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etrayalogs2024-12-21 05:15 pm
etrayamods) wrote in etrayalogs2024-12-21 05:15 pm
Entry tags:
- !mingle log,
- arcane: caitlyn kiramman,
- arcane: jayce talis,
- batman beyond: bruce wayne,
- batman wfa: jason todd,
- dimension 20: gorgug thistlespring,
- fe3h: yuri leclerc,
- have you seen my brother: chu wenshan,
- ice age: manny,
- jl gods and monsters: kirk langstrom,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- person of interest: sameen shaw,
- remnant 2: the custodian,
- the walking dead: brandon carver,
- ✘ blade of the immortal: asano rin
DECEMBER MINGLE
WHO: Everyone!
WHEN: December 21st - Early January
WHERE: Etraya
WHAT: Newcomers, a surprise gift from Tatianna, and a visitor!
NOTES\WARNINGS:
WHEN: December 21st - Early January
WHERE: Etraya
WHAT: Newcomers, a surprise gift from Tatianna, and a visitor!
NOTES\WARNINGS:
 ⏵ arrival ⏴ Welcome to Etraya! Arrival goes as expected - characters awaken on hospital beds and are offered an explanation of their situation: that they have arrived in the city of Etraya, and they are their world's only hope. They are welcome to wander the hospital if they would like to - the upper floors are mostly empty, full of pristine hallways and numerous rooms filled with supplies, cots, and things one would expect from a relatively average 21st-century hospital. The lobby is filled to the brim with tables of freshly baked goods. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" banners are taped to the walls, and several other typical birthday decorations can be found in this area. A few of the baked goods tables are lined with massive cakes covered in unlit candles, just waiting for someone to grab a lighter and sing off-key. Is it anyone's birthday? Who knows! The companion bots seem to believe it's every new arrival's birthday and will greet them as such - with friendly waves and cheers as they make their way to the lobby. A coat rack is situated by the doors leading out of the hospital, covered in warm clothing that fits the new arrivals just right - whether it's to their preferred style or not is something else entirely. Some of them appear normal enough. Others? Well. They can't all be perfect, now can they? Outside the windows, the grass is covered in a couple of inches of loosely packed snow. We hope you enjoy your stay.  ⏵ an unexpected gift ⏴ Out by the hospital stands a tall, decorated tree covered in candles and golden pinecones with a handsome, red velveteen tree skirt. In front of it are a few oversized wrapped gifts for show- and atop one of those sits a familiar woman. Or unfamiliar, if this is your first time. It's Tatianna in a slutty Santa outfit with a big ol’ burlap sack. “Hey, I got something for you,” she says, digging into the bag and rummaging for a moment. She produces a painted egg and holds it aloft. “It’s your Winter Solstice Egg! This is the egg holiday, right? Wait, shit. I’m mixing them up, aren’t I? ...Well. It’s a little late to change it. Here you go!” How one treats their egg is fully up to themselves. They can choose to ignore it entirely, or destroy it and leave the yolk and innards to rot on the ground. They can hand it over to someone else or care for it as if it were something precious. No one will prevent them from doing whatever they please with it!  ⏵ naughty or nice ⏴ Those who keep the egg and tend to it will get the benefit of being able to watch it hatch seven days after they are handed the egg. Eggs that are treated with attention and love may yield a loyal companion, or a weapon of choice that always returns to its owner, while neglected eggs may yield a curious, cursed trinket or an animal who treats its new owner very much the same way its owner had treated it before it was born. Please submit an egg request below for what items you would like your character's eggs to hatch into! Please note that these cannot be things that would be applicable in the game. Those whose eggs are destroyed or forgotten will simply get the gift of... nothing!  ⏵ free your spirit ⏴ With the winter chill gripping the air, a mysterious figure makes their presence known in Etraya - a towering, horned creature dragging a massive sack behind them. Regardless of a character's strengths or weaknesses, they will find that when Krampus raises his massive sack over their head, they are powerless to stop him from catching them. Those capable of great magical feats or other supernatural abilities will sense something... otherworldly about Krampus, but will not be able to place the source of that sensation. Once within Krampus' sack, they are welcome to fight, but escape is impossible. It will feel as if Krampus is dragging them over every rock possible, dragging the sack in through the rivers to the point it soaks through and drenches them - potentially almost drowning them. When