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Who: Jasmine, Rose
Where: Locke City
What: The place where two shadows meet
When: The 17th

Jasmine Tsukuyomi felt like a bit of a hypocrite. She'd spent a short time before arguing with Winter about her intention to go back to Locke City, and now, here she was emerging from the community center herself in the exact same city. Of course, she wear a hoodie with a cloak and a special pocket for her to fold her wing into. She didn't really feel like being recognized here.

Just being back here for one day would work, she told herself. She'd left at 1:00 AM in Shephard's Haven to get there in what would be the morning for Locke, which meant she had a lot of the day to do what she needed to do.

Which was find her sister's doppelganger. Or rather, get her sister's doppelganger to come to her, which meant leaving a message for Rose at Lily and Winter's old house. Which she knew she and Rose were using. The note would tell her where to find Jasmine, which was in the city's park, where she would eventually be waiting for Rose on a bench. If that didn't work, Jasmine would more aggressively track her down.

Or, she could run into Rose in front of said house, and neither of them would have a chance to prepare. Options were fun that way.

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Lucky for Jasmine, and both of them really, Rose does not catch her in front of the house. Actually, as she finds the note, she almost just balls it up and tosses it in the trash. That had to be the absolute last person in the world she wanted to see... right? Of course, she is. She has to be--

No amount of frustrated internal arguing can really stop a nagging feeling in the back of her head, sadly. It's that nagging feeling that puts her at the park, announcing her presence with a crack of her knuckles.

"The hell do you want?"

Jasmine frowned. She didn't expect Rose would be happy to see her. But still, hearing that from someone with Rose's face was difficult for her.

But no, she had to focus on business.

"I wanted to tell you that my sister and her wife are thinking about coming back to Locke," Jasmine asked. "Whether you and Summer get in their way is between the four of you, but... I would like to ask that you don't."

Rose's eyes narrow, and her hands ball into fists. She lets out a little, aggravated growl, before taking several steps towards Jasmine.

"So you wanna just kick us outta the way, then? Hn. Typical. What else is new?"

Edited 2015-09-23 00:30 (UTC)

Jasmine grit her teeth. She expected Rose might react this way, and she realized... that it was perfectly fair. Still, she held her ground.

"Yeah," she said. "I kind of am. That's their home, Rose. They deserve to stay there. Seeing as how you and Summer have been all over the world, I don't think you see it as home either."

"You say it's just that place, and if that was the case, maybe I wouldn't mind."

Okay, so. She would. Because Rose is a bitch, but that's beside the point. She nears Jasmine and grunts a bit, tilting her head to one side and scowling with the sort of contempt Jasmine would have never seen on her actual sister.

"Be honest. You'd rather us just get out of sight entirely."

Jasmine stood up, gritting her teeth. "Get you out of sight?! You think that's what I want?! I never said anything like that!"

She turned her head to the side, frowning. "I don't want you... any of you to have to hide. I don't want any of you out of sight. I'm only doing this now because I don't want a situation where the lot of us end up fighting another!"

Jasmine had quickly reached the edge of tears. "Someone with my face... already tried to do that to us. You were all created to protect this world, and she... she tried to destroy all of us. As far as I'm concerned, I'm the one who should stay out of your sight!"

Edited 2015-09-25 23:29 (UTC)

Unfortunately for Jasmine, when Rose looks at her... It's hard to see anything but her Jasmine. That hateful, vengeful force of personality who had strung all of them along, who had manipulated Rose, who would have thrown them all away to get what she desired.

Rose, perhaps more than a lot of people, has a lot of difficulty divorcing Numbered from Doppelganger in some cases. For Jasmine, it's the worst case of it.

Jasmine says a lot, but it's that last part that sticks with her. The sight of her actively hurts in a way that Rose can't fully comprehend. She clenches her fists tightly, though her face slackens a bit, and she looks down.

"Maybe you should."

... Jasmine just sort of deflates. She said all that, expunged her worries and what she was feeling, and... Rose threw it back at her. Jasmine had given her the opening and she'd taken it. No one could blame her for that.

But...

"Then how are we going to function?" she said. "Just ask me that? How can we keep going on, dealing with the same problems, the same threats? You're obviously not going to stay away from my friends, or my sister, or especially Winter...!"

