deercountry | Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

"I know. I thought that if you no longer wanted me then he would because he also had nothing left. I was afraid of having nothing again... I was afraid of losing you. I'd rather be gone than to be alone again. To not have you."

His body trembles again as though getting violently rocked by some unseen force. Midoriya tells him the things he wants to hear more than anything. But those words are like doors, opening up new possibilities, and thresholds to be crossed. He'll have to face possibilities of losing what he has.

"I don't want to disappoint you. I think you think better of me in your love."

[ She shrugs as though unconcerned. Eating things raw is a bit different, but it's not like she's tried it here yet. ]

Sure. I eat fish all the fuckin' time. It's pretty cheap here.

[ When she first came she thought she'd never eat seafood again, but here she was. The revulsion faded after only a few days, and it's not like any Sleeper Squids ended up at the markets by mistake, right? ...Probably not, anyway. ]

I might be able to do that. Immune to poison. What'd be in it for me?

I don't know what person I want to be. I don't even know what sort of person I am. If I can be considered a person at all.

[It's something that could be teenager and dramatic but Kaworu's voice trembles, betraying his honest emotions. His confusion at himself is real as is his struggle to navigate it.]

Doesn't the past define us and shape our future? If so, then the past will always matter.

"That fear of losing someone is... what happened to me. When we were separated." His voice is tight.

He presses him close to embrace his shaking and tucks Kaworu's head into the safe space against the pulse of his neck. Sometimes the mind follows the settling of the body. He lets the slow swells of his own chest show him how. (The rapid beating of his own heart gives him away, but it is strong.) He flattens his palm on Kaworu's back and moves it in circles. Normally shy about who sees him being close with someone, he doesn't care if anyone walks in now. This is too important.

"You can still be so much. And you came back. It was your choice. I'm going to help you, okay? I'm going to help you make things better. I know what you did. I'm not ignoring that. But the worse things are, all the more reason to take your hand."

[ It's only now that Daniel turns to actually look at her. He figures maybe it's a little easier for her to talk about the way she feels about someone than it is for her to talk about the way she feels in general.

At least - most teenagers seem to be that way, as far as he's observed.

Though the true reason for his turn is mostly so she can properly see the half-shrug, half-spreading-hands gesture he's making here, as he says: ]

I've been trying not to pry. [ And Johnny was.. pretty vague while trying to hijack his truck for this mission. ] I figure all of you had been through enough.

[ To not have to tell Johnny's strange karate ~~friendly~~ ~~homoerotic~~ rival about it. ]

All Johnny told me was that there was a guy who was treating all of you badly.

[ You can tell this is the PG version of what Johnny told him with all the swearing left out. ]

Paul lets Midoriya take his arm, lets his hand slide down to the still-hot but cooling curve of his own hand, lets himself be led. His eyes oscillate in blue-greens, their shade unfixed as he is guided out of this house, expression empty but not blank. It is hollowed, a bare field of ash.

He may never cross this threshold the other way again. When he left Caladan, it had been the same, but he had not felt the doom that hung over them all so certainly then. He had faced the future with courage. He had been willing to believe in the transience of bad dreams. He had believed that the good and the just might not have their victory assured, no, but that it would be theirs if they were clever, and they were strong, and they stood side by side with their comrades-in-arms.

The air tastes of storms.

“I love you,” he whispers, as much a ghost as anything that has ever stalked the shadowed halls at their back, and he wishes that he hadn’t. He wishes that his tongue would cleave to the root and fall out of his mouth, as one wishes when one does not believe in wishing.

“I love him,” he says, and it’s worse, “I won’t regret anything that keeps you safe. Not if the one paying the price is me.”

The last, and the worst, in its helplessness: “I’m not done yet.”

[ Big Boy shakes her head, gently, a motion that is a cross between helping the little mouse get settled and soft laughter. She's glad to help. It's something she and her Sleeper have in common. ]

She's looking for your Sleeper.

