deercountry | 08 . family drama

[For all of the bravado that Oscar had worn during this entire affair, the frustrations of maintaining such a front in the face of the unknown was starting to wear on him. He had said and done things that he regretted, even though it would still be a lie to admit that he was sorry for his actions.

He wasn't. He would do it again.

But the strain of carrying that burden along with the rest of his responsibilities was only obvious when he stepped into the artificially lit greenhouse and breathed. Shoulders dropping, he took a moment to just appreciate the smell of clean dirt while he listened to Paul's words.]

... You don't need to apologize, [he cut in quickly, dropping all of his acts and just being... Himself. An ordinary farmhand who liked the ordinary things in life.]

I should have said something to you. But... I panicked.

It's never good when anyone panics.

[Seeing Paul's curious hands, he picked off a sprig of basil for the other teen to investigate and appreciate.]

Before everything happened and hit the road to find Ruby, I was helping my Aunt with the family farm. Gardening helps me feel better when things are going wrong.

[Bushing his fingers over his herbs and the tiny green tomatoes that were no bigger than marbles, he added:]

I lost all this when the dream collapsed, but I managed to store a lot of the seeds away. When we found this house again, it was nice to find out that the seeds were still viable after everything.

[On the network, it had been like speaking with someone entirely different from the tiredly determined and earnest boy in front of him now. Paul accepts the sprig of basil with a flicker of surprise cresting through his own careful composition, looking down at it in his palm longer than he should. He rolls the herb between his fingertips, delicately bruising it to bring its volatile oils to the surface, and raises it to his face to breathe it in.]

You're right about panic. [Paul glances up, his wariness undercut by muted regret.] But I do need to apologize. I am sorry.

[He's sorry for a great many things. It's not difficult to be. He'd be better off if it didn't come so easily to him, this constant, pointless sorriness. He watches Oscar skim his fingers (whole, intact) over his salvaged plants, and he can't help but recall the impulse of recognition that led him to invite Oscar over for the first time. He can't help but feel it again.]

I'm glad you were able to save something. It would be a shame to lose all of this. [He puts every tonal modifier for not-a-threat he knows into the words, in the hopes they'll be understood.] ...it's funny, isn't it?

[The question floats suspended between them, ambiguously framed as Paul lowers his hand, exhaling rich, cool air subtly flooded with the scent of earth and living green things.]

You'd think that practice at losing things would make you better at it. It never seems to work that way. At least not in my experience.

[It wouldn't have been the first time Oscar was accused of being someone different. His first encounter with Ruby involved Qrow.... well, crowing about how he found Ozpin in a fit of drunken giddiness that ultimately broke the coffee table. At night, when shadows stretched beyond his grasp and the clocked ticked determinedly into eternity, he still could hear a certain question when he was at his most anxious:

"To whom am I speaking?"

In many ways, Paul had been speaking to Oscar on the network that evening-- but also someone who was so much more than anything Oscar could muster as just... himself.

He dimly recognized that this must be what the path towards corruption meant for him. It meant losing the parts that made him an individual-- the parts that he broke his egg and murdered a young girl to keep.]

...Losing things never makes you any better at it,

[He said quietly, with the odd gravity that sometimes fell on him when he was feeling a tad grim. It was times like these that Dipper would pull him aside for something ridiculous, or Ruby would blow straw paper wrappers at him for.

Paul was Paul. He didn't know the depths of what the being known as Oz had to endure.]

It just shows you different ways to lose, and it never gets easier.

Edited 2022-04-27 00:12 (UTC)

[Paul watches solemnity beyond Oscar's apparent years fall across him. He understands better now than he did on the beach, or even on the couch, where it comes from. The words that the no-longer anonymous stranger cast before him like dark pearls are heavy on his mind.

Paul believes Oscar understands loss the way that birds understand the wind, and he wonders, for an absurdity of a moment, how Oscar might react if Paul told him that the black eyed man he's so afraid of understands it too. That they've both told Paul the same thing about it, in almost the same words.

Never, Oscar says, and Paul believes him. He doesn't need every gory detail spread out before him like augury.]

