last despair calls first hope

[ringwizard]

Date & Time: July 2nd & 3rd
Location: Initiative Library, Room 701, around the apartments
Characters: Haruto Souma (ringwizard), Kousuke Nitoh (ringbeast), Oriko Mikuni (precludes)
Summary: Haruto witches out gets the d(espair) hits his breaking point, becomes despair monster.
Warnings: Upupupupu. Depression, despair, a dickbag monster, at least one fight, Chimaera being a tool, references to mass murders, references to not so mass murders, possibly suicidal ideation, character death. Oriko's sense of priorities.


Haruto leaves the Initiative's Hold early in the morning with a certain spring to his step. He's gotten a little tan--his time in 2050 had done him some good, a lingering scrape on the back of his right hand aside, and it's obvious. Being back in the city again leaves a lingering malaise to his mood, but he forces it away. With things to be done all around, he's got to keep moving forward, right? There's a lot of hustle and bustle outside the Hold with the still-lingering confusion of new arrivals, as far as he can tell, and he steps around people talking as he opens his tablet and messages Nitoh.

Are you still asleep?

Comments

[ringwizard]

"I certainly hope not," Haruto drawls, "that might be a kind of weird thing to find out." He lets Nitoh lean on him without comment.

"I'm just confused about why they're showing up in a book about Russia," Haruto answers, and slides around one of the tables to get a look at the call numbers. "...this way," he says, after a minute, turning on his heel and pointing left.

Two more turns later, he steps into the Western European History section. "Eastern Spain, 2050," he says, to remind either Nitoh or himself, and goes to start looking.

[ringbeast]

"Nah he's way shorter than you," Nitoh says offhand, looking around. "Man, it's a shame they haven't digitized all these books yet."

He pokes through the books, trying to remind himself of the title. "What was the book you wanted? Post-Olympic something? Are you sure it wouldn't be in Eastern Europe?"

[ringwizard]

"You're telling me," Haruto answers, "I keep having to come all the way down here when something I took out references something I don't know."

"Russo-Spanish Politics," he says, and pauses from tapping spines. "It might be," he admits, "do you mind...?"

[ringbeast]

"Sure, I'll look." He jogs around the corner and starts to read the titles. He kneels down and taps them. After a moment, he calls out over the wall. "Was it 'Russo-Spanish Politics in the post-Olympic era,' cos I found that one!"

[ringwizard]

"That's the one," Haruto calls back, sliding a more general history book off of the shelf. "I'll be--at the end of the row," he continues, and turns, cradling the moderately thick hardcover in his palms as he walks back to meet Nitoh.

[ringbeast]

"Comin'." he murmurs, sliding the book off the shelf. He skims the back of the book as he walks over, not really finding anything altogether objectionable there.

He hands it to Haruto. "Here you go. Stroke your ego."

i laughed but then i cried

[ringwizard]

Haruto sets the book in his hands down on the nearest table, and takes Nitoh's offering. "Like you wouldn't be just as pumped?" he asks, as he leans back against the tabletop and cracks the book open.

He goes for the glossary, sliding his finger down the topics. "No, no, no," he says, and then stops. "Escalation of conflict after the Igualdad Incident," he reads, aloud, "page 67."

He flips, carefully, through the pages, until he gets to the right chapter. "After an initial attempt to dismantle influential equalist commune Igualdad during the 2050 Olympics was foiled by internal forces and their arms confiscated," he reads aloud, and points to himself, then continues, "Russian operatives provided arms in an attempt to weaken the Spanish government."

His brow furrows. "Three months after the close of the summer Olympics, in the flurry of recouping losses caused by the arrest of a full third of the commune's residents during the initial attack, Igualdad's political message of acceptance was forcibly silenced in a coup led by community leader Alvaro Garcin, resulting in the deaths of three hundred commune residents." Here he cuts off, the book slipping between suddenly nerveless fingers. He'd played cards with Alvaro Garcin, two nights ago.

[ringbeast]

Nitoh sees the expression on Haruto's face change as he reads aloud, and that almost gets to him more than the words. That deep, pained look in his eyes returns as if it had never left. Nitohs mouth falls open and he tries to grab Haruto's hands to keep the book from falling. "Hey, hey!"

He kneels down to pick up the book and flips back to page 67, reading for himself... "That can't be it, that can't-" That's it, though. Most of the people who Haruto had helped had died not long after. "Why the hell would they send you on a mission like that?!" He shouts, outraged.

He stands up, setting the book on a nearby table and looking at Haruto. "Hey..." he says again, more softly. His urge is to hold onto Haruto, but sensitive moments like this take a little more care. He stays silent and just watches him, mouth curved in a small bow of sorrow.

