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. ]

voice; un: givemeyourown

[unsheathedfromreality]

Yes.

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

[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;

[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.

[vibing]

did you go?

[ it sets him to thinking: would he have actually killed estelle, if he'd had to?

maybe.

probably.

but he sure didn't want to, even though she was going to destroy the world. ]

[hauntedsavior]

[god. she sure did. leave it to someone who thinks like her to cut to the quick.]

Yeah.
I stayed in the back when they lowered her down.
Didn't talk to anyone. Didn't know what to say.

[vibing]

did it help?

[ anna, not the family. if the family didn't know who she was, at least she was another body there, another piece of proof that their daughter, sister, whatever, that she mattered ]

id go too

[unsheathedfromreality]

Even so, the answers may be different for each.

The question of whether she was killed, that is; I would go to her funeral either way.

Why did you do it?

[hauntedsavior]

It felt right to be there.
She was part of my life even if she didn't remember me being part of hers.

[she knows she's not answering the question. she knows he knows it, too.]

She looked peaceful.
In a way she hadn't looked like for months.

[hauntedsavior]

I had to do it to save the world. [she's not defensive; nothing to defend when she's already defeated.] Nobody knew what would happen after that.

[vibing]

is that that thing again? where people forget about you when you're not connected anymore?

[ he'll let it slide. but hey, at least he remembers their conversation, from before ]

seems like a bad system. how can you do better next time if you don't remember your fuckups?

funerals are like that i guess. good make up

[ he remembers flynn's mom's funeral. she looked better, lying there, than she had in all the time she'd been sick ]

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.

text; un: tabris

[peripheries]

why did you do it?

[hauntedsavior]

Yeah.
That's what really happened. The thing eating at her didn't get her memories, but I figured this was easier to explain.

I don't know why the only way they thought it would work was a full clean slate every time.
I guess it wasn't built for someone to stay on there while someone else fell off.
It was built to have everyone or no one.

[hauntedsavior]

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

[hauntedsavior]

It was going to save the world.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Then not even an elven court would convict you, if no one could have known what would come of what you did. Legally, you did not kill her.

Is there some situation where she would have lived on, had the world died?

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.

[peripheries]

did it?

[vibing]

wait
so you erased her memories?

what did you have to stay on?

[ okay maybe he didn't fully understand their last conversation ]

[hauntedsavior]

Eventually, yeah.
But by the time it came around, she was already on her way out of it.

[peripheries]

Was the world worth it?

[hauntedsavior]

No, the city did. She... it's complicated.
She was turning into a robot, too. Like me. The mechanical parts she was getting back were keeping her alive.
And I ended up doing a bunch of stuff to eventually save the world, and along the line, she lost access to the app, and she went back to her human body.

I don't know why I was chosen to stay there when nearly everyone else fell off around me.