No. It doesn't. [He runs his fingernail along the stem of the herb in his palm.] I've always hated losing anything. Even small things. It's not one of my better qualities.

[He allows time for that to settle. He doesn't look around him for the fern, which has long since stopped being exactly the point of all of this, if it ever was, but he thinks about it.]

You're afraid he'll take things from you. [A soft note of sympathy, an undertone of understanding.] What happened didn't help.

...It's not that at all.

[Oscar said simply, as if he were explaining a plot point in a book rather than an example of his own personal torment. The words didn't convey much and, knowing this, he called back to their conversation on the post that encouraged anonymous gossip which had exploded beyond measure. He had divulged a great number of personal details on that post-- a fact which he regretted, but couldn't take back. Instead, trailing his fingers along the fuzzy stem of his tomato plants, he elaborated.]

His eyes look like the woman who tortured me.

[He let the words hang there. Although he said it in the same plain tones as earlier, Oscar understood that it was a heavy bomb to just drop out of nowhere. Stories of shared loss would have no impact on his own problems, because there were no excuses.

It was loss which had pushed Salem over the edge into madness. Loss which propelled her to defy the gods repeatedly until they cursed her to be undying and fueled the flames that drove her to destroy humanity.

As much as he wanted to explain, he instead just shook his head.]

It was almost a year and a half ago by this point. It's been just about a year since she took my leg. But, I guess injuries like that keep hurting after it's over.

[A shrug. He still carried the scar on his chest from his encounter with her. His leg was still missing; Ruby's eye, lost due to hallucinations related to that woman, was still a robotic facsimile based on Atlesian tech.

It was a hurt that wouldn't heal the normal way.]

I told you. I panicked. I was just trying to get information, to make sure you were safe.

[...with that, he finally looked up and met Paul's gaze.]

But. You're well aware of the danger. You're too smart not to be.

[Thoughts of reiterating what he meant, trying to explain himself better, fall aside as Oscar continues speaking in his soft, matter-of-fact tone. Paul is silently attentive, his eyes fixed to Oscar's face as if held there by magnetic force. When he speaks of being tortured, losing his leg, Paul winces faintly, troubled by guilt he doesn't know how to name.

He knows about holding things at a distance. The necessity of doing so, if a person wants to survive. If some things are allowed to sink their teeth into a soul, they'll never let it go, or so Paul has every reason to believe. The past is a poison to sip lightly, lest it overtake you.

He understands. After all - there's a reason he said things and not people.]

...I wasn't able to sleep through the night for months, after I came here. [Now he looks away, fixates on the tiny bud of a still-closed flower.] I don't understand exactly what you went through, but I understand...scars.

[It's not a well-kept secret. It's also nothing so terrible to be ashamed of. Admitting to it still feels like a vulnerability, but he's beginning to learn that's what people need, in moments like these. Show me your throat, I show you mine.]

All power is dangerous. Where I come from, that's something you know, or you don't survive long enough to know anything else. [He lets out a soft, controlled breath.] I know not everywhere is like that. I should have thought about it. I overlooked it, and you paid the price. So maybe you were right about me the first time. I wasn't smart enough to see that danger, was I?

You made that plain enough when you jumped in to defend him from an anonymous ghost.

[The sass turned back on with a raised brow. Power was a concept he understood in his bones, but was still learning about on a conscious level. In many ways, it was like having the keys to an endless library with contents that were unknown beyond mere surface level understanding. As much as he railed against exploring that library, the shadows within it had already taken a hold in his soul.

Such effects couldn't be swept aside. He was changed no matter what he wished.

No matter what, he was always paying for the mistakes of another.]

It's okay. This isn't the first time I've done something I knew could be dangerous without telling anyone first. Those times ended up... pretty bad, but it worked out.

[Even if he knew he was giving Jaune heart attacks with every time he decided to go walk about without warning.]

...I'm not used to having the time to plan things out. Power is dangerous, but so is not acting when you see an opening. Where I'm from, a moment's decision can make the difference between life or death no matter how much power or experience you have.

