[It comes out a snarl, before he catches himself, makes himself reel back in. Even then, though, he's all contained grief and fury, his fists clenched on the table so hard his knuckles are white.]
. . . She's not . . . "that girl from the party". She's . . .
I don't think you can understand how brave she is unless you know . . . where she came from, what she's done, what was expected of her and the path she chose instead. But she's not just some girl. She's not just my friend. She's . . .
I had to leave home, and she did too. For different reasons, but she understood, and she - sometimes she'd just talk to me like she knew I needed to have someone talk about home like it mattered. Because if someone else said "I miss them," then I wouldn't have to. And I was supposed to protect her, I am supposed to protect her. That's my job. That's what I want to do, I'm.
She's not just some girl, or Holly's mother, or Jotaro's grandmother, she's . . . my Suzie. And if I hurt her, the one person who trusted me to always take care of her, then none of you, no matter how much breath you waste, can convince me it's worthwhile for me to be here.
Relax. I just said I've never met her before, so obviously I didn't have anything else to go off of until you just told me.
[Which he listened to, without commenting apart from that for a long few minutes. Kakyoin thought very carefully about the situation and tried to put himself in a similar one to evaluate how he'd react. If there was a girl who loved Jotaro the same way he did, one that was like a sister to him (Izabel came to mind for a split second, but she didn't fit the first criteria even in a hypothetical) then what would he do? For a long time he had trouble even picturing the situation until a half-joking conversation with Polnareff came to mind. If joking wasn't joking and it really was between the three of them, what then? He sure as hell wouldn't step aside as long as Jotaro still wanted him around, he didn't have 'surrender' in his vocabulary. But there had to be some gray middle ground between black and white, one or the other.]
...The fact that you're worried about this so much means you aren't going to just carelessly hurt her.
[Kakyoin couldn't believe he was seriously considering this purely hypothetical matter, but if it came down to a matter of himself, Polnareff, and Jotaro in a similar tangled mess, then-]
You shouldn't have to shut down every possible route that ends in your own happiness just because some of them might hurt her. Some will, but those obviously aren't the paths you're going to take. You're thinking through what happens next and considering the consequences, that's important in itself.
[-he would want them all to be happy. Taking a half-step to one side wasn't stepping aside completely.]
Hear me out for a minute. I want you to talk about this with Joseph--ask him how he feels about Suzie himself, if you haven't already. If what I know for a fact in 1988 is still true now, I know he'll want to protect her too. The two of you make a good team; you're the kind of people that just get each other sometimes, right? So if you want to protect her and he wants to protect her, then you can work together and make sure none of you end up getting hurt.
[He'll fight his own ass in the desert over Suzie Quatro. Don't test him.]
[He does listen, though. He doesn't really like this answer, or believe it, but he's finding it hard to argue against it. It's just hard to envision this working out without people getting hurt, terribly hurt. That's sort of what he's used to. Used to doing the hurting, too.]
[Suzie's not one of those girls. She's his Suzie, or their Suzie, or something . . . he doesn't know. He just doesn't know at all.]
I asked him. That was, that was the first thing I asked him. He said he didn't know what would happen, if — he just said he didn't know how it would change things. And then—
[And then they weren't talking about that anymore. Or about anything. He frowns slightly, focusing just past Kakyoin's ear.]
I don't think he knows. About that or about anything. He doesn't, when he got here he was still fighting, I don't know if it's any easier for him to think about all of this, about having a life again, than it is for me.
[That answer came immediately, as though it hadn't required thought at all. It couldn't have been any easier for Joseph just like it wasn't easy for Jotaro. Dying had been simple, living past that was what seemed nigh impossible.]
No one goes back to being normal after...all of this. Cairo, whatever you guys were doing, there's no 'happily ever after', there's no 'back to the way things were'. There's just 'trying not to be fucked up'. But there's also the fact that neither of us have to try to do that alone.
Listen to me, okay--really carefully. Rushing ahead would be careless, you're absolutely right to be concerned about Suzie as well as just in general. But you're not just rushing ahead, the factthat you're here talking about this at all proves that. And you don't have to solve every single problem here at this exact second. If there's one thing this place is good for, it's giving time to people that don't have any--so for now you and Joseph both have time to work through this whole thing as cautiously as you need to.
