Entry tags:
there's no way you can save it now
Who: Taro Watanabe and Jaune Arc
When: July 30 after this conversation
Where: Jaune's house
What: Taro made himself sad. Hopefully a friend will help cheer him up.
Taro... tends to keep up his happy mask. He tends to try to keep making sure that other people are okay, rather than take care of himself. And what does it matter anyway? He's dead now, so who cares? He tries to pull back from the the thought as much as he can, but it still pesters him, like a hangnail he can't quite clip.
Not that he usually has to deal with those, since his form is an illusion, but now it's not and it's very frustrating.
He heads over towards Jaune's place, trying to slip back into Kei's mindset - similar to his, but utterly human and utterly unworried about death other than it being the time he can't do cool stuff anymore. It sort of helps, so he keeps the smile on his face as he knocks on the door.
"Hey, John?" Not like 'Jaune' sounds much different, but he's not sure who's going to answer.
When: July 30 after this conversation
Where: Jaune's house
What: Taro made himself sad. Hopefully a friend will help cheer him up.
Taro... tends to keep up his happy mask. He tends to try to keep making sure that other people are okay, rather than take care of himself. And what does it matter anyway? He's dead now, so who cares? He tries to pull back from the the thought as much as he can, but it still pesters him, like a hangnail he can't quite clip.
Not that he usually has to deal with those, since his form is an illusion, but now it's not and it's very frustrating.
He heads over towards Jaune's place, trying to slip back into Kei's mindset - similar to his, but utterly human and utterly unworried about death other than it being the time he can't do cool stuff anymore. It sort of helps, so he keeps the smile on his face as he knocks on the door.
"Hey, John?" Not like 'Jaune' sounds much different, but he's not sure who's going to answer.
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After the exchange on the app, Jaune had started getting some snacks together. He had a hunch it was going to be one of those get togethers and he HAD just been talking about that being a skill he could use to contribute outside of combat. Thankfully, he didn't have to worry about anything accidentally burning when the knock came. His mother was still at the restaurant and his sister was either at school or pulling a shift--he wasn't entirely sure which, but she certainly wasn't home.
"Hi, come on in," he said after opening the door. He stepped aside to let Kei inside. It was time for another post-Awakening conversation he supposed.
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"Would I be correct in guessing this might require some snacks?"
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He led the way into the kitchen then. Figuring that would give them a place to snack and a room where they could get a warning if his mom or sister came in through the front door.
"Mom doesn't keep much alcohol around anyway," Jaune admitted. He was 18, so technically he probably could have gotten some for Taro -- who couldn't have been too far behind him -- but as he just said at this point it didn't really matter. Instead, he focuses on pulling over a plate of cookies he'd been working on and moving them onto the counter to rest in front of Taro. He hoped that would serve as enough of an ice breaker to get the real conversation going.
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It took a few moments until he swallowed the cookie, and he stared at the partial cookie in his hand before looking up at Jaune. How to begin...
"... Have you ever had a situation where you know you did all you could, and it ended up in failure for you anyway?"
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When Taro asked his next question though, he nearly choked on the cookie. Not only was that a pretty good summary of his life to a degree...it was a particularly sore spot in terms of one of the memories that still made it hard to sleep sometimes. Jaune wiped away the crumbs he had spewed, looking a little sheepish and pale at the same time. "Uhm...yeah I guess you could say that," Jaune said.
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"Except... there's been a shift in power. The people on the top are getting in contact with the gods again. We know they exist - my best friend's mother is Inari. But they're... they don't talk to us, really. But the people on top are trying to get more power and they're setting up cults and stuff to give worship back to the gods... and it's not right. So I've been collecting information." He just put the cookie down, pressing his head into his hands.
"I stole things that I swore I'd never try to touch. I bribed people with more than I should have. I did everything I could to try to get information, and it wasn't enough. And they tracked me down. They tracked me down and sent an assassin after me and I don't know if it's going to be enough for Toshiko to find and follow up on. But what if she does? What if she... I don't want her to die, too!" He wiped his face, trying and failing to not cry, breaking down into sobs. "I... I shouldn't... I trust her, and she's smart, but I don't want her to die... she's my best friend. She's like my sister. And she's the only one I have left. The only one who didn't die in hunger and pain..."