[ringwizard]

Haruto is still through Nitoh's flurry of activity, eyes distant as he relives the last week. He'd saved them for three months, and that was all. Just enough time to let them rebuild their lives a little.

'Did you think you'd protected their hopes, then?'

Dragon speaking is an icy spike thrusting against his sternum, and he presses a hand to his chest, tensing his jaw to keep from speaking. He screws his eyes shut, taking a short, tense breath. His lungs feel too tight, like he's being physically crushed. Dragon has begun thrashing around in that dark secret place where he resides, his pleased teasing broken up by echoing laughter. When he looks up at Nitoh, who is too open, too worried, he has to turn physically away, unable to bear that measure of kindness. He has to be--he has to be okay.

In a fit of uncontrollable frustration, he kicks the leg of one of the chairs at the table with as much force as he can muster. It goes clattering with a loud noise even on the carpet of the library's floor, falling backwards. He stands over it, silent, and works the fingers of his right hand into his hair, pulling. He's got to get himself under control.

[ringbeast]

He watches Haruto's expressions shift and change and he can't even be sure what it is he's seeing. When Haruto meets his eyes, something there is unsettling. But he puts it out of his mind, reaching a hand forward just as Haruto turns away.

He jumps back when the chair goes over. "Woah, Haruto..." He wants to say, calm down, he wants to say it's not that bad. But he knows that Haruto, of all people, cannot possibly take something like this lying down. "Look... It's... It's gonna be okay. Don't--" he moves forward, trying to put his hands on Haruto's shoulders, to stop him from pulling his hair out.

[ringwizard]

"It's not," Haruto snaps, voice rough with barely contained emotion, and then, more quietly, "it's not gonna be okay." Nitoh's hands settle on his shoulders, and he stiffens, momentarily rooted to the spot. Slowly, his hand slides out of his hair, and after a moment more, he shrugs Nitoh's hands off, leaning down to carefully right the chair.

As he gets it settled and straightens back up, Dragon speaks. 'I wonder if any of the children remembered your name...' He winces, as if struck, and curls his hands into fists.

"It came from inside," he says, voice flat as the implications spread themselves out before him.

[ringbeast]

He pulls his hands back, taken aback by the emotion in Haruto's voice. He feels compelled to do... something, but the last time he saw Haruto even remotely like this, all he could do was get out of the way. At least he picked the chair back up, that was a promising sign, right?

The wince doesn't escape him, though its meaning does. He peers at Haruto's face for some sign. "What... What did? What do you mean?" He heard what Haruto had read, but the totality of its meaning escaped him. The alternative, that he was talking about himself somehow, that he was talking about Dragon, was too terrible to consider.

[ringwizard]

"The second attack," he says, quietly. "They were there the whole time. I didn't get them all."

He swallows, looking away, past Nitoh's stare. "They were able to attack twice because of me." It's his fault, and Dragon's not slow to seize on it, pushing against the limits and walls of his Underworld.

He'd always said he'd be waiting, to see how much more Haruto could handle. Haruto wants, desperately, to believe he can handle this--but he can't, not in this moment.

"I'm--I'm gonna take a walk," he says.

[ringbeast]

He gets it now. But even Haruto couldn't have ferreted out every last one of them in two weeks. He couldn't have known that second attack would happen. He grits his teeth. "Look, I-" but the look on Haruto's face silences him. Under the weight of that gaze, he's nervous, he's nauseous, he knows something is going wrong.

"I- I'll go with you," he says, "I'm not gonna let you be all alone." He raises his hand. "I know, I know, don't say it. I promise I'll be quiet."

[ringwizard]

Deterring Nitoh is clearly going to take more energy than Haruto can expend on anything that isn't desperately shoring up his mental walls. "Fine," he says, and turns, putting his hands in his pockets.

He wonders, idly, if he should be heading for or away from the city limits. Would the sight of that much open sky entice Dragon to break free and fly in it? He suspects as much.

He walks with purpose, because he needs out of this building, and doesn't slow down until they're on the sidewalk again. The eternally-overcast sky seems darker and more ominous now, like it's going to pour any minute now, but he thinks it might just be his imagination. "I told them I'd be their hope," he says, when they're outside, like he's commenting on the weather or saying that his feet hurt.

It means about as much, probably, coming from him. A platitude with no substance. He begins to walk.

[ringbeast]

He follows along behind, panting a little bit with the strain of keeping up with Haruto, who seems to be running from something. When he says that, Nitoh feels a lump in his throat. "I... uh," he starts, but he has nothing useful to follow it up with.

