she finally finds the space to think of herself again, slightly distracted as business slows and fiddling restlessly with her smartphone. Only when she notices Robin passing through the restaurant does she put the phone away, firing off one more animated heart in Rin's direction before trailing quickly after Robin in time to slip through his office door before it shuts.

Robin's been kind to her since they met, but still Nuriko feels her pulse quicken nervously. It's been a while since she's asked for a favor like this, potentially dangerous and definitely completely outside of her comfort zone.

And if there's anyone who knows the value of that, it's Robin.

"Hey, boss," she says, tone hesitant and wheedling as she knocks belatedly, offering a smile. "Do you have a minute?"

Comments

[goodfella]

"Yeah, I suppose," Robin says as he dumps himself heavily into the swiveling leather office chair behind his desk. He lifts his curly head to stare across the space at Nuriko with a question in his green eyes. He isn't quite used to this tone of voice of hers, and he wonders immediately what it means.

"I don't suppose this is about business?" he says, quickly steepling his hands on the surface of his desk. It doesn't sound like she's here to beg for a day off on the schedule. No, Robin supposes she wants something more personal, perhaps a favor. He isn't always the kindest, where favors are concerned, but Nuriko has never asked for much from him, and she's been a good employee. Both are important to him.

Moreover, he considers her a friend, whether he's volunteered the word or not in reference to their relationship, whatever it is.

[willowed]

With a wide smile, Nuriko steps further inside the office, shyly seating herself down in the chair across from Robin and resting her hands nervously on her palm. She seems to have caught Robin in a decent mood, though to be fair, he's never been anything short of patient with her, something which has kept Nuriko working very diligently at the restaurant from day to day.

"It's not about business," she admits with a soft laugh, shaking her head and nervously pushing her hair over a shoulder. "I ran into someone recently in the city. The man who runs the new cat café. And he knew what I was. I didn't tell him, I don't think I gave out any obvious cues, but he could from just looking at me that I'm different, and he asked me if I'd be willing to let him take a look at this body of mine and the way that it functions. I think he wants to do it to study up for his business, which partly involves helping out people like me, which I don't mind, but I'm also just smart enough to realize that it's a situation I could be easily taken advantage of in."

Her eyes narrow, wincing. "So I was wondering if you would be willing to come with me and make sure that he doesn't, I don't know. Steal my body."

[goodfella]

Robin gapes a little, but only a little. It's more that it's unexpected than that it's unimaginable. He's seen and heard a lot of weird shit in his very long life. He keeps his ear to the ground just enough to know that the owner of the new cafe is about his own age in appearance, a man, and Japanese. A cafe doesn't directly compete with a bar, so Robin truthfully hadn't been assed to learn more immediately.

He regrets it a little now.

"Doesn't sound like a human to me," he says without judgment, only curiosity. Whoever or whatever he is, Robin has no reason to dislike the idea of him, except in that Robin's own closest memory to a situation like this had been with Wahanket. Who'd tried to kill Robin, in the end.

Ungrateful, dried-up old priest.

"I don't think you're stupid," Robin says thinly. Certainly, Nuriko is smarter than Caliban, and Flay, and the old Boggle in the park. "But I do think you're right in coming to me for this. You can trust me," Robin says earnestly, "To extract you from anything sticky that might become of the situation, if that's what happens. Moreover, I'm a little curious, now. I don't know much about the business of spirits. You may have noticed, I'm very much a material man. But I've been around the block."

[willowed]

"He felt... like a very wise, very old man wrapped up in a much younger, handsomer body," Nuriko decides with a nod and lightly narrowed eyes, giving her honest assessment. "I did absolutely nothing to attract his attention there, I just wanted to buy a dessert for myself and my boyfriend, and he stepped to take my patronage. Like he'd noticed, obviously something that you can't even see with human eyes. Something that even you couldn't see when we first met."

