lifeaftr | minecraft is unrealistic

Entry tags:

minecraft is unrealistic

Who: Héctor, anyone
What: His spirit is as dead as he is.
When: July 25th
Where: Enso
Warnings: Mild injury, and a truckload of d e s p a i r to start with.

It's mid afternoon, one year and then some after he first arrived on the beaches of the island. The thirteenth month. Thirteen's been said to be an unlucky number. Certainly it's not doing him any favors.

As good and kind as everyone is... it's just not enough. Not every day. There's only one thing that ever will be, one thing which he always seems to be denied, one way or another. Granted, not much about his situation is new, when it comes down to it, but then neither are these deep black moods. There were no failures this year. No bridge. Nothing to try. Everything's perfectly fine until he can't fake it anymore, because everything is not fine.

He had four pleasant days with his family, after so long dreaming of them. Was that it? Is that all he'll ever have? And there's no reason for it, seeing as there's very little he can do someone else can't do better. Of course, if he hadn't been so stupid, he would have had many years with them before being drawn to this world, not only four days... stupid, stupid, stupid. He's always been stupid. It explodes outwards as anger first, for a few minutes, but that's hard to sustain for him. So...

He's just lying on the ground, in the leaves underneath a tree, no smile on his face and cracks spiderwebbing through all the bones of one hand. Don't punch trees if you have no padding on your hands, you won't like the results. He doesn't want to get up, he doesn't want to goof off, joke around, play games, none of that. There's... nothing. No point at all.

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Someone else can talk. Tim's better at listening, anyway. He resists the urge to dig at a cigarette. He's been trying to quit. He's still not really sure about what else he should be doing with his hands, though, so eventually he slips a flip-knife from his pocket and opens it and closes it without any seeming pattern to the motions.

It holds everything in place and keeps his thoughts from drifting while he listens.

"He didn't like the sound of that, I'm guessing."

"No."

It's surprising even himself how steady his voice stays, talking about these things. It's only been a year since he learned the truth. He can count on one hand how many times he's gone over it with another person. Most of his friends who happen to have been murdered knew straight away... this, his situation, it's something else entirely. Something unresolved, because he's been trapped on a goddamn island since finding out.

"And that was it. That was my death. He went on to become famous with mangled versions of my songs, so..." He fiddles with the rim of his hat, also wanting to keep his hands busy. "I don't play anymore."

"He killed you?"

Héctor doesn't spell it out, but he doesn't need to. That was my death. A jealous partner, a disagreement. It's easy to pull together the pieces.

"Low blow." Tim blows out a breath to the effect of well, damn. "Don't want to, or afraid to?"

"He poisoned me." And who drank the poison, naive, trusting his 'friend'? This idiot did. He had everything he wanted, he walked away, he deserved what he got.

"I don't want to. I don't want to enjoy it. But I still do, no matter how hard I try."

"Jesus." It's said with a sort of blunt acknowledgment. Fucked up, but not all that surprising. Given that murder is, apparently, involved in this backstory, it was never going to be pretty.

"That's not really something you can change."

"I know. It's part of who I am. If I hadn't changed by now, it's pretty deep rooted."

The music, it's not just in me. It is me... Cheesy, dumb lines from a young boy more than a hundred years ago, but he meant it. He always means what he says.

"Y'know you don't have to run from that." Pretty sure that isn't gonna make it any easier, or magically fix anything, but he has to say something, right? "I mean, I don't think anyone here is gonna try to poison you over music."

...well, given some of the shit that happens here, maybe that's not the best statement to make.

"On purpose, anyway."

"No. I mean yeah, I know that. It does feel... good to play, once I pick up a guitar and go for it, but... music tore apart my family for almost a century. My stupid music."

He's already said so much, may as well go for broke and keep it up. Air out all his dirty laundry and maybe... feel a little fresher tomorrow.

He goes on, a man full of sorrow. "You know they banned music from the house so they wouldn't be reminded of me, ever. Because I abandoned them and it hurt them all so much..."

