doublesmall | [PCs] team trust no bitch aka team hat aka chuuya & caren

[Still shaking, Caren is silent a while longer. Before she speaks again, she moves to the side, swinging one leg over his so she sits astride him. Despite the intimacy of it, it really doesn't seem to be suggestive; she doesn't try to do anything else with it, and Caren just sits there with the same tranquil, cold look on her face.]

Self-righteousness really doesn't look good on her. [She grips his shoulders, white-knuckled, forcing some control into her fingers even though they hardly feel like hers.] The entire time, she pontificated about solving all the murders. Especially Madara Mikejima's. Always Madara Mikejima's. How outraged she was at my confession; she even wanted to ask that ridiculous board about who did it.

That man [Izaya] is right. She truly is outstandingly hypocritical.

It must've been an act. Whatever she said to your confession-- she already knew. I told her that I did it the night I died. She just kept talking about how they didn't have any choice to kill, but I did, shit like that.

[he drops his arms, lets them wrap around her waist to pull her close. chuuya's not surprised to hear she'd pull that kind of thing even already knowing who'd done it, but he still can't reconcile their attitudes with their jobs.]

It's like she doesn't realize we all kill, every damn week. Even if we don't have to hold the knife, every one of us makes the decision to kill when we cast a vote.

Guess it makes some feel better to look down on people who actually play the game and pretend they're innocent, huh?

Of course it was an act. I should have seen through it, but she was so obstinate and I wanted to uncover the truth.

I imagine it brought some comfort to be able to erase a killer. Wasn't it the same for us when we learned of Ranpo's nature?

[She slides her hands down, forming a triangle on his chest with her palms. While Caren isn't shaking so much anymore, she's calm and still in a way that might be worrying in a different way.]

Well, humans always create their own demons. If we were all so determined, we could have just all chosen ourselves that first week.

They could've chosen to be erased themselves, too, but they didn't. All that complaining about having no choice, but what they really meant was that they were too selfish to give themselves up.

[a little grin pulls at his mouth, there, but it isn't warm or pleasant. chuuya's discounting everything they said about doing it for the sake of the players, for the sake of saving everyone; it all sounds like excuses to him. the point of the game is to find and eliminate them, isn't it? of course they'd say things like that. of course they'd try to get people to spare them.]

Not that I can talk. I told them both I'd do whatever it takes to live-- guess they can understand that much, yeah? But they're gonna have to live with their choices.

They'll understand that better when they die.

They should do as they say instead of as they do. [It's a mangling of the idiom, but one with a purpose.]

They could simply do as we do just as well and save themselves some trouble. I'm not used to being a role model for others, but I'll take it up if I have to.

[Caren smiles slightly. That's the joke -- here of all places, she would especially not want to assume a position of role model. Everyone's always in such disagreements about just what actions should be taken to save others; fewer are willing to act.]

They will. [She looks down at him, bangs almost obscuring her eyes as her mood suddenly sobers.] The circumstances have changed, Chuuya. What do you thinking about the conditions of ending this game?

The short version is that I think it's bullshit if we're supposed to do anything but what they laid out for us to do.

[he's been playing the game as they were informed it should be played, and chuuya hates being toyed with; his eyes narrow at the thought.]

Everything people were talking about, with stretching this game out instead of ending it-- it's all bullshit. So is all of this talk about trying to save all of us.

[...now that he's one of them, maybe he should think differently, but chuuya still has a hard time reconciling it all.]

I want to live, Caren. But-

I don't want to wait around down here to be saved. I wanted to win on my own merits and be judged that way, not get rescued after I already lost, and if anyone manages it and expects thanks for that-- they're going to have to get it from someone else.

Ah, I suppose I would thank them, at least, but anyone who expected an apology or thanks probably wouldn't understand why I did what I did this weekend.

I cannot fathom why there would be any reason for a game to run out its time limit. Truly, that's the part that vexes me the most. It's against the nature of a "game."

[How strange and even terrible that, for all their differences in background and beliefs, their opinions happen to align more often than not. They lost, indeed, and Caren would play again if given the chance, indeed, loathes that she was the one not playing with all of the information. It isn't a position she's used to.]

