fallbymyhands | [Week 2, Saturday: Lenka]

[The quiet company really helped while he was shaking all to pieces -- the last time... the last time he'd been in a place like that there hadn't been anyone, not a single person for days and days. Having people around, Mitsuru, the campfire, had been a surprisingly big help in getting him back to himself again.

Well. He's still not entirely all the way to himself, and won't be for a while. But he's more-or-less present and coherent and that's something.]

M-- Kirijo. [he may have spent too much time just talking to the other Mitsuru] Better. I think.

[It's a very low bar, but you've got to start somewhere.]

[it's all right. she accepts his correction with a nod, and likely wouldn't have scolded him for using her first name when he's in. . . this state]

"Better" is a beginning.

[a low bar, sure, but still a beginning]

I-- [a pause] I am so sorry for what you experienced.

[He runs a hand through his hair -- it's more absent than anything, a rare fidget -- and seems to be thinking it over. His feelings about the whole thing, now that the kneejerk ones have run their course... they're too complicated for him to sort them out tonight. Maybe for a while yet. It feels like that feeling of failure earlier in the week has just... built upon itself.

He's used to carrying things like this, but sometime when he'd looked away it had become something crushing enough that it's hard to see beyond it. And the actual execution is... something else altogether.]

... I should have let Talcott do what he needed to do. He wanted to-- [he stumbles for a moment, a brief shudder] --end it himself.

[Anyone who had been watching the execution closely probably saw him move unnaturally, trying to stop him. Jerkily, like he didn't quite intend to move but did anyway.]

. . . I saw.

[yeah, it was hard to miss Talcott taking the knife to his own neck]

But you couldn't have known what was about to happen.

[with the. lake creatures]

[He hesitates. But no, it's better if he doesn't talk too much about the lake creatures' role -- even through the strange feeling of almost-vertigo muffling all emotion and reaction he can't quite bring himself to do that part.]

I wanted to-- I wanted him to be able to choose his own death. At least. After everything.

[He remembers Talcott from last week, at the trial, and feels the memory dig in a little deeper and sharper and more accusing. That he wasn't even able to do this, give him that much at the end.

Somehow it's a fitting coda to a week like this one.

And he's distracted, but they're not the only ones who didn't predict the lake cats, were they?]

[there's a brief pause on Mitsuru's end, as she tries to figure out how to word this question. in the end, she decides she can only be blunt]

Why did you try to stop him, then?

[That is the question, isn't it?

And Lenka wants to answer, he does, but everything is still jumbled up in his head and there's a blurriness to the memory he doesn't like. It mixes and bleeds into other memories and memories he's not sure are entirely memories, losing color and tone and coherence until it's all just a snarled impression of screaming and reaching out and empty air where someone should have been.

He tries anyway.]

I didn't-- I couldn't-- [that goes about as well as you'd expect, his voice shaking for a moment before he stops, tries again] I didn't mean to. He was-- The knife and I just--

[He stops. Lets everything settle back in a murky fog like the bottom of the lake.]

I moved before thinking.

[Which might sound thoughtless, but it was more that his body had simply stopped listening to reason at all.]

You moved. . . on instinct.

[that's what it sounds like, when he puts it like that]

Protective instinct. The desire to keep someone alive.

[that. . . she understands]

I-- I guess.

[He's not sure it's anything nearly that rational or well-intentioned, even with the caveat of instinct involved -- he'd truly wanted to give Talcott whatever he could, at the very end, but there was just a point passed where everything... slowed down, and accelerated, and the cats were there. Another person he failed. One more body to step over.

He closes his eyes for a moment, checks that all the things that were just rustled up have quieted again. He can't keep doing this.]

... It was useless. Those cats... they must have been like the moose. I don't know. [his words are getting away from him again] I don't know what we're being sacrificed to.

. . . neither do I.

[Mitsuru admits, a bit of pain to her words. two weeks come and gone, and they're still all so, so clueless]

Do you think all of the animals in this camp-- except for that cat-- are like the moose and the lake creatures? If so. . . is that important somehow?

I... know that most of them aren't normal. In a place like this.