Your happiness doesn't automatically mean someone else's misery, Caesar. Not Suzie's, not Holly's, not anyone's. It's not completely, unforgivably selfish to think 'I deserve to be unconditionally happy just once after the shit I've been through.'
Historically speaking, my happiness hasn't really coincided with anyone else's.
[There's still one thing he wants to ask about, but at the same time he really, really doesn't. He doesn't want to talk about any of this. He doesn't want to be here, but he doesn't want to go home. He has no idea what he wants — which is exactly the problem.]
[He drags his hands down his face, up through his hair, ends up with his hands folded on the table and his chin rested on top of them.]
This is all so stupid. It's stupid that it's happening at all, it's stupid that I'm so shit at it, all of this is stupid.
It's pretty stupid. [He picked up the notebook,putting it back in his jacket.] Things like this shouldn't be nearly this difficult. Or at least, we shouldn't have to worry so damn much about them.
...But I think it's okay if you're not any good at it. Neither am I, and I think I've gotten a little better. You will too, I'm sure.
But it won't. You're not going to knowingly hurt anyone that doesn't deserve it. Doing something unintentionally, though--that just happens. It's called making mistakes and fucking up, everyone does it once in a while.
I've screwed up a lot of different ways and gotten Jotaro pissed off at me before. It didn't change anything. He was angry, but that didn't automatically translate to 'I hate you and never want to see you again, Kakyoin' even if I was absolutely convinced that it would.
...I told you I wanted to be part of this family. I wanted whatever that other Kakyoin Fujiko told you to be true, weird and surreal as it might be. I meant it then, and I mean it now. Family doesn't turn their back on one another, right? Even if you did something to really make me angry, I wouldn't suddenly despise you. And I know friends don't just turn their backs on each other. No one here is going to despise you or write you off as a lost cause. I won't allow it, even if they tried.
It's not that simple. Why do you think it's that simple? Christ, Kakyoin, I've written people off in the few months since I got here, and for less than this. Not much less, but less.
[He lets out a frustrated noise, not sure how to explain it. He just doesn't believe this will turn out. He doesn't believe people will give him the benefit of the doubt like that, because no one ever has — no one he's known in the long term, with the possible exception of Suzie. And she'd be the one in the way of getting hurt, just because he wants to be happy.]
Because people like Jojo and Jotaro aren't fucking normal. People like me, shitty vindictive awful people, those are normal. Common. People who take advantage of other people, those are normal too.
Trusting people is just — a good way to get the shit kicked out of you, even if you haven't done anything wrong. If you do do something wrong and then expect everyone to just forgive you, then you deserve whatever comes of your stupidity.
...You're right. People who take advantage of others exist, and there's a lot of them. [Kakyoin folded his arms, gripping the sleeves of his jacket like there was much more he wanted to say there.] And when you've been hurt by someone like that, someone who uses and discards you--it's harder to trust people. Much, much harder. But just because there's a lot of people like that doesn't mean everyone is. And it doesn't mean that there's no one worth trusting in the world.
Tell me honestly, Caesar; do you think I would turn around and leave if you said or did something that made me angry, or do you think I'm one of those people that isn't 'normal'?
I think everyone has their limits. I think yours are farther out with me than other people's might be. So it would take a lot. But it's not impossible.
I wouldn't betray you like — I just wouldn't. And I wouldn't lie to you. But people like Holly, I think if she saw this as a betrayal, I couldn't even argue with it. I couldn't ask her to trust me again, or forgive me.
My unfortunately short temper aside, I know where my limits are regarding you. It's the same as with my other friends--nothing you could do would make me simply stop caring. But you can believe there's a limit if you don't believe what I'm telling you now. It's a better answer than I anticipated.
[...]
I can't speak for miss Holly and I won't try to. I can't expect something like this will be simple for her, but my own assumption based on what I know is that she cares too much to truly hate anyone.
I almost did. And I was bleeding all over the place. Honestly, my mother would've at least said something about ruining her floor before fixing up someone like that.
I'm trying to say she's absurdly goddamn nice and as long as you're not actively going to the effort of pissing her off directly, I don't think that she'll hate you.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 10:14 pm (UTC)[It comes out a snarl, before he catches himself, makes himself reel back in. Even then, though, he's all contained grief and fury, his fists clenched on the table so hard his knuckles are white.]
