TL;CR MEME

[retellers]

1. Comment with your character.
2. Receive comments from others.
3. Reply to their comments with long ballads and explanations of your characters' relationship throughout the game.
4. Suffer as we have suffered over your CR.

Comments

[bisouled]

stop being vague i can't take it no more

[soulus]

He thought she was a disaster in the nicest way possible.

The beginning was rocky. Let me tell you, Sib, I also thought their CR wouldn't go anywhere. Fiora was stubborn and idealistic in ways that clashed with Rufus' own obstinacy and realism, and he had no intention of giving her what she wanted. He had no desire to feel another sting of betrayal here, so he resisted when she wanted to be friendly and thought her blind trust in him to be extremely naïve, because he knew he would betray it someday if it came down to that.

But the thing about Fiora was that she didn’t leave to find somebody else. She made herself at home in his company. She didn’t fade away over time or retract her faith in him. In fact, she seemed to grow more attached over the weeks, which baffled him.

The first breakthrough was when he decided to use her for his task as the Pawn. He went in with the intention of manipulating the encounter to get what he needed and left with the knowledge of her secret and team assignment—at the cost of a deeply personal memory involving his mother. He didn’t like it, but this turned out to be a good thing in the long run: Of everyone in the Realm, he connected emotionally with her the most.

And, of everyone in the Realm, he probably exercised the most patience with her. Fiora was unyielding in her values insofar that she foolishly voted for herself the one week; however, her vocal arguments made her actions that much more obvious when she would take increasingly larger steps toward doing what was necessary for the Realm. He thought she was fighting an uphill battle that couldn’t be climbed when it came to what was right or wrong, but she wasn’t a lost cause. Their agreement ensured that she had his loyalty as a partner, and their strange connection built on the consecrated memory of his mother gave her an edge that most other participants lacked—more so once she confessed her belief that her team didn’t trust her (combined with the fact that he had, by his reckoning, already betrayed and was continuing to betray hers as he kept mum about his role).

Fiora struggled with trust, and Rufus derived no joy in watching her go through that. It was evident to him that she was lonely. Unfortunately for her, he knew that he wasn’t the ideal conversationalist for this issue. His attempts at grounding her included talking her through the nature of the competition and steering her away from soaring too high (the literal answers to her figures of speech were deliberate) or running too far ahead.

On the other hand, her circumstances were familiar enough that his heart reacted once she admitted that she was dying. Not only was she struggling here with the kind of hardship he experienced in his youth—loss of trust in the people around them, as well as doing something that went against their values—her story before the Realm was vaguely reminiscent of his mother’s. Between her enduring faith in him and her emotional attentiveness, he felt that she was someone he wanted to look after, which he came to acknowledge on the week he lost his cynicism.

He knew that he shouldn’t. The logistics of it would be a nightmare, but he offered to take her soul, knowing that it would land him in another debt were he to approach a broker to resurrect a foreign soul. It was an offer made on impulse after she admitted to fearing the unknown that he knew well enough, and he hadn’t been thinking much about life after vengeance. Because he had never envisioned a different future for himself, he told himself that he probably wouldn’t mind working for Fiora’s reincarnation if that was what she wanted.

Despite himself, he felt her absence when she was removed by Jeanne, whom he didn’t resent for the deed. Something like this had been bound to happen. He knew that she would be back—he would do everything in his power to retrieve her and everyone else they had lost. But then she sent him a letter, apologizing for leaving him, and he was frankly speechless that she would assume responsibility for something that wasn’t even her fault.

He expected that anyone and everyone in the Realm would kill if push came to shove. Upon her return, Fiora admitted that she would have killed to survive so that he wouldn’t have been left behind. Words could be pretty and just as false, but he found himself believing her, and the admission earned her a massive helping of his respect in spite of the disaster that could have wrought for the competition. She wasn’t so tied down by her values that she would lie there, die for what was ostensibly the right thing, and leave behind the people for whom she had promised to stay.

He didn't judge anyone who did just that in the Realm. But coming from Fiora, who knew about his family situation and why he had grown up so bitter, this felt different.

She wasn’t blinded by righteousness in the way that his father had hurt him and his mother when he was a child. She was naïve, but at least she still had heart that he himself had cast away for the sake of doing what was necessary in his mind. While a terrible participant for the competition, she wasn’t a terrible person. In the end, he gave her his trust and gratitude with the locket—not that he'll ever admit that part.