After a moment of thought, it dawns on him. "Look, Haruto, you can just go back to the Initiative and ask for more time there, right? Just tell them you found out you left something undone and go back like you never left and kick the guys who did this in the face, right?" He holds onto to Haruto's shoulder as he tries to keep up. "You can still be their hope! You can still fix it, that's what time travel's for, isn't it?"

[ringwizard]

Haruto shakes his head. "I gave them a mission report, and they said things had worked out as they'd hoped," he says, bitter now that he understands exactly what that meant. "I don't know how that helped, but it must have."

Any positive feelings he'd been nurturing toward the Initiative have officially dissipated. He'd hoped they were going to give him a chance to do what he was really good at, and their dossier had certainly suggested as much on that front, but it hadn't said anything about their projected result. Probably because he'd have gone straight to the network with it.

"And even if I did fix the next attack, what about the one after that? Or the one after that? If people were that angry, they'd eventually get what they wanted." Especially if what they wanted was death, and wholesale destruction. He's not meant to live out his life protecting a commune. There's work to be done here, and at home.

[ringbeast]

"S...Sure, but..." he feels the dark cloud around Haruto descending over him, too, but he shakes it off. "You can just push it, warn them, tell them to be a little less trusting, you know? I'll come too, I can help!"

"You gotta go to the source this time! You know there's always hope, no matter how dark it looks! You can't just say it's unsaveable because someone else told you so...!" He sounds a little lame, a little defeated as he says, "It's not like you, man..."

[ringwizard]

"You don't have any idea what Igualdad was like," Haruto says, thinking of the way he had suggested they try being a little less trusting. "It would go against their entire system."

But if Nitoh is going to push it, he'll bend. He stops to catch Nitoh's eye, weariness lining his expression. "Fine," he says, "we'll ask if they can send us back."

He turns at the next corner, to take them back toward the Hold. Maybe he can lose Nitoh within it for a while, when the inevitable answer comes back.

[ringbeast]

"Yeah, that's it..." he says, sounding almost too relieved. He's still tense, still worried about Haruto, but at least this time he was able to redirect it a little bit. "Then we can really break some hearts, right?" He laughs, but it rings false and his expression returns to a solemn one as soon as it's over.

"I could go right now, too, it's not like I got any plans for the next couple days. If you feel like resting here for a little bit, I can do that too, I'm not picky." He's babbling now, trying to get things back to normal a little bit, just a little bit. "It's time travel, right?" He gives a weak laugh.

[ringwizard]

Haruto thinks that if he sits down to rest, he's not going to get back up for a while, but there's no point in telling Nitoh that when he's like this. "It's time travel," he agrees, warming up a little to the idea. There had to be a chance, right? "Danger is opportunity," he says, more to himself than to Nitoh. Even this danger--the one that came from inside--he could use, if they could just fix things.

[ringbeast]

He breathes a small sigh of relief, and bangs Haruto on the back a couple times. "Yeah, that's right. That's right." He doesn't smile, so much as grimaces awkwardly, as he follows Haruto towards the Hold. He hopes quietly that they let them go, because he's not sure how Haruto would handle it if they didn't.

[ringwizard]

Haruto breathes through Nitoh's overly-companionable contact, tightening his fists in his pockets, and walks on, through the Hold's front courtyard and in through the front door. Though the outside of the Hold is something of a mess, the clinical gray and white interior looks the same as always. Almost comforting, except where it makes his skin crawl.

He ignores the front desk and the corridor to the training rooms, making a beeline for the labs where the Initiative's time travel machinery lies.

The double-doors are open, but he lingers in the doorway for a moment anyway, breathing. "Let me handle the talking," he says, before he moves.

[ringbeast]

"Oh..." he feels a little nervous about it, but he nods and hangs back. "Got it, sure." He clears his throat and crosses his arms, looking at the Initiative workers around him with a jaundiced eye.

[ringwizard]

"Excuse me," Haruto says, looking for one of the actual technicians--specifically the one who'd handled his mission report, who would know why he had to go back without an extended explanation.

When he spots him, he walks straight for him. Distantly, he notices the guy is starting to look like a caged mouse the closer he gets, and he schools his expression more pleasant with effort. "Hi," he says, "I need to talk to you about--going back. Fixing a mission."

'I'm sorry' begins the answer, and Haruto's heart begins to sink. The political balance of the period plays into the UE power structure. The sequence of events cannot be logistically altered without heavy public influence of the period, which they could not support and would not facilitate. The temporal physics were extremely fragile, and returning to the period too many times would alert the UE to their plans. The last breaks his rapidly diminishing composure, and he half shouts, "stop."

He breathes in, then out. His voice shakes. "You guys'll just take any victory, no matter how bloody it is, won't you?" he asks, and then turns on his heel to leave the lab--and Nitoh--behind.