A few times with my sister! [HE SOUNDS... SINCERELY HAPPY.... In a way that Baren normally doesn't let slip, but well, he adores his sister. He adores traveling. It doesn't occur to him to be a menace for a moment.] We haven't gone in a while....
I'll tell you next time I get invited out there, Kitty Kat. My sis gets bored a lot faster than I do so I think she'd pass. Sooooo you should run away with me for a weekend.
[Well, well, isn't this new and interesting. We started out with amusing the devil with philosopher shenanigans and now here we are listening to his tone rich with love for his sister and legitimate enthusiasm about something that isn't just pure chaos.
It's kind of nice, really, and a little enchanting.]
Do you travel with her often, then? It must be nice.
Not lately - I've gotten busy and things have gotten... weird.
[There's a little pause in that - a moment where he remembers that Retrospec exists and he's caught in this game when his sister isn't. But he continues after that, answers mixed with lies but fondness all the same.]
There's a lot of the world to see, you know? She's even more curious than I am so it's never boring.
You'll come along next time we go out, right? You sound like you haven't left the country. That's not fair, you should get to see what you want to see.
I nearly didn't come to Recollé, actually; you're right about that. I came here for academics.
[Now it's his turn to pause, not because he's ashamed but just because he seems to be sorting through how he wants to word this.]
I almost didn't go to university, either, much less come here for graduate studies. My plan was to stay close to home and get a job — staying occupied while I helped out.
[This is getting too close to backstory sharing - but unless Fawkes is expecting anything in return for Baren, he doesn't mind listening for the time being. It's interesting to him. He won't admit it out loud, but he sincerely thinks that Fawkes is one of the few people indisputably smarter than he is.
The idea of him being cooped up somewhere small is almost unforgivable.]
[Hmmmm, it sure is backstory o'clock, isn't it. Though it sounds like Fawkes is silently debating just how far into Details Of The Past we're going to go, before he finally speaks.]
I thought it would make me a bad son if I did anything else.
[...]
My mother is sick, and has been for a long time. I always just assumed my future would involve devoting my time to taking care of her.
Baren thinks back on that - his own mother hated him and his sister, used them for her own revenge, and died without saying a single word of affection without a string of manipulation tied to it - and he pauses. He doesn't understand anything about family relationships and dynamics that don't go up in flames aside from the unbreakable tie he has to his twin sister.
But.
But he knows what he wanted, even in the last days where his mother was sick - ]
[That's what Baren thinks. He doesn't say it out loud, doesn't tell anyone, but he waits on his sister hand and foot. If she said she needed anything in this world, he'd drop everything he did to get it for her. Each morning, he prepares breakfast for her and helps her get dressed, just because she's too sleepy and slow in the morning to move quickly enough on her own.
She's the only thing he has in this world and he'd slowly lose his mind if she got sick.]
Mm, but she's right, too. This place would suffer a loss if you weren't in it.
[Not a pick up, not a come on - just an easily breathed fact.]
I'd rather something happen to me than see it happen to her. But something like this...you just end up helpless. Powerless.
[And he remembers it — oh, does he remember it. That one awful summer, the sterile smell of the hospital, the blue-white fluorescent lights, the hard plastic of the chairs digging inflexibly into his shoulderblades. He remembers each day feeling like a roll of the dice, each morning wondering if he'd end up receiving a call of condolence by mid-afternoon. He remembers going over it again and again in his mind, frantic, whatever last words he'd said to her before she'd fallen asleep, in the fear that they'd be the last ones she ever heard from him.
He remembers the shoulder he'd spent an entire summer leaning on. He remembers how many moments of hopelessness and lethargy had been broken by someone who'd shown care for him, while he was expending all the care he'd had on someone else.]
It still feels selfish, sometimes, to be here instead of home. I just try to tell myself that it's what she wanted, so I never have to answer either way whether it was what I wanted, too.
[There's a long silence on his end, because Baren doesn't judge. It's not his place to. He doesn't care to. But there's just something bothering him, at the very end—]
... are you running again, Foxy?
[Not that Baren can blame him. His tone is curious, not leaning one way or another. It's not as if he doesn't know a thing or two about abandoning a difficult choice, just so that you'll never have to make it.]
Are you worried you won't forgive yourself if you admit to wanting to something?
... You know, if choices like that were easy to make, everyone would be successful. I kinda wish that's how it was, but...
[It's not. As much as Baren likes to pretend that he can pull the strings of his life so easily that he doesn't have to hesitate, that's not the case. Everything is a series of choices. Even if not all of them are as difficult as Kit's.]
But I've found that if you don't make those decisions in time, something else will make them for you.
And is it worse? When something else manages to get to the decision first...?
[An odd question to pose in the first place, once he sort of reexamines it after it's already out of his mouth. Having the choice is always better than the alternative, isn't it?]
[And in the end, the summer ended, and he'd had to go back to university, so he'd never had to do anything about what Kuro had said because the choice had already been made for him.
Baren's exactly right. He'd been looking for an excuse then, hadn't he?]
...You weren't serious, were you? About France. About going.
I don't know if I'll still want it tomorrow. But right now?
["Tomorrow" is a thought filled with notions of things like when and how and but what about. He can't stop tomorrow from existing, from lying in wait for him, but he can at least keep it from creeping in at the edges of this moment.]
...Being around you makes it easy to feel as though it's fine to live in the moment.
[There's a but what about that slams against the front of his brain, that leaps to the tip of his tongue and threatens to break free almost instantly upon hearing that. He can't help a reaction like that, frankly; it's impulse, it's old habit, it's simply his nature to consider as many variables of any given situation as he can before making a decision in any direction.
But that would defeat the purpose of the exercise, wouldn't it? The instant he offers up anything that isn't a simple yes or a no, the moment he lets himself drift into how and but and what if, it's over and he's already sunk.
It's not an easy impulse to overcome. But that doesn't make it an impossible one, ether.]
Well. I'm willing to pretend it's Paris if you are.
[And isn't that just the whole point? There's a laugh on his end of the walkie talkie - he hadn't expected this conversation to go in this direction - and the sound of rustling paper.]
Name a time and a place and I'll whisk you away, Kitty Kat.
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roseblooms) wrote2020-04-24 08:15 pm
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How many times have you been? Either way, I'm jealous.
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I'll tell you next time I get invited out there, Kitty Kat. My sis gets bored a lot faster than I do so I think she'd pass. Sooooo you should run away with me for a weekend.
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It's kind of nice, really, and a little enchanting.]
Do you travel with her often, then? It must be nice.
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[There's a little pause in that - a moment where he remembers that Retrospec exists and he's caught in this game when his sister isn't. But he continues after that, answers mixed with lies but fondness all the same.]
There's a lot of the world to see, you know? She's even more curious than I am so it's never boring.
You'll come along next time we go out, right? You sound like you haven't left the country. That's not fair, you should get to see what you want to see.
no subject
[Now it's his turn to pause, not because he's ashamed but just because he seems to be sorting through how he wants to word this.]
I almost didn't go to university, either, much less come here for graduate studies. My plan was to stay close to home and get a job — staying occupied while I helped out.
no subject
[This is getting too close to backstory sharing - but unless Fawkes is expecting anything in return for Baren, he doesn't mind listening for the time being. It's interesting to him. He won't admit it out loud, but he sincerely thinks that Fawkes is one of the few people indisputably smarter than he is.
The idea of him being cooped up somewhere small is almost unforgivable.]
no subject
I thought it would make me a bad son if I did anything else.
[...]
My mother is sick, and has been for a long time. I always just assumed my future would involve devoting my time to taking care of her.
no subject
Baren thinks back on that - his own mother hated him and his sister, used them for her own revenge, and died without saying a single word of affection without a string of manipulation tied to it - and he pauses. He doesn't understand anything about family relationships and dynamics that don't go up in flames aside from the unbreakable tie he has to his twin sister.
But.
But he knows what he wanted, even in the last days where his mother was sick - ]
Is she doing okay now? Do you get to see her?
