Chapter Text
37 HOURS AFTER JUDGEMENT - 22 WEEKS AFTER THE CRASH
Daisuke wakes in pieces.
And, most noticeably, an overwhelming sense of oh my God, everything hurts so bad.
He blinks, bleary eyed and doing his best to flutter away the lingering blur, and tries to parse through all, exactly, that has happened.
He can remember doing this sort of thing back in college, a lot — woke up with mussed hair and clothes with weird, unexplained stains left scrabbling trying to retrace his steps and hope that, you know, he hadn’t blackout drunkenly ruined his life, or something of the sort.
The stakes here were probably higher than then, he’d guess. All that he really comes up on is that…
Oh, yeah.
Daisuke swallows, and is absently kind of impressed that he can.
The vent. The vent and cocktail and Jimmy and blood and Anya—
…Medical. Curly’s one eye, everpresent as he faded in and out, Swansea—
Oh, fuck, Swansea.
Are… you mad?
No.
God, he should be. He should be so, so angry — Daisuke wouldn’t even be indignant about it, or upset at all, not for that goddamn cocktail. It was probably a blessing that he was even alive, ‘cause that stuff could not be good to drink.
…Reiterating the same things he’s already thought is probably a good sign, right?
Trying to focus, Daisuke looks around himself —
He’s in the lounge, he can tell, for the glaringly bright screen above him proves that, his feet are kicked up on some… books? Probably Anya’s, if he thinks about it. A random spare employee shirt bundled up under his neck and his Hawaiian button-down no-where to be found.
Another thing he doesn’t fail to notice is the tape.
Just… wrapped around his legs —- his, his wounds, he thinks, a little dizzyingly. Awkwardly crossed along his chest and sides, tugging insistently for his attention.
It hurts, is his grand conclusion as he tries to twitch his leg. Finds that pain demands itself be known in staticky, pulsating throbs lighting up nearly his entire body.
Where…
He swallows, tucking his elbows behind him and pressing his lips flat to keep the pained groans inside his throat, for once.
Looks around — nothing dramatically changed. Same cracks and the same perpetually-used board game on the table nearest to him, but something…
What was that in the air? The mild tang of copper, cloying and particularly pungent, just lingering all around. It wasn’t—
Blood, maybe? His?
Daisuke frowns. Curls up onto his side and pushes himself entirely sitting, hissing through his teeth only a few times — his forearms throb with the reminder of live copper at the mild pressure he lays onto them. He makes a mental note to avoid that in the near future.
…And tacks on another mental note to find someone. That would probably be helpful in fleshing out his very spotty, very fuzzy memories.
Next order of business, then — actually standing up.
Easier said than done, he thinks, sucking in a sharp breath almost immediately— his muscles ache like he’s ran a marathon and prove heavy. Weighted for some godforsaken reason. His thoughts declutter faster than his body can move, sorting, mostly, out of their fritzy edges.
Landing on that—
“Daisuke.”
Breathed out in singularity, and Daisuke is whirling towards it on something like shocked delight when he’s met with a faceful of Anya. All fluttering hands and what he can pin as relief rolling off of her in thick waves.
“You’re… how are you feeling?”
“...Uh—” Daisuke winces at the violent rasp lodged in his throat, chafed against the inside like sandpaper. He swallows. “Fi— ne, I think. Y’know, uh, considering.”
Anya smiles — light and warm and he thinks, suddenly when was the last time that happened? “Good. Here, I’ll— I’ll go get Swansea and see if we have any water, alright?”
“Uh— Swansea?” his voice pitches painfully on the final syllable.
Because— because—
Swansea. He, he has so much to say and to explain to him and God, he probably needs to reconcile this curdled, shaking guilt spooled deep in his gut before—
“Huh?”
Daisuke jerks — feels something in his chest perk and old flitterings of worry spark to life all at the same time at the sight of his mentor.
Swansea raises his eyebrows when he sees him, something mutely surprised in his voice when he says, “I’ll be damned. Pulled through, did you?”
It’s not mean. It’s not mean and all things considered it’s actually pretty nice because this is Swansea he’s talking about and maybe it’s just the weight of everything or the feelings he can’t untangle but almost instantly he feels the pinprick of tears sudden and alot.
What does he even say?
“Oh—” Anya reaches out gently, feather-light touch on his shoulder. “Yeah, it’s been… a long few days.”
“Days?” he warbles.
Swansea snorts. “You’ve been out for nearly two.”
