Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

[strikefirster]

Who: Johnny, Daniel, Ortus, Gideon Nav's Exquisite Corpse, Paul, Kaworu, Deku, Harrow, Maybe more?
What: Kidnapping, Forced Adoption, Getting these kids away from the Emperor
When: Shortly after boatgate
Where: The Bone House and Cobra Kai

Content Warnings: Probably references to Murder, Manipulation, Johnny Lawrence.

Prompts and Mingle will be in the comments.

Comments

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul remains quiet and still as Oscar explains, outlining some things he understood, recontextualizing others, and revealing previous unknowns. It is a heavy weight, but he shoulders it readily.]

I don't ask questions I don't want answers to.

[Unvoiced, the tone is lost, but Paul doesn't mean it to be short. He knows that he's unusual for that, among a host of other things he's unusual for. Another one of those things whirs into life at the edges of perception, the processing engines of his mind taking the story apart and putting it back together with nearly mechanical efficiency.]

Why was Cynthia different from you two, and Julia? Theories and facts.

[He should be gentler. He should pay more attention to the tragedy of this story. He doesn't know if he has anything like that left in him.]

[justoscar]

[silence answered.

Oscar hung in the ether, feeling bombarded by question after question after he had spent the afternoon watching Paul act as of driven by unconscious directive. It was surreal-- not too unlike the moments when he had relinquished control of his body to Ozpin.

The only difference was that he didn't have a body.]

It was a dream, Paul. Dreams don't operate the way normal things do.

[Even if he still felt chained to those memories and the decisions he had made.]

Cynthia, released from the bindings of a role she didn't ask for, was free to become her true self.

She became the Moon Presence we know here.

Ozpin and I wanted to believe that the same would happen with Julia... And with us.

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul takes a deep, expansive breath in, one conspicuous enough to draw attention. He shakes his head slightly, and absurdly wonders if it might make Oscar dizzy.]

But it was different.

[Being unable to change in a world that offers that promise in so many forms; that's a story that touches too close to the bone, which is enough to push him out of the rut of efficiency.]

We'll work on that later. One thing at a time.

What's next?

[justoscar]

... Nothing.

We wait a day, and I won't be a problem for you.

That's how it worked in the Dream.

[It was cold, and matter of fact, but he didn't know what to do. Anna's words so haunted him, and he knew that Paul played a hand somehow in what went down.

Distance was the best he could offer: he just wanted to be with Ozpin. ]

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul lapses into silence. His mental scrawl stills. He can sense Oscar’s withdrawal, close enough to his own feelings he has to suppress the instinctive buck of his defensive conditioning against planted emotion, but he doesn’t know what to do about it.

Oscar isn’t a guest. He’s a shipwrecked soul cast up on an unsuitable beach, and there is no pleasantry that can erase the circumstances of how he came to be here. Paul worked too much havoc to pretend at being a good host now.]

You’re not a problem.

[That’s the only other thing he writes. There’s nothing else to say.]