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[He hesitates, just a little. Just enough that it's noticeable, impossible for him to hide.]
She said it wasn't right for me to put my future on hold, even for her. She's that sort of person — never wanting to be a burden on anyone.
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[That's what Baren thinks. He doesn't say it out loud, doesn't tell anyone, but he waits on his sister hand and foot. If she said she needed anything in this world, he'd drop everything he did to get it for her. Each morning, he prepares breakfast for her and helps her get dressed, just because she's too sleepy and slow in the morning to move quickly enough on her own.
She's the only thing he has in this world and he'd slowly lose his mind if she got sick.]
Mm, but she's right, too. This place would suffer a loss if you weren't in it.
[Not a pick up, not a come on - just an easily breathed fact.]
no subject
[And he remembers it — oh, does he remember it. That one awful summer, the sterile smell of the hospital, the blue-white fluorescent lights, the hard plastic of the chairs digging inflexibly into his shoulderblades. He remembers each day feeling like a roll of the dice, each morning wondering if he'd end up receiving a call of condolence by mid-afternoon. He remembers going over it again and again in his mind, frantic, whatever last words he'd said to her before she'd fallen asleep, in the fear that they'd be the last ones she ever heard from him.
He remembers the shoulder he'd spent an entire summer leaning on. He remembers how many moments of hopelessness and lethargy had been broken by someone who'd shown care for him, while he was expending all the care he'd had on someone else.]
It still feels selfish, sometimes, to be here instead of home. I just try to tell myself that it's what she wanted, so I never have to answer either way whether it was what I wanted, too.
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... are you running again, Foxy?
[Not that Baren can blame him. His tone is curious, not leaning one way or another. It's not as if he doesn't know a thing or two about abandoning a difficult choice, just so that you'll never have to make it.]
Are you worried you won't forgive yourself if you admit to wanting to something?
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Maybe.
[It's not a dodge, either; it's genuine uncertainty, the byproduct of ambiguities he hasn't yet really had time to unravel and examine.]
The things I want always seem like they come at the expense of something — or someone — else.
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[It's not. As much as Baren likes to pretend that he can pull the strings of his life so easily that he doesn't have to hesitate, that's not the case. Everything is a series of choices. Even if not all of them are as difficult as Kit's.]
But I've found that if you don't make those decisions in time, something else will make them for you.
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[An odd question to pose in the first place, once he sort of reexamines it after it's already out of his mouth. Having the choice is always better than the alternative, isn't it?]
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[That leaves Baren's mouth so quickly. So many things can be used to explain away your own inaction, if you just wait and let life happen around you.]
But that doesn't sound like living to me.
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Baren's exactly right. He'd been looking for an excuse then, hadn't he?]
...You weren't serious, were you? About France. About going.
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[Said with a brief little laugh - he'll admit to that easily.]
But that wasn't one of them.
I'd take you - if that's something you want.
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["Tomorrow" is a thought filled with notions of things like when and how and but what about. He can't stop tomorrow from existing, from lying in wait for him, but he can at least keep it from creeping in at the edges of this moment.]
...Being around you makes it easy to feel as though it's fine to live in the moment.
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[A hum and an invitation if Fawkes is interested - but not one that Baren lingers on.]
I don't know if I can promise Paris tonight, but that seven-course dinner is probably in the cards.
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But that would defeat the purpose of the exercise, wouldn't it? The instant he offers up anything that isn't a simple yes or a no, the moment he lets himself drift into how and but and what if, it's over and he's already sunk.
It's not an easy impulse to overcome. But that doesn't make it an impossible one, ether.]
Well. I'm willing to pretend it's Paris if you are.
no subject
[And isn't that just the whole point? There's a laugh on his end of the walkie talkie - he hadn't expected this conversation to go in this direction - and the sound of rustling paper.]
Name a time and a place and I'll whisk you away, Kitty Kat.
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[He says, sounding vaguely satisfied.]
The church again?
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[But there's a laugh - ]
Yeah, you got nothing to do? I can get you now if you'd like.
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[What a rebel.]
So yes. I'll see you there.