“Two… geez,” he sniffs a bit, pressing his palms to his eyes until little colorful spots flare up in the staticky darkness. “I…”
It lulls. It lulls, and he needs to, to—
“I, I wanna— there’s—” so much to say. To explain and ask, to catch up with —
What happened? Anya and Swansea are both okay, hell, even he has ‘pulled through’, so…
Where’s Jimmy? Curly, even?
“We got time. Best thing you can do is rest up — yer gonna hurt yourself, goin’ so fast.”
A frown twists at him — revving up in his chest that same itching wonder. “I…”
“Swansea’s right. You… got really lucky. Be gentle, just for now.” Anya urges.
…He stays quiet — feels the aching burn of every one of his muscles from leftover scrap metal, the memory of which sends his senses dialing into everything all at once. A kind of static buzz in his ears as he just nods numbly.
He’ll… get the time. He just has to sit with it.
//
Their water rations are, putting it lightly, sparse.
Still, Anya passes over the emptied mouthwash bottle hardly a fourth full and watches Daisuke barely sip at it — trying to savour it, she supposes.
“So…” his voice has lost some, though not all, of it’s unused rasp. Hair mussed in the back and tucked behind his ears, Hawaiian shirt bundled up in his lap when she’d retrieved it for him. “What, uh, happened?”
…It’s a loaded question. What has happened?
“Well…” she trails, looking off.
What is she to say to that? I killed him?
Daisuke’s eyes flicker past and around her. “And where… uh, where’s Jimmy been?”
…And it compounds. In an unused storage locker near the foamed-up sleeping quarters is the answer. “Well, um. Jimmy is— gone.”
She almost winces at the bruteness, at the awkward way the words fall out. It almost sounds like breaking the news of a dead pet to a child, or something similar — she doesn’t like it much. She doesn’t know how else to say it.
Daisuke's brows knit together. “...Gone?”
“He’s dead.”
And immediately, they shoot right up to his hairline.
Hm. Perhaps she could’ve used a bit more tact there.
Her hands twitch in her lap from some phantom weight she can’t scrub away. She hasn’t tried very hard to. “Do– do you remember asking me if… if Jimmy did something to me?”
It hangs in the air.
There’s a chance he doesn’t — there’s a chance he does.
“It. It was a long time coming, with… with everything.” It had stricken her in the hours since, thinking idly of every detail leading to and from the finale, that perhaps it was simply inevitability. The type of man Jimmy was…
Volatile, destructive. The ship always would’ve crashed because she always would’ve told. One of them always would’ve died, trapped together as they were.
Daisuke’s voice is unsure, shaking a little in it’s frame. “...Did. Uh, wow, this sounds so much more mean now that I’m saying it but, uh, did he— deserve? It? I, I know with the– the ship and stuff…”
It’s not like she blames him for the questioning; he’s so young. Optimism someone might call kidlike — why wouldn’t he quesiton something so extreme as murder?
He knows some, but he doesn’t know all. And an eye for an eye just leaves everyone blind, doesn’t it?
“...Yes. I think… I think it’s the best thing I could’ve done.”
It’s an echo of her now days-old words, and—
Ah.
I could’ve.
Daisuke’s eyes meet hers, unreadable for a moment, before they flicker off and onto the ground just past her. “...Huh.”
She isn’t sure exactly what tone he’s speaking in. But she…
She’s not going to waste breath justifying herself. What’s done is done — whether she trusts him to understand is uncertain. With the type of person he is, maybe he won’t — and in the same moment, with the type of person he is, maybe he will.
There isn’t much more to say on it.
“Hey,” Daisuke sits further up, meeting her gaze again. “Did… was, was Swansea upset at all? When you first saw him?”
…Perhaps he can see that, at the very least.
She hums. “No? He was with you for some time — do you not remember?”
“No, I, uh, I remember some, I just…” Daisuke waves a hand. “Feel bad. About what happened before the whole… vent thing.”
“...What happened?”
“The… the isopropyl… Swansea didn’t— uh, didn’t let us into Utility so, so I…” Too fast and chopped, jittery all at the same time like it’s all lodged in his throat.
She thinks… I didn’t want to… there— I couldn’t—
Swansea not being there. A high alcohol percentage and though you aren’t meant to drink it…
Well, you aren’t meant to drink mouthwash, either. No matter how drunk it gets you.
“So that’s what you meant? When you first… came out of the vent, you were saying something like you ‘didn’t want to’.”
“I— I didn’t! But it— I mean—”
“You were pushed to.” It was Jimmy with him, of course. She was familiar.
