we lit the fire and it's burning bright.

[enflammen]

Who: Micah and Nathan
What: Photos and memories
Where: Nathan's place
When: ... Sometime after Micah's end of January Mello-death experience /vague hand gestures

... There's nothing to be nervous about. Right? People go to each other's homes all the time.

Of course, people don't go to each other's homes to look over photographs that belonged to the people in their previous lives terribly often. Photographs like that don't typically exist, unless you're Numbered.

Maybe that has something to do with the wave of anxiety Micah feels rising up in his chest, something he counters with a long, deep inhale and exhales as he knocks on Nathan's door. This photograph was important to both Mello and Near, and Micah has no idea what - if anything - to expect from it once he sees it in person.

Comments

[solvethepuzzle]

In Nathan's case, people going to each other's homes had been more of a rare thing until Shepherd's Haven happened. He'd never had a lot of visitors growing up, and when he'd had his apartment as an adult, he did not invite people over lightly. And in both periods of his life, he hadn't precisely had many -- or any -- friends to visit himself. It's been a little different here, though, with so many people he feels secure around.

That being said, he's always been one of the village's few residents that locks his door regularly. Not out of any actual mistrust, but it's . . . just the safer thing to do, logically.

He's expecting Micah, though, so it's fine. He slides the door open. "Hi. Come in."

He steps back to allow him in, and while Nathan is someone whose personal appearance borders on the unkempt, even a first glance around the little house shows that the dwelling is positively immaculate. Not a thing out of place, even if the toys lining the occasional shelf are a bit of an odd thing to be present in the home solely occupied by a twenty-year-old. Nathan tries not to indulge the fixation in public, but has little problem doing it at home.

[enflammen]

"Hey. Thanks for having me." Micah offers Nathan a small smile as he steps in through the doorway and scans the interior of the house. The toys ... well, it's both surprising and not. Micah hasn't really seen any indication that they're a thing Nathan likes, up to now, but people collect all sorts of things, so it's not entirely strange. (He never has, though - better to keep his belongings sparse. The old instinct to be ready to leave at a moment's notice is a hard one to shake, even after as many years of relative security as Micah has experienced.)

Micah wonders, briefly, thinking back on what he remembers seeing of Near's headquarters, if the affinity for toys is something Nathan Echoed back, the same way Micah got Mello's love of chocolate. But, he supposes, it probably doesn't matter much. He and Nathan and the rest of the Numbered are who they are, influenced from their Others or their own lives, it doesn't really make much difference.

"This is a nice place you've got here. You been here a while?"

[solvethepuzzle]

The puzzle might have been a clue, but those tend to get a slightly different connotation than other toys. Less inherently immature. Nathan is not one to have hoarded anything particularly before his Echoes, though that may simply be because he'd never had much. Even now, the toys there are mostly from Echoes and gifts, with just the occasional indulgence.

... Does it count as just a collection if he actually plays with all of them? And how neurotic is it that he always puts them back in the exact same positions, carefully ensuring that they're spaced a precisely equal distance apart?

"Ah, thank you. It's been since a few months after the invasion. The sentiment against us in larger cities was so harsh following that . . ."

Nathan is a city person, at heart. He feels like there is more he can do there, when in rural communities there is more of an emphasis on being able to do physical things. But cities just hadn't felt safe in the aftermath of the invasion. Particularly Locke, which had been hit very hard.

[enflammen]

"Yeah, I remember that." The backlash against the Numbered had run hot and heavy. Micah had no idea he was one of them at the time of the invasion, or for some time after, but he still couldn't wrap his brain around the idea of holding that much hatred for a group of people he didn't personally know. Rationally, he could understand why some people might - fear is a strong motivator, and persecution of groups that are feared in a society is as old a story as time itself. But even at his angriest, Micah always found it hard to hate someone unless that person had personally wronged him. That he could understand. That he knew well from experience.

"So ... " He nods toward the toys on the shelf. "Which one's your favorite?"

[solvethepuzzle]

When the dust had settled, Nathan had been in Tokyo, where the sentiment hadn't been quite as bad; the city hadn't suffered as much destruction as other areas due to its Animal being there and at full power to defend it. But the unfriendly vibe permeated even there, so this had still been, in Nathan's mind, the safest move.

"Overall, I tend to prefer building sets to the action figures, but . . ." He points at the toy in the centre of the shelf, an old, boxy-looking robot that looks a few decades out of date. All things considered, he should probably feel more awkward about naming this one the favourite, given his discomfort with his Other. "It was my first Echo. I'd assumed at the time that it had been a sentimental object from Near's childhood. That hasn't proven to be the case."