Nuriko leans back in the chair, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. "I don't want to put any risk on you if I can help it. I don't think he means to hurt me, and if he does," Nuriko says, her eyes suddenly wide and intent. "If he does, I don't want you to stick around. But I can't afford to just disappear. That's all I'm worried about. My boyfriend, he — he's not used to being on his own, and he's already lost so many people. If that shopkeeper hadn't sneakily mentioned wanting to sell these bodies for other wandering spirits, I wouldn't even bother."

Leaning forward, Nuriko presses her lips together. "Na, Robin. Why don't you know much about spirits? You've certainly lived long enough."

[goodfella]

"Well," Robin says a little awkwardly, one corner of his mouth raising in an expression that looks more like pain than humor. He folds his arms over his chest and leans back thoughtfully in his office chair, dropping his heels on the edge of his desk.

"I can't see ghosts or spirits or anything like that. My eyes are just normal eyes, after all. And where I can sense that something else is around, I have to encounter something before I can understand it. I just frankly haven't encountered that many. I have no reason to approach something I can't see. The things I deal with ... are material things. I'm interested in what I can touch and hold, physical things. You can't go drinking with a spirit, can you? Or dance with them, or steal their things, or anything like that. It's just a matter of usefulness. They're of not much use to me. No offense."

[willowed]

"I love drinking, and dancing, and catching people who are trying to steal from me," Nuriko lists with a slight shrug, brushing her thumb along the curve of her cheek. "None of which is possible when I'm not in this body. Well, no. Wait. I can still steal things without this body, there's just... not much of a way for people to retaliate. Doesn't work the other way around."

With a slight groan, Nuriko leans forward, dropping her face into both hands and massaging against her temples and around her eyes.

"You can see why I'm considering helping the guy though, right? Because you're right. Spirits aren't fun, we're just troublesome, hanging on where I'm pretty sure we shouldn't be most of the time. At least, not someone like me. But I don't want to try and pass over while I'm here, because who knows where I'd end up?"

Struck with a sudden thought, Nuriko lets one of her hands drop away from her face. "What if this guy is a spirit, himself?"

[goodfella]

He can understand completely why Nuriko would be sympathetic to someone whose goals seem to include helping the dead live on in what way they can. Robin is sympathetic toward Nuriko to begin with. And he is damn tired of losing the people he gathers around himself so often to death. He shakes his head fervently.

"No, no. I wouldn't advise trying to pass on to whatever next life may be waiting for you while here. Who knows what could happen? Certainly, I do not. And there are a lot of afterlifes out there even in my own piece of the universe. Certainly, I think whatever this person who wants to take a look at you is, it's someone who would gain something from the research. Either personally, or for some greater objective. Not that that should dissuade you. It just doesn't sound like something that a sane person does in their garage for funsies."

[willowed]

"Then again, if we waited for sane people to get things done, I doubt we'd have half the luxuries we do today," Nuriko points out, arching a brow and ignoring the easier question to ask — namely, how sane Robin Goodfellow considers himself to be in the first place.

He brings up an interesting topic, however, something Nuriko never considered when she was waiting in the wings on Mt. Taikyoku.

"The only afterlife I know is one which works towards finding a new life. Being reborn. Are you telling me that there's something different for some people?" Nuriko rests her chin in her palm, expression carefully neutral. "Where does a puck go after he dies?"

[goodfella]

"Heaven," Robin explains evenly, leaning forward now over his lap and resting his elbows on his knees as he favors Nuriko with a vague look, though one that is friendly and avuncular.

"When a puck dies, a puck goes to heaven. As it goes for all creatures like myself in the greater sense, where I've come from. We call ourselves 'paien.' And all paien kind go to their own sort of Heaven. Some have multiples. Of course, Heaven for a puck ... is not the same thing as it would be for a Wolf, or for a human being, or for Auphe. In any case, we go somewhere where nothing ever changes."

[willowed]

"That's the same word that we use," murmurs Nuriko softly, smirking for a moment as she leans forward in turn, mimicking Robin's actions, if not his expression. She can't seem to make herself look wise. And worn. Not in the same way that Robin is, at least.

