My fuck rations are depleted [October catch-all]

[neverleave]

Who: Natsuno and you
What: Monthly catch-all
When: October
Where: All around
Warnings: Discussion of murder, violence and suicide, will add as needed

Comments

Cw: suicide mention

[neverleave]

[It would seem I've been rather mistaken about you. Something twists in Natsuno yet again. A part of him wants to snap at Jade for making assumptions no one asked him to make, for burdening Natsuno with expectations like he's obliged to be what other people want.

Another part of him hears you disappoint me and is overcome with shame. This time he does avert his gaze, looking at the floor until Jade asks - accuses him of accepting the risk of not coming back.

The look he gives his roommate isn't surprised, or angry, or ashamed. It's resigned.]

...Not just as content.

[He's no longer the boy he was on those first few months, when all he wanted was to go back to that dark oblivion, the final "fuck you" to everyone who thought they can decide his fate. If there's a chance to leave the ship and start again in a new reality, Natsuno does want to take it. He doesn't want to leave his friends behind.]

But you're not wrong.

[Preferring to live doesn't mean he's afraid of the alternative. Natsuno may not have thought about it consciously when he and Jinx reached their agreement, but he would've never have gone through with it in if he wasn't willing to accept permanent death in the first place.

It's not something he admitted to anyone here, except Clarke, but now that Jade put it out there, he won't dance around it.]

I died before I got here. By my own hand. All the shiki had to die, myself included. I never expected to reawaken again.

[He's just a snapshot. His other selves are still dead and chose it without regret.]

So if the captain wouldn't have brought me back... I would just go back to where I was supposed to be all along.

Re: Cw: suicide mention

[fonomena]

[On an objective level it probably is a distinctly unfair sort of thing--that Jade might have formed any expectations of Natsuno in the first place. The kicker is that he hadn't even realized he was forming them himself...and if he'd been accused of it at any point earlier on, he would have been dubious at the idea of it. Yet, it would seem...that they certainly manifested anyhow, now didn't they? Somewhere in the camaraderie they'd ended up building between each other despite themselves, after such extended time both sharing quarters and sharing the varied hazards of the captain's whims. At some point down the line, Jade had ended up forming an approximate feel for the image of Natsuno's nature, his strengths and shortcomings, and...

Ah, but the worst part is that this image still hasn't completely changed, has it? Certain fundamental aspects remain true. But Natsuno's perception of his current existence...it certainly seems to have been far worse than expected, after all.

--But not as worse as it could be, is it? That correction doesn't go unheard--not as firmly as it's laid, even alongside the words Natsuno says after that. "Not just as content." ...Jade does wonder if that's something he would have said from the very beginning indeed--that first stretch of time upon this boat, freshly dragged back from a death he'd already set upon himself by his own hand, as he states now. Perhaps not. Perhaps, even despite the terrible trappings of their overall situation here, he's ended up finding people he no longer wants to completely abandon....because that's where the cracks always start, now isn't it?

(Jade knows he shouldn't find anything to empathize with, in this. That Natsuno's situation is no doubt vastly disparate from his own...that even trying to levy a comparison would be an immeasurable disservice to the boy's own experiences. Yet still...yet still....)]

Where you were 'supposed' to be? ...Or where you think you ought to be? Only one of these is an objective fact.

[And even if it no longer might be something Natsuno would pick first...there's the indication he still would have accepted that outcome. Instead of fighting against it, or at least doing his level best to avoid it...

Jade's posture doesn't actually shift much outwardly, and yet--something in his bearing finally seems to be loosening just a bit anyway. The true waning of his earlier anger, perhaps, a flame that's just no longer quite sustainable in the face of Natsuno's visible abject resignation. In its absence, the beginnings of a fundamental exhaustion filter in, equal parts promoted by the utter lack of sleep Jade has had these last few days...and the weight of what Natsuno's laying out in the open, here and now. ...Perhaps he really ought to have noticed this about him sooner. Perhaps they might have never found that closet full of viscera, if only he'd been paying more attention...but what good are such thoughts now?

No, now they're here, and now there's this.

Hm.]

...Do you think this existence would be easier, if there were no one on this ship that cared about you?

suicide cw for this entire thread tbh

[neverleave]

The only objective fact is that I made a choice, and it was taken away from me.

[He can't even decide his own fate, and Jade wants to argue about semantics? Fuck this, he's not playing.]

It wasn't even the first time. The shiki turned my best friend, and then sent him to kill me for snooping around. And you know what? I was fine with that, because it was either him or me. [If Tohru hadn't gone through with it, they would've hurt his still-living family and send someone else after Natsuno anyway.] I made peace with dying. Instead I turned into one of them, and after everything I've done to not be one a part of me still ended up in this fucking place -

[Natsuno cuts himself off. He didn't mean to let the dam break, but he's just so angry. Even now, he made another choice only to get fucked over by the captain's caprices and hurt everyone else in the process.]

So yeah, of course it would've been easier if no one here cared about me. But what's the point of even asking that? [He's not deluding himself. He knows you can't help but form bonds with others, especially in these situations.] People care, and I care about them.