[bisouled]

RUFUS....... i already told you but i really am so happy she actually did have a positive effect on him and he appreciated / liked her in his own rufus way, weh. IT WAS ALL WORTH!!

anyway... cracks knuckles

Fiora's the type to talk with anyone and check in on everyone, so it was no big deal that she talked to Rufus, although I also thought it wasn't going to go anywhere because they clearly had very different personalities - I figured they'd just be acquaintances at best. Which is probably what would have happened if he hadn't happened to sleep in the station and get scratched, and Fiora didn't happen to also be on an investigation team with him that first week! Thanks to that, though, she had a reason to be more concerned with him than she would be otherwise, and thus, a beautiful friendship(?) was born...

Really, though, she could tell right off the bat that he was the loner type who'd try to just endure everything on his own. Fiora did not blame him at all for not trusting her, considering a murder had just happened, but she also had a feeling that if nobody reached out to him, he'd be isolated here soon enough. (The irony is so bad...) Of course, she was also concerned with his face then as evidence for the trial, too, so her initial meeting with him was twofold in purpose: to make sure he was okay, and to see if he knew anything. The answers were yes and no, respectively, but more importantly, she decided that she'd throw her lot in with him for the time being. It was obvious he'd be a suspect at the trial, but Fiora's gut told her that he wouldn't do something like that, and she trusted it. The fact that he doubted her so much and wouldn't trust her only made her more determined.

Luckily, she was right about him being innocent! She decided then and there that Rufus was trustworthy, and that she was going to look out for him, since he did nothing to protect himself in trial (being the tough guy lone wolf, just like she thought.) And, despite being stubborn and cold, she believed that he didn't mind having her around, himself, even if he couched it in business terms and partnership. This place was dangerous, and it was only going to get worse; everyone needed to stick together and cooperate. It was good to have someone in her corner from the start - and she was glad that she could help someone isolated, too.

He was a difficult personality, for sure, but Fiora found that he had his own charming qualities buried in there, and she was especially convinced that he wasn't actually bad, even if he could be mean. His extreme bluntness was irritating at times, but it also made him reliably honest. His insistence on seeing everything as a transaction was weird but funny, and it became clear as time went on that he didn't have ulterior motives - he was as straightforward as they come. So checking in on him and working with him wasn't a chore - even early on, she did genuinely enjoy his company, if only because she's a rascal and liked seeing how far she could push him and if she could get him to act more like a person. Is that bullying?? Is it bullying even if she wasn't trying to be malicious??? OH NO

The relationship was forced to get a little more personal when Rufus had her share an important memory, which happened way earlier than I remembered, wow. Fiora's friendly, but she doesn't like to burden others with her problems, so telling Rufus about her death and her current circumstances forcibly moved him into a closer social circle with her. Obviously, that was a very traumatic memory for her, and even if she was loath to share it with anyone, she did have the hope that letting him into her life a little would make him open up to her more... which it didn't. Instead, she had someone who didn't really care about her as a person learning intimate details of her life, which didn't feel great. However, Fiora isn't the type to get angry about that; instead, she just became even more resolved to make friends with him so that he would deserve to know that information, and so that she'd be more comfortable with him knowing. This in addition to wanting to make sure he wasn't alone and was taking care of himself. And, again, learning about his family life and his mother made her much more amenable to being his friend. Once more, he proved that he wasn't an unfeeling bounty-hunting machine - he had just gone through a lot of shit, and was still going through it. He did care about people.

Just not about her! Probably! Which is a recurring problem she ran into.

But he was someone she trusted, and someone she could speak freely to about her feelings, thanks to his honesty, even if he never offered much in return, and there was something to be said to that. It's sort of like showing up and talking to a feral cat every day, hoping they'll come out one day and be your friend. That was Fiora's relationship with Rufus!! Her expectations were very low; every time he'd come forward of his own will and share something with her about himself, it felt like a little victory. I think that helped make her more attached to him, too - it's hard not to keep trying and trying with someone and actually get small results, and then not feel invested in them.

Fiora was very honest about not being comfortable with the way the game worked, despite her familiarity with bloodshed, from the very beginning. On the other hand, Rufus was very honest about how willing he was to do anything required of him to achieve his goal - a goal that was killing someone. On the surface, it's probably surprising that she was as all right with that as she was, but it's important to know that Fiora isn't so naive that she thinks all problems can be solved peacefully. She didn't like the rules in place or the game here, and she thought the killings were unnecessary and cruel; that's why she was so against it all. But Rufus was a bounty hunter from the start, someone who lived within a similar set of rules, and who was simply navigating the situation in his own way. (His situation with Tristan was also way too personal for her to try and make a moral judgement on.) His being forthright - and his agreeing to help her and keep working with her, even if he believed he had to obey the rules - went a long way in making Fiora really rely on him.

