Things Unspoken Meme

[ironwood]

things unspoken meme► 1. post with your characters ► 2. Other characters respond and comment ICly with something they'd like to say to them (or a question for them) but haven't. Or, things they have, but would like to say again. ► 3. It can be something incredibly minor or something incredibly serious or something incredibly goofy! e.g. "I was the one who strangled your father with a sausage link" / "I actually hate whiskey and you keep on giving it to me because I said I liked it that one time to impress you" / "There's always a booger hanging from your nose and it makes talking with you REALLY DIFFICULT" ► 4. React ICly. SHENANIGANS. ► 5. have fun!! meme from etcelsior

Comments

[lasergrenades]

Good. I'll take that as a compliment.

It's your choice, Kratos. It has to be. Offer's open for as long as I'm here.

[simulsimul]

[It's a compliment. It's also frustrating. And painful.]

I'm not historically good at those.

[lasergrenades]

I've heard. I know what choice I want you to make but I can't make it for you.

And no matter what you choose, I'm still going to be your friend. I'm just going to come at it in a different way. [Oh, she'll be disappointed if he doesn't fight for himself, sure. But she won't give up. He could change his mind.] What do you have to lose?

[simulsimul]

A quantifiable end.

[lasergrenades]

...are you saying that if you decide to fight for your own well-being, you don't know if you get to die or not?

[Wow, JRPGs. Wow.]

[simulsimul]

Angels are functionally immortal. We don't die by ageing.

[Four thousand years, Pepper. Four thousand years. Sometimes they go places.]

[lasergrenades]

Oh.

[Welp. That did make a certain amount of sense.]

Okay. Well. I can see how functional immortality sucks, but... not seeing how taking better care of yourself means not getting a choice about the how or the when.

[Sheesh. And Kratos had said Zelos had a death wish. This is a little different, but... yeah. Still an issue.]

[simulsimul]

I'm under a seal which obliges me to defend myself if it feels threatened. The only way I can die is if someone manages to kill me.

[Raine totally and completely dismissed the effect of the seal on him and it threw him for a loop. Maybe Pepper will understand the weight of it. Maybe you're being a butt, Kratos, ever think of that.]

CW: suicide

[lasergrenades]

So... if you didn't have this seal obligating you to defend yourself, would you not defend yourself? Fighting for your life when you feel threatened is an instinct. It's biology. It's what you're supposed to do.

[Her expression turns stony.]

You using your past mistakes as an excuse to get someone to end your life because you can't do it yourself? We have a name for that back home. It's called suicide by cop. And you are not allowed to do that. You have a son. You don't get to be that selfish, Kratos. I don't care what you've done - you need to fight for him if you won't fight for yourself. You know what you really have to lose? Lloyd is what you have to lose if you walk away and pretend you're doing the noble thing by hating yourself. That's the easy way out, and you don't get to take it because you brought another person into the world and you have to own that. And if you don't, then you're not the man I thought you were.

[simulsimul]

[What is it with the people here and their dismissing the parts which are important? Although to be fair, Kratos hasn't really explained himself properly.]

The seal is what's keeping the worlds apart and in constant war with each other.

[So. Flatly.]

It can only open if I die, and I've tried to make it happen myself. The worlds need me to die for them to survive, and I can only die if someone kills me. At this point, 'selfish' has nothing to do with it. Lloyd deserves a united world.

[Conveniently not mentioned: the fact that his best friend of four thousand years, for some inexplicable reason, manages to save his life in spite of the seal's requirements. Or so he hears. Also not mentioned: he can very well open the seal without demanding anyone to fight him. It'll just still result in his death. So basically, 'selfish' has literally everything to do with it.]

[lasergrenades]

Lloyd. Deserves. A father. Don't be an ass, it doesn't look good on you.

[She glares at him. This isn't petulance. This is anger, and it's cold and controlled and to anyone who knows Pepper well, it's also scary.]

You're not being stoic. You're being selfish. Find. Another. Way.

