reach the residents

[ximilian]

● ● ● REACH THE RESIDENTS

For any questions you want to ask Viveca or Degar and receive an IC response, please direct them here. Please indicate in the subject line who you are trying to contact.

// VIVECA

Hi, what can I help you with?

// DEGAR

Today was gonna be the day, but they'll never throw it back to you. And by now, you should've somehow realized what you're not to do.

▶ NAV

Comments

apologies for the delay!

[vivecai]

Ha, [ it's more a breath than a laugh, but humorous regardless — the hit lands, for both of them.

but when he says she might be surprised, she does laugh — this time entirely without humour. it wouldn't surprise her, at all. ]

That's exactly why I haven't brought it up. I don't want anyone feeling obligated to do something about this. It's what we chose to do. I won't have anyone undermine that by thinking they know what's better for us.

[blackfire]

（ local man, wildly guilty of exactly what she's saying she's afraid of, flinches minutely. it's barely notable, mostly in the faint narrowing of his eyes. there and gone like a whisper. when he speaks again, it seems almost like a sidestep into another conversation than a continuation of the one they're having. ）

May I ask what your regret was? The one that brought you here.

（ he won't be offended if she doesn't want to tell him. at any rate, he can surmise — but he would rather hear it from her, genuinely given, than to assume. ）

[vivecai]

[ it doesn't escape her attention, the way he shifts the conversation from one rail to another — but she doesn't call attention to it, either... not least because now it's her time to flinch infinitesimally, upon hearing the question. ]

It should have been something else. Something better. But... [ she sighs. ] I'm sure you've guessed, based on when it was that I disappeared from my world. After the attempt on my father's life. I — I wished I'd succeeded. [ she pauses, then shakes her head. ] No, more than that, I wished I'd done it far earlier.

[blackfire]

（ ah. ）

How old were you then?

（ the timeline is uncertain. even in her own world, where the fox's disappearance had happened years earlier, there is no accounting for the whims of the ximilia. ）

[vivecai]

Twenty-two.

[ she doesn't loo at him — instead, her eyes are fixed on nothing in particular in the air. ]

I thought that if only I'd managed to kill him earlier, then maybe... maybe I could have stopped Mom from being sentenced to the camps. Maybe none of my friends would have died there. Cal and Yvonne wouldn't have had to risk their lives for all those years.

[blackfire]

（ the same age he is now. it's funny, with all the time he's spent in tsukuyomi, all the lives that have spun out in the realm of nightmares, that he can hear her say that and marvel at how young it feels, seems, is. for a moment, it's a dizzying dichotomy, and he feels something not entirely unlike vertigo. standing at the edge of a cliff, looking into the deep darkness below, the way the world shifts like it wants to swallow you whole. ）

I'm sorry, for those you lost.

（ then, in the camps, and nearer the now — the previous crew may not all be dead, but they are certainly gone. she and degar have each other, but it must still be lonely. they hold themselves apart from the current crew for a reason. ）

Stirring oneself to patricide is not easy, even with a man such as your father. Doing it earlier would have meant being a different person from that point on. You did the best you could with the information and knowledge you had at the time.

[vivecai]

You don't think I know that?

[ there's no sharpness, no accusation — just quiet wryness of someone who's thought it to herself countless of times, and still finds it ringing hollow. ]

That's what regrets are — choices we made that we thought to be the only option at the time, and just didn't know better. [ then, with a small smile at him, ] What you did made my regret useless, though. Mom's out of the camps, now, and Father is no longer running everything.

[blackfire]

（ she gets a sideways glance. ）

I think that knowing things in here — （ a tap against his head ） isn't the same as accepting them here. （ the hand falls, settles over the placement of his heart. ）

（ aka: it's okay to accept support from others, said the hypocrite. ）

It wasn't useless. Without your being a member of the previous crew, nothing would have progressed the same. Perhaps it was not your sacrifice that re-wrote the fabric of your world, but the seed of it that set everything in motion.

[vivecai]

[ the only response he gets at first is a raise of her eyebrows, as if to say, yes, and clearly you have taken this to heart as well.

then, though, she listens to his next words, and sighs. ]

Maybe you're right. Maybe not. It's a kind notion, anyway, to let me think I've done more good than harm for my home by being here. [ twirling a curl around her finger, she looks down. ] It's just as well; in the end, I wouldn't...

[ she trails off, doesn't finish the sentence. instead, she turns her attention back to their board, to make her next move. ]

[blackfire]

（ baby steps, viv. baby steps.

he watches her make the move, expression soft and attentive.

how many things could be concealed within what she did not say? he has stolen more of her secrets than even he intended to, and he does consider leaving well enough alone. he has a shark he could move to one of the underwater vents, and the game would carry on between them. but after a moment, he hazards — ）

'Return'?

[vivecai]

As we established, yes. That's one way to put it.

[ but is it the one she was thinking? from her tone, perhaps not.

she doesn't elaborate. ]