002 // text; username: grollschwert

[hauntedsavior]

cw: chronic illness, ruminations on death

Fun one for you tonight.

[this message comes in the middle of the night, when no one in their right mind should be awake. but that's never stopped anna. she can't sleep, and if flynn and ruby and everybody are right then she has to at least try not to keep this stuff inside her at all times. sorrow's silence we needn't bear, or whatever.]

You know a girl. Her body is breaking down and her meds are failing her.
She has years left. Maybe months, if it gets worse.
But something happens, and she gets access to amazing new technology. Things that prevent her body from attacking itself.
Things that stop her timer from ticking faster than everyone else's.
Great, right?
You get to know her better. You entertain her little crush on you. Maybe you like her back a little and maybe things aren't gonna be so bad.

But one day, you do something.
Something that sets off a chain of events that you couldn't have predicted. Not in a million years.
Small things collide into medium things collide into big huge massive things.
And after the butterfly version of you is done flapping its wings, she doesn't have access to that technology anymore.
She's back on the timer.

She doesn't know you did anything.
She never finds out.
You can't bring yourself to tell her, and she wouldn't believe it if you did.

She barely recognizes you anymore, by the end of it.
Her family finds your name on her phone and invites you to pay respects.

Do you still go to her funeral?

Did you kill her?

Comments

Text. | UN: eminemu.

[silkcasket]

I don't think it'd be bad to go to her funeral.
I think sometimes distance and even death can make two people grow closer... in a way.

[ That probably doesn't make any sense to anyone but her and Samatoki. Truly, anyway. ]

[hauntedsavior]

Well, her body is six feet underground in a city a universe away from here.
Can't get much more distant than that.
So you don't think you're the reason she's there?

voice; un: givemeyourown

[unsheathedfromreality]

Yes.

Do you ask by reason of legal fault, or moral fault, or to keep blaming yourself?

voice;

[hauntedsavior]

[her voice is dry when she speaks up.]

Call it curiosity.

text; un: lowell

[vibing]

was what you did worth it?

[ so much for the questions. if its a moral judgement you want, anna, there's more information to be had ]

[hauntedsavior]

Saved the world.
Eventually.

Text UN: ClickClickBloom

[onekindsoul]

I'd go...
Just because she doesn't remember doesn't mean those experiences didn't happen.
Even if you are the reason she's there.
She might not see it that way if she could understand what had happened.

[hauntedsavior]

So you do think you're the one who killed her here, Ruby?

text; un: tabris

[peripheries]

why did you do it?

[hauntedsavior]

It was going to save the world.

audio; un: padlocks

[enblightened]

I would go.

I would rather do that than spend the rest of my life wondering otherwise. A long life is full of too many regrets as it is.

audio;

[hauntedsavior]

[there's a few slow breaths, and one particularly long one as she puffs out some smoke on her end.]

Yeah. I went. I don't regret it. It felt better to see her off instead of running and hiding from whatever everyone really thought. Besides, she deserved to have a friend there.

un: eudaimonikos; text

[eudaimonikos]

No.

I just came from a system that held all humans morally accountable for every unpredictable, far-off indirect consequence of their most minor actions. It's a cruel and impossible standard to set.

[So maybe he's projecting a tad. Truthfully, the details here are a little sparse. He errs on the side of generosity these days, though; the way she puts it, she did something innocuous that set something far larger than herself into motion.]

The world's too hard and complicated to predict or control every outcome. No one's omniscient.

That's not true, some people are. But even Janet can't predict the future.

Point is, I think if you did the best you could with what information and options you had at the time, there's not much more you can reasonably expect from yourself.

[hauntedsavior]

[wouldn't be wrong. all she did was agree to help an HR guy save the world. it wasn't supposed to end up with her stabbing a giant omniscient dimensional monster in the face while her future self infiltrated an underground soul lab.]

That's good to know. That it's not doing any good to blame myself for it.
I had no idea how it was all going to play out. I just wanted to do what was right.
To try to save as many people as I could.
Just wish she didn't have to be the one person whose life got worse from it.

Holding everyone to cruel and impossible standards for things they couldn't predict... so how was Deerington, anyway?

text; un: shiro

[shiro2hero]

Would she have wanted you there?

[hauntedsavior]

If she still remembered who I was? Probably.
She didn't like talking about what was going on with her much, but...
We kind of understood each other.

text | carcinoGeneticist

[klawful]

THERE IS NO POINT IN THINKING ABOUT CIRCUMSTANTIAL TIMELINES OF WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN. THAT IS A ONE-WAY TICKET TO INESCAPABLE MENTAL ANGUISH AND THAT'S NOT A TRAIN YOU WANT TO CATCH.