[ Big Boy honestly doubts she's found him, but she keeps that to herself. It is so hard to be the ephemeral soul-manifestation that does the thinking for the entire duo. ]

Do you know where he is?

[ Big Boy will follow Sophia's lead, wherever that may be. She'll take the search at a slow and steady trot, hoping that the easy, back-and-forth motion will be at least somewhat soothing. ]

Paul's hand feels like it has just held a hot cup of tea. A fine illusion, as if they can just sit and share one together by a fire to drive the nightmares away. It will take more than that. When he touches him (and he does without hesitation) Midoriya still sees the blood on Paul's hand like an involuntary fever chill. They're not done yet, but that struggle is also a hope.

He leads Paul to the far end of the yard away from the clatter of everyone loading the truck and potential questioning looks about the third person not accompanying them. The air is cooler outside. There is a thin breeze coming in from the sea, and it promises to swell. It carries the warning of upheaval, but it does not yet threaten to cleave the sky in two. It clears Midoriya's head. His goal remains unchanged.

He squares his shoulders and says quietly to the trees at the edge of the property, "You can't pay if you're dead. You've studied the Pthumerians; if you think the Reckoning will see it this way, go ahead and do it. I'll protect you so you can see it through."

He turns and looks at him with the solemnity of someone who knows what it means to experience the fear of death and push forward anyway. "Don't be afraid."

He looks up at Kaworu's window, but distance, sun, and shadow obscure what is in it. He thinks of how he left his mother in tears, how he didn't shed any at all, how the light in his eyes had died.

"I can't tell if he's watching us, but sign to him anyway. Tell him you love him. You didn't before. He needs that."

Edited 2022-08-17 06:04 (UTC)

You're immune to poison?

[ Hold on, Kainé, Daniel is still busy trying to process this part of all of it. It may not be the strangest thing he's come across in this place yet, but that's not saying a whole lot, considering the level the standard is at right now..

He frowns a little. ]

Completely immune? Or do you still experience discomfort, even if it doesn't get as bad as it would with other people?

[ Look. It's just that he doesn't want to use her as a guinea pig if it would still have a negative effect on her, even if it's very faint.

It doesn't help that Daniel can't quite understand how someone could be immune to poison in the first place. ]

[ It's definitely the 'if I can be considered a person at all' part that makes Daniel wonder a little if there's more going on with Kaworu than first meets the eye. It's not something he wants to dig into without the other voluntarily admitting it, so he doesn't mention it, but it's something he stores in the back of his mind for further consideration at a later date.

Right now the man just sucks in a breath, seeming to think, before speaking up with: ]

The past only does that in ways you let it.

[ When it comes down to it, anyway. It's what Daniel wants to believe.

But, more so than that, what he really wants to ask here is-- ] .. What do you think is bothering you the most right now?

[ Because Kaworu is obviously troubled. But Daniel can't quite tell if it's mostly because one of the things the other has said already, or if there's some greater underlying cause. ]

[ Ortus is very near to reluctant to let her pull away even that much. He shares in the common Ninth discomfort with such closeness as this, but he has not felt it here. Only gratitude still, overflowing, and so it is that when she does look at him it is still plain as if stamped upon his features.

Even the mention of Sensei Lawrence cannot dim it, though Ortus does his best to affect more suffering at his name. He understands, dimly, that there is a role to be played.

(He remembers. Brothers jostling each other with sharp elbows, sisters wrestling in the halls, the hushed but fearsome arguments over trivialities. All the things the last children of the Ninth grew in want of, while he retreated inward, but no more.) ]

I have found him bearable, if, at times, perhaps over familiar, and crude, and possessed of many unusual habits of both deportment and demeanor, to say nothing of his diet.

[ He brings a hand to her shoulder and squeezes it, firmly. Perhaps too much so, in overcompensation. ]

He came to transport us from the house, and of great help to myself, and to Lady Harrowhark, and all others he has taken in. I forgive much in the name of my gratitude.