the sack opens, they will find themselves in an impossibly dark space. Around them are others who have also been captured and dragged here by Krampus, trapped in small cages hanging from a massive, wiry tree. Krampus will return often, banging clawed hands and birch rods on the walls of the cages and knocking them into one another. The whisper resonates through the darkened area, regardless of Krampus' presence. Confess your secrets, and be freed. Otherwise? You'd better hope someone figures out where Krampus has set up base; those who refuse to confess may find themselves stuck here forever. Krampus' base is under Etraya! Deep within the catacombs, he has set up multiple cages to capture those who inhabit Etraya to punish them for their naughty habits. Fighting him is possible! Defeating him by means of combat is not, however, possible. Think of it like fighting a god: Krampus creates the rules in the space around him, including who can use what ability. For all questions relating to this log, please refer to the mod queries comment. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ. |
no subject
Even so, there’s something so devastatingly, grimly hilarious about that bitterly asked question. Dazai doesn’t laugh, but his previously blank expression twists into a smile all the same. It’s not like his usual plastic ones, that almost uncanny valley cheerfulness that advertised its falsity like a neon sign. No, if his heart is a black hole, this smile is the x-rays that emerge from within, the ones that allow detection of something drawing all light and matter into its void. There’s a palpable weight to its emptiness.]
That’s a silly question, Chuuya. Someone like me … can never attain real happiness.
[No matter how hard he tries, how tightly he tries to grasp at things he wants, they're destined to slip out of his fingers like so much sand. It’s like he’d said in a certain bar, as a different man, and yet the same — there’s nothing worth wanting that would prolong this life of suffering. Certainly not something so abstract and unknowable as happiness.]
no subject
There's no grander purpose to it. There's no love in it. There's no happiness that can result from it. There's nothing at all. It's no different than the dog chasing the car, but now with some pretentious crap about being one of the good guys.
Chuuya wouldn't want him back, and he's glad that Dazai left, but it only serves to frustrate him further that it had such lackluster results.
He doesn't ask himself if either of them are really happy. ]
I bet if happiness slapped you in the face, you'd peel it off and throw it in the garbage.
[ There's no real bite to that though, because it's hard to hang onto anger at a person who doesn't fight back. The Sheep's policy was always to defend themselves against enemies and to retaliate, but never to initiate, and he's no different. He doesn't bully for the sake of it. He can't hate a person for trying to carry on a dying man's wishes either.
But that isn't enough to heal the wound, and that doesn't mean he knows what to do here.
God, he hates this. This isn't right. ]
You just don't want to be happy. You never have. That's what I can't stand about you.
no subject
He shakes his head after a moment of internal debate. This has gone on too long; they weren’t meant to speak this openly or honestly with each other, not like this. He ought to get it over with as soon as possible. If he comes to a point where Chuuya of all people comes to look at him with sympathy, life in Etraya truly will become unbearable.]
Have you ever tried to pick up loose sand with just your hands? No matter what you do, most of it leaks out through the gaps in your fingers, right? It’s a little like that. By the time I have something in my hands that might be recognizable as something like happiness, it’s already slipped through the cracks, leaving behind only the rough residue of having once been there.
[He rolls a shoulder, casual even as he feels his organs crushing into dust. This part isn’t as hard to talk about, but it’s a little like trying to explain the experience of being blind to a person with 20-20 full-color vision.]
At a certain point, you’d give up and use a bucket instead, right? But imagine the bucket had a hole in the bottom. No matter what you use to plug it, the grains will leak out until nothing is left.
[He’ll never fill the bucket. Odasaku had warned him as much when he died, and he had been right. Even now, four years later, he still can’t even find all the holes to plug.]
But even if I can’t fill it, I can still choose how the bucket looks and feels. I can paint it with blood or in beautiful colors, you know? It doesn’t change anything, not really, but even so … it’s a more pleasant experience, scooping sand endlessly into a more beautiful bucket. Makes waiting for death to come for me a little more bearable.