Her hands ball into fists. "I know you care about her just as much you do Summer, Rose. I can't walk on eggshells every time you rear your head, get involved in their lives, as afraid as I am of hurting you with my face. You're..."

Jasmine paused, and felt tears beading at the corner of her eyes. "You're my sister too... despite everything, you're still my sister as much as Lily is..."

Rose is tense, and ready to do something drastic, and then Jasmine speaks again, and... Everything she says hits her like a sack of bricks. With many other people, it would be enough to make Rose fly off in a blind rage. Somehow, be it who it's coming from or the truth of it all, she just stands there stunned for several moments.

For months and months, she's still been applying her own Jasmine to this young woman. She knows better. Of course she does. But her Jasmine isn't here anymore, isn't here to catch Rose's rage and sense of betrayal.

"You're not-! You...!"

She grits her teeth. She growls.

For all intents and purposes, they have the same blood. Before Rose's "birth," she has all the memories of their life. As little girls. The death of their mother. Moving across the country, trying to settle in and never quite fitting.

That stupid cake.

"GODDAMMIT!"

Rose isn't thinking now. She's only moving on instinct, and that instinct brings a balled fist crashing right into Jasmine's face, even as tears sting at her own eyes.

Jasmine doesn't move, or even flinch. She just stands there, crying as she holds that stoic expression on her face, and... takes the punch. Right in the face.

Her hands ball up into fists, and her eyes narrow, despite stinging from the tears.

"Let it all out," she said. "Just. If you want to hit me again, hit me again. Get it out of your system."

Rose looks... surprised at herself, enough to stop the tears threatening to overwhelm her. Her fist stays planted on Jasmine's cheek before she pulls it away. She cocks her arm back once more, and--

She can't do it. Her hand shakes, and she growls.

"You... You... There's nothing more I want than to pound your damned face in...!"

And... her hand drops, looking away.

"But it wouldn't mean shit. You're... you're not her. Dammit to hell..."

Jasmine doesn't smile or anything as Rose's fist drops away. She simply sighs, and lets out her tension. She wants to hug Rose and comfort her, the same way she would with her real sister, but she knows she can't.

Still... now comes the time for a hard truth.

"I'm not her," she echoed. "I'll accept the burden of what she did. Do everything I can to repair the damage she did. But I want you to know something..."

Jasmine grit her teeth. "I've seen the monster inside of me, Rose. That monster... she did what she did because she was lonely. Because she was afraid. My doppelganger... she had those memories, but she didn't understand that pain. Everything she was... she was because she was a twisted opposite of the things I endured. She didn't hurt because of the ugliness of the world... she did it because she wanted the world to be as ugly as she was."

Jasmine closed her eyes and shook her head. "So... I will do everything I can to make up for the evil that she did. I will do everything I can to help you. I'll even accept any punishment she deserves. But I will not... I will never allow anyone to consider the two of us the same. She's not my reflection, she's my negative. In the end, we're our own people...

"... And the same goes for Lily. You're just as much my sister, you have her memories, but you are still your own person. In the end, we're all struggling with the lingering remnants of past lives. You... you just had the misfortune of dealing with them twice over... So please, Rose. Please."

She reached out for the hand that Rose had lowered. "Don't compare yourself to Lily. Don't compare me to her. Live your own life, however you want to. Don't make the same mistake she did, in refusing to realize that you are beautiful and unique even when there's someone with your face out there..."

Rose manages to look back to Jasmine as she talks. Everything she's saying, every bit of it, makes sense. It hits something in her core, it does actually reach her. Yet as she stares at the hand being extended to her, she just sort of crosses her arms, looking back away.

She trembles a bit, nodding.

"Okay. Alright. We'll... we won't get in their way. Honest. We won't. I'll... make sure of that."

Then she turns, and begins to walk off. She looks like she's not going to say anything else at first, but she stops briefly - she doesn't look back, or else she'd show the tears welling in her eyes.

"Thank you. Jasmine."

And with that, she moves. A little too briskly to just be considered a walk, but not quite running. That may have all reached her, but...

She's not really sure how much of it she can face, at this point. Not yet.

Jasmine watches her leave, and just... she can't stop herself from crying. There's a part of her whose heart hurts, and she just... she spoke from her heart, she made Rose see what she wanted... and she still felt like her heart hurt.

She stood there for several long minutes more, before sighing and turning on one heel, and heading back to the teleporter.

Jasmine would feel this way for a long while, yet.

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