"Heaven, I mean," she adds, sobering. "Humans don't stay there forever, naturally, but while we're resting and preparing ourselves... it's peaceful. Far up on a mountain, but one that's warm, one where we can watch everything that's happening below if we can make ourselves think of it in the first place."

Humming briefly, Nuriko's gaze breaks to the side, where it lingers for a few moments before she shakes her head. "It sounds kind of poetic, doesn't it? That after everything around you changes so much over the course of your very long life, what happens after is things finally coming to a still.

"Is that what you want, though?"

[goodfella]

"No," Robin says, smiling a little more broadly, almost defensively, as his eyes dart, not meeting Nuriko's, but staring at the window on his office door.

"Sometimes I think I want that, but then it turns out to only be a lie I'm telling myself. In the end, I'm the sort of person that can't accept staying too still for too long. Forever is forever, after all. I couldn't even imagine something that lasts forever."

[willowed]

"I don't think anything will, though," Nuriko says, gaze following the direction of Robin's before drifting off in the opposite direction, having found nothing in particular to focus on. "There are so many people here who seem to think that Heaven is... happiness. Forever. That you finally get to lay down your burdens and enjoy eternal bliss. But, hey, I didn't have that happen. How would any place, afterlife or not, be able to protect the way it is forever? It just... the world had a start. Surely, it'll have an end. The way we know it, anyway."

Unsure whether or not further discussion might bring comfort to Robin, Nuriko presses on instead with a changed topic.

"Have you heard yet through gossip that my boyfriend isn't fully human?" she asks, voice returning to its regular cloying tone.

[goodfella]

Robin happily takes the change in subject, expression moving from forest-deep contemplating to sharply amused interest, as he mugs across the table at his youngest, strangest employee.

"I may have heard a thing or two," Robin admits. He's seen Nuriko's steady stop by to pick her up after her shift, and also just to visit, but he'd made a point not to approach. Chiefly on Ishiah's sake; there was a situation that he was much better suited to deal with.

"Chiefly that he has a tail. Aren't you an overachiever. Putting the strange in your Strange and everything. But I am happy for you."

[willowed]

"Ah, and it's not just for show, either," Nuriko says, brightening with an amused grin, though her cheeks blush in modesty, hand plastered against her face to try and lower the temperature. "It seems to have almost a mind of its own, or maybe it's just instinct. He wraps it around me without thinking, sometimes. Especially during that."

She leans back, cheeky once again.

"It's kind of nice. Being wanted."

[goodfella]

If Robin was ever one to blush, he'd lost that kind of shame at least a million years ago, and only rests his cheek in one hand propped up by an elbow on his desk, offering a smile, lascivious and full of too many teeth, across the table at Nuriko. It's just the kind of gossip he likes to muse on the best. The dirty kind.

At any rate, he can relate. There's something about Ishiah. His habit of wrapping his wings around what he wants to keep safe like some nervous mother bird. He gives a snort of laughter.

"If only everyone in the world could feel so wanted. Maybe there'd be fewer strifes. As much as I like a good, hard tussle, I could get behind that, I think."

[willowed]

Nuriko stares across the table for a few seconds before huffing an amused laugh, reaching out to pat the crook of Robin's elbow, deeply fond. She's never before had a guardian or boss quite so capable of laughing over the more intimate aspects of her life, nor seen anything quite as bright as the gaze he gives her now, making her feel as though she's been stripped bare directly in front of him.

"Pervert," she says with a laugh, reaching behind herself to start pinning her hair back up in preparation for heading out to the floor again. "But you're right. If everyone had a little time in their day to focus on things like this... maybe we'd care less about fights and wars. Maybe. There are worse vices."

Standing from her chair and pressing both of her hands against the edge of the desk, Nuriko smiles and bows her head in gratitude.

"Thank you again. Truly. I know I'll feel much safer having you there. And maybe you'll find a thing or two to interest you during the meeting. He's an interesting man, that shopkeeper."