Work Text:
Two weeks.
It had been two weeks since anyone had heard from Takanashi Kiara.
It wasn't often she was so distant, and in fact, very worrying. Calliope Mori, of course, was the first to notice her absence. The two often spent weekends together and hung out whenever generally possible. Not to mention how it was usually Calli who forgot to respond to Kiara. It was odd for the phoenix to go two, four, or even five messages without at least reading Calli's messages. Not to mention, it took a lot for Calli to even consider doing something like that, not wanting to seem super clingy. After so much time without the two speaking to each other, it was starting to seriously worry the reaper.
Once she looked at the calendar and saw the date that marked two weeks since their last conversation, Calli was beside herself. She practically yanked her phone out of her pocket, fingers gliding through the device until she could dial up Gura. She leaned against her kitchen counter, foot tapping against the wooden floors as the phone rang. Come on, pick up. Out of all the times she had to be away from her phone. Calli's mind raced, practically feeling a wave of relief crash over her when the ringing stopped. "Y'ello?" Gura's voice rang through on the other end. "Hey, Gura. Have you heard from Kusotori recently?" The reaper questioned. She certainly wasted no time getting straight to the point, which Gura took quick notice of.
She heard a scoff come through the over side of the phone, being able to feel the other's eyes rolling. "Man, I'm serious. She hasn't messaged me in two weeks." Calli said, her tone a bit more serious as she turned around to look out of her window. Gura still didn't seem to take her very seriously, humming as the other spoke. "Well, have you tried calling her?" She asked, causing Calli's brows to furrow. "Yeah, should've figured you'd be no help." Was all she said before quickly hanging up. She heard the sound of Gura opening her mouth, thankful she hung up before she could be lectured by her.
She quickly ran a hand through her hair as she examined who else to call. She figured that contacting everyone in holoMyth would be beneficial considering they were all colleagues. She searched for Ina's number, quickly calling it up as she paced her way through the rooms of her apartment. Ina, of course, was quick to pick up. "Calli! Good morning." She greeted much more cheerfully than Gura had, much to the relief of the reaper. She huffed as she started shuffling through her closet, looking for something to put on even if it wasn't incredibly presentable. "Hey. Have, uh, you or Ame heard from Kusotori?" She asked, deciding to ask in the stead of Ame. The girl was a bit of a spaz, and Calli didn't really have time to call her as well. Ina hummed over the phone for a minute, and Calli heard her fingers tapping against the phone.
"Ah, now that you mention it, no. At least, not on my end. I haven't heard Ame talk about her, either, though." She explained, causing Calli's eyebrows to furrow in disappointment. She let out a frustrated sigh, causing Ina on the other end to respond. "I'm sorry, though. Have you tried visiting her?" She suggested, tone now a bit more timid as she empathized with Calli's situation. This caused the reaper to quickly change her tone, not wanting to make Ina feel as if she had done something wrong. "No, no, you're fine. But yeah, I'm getting ready to go drop by right now." She explained, putting her phone on speaker and setting it down on her bed. She didn't take much effort in trying to respond as she quickly began to change into her clothes, Ina occasionally comforting her and telling her it's okay. Though it was very appreciated, it did little to soothe Calli's racing mind.
She was death, after all. The thought of her friends getting hurt or worse always lingered on her mind. She knew Kiara was a phoenix and even if she ever did get hurt, she'd just come back. That didn't make the thought any less scary. Not to mention how Kiara herself has said that she revives in different universes almost every time. Even if she was okay somewhere else, the thought of having to wait thousands and thousands of years to see her again made her sick to her stomach. Maybe she had just spoiled herself, being able to see Kiara nearly every day, she didn't want things to go back to the way they were before hololive. It was a lifestyle she had gotten so used to, it made her years of reaping feel like just a blur in the past.
"...Calli? Are you still there?" Ina's voice rang through her mind, making her realize she had completely zoned out while getting dressed. She cleared her throat, picking up the phone once again, now that she was fully dressed. "Ah, shit, yeah. Sorry, my mind's kind of messy right now." She explained before letting out a long sigh. Calli shuffled her way through her apartment, still keeping Ina on the phone for the time being as she grabbed her keys. "I, uh. I appreciate you being on the phone with me. I'm about to head out, but I'll call you if anything changes." She said, not paying much attention and accidentally cutting the other off mid-sentence. It wasn't her fault, and she certainly didn't mean to, her mind was so fuzzy right now.
