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[…There it is. It's pretty much as Rindo thought. Gladion feels responsible for Lusamine's actions. Of course he does.

Something's caught his attention, though, and it feels important, like he's finally unearthing a key piece of the puzzle.]

You have a sister? She… isn't here, right?

[…He doesn't like asking that question. There's no answer that doesn't hurt to hear, or to say.]

[The driest hah you've ever heard, and the dull thunk of the back of Gladion's head against the wall.]

No, no she's not. I left her with a fine mess to deal with, but at least she's not here. And there are people looking out for her.

[Big sigh.]

…Right. Okay.

[Rindo leans back on his chair and closes his eyes for a moment. Thinking about what to say.

It's hard not to feel like he's stepping all over something he has no business being involved in. Easy to, in his relative ignorance, only make things worse. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

But maybe there's a small thing he can say? And whether he'll be believed is yet to be seen.]

…Here's how I see it.

[He opens his eyes and looks at Gladion.]

You didn't choose any of this. [Not to leave your sister behind, not to be sent here, not for your mother to do the things she does.] It's not something you have to fix. Hell, even if it was all your fault, I feel like it's just… way too much.

[He averts his gaze.]

I get that you don't want to leave things as they are, but I'm worried you're beating yourself up over it way too much. It's hard enough just… existing here.

[…Preempting a possible objection now:]

I'm not saying don't do anything. Just… your sister's not here. I think you might be the only one who can still be hurt by this whole situation directly, you know? Does… does that make sense?

[So what if he didn't choose it? What matters is the outcome—if he walks away, bad things happen.

But—thinking of Lillie—Gladion holds his tongue, peering cautiously down his face at Rindo. What he hears doesn't surprise him. It's like what he's heard from Lillie before. And he winces after Rindo looks away, because that would have been his retort, and he doesn't have one past it.

He can't leave things as they are.

But: it's way too much.

When has it ever not been? Isn't that just how you grow? It's not ideal, but if you don't have ideal, you have to work with good enough. It's not ever going to stop being like that. Things don't end neatly in real life. Rindo knows that; it's why he says I get it, I know, I'm not saying don't do anything.

...You know?]

...It does. [He's looking elsewhere. Up at the ceiling, head still tipped back against the wall, tension rotted away. This last point is also not a surprise—just a grim, embarrassing reality he was willing to trade away until Rindo said it out loud. Maybe his mother could hurt someone. And maybe there's nothing exceptional about that, here in Ryslig. So maybe this isn't the big deal he thought it was, and maybe he didn't need to induct Rindo into it, and maybe, this is in fact just dragging—

—asking for help.

Whatever the hell that's supposed to mean.]

It makes sense. [He sounds weary.] You're probably right.

[Suddenly, now that he's on the other side of… saying what he meant to say, Rindo finds himself sharing Gladion's obvious frustration.

Now what? This is all well and good, but regardless of Gladion's agreement, this is still clearly bothering him—not that Rindo was expecting anything less. Frankly, he's not sure that his words have truly sunk in, but who knows how long Gladion's been feeling the way he does. He wasn't expecting to upend his entire worldview with just a short little speech. Rindo stays silent for a good while, frowning at nothing in particular as he thinks.

…There's a lot of people here who have little scruple about hurting others, or who simply don't care how their actions might affect everyone. Rindo's not been here for long, but he knows that, for instance, the weird fog in March had been caused by one of the monsters of Ryslig, and that this sort of thing is a common occurrence. Gladion's description of Lusamine, the accuracy of which he has no reason to doubt, paints her as someone who would gleefully join these troublemaking ranks. And if she does, everyone gets screwed over.

But if it's not Lusamine getting up to no good, it'll be someone else, he's sure of it. He's already given up any hope of a peaceful life—monthly horrors for the rest of time. That, he can do nothing about. Giving a friend some support, though… maybe he can manage that. This is really what all this has been about from the start, for him.

…And so, it begs one question:

What had she done to Gladion?

At last, Rindo speaks up, quietly, his tone halfway between gentle and hesitant. Looking back at Gladion again—it's easier when their eyes don't meet.]

How did she treat you, back home?

[And, as if to dull the edge of that too-personal query:]

You don't have to answer if you don't want to. I just… it sounds like she wasn't a great mom.

[He cringes slightly at his own wording there. Yeah, no shit. Perhaps in an attempt to distract Gladion from the blunder, he continues.]

It might help to talk about it. I… I know talking to Shoka about stuff helped me, back in our world, even if she didn't always have a solution to give.

[Frankly, it's insulting to even begin to compare the scale of his problems back home to that of Gladion's, but surely it's not complete garbage advice, generally speaking? He can only hope to match Swallow's level of comfort-giving. He knows he's not as good at it as she is.]

[He's gotten this question before, or something close enough to it. And he always deflects: she didn't do anything to me.

It's always been a conscious lie. What Gladion means is: that's not as important as the rest of it. And what he means by that is: none of your business. And on some level, he knows what he's doing, and knows it's not the best choice, and holds to it stubbornly because it feels wrong to change course anyways. He just can't. He won't. Unless he has to. Unless—unless you know the same things he knows, about how it's wrong and embarrassing but practical and correct, and you have to justify it and make up for it. Unless you can speak the same language of shame his own mind does.

Gladion huffs. It's a boneless laugh, but not an acidic one.] I know. [He knows what Rindo doesn't mean to imply, the same way Rindo knows what he doesn't mean to imply.] Yeah. I can try, I don't know how much sense it'll make. She always...

[...]

There was something wrong with her for years, but she mostly showed it in small ways. It's hard to explain.

[He's relaxed. It's a weird sort of relaxation, but he is relaxed. It is easier when their eyes don't meet.]

She treated us like dolls. Like...she was obsessed with appearances. [As he said.] And part of that was, she couldn't see us doing anything that wasn't her decision. Lillie and I—we didn't get exactly the same treatment, but that was pretty much the same between us. Sometimes she showed it in different ways. And she was sort of the same way with anyone else who reflected on her, and the Foundation as a whole. And the house. But, you know, rooms don't complain when you redecorate them. And employees go home at the end of the day. She couldn't go through their belongings, or tell them what to wear off the clock.

[The clothes. There's always this unique frustration attached to that whole thing. He knows how important it was. He knows how much it hurt Lillie. He knows how he reacted to it. But it always sounds more frivolous out loud than it does in his head.

Ugh.]

Also, she changed over time. She gradually got worse, but she'd also go back and forth. If she was distracted, or uninterested, she wouldn't pay as much attention. But then once she did notice something that wasn't right, she'd come back with a vengeance. So it was always kind of a balancing act, trying to catch a break when you could but not doing anything that would count against you later. Especially out of the house. Because most people on Aether Paradise didn't actually know how she was, so things would get back to her, and even if they were fine she'd still...

[Waves his hand a bit. That got away from him, actually, let's pivot.]

That was the thing, overall. She could just make up a reason to be frustrated. She could look at something she would have decided, but get mad about it because she hadn't been there to decide on it. So there was never really a foolproof way to keep her happy. Just going along with what she wanted from moment to moment.

[Rindo's not too worried about sense-making. Horrors tend to be hard to describe, words tumbling out before feelings can begin to make sense in your head. (…Memories of talking about changes.) If that's what it takes for Gladion to untangle the situation, he's happy to be the catalyst for it.

But as it turns out, Gladion makes complete sense, perhaps in the way only someone with some amount of perspective can when discussing these sorts of things. It's not a surprise, either. It's painfully obvious that he's thought about this… a lot. Probably too much. Who could blame him?

…

So. A volatile control freak, who lashed out when she didn't get her way. A lot of little things about Gladion are suddenly recontextualized. "My interests before were a bit limited by outside circumstances." The way he values his space and his autonomy, like something hard-earned. And yeah, the clothes. There's no way his mother would have cared for his current aesthetic. (…Aggressively pushing thoughts of Fret away. Fashion's always a fraught topic.)

It's hard to hear all this—though obviously not as hard as living it, of course. It fans an ember of furious indignation in his chest, for which he has no outlet. And there's a sharp pang of guilt at his comparatively much, much better home life. His parents never did anything like this to him. (…Sucking air in through his teeth, flinching as if he'd touched a hot stove, pushing all of that away too because now isn't the time.)

…Despite all of this, Gladion doesn't want to cut off his mother. Whether that's wise or foolish, done out of a sense of responsibility or homesickness or both—he couldn't say. And he's not about to weigh in with an outsider's opinion.]

Sounds like you went through hell.

[…That's safe enough. And it's not enough.]

…You didn't—you don't deserve to be treated like that. You and Lillie.

[Still not enough. Maybe Rindo's saying this for his own sake. Stating the plain, obvious truth, in some kind of attempt to make sense of a world where things like these are allowed to happen.

He stares at the ground in between them, his jaw set tight. Frustrated. He wants to help, but he can't fix things and anything he says feels inadequate. How does Swallow deal with him?]

[There was a time when he thought that was all he wanted to hear. To reach the finish line, stop her schemes, bring her back, and have someone—her, Lillie, he didn't know—look at him with admiration and say, I can't believe you made it through all of that.

