Following Fracture [Safie/Cecil]

"I have read much about customs and greetings across many and varied cultures!" Safie answered, pride flashing through her smile, flying in the face of Cecil's distress. "Misdirection, shyness, and then there's the ageless adage 'treat them mean, keep them keen'? Such are the signs you show, such are the symbols I read - though I must regretfully inform you that relations of romantic significance are beyond my grasp. Ah, but I miss the heart of the matter! Please excuse me."
She slapped Cecil's shoulder, heartening, as her own verbal vomit took on new meaning. "The Velvet Room is visible to the valiant vanquishers of this vicious violation of Endymion's vitality. It is reality for those who have writ upon their souls the pact that is Persona. For you to go so long before the Room appeared to you... do you have trouble with your power?"

Safie got a funny look for that explanation. "...you don't think I was acting weird because, well...I hit you with a rock? Which is kinda bad? And that people tend to get kind of upset about?" He shakes his head. "That isn't even what...that 'adage' means." He hoped. He doubted abuse was the intent of the phrase, but he wasn't exactly familiar. "You don't do that to someone you actually care about anyway. Or, well, you shouldn't to anyone. It's stupid, and...kind of manipulative. Nasty. Anyone who does that isn't someone you should bother with."

Cecil remains silent on his persona for a few moments before letting out a dark chuckle. "More like it has a bloody problem with me..." He rubs at his shoulder...that slap felt harder than Safie might have realised. "I don't know. It's under control...unlike with someone else I know of...but..." He pauses. "I just wish it would shut up and leave me be. Didn't have to go along with whatever it wanted to get any peace from it."
He scoffs.  "Problems with my persona...can't even get that bit right, can I? Typical."

"How strange." Safie murmured, taking a seat. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms about them, peering at Cecil from behind her legs. She scrutinised him, examined everything he said and did with thin lips and a curious hum. "How curious. Your power defies the logic of its formation. For one to meet with resolve and forge the strength of heart to face these challenges, only to be tormented by that same strength...?"
A wind whipped through their conversation, causing her to bristle with a chill unlike any she'd experienced in the Velvet Room. She squealed, drawing her legs up tighter. "Oh! Weather! Most engaging..."

Cecil sighed and wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Looked like the tears wouldn't keep flowing for now. He sends a curious gaze to the girl to his side, and the way everything seemed so novel to them.
It would be nice if he could share that wonder.
Turning his head to rest his knees, he thought about what he had been told only to break out into another bitter laugh. "I don't know about that...it's me, isn't it? It knows everything I have a problem with. All the things I want to fix...so, it tries to get me to fix all of them. Every little one, at near every second of the day. Lucky to get it to back off as much as it has..." He groans, the sound slightly muffled by the limbs he's buried himself in. "Fuck, I'm screwed up."

"That is how you perceive your self." Safie observed, leaning to one side to try and find his eyes in the tangle of limbs. Her words came as a recital, the knowledge of the master at his desk rolling off a tongue gilt by his knowledge. "Your power is the strength of heart made manifest. The power to face life's cruelties. If you perceive that power as the solution to all your problems, then 'tis no surprise that you are dragged in the direction of those problems. Truly, you are shackled more now than you were as one of the ignorant masses. Such is the burden of true perception..."

"The solution to..." Cecil snickers. Then again. The sound ramps up and up into a bout of manic laughter that goes on for too long, before he slumps over once more. "The fuck it is. Summoning magic men from your brain doesn't make you a better person. It doesn't make you smarter, more diligent, less pathetic. It kills demons and gets you arrested. Why would I think it does anything else?" He shakes his head, lips fixed in grimace. "All I get is reminders of all the ways I screwed up, and continue to screw up. Every place where things just aren't good enough, and I have to do more...to work myself to death to try and get anything worthwhile out of this miserable sack of flesh."

Safie tried to respond. She made to speak, but the wrods caught in her throat, and she pursed her lips with an expression of great vexation. Every attempt to speak met the same end. She tried clearing her throat, a little squeak of a noise that sharpened her soft, silken voice for an instant. "Yes." She answered, eventually. "No. I don't - I don't understand. I don't..."
Her eyes broke from their curiosity glint, melting into a complicated cocktail of frustration and fascination. "I don't understand...? But-" She inhaled, holding it in her lungs for a long time before it exploded out in a single question. "Why don't I understand? You are a Persona-user, are you not? If you have accepted your heart's desire to fight, why do you yet hesitate? If it troubles you so, why don't you just... give up?"

Shaking his head, Cecil unfurls himself and moves into a crouch. "Aside from the fact that it's not just going to go away like that?" He sets down on one knee, leaning on the other as he turns to face Safie. "With this, I can at least try to help out other people. Fight the things that would shock my body til the life left it without it. Deal with all the awful shit I found out about." He sighs. "If I'm any indication, personas don't magically fix everything because they're there. You beat the crap out of things and stop ignoring things, and that's kinda it." He shrugs. "You're still who you were before. I guess at that point, you just get the chance to start changing things from there."