He missed you, too.

Yeah, I'm Vileblood.

[ Right, he's new. He probably doesn't know anything about the other blood types. With Vilebloods being especially shunned by the locals, on top of everything else lately, she doesn't exactly consider it much of a blessing. ]

Never hurt me before.

[ Maybe she's just used to a baseline level of misery, though, and doesn't notice when she's poisoned. ]

He cries out as if touched by a sun-hot brand, but he remains still except for a small jolt of muscle under fingertips. His cry extends into a keen. He is only what his body is doing. He loses track of where everyone is and who is touching him. (But he knows, he'd know that touch anywhere, and it's only this person who would touch him so hesitantly.)

"Kaworu-kun!" he gasps as he jerks up, turning, possessed by a fleeting urge to leap out of the truck to go back for him. He does not. There is someone in his way, close, blocking his vision. He arrests himself and crumples like a useless doll, his body understanding the futility of going back before his mind does. His face and shoulder thump gently against him.

Once, he was caught in the pouring rain as he collapsed and passed out. Today, he is still awake. Sobs convulse through him with double their strength.

No.

[ She delivers the news fretfully, and with a tinge of shame. It is not proper for an Omen to lose track of her Sleeper. ]

I know where he should be. But he goes away from me. I do not know where. His body is outside, with the boy-wizard.

[ Sophia tucks herself in close once again, a huddled, nearly invisible passenger. She remembers the smell of horses, even if she's never scented one herself. There is something about the rock that does soothe her, a sense-memory not her own. She pulses the coordinates of her Sleeper's physical form to the other Omen. ]

When she was gone, in the other girl, where were you? Do you remember?

Paul slips his hand out of Midoriya's soundlessly, folding to his knees where he stands as he did on the beach. He has even less to work with now, nothing but his still sharp fishknife, a single cone of incense, and his own guilty blood. It will be enough. The Reckoning is not a god of subtlety.

"No, he doesn't," Paul says, with matching quiet solemnity, and something in him has given way. He sets out his incense and lights it with a flaring finger, not caring that he's seen to do it, only that the bright arc of pain that runs up his arm adds to the siren's call of his yet unopened veins.

"Neither do you." He traces a scorch circle in the grass around it, a tang of ozone blending with the faint trace of salt in the air. His voice rises, steadily, swelling up with resignation like a bruise. "You think I don't know that this is over?"

The house and everything that was built in it are coming apart, even if it stays standing. He can hear its bones being broken and its sinews being torn. They are shattered and scattering, with everything Paul had thought he had made safe ruined and destroyed. This, them, everything - all of it done, so much dust.

"Look at what I did to him. What I did to you. What I did to everyone else. And you think I should tell him that. I shouldn't even have said it to you." He sits back on his heels and lets his hands fall to his lap, head tipped back to stare up at the blank, pitiless sky. "But I can't help myself, can I? I ruin things. People. It's what I'm best at. Every time I try to do anything else -"

He shrugs. It's off-balance, one shoulder higher than the other. He rolls his head forward, his neck bowed, and he takes a long, slow breath, in and out.

"What do you think I'm afraid of?"

[ Yes, those were almost certainly the exact words Gideon's sensei used. He definitely chose to employ mild, unassuming language, and probably picked his words carefully. Totally.

There's so much Daniel doesn't know. So much that could genuinely hurt him, and that's why Gideon chooses to keep talking. It's not because of the weight of these secrets, or the fear they inspire, or the isolation. Duh.

She doesn't meet Daniel's eyes. ]

He's God, where I'm from. The Kindly Prince. So he's, you know, super fucking powerful, and an asshole, but he pretends not to be. He likes to seem like a regular dude, one who could really like you.

[ One you want to like you. ]

He's also my dad. And he left me to drown in that deep fucking sea, so, you know. Real swell of him.