THIS POST DOESN'T ACCOMPLISH ANYTHING EXCEPT FOR REWASHING THINGS BETTER LEFT WHERE THEY ARE IN THE PAST.






ARE YOU OKAY?

[hauntedsavior]

If you've got a better idea of what to do when your brain won't shut up in the middle of the night, I'd love to hear it.

I'm fine.

[a long pause, and then a second text.]

I'm fucking not fine.

Private - Text: UN - IceCream

[threelayers]

Uh, Anna.

This one of those "Forget Everything" cases you knew about isn't it?
Before I answer your question, I kind of want to be sure.
Because like hell does that sound hypothetical.

private;

[hauntedsavior]

Got it in one, NP.
The disease didn't take her memory. The city did.
At least, I was pretty sure it took everything, but now... I don't know.
Bringing it to everyone here is kind of making me wonder how much I took for granted.

Anyway. Fire away.

text | un: erwinsmith

[13thcommander]

Yes.

You should always pay your respects to those whose lives you altered.

[Or ended, as the case may be.]

[hauntedsavior]

Well, you sure don't mince words.
Even when there's no record of you ever having done anything? When you suddenly turn into a non-person in their life?

text; un: ushiromiya

[entreats]

[ Well, this is.. strange, Ange thinks. She immediately recognizes Anna's username, but then there's that whole story.. One that's very clearly not just hypothetical. The other doesn't seem like the type to just make up stories and throw them on here for everyone to read.

.. huh.

It's that fact that makes Ange think more than she has to think about her question. That's the easy part, really. ]

Of course you go. You cared for her. Regardless of blame, why wouldn't you want to pay your respects?

[hauntedsavior]

[mm. ange. smart, clever, perceptive ange. who probably saw things like this inside her already. why does it feel embarrassing to have gotten her attention?]

Guilt? Shame?
I don't know.
The feeling like you don't belong there no matter how much you want to pay your respects.

text | un: sharpshooter

[azurestar]

[It's a heavy thing he resonates with in his own way. He stares at the text, reading it over a few times before putting thoughts to words.]

funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living

if going to her funeral would help you find peace then you should

[hauntedsavior]

I did.
Jury's still out on whether it helped find peace.

Everyone's focusing on the easy one.
Can't say I blame you.

text | un: moonmochi

[hopticulture]

You go to her funeral.
And her death isn't entirely on you.

[hauntedsavior]

So what part of it is?

text; un: morningstar

[morningstud]

Once upon a time, I might have scoffed at such a question, but that was before I broke a rule I gave myself when humans first started to walk the Earth.

I know that sort of guilt all too well, even if our circumstances are different.

[hauntedsavior]

Leave it to the existential questions to bring the nonhumans out of the woodwork.
(Unless you've just got a particular way with your words, Herr Morningstar.)

How do you live with it?
For so long, too.

text; un:scifo

[thinkfirst]

If you couldn't have predicted it, and you didn't intend to cause her death, then I think it's only right to go to her funeral.

Especially if you really did save the world.

Was she the kind of person who would have been proud of you for doing that?

[hauntedsavior]

[goddammit. she knew it would only be a matter of time before flynn saw her wallowing. this is a bigger embarrassment than ange catching her on it, because flynn was supposed to make this stuff better. what the hell was the point of the whole conversation last month if she can't keep it together in front of him for four consecutive weeks?]

She would've thought I was really hot for doing it.
That's the same.
Evening, Flynn.

un: song | text

[spoilers]

The first is a personal choice. Not for her, not for her family, but for you.

The second...some things, they happen, and as much as we might think we can change them, we can't. You aren't to blame for her life, or her death, but you should hold onto the good things you remember.

[hauntedsavior]

At least I have part of that down.
I'm not letting go of the good things me and her did together.
Those aren't for this place to know about.

text; un: thursday

[foolintherain]

[ Well, that's a familiar meandering of guilt. There's a lot of kind words and good advice that she's already received, which is good, because Castiel doesn't know the answer himself. He is curious, though. After all that good advice: ]

What did you decide?

[hauntedsavior]

[anna waits until the cold, clear light of day to respond to this. it's been a rough evening, but she's outside, she's looking at the waves roll in on the beach, the wind is whipping her hair and touching parts of her face that she usually keeps covered by the eyepatch. and goddammit, she's smiling.]

There's no way I could've killed her.
And I went to her funeral -- but I knew that one going in.
There's a chance she still remembered me at the end of it.
And that makes what I did worth it.