Also, as much as she hated it, the fact that Rufus trusted her enough to let her help with his hand meant that he relied on her, too, and she started to believe that their partnership actually did mean something other than simple convenience. Did he care about her? Not sure. But he at least would trust her with his injuries, and respected her enough to try and pay back the favor. He continued to not be receptive to her kindness, or her attempts to reach out, but he accepted her presence easily. The two of them ended up sharing even more memories soon after, and for the first time, he actually insinuated that he did care about her - but, once again, it was couched in business language, and she continued to not be convinced that she meant anything to him as a friend, as much as the opposite was true for her.

After Week 4, that all got much worse. Up until the point of Claude's announcement and her subsequent commentary, Fiora had largely believed that the people here felt the same way she did - that they all opposed the killings, and that there was some external force goading people into it; that they were only playing along until they found the weak spot in the rules and cracked the entire thing open. It immediately became extremely apparent that was not the case, and that her ideas about breaking the system or rebelling against the rules were radical to the group at large. The idea that so many people - kind people, people she respected, and people she considered friends - would accept that the murders were necessary and that rejecting the rules was idealistic shocked her. This only got worse when she and the other Swans met up the next day and Sora revealed that he'd done one of the murders - only for Hua Cheng to reveal that Sora was lying on his behalf, and he'd actually done it, without any of the others knowing. This felt like a betrayal, too, and hot on the heels of the post-trial discussion, she felt at once very alone. It's worth noting that, at this point, she no longer remembered that she was ever human, and she'd forgotten her best friends' existences entirely, too. Her world was getting smaller and smaller each week. She was a Mechon, fighting alone against her own people at home; here, too, she's an outsider, struggling against the tide. Ironically, in the end, Fiora was the one who was isolated.

This made it all the more meaningful that Rufus actually came to see her and confirmed that he would keep working with her. Rufus was actually the only person who came to talk to Fiora after that debate, and he was certainly the only person to verbally offer support. He promised he'd be at her side. He might have balked at her declaration of friendship, but that didn't matter.

After that weekend, Rufus was officially elevated to The Only Person Fiora Trusts In Redacted. She still liked the others, but felt like she was playing on the wrong team - and it was hard to continue trusting and smiling with everyone when she knew that some of them had killed, without a doubt, and would do it again, lying to everyone all the while. In the meantime, she continued to bond with Rufus, now appreciating him much more as a friend than before - she's learning to read his moods and the way he talks, and beginning to suspect that he's dishonest in an entirely different way: she starts to believe that he does care, and just doesn't want to acknowledge it, for fear of being hurt again.

That said, her feelings were really hurt when he said he'd sell her soul right after saying he could shepherd it after her death - a very personal fear of Fiora's that she'd normally not share with anyone! It was like a slap in the face - she'd confided in him and he just turned it into using her to make money. The fact that he apologized helped, but I'm gonna be real, if she hadn't died that very night it might have been bad news -- she felt like a complete idiot for being so open with him when he obviously didn't care about her feelings. And yes, she suspected he lied to protect himself, and that he was very money-oriented and not good with people - but Fiora is sensitive, and, despite everything, her instinct is to believe what people tell her.

However. She died. And she felt badly enough about doing that and leaving him alone that she was willing to sort of gloss over what he'd said when they met next - especially after being confronted with his death on her way back to the world of the living. (And, once again, while she was shocked and hurt that he'd killed someone without telling her, it wasn't actually that big a surprise when he'd been very honest about the actions he'd take in this game - and it hurt less when Hikaru told her how he'd treated her, and when Rufus said he was bound by a vow of silence. This is a big difference from the other people she knew and trusted that killed people - she never had a clue.) It was actually a huge relief to see that he was okay, and that he wasn't upset or skittish around her after she'd died and abandoned him. She was kind of mad at herself for being so relieved after the stuff he said, but, as it turns out, Fiora is terrible at not caring for someone. Even if she was still angry at him for what he said, and not completely certain he even liked her, she couldn't stop herself from liking him, and she still spent the rest of her time in Redacted largely at his side.

Ultimately, she's gonna get the truth from him about that soul-selling thing, though. WHEN I TAG YOU BACK.

i feel like i've rambled on enough... basically, Rufus is the most important person here to Fiora, SOMEHOW. By random chance and by virtue of his own honesty, he was the person she came to trust more than anyone else. He's awkward, mean, and stubborn enough that she sometimes wants to rip her hair out. But he's also considerate, reliable, and, deep down, a kind, sensitive soul who's been dealt an awful hand in life. She's only sad he's not willing to open up to her and let her help him carry those burdens. But she hopes that if she keeps being persistent (and lives long enough), he just might.