Huntsmen and Huntresses don't have long careers. And, I don't think my predecessors did either after they were chosen by their fate.

[Paul watches the wall of wryness come back up, a distance unusual in someone Oscar's age (but what does that matter, with someone like him?), with a bitter twist of salt at the back of his own mouth. They're perhaps a meter apart in space, but worlds apart in context.

It's a wall he's tried and failed to scale before. He half-closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath, fixes the faces of the people he came here for in his mind.]

I don't blame you for acting on the knowledge you had at the time, according to your understanding of things. You saw an opportunity, and you acted. I've done the same.

[He has to work from base principles. He has to try to persuade Oscar to see his perspective, even if he doesn't understand it. They may never achieve a joint context, but perhaps they can still achieve communication.]

You assume he's the one I'm defending. He doesn't need me to defend him, and he didn't ask me to.

In your world, when people transgress against someone powerful, who is it that ends up harmed? [He tilts his head back, looking up at the filtered light through the greenhouse roof.] It's not the king who suffers most in a war, is it? Unless your universe is much more enlightened than mine is, I doubt it.

I don't want anyone to suffer through that. Not you, not the people who live in this house, and not the people who live in mine. Whatever you think of my methods, I want you to understand my motives.

...Everyone gets hurt, Paul.

[The words were spoken with a seriousness of understanding. Although Oscar didn't have it in his memories yet, he knew that his struggles back on Remnant end up resulting in the floating city of Atlas falling despite all of their best efforts. Safety wasn't guaranteed for the people they helped escape, because no one knew what was waiting for them in the desert city of Vacuo that they had convinced a veritable demigod to help them construct a portal to. With certain death on one side of the spatially folded passage and a desolate wasteland potentially filled with monsters on the other, Oscar couldn't imagine the sheer levels of terror everyone must have felt.]

And, even if you don't wish it, there's often suffering anyway. Putting yourself forward to take the fall doesn't spare others-- it sets them up for a different kind of pain if you don't succeed.

[Says the kid who ran off in the midst of an explosive firefight to try to talk the General down from enacting full scale Martial Law.]

I hate to say it, but it's a gamble. I knew the odds of success with anything were slim if my hunch was right, but that was why I went to get information first instead of just... approaching.

...It sounds like our motives are similar. But, Paul. What are you planning?

[Oscar's question is answered first by Paul putting his hand over his eyes, his head tipping even farther back, his throat bare and exposed as if he's in perfect safety here. He drags it down his face with a hollow laugh, a dry hah more exhale than amusement.]

You sound like - [he meets Oscar's eyes, his mouth twisted in a slight smile] - like someone I used to know. He'd agree with you, which is another way of saying you're right, and I should know better.

[It's possible Gurney might not appreciate being compared to a teenage boy with a tender greenhouse - but Paul thinks he wouldn't mind it. He might even have found it funny, in his sharply wry way.]

What am I planning. [He pauses, a drawn out span.] To get the fern back, if you'll give it to me. To make as much of a peace between your house and mine as I can, for whatever that's worth to anyone else. Isn't that enough? Can't it be?

[There's too much of the plaintive in his voice, an unseemly desperate thread. Isn't it enough? Can't it be? He asks himself that every day that he strives to be the kind of person who might answer yes.

(Of course it's not. He knows that. But what else can he do?)]

Someone at your house puked in the fern. It's not enough-- do you know what a pain it is getting stomach juices out of the soil chemistry?

[He's being dramatic.

But. ]

If you have to ask that, Paul, then you already know the answer.

[It wasn't enough, but he couldn't force the information into the open if it was against Paul's will. Instead he thought of Ozpin, and those moments in the snowy mountain pass when they did force the truth into the open.

The fallout was still ongoing.]

I know something about secrets, Paul. I also know something about despair.

["Is there any way I can stop Salem?"

"You can't." ]

... These kinda things are always easier to carry if you let your friends help.

They did what-

[If Oscar is being dramatic, Paul's immediate affront at the revelation about what happened to the fern is an audience being drawn into the play. He's halfway to formulating a question about who when Oscar grounds him back in reality.