. . . She's not . . . "that girl from the party". She's . . .
I don't think you can understand how brave she is unless you know . . . where she came from, what she's done, what was expected of her and the path she chose instead. But she's not just some girl. She's not just my friend. She's . . .
I had to leave home, and she did too. For different reasons, but she understood, and she - sometimes she'd just talk to me like she knew I needed to have someone talk about home like it mattered. Because if someone else said "I miss them," then I wouldn't have to. And I was supposed to protect her, I am supposed to protect her. That's my job. That's what I want to do, I'm.
She's not just some girl, or Holly's mother, or Jotaro's grandmother, she's . . . my Suzie. And if I hurt her, the one person who trusted me to always take care of her, then none of you, no matter how much breath you waste, can convince me it's worthwhile for me to be here.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 10:37 pm (UTC)[Which he listened to, without commenting apart from that for a long few minutes. Kakyoin thought very carefully about the situation and tried to put himself in a similar one to evaluate how he'd react. If there was a girl who loved Jotaro the same way he did, one that was like a sister to him (Izabel came to mind for a split second, but she didn't fit the first criteria even in a hypothetical) then what would he do? For a long time he had trouble even picturing the situation until a half-joking conversation with Polnareff came to mind. If joking wasn't joking and it really was between the three of them, what then? He sure as hell wouldn't step aside as long as Jotaro still wanted him around, he didn't have 'surrender' in his vocabulary. But there had to be some gray middle ground between black and white, one or the other.]
...The fact that you're worried about this so much means you aren't going to just carelessly hurt her.
[Kakyoin couldn't believe he was seriously considering this purely hypothetical matter, but if it came down to a matter of himself, Polnareff, and Jotaro in a similar tangled mess, then-]
You shouldn't have to shut down every possible route that ends in your own happiness just because some of them might hurt her. Some will, but those obviously aren't the paths you're going to take. You're thinking through what happens next and considering the consequences, that's important in itself.
[-he would want them all to be happy. Taking a half-step to one side wasn't stepping aside completely.]
Hear me out for a minute. I want you to talk about this with Joseph--ask him how he feels about Suzie himself, if you haven't already. If what I know for a fact in 1988 is still true now, I know he'll want to protect her too. The two of you make a good team; you're the kind of people that just get each other sometimes, right? So if you want to protect her and he wants to protect her, then you can work together and make sure none of you end up getting hurt.
[Communicate like a fucking adult, Caesar.]
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 10:47 pm (UTC)[He'll fight his own ass in the desert over Suzie Quatro. Don't test him.]
[He does listen, though. He doesn't really like this answer, or believe it, but he's finding it hard to argue against it. It's just hard to envision this working out without people getting hurt, terribly hurt. That's sort of what he's used to. Used to doing the hurting, too.]
[Suzie's not one of those girls. She's his Suzie, or their Suzie, or something . . . he doesn't know. He just doesn't know at all.]
I asked him. That was, that was the first thing I asked him. He said he didn't know what would happen, if — he just said he didn't know how it would change things. And then—
[And then they weren't talking about that anymore. Or about anything. He frowns slightly, focusing just past Kakyoin's ear.]
I don't think he knows. About that or about anything. He doesn't, when he got here he was still fighting, I don't know if it's any easier for him to think about all of this, about having a life again, than it is for me.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 10:59 pm (UTC)[That answer came immediately, as though it hadn't required thought at all. It couldn't have been any easier for Joseph just like it wasn't easy for Jotaro. Dying had been simple, living past that was what seemed nigh impossible.]
No one goes back to being normal after...all of this. Cairo, whatever you guys were doing, there's no 'happily ever after', there's no 'back to the way things were'. There's just 'trying not to be fucked up'. But there's also the fact that neither of us have to try to do that alone.
Listen to me, okay--really carefully. Rushing ahead would be careless, you're absolutely right to be concerned about Suzie as well as just in general. But you're not just rushing ahead, the factthat you're here talking about this at all proves that. And you don't have to solve every single problem here at this exact second. If there's one thing this place is good for, it's giving time to people that don't have any--so for now you and Joseph both have time to work through this whole thing as cautiously as you need to.
