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

[doublesmall]

[but is it really team hat if only caren has one, though? that's the real question here.

threads in comments!

(there is age difference ship content here but nothing nsfw)]

Comments

[sexorcism]

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.

[doublesmall]

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?

[sexorcism]

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.

[doublesmall]

...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.

[sexorcism]

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.

[doublesmall]

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.

cw suicide

[sexorcism]

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.]

[doublesmall]

--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.]

[sexorcism]

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.