His mouth shuts with a click in his jaw that he never used to hear, and he thinks about that as he listens. It's a trivial thing to think about, but is it any less so than a fern? Aren't they both small things that point to a larger one? How long can he ignore the way his shoulders ache?]

Is that what this is? That we're friends?

[They could be bitter questions, or edged ones. All it would take is a slight adjustment of inflection, but Paul holds his tone steady and true. He wants to know. He wants to know with a force that surprises him, that lives in the memory-space of the joints of his hands.]

Why would you want that? After everything that happened to you because of knowing me?

[Oscar heaved a deep sigh, shoulders sagging under the weight of these questions and suppositions. There were so many variables in play that it was hard to tell where the paths diverged-- but, he needed to get this settled.]

You could ask the same about Ruby.

[He explained candidly, blunt and yet not harsh. It was a simple truth that he had already comes to terms with. Shifting uncomfortably, to get some weight off of the prosthesis he did his best to not make a big deal about, he elaborated.]

I've nearly met my end five times over since meeting her. I've been shot, tortured, lost a leg-- all in no small part because I admire her will to do the right thing no matter the personal cost to her.

...It's just how life is on Remnant-- so, until you willingly aim a gun at me, I say it's worth the risk.

[It was a bold declaration of just the way he thought and they way he had learned how to live. Culture shock could be applied to anyone interacting with someone from Remnant.

This was also why Oscar found it funny when people suggested that he kept Dipper in line. The truth was the opposite: Dipper kept Oscar in line.]

You tell me, Paul. Are we friends?

[Paul listens to Oscar declare himself a martyr with a sense of foreboding he knows better than to call illusory. The teeth of a trap cast shadows over both of them at the edges of his vision-beyond-vision, sea-damp fingers tracing the pearls of his spine up to his neck, curling with skin-prickling cold into the soft hair at its nape.

He makes a warding symbol with his left hand, a brief suggestion of an eye between fingers and thumb, and he holds his inner eye shut with a wrenching bile-brine trickle at the back of his throat.]

I'd like us to be.

[Perhaps that's why his soft voice has a momentary rasping quality before he swallows it down, shaking his head as if clearing it of some clinging dust.]

But I'd prefer it not cost you so much. [He half-laughs, or something like it, a rustling breath out.] I underestimated your commitment, Oscar. I underestimated a lot of things about you.

I don't know where that leaves us. I'd prefer not to point a gun at you, willingly or not. For one thing, I don't think Ruby would approve. So what do you want me to do?

[He means this question too, maybe even more than the last one.]

[Was it martyrdom when everyone knew somebody or knew of somebody that had died by the Grimm? Was it martyrdom to recognize possibilities within your reach and make moves to grasp them before the endless march of time ripped them away?

Perhaps. This was the debacle everyone from Remnant grappled with on some level. Few of them made careers out of fighting the Grimm and lived to see retirement. Fewer still were able to render any positive change in their world.

And yet-- they smiled, partly from necessity. The beasts would converge on any point with too much negativity of their numbers were dense enough and the emotion was heavy enough.

There was no escape.]

...A lot of people do,

[He said quietly, rubbing at his arm nervously and looking away. This wasn't a fact that he liked even bringing up. He didn't want to have to live a life where people realized with uncertainty and even fear that they had underestimated him.]

And... it's okay. Lots of people are surprised by how we live on Remnant. I still stop and ask myself sometimes if things like learning to fight off Grimm to save the harvest before even getting a driver's license is really normal.

Somehow, I don't think it is.

[A sigh.]

I want us to be friends to. So... just talk to me. I know Ruby is fond of Gideon, and I don't want to see any of them hurt, but this isn't looking like it's even my fight.

Just. Tell me how I can help you help them. If that's what you're doing.

[The way Oscar shies away from Paul's new estimation says as much as his no longer anonymous message did, another parallel to run him through like a pin. He feels a strange sympatico of uncomfortable revelation. It's not only courtesy that makes him look away this time.