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He gets that it is serious on some level, but Jaune doesn't quite understand how serious until it actually causes the other to sob. Oh...jeeze this is not what he thought they'd be talking about at all. Jaune gets back up from his seat and crosses over to Taro, resting a hand on his shoulder, "Hey...it's...," he catches himself before he can say 'okay' because it might not be. That was probably the biggest lesson he learned out of the fall of Beacon, that sometimes things just weren't going to be okay. What should he say? "It...sounds like you made some bad choices, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to come back from that."
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"Sorry. I shouldn't be springing this on you. I mean... heh. I just... people like me are just like any human. We want the people we care about to be safe. We want to have fun. We want to live our lives. But... I never imagined any of this would happen when I helped set up our branch like a century ago. I just wanted us to be able to be safe."
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Jaune considers it, leaning back to the counter and offering him some napkins. It isn't as nice as tissue -- which would probably be elsewhere in the house -- but it's better than nothing. "I think everyone wants that if you really get down to it, safety that is. That's what spurred a lot of the conflict and negotiations for peace where I'm from...though it always seems to be a pretty delicate balance because there's usually something else at stake that people want to defend," Jaune says. "I think," he hesitates, "I think as much as we may want it...one person can't keep the world safe like that...or even a small group for that matter."
"Besides...it sounds like a lot to be holding in. I know the memories can be rough...but yours sound like they might be a lot more than anyone else I've talked to," Jaune admits, thinking about the fact that if he's at least a century old then that's a lot to process...on top of apparently being dead. "I...can probably only just listen, but I hope that helps in some way," Jaune adds.
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"But... um. ... Thanks. I'm not normally so open about this sort of stuff, it's just... this whole thing has been weird. And - shit." He groans, and presses his face into his hands again. "Shit, the survey things. Speaking of weird, some of the answers I had there..."
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Jaune has to think for a minute. So much had happened since the survey part of the app had been used. "Oh...you mean the whole soul eating thing?" Again, tact Jaune, you should really work on that. To his credit, he doesn't seem scared so much as confused and perhaps a little worried or curious. "Sorry...that probably wasn't the best way to phrase that...I mean the app always brings up stuff we wouldn't necessarily want to go around sharing," he's babbling, which he does a lot these days, especially when he's put his foot in his mouth.
Jaune stops, takes a breath, and tries again, "Look. I don't want you to feel obligated to share everything with me. It...it feels unbalanced, since I was already Awakened before you and so you weren't there for when I was a mess. You don't have to explain yourself or share these things your uncomfortable with if you don't want to. You aren't obligated to..."
He wants to believe that the person he has memories of here isn't completely gone, but he also knows that might be something he'll have to accept. That's probably been the hardest part in dealing with all of this: consolidating memories of two different lives and trying to come to terms with that.
But...the guy was openly sobbing in his kitchen a few seconds ago. Surely he can't be a complete monster. As he insisted before on the network...there has to be some kind of story, right? And while Jaune just said that he isn't obligated to share, there's a part of him that really wants to know.
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He's still been wrestling with the idea of Kei existing. the guy seems to have everything Taro's wanted, and still he's not satisfied. Would he be, if he got what he wanted? He's not sure.
"... You don't have to share with me if you don't want to, either. It's just... even as much as this stuff hurts... it's nice to be able to actually say stuff in the open. Not... not even my family, when I had one, actually knew. I was just a kid they adopted and then disappeared one day. ... I didn't want to hurt them by making them think their relationship was with someone who wasn't really who they though they were. ... Like the family I have here."
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"One time, a few nights after my team had been put together, we swapped stories about ourselves so we could try and bond a little I guess...it was Pyrrha's idea," he hesitated, he knew this wouldn't really mean anything to Taro, "Maybe we could do something like that. Just take turns talking about what we need to get off our chests."
He set his cookie down, getting up to go get a drink from the fridge, but stopped and turned back to look at Taro, "I'm...glad to hear you didn't kill anyone though. I really didn't think you had, but it's still a relief."
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"That was the name of our team. Pyrhha, me, and two others, Nora and Ren. We were attending a school that trains us to fight monsters known as Grimm and keep the kingdoms of Remnant safe -- they're a lot like the Shadows are here. It's insane to try and fight Grimm by yourself, so from the beginning they like to put huntsman and huntresses in teams so that we can learn to fight as a unit and watch each other's backs."