[In a sense, they'd be normal for where he comes from, but he's trying to take clues from context -- invulnerable giant animals doesn't seem to be a camp-related sort of issue. He'd wondered, idly, now and again, if they aren't being sacrificed to gods like these. Gods of the planet, Dr. Sakaki would have said, carrying out judgment upon mankind.

But not all of them are mankind, are they? He doesn't know. Some of it is still a little too metaphysical for him to parse, especially now.]

But I don't know if they're the ones behind this.

[Their behavior is too erratic, varies too much and seems to swing between what he's suspected are at least two different factions involved in whatever this is.]

I didn't think they were.

[the ones behind it, she means. just another prop, another part of the scenery, to make their stay here all the more frightening]

I just. . . wasn't really sure what to think of them. I thought maybe their existence could be some kind of clue to lead us to the answers behind this camp, but--

[now that she ruminates on that thought, she realizes she was overthinking it]

If they're a clue as to how powerful those behind this are, I--

[He cuts himself off there, rubbing a little at his face with a hand, and trying at the same time to cut off the persistent tremble in his hands. It's irritating. Even through all of the nightmares and sleepless nights he's never reacted quite this way, where none of the ways he normally moves forward are working.

And it's getting harder and harder to hold his Arc steady as the weeks wear on. Maybe it's just exhaustion.

Maybe it's the slow and unrelenting realization that there is no sense of escape here that doesn't immediately involve either a dance with death that doesn't just involve himself, or dealing with a world he knows nothing of and doesn't know how to really free himself of. He would trade all the trees and greenery he could see here, for something to hold on to.]

I don't know.

Edited 2018-06-23 06:19 (UTC)

[the tremble in his hands is far more obvious than he'd like, surely. and Mitsuru notices]

You're shaking.

This--

[Can you hold a God Arc with those hands?

That's the first thing he thinks of, and with it he forcibly clasps his hands together, ignoring the persistent ache in his right arm. None of it is anything he can afford, not here. Not anywhere. He has to be able to fight, to think, to move; that's what he does. It's how he lives.

He could blame it on the altercation with the moose. Mitsuru was there. He could gloss over it. It's simple enough. It'll pass. He could--]

It's nothing. I just need sleep. [he's not a particularly practiced liar, but he plows on, because there's something else they should discuss, too] --Kirijo. About the... about the cabin defense.

[she's about to push him a little more, but he changes the subject far too quickly for her to keep up. a moment of silence passes, before she nods and decides to go along with what he's saying. for now]

Yes? What about it?

[He lets the silence run out, pulls more of the pieces of himself together in the meantime. They've been drifting apart again, like ice sloughing off into water. Smaller and smaller and harder to find and retrieve. He doesn't need all of them, but he does need a handful for tonight, to make it through to tomorrow.]

... I think it would be better if I stepped back from it.

[It's said quietly, but steadily, something he's been thinking for a while. Something, if he's to be honest, he'd been thinking about since the end of the first week. This week... it's enough. He's done enough, to the point where he doesn't know where he's going anymore, plowing blindly forward. It's going nowhere.]

I'll help find replacements.

[They'd be down at least half. Responsibility is a curse.]

[well, needless to say, that admission takes her by surprise]

Why?

[Her surprise makes him pause for a moment in turn. He'd felt like it was... almost obvious? At least some of it. It takes him a moment to start again, voice not quite as steady as before.]

Because it's hard to trust my judgment.

[It's impossible to draw a distinction between him not trusting his judgment or anyone else, so he just casts a wide net and drags the whole thing into it. This week, last week... this is a place where most of his skills feel like they hinder more than help, and where he's stumbled more than he's stepped forward to lead.

He'd still been new to it, back at home. He knows he'd gotten ahead of himself -- but back then, he hadn't been able to help it. Maybe he can help it now.]

[another pause while she considers this]

You are the one who doesn't trust your judgment, correct? Because of the mistakes you have made in weeks past.

... I don't think anyone would.

[To him, that's just the objective assessment: in common parlance, he fucked way up. In less common terms, he... doesn't feel like he's gotten anywhere, since he got here. Since things started going wrong, which was immediately. It's like... back before his God Eater days. When there was nothing he could do, about anything.]

[Week 2, Saturday: Lenka]

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