People underestimate him as well. There are times it's an irritant, but rarely does that irritation outweigh the sensation of freedom. He wants to be seen, to be understood (why else is he here, trying to be as honest as he knows how to be?), but he flinches from the reality, because -

It's trite. He's more sick of himself than anyone else is, his own failure to tie off that knot. Oscar thinks he sees Paul, and he has seen more than most people. Perhaps Paul sees more of him than he lets other people see as well.

Perhaps that's a kind of friendship, one he hasn't known before.

He looks around this green and peaceful chamber of Oscar's heart, full of the things he saved from a nightmare. He considers what it means to cultivate something, to carve out a space where things can grow, and what it might say about the person who would choose that over the killing of monsters.]

I think normal is a relative term.

[He turns back to Oscar with a decision made in the clear lines of his jaw and the clarity of new leaf eyes.]

If anything happens, could they come to you? To this place? Gideon, Harrowhark, Palamedes, Kaworu. Would you take them in, offer them your help? Speak out on their behalf?

[He asks the questions plainly and boldly, borne up on an intuition singing in his blood. He thinks he sees, now, the kind of man he's dealing with. A good one.]

That's what would help them. A place they could go for refuge, if they need it. Would you give them that?

[He would always choose maintaining a garden over fighting monsters. Anyone could fight off beasts if they tried hard enough. Having finesse and skill at it took practice, but anyone could take a shovel and deliver a beat down if it was required.

Not everyone knew how to garden, though. And, Hunger was an insidious beast that couldn't be killed with brute force. It was a small way Oscar had found to help the people he cared about-- and, hopefully, the larger community.

The question drew his attention to Paul once again, hazel eyes bright with clear surprise.]

Of course I would. The safehouses are one of Ruby's projects, and it's one of mine to keep them stocked. There's plenty of resources for everyone. But...

[He wasn't an idiot. He saw exactly who was being left out of this equation.]

Paul. What are you planning? Don't be crazy.

[Says the boy who heard it from the mouth of a friend that he would choose the path of terror just a short while after his own memories of Remnant ended. Oscar knew he would never fully be able to earn Jaune's forgiveness for leaving him terrified over Oscar's safety no less than three times in a row. Pressing forth with his words, Oscar continued. Although they didn't have any spirits of infinite knowledge in Trench... they had their wits, and maybe a little foresight to guide them.]

If he's anything like Salem-- that Witch who only wants destruction back in my world-- I don't know if there's anything people like you or I can do.

[Paul folds his hands behind his back, tucking his chin slightly, a smile that's nearly shy in its ambiguity making a crescent curve of his mouth. There's a lightness in his stance of a weight that, if not lifted, has been shifted to a more bearable balance.]

Now who's underestimating who?

[Like the near shyness, it's nearly teasing. If not for the violet hollows of worry under his eyes that no swift reprieve can remove, it might be wholly so. He hasn't gotten everything he wanted, but he's gained an assurance of something far more valuable.

And maybe he's managed to salvage something else he didn't know he had, until it was slipping through his fingers. He has such slight experience making friends the way people here seem to - what does he know about how it's done?]

Like I said. I'm not planning anything. [He turns serious at that, smile disappearing back to whatever fey place he called it from.] These are just contingencies.

Not everyone thinks like you do about people. Judges them on their own merits. Or lack thereof. [This, with a wry glance down at himself.] You should be proud of that. And I'm grateful for it.

Contingencies are important,

[Oscar said listening to Paul's explanation. In a perfect world, his predecessors would have put better ones in place-- ones that encouraged a little honesty. It would have spared everyone a little heartache.]

So's taking people as they are. I'm jumpy, but I like to think I know a little bit about both.

[Reaching over, he pulled the fern out from the place it had nestled among the tomato plants and the potted herbs. Holding it out for Paul, he continued:]

Trust me when I say that communicating your wishes to the people involved is important. Secrecy can hurt more people than it helps if you're not careful.

[By this point, Paul isn't surprised that Oscar picked up on his slight secondary implication. It just adds another degree to the tilt of his smile, his mouth beginning to part to respond with something else wry and precisely formulated - and it keeps parting in soft surprise when Oscar produces the fern.