Ina gave a knowing hum from the other side of the phone, "Mhm, all right. Be safe, Calli." She simply said, a smile creeping onto Calli's face as she pulled the phone away from her head to hang up. Once she did so, she closed her eyes and leaned against the wall for a moment. It felt like an eternity she was there. Eventually, though, she walked towards her apartment door. She opened it, quickly walking out of it and closing it behind her, shoving the keys into the door handle and locking it. She felt like her feet moved on their own as she made her way down the stairs of the apartment building and to the parking lot outside. If she was honest, she was prepared for the worst case scenario. Not to mention how thankful she was Kiara had given her a spare key in case she really was gone.
Once she got to her car, Calli quickly used her keys to open it up and get inside. She felt a chill run down her spine at the temperature inside her car, quickly moving over to turn on the heat once her keys were in the ignition. The coldness of the car didn't really help with her overall mood, honestly only making her more and more anxious. She huffed as her foot pressed onto the gas, maneuvering her way out of the parking lot and onto the street.
She blacked out for most of the drive, the heat now filling her car being soothing. She only really came to when she heard droplets of water falling on her car windshield. Wow, cliché. A shitty day like this is cause for rain. Playful (and sometimes situationally inappropriate) thoughts always helped lighten her mood at least a little. But it was just for the moment. At the very least, she snapped out of her driving trance as she approached Kiara's apartment building. She wish she would've checked the weather forecast before going out, but she knew logically she was much too preoccupied with other things. Once she pulled into the parking garage of Kiara's apartment, she turned around to see if there was an umbrella of some sort in her car.
Of course there wasn't, because that was just her luck. Calli quietly swore as she got out of the car, thankful this apartment building at least had a parking garage closer than her apartment did. If it was her apartment, she'd be in a parking lot, left to fend for herself in the rain. She used her jacket to put over her head as she walked her way over to the apartment's door, feeling the drops of rain hit against the fabric. She didn't waste any time before she quickly made her way up the stairs to the floor where Kiara lived. She put her now damp jacket back over her as she fiddle around in her pockets for the spare key to Kiara's apartment. First, as to not seem like a total creep, she brought her knuckles up to gently knock the door. She sat there in silence for a moment as she awaited an answer of any kind from the other side of the door.
Nothing.
She felt a knot curling in her stomach as he knuckles once again tapped against the door, this time a bit harder than before. "Kiara?" She called, hoping maybe addressing the other's name would help catch her attention.
Still nothing. Not a creek, not a footstep, not a word.
Yeah, that's enough of that. Calli quickly fumbled with the keys in her hand as she frantically pushed the door open. She felt the sweat collecting on her body as she expected the worst. Seeing Kiara dead wouldn't be anything new, but it would certainly fucking suck to see.
However, when she pushed the door open, what greeted her was something she didn't expect.
"Hä?" The phoenix had been caught walking between her bedroom and living room, seeming as if she had just woken up. Her eyes examined the reaper that stood in her doorway for a moment, slowly blinking, before puffing up and shrieking. She ran away from Calli like a frightened cat, causing Calli's eyebrows to furrow in confusion. She shut the door behind her as she watched the other run from her. "Kiara? What is wrong with you?" She asked, deadpan as usual, but with a strong hint of curiosity. She followed down the hall where the other had ran, getting her head spun with a fist from the phoenix. "Ow, shit! What the fuck, Kusotori?"
Kiara seemed completely taken aback as she glared daggers at the other. "Was machst du in meinem haus?!" Calli squinted at her, her gaze feeling a bit foggy. God damn, Kiara really could punch. She held the side of her face that had been hit, feeling the warmth of freshly wounded skin. "What are you saying? Dude, I don't speak German." Calli calmly explained. The phoenix still kept her fists up as if she was ready for Calli to attack her back, which of course, she wasn't going to. Skeptical magenta eyes examined the reaper, before slowly lowering her hands down to her sides. "Who are you?" Kiara asked, her English sounding surprisingly rusty compared to normal. Calli continued to squint at the phoenix. "What? Are you serious?" She finally uttered, tilting her head and standing up straight to look at the other. "Calli? Calliope? Death?" She asked, her tone as sarcastic as it usually was, which surprisingly seemed to annoy Kiara.
"Don't fuck around." She simply replied before shoving the other. Calli let out a startled "hey" before she was pinned up against a wall by the phoenix, Kiara holding her by her bunched up shirt collar. "Warum sind- ahem, why are you here?" She questioned, her gaze extremely hostile as she held the other up. Calli let out a soft scoff, almost in disbelief at the situation. "Are you actually serious?" She asked, her hands now instinctively on top of Kiara's. If she didn't care so much about this stupid bird, she would've rocked her utter shit by now. The silence gave Calli the answer to her question. "Did you get knocked over the head or something? You're acting like you have memory..." Calli drifted off with that thought. Holy fuck, maybe she did have memory loss. If there was one thing she knew about phoenixes, Kiara especially, she had a brief lapse in her memory whenever she revived.
