fandomtownies | Covent Garden Flowers, Tuesday

Entry tags:

Covent Garden Flowers, Tuesday

So, this was it. Today was Nathan's last day on the island. Tomorrow, he'd be taking his chances with Portalocity in the hopes that it would be able to get him home. Not that he didn't enjoy the island, of course, when it wasn't trying to kill him, but he had a family back in Japan. He missed Higen and Magojiro and most of all Taka, and his inability to be certain that his letters were getting through was all but driving him mad.

So, tomorrow. And today he would spend his time filling orders and writing a letter to Peter explaining that he wouldn't be back. He wished him all the best, especially with another holiday on the horizon, but his time here was through.

Now he just had to get that ivy to stop trying to wrap around him and keep him in place. He wasn't convinced that it was going to miss him that much.

[Open! It's his time.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Fortunately (or not, depending), Peter had a bit of extra paperwork to do and thought he might as well say hi to Nathan, so he showed up at the shop. He smiled and waved at Nathan. "Good morning. How is everything going?"

"Everything?"

Nathan looked down at his letter, half written, and frowned a little, thoughtfully.

"Everything is going well enough for me, I suppose. Busy." He tilted his head and looked up at Peter again. "Writing a letter of resignation on rather short notice, I'm afraid."

Peter blinked. "If you need to take some time, that's fine. I can hold the job for you. Anything I can help with?"

Nathan sighed, balling up his letter and throwing it in the recycling pin.

"It's not a matter of time off," he replied. "Portalocity has found a window of time during which they can get me back home. I intend to take it."

Octavia was feeling restless.

... When was Octavia not feeling restless? That was beside the point. The point was just that the restlessness made her wander, and the wandering led her here.

"Hey."

[ooc: Flu-induced SP in effect, but I can't let him go without a goodbye, omg.]

"Octavia." Nathan glanced up from a flower arrangement he'd been working on; an order for this afternoon consisting mostly of sunflowers. He smiled faintly and nodded in greeting. "Hello there."

[ooc: SP hooray! Feel better soon!]

"Oh!" Peter gave him a relieved smile. "I'm glad to hear it, if a little jealous. That's wonderful news."

He came forward and held out his hand to shake. "The job is still yours if you're ever back, but I'll hope for your sake you're not."

Nathan smiled, grasping Peter's hand and shaking.

"I appreciate that," he replied, "but as you said... with any luck, I won't be back. This chapter of my life should have ended years ago. I'm looking forward to getting back to the life I've been living."

Octavia eyed the sunflowers. Then she drawled, "Tell me those aren't for another stupid upcoming holiday."

Funnily enough, it was because she actually liked the look of them. She could only hope she wasn't about to get tired of them due to overexposure.

"The next big flower giving holiday is in... roughly a month," Nathan replied, smiling apologetically. "Somebody just wanted sunflowers today, I believe."

He couldn't imagine the flowers surviving quite long enough to make it to Mother's Day, after all.

Mother's Day was going to be enough of a strain on the Blake household even without added floral annoyances.

"A month," she repeated. "I guess I can live with that." Spoken with the sarcasm of someone who'd toughed it out over much more genuinely life-threatening circumstances. "What did you say they were? Sunflowers?"

"Sunflowers," Nathan agreed, and then smiled faintly. "These are some of the ones that are actually useful. The seeds," he tapped a finger to the dark middle of the flower, "can be eaten."

See, not every flower was cheery and useless. Some of them were cheery and edible.

"I'm glad you'll have the chance to," Peter said. "Do you have packing or anything to do? I'm happy to take over if you need it."

"I'm already packed," Nathan replied, smiling wryly. "I don't have nearly enough to my name to warrant needing to take the rest of today off. When I arrived on the island, I didn't even have shoes."

Peter smiled ruefully. "I know that feeling. Well, I can get you your last paycheck now. Hopefully the bank here can get it to you in some form that'll be useful to you."

"I would be surprised if they didn't carry Meiji Tsūhōsatsu there, all things considered," Nathan mused, tilting his head thoughtfully. "I appreciate that, Peter. Thank you for... all of this, really."