[Ugh. He makes a face. That truly feels revolting to tell Chuuya in full earnestness. He can’t help but add:]
It’s for the best, though, right? Imagine how insufferable I would be if I wanted to harass you over a long and fruitful life.
no subject
What the Hell is he supposed to say to that? What honest remark is there to give to make the door creak open fully? There's precious little, and that makes his frown deepen, because Chuuya isn't one to keep secrets; if his emotions are dishonest, it's because he does process them in such a simple and straightforward way - he hates Dazai. He hates Dazai. He won't let him die. As much as he bragged in his face about seeing him executed, if it had come about he wouldn't have been able to accept it; but he doesn't think of that to say it.
But he thinks that if there were a hole at the bottom of some bucket he picked up, then he'd find a way to plug it up. There's ways how to. But no matter how he looks at it, the Agency is no more beautiful or ugly than the Port Mafia. They're precisely the same, just a different veneer and different colors, and it's almost insulting.
It's like saying the moon and the stars that shine brightly in the sky so pale in comparison to the sun.
He's not Mori. He's not Dazai. He's not that anemic bastard the two of them were scheming against. Chuuya is just a person, so he can't understand the planning and scheming, but he does take a few moments to muddle over it all. ]
Yeah, well. I celebrated when I found out you left. I popped open my finest bottle of wine and threw a goddamn party for knowing you were gone. My life has been a Hell of a lot better since you left. Until we all had to, no one gave a shit where you've been.
[ Chuuya breathes in softly, lifting one hand to rub the back of his neck, not quite finished, but unsure of what it is that he wants to say next.
But finally, without acknowledging what he'd said, but not quite ignoring it either - ]
If you were still with the Port Mafia, the Guild wouldn't have stood a chance. It has nothing to do with loving Yokohama or whatever.
[ Though Mori does, because he protects stability, but that's not all it is. That's not all it is, and this isn't anything he wants to say, because it's between them and not Dazai - now an outsider, but whatever. ]
The Boss kept your seat open. The Boss still wants you back.
[ And that's frustrating, so endlessly frustrating, and he hates it, and he wants him to forget it, but - ]
He still thinks we work well together, and he thought that you needed bailing out. Great to hear knowing how unpleasant and ugly we are for you.
[ He scoffs. And as for Chuuya.... ]
Whatever. If it's that important to you, then you should at least find a way to patch up the damn hole in your bucket instead of saying that you can just paint it. I dunno your friend, but I doubt he wanted you to stop there. I wouldn't. I'd punch you if you seriously thought that was the best you could do.
[ . . . ]
Sounds to me like wanted you to live.
no subject
[Again, he meets the challenge of trying to explain a lack of something so fundamental to most as to be taken for granted. He wouldn't change the life he's lived up to now; when he says his world is more beautiful now, it's not that it was previously the inverse.
Rather, there was nothing. There's still nothing; he won't ever find something that fills that hole inside of him. There's no great meaning he's found, in saving lives rather than taking them, nothing that makes him want to get up each morning. It's just that he could draw his attention away from that oxidizing world, just a little. A reason to live wasn't necessary to save someone else's, after all.]
You know why I joined to begin with? I had believed that surrounding myself with death, with violence and bloodshed and destruction might reveal to me the reason why people cling so desperately to life. ...I can't forgive Mori-san, but I don't regret that he brought me into the Port Mafia, or the time I spent there. It didn't help me find a reason to live, but before that, I had given up on even looking.
[Sounds to me like he wanted you to live.
Dazai knows that Chuuya isn't wrong, and yet those words might be the most painful ones yet, like that sealed vacuum inside has suddenly imploded, pulverizing what remains of the shreds of his insides. Odasaku did want him to live, for all he always humored his endless suicide talk, and yet went ahead and died without him.
How do you know? Dazai had asked him, back then.
I know. I know better than anybody.
Odasaku had wanted to live, too. He wanted to be a writer.]
...For all your claims of celebration, though, I think it makes you angriest that I could come back, but I won't. It'd be easier for you if Mori-san would want me hunted down, wouldn't it?
[It's cruel of him to turn the tables like this, to set his attention on Chuuya's door first. But he's realized, suddenly, what it wants from him. And he's not prepared to say it.]
no subject
Chuuya wears his heart on his sleeve. There are things hidden, but those things which are crawling beneath the skin, like maggots hidden ones blood, creasing ones skin and making it crawl and dance and writhe in some sickening manner. ]
Yeah. That's right. It pisses me off that the boss would take you back in a second. You want an award for guessing that?