Choking every word back, terrified of pushing back, of saying or doing the wrong thing and setting him off — it was bone-deep, a constant pervasiveness that she felt rotted her, sometimes.
Even now, she holds onto the framework of caution. Is scared that she won’t remember what, who she was without it.
Daisuke deflates in his seat, curling in on himself. “Yeah. But it— I still did it, you know? I could’ve… not.” his voice falls to a mutter, eyes lidded in a partial scrunch. “I just… don’t want him to be upset with me. Even though he totally should be.”
Anya thinks of Swansea’s suddenness, seeing Daisuke as he had been. Of that he’s hardly drank enough mouthwash to even count as ‘hydration’, much less been anything but grossly sober.
It would explain the tremoring she’s sure he thinks she hasn’t noticed. The clammy skin and way he cups his hand to his throat like his pulse is beating fast.
She doesn’t say anything. Not when they don’t have anything to help it but time.
She tests the words in her mouth, feeling them roll like little glass marbles when she says, “I think you should talk to him.”
His head nearly snaps up, twisted in a deep frown. Alarmed.
“Seriously? I—”
“Just… trust me on this one. I think that… he’ll understand more than you think.”
He’s quiet. It’s about what she expected.
Moments pass. Moments, and then — a tiny, wobbling smile. Only a little forced in the sand-down edges, but genuine somewhere in there.
Anya returns it.
___
25 WEEKS AFTER THE CRASH
Well? How is he?
...We won’t be running out of painkillers anytime soon, at least.
Daisuke still wont take any — he thinks that he needs them more.
Mm.
‘N everythin’ looks good there?
His wounds are shut, and all of the burns on his arms are healing as they should. Everything looks good so far— really good, considering. No signs of infection.
Huh.
There’s some good news, for once.
…
How long d’you think he’s gonna last?
...Considering so far?
I think as long as we make him.
And that’s what we wanna do? Ain’t got no-one beggin’ to keep ‘im around and in pain.
He still screams some nights.
...I know.
…
It would… be kinder, wouldn’t it?
Yeah.
Yeah it would be.
___
23 WEEKS AFTER THE CRASH
The medical room is… oddly cold, when he thinks about it. Feels remarkably unfriendly in a way it hadn’t before.
Daisuke takes his time in the space, shuffling along until he’s hefting himself onto the countertop beside Anya’s wilting… whatever that flower was, exactly, and the paracetamol bottles, just like that first time.
Only this time he can see the rust-colored stains of his blood that Swansea and Anya hadn’t quite managed to lift from the ground. He decides on ignoring those — and the queasiness they drag along with them. “Hey, uh…”
Daisuke swallows, and meets blue. “Curly.”
The last time he’d seen him, he’d been sprawled on death’s doorstep. He wonders—
What had Curly thought of all of this? When he’d dragged himself through, when Anya had locked herself inside?
“How’ve you been?” An awkward, stilted kind of laugh falls from his lips. It sounds jagged in the edges to even himself.
It’s… it’s probably fair to ask the guy. Considering that— that—
Does he even know? He has to know, right? Someone had to have told him that…
Jimmy’s dead. Like—
One minute he was there, and the next he’d been waking up to the news that he wasn’t. Daisuke hadn’t been… particularly close to him. Like, at all. Not towards the tense end and not in the rocky beginning— left mostly with this intangible, foggy fact a few leftward steps of his own head that oh, he’s dead.
He’s dead, and Anya did it.
That’s…
Just that, isn’t it?
“You, uh…” he prods at his own fingertips, and looks just past the man across from him. “You and— and Jimmy were friends, yeah?”
But it’s been an open secret for a while that Captain got Jimmy this job in the first place. They’ve known each other forever.
“I’ve… already asked you that before, I think. Yeah… did you even, um.”
He exhales, drops his chest. “Was he… like that, before the job? So…” his shoulders shrivel up close to his ears. “I dunno. Pushy? Mean?”
Do you remember asking me if… if Jimmy did something to me?
I think so, too.
Worried faces when he asked about him. His disregard for her, his weird treading when he mentioned Anya in any way —
The… smaller things. Swansea’s disdain for him; what Swansea had said. ‘Spose I should prob’ly look twice at this thing if you were anywhere near it. Daisuke doesn’t…
Swallow those implications well. Doesn’t like the carnal panic that drowns his senses when he looked back on all those moments he was alone with him, doesn’t like the mangling of guilt with it, too, when he thinks of every moment he left anyone else there, either.