Employment had done him some good, here. Had helped keep him busy, and therefore comparatively sane.

"Thank you," Peter answered. "I'm glad I met you, and I've been glad to have you around."

Octavia was noticing that! To a certain extent. It would've been wrong to say she perked up at hearing about the edible seeds, but she did look just a tad more focused after that. Or more interested.

"Finally," she said, "an arrangement with something useful."

"It's been good to be around, all things considered. As hectic as this place has been, it's... comfortable."

And he wouldn't mind coming back, if he had nowhere else to be. But he very much did have somewhere he wanted to get back to. So...

"Took quite long enough, didn't it?" Nathan gave her a little smile. "Though I'll admit that I'll miss some of the more unique plants around here."

He paused for a moment, and then sighed.

"Portalocity has found me a way to return home," he explained, because she was one of the few people he didn't work for or live with that he had wanted to at least tell about his departure. "I'll be leaving tomorrow."

There was the briefest, oddest sensation of falling, which took Octavia by surprise.

But it didn't show on her face, which was about as much as she could hope for. "What?"

"Back to Japan," Nathan replied. "In my own time. Back to my home and the family I've found there."

He couldn't stay here forever. He would have at least appreciated more warning from Portalocity, but he would take what he could get. Especially if it could get him back to Taka.

Octavia understood. She didn't like it, but she understood.

(Lincoln.)

There was something a little stony about her expression. But what else was new? "And they just found this solution for you now? At random?"

"Apparently so," Nathan sighed. "If they knew, they sat on that information until Sunday."

Nathan hadn't even been aware they had customer service representatives available on Sunday.

"I'm taking it all with a grain of salt, but if they can get me home again, I have to try."

"Yeah," Octavia said, because she couldn't think of anything else.

Well, no, she could. After a second - and squaring her shoulders, trying not to be obvious about it - she found some that were actually acceptable to say. "I hope they're right. I hope you get home."

Since that was a concept that actually had meaning for him, the way it didn't for her.

It was funny. 'Home' was something that hadn't had meaning for him for so damn long, wanting to return to it now was still a fairly novel experience for Nathan. He offered her a small smile and a nod of appreciation.

"Thank you," he replied. "And... it's been a pleasure working with you."

He would offer to write, but that seemed almost... trite, somehow.

Octavia had never been very familiar with the concept of letters, anyway. Her impression of the world was that most of the time when people left, they were just gone.

She nodded, then stayed quiet for a moment.

Then, after some hesitation, she said, "Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim."

Nathan was silent for a moment of his own, mulling over those words. Nothing familiar to him, but they seemed to be rich with meaning. He looked at Octavia curiosly.

"What does it mean?"

"'May we meet again'," Octavia said, evenly. "In the language of my people." But the phrasing of her other people.

Allegiances were as complicated as 'home' was.

Such things often were. Nathan bowed his head slightly. Smiled, just the faintest bit.

"Mata yoroshiku onegai shimasu."

'I look forward to the next time.'

Octavia didn't ask what it meant. The context was enough. She didn't smile, either.

But she opted for honesty. Tried for a neutral tone, but didn't quite hit it, not fully. There was a note of something a little more fragile, at the end.

"I wish you weren't going."

Nathan bowed his head a little.

"I wish I could have it both ways," he admitted. "And I can't make any promises about returning. But I will miss this place, and the people here."

Yes, he would miss her.

Octavia would miss him, too. But she figured she'd made that obvious enough. Anyway, she was bad at goodbyes. Either she'd endured too many or not enough of them, so far.

(She'd lost a lot of people. She hadn't had the chance to actually say goodbye to way too many of them.)

She was quiet again, for much too long. "I should go." She didn't know how to do this.

For what it was worth, Nathan wasn't terribly good at it, either.

"I shouldn't keep you, then."

Another second of hesitation, and Octavia bowed her head. Just a little. Like he had.

And then, she turned to go.

She hated this.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Covent Garden Flowers, Tuesday

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject