Week 1, Thursday

[walktodeath]

[ It's been a remarkably non-bloody week, for what has been announced on Monday. Tokiko keeps waiting for somebody to die and it's... nothing. Ironically, Murder Circus might be the least death she has seen in quite a bit. She doesn't know what to do with it.

She doesn't know what to do with herself either. She's almost tempted to start learning circus tricks at this rate, just to have something to do.

But there's Raven, looking like she equally has nothing to do. Talking to Raven is better than circus tricks. ]

I'm surprised we're all still alive.

[ What a greeting. ]

Comments

[azaroth]

...I think the weird part is... well, I don't. Part of me even blames Zelos. He wouldn't let me use my power on him and then we had no way...

[This confession comes with a degree of shame, knowing it's not really fair, but she's less inclined to hide it in front of Tokiko for whatever reason.]

I feel guiltier that there wasn't anything we could do about Diluc and Fujino.

...I liked them.

[walktodeath]

Yes, me too. Fujino-san was pleasant to talk to and Diluc-san gave his honest consideration to me when I was discussing the matters of my soul. We were nothing but passing acquaintances, but I would have liked to speak to them more.

[ She pauses for a moment. ]

You tried something, right? With Fujino-san?

[azaroth]

[Ah. That.]

...Yeah. It was stupid. [She sighs.]

I tried to bring her back. Using my powers.

[walktodeath]

[ .... ]

Did you ever do that before?

[azaroth]

...Only once.

[And she's not sure it ended up mattering in the end.]

A boy. One of my only living friends. And... one that I had feelings for.

[walktodeath]

[ That sounds like a movie plotline to Tokiko... but it was real for Raven. Multiple realities are weird. ]

Did he... appreciate it?

here comes the suicidal ideation cws

[azaroth]

[It was extremely cliche, but yep, it happened.

She pauses at the question, considering. Tokiko is probably expecting a short answer as to whether or not death is kinder or not and Raven's not even sure. She's asked the same so many times.]

...I think when I met him... if it had happened around then, he wouldn't have. He was convinced he deserved it, that he was only playing pretend at being good, and that it would be easier for the world and the people he loved if he died. [It's part of why they both understood each-other, and her tone probably indicates this. That it's a sentiment she understands.]

But by the time he did, I think... he'd found things he wanted to live for, even for just a little while longer.

[walktodeath]

[ That is indeed an answer that is a bit more detailed than she was expecting or maybe even hoping for. It gives her something to chew on for a bit.

... things really were so much easier before magic and souls and multiple worlds were introduced to her world-view. ]

Doesn't that just mean he died a better death, not having wasted his life and having found fulfillment? Not that he should have wanted to die or that death is a good thing, but... having found those things, he was finally living every day to the fullest and appreciating how precious life is.

[azaroth]

[It's... wrong. That statement in some way bothers Raven the slightest bit. The idea that happiness makes death easier...]

...I wouldn't say any of us were living life to the fullest.

The planet was ruined beyond repair, most of our friends were dead, his brother went mad from an attempt at saving his life, his father had been turned into the puppet of the man responsible for all of our suffering. He just wanted to live to protect what was left.

So did I. It just... took me longer to realize there was anything left to fight for.

[walktodeath]

[ That makes Tokiko go quiet. She's no good at relating to others. This is like a story in a book and even there she struggles at understanding the motivations of individual characters. There is nothing she has to draw on in her own experiences that makes any of this easier to contextualize.

Except death, of course. Raven has said it before that all her friends were dead. Death is the common ground, always, for everyone. ]

What did you fight for, in the end? What was the thing that was left?

[azaroth]

[She can tell that Tokiko is struggling with what she's saying. But, it's important to her, and she hopes she can help by sharing it. She spent so much of her life feeling like she was better off dead. She's still not sure she believes she deserves to live. And yet...]

...The idea that even despite everything we've lost, we could create a future worth living in. And prevent this from ever happening again.

[walktodeath]

[ This feels extremely abstract to Tokiko. She's a callous person after all - ideals like justice and freedom mean little to her, when her immediate environment is so much more important. She doesn't like going against the wishes of those around her, but something so grandiose as happiness for others, for strangers... Tokiko can tell it is 'right' to think this way and she can be glad for Raven to have found this resolve, but to be inspired herself is a difficult feat.

Still, she smiles. ]

You're truly a good person, despite all adversity.

[azaroth]

I'm not. [It's fast. Instant, really. Like it's an argument she's used to having.]

I just wanted to live in that world for myself. [...] Making sure it didn't repeat... that was Clark's motivation. He was the one who found me and convinced me. I think, deep down, I just wanted revenge. I know my father did.

I think, if I was a good person, I wouldn't have chosen to live knowing the threat my life meant for everyone around me. [And now she's the last one standing, or at least the last one who remembers. Funny how that works.]

suicidal ideation cw

[walktodeath]

[ That is more comprehensible again, for better or for worse. ]

Even knowing people will keep dying around you, you choose to live for yourself?

[ A clarification after a moment of pause: ] I don't mean this in the altruistic 'oh no, you will get people killed' way. I, too, would keep on living for myself as long as I saw my own happiness on that path.

cw for past suicide attempts

[azaroth]

...

I tried to end it. Once.

[She looks down at her feet as she talks about it. Even now, when none of it matters at the end of the world, she's not sure if she regrets being unable to go through with it or the attempt.]

...I wanted to believe that I could live in the world and be something other than a curse on the world. My friends wanted that for me too, but after they died...

cw suicidal ideation

[walktodeath]

Hm... I might be more selfish than that.

[ Which is an odd thing to say given how much, just how much of her life has been dedicated to nothing but pleasing her father - and how much she would have liked to keep going like that, forever a being of gratitude. If only he hadn't asked something else of her. ]

I wanted to live with Natsuki for the rest of my days - but Natsuki is dead. And if I am truly cursed, then there is a high likelihood that my curse killed her.

I don't want to replace her. She's given me everything I could possibly want. She made me happy. But even if I were to go on and make connections of different kinds, find different people... I would be dooming them over and over.

So honestly, I'd rather vanish from this world by my own choice and for my own happiness than try to be a boon to a reality in which I cannot have anybody to myself.

[azaroth]

[Hmmm. She doesn't think that makes Tokiko a worse person at all, mainly because her own guilt won't allow her to accept the idea. There's always been a feeling for her, that every moral victory she wins over her father, proving herself to be something more than what he wanted her to be, was less her own victory and more a victory of the hands that made her.

It would be so easy to just embrace her bestial nature, to kill and conquer and to join her father's side in ruling the world. Or it would have been. But she didn't, because there were others there to teach her that there were better ways.]

...I understand that.

It's not fair that those are the choices we're given though, is it?

[walktodeath]

It isn't.

[ 'It isn't fair' is the kind of thing Natsuki would have said. Natsuki, who would always get upset on Tokiko's behalf about realities that Tokiko herself had readily accepted as-is.

Looking at her own condition on somebody else, Tokiko can understand it at least a little bit, that idea of 'fairness'. ]

But I think it's pointless to lament it when that won't change a thing anyway.

[ .... ]

What are you going to do, after all this?

[azaroth]

I try not to think about what is and isn't fair, generally. It'd drive me mad otherwise.

[But still. It needed saying. And maybe now she can feel the sheer amount of anger she's kept buried inside of her at her father and even her mother for being stupid enough to try an occult ritual she didn't understand.

Tokiko's right. It doesn't mean a damn thing, what is and isn't fair.]

...I don't know. I can't go home.

Will you?

[walktodeath]

[ Tokiko shakes her head decisively. She's got nothing waiting for her at home except the family fortune (useful, but not compelling on its own) and possibly jail time (extremely not compelling). ]

Definitely not. Though I haven't decided what to do either - if going anywhere is worth it at all, what I will do in that place...