[simulsimul]

Lloyd has a father. He was raised by Dirk, whom he loves.

[Stubbornly. Kratos does not know Pepper well -- yet.]

This is the best way.

[Note that he doesn't say only way. He doesn't realise that fact just yet.]

[lasergrenades]

He's still your son. That's not an obligation you can get out of so neatly.

The best way doesn't make it the only way. Find. Another. At least think about it with a few extra of those angel brain cells. You're smart but you're also seriously dumb if you think you can unilaterally make decisions for the one person in your life that you should be willing to risk even the fate of two worlds for. He should get a say, even and especially if you say he doesn't because you owe him more than that.

[simulsimul]

I already tried that.

[Oops. Take a breath, and then another. This is striking all the sorest nerves. How does she do that? And in a way different from Lloyd, just by not being him?]

How do you think we got to this point? I risked the fate of the worlds to trust and stand by Mithos. Shall I do it again, when the alternative cost is only my life?

[lasergrenades]

[Oh, good. They're getting somewhere. She absolutely does not cackle gleefully.]

If you're doing the selective deafness for concepts now, I'm going to smack you. You're here. You can't do anything about the worlds being separate or together right here and right now. You know what you can do?

Think. Talk to Raine, talk to Zelos, consider literally every option available to you and exhaust every single stupid idea and impossible plan and then - and only then - do you get to decide something is the best way. Not before that. Not when you have all the time in this world while time is frozen in yours.

Then you go home and do it again.

[simulsimul]

Ah, yes. When I'll lose all my memories of having done so.

[Flatly.]

Because determining a solution I will never be able to create is the less painful course.

[Completely ignoring that back-home Yuan already has a solution, here.]

[lasergrenades]

That hasn't stopped me from wanting and trying to keep someone I love from having to die, even if it's theoretically impossible. But I'm not a four thousand year old angel, I'm just a girl, so what could I possibly know?

[simulsimul]

Your being a girl has nothing to do with it. You're stronger than I am, and hope is still your ally. I haven't been like you in a long time. Yes, four thousand years, in fact.

[lasergrenades]

So what's Lloyd to you, if he's not the hope you got back long enough to bring him into the world in the first place?

[simulsimul]

-- Ngh.

[A definable hit, there, as Kratos deflates and looks away.]

The hope that the worlds will be reunited. The hope that I might finally see my duty done.

[He glances back, eyes narrowed.]

But that doesn't make hope my ally.

[lasergrenades]

That doesn't make hope your funeral pyre, either.

[There's still anger in her, but it's softened some now that he's let a few things past his guard.]

If you're going to 'do your duty', at least do it for the right reasons and not because you think you deserve some kind of divine punishment. If there was another way, a better way, would you even take it?

[simulsimul]

[He has to sigh, but it's not an exasperated sigh. If anything, it seems weary.]

I don't know. But it wouldn't be because of divine punishment. I had -- thought -- that opening the seal and giving Lloyd the means to reunite the worlds might finally earn me the right to die.

[lasergrenades]

[Oh, dear. Pepper can't decide if she wants to hug him or punch him.]

Everyone has the right to die. Everyone. [Her voice is quiet.] Being under a seal, whatever the consequences are, doesn't change that.

You're using the past tense. What are you thinking now?

[simulsimul]

And yet everywhere I turn, I have people telling me I must not.

[This is equally quiet, and then he looks away.]

Raine tells me that I don't. A -- friend -- risks his life to save mine.

[Even though he didn't ask for it, YUAN.]

[lasergrenades]

[She blinks at him for several long, confused seconds. Really, Kratos. There's another way. How fascinating.]

Accepting that you have a right to die and wanting you to keep living for a little while longer are two very different and separate things.

Of course people that care about you want you to stay alive, you dolt. If no one cared, no one would try to stop you from dying when the seal opens, and you should maybe take a minute to respect the choices other people have made rather than dismissing them. You can't dictate how people feel about you. You can complain about it, sure, but you can't dictate it.