foolishmortals

[ She stiffens a little as she remembers. Marluxia, scythe in hand, easily holding his own against Sora and Riku and everyone... She won't admit it easily, but when she closes her eyes, that's the thing she sees the clearest. ]

... I don't know if it's real or fake. I... hope it's fake. It's... I want it to be a trick, like the other weeks.

[ That's what she tells herself... that they're tricks. Lies. ]

[That's the easiest explanation, isn't it? The safest. To a man who tends to see red flags even where there are none it's even more imperative than usual for him to convince himself this isn't a real threat, or else the fear of it looming over him will kill him before any of his housemates get the chance.]

It must be. Stanford said it himself, it wasn't possible. And if what was shown for our world isn't possible then none of the others have to be, is my thinkin'.

[ She hesitates. It would... be easy to tell him that he's right. It would be simpler, in so many ways, to agree with Fiddleford.

But... ]

... It could be possible, for... for my world.

[Ah, what, no. Come on.]

Well. I, ah. Possible doesn't always have to mean probable, does it?

... I suppose not.

[ She frowns. She probably shouldn't have said anything after all. ]

I'm sorry. I'm not being very helpful at all.

[Oh yikes. Yikes yikes yikes yikes.]

Oh, no, that's not what I -- I'm sorry, that's not what I was goin' for at all.

I'm just -- in this sort of situation what I'm used to doin' is tellin' myself all the ways it might not be as bad as it looks. And maybe if I'm lucky one of them sticks. It's a way of bein' positive and I should've figured by this point it doesn't really work here.

You didn't do anythin' wrong.

Oh.

[ It's okay, Fidds. She's tryin. ]

Okay. I'm glad. [ Really, she is. ] Anyway... even if it might be possible, that doesn't mean it is. Just like the other things... the photos, the videos... right?

Right. Exactly. Heck, the photos could have meant nothin' at all. They were just pictures.

[Without a real threat attached it... well it wasn't easy to convince himself there wasn't one but it was easier than it might have been otherwise.]

I... this is goin' to sound awful but I'm almost glad for that picture. It's good to have somethin' to remind me of happy memories, here. Don't have an awful lot of those right now.

Memories...

[ She shakes her head. She gets it. There are so few precious things in her... life? Existence? What does she call it anymore? Even she isn't too sure. ]

I don't think it's that awful. We... have to take what we can get here, don't we? Otherwise, we might all fall into despair.

Mmhm.

[Her mentioning memories has him thinking on something else entirely, something he read on the little biography in the foyer and has been unsure how to approach for the past five weeks. It's never felt like the right time. Now doesn't even feel like the right time, exactly, but when is there going to be a better opportunity?]

Y'know, uh. Speakin' of memory. I've been meanin' to ask-- I read on the, uh, the plaque out there next to your picture -- I'll understand if you don't want to talk about it. Really I will.

[Yeah that was good. Super eloquent. Nailed it. He takes a breath. His knee bounces under the table, a sure sign of nerves.]

It's just somethin' I have experience with is all so if you needed -- I mean, I'll listen.

Oh...

[ Yeah, it's more than a little bit of a sore spot for her. She takes a small sip of her tea as she considers the offer. He hadn't meant anything by it, and it's meant well and kindly. So... she decides that it's okay. ]

... What kind of experience? My situation is a little... um, unique, I think.

With, uh.

Well with just about the same thing.

Don't know if you watched the screen too close a couple weeks back when the offer was to fix... y'know. To fix the past.

[It was less than a couple of weeks ago but it feels like he's been in this house forever and anyway he's no good with dates and timelines anymore.]

But you'd have seen -- there was a gun. I built it, and what it'd do was zap away bad memories. Used it on myself, mainly, but there were other people. A whole town of other people.

So when I say I understand I mean -- I mean I really do understand. What that's like.

I... didn't watch much of any of the others'. It felt... rude. Having your past and future on display like that... I know I wouldn't want anyone to know unless I told them myself.

[ That's. Yikes, though. She really feels for him. It's not easy at all to confront something like that yourself, and having people you just met a little over a month ago see all of that?

It's rough. ]

They... must have been very bad memories. [ Her voice is soft. It has her thinking, too: If she could do the same, would she? ] It seems like you meant well, though...

My powers don't exactly do that. Not at first. It starts with a few things: Sora forgot where he was going, where he had been. What he had been doing. But then he started to forget people. Or just... one person, who's very important to him.

But she was replaced by someone else. [ The girl you really care about... The one who was always with you... It's not me. It's her. ] I used my powers to make him think I was the one most important to him.

[Man this is just yikes all around, isn't it?

He considers telling her they're coming back now anyway so it wasn't even worth all the damage he did to his brain. He considers telling her how many times he made his wife forget she didn't love him. He doesn't do either.]

Oh. No, the ray could only ever... remove. Whatever you wanted, sure, but that's all it could do. It couldn't replace, like that, though I used to leave myself notes about what I'd -- well it doesn't matter.

Why?