Your happiness doesn't automatically mean someone else's misery, Caesar. Not Suzie's, not Holly's, not anyone's. It's not completely, unforgivably selfish to think 'I deserve to be unconditionally happy just once after the shit I've been through.'
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:09 pm (UTC)Historically speaking, my happiness hasn't really coincided with anyone else's.
[There's still one thing he wants to ask about, but at the same time he really, really doesn't. He doesn't want to talk about any of this. He doesn't want to be here, but he doesn't want to go home. He has no idea what he wants — which is exactly the problem.]
[He drags his hands down his face, up through his hair, ends up with his hands folded on the table and his chin rested on top of them.]
This is all so stupid. It's stupid that it's happening at all, it's stupid that I'm so shit at it, all of this is stupid.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:12 pm (UTC)...But I think it's okay if you're not any good at it. Neither am I, and I think I've gotten a little better. You will too, I'm sure.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:16 pm (UTC)[Articulate. He blows his bangs out of his face.]
If I don't utterly fuck everything up first.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:19 pm (UTC)[He stopped for a second, like something about that struck a chord somewhere. After a short silence, he adjusted his glasses and spoke up quietly:]
'Sometimes change is like crawling up a steep gravel hill on your elbows. It'll hurt. You'll fuck up. You'll slide back down.
No one is going to stop caring about you if that happens.'
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:22 pm (UTC)[He looks up at Kakyoin, eyes narrowed.]
People stop caring about you if you hurt them. Sometimes you don't even have to hurt them to make that happen. Sometimes it just happens.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:30 pm (UTC)I've screwed up a lot of different ways and gotten Jotaro pissed off at me before. It didn't change anything. He was angry, but that didn't automatically translate to 'I hate you and never want to see you again, Kakyoin' even if I was absolutely convinced that it would.
...I told you I wanted to be part of this family. I wanted whatever that other Kakyoin Fujiko told you to be true, weird and surreal as it might be. I meant it then, and I mean it now. Family doesn't turn their back on one another, right? Even if you did something to really make me angry, I wouldn't suddenly despise you. And I know friends don't just turn their backs on each other. No one here is going to despise you or write you off as a lost cause. I won't allow it, even if they tried.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:35 pm (UTC)[He lets out a frustrated noise, not sure how to explain it. He just doesn't believe this will turn out. He doesn't believe people will give him the benefit of the doubt like that, because no one ever has — no one he's known in the long term, with the possible exception of Suzie. And she'd be the one in the way of getting hurt, just because he wants to be happy.]
[It's not a good enough reason. It's just not.]
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:37 pm (UTC)[That didn't come out as a challenge, no matter how it was worded. All Kakyoin did in response was ask a simple, honest question.]
You're a good teacher--I don't understand it, so explain it to me.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:41 pm (UTC)Trusting people is just — a good way to get the shit kicked out of you, even if you haven't done anything wrong. If you do do something wrong and then expect everyone to just forgive you, then you deserve whatever comes of your stupidity.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-10 11:49 pm (UTC)Tell me honestly, Caesar; do you think I would turn around and leave if you said or did something that made me angry, or do you think I'm one of those people that isn't 'normal'?
no subject
Date: 2016-04-11 12:01 am (UTC)I think everyone has their limits. I think yours are farther out with me than other people's might be. So it would take a lot. But it's not impossible.
I wouldn't betray you like — I just wouldn't. And I wouldn't lie to you. But people like Holly, I think if she saw this as a betrayal, I couldn't even argue with it. I couldn't ask her to trust me again, or forgive me.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-11 12:07 am (UTC)[...]
I can't speak for miss Holly and I won't try to. I can't expect something like this will be simple for her, but my own assumption based on what I know is that she cares too much to truly hate anyone.
no subject
Date: 2016-04-11 12:12 am (UTC)[He sighs and rubs at his eyes, sitting up a little straighter.]
People who think they can't hate anyone have just been lucky so far. What answer did you expect?
no subject
Date: 2016-04-11 12:20 am (UTC)[He shrugged, looking away.]
Maybe she is. But I don't think she could hate you. Hell, I tried to kill Jotaro and the first thing she did was come over with a first aid kit.
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