He thinks… “Did he just not care that he might’ve killed you?”
The crash. The crash, and Anya, and Curly, and I’m taking care of it. I always do. A whole host of possibilities and maybe’s and what-ifs that Daisuke just doesn’t know what to do with.
Jimmy is– was, just—
Some kind of mystery, he guesses. His head aches trying to picture what he must have been thinking. How he could possibly explain away, rationalize every little thing.
Spins, wondering— “Did he… just not care that I might’ve died?”
Jimmy pushed. He’d said no, he’d tried to go back and against and question and question and question and—
Daisuke. Look, either you can help me, or you can get the fuck out of my way and keep your mouth shut like you’ve been real good at when I was asking you things.
“He was— he was upset. About you. Concerned. But— but not about Anya, or Swansea, or— or me, I guess.” his fingertips trace the underside of the countertop. Eyes facing the middle-distance. “...But he hit you. That one time.”
“I, uh, I’m sorry about that, by the way. Totally freaked when I heard it, y’know? Hah…”
But you could’ve stepped in then. Maybe if you would’ve put your foot down then, shown him that you were willing to step in…
Maybe…
“...That doesn’t fix it any. I guess you’d know that, huh?”
The pressure on, in his chest has lessened, at least. Alleviated just that little bit, letting him breathe and little easier after airing his thoughts out like this — even if he’d probably look back and feel kinda bad for just talking at the guy.
He kicks one of his feet out, swinging the weighted, stained boot absentmindedly. “I think— I think I’m still missing some things.”
“I don’t know.” Daisuke feels like he comes to, like some kind of double-take. Casting a glance around the orange-glow dim of the room and the quiet, rattling breaths Curly takes across from him. “I don’t… know.”
He stands, suddenly — feels like finality, feels like he is so suddenly cramped in this room with too little space and being right there next to that vent, being right there next to his own blood and so close to live wires and mangled sheets of metal and, and—
Fuck, he needs out.
He— there’s nothing more to say, nothing and—
Daisuke feels his throat constrict painfully.
The eye remains trained on his back when he stumbles away.
___
25 WEEKS AFTER THE CRASH
Was bad, wasn’t it? Lotta shit to clean, at least.
Lucky us.
...Not as bad as you’d think. He didn’t even—
He didn’t even put up a fight.
Hurt worse that way?
…Yeah.
I look back and I think ‘was that it? Was that all that it took, all this time?’
…
‘Our worst moments don’t make us monsters’, huh?
You still believin’ that even now when you don’t have to?
I don’t…
I don’t blame you for not doing anything, really.
Not with how careful everything was. It didn’t fall on you.
Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be fessin’ up to it.
I’m sorry, Anya.
For not doin’ what I could’ve.
…
Thank you.
Really.
Don’t need to thank me for nothin’.
Should’ve never been in a position to.
…
Hey.
Is that— the pod. Still working?
‘S far as I can tell, it’s up ‘n runnin’ jus’ fine.
A miracle considerin’ who’d been in there.
Don’t know what to do with it, now that I can choose.
Funny how that goes, ain’t it?
It’s your call to make, Swansea.
Do you want to tell him?
___
24 WEEKS AFTER THE CRASH
Daisuke has never actually been in the cockpit, post-crash, now that he thinks about it.
He’d heard about it, — hushed snippets of conversations with Anya, Swansea mentioning it offhandedly in reference to Curly — of the blood that had soaked into the leather of the seats and effectively coated the panels and various controls in a way that they weren’t able to clean.
A choking, festered remnant of what had been.
He thinks of their previous Captain when he finally braves it, getting around easier nowadays even if his muscles still ache, like, all of the time, sort of like they always had after particularly rough baseball practices.
…God, wasn’t that something to think about? He can still taste those complaints on his tongue, about soreness and dirt and the sunburn on the bridge of his nose—
He’s pretty sure he’d sell his kidney right here, right now just to get to see the sun again. To feel it — feel something warm, be in patchy sunlight or peeling burns or even a goddamn lukewarm shower. All at once, as the days have dragged on, Daisuke has craved.
Now isn’t an exception, feeling phantom grime beneath his fingertips as he gingerly steps into the cockpit.
Immediately, the smell catches his attention — how couldn’t it? Thick and tangy in the back of his throat, distinctly iron. Familiar. Faint, and yet so there with nothing to overtake it.
He swallows, and ignores the mild twinges all around his body.