[He thinks he already knows why but like hell is he going to make assumptions and tell a little girl how he thinks she probably fucked up. Asking means she gets the chance not to tell.]

I was lonely.

[ She knows. She knows how badly she screwed up. ]

I'd been alone my entire existence. Marluxia and Larxene told me that using my power to manipulate Sora would be the only way I could make a friend. And I believed them.

[ She hates herself for it every day. Even after Sora forgave her... ]

What I did... it was terrible. I shouldn't have done it, I know that. But I did, and the only thing I could do was fix it. I did, but... that doesn't erase the fact that I hurt Sora.

[I... I just wanted attention.

Man it would be funny if it wasn't so sad, wouldn't it?]

Well... well no. You can't erase the things you've done. I mean you can when you're... when you can do the things that we can do. But you can't undo the fact that it happened. And I'm startin' to figure it's better not to hide from it.

[Which is very, very difficult for him to say when he spent so long convincing himself that was the good solution, the right solution.]

I've hurt folks here and there's no way to get away from that when we're all stuck in the same house, y'know. And I've tried makin' it up to them and some of them haven't always forgiven me entirely [Star] but I figure that's just how things are. You do your very best and that's all anybody can ask.

There's really no use in hiding from it, is there? It would be easier to, but... in the end, I think that would only make things worse.

[ It's hard, to confront the things she's done. But running from it would mean she'd be protecting herself, and that's not fair to Sora. Not after he had come so, so close to becoming Marluxia's puppet. ]

Mm. Making mistakes is... normal, isn't it? But I think how you approach the aftermath is more telling.

I'd say that's right. I work a lot with math, y'know, where one little mistake can make everythin' go wrong and even quintuple-checkin' my work doesn't always catch it. And I've never just... just shoved the paper into a drawer and pretended I never tried in the first place.

[Which, now that he's put it like that, makes everything he did look extra stupid. He prods his own toast awkwardly around on his plate.

He thinks still, very often, about Mulan and how bad the mistake she made was and how calmly and bravely she faced the consequences. The issue he's always had is that he's not strong in that way and he never has been and he's beginning to wish now more than ever that he was.]

Y'know I thought everyone would hate me. The ones that saw, anyway. They could have and I wouldn't have blamed them. But Mike -- [And god bless Mike Chilton for always, always being the voice of reason here] -- Mike said to me that it didn't change the me that's here now. And I don't think what you did changes the you that's here now either, and whatever else that you is she's also good at heart.

[ If there's one thing she's learned above all else in this mansion (and, there's a lot she's learned her, let's be honest) it's that people are kind. Startlingly, incredibly kind. And accepting, so accepting that when she thinks about it, about how Maui and Lefou and Ford had accepted her so easily, it's enough to knock the breath out of her.

Which is what's happening now. Quickly, she wipes at her eyes. ]

Sometimes... I think I don't deserve how kind everyone has been to me. But other times, I'm glad for it. And so thankful, so much that think, maybe, I do deserve it. [ She holds her cup a little tighter, lifting her head so she can smile at him. ] Thank you for saying all of that. For what it's worth, I think you're a good person. Even if we've done bad things... I don't think anyone here is bad.

[ Which is why all the deaths and the investigations and the trials cut so deeply. ]

[He nods, politely not pointing out any tears there may or may not have been in her eyes.]

I don't think so either. I always try and see the good in people. I think everyone has some in them, it's just... it's buried deeper in some than others.

[And with some, the bad in them outweighs the good enough that the good doesn't matter, but no one here is like that. He used to think Ford was, but much like a lot of his other decisions he's been shown how wrong he was.]

Thank you for tellin' me about it. I know it's hard to... to talk about that sort of thing.

[Hard to trust. God, he knows how hard it can be to trust.]

[ She's inclined to disagree with him. People like Marluxia and Larxene and half the Organization have existed, after all. But after such a heavy conversation, she doesn't think it prudent to mention that.

... His thanking her takes her extremely by surprise, though. ]

Oh-- you're welcome. But I should be thanking you for listening to me.

[Deep down, sometimes, even he is inclined to disagree with himself. He's just always been a little too forgiving, because the alternative -- assuming the worst in people -- would probably team up with his anxiety and paranoia to kill him where he stood.]

Lets just agree on thankin' each other, how about that?

[He pushes his toast around his plate a little more and continues to fail to eat it.]

... When my littlest sister used to need cheerin' up, y'know what always liked?

Edited 2017-07-24 01:27 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea.

[ Otherwise, they'd keep going around and around in circles and never stop.

Anyway. She tilts her head slightly to the side. ]

What did she like?

[He'd know all about that. Being from the South and all. Sometimes you get stuck in a 'thank you' loop that'll go on forever unless someone intervenes.]

She'd have me do up her hair. Usually in a braid, I was better at braids than anythin' fancy.

[ Her face sort of lights up at that. ]

I don't mind if you braid my hair. I'm not sure how I'd look with one, but I don't mind at all.

WEEK 6

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