It looks all right. Better than it should, if someone really vomited on it, and Paul reaches for it without hesitation. If Oscar has gone to the trouble to hold onto some secret revenge hidden in a plant pot, Paul would almost think he deserves to see it unfold.

Nothing happens. Paul brings the fern to him like a precious, fragile heirloom, securing it in the crook of his arm. His surprise gives way to subdued gratitude, something even more delicate at its edges.]

Thank you.

[It's been months since Paul has felt humbled in this way, unsettled in the presence of grace, unearned and unwarranted. Oscar could have asked for more than this from him, or refused on principle. And so, because he was asked for so little, he feels the need to give more. It's a strange thing, reciprocation.]

I've been hearing that, lately. [About secrecy; about communicating your wishes.] Oscar...if there ever is anything you need to know - anything that might harm you, or your household - I will tell you, if I can. I'm trying to be better about that.

We're both Palebloods. There's always a way to find me.

[Although the bond between himself and Dipper had strengthened their dynamics, there was no reason why similar effects such as visiting each other's dreams in an emergency couldn't be achieved between other Palebloods. Oscar tried to keep his tone neutral, but quietly he felt himself tense in alarm.

Whatever was going on, it was bigger than the both of them. It was egoistic to think that either of them could be the hero. However, a part of him recognized this pattern-- this quiet insistence on doing something terrible, and doing it alone.

Hadn't he done the same thing back in Remnant?]

Paul-- I know this probably isn't going to make a difference. But, if your people are anything like mine? They're not going to take kindly to you just doing whatever without telling them.

If you get hurt, you're going to hurt them too.

[Half a year ago, Paul would have dismissed that warning. It would have rolled off of him like water from the sleek hide of a seal, or struck him as a well-intentioned but misguided appeal to fundamental human weakness.

But he's learned things about loss since then. He looks at the fern, its soft, curling fronds, and the black eyes he thinks of are only nearly black, lapped at the edges with residual grief. He thinks of ash grey, of heart red. He thinks of blue, shadeless and bright, reflected back at him, the empty color of a world without.]

I know.

[He readjusts the fern like a little animal, as if its roots can sense his cradling, and gives Oscar a wan, careworn smile.]

So the trick is not getting myself hurt, isn't it? [The smile drops, seriousness filling the space it leaves.] Maybe I should start with not picking fights with mysterious strangers. Even ones who turn out to be excellent gardeners.

[He knows, now, what it is to lose. It's a hard-earned lesson, and one he won't forget any time soon. So what that leaves him as a choice is simple: whatever he does, he needs to make sure he can't fail at doing, whatever it takes.]

[Oscar returned the careworn smile with one of his own, despite how concerning and frightening the ideas that Paul was suggesting were. This wasn't his fight, and yet Oscar couldn't help but watch, wonder, and worry.]

"...It's more than getting yourself hurt," [He explained with the tired patience of someone who had seen all of this and done all of this. Jaune's face when they finally met up after Oscar's fall in Mantle was still impressed on his memory-- the fear, the pain, and the relief he had read on the normally goofy blond's face wasn't something he could forget no matter how hard he tried.

"Sometimes, it's also thinking about how your actions might be hurting the people you're trying to help. But... you're the only one who can make these decisions."

He laughed softly, bitterly. "I'm just that guy who likes to garden."

[Reconciling Oscar's dual nature fully will take time, but Paul slots another piece of the puzzle into place now, that weary set of experience on a face too young and innocent to bear it. He's seen it before, on the face of someone who may have said much the same, if in less gentle terms.

I'm just a baliset player, he'd told Paul, once, tired and undone, What do I know?]

I don't think you're just anything. [He says, as quietly as he answered then.] Someone who was just anything wouldn't have made it this far.

[Through the life he described before this place, through the life he lived in the dream, then this place, all the way to here, leveraging all the might of a fern against the will of a god. What can Paul do but be impressed?]

I'd heard it said only a fool keeps sole council with himself. Do they say anything like that where you come from? It's good advice.

08 . family drama

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