"I love you." Kaworu says, softly, but with a resolve that betrays a certain ferocity. As if he dares the world to deny it or refuse his truth. Buried in Izuku's gentle rhythm, he thinks of how he would play that voice message over and over again, curled up in a quiet house that no longer wanted him and that he no longer wanted in return. A place he'd been resigned to.

All he'd wanted to do was reply and beg Izuku to find him and save him from his own maelstrom of confusion and pain. Yet, he'd refrained. Afraid that there would be no hand offered to him. Or perhaps even more afraid that it would be withdrawn at the sight of him.

"I don't know if I a deserve your hand in mine but I'll never let it go again."

Paul half-starts upward as Midoriya does, wrenching another jolt of alertness out of overworked adrenal glands like it's nothing, his heart hammering in averted readiness as Midoriya slumps helplessly against him. His long arms are around the shorter boy's shoulders before thought can halt him, every instinct attuned to the heartbreak in those wracking sobs.

There was an instant where Paul thought he had burned him. It takes so much not to now, extinguishing flickers that spark into his fingertips on the cresting wave of fear. His hands are hot and dry as one curves around Midoriya's upper arm, another coming up to cradle the back of his head. He turns his face against messy green hair tucked against the crook of his neck where he settles him, and he lets himself feel the tears Midoriya weeps for both of them.

For all three of them.

There is nothing Paul can say, so he still says nothing. He rocks Midoriya softly back and forth as he sobs, counterbalancing the jarring of the truck bed, and if a trace of saltwater disappears into the verdant forest he hides his face in, who is there to know?

[ There's a faint nod when she mentions that first part - so it seems that he's at least heard about the different bloodtypes, even if he doesn't exactly know quite yet what the differences entail. At least he can grasp logically here that it means Vilebloods are somehow immune to poison and stuff like that, which is.. a wild thought. He supposes it's possible with one's blood having a different makeup and all, but it's all still pretty new and strange. ]

Well, if you're sure.

[ It's not like Daniel of all people is going to force anything on anyone. ]

I could try to see if I can make some sashimi soon, and then you can try it out first.

[ Kainé: official taste tester. At least it means she's the first to get to try all the good food.. ]

Does that sound good to you?

[ Under regular circumstances the first part would be the most surprising thing here. After all, where Daniel comes from, you don't often get to hear that someone is a literal God - not unless they're just some scam artist trying to start a cult, after all.

But even though he hasn't been in this place for long, this guy has had the world's fastest course in learning how to accept things that would have sounded completely ridiculous to you, once upon a time. It makes the God thing just a side fact in this entire matter, other than the fact that it means this person they're talking about is very powerful. More so than Johnny himself described, anyway, since he left it at 'oh, he might summon a few skeletons.'

No, what Daniel's attention is instead drawn to is the second part. ]

Your father left you to drown?

[ Maybe more mundane in the face of the entire god deal, but of course it's where Daniel's entire attention goes to instead. He has way too many dad feelings of his own to not be absolutely horrified by the idea. If it had been Sam or Anthony in that water, drowning, dying-- even just thinking about it threatens to make him sick.

How could any parent ignore that?

Daniel may have seemed calm a moment ago, but the worry is very visible on his face now. His skin may even have grown a touch more pale. ]

That's.. why you died? Because you drowned, and he didn't even try to save you?

Midoriya, like most Japanese people, was never religious except in a customary, matter-of-fact sense. If asked, he might say he doesn't really profess a religion, or simply shrug. But he's checked his apartment for ghosts and leaves little offerings to large and small deities when he happens upon their shrines. It's just practical to avoid restless spirits and polite to pay respects to local kami.

Normally the shedding of blood is considered pollution and not a suitable offering. This is not a Sleeper preconception, but one Midoriya carried from home. However, Midoriya readily accepts that Pthumerians can operate on a different logic. He's used to the concept of multitudinous gods, each more different than the last.

He balls his hands into fists at his sides and frowns, tight-lipped. He needs Paul strong and ready for anything, not like this.

"...What made you scared just a minute ago," he answers.