He thought a lot of things, back then.

It's awkward now. It's true. It's still down in the muck with the two of them, where clumsiness is the rule.]

Yeah. [Yeah.] It wasn't...a question of deserving. We were just there. [Wicke said something like that once.] I know because she didn't stop. After we left. I...

[Sigh.]

Something stupid about the whole thing is, I knew she was bad. She wasn't like that before. Even when it was gradual, it was—I knew it wasn't right. [More or less. Most of the time.] But I also...didn't. I didn't think I should...do anything about—not even that. There wasn't much I could do. But I didn't even think it through. [Is this a distinction without a difference? It feels like there's a difference.] Not until Silvally. I left because I found out about the UBs and the Beast Killer. It put this whole...idea in my head about what would happen if I stole it and ran away. But none of that actually made sense. And it sure didn't happen that way. But—

[What was his point? Gladion runs a hand back through his hair, swallowing back the scrambling feeling that was starting to run circles around him.]

...I don't regret leaving. Obviously. It still turned out for the better, for everyone, eventually. [Bluh.] What was I saying. [Bluuuugh.] Silvally is the Beast Killer. Mother changing the project meant, maybe they'd let it out now and then, or maybe they'd just shove it into cryostorage and forget about it. That's how I realized what the stakes were. For...us. She treated us one way because we're her own human children she was stuck with, and if we were Pokemon she'd let us get shoved in boxes when she was done with us too.

[Exhale.] Anyways. One reason I came up with was that I'd scare her into waking up. Or taking Silvally would screw up her plans and she'd have to stop. Just, either way, running away would fix things there too. But it didn't. She came down even harder on Lillie when I wasn't there. And after Lillie ran too, she went on ahead with the master plan.

[Point made. He thinks. After taking the long way around. He got a little worked up along the way—not, like, tearful or anything, just a little agitated from how much there always is.]

I'm fine. [For the record. In case the sudden rash of sighs and hair-fussing implied otherwise.] It's just a mess.

[Rindo's not convinced that Gladion's fine, but he's not about to grill him about it if he wants to pretend to be. He gets a feeling that just getting him to open up this much is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Gladion's sigh finds itself echoed in Rindo's reply.]

…Yeah. It is.

["Mess" is an understatement. Rindo's glad to hear Lillie was able to flee, at least. Still… how stubborn, how obsessed do you have to be for two of your children to literally run away from you and still refuse to change? To double down, even?]

Honestly, there probably wasn't any good solution… I guess you just couldn't stand it anymore. You had to try something. So you did whatever you could think of and… it didn't work. Maybe nothing would've worked, not as long as she didn't want to stop.

[Gladion's reasoning for stealing Silvally makes sense to him, even if…]

I… I don't think I would've been able to do what you did.

[It sounds… brave? Reckless? Risky? None of these qualifiers apply to Rindo.

Back to questions for a bit…]

So Silvally's the Beast Killer…? Is it artificial or something?

[He certainly doesn't mean to imply any kind of judgment here. So what if Silvally looks like a bunch of things stitched together? He and Gladion are just the same now.]

Edited 2023-08-14 15:05 (UTC)

[That's the thing, though. You don't think you can, until you have the choice. Then...then you find out what you're capable of.

Gladion is chewing on that. (Maybe to squirm away from how the validation feels.) Rindo holds himself back, he knows. And you never know, so it's pointless to speculate. But he thinks he can imagine it. Rindo drawing on, drawing out those little flashes of stubbornness he shows. Standing his ground, raising his voice. And then maybe something more involved. If he ran into Lusamine, at least, he wouldn't just fold to her. And that's worth something.]

Right. Born in a Foundation lab. That's why it was so...undersocialized before here. [What he's said before about it, how it seems to have taken well to Ryslig.]

[To be fair: there is a world where Rindo folds to Lusamine, or to Elias, or to any other manipulator—but it can't be this one. He's been made too wary, and there are too many people looking out for him, Gladion himself included.]

Well, even if things didn't work out the way you wanted, I'm glad you got it out of here. It must've been hard.

[If it's an artificial weapon, then Gladion's comments about it suddenly make a whole lot of sense. Thinking about Silvally's creation, there's a lot of room for imagining the worst… and for relating—both in the how of it, and the why.

…]

Isn't it kinda like us?

Made to a purpose?

[Let's keep following this train of thought it's way better than diving back into his turbulent mom feelings. Gladion's voice is still wavery, but it's in, like, a wry way now. He's Fine.]

[Still not convinced. Making plans to offer a distraction later, or possibly a hug if the vibes are right. (If Gladion's looking, he will be able to see the concern plain on Rindo's face.)

"Made to a purpose" isn't quite how he'd have worded it, but now that he's giving it some thought, he's realizing that he can't really find better words.]

…Yeah, pretty much. Made to be weapons. And we don't get a say in that.

[Big sigh. This has not been an easy conversation for either side.]

[He's looking. He doesn't know how to acknowledge it now any better than he has before, elsewhere, except as a problem he needs to solve. His goal is to not elicit that kind of concern; that's how he, along with everyone else, will know he's actually alright.]

Right you are. [With a wry snort. Welcome to the wonderful world of kinning your beast, Rindo.

But Gladion doesn't get to elaborate on that, because a static burst snaps along his limbs, pushing a jolt of pain with it. Pain that fades fast but also doesn't fade at all, sudden discomfort that he flinches with, one knee pulling up, hunching over himself.]

Ngh.

[Sometimes it blinks back at this point. Sometimes it doesn't. This seems to be one of the latter. When he leans back against the wall again, nausea rears, and he closes his eyes and puts a fist gently to his mouth to ride it out.

His very human eyes have bags under them.]

[Sorry Gladion, you cannot stop this.

Just as Rindo begins to muse about how he's been missing Silvally's presence, with it stuck inside its Ball to keep it safe from the glitches, it happens. The visual crackling that courses painfully through Gladion's body elicits a sympathetic wince from Rindo, but it quickly morphs into open-mouthed staring as he realizes that all of his monster features have vanished.

Of course, he knows this can only be temporary. Rindo drinks in the sight for a few seconds, transfixed, muttering:]

You… you look human.

[Truthfully, Gladion doesn't look much different. The most obvious change lies in the colors. The familiar Nymph-green is gone now, pale skin and blonde hair in its stead. Rindo couldn't catch the color of Gladion's eyes before he scrunched them shut, but he's sure that whatever the irises are like now, the scleras have gone back to white.

This is the Gladion that, fed up with his mother's downward spiral, stole the Beast Killer, then got taken to Ryslig, and Rindo can't quite tell why the sight shakes him so much.

As the shock of the sudden transformation fades, he finally processes Gladion's obvious discomfort. At that moment, he practically jumps from his chair, crossing the short distance separating them in a few long strides. Once he reaches his side, he places a hand on Gladion's shoulder, squeezing it lightly. From there he notices the ears—no longer pointed—and the empty feeling under his hand, denoting a lack of moss growth.]

You okay? Want me to get a basin?

[He hates that this is about all he can do. But of course, this is just their lot in life here. Nothing to do but endure. (The thought doesn't make him feel any less bitter.)]

[He'd forgotten just how bad all of this felt, in half a year of being a monster. How tired and frail it was possible to be. What kind of effort it took to maintain dignity. The hand on his shoulder is shockingly strong, as if it's not Rindo's hand at all, but the hand of an adult coming down on the shoulder of a much younger Gladion.]

M'good.

[He feels like shit, but he's not actually going to puke, with nothing in his stomach. He does want to lie down. But he doesn't want to frighten Rindo. He drops his hand to his side and opens his eyes, squinting, grimacing.]

[Rindo's not sure if Gladion, as a human, was normally that pale, but even without that point of reference, his expression tells him everything he needs to know. (When he spots the green irises, he exhales quickly through his nose, an aborted laugh that was never going to make it out whole.)

Gladion's insistence to pretend he's okay despite the obvious signs to the contrary frustrates Rindo. He gets the urge, though, so he can't be mad.]

You should probably lie down.

[He speaks at a slightly lower volume, as if addressing someone nursing a migraine. Then, he reluctantly tears his eyes away from Gladion's face and scans the room, looking for some kind of inspiration, some way to help.

A few seconds later, his search fruitless, he lets go of Gladion's shoulder and speaks again.]

Is there anything I can do? I could go get you some water or painkillers or something…

[Strange how physical memory is. The shift makes Ryslig feel half-real, as if time has suddenly wound itself backwards, and the whole thing is a nasty dream he's about to wake up from. Rindo could be a nurse's assistant at Aether, showing all the same concern. (Would that make it easier to brush off?) (Didn't have much in the way of visitors back then. Lillie hardly counted.) (It would be easier to brush off. The scrutiny of a friend is a very different beast.)]

...Anything that goes down is coming right back up. [Gladion's voice comes out lower too, out of lack of energy rather than abundance of care. And he might as well lie down—this too stings less in the shared language of shame. If Rindo can keep secrets about Lusamine, he can probably be trusted with the secret of one time Gladion was lying down and it looked silly. So Gladion leans over sideways, slowly, on a shivering elbow, until his cheek meets the bedspread.] Just...waiting it out. It's what I've been doing.

[Provided it does revert in a reasonable amount of time, and doesn't leave him like this long enough to bring on some kind of medical emergency. And who could do anything about it then?]

[…Right, that makes sense. Rindo nods, somewhat absently. At least Gladion's laid down now. That's something. What else can be done, then?

Focusing on his own concern is an effective distraction from the urge to stare, to burn the sight of what should have been into his memory before it's taken away. Still, his gaze tends to linger, and the sight of a fully human Gladion stirs in him an odd sort of grief he hadn't felt before.

…Okay. Focus. He blinks, as if to chase those thoughts away.]

Want me to stay until it wears off?

[He doesn't mind. Not like he was doing anything of importance before he got called over. And he figures offering directly might push Gladion past whatever hangups he might have about it.]

[He gets comfortable, as much as he can. Pulls his knees up, curls in on himself a little. His sweater bunches up around his chin, loose and warm.

...The question sounds like he's asking permission. Gladion thinks, if Rindo wanted to leave, he'd probably ask if he wanted to get some peace and quiet.

It's not as if he has anywhere to go, either. It was already a slow day in the house.]

Sure.

[Rindo nods, mostly to himself. Good… though he figures sitting there and staring would quickly get uncomfortable for the both of them. With Gladion's condition, talking isn't ideal either—so after just a moment's hesitation, he speaks up:]

Be right back. Just grabbing a couple things.

[True to his word, he returns two minutes later with his tail vine wrapped around the botany book he'd abandoned earlier and a cup of water in each hand. Gladion did say he couldn't stomach anything right now, but with how much talking he's been doing, he could still use a drink once he's back to… what passes for "normal" here.

If nothing alarming's going on when he gets back, Rindo will have a sip of his own drink, place the other cup within Gladion's reach, sit down by the bedside, and flip open the book to the page he'd left it off at. A (hopefully) comforting presence while recovering from The Horrors.]

[Gladion's eyes are closed when Rindo returns, but they open again— he can't sleep like this, really.

Moments pass in silence...

It's comfortable.

After a few minutes, when the pain and nausea ebbs, he reaches for the glass.]

What you said, about, you couldn't do what I did. [Awkward pause. His voice is still low—can Rindo hear him?] Thing is. There's no way to know ahead of time. Before you have the choice...that's how it always works.

[.....sip.]

[Rindo's leafy ears perk up. Gladion's voice may be quiet, but it's still easy to hear in the silence. It's not like he was absorbed in the book or anything. On the contrary, with Gladion's extraordinary story still settling in his mind, he could hardly focus on the words he was trying to read.

He looks up from the pages, taking in Gladion's human appearance once again. Now that the initial shock has passed, it's… bittersweet. He could almost pretend he's back home, hanging out with a sick friend. But of course it's not like that—it's nothing like that. There's the mildest comfort to be taken in the fact that Gladion's condition has improved enough for him to talk, at least.

The actual words, though… they ring true in general, but…]

Even so. It's not something just anyone could do. You think I could?

[Because he does not see it.]

Not without being in the same situation.

[Gladion looks flustered to have to put it like that, and/or just generally flustered about his own discomposure. His eyes won't meet Rindo's.]

And you wouldn't know until then. [And even if it feels vaguely...naked to say it:] I didn't.

[Sip.]

[In contrast to Gladion's unease, there's actually the shadow of a smile on Rindo's face.]

Well, I can't really argue with that.

[…Not without implying that Gladion doesn't know what he's talking about. He has to wonder what makes him see this potential in him, though. It's still hard for Rindo to imagine himself doing something that daring, but it is a little nice for Gladion, specifically, to believe in him like that. It's easier to trust in the judgment of someone who knows him well and who's free of preconceptions, unlike Swallow and the others.

Speaking of which… The words tumble from his mouth before he can second-guess himself.]

You know, back home… I must've won the Reapers' Game. With Shoka and the others.

["Be happy—the Game's over! You got what you wanted!"]

And… well, I don't know how it went, exactly, but from what I heard, it had to have been pretty hard.

[He doesn't like to think about it, because the experience of having an alternative version of himself he only knows of through hearsay is, at best, weird as hell, but it's so fresh on his mind following the Coco incident that he can't really help it. And with Gladion being an outsider to everything… He's just easier to talk to, he finds.

…It's kind of ironic that he knows way more about Neku, Beat, and Joshua's involvement in the Games than his own, but it is what it is.]

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familyproblem - 2023-10-22 17:33 (UTC) - Expand

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worldisyours - 2023-10-29 17:52 (UTC) - Expand

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