[ No hesitation. No denial. It's the same as ever. That's ever the problem. Chuuya is too honest, and so all those things that should be hidden protrude and bloat beneath the skin, creating tents with it before moving on.
His eyelids lower halfway, looking lazily now, as though Dazai had told him that the grass was green and that the sky is blue.
Only a diamond can polish a diamond. They're a pair of diamonds, scraping against and refining each other, and that's ever the problem.
With a tired sigh, he adds: ]
Let me guess: You knew that the Boss wouldn't execute you. You had your "contingency measures," [ He gestures vaguely because who cares now, ] But that really wasn't the point. You knew damn well that Mori-san didn't want to harm you. And you figured that even if for some reason all of that failed, I'd bail your ass out, just like always. Am I wrong?
[ His initial plan was flawless, of course; without fail, it would succeed, but even if it didn't, there wasn't even the faintest possibility of failure.
And that's the trouble of it all.
Because neither Mori or Chuuya could ever truly want to see him dead. Niether of them could see him dead, now, because - ]
If Mroi-san wanted you dead, you would be dead by now. I got all excited, but that was just my hubris, [ He clicks his tongue and shakes his head, ] Not even you can escape the terrors of the night. If Mori-san wanted you dead, you would be dead.
[ And if Chuuya really wanted him dead, well... Who knows. They'll never know. They'll never know, because Chuuya never really thought about it that hard. ]
no subject
No, Chuuya isn’t wrong. Dazai did know that Mori wasn’t going to have him killed. He called the man out on such as he was walking out his door for the last time, a dozen guns trained upon him. If Mori wanted him dead, he truly would be. He wouldn’t have made it out of the building, much less to where Odasaku had breathed his last.
That’s not what stills him, though. After all, it’s a relatively straightforward conclusion to come to—Mori does not fail at his objectives. Anyone who attains any rank at all within the Port Mafia knows that. It’s the other part, all but buried within the middle of that rant.]
Would you have really come bailed me out? Even if it meant going against Mori-san?
[Even Dazai can’t predict everything correctly 100% of the time. If he could, he’d still be with the Port Mafia, and …. well, Ango would probably be lying in a ditch somewhere, taken care of, or have fled the country in a hurry. It hits him strangely to think that he might have read something wrong in Chuuya, the man he’s known for seven entire years.]
I would’ve assumed you’d sooner let yourself be consumed whole by Corruption before defying Mori-san’s wishes. It’s something that’s always annoyed me, frankly. Your unconditional loyalty isn’t something that could ever be reciprocated. You might even end up paying a blood price for someone else’s actions.
no subject
... I'd respect the Boss' wishes.
[ The world is sour, bitter, like he'd just chewed on something truly foul. Like just the though of their wishes being so out of tandem was something putrid and rotten. That was probably what happened with Dazai, but that only leads credence to his thought that Mori had been ignorant to it; the Boss, who seemed to know everything, who had such a gross oversight.
Chuuya, the leader of the Sheep, who had such a gross oversight that he wound up a member of the Port Mafia.
Dazai, who had such a gross oversight that he wound up a member of the Armed Detective Agency.
Chuuya hesitates, processing. After some thought he says, ]
... But the Boss would have spared you if I told him to. You're gonna ask why, right? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter a damn thing, and that's what I'd tell him. It doesn't matter why. Who the Hell cares if I don't want you to die? Why do I need a reason?
[ The Sheep were just good kids. They were kids who betrayed him. They stuck a knife with rat poison into him. They left him to die. They were afraid of him.
Who cares? He didn't.
But Chuuya doesn't think of things logically. He was only initially tempered by the Sheep begging him; his life is nothing, but in a different way.
Then, a bit more softly, ]
Mori-san can discard me if he wants to. That's why he's the Boss and I'm not, 'cause I can't make decisions the way that he can.
[ And there's the unspoken statement.
Chuuya is simple and earnest. He wouldn't have used logic. He wouldn't have talked it through. He would've run headstrong into it. He would've let Mori shoot him up. There would have been no negotiation.