He folds his legs under him as he did when kneeling in Kaworu's room. He doesn't face Paul as an adversary, but by his side as a friend, ally, and fellow supplicant. He stares at the little smoking cone giving off its cloying holy scent.

"A while ago, someone apologized for hurting me. I didn't realize that I needed to hear it, to know they cared about me. I... almost didn't get to hear it at all." A tear slips down his freckled cheek as he looks at Paul. "Yeah, sometimes you give someone love or kindness, and it's rejected. Kaworu-kun might not even be looking at us. But please tell him."

[ Kainé doesn't really bother trying to understand it, or most of the things that take place in Trench. There are other people that do, and she'll ask them if she really needs it. She's just so used to bad things happening arbitrarily, that asking why is more of a function of grief than interrogation sometimes. ]

Yep.

[ She nods, and despite herself, her lips quirk in a small smile. It's been rough lately. She has to take the little things as they come. ]

Well, shit. I ain't turning down more free food.

[ Big Boy knows what it is to go away. To be separate, fractured, less. There is no judgment, only the steadiness of someone with a job to do.

Her calm is disturbed by the other Omen's question. There is a shock of fear, too quick for Big Boy to hide. Sophia's question does not have an answer in words, because there are no words to describe what happened to her Sleeper's soul. What happened was an atrocity. The best Big Boy can do is an amalgam of gone-drowned-eaten-lost, and even that is not enough.

(There are parts of Big Boy that are missing, even now. Bald patches in her coat, places where the smoke does not fully coalesce, no matter how hard she tries.) ]

The strangled little noise Paul makes is nothing like a laugh. He closes his eyes as Midoriya kneels next to him like he doesn't despise him, ever generous even to his villains, and lets his head roll forward to hang as Midoriya speaks.

"I'm not afraid you'll reject me." Paul produces his ritual knife with a flick of his wrist, a bead of frustration working into his voice. "You should. You both should."

The proper form of this would be to have Midoriya take the knife and inflict the wound, but Paul can see the fight that would come of it with the dull foresight of mundane understanding. Self-inflicted will have to do. He raises the razor sharp blade to the crook between thumb and index finger and rests it there, already biting lightly into yet-unbroken skin.

"I'm afraid you'll go somewhere I can't bring you back from," he says, staring forward at nothing, and then, irrelevantly, unbidden, "At least he wasn't sick."

Paul slits his palm down to the flexor tendons, bisecting the branching loop of the radial artery in a gush of oxygenated blood that spurts obscenely once before it subsides into a torrent that slicks down Paul's upraised forearm and drips heavily on the cone of incense, plumes of cinnamon and iron scented steam rising from the contact between the profane and the divine.

It's then Paul raises his hand, signing with slippery, reddened fingers: I love you.

He knows it intimately. "The same fear I--"

The blade, so true, cuts so easily it hardly seems as if it cuts at all. Paul's hand simply opens of its own accord, and blood is spilling across the deck of a ship as the smell of iron fills the sea air. Midoriya opens his mouth to say something about cutting too deep and immediately regrets it as he tastes it, and he can only see the dark red inside of his eyelids as he hears the gagged protests of the sacrificial victims--

His eyes have been open, and he is kneeling on grass as his head snaps in alarm towards a crack of displaced air. He recognizes the hem of the giant robes. A giant sword hovers as if to harvest the tops of the nearby trees. The Reckoning is a Pthumerian of action, so it is fitting she is prompt.

At this moment, he should make a proper greeting, perhaps bow and clap his palms. All he can do in the feral buzz of his panic is activate the Full Cowl of One For All. Its warmth spreads to fingers gone cold with fear that the one next to him will be taken away again. He grabs Paul's arm despite his claws and opens his mouth in a strangled shout up, up at the helmet lurching against the sky:

"HE'S MINE!" he protests (commands, snarls, pleads) through the red staining his fangs, and he's a coil caught in a surge of rage and pain.

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

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