He holds silent, before letting out another quiet chuckle. "Maybe I would just let myself be my same old pathetic self without this. But that'd be selfish when I can now help people with better chances than I do. And hell - maybe if I'm just a little better, I can do more for the people worth anything. So now, I've got this little voice in my head trying to make me work on me, and an entire night each day where I can at least make sure someone doesn't get eaten by a demon. At least then, someone comes out of this well."

The answer he gave didn't seem to satisfy Safie. If anything, it only confused her more. She curled into herself, letting her legs slip to a more comfortable position that allowed her to rest her cheek on a clenched fist. Bewilderment wrenched her eyebrows into a tighter knot, pulled down the corners of her mouth and pushed up the middle, scrunching her into the picture of hard contemplation. "Is that so. Hm..."
She lost herself in Cecil's answer, trying to piece it all together. Sure, he claimed he was helping, but to be so miserable doing so? Was Persona not the strength of heart she'd been taught to revere, or was this simply another side of it? Could more than the expression of that power be shaped by the individual's desires?


Safie jolted upright. She snapped her fingers. "Ah! I see now."
The tension released from her face, revealing a bright, excited grin as she saw Cecil anew. "What fortune, to encounter such a strange wielder of the power so soon in my journey. What is your name?"

Cecil watches as Safie curls up, losing herself in thought all while he takes the moment to figure things out himself...those doors...they were real, something he should have seen the moment he had Ankou. Moreover...it looked like the girl before him had come from wherever it lead, equipped with knowledge of the beings such as the one he possessed, and honestly not a lot else.
At least he wasn't going crazy.
...hopefully. It was entirely possible the girl too was another delusion, but considering he'd hit her with a rock, he was more inclined to take her word and trust that she was real along with the rest of this.
Besides - her word against his, and who'd take his word?

He startles as the girl bolts upright, a little taken aback by the sudden turn. "C-Cecil? I'm Cecil."

"Cecil!" Safie nodded. "Cecil, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Safie, an attendant of the Velvet Room. Like my sisters before me, I am here to - wait, that's not right. I suppose I am learning to guide those gifted with the power of Persona to greater heights in their defence of this illusory world. I will be the one who presides over the talents of yourself and others. Eventually." She paused. "Not now. I'm still - we're still - there's some administrative difficulties, I suppose you might say. Nevertheless!" She grinned, pale lips splitting wide into a marble smile. "I look forward to working with you."

An 'illusory world' was perhaps not the best way to refer to everything around him at this moment in time, and Cecil ended up flinching at the word choice.
Still...well, as far as he was concerned, it was hard to blame him for that. He was listening to a woman that had come from behind a magic door which nobody else could see or touch, who took being hit with a rock as him trying to pick her up, ramble on about how she helped people with powers such as his and how the administration was blocking her from her desired role.
It was bloody ridiculous.

But if he was honest, his whole life was kinda crazy at this point, and he'd still take crazy over the whole thing never have being real at all.

Still didn't make this easy for him though.

"I, uh...." Cecil picks himself up off the ground, scratching at the back of his head. "Same here, I guess." He pauses, and his hand drops. "Umm...what happens next, exactly? How is this whole thing supposed to work anyway?"

Safie bounced to her feet, dusting the back of her dress off before loosely folding her arms. "I have no idea!" She announced, with all the authority and expertise of someone who should never say 'I have no idea'. "I haven't the faintest. Really, my master directed me to your world, but I've yet to truly fathom more than the surface of his intent. I would suppose, for now, that I am expected to come to understand you and others of your ilk. How do you think I should achieve that?"

Cecil looks blankly at Safie.
"...spend time with them and get to know them? That's...geeeeenerally how you learn about people." This was...if you're going to send people out into the world to do shit like this, at least give them idea what they were bloody doing! He had to wonder what this 'master' of hers was doing if Safie was like...this! Did they not get any proper education about the world outside? Why keep them stuck in that room anyway?!
...he had no idea how a situation like this started, but he sure as hell wasn't impressed with this guy for leaving her like this.

"You...wouldn't happen to have a phone, would you? Know what one is? Have some way to contact people without showing up out of nowhere?"

Safie matched the blank stare, point for point. "I have read much about the leisure activities available in this world. Many tourist guidebooks speak fondly of Endymion's attractions. Is it true you have an entire district purely for screaming into microphones for the pleasure of the masses?"

Cecil's next question caught her off-guard, and she answered to the best of her understanding. "Phone? Ah, yes, I am aware of these phones - but no, I do not myself have one. Would it not be burdensome to carry such a large instalment on your back everywhere you go?"