Same screen, blared spotty error messages across. Same locker off to the side and foam encasing just about everything, save for what they’d broken through getting to Curly. Open wires beneath the paneling.
His fingertips rove idly over the controls — not so much touching but ghosting, letting his head just… empty, really. Wondering idly about certain lit-up sections while not turning them over so intensely.
It’s been so…
Oddly lulled, after everything happened. Menthol didn’t sit so thick in the air— nothing did, actually. The weird tenseness that had enveloped everything after the crash was just… kinda gone. Certain inevitabilities more detached than they ever had been. Daisuke…
Thinks he likes it? He doesn’t really know.
He’s realized that he doesn’t really know much at all.
Maybe it’s that, that little scrap of shelved in the back of his mind that has him poking at buttons and idly reaching out for the screen. Maybe it’s that, that has him thinking—
“What’re you doin’ in here?”
Thinking nothing, actually, with the sharp and sudden jackrabbiting of his heart as he jerks away from the panel.
“Swansea.” his chest drops with an exhale, tension leaving him. Just Seansea. Just gray-blue and a stained shirt and familiar scrunch in his eyes. Nothing more.
He falls into the seat behind him and onto stiff, roughened leather — more like slumping into it rather than sinking. Tries to shake that feeling that he’s done something wrong when he hasn’t done anything, really.
Swansea tosses a look that he might call amused over to where his hand had been. “Takin’ to diggin’ ‘round the ship, eh?”
He steps further inside the room, seating himself in the one other chair.
“I’ve never been in here, uh…” Daisuke looks around, taking in the unfamiliar interior. Geez, when was the last time he’d been in here? “Ever, actually.”
He can’t… recall a time before the crash he had been. Huh.
Swansea clicks his tongue. “Ain’t much worth lookin’ at, now. One o’ these…”
He leans forward, hovering over each patch of switches and buttons until he knocks lightly on one — sending a little band encircling it lit up softly in green. Nothing like the permanent error-red of everything else.
“See that? That is a kind’a emergency contact.” he sits back, eyes still fixed on the sputtering glow. “Of course, that was before the crash. And we ain’t got enough room to check all the wires n’ make sure it works.”
…But—
Light means active, in some way. Emergency contact.
Holy shit. “It lit up, doesn’t that— shouldn’t that—”
“Look,” Swansea levels him with a heavy kind of glance. “I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s slim— real fuckin’ slim.”
“Pony Express could’a cut whatever server they had for us. Could be an off season for haulin’ or we could be so far out that nothin’s around to get it, or maybe their new fancy ships don’t take the signals that the ol’ Tulpar can send out. The crash could’a busted the internals so bad that it doesn’t do anythin’ but light up.”
“But if we can get it runnin’ enough times to trust it…” Swansea trails.
It’s— an odd show of hope. The kind that has Daisuke’s heart fluttering, something warm blooming just beneath his diaphragm in a way that was not optimism but some real, real possibility.
Holy shit, they could— if it really worked then, then—
Then it could be their ticket out.
“S’ better than nothin’, ain’t it?”
So odd coming from Swansea. Because there’s always a reason, and if there isn’t, then you’re missing something. But maybe it was just in—
In more things. Like that he hasn’t seen the man drunk, hell, so much as buzzed since the cocktail, that his kind of barbed certainty that they were damned had replaced itself with a gruffness, instead.
He thinks of bleeding and burns and live wires and luck. He wonders what, why anything has changed at all.
Daisuke feels a wild grin tugging on his lips and doesn’t bother to stop it at all. “Way better than nothing.”
Swansea doesn’t return it, but he isn’t scowling, either.
His chest buzzes — hopeful.
Maybe it’d be enough.
___
25 WEEKS AFTER THE CRASH
Worst comes to worst…
You want him to have a way out.
I know — if anyone deserves it, its him.
What’s our remainin’ air supply look like?
…
Another month?
Maybe two, pushing it.
So we either get lucky, or we don’t.
How is… everything on your end?
Sent out what I could.
Tried to, at least. Those lights don’t mean nothin’ when it comes to the actual signal.
But they’re on and all we’ve got.
Good. That’s… better than we’ve had before.
…
That’s all, then?
Everything?
Think so.
Off we go, I ‘spose.
Guess we should let the kid know, too.
Yeah.
…Guess this is really almost it, then.
Home stretch.
//
One thing Daisuke wasn’t used to is the worry. He’s never—
Never felt this pittering, cold-stinging bite in his chest spread outwards like he does nowadays. Sometimes it’s baseless and other times it’s, well, not.