There wouldn't have been any if Dazai had asked Chuuya for help either. If he'd asked Chuuya, who would have bitched but asked no real hard questions.
But he doesn't say any of that either. ]
And he's the Boss 'cause he listens to his executives and underlings. As much as I hate to say it, No Longer Human is too big of a sacrifice to make. And I'm going to be the one to kill you. I won't let anyone else do it.
The Boss gotta deal with that too. You ever thought about it?
[ What a delicate balance that is.
Or how in tandem they might be about Dazai. ]
no subject
The notion of a burden like that weighing down Chuuya's shoulders is strangely dissonant. It doesn't suit the way Dazai sees him -- too loud, too bright, too offensively much, and yet, for such somber things to dim him down ... it feels profane, in a way he can't define.
He's the Boss 'cause he listens to his executives and underlings.
If Dazai had figured things out sooner, if he'd been able to go to Mori and asked him not to sacrifice Odasaku, to find another way to obtain the Gifted Business Permit ... would it have changed anything? Would he have listened? It's not the first time Dazai's been haunted by the question. Yet too many of the pieces were obscured, and he'd been so, so stupidly blind to the rest. Could he have ever figured it out, before it was too late? Or was his mistake much, much sooner ... in not hunting down those former police thugs to the last man until they revealed exactly who was after that painting, and how much he could buy them off for, in not having rumors spread that the painting was in the wind again. Not keeping Odasaku far away from Mori's chess board to begin with so there would never be a risk of him being used in such a way.
The silence stretches even longer this time, the only sound breaking the stillness being the clank of the cages as their captor moves about.]
That's no good, Chuuya. You're not a beautiful woman, nor would you commit suicide, so I can't die beside you like that.
[Leave it to Dazai for that to be the first thing he says. Then, at length:]
You know ... you're quick to say you'd allow yourself to be discarded, yet you hate the notion of discarding others. You willingly left the Sheep behind so they wouldn't be slaughtered as our enemies. You resent me forsaking Mori-san and the Port Mafia for the Agency -- yet despite that, if I were to abandon them to return for some reason, it would bother you even more, wouldn't it? For you, the idea of severing a connection -- even to someone you hate -- is like ripping out your heart from its chest with your bare fingers.
[He looks...tired, as he says it. He can't really understand what that feels like, as someone who struggles to connect to humanity at all. But then -- there's Odasaku, there's three glasses of whiskey at the bar. Someone to say goodbye to, a goodbye to lament from the bottom of his heart. It's the evidence that something was there, and real.]
What would you do, then, I wonder ... if one of those connections were to be sundered by someone else, too late for you to put a stop to it?
[...]
[He lets the moment hang, then drops the metaphors and insinuations and states it openly:]
Mori-san knew Ango-kun was with the Special Division. He looked the other way to bring Mimic to our doorstep, so we could have the Gifted Business Permit for crushing them. If he'd intended the Sheep to die in that crossfire, rather than Odasaku, would you still have been able to bear the weight of any atrocity Mori-san committed, for the Port Mafia's sake?
[The black hole inside him feels like it's expanding, like he'll take others into his gravity now as well, crush them at the event horizon simply by being there. He doesn't like saying any of this to Chuuya, would rather take the source and scope of his resentment to his own ever-elusive grave. But it's as though they've been injected with snake venom, and the only option is to bleed it all out at once. If nothing else, he's certainly built new resentments in Etraya that far outstrip anything he could feel for Mori, now. Someday, he'll tear Echo apart, piece by piece.]
It's my fault, too. I didn't see it soon enough. Didn't want to see it, perhaps. But I can't forgive him.
[The door all but rattles. It's so close now, the latch holding back one last notch before it comes loose. Something still held back, clung to by the fingernails in vain hopes of being released before offering it. Chuuya can probably feel it too. Their escape is imminent, but the last part of ripping off a bandaid always hurts the most.]
no subject
He traces the inside rim of the hat, looking down at it, and he does pause to consider. Chuuya doesn't need to consider the question, no, not when it's one he's been confronted with so many times before. He doesn't need to, but here and now, talking like this, he considers the ramifications of it once more. He thinks on how much has been lost. He wonders what might have been with so many people - people that helped him, people who hurt him, those loved and hated and who didn't really matter at all. People who are still here, and people who slipped away from him as easily as water he'd scooped with his hands, dripping between his fingers and the gaps between the hands he'd pressed together.