There was a slightly heavier tension in the room as Calli's sentence faded off. Kiara's gaze never left the other, despite Calli mostly dissociating from the situation. "Go on." Kiara firmly demanded, making the reaper shake her head and snap back. "Okay, hold on for a second," she said, "Kiara, put me down, can we talk?" She tried her best to sound reasonable. She knew it was only a matter of time before her memory triggers back, but she would prefer not to leave the other until everything was sorted out.
Kiara seemed hesitant, extremely so. Despite her mostly light-hearted and goofball demeanor, she was a phoenix with eons of experience. But despite this, she slowly released her hold on the other. Calli was now free from the hold she was in, letting out a breath of air she didn't know she was holding in. Kiara's glare remained, but had significantly softened. She gestured over to the couch, causing Calli to quickly skitter over to it. It was almost embarrassing how fast the other had obeyed her command. Being death, it would only be natural to assume she was not so easily swayed.
But this was her friend. Her very best friend. Someone she cared for deeply. She wasn't going to be snarky or rude, she just wanted to fix this. So, she sat down on the couch and waited for Kiara to do the same. Once she felt the couch cousins be pushed down, she cleared her throat. "Can you, ah, tell me what you remember?" She asked, trying to stand on stable footing for proper conversation.
The room was quiet for a moment before Kiara began speaking. "My name is Takanashi Kiara. I am a phoenix. I come from Austria." She explained, her tone seeming uncharacteristically calm. Calli nodded her head as she listened to the other, thinking of what else to ask. She had never helped with memory recovery before, and she was just shooting in the dark hoping to trigger something. "Okay, um. Do you know what hololive is?" She asked. This question received a confused look from the phoenix, which was not a very good sign. "I take that as a no. Uh, okay, do you know who I am?" The two had known of each other long before hololive. It may have seemed self-centered (and in a way, it was), but if she didn't remember Calli then she would be a lost cause in the reaper's mind.
Kiara's eyes examined Calli's face. She felt like she was being held under a microscope the way the phoenix examined every part of her face. She averted her eyes for a second before looking back, meeting with Kiara's in an uncomfortable staring contest. "Familiar." She simply said, her voice slightly above a whisper. Or, a whisper by Kiara standards, at least. Calli was happy to know she hadn't lost all her memories, slightly leaning forward. "You and I met a long time ago," she began, "To be honest, I forgot exactly how long? I'm a reaper. I was assigned by my mentor to reap you." Her explanation seemed long-winded, but Kiara seemed to listen much more intently than she had before. "Um, we've met a lot, actually. Throughout your lives. Including this one, and the last one."
Calli finally finished, knowing that if she kept going on and on like this, she'd end up becoming grossly sentimental. Still, she was happy she found something that was able to hook Kiara, maybe leading to a snowball until she got all her memories back. The phoenix continued to maintain eye contact with her for a moment before looking down at the couch. "The reaper... I know about the reaper." She finally clarified. Calli felt her eyes slightly light up as she nodded her head. "Yeah, that's good! Do you, remember anyone else by chance?" She asked, her tone eager. Hopefully remembering Calli would lead to remembering the rest of holoMyth, and hololive, and so on and so forth.
Kiara seemed confused as she looked at the other, before her eyes slowly lit up. "The, um. What is her name, the shark? And, and, the..." She drifted off as she held her head, almost like a physical indicator she was thinking. Calli was very enthusiastic that Kiara was doing so well with remembering these kind of things, nodding her head along as she thought. "Do the names Watson Amelia and Ninomae Ina'nis sound familiar, maybe?" The reaper encouraged. Kiara looked up at her with a bright and slightly surprised expression. She wordlessly nodded her head, which was a great step in the right direction. "Ame, she... She was a time-traveler. And, the shark girl's name was Gura." She spoke, mostly recalling things to herself as she tried to stay on a steady train of thought.
The reaper gently took one of Kiara's hands into her own, the physical contact hopefully being a bit soothing to Kiara (and her, because she certainly needed something soothing). Kiara looked up at her, her eyes seemingly lighting up as she jumped over the reaper. This elicited a loud grunt from Calli as she was pushed down onto the couch, now firmly embraced by the phoenix. "Ohhh, Calli!! I can't believe you came to check up on me!" Kiara squealed as she squeezed the girl in her arms. Calli coughed a little, the air being squeezed from her lungs by the hug. "Jesus, Kusotori, you scared the shit out of me." Calli said, moving to wrap her arms around the other in return. Kiara let out a loud giggle as she kicked her feet while still holding onto the reaper.