Sitting around the square table near the kitchen with Swansea next to him and Anya across from him both wearing mildly pinched expressions makes him feel like it’s not that weird. To be nervous.
“So,” he starts in the silence, feeling a laugh bubble behind his teeth. Pressure, pressure… “What, uh, what’s all this for?”
Swansea hadn’t told him much — just to sit, there’s shit t’talk about.
Anya’s gaze flickers from Swanea to him --- leaning back a bit and sighing thick in her throat. “It’s… about Curly. Some other things, but mostly—”
Her hands flutter in the empty air. It’s about Curly.
Curly, Curly— Captain. Friend, confidant, a great leader and et cetera, et cetera.
He might’ve been the friendliest towards Daisuke when he’d first boarded — stiff in some ways, not that he’d blamed him because, well, he wasn’t really supposed to be there, but amicable. He thinks…
Of the crash. And being so friendly, and even a bit that he’d been so accepting of Daisuke on the ship, anyway.
Five people is one too many for the Tulpar. Plain and simple — food wasn’t rationed for it, safety measures weren’t in place for it, the rooms themselves weren’t even accommodating. It was a cheap move— squeezing out just a bit more money before they went under no matter the negligence, he guesses.
Maybe he should’ve pushed a little more. Just a bit.
“It’s…” Anya’s lips purse. “...Cruel, maybe, is the word. To— to keep him alive like this.”
…Huh. It’s not like he himself hasn’t thought that, sporadic, hearing the guy cry or even just in the… meaner wonderings of the back of his head but—
But it just—
God, he doesn’t know. Maybe the idea of more death is just squicking him out.
“Especially,” she sits up straight for that, looking over with meaning. Weight. “Because we’re… at a kind of turning point. We…”
Turning point. His face twists just a bit.
Swansea, from beside him, copies her in leaning forward. “Look. Whatever emergency that was in there is as out as we’re gettin’. But the air supply is runnin’ low, and if it comes to…”
…Hm.
His eyes squint just a bit. Head sort of spinning trying to keep up, to level with what is being said before he’s cut off by another staticky burst of words.
“That cryopod in Utility? It ain’t for either of us, kid. Not if things go sideways.”
Ain’t for either of us.
Not like this. Not by keeping it to myself and, and what? Waiting for the rest of us to kick it? That’s the only goddamn reason—
That…
It’s not for them. It’s not for them so it must be for him but that—
It couldn’t be. Those, those twenty years couldn’t be handed out to him, just like that. That’s not…
“What?” he mumbles, and hardly realizes he’s spoken at all. Dizzied.
“That pod is for you, Daisuke. That’s always been the plan.” and Anya sounds so sure of it.
But you only think that because that’s what you would do!
He hadn’t…
“But— but that— why—”
Swansea sighs. “Kid, outta all of us, you’ve got the most of a life ahead’a you. Got parent’s waitin’ on you to make it back, don’t you?”
“Don’t you have a family back home?” he shoots back, feeling the hysteria in his throat and hearing it infinitely more in his voice. No, no, this isn’t… “Don’t— don’t both of you—”
Anya’s smile is far, far kinder than it has any right to be. “Not like you.”
“That, that still—”
“It’s okay, Daisuke. We’ve talked about this for a while, now. It’s the best thing we could do.”
He nips at his bottom lip. Feels a phantom kind of panicky sting behind his eyes. Feels, feels like a child when he laughs wetly. “But— it, it won’t come to that. It won’t…”
“It could. It very well could, and it’s more fair t’tell you now than if it comes.”
…His teeth dig into his cheek, next. His head floats more than a little idly back, back—
Somethin’ you’ve gotta understand, Daisuke, is that a damn good amount of people are uglier on the inside than they show on the outside. And sometimes, it leaks.
If one’s true, then the reverse must be too, yeah?
He feels a little sick with it. With everything.
Life is just as much a possibility as his— his stasis, when he thinks about it. He doesn’t know which one is more likely and maybe it’s more so that he knows exactly which one is more realistic and which one he hopes for down to his very bones.
I just want to live. I want everyone to live. I want everyone to make it through this.
He just… nods, mutely. He doesn’t know what to say to that.
Hopes with his entire chest, grasps the little scraps of warmth he can find. Please.
Life will go on, for the moment. It does, in scrapes of chairs and wandering about doing what they could in their limited space and constant constraints. It has to be enough. Every little moment and every thing has to be enough.
Please be enough.
Please.