Randou. Verlaine. The Sheep. The Flags. His men.
Dazai.
He traces once, twice, and there's this faraway feeling, something nostalgic and painful, like a longing for home. It comes and goes, slipping through his fingers and the gaps between his hands, and he places his hat back on his head.
The answer is obvious. ]
... Mori-san wasn't their leader. I was. If they got caught in the crossfire, it was 'cause I didn't protect them.
[ That's how all this nonsense started. It started because he failed them. It started because they were caught in the crossfire. It could even b said that Mori had given him the opportunity to save them by working with him. He'd saved him, because otherwise Chuuya might never have seen all the fractures running through them.
H wasn't a leader at all, really. ]
The Boss once told me what it meant to be a leader.
[ And there's a knowing look, one that comes and goes quickly, one that says that he suspects Dazai receives the same lecture - that he has the same understanding of how that man works. ]
Let me ask you the same: Would you destroy everyone around you to save a single person you cared for? If it were one single person versus the lives of dozens, hundreds, of others who matter to you, would you still choose to save them?
[ Chuuya isn't the brightest of the Port Mafia members. He's relatively simple in his way of thinking. He runs on emotion, he can be impulsive, he's hardly a strategist - but that's why they worked well together, why they still do. But he runs on emotion, and he cares too much, and they've both seen it. Seen how far a man will go for a single person. How far a person will go for an organization, for a city, how much those people will give up of themselves.
So of course he's thought of that too. ]
You really think you're better than him?
no subject
He understands the parallel Chuuya is making, in asking it. To Mori, the Port Mafia was everything. To ensure its survival, the furtherance of its goals and standing, he would plunge his hands deep into the muck and viscera and filth. He would embody the night itself, even if it meant blocking out every last ray of the sun from ever reaching him again. The problem has never been in understanding why Mori did what he did. It is that in making that sacrifice, Mori had cut into the one thin thread that tied even someone like Dazai to humanity, the single artery from which blood flowed into his heart. If he hadn't cauterized the wound immediately, he would've bled dry, and then what would've become of him? He lives so close to death as it is, but he thinks he would become an even more unrecognizable creature that way, something not living nor dead, no longer capable of seeking either.]
I'm not.
[He shakes his head. For all that he works to be on the side that saves people now, he's well aware that he's not a good person. He chooses goodness when he can, when it serves the outcomes he wants, but sometimes he still knowingly puts even those he cares about through pain for the sake of those outcomes. His blood will always be mafia black. And that's why he can't forgive Ougai Mori.
And so he admits, very simply:]
If it meant Odasaku would be able to live, there is nothing and nobody I wouldn't sacrifice. Even if it meant he hated me for the rest of his life, any cost would be worth it. Mori-san feels the same about the Port Mafia. Don't assume I don't realize, Chuuya. I have always known.
[He closes his eyes, that smile from before on his lips again, weighted down with grief that goes beyond his ability to speak words to it.]
If I were a better man, I could say, I understand, I would've done the same thing in your position. I can only be the man I am, though.
[His eyes open again, and he stares down that very last latch. Somehow, now, it's easier than he thought it might be to say what will open it.]
You want to know a real secret, Chuuya? I don't know who I would be if I felt differently. It's why I'm actually ... a little afraid to die here. I don't cooperate for any other reason, than not wanting to forget.
[Click.]
no subject
He wouldn't be able to accept anyone else killing him. He couldn't allow it. In that, Mori and Chuuya are the same and altogether different.
But Chuuya knows Dazai in a way that the Agency can't, because they were just fifteen when they met. Because three years is a long, long time at that tender age. Because they could be close solely due to not acknowledging anything that made them such. ]
Tch... Dumbass. I already knew that.
[ There's a deep frown. He did, and he didn't. It was that sort of instinctive knowledge. It feels slimy when said. It's like a shadowy, fungal, consuming blob now that it's been said - something creeping and crawling, faceless, showing teeth, that might consume both of them. That could cover the pair of them, choke them, rot them out.