After a bit of hugging the whole situation out, Kiara pulled away from the hug to look at Calli. "How did you know to help? I mean, I didn't tell you I died or anything- Oh my god, I forgot I hit you! Are you okay??" She spoke rapidly, something Calli was much more accustomed to. It was kind of jarring seeing her go from a somewhat reserved and skeptical phoenix to the loud and forgetful bird Calli was more familiar with. "I'm fine. But god damn you can pack a punch." She joked, but Kiara seemed more concerned about the other. This caused Calli to awkwardly clear her throat. "No, but seriously. You've been MIA for two weeks. I'd be stupid if I didn't think something happened." She explained. Kiara got up and off Calli as she heard the news, letting out a slightly annoyed sigh. She seemed a bit distressed by the news, before a smile crept onto her face and a laugh escaped her lips.
Calli tilted her head at the sudden mood change. Kiara once again turned towards her. "You know how sometimes in movies, a bird will hit a windshield and die?" She asked. This question caused Calli's soft expression to turn into one of annoyance. Her eyebrows furrowed at the phoenix. "You're not serious, are you?" She questioned back at Kiara, thinking she knew where this was going. Kiara just continued to giggle as the other scowled at her. "No! I'm serious! Man, that must've been so trippy for the guy driving. I don't know exactly what happens when a phoenix dies, but seeing some girl you hit disintegrate into ash and then become a fire bird would be one heck of a party story." She rambled, sentence occasionally interjected with giggles. Calli finally let out a small chuckle herself, nudging the phoenix with her elbow.
"You should probably tell the rest you're not dead," she said, standing up from the couch, "Well, not dead anymore, that is." Calli giggled at herself, clearly thinking she was funny (she wasn't). Though, it was nice of Kiara to feed into her comedic delusions by laughing along. "I will! Don't worry." She clarified, getting up and rushing over to her bedroom. Calli watched as she did so, blinking softly. Her eyes suddenly felt incredibly heavy. She had only just realized how little sleep she got when Kiara was missing. She rubbed her eyes, opening them to see the phoenix in front of her once again. She was scrolling through her phone before letting out a coo. "Ohhh, Calli! You messaged me, like, six times!" She said, almost as if celebrating it. "You really were worried, weren't you?"
Calli was too tired to protest. It's like the tiredness had hit her all at once, like a wave crashing over her. She just nodded her head with an accompanied hum. "No shit. We talk every day, you just going missing for two weeks freaked me out bad." She admitted. The embarrassment would come later, but she did want to be honest with Kiara for the time being. The phoenix nodded her head, taking close notice of how tired the reaper seemed. She held took ahold of Calli's hand, causing her tired eyes to open a bit more to look at her. "Well, I'm all right now. How about you take a nap here, yeah?" She asked, a wide smile on her face. Calli looked down at her hand that was being held by Kiara's. It was always something she appreciated. Her entire body was as cold as a cadaver, and Kiara's was always just the opposite. Having such a warm hand holding her freezing one was nice. Before she zoned out too bad, she nodded. "Yeah, okay. But you be sure to tell everyone you're alive." She lectured, even her tired voice sounding snarkily commanding.
Kiara giggled and nodded. "Gotcha, gotcha, now get to bed." She playfully lectured back, dragging Calli by her hand into the bedroom. Calli yawned as she looked down, only just realizing everything was such a whirlwind she had forgotten to take her shoes off at the door. She silently cursed, quickly taking them off. She then remembered how hard the downpour outside was. "God damn it, I'm sorry for tracking water all over your apartment." She said to Kiara as she was about to shut the bedroom door. Kiara poked her head into the room once again to give the reaper a wide smile. "Ah, don't worry! I need to do some cleaning anyway. You just rest up." She comforted before shutting the door behind her. Calli once again let out a large yawn as she reached down to take her socks off as well, almost unable to keep her eyes open. Usually, she'd rather die than sleep with a bra on, but she was too tired to do much about it now.
She fell backwards onto the bed, shutting her eyes as soon as she felt the soft fabric underneath her. She stretched out as she crawled under the covers, feeling herself get pricked by something. She groggily opened her eyes to see that she had been poked by one of Kiara's feathers that was in the bed. She let out a small chuckle at it, throwing the feather off into the floor before curling up once again. As she drifted between consciousness and sleep, she thought over the events of the day. Part of her wondered if she had been dead for the whole two weeks and just come back recently, or if phoenixes worked in a different way. Kiara was peculiar, so even if phoenixes did work a certain way, that didn't guarantee that's how things worked for Kiara.
Calli didn't end up thinking too far on this topic, though. Eventually, she just passed out.