He took a drink from the soda, looking away from Taro because he felt strange talking about this all of a sudden. Even though he had suggested it, he was starting to realize that he actually hadn't vocalized much about his memories since they'd first started coming to him all those months ago. "I somehow got made the team leader -- despite every one else being so much better at combat than I was at the time."
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Because why would they put people - really, why would they put kids - in a school to train them for that if it wasn't a bad situation? Kids aren't police, or military, and they shouldn't have to fight if they don't really need to. So the situation must be dire enough...
Still, the latter comment gets him to smile. "... Leaders aren't always about physical skills. Even in something like that... I've seen plenty of leaders in the Underground come and go. Some of them are chosen on might, some are chosen on policy, and some are chosen on heart. So whoever picked you definitely made a good choice. A leader's got to care - and you care a lot."
He points his thumb at himself, grinning. "Hell, I helped set up my branch and I've avoided taking a leadership role for a reason. I care about people, yeah, but I don't think I could deal with caring about them for a full time job. You're a stronger guy than I am, and you're... what, a tenth of my age or something? So you're already a better guy than I am in some ways. And don't say 'oh, but you're a good person'. I know. But I also accept that I'm shitty when it comes to some things. That's part of knowing yourself. You'll understand that when you're older."
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Taro's words do make him feel a little better -- his teammates and friends had often said similar things -- but there's something about Taro saying it that makes it stick in a different way. True, he still doubted himself sometimes, but even he had to admit he'd come a long way from the kid who got himself stuck in trees and thrown around by monsters on a regular basis. He smiles, "Thanks...and while I believe you when you say you're that much older -- sometimes it's really hard to take that part seriously." He knew the humanoid form before him was more or less an illusion or...something, but that didn't make it any less of a truth to some degree.
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Kei had been similar, which makes it easier to accept that maybe that was his version here... but the kid was rebelling, not celebrating. There's a key difference there. "I'd rather laugh than cry, and I'd rather be around people than be alone. Tanuki... there's supposedly some that have lived away from humans, but I'm not sure how possible that is nowadays. I ended up... shit, like five thousand miles away from where I first appeared? More than that, probably. But I fit in with other people. I don't... I have an attachment to this body and face because I've worn it so long, but it's not 'me'. I don't spend much time in my real form, but... it's still what I really am. I can pretend to be human, but I'm not."
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As soon as he asked the question he felt like it was a bad move, like maybe that was going a step too far.
"Sorry...I was just thinking of something else. You don't have to answer that."
cw: world war ii
"One of the memories that came back before everything else did... there was a war, and the country we had moved to got involved. The family that I had run away from... they, like everyone else from that country who had moved there, were rounded up and put in... custody. Because they could be spies, or... some reason. It doesn't matter. It's complicated to explain all the reasons on all sides, and it doesn't matter."
It's stupid. It's stupid and ugly and it's one of the reasons he hates politics, even in the Underground. "But I had already run away from them. I hid. And... when I went looking for them after the war, they... had died in that camp. ... I never even got to say goodbye. So yeah. I have nightmares, of the family I was with just... dying alone, in pain. Without me to help comfort them. To help find them food or health care or... I would have outlived them anyway, but I wouldn't have abandoned them."
Taro reaches up and wipes his face, trying to keep his emotions in check. "... I know it's good to get stuff out there. But I... it's hard sometimes. And... and I want you to know you can be honest with me, too."
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"I know," he hesitates, but decides that if his friend can share this information, his own life story won't hurt, "...before all of this I lost someone dear to me. My friends were always trying to get me to talk about it, but it just didn't feel right. Now...now I feel like it would help if I did, but I don't even know if it matters any more. I think that's why I have been having nightmares about her...I'm the only one here that knows anything about where I'm from and what happened. I had to live through it all again..." As he talked, he couldn't help but think of Pyrrha--the girl he'd loved and lost. Jaune felt tears on his face again, he didn't have the experience to keep his emotions in check.
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"One of the last memories I have from my other life is going on a quest with some friends to find answers for the murder of a friend of mine...but now I may never get those answers."
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"I hope so...I really do," he takes another breath, "But...I guess we have this place to figure out first."
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