It's a bit much, for a pair of people who have always kept such a polite distance, silently agreed to not press on one another. The words leave a vile and bitter taste on his tongue, like the aftertaste of some poison. ]
Dazai, you absolute moron... [ He says that again for good measure, because he hears that soft click, it's there, it's there, and he doesn't want to say this, and this is all so infuriating, and where the Hell is everyone else now - ] What the Hell is wrong with you? You're supposed to be the best strategist, the smartest of everyone... [ And those words are practically spit, as emotional as ever, ]<./small> So how the Hell haven't you figured out that everyone's like that?
Everyone has things that they can't forget - people that they can't forget. Dazai has just one, but Chuuya has so many. He has so many, and he hates Dazai all that much more for it, because it certainly must be easier to remember one person than many - he's forgetting. He's forgetting voices, he's forgetting gestures, and worst of all he's forgetting faces. He's forgetting the smiles and tears, he's forgetting so much.
He lifts his hand, but it stops at rubbing the back of his neck.
He can't forget it. He can't remember an umbrella hanging over him. He can't forget how cold it was. How lonely it was. How it got at once colder and warmer it was when released from the torrent of rain.
Chuuya can't forget that look though. He can't forget those words.
He didn't feel cold anymore. ]
no subject
He has spent twenty-two years not dying. In a year, he will be as old as Odasaku was when he stopped living. And yet, for all that he lives in a way he likes better, he still doesn't understand anything about living. Chuuya is his natural opposite, in that way; he shines so brightly with life that it's difficult to look at him, and some part of him will always envy that. His own heart struggles so desperately to beat in that way, to thrum with more than the memory of three glasses of whiskey, but he is akin to a man lost in the desert, chasing mirages. Whenever he thinks he's reached an oasis, it slips through his fingers, fading away into so much dust and wind.
The door is open, yet his legs feel as though they weigh a thousand pounds. He can't find the energy to get them off the ground.]
It's ironic, isn't it? That my ability is called No Longer Human. I never really have been, I think. All I can do is reach out my hand toward humanity, knowing that anything that comes into my grasp will be reverted to nothingness the same way. If things were different ... maybe I could've saved him.
[If he weren't so inherently empty, so fundamentally disconnected, maybe he would've known what to say. Maybe even with the mistakes he'd made, the betrayals he didn't see coming, he could've stopped Odasaku from walking out to the very last fight of his life. He doesn't forgive Mori, but more importantly, he can never forgive himself for that.]
All of my plans and strategies -- they were all meaningless, in the end. I couldn't protect what mattered to me. So I want to protect his memory instead ... and die with that most human part of me intact. I can't do that here. So let’s leave, shall we?
no subject
In the Port Mafia, one minds their business. There's some unspoken rule to not press too hard on one's heart. He respects that now, as much as he did then, because Dazai needs only say as much as he wants to.
His former partner doesn't need to say anything more than he has for Chuuya to understand, and even before he did, some part of him had. That same part of him which can't forgive it even now, because he's given up so much more.
Such is their relationship, built on complications and resentment and respect and such other things that the average person couldn't possibly understand.
Such as it is, that he pressed on the subject no further, and that is a kind of care, a sort of acceptance, because the man before him simply is as he is. He is as he states he is. There's no words of comfort that one can offer, and Chuuya is ever not one to try, ]
... Yeah. I'm tired of being in this shithole, and having nothing to listen to but your voice is enough to burst my eardrums. Let's get the Hell out of here.
[ No dramatics. No promises of acceptance. It simply is there, as it always was. He shoves the door of the cage open with such force that it bangs against the bars beside it, echoing through the area, and he clicks his tongue and glares at the darkness left to them, because of course it's some bullshit mockery of a trust exercise, or whatever the Hell one would call this. That, he doesn't know nor care, because neither name or title would make it less vile. ]
We still have a job to do.
[ They're still partners.
They're still partners, and Chuuya still hates him.
They're still partners, and Chuuya still hates him, and he won't let him die without attaining whatever goal he's set for himself. Not here. Not now. Not in this shitty ass fairytale bullshit setup, not in some garbage bonding room.
They're still partners. ]
After this is over, I'll kill you as many times as you want. But for now we gotta focus.