But... I've been thinking about the life I would lead with that second chance, when I've had the time.

Yeah?

[turning the topic to something like this has him relaxing, bit by tiny bit, no longer shaking slightly with that shared anger of theirs. he's still tense, it'll take more time to ease that from his body, but as chuuya exhales a breath his posture shifts to hold her a little less firmly.]

So what do you think you'd do with something like that, Caren?

I can't say it would be anything extraordinary enough to call it a "rebirth." Wouldn't I just go back to what I've always done?

[Because she's on top of him, it's easy to look to the garish, over-florescent ceiling as she speaks, even if it isn't much to look at compared to the sky.]

Yeah. Someone who emerged triumphant on the other side of this should be relieved to go back to that sort of life.

'Should' doesn't mean much, though.

[just going back to what she's always done-- it sounds familiar. he's quiet for a few moments before he continues.]

I don't... know if I'd be relieved to go back. Living that kind of life is going to get me killed again, right? So I shouldn't want to, but-

There's probably nothing else for me anyway.

[it's the only life he's ever known how to live, and he was good at it, but without the memories they took from him-- would it be much of one to return to? would having them make him want to go back, or would they prove he shouldn't?

the same questions come up every time. they're becoming exhausting.]

Is there anything like that for you?

No, it doesn't. But for me there is no way to distinguish it from "would like to."

[She can't even tell him what she felt about the life she led before the first of her deaths because the memory of those feelings is simply void. What occurred there, what she learned...all of that would be easy for Caren to disclose to him now.

But if it was worth it?

If it ever once brought meaning to her life?

Who could say?

Her hands lift from her chest and come to her own, tracing the outline of nothing. Not a heart or a necklace. Eventually, they still.]

In the end, there is nothing outside it for me, either.

Nothing at all, huh...

[then they're sort of in the same boat, aren't they?

he reaches out, lightly pressing one of his hands over one of hers.]

Does this have to do with what you said before-- about not enjoying anything? Or is it different?

Maybe.

Then again, I may have simply come into the world with this damage. Born incomplete.

It doesn't really bother me; that's just the way it is, but I must also acknowledge that my prospects are limited.

...that doesn't mean it can't change, Caren.

[he's spoken about a little of his past with her before; it's easier now to broach the subject, after keeping it to himself for as long as he has.]

I felt something like that, once. Like there was something missing from me, something-- essential to being human, I guess.

I don't have any regrets about my life. [It's a repeated sentiment, but when she says it this time, Caren's voice seems a little more hesitant.] The man who sired me, I hear, was broken also.

[But she doesn't interrupt when he talks about himself, lets the issue of her parentage and that looming specter of her past all but die as Chuuya reveals what she knows to be sensitive for him.]

Even then, you did as you said and made something else of yourself in the world.

It took me a while to figure it out. But if someone like me could manage it-

I don't think it's impossible for you. Hell, you know where you came from, that's already more of a start.

Listen. I'm not asking for any pity. This isn't a sad story.

[She looks directly into his eyes, firm. It's important to Caren that Chuuya doesn't get the wrong idea... She's explaining things so they make sense to him, not so she's earning some kind of sympathy for something that, realistically, there's nothing to regret about.

That's right. It's a simple story; she can make it short.]

That man was never a part of my life. My mother took her own life, so I fell into the care of the Holy Church with those blemishes already on mine.

[That's where she's from.]

--look, I don't know how things work for your Church, but that's ridiculous. Blemishes for something you didn't even do, yourself?

[he won't give her pity-- but there's a mix of disbelief and anger, there, though he tries to keep his tone even. if anything should reflect on someone, it's what they've done.

it makes things make a little more sense in some ways, makes them harder to understand in others.]

Maybe it is. [Her expression, normally so tightly controlled and yet increasingly vulnerable around him, looks a little helpless. He should know by her lack of an answer that she is literally unable to, in this case.]

But that's the world that raised me. Like you, I wonder if I feel differently once what's missing is returned to me.

[PCs] team trust no bitch aka team hat aka chuuya & caren

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cw suicide

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