"Your friend wrecked everything. That isn't your fault." You can't be expected to do much from beyond the grave if you're dead. There are exceptions to this, sure, but the point is that they're exceptions.

"Your family didn't have the full story. You didn't abandon them. You died. Unless you're pals with a necromancer, how's any of that on you?"

"You don't understand."

He doesn't have a throat and yet it feels like it's closing, he's choking on his own words.

"I did die. But before that, I left. They begged me not to leave and I went anyway. To play music, to make the world happy, when I should have only cared about making them happy. They... they were my world. My wife. My daughter. Especially her."

"Yeah, but you didn't mean to leave them forever, did you?" He wouldn't be betting on that, based on the way he's talking about them. "You wanted to do something for yourself, and it went badly. That's not your fault."

Who anticipates their best friend poisoning them. Seriously.

"I know. Dying wasn't my fault. Leaving was."

He'll sit in the dirt all day and say it--he'll be a broken record for a thousand years. It seems skeletons develop odd habits when they're upset, because he's clutching his own collarbones miserably.

"I shouldn't have. I should have stayed home and made something of myself in Santa Cecilia. I could have gotten a real job, there was nothing stopping me."

"Oh, so anytime someone takes a vacation it's their fault if their plane crashes and they die and don't come home?" He hasn't had to do that before. Not really. But he'd been living out of suitcases for the past several years of his life, until he wound up here and was forced to stay in one place.

"You didn't know what was gonna happen. You went out to do something you wanted to do and it ended badly."

"It wasn't a vacation. It was 1921, travel was hard. I meant to be gone a year with a four year old daughter. A whole year, that's eternity to someone that young."

He sucks in a breath and... sighs. Yep. Broken record. Tim's going to snap if he keeps it up.

"Look, I understand what you're trying to say and it's kind. And they forgive me. But... I don't. It was wrong. If it was unforgivable when I died of 'food poisoning', it's still unforgivable now that we know it was murder."

"So what's sitting around and feeling bad about it doing for you?"

Look, he gets it. He gets guilt. He gets feeling that you're responsible for every shitty thing in someone else's life, and he gets feeling like nothing you do will ever make up for it. But then he ended up in a world that didn't allow him to stew in that, and it's at a point where it doesn't matter how bad he feels about it.

It won't change what it is.

"Is feeling like shit about it gonna fix anything?"

"...no, not really."

The sickly grin makes its return. Yes, Héctor, stop hiding in the woods and stewing in self-loathing. Make this horrible dark mood pass, not simply wait it out.

"Lo siento, I know, I shouldn't... go down that road. Better things I should be doing."

Tim sighs, and resists the urge to dig around in the pockets of his jeans for another smoke.

"Look. I get it. I mean, I get feeling...like that. Like nothing you do is ever gonna fix what you fucked up. But if you just let it eat at you, it's never gonna get better." It's easier for someone else to forgive you than it is for you to forgive yourself. He knows that.

He's lucky that he's never had to worry about forgiveness. No one from his history has ever made it far enough in his direction to bother.

"It's always gonna hold you back."

"It doesn't. Most of the time. This isn't new." It's been there the whole time, since the moment he awoke on a beach with a possessed elevator chasing him down.

"Sometimes I'm..." Unable to do much but lie down and wish it were over. "Tired. For a day or two, no more than a week. It always passes. I'm... just an old dead guy, these things happen."

"Tired, or depressed?"

That sounds like Depression, buddy. Just because you don't, technically, have a brain anymore doesn't mean you can't get suffer from the same sort of problems that would plague a brain.

"Oh. I don't know. Both?"

Who wouldn't be in the dumps, honestly, every time another year passes and he is still not home? There's nothing to try. He'd very much prefer to try and fail than to have nothing to do. No bridge. No petals. Nothing to cross. Somehow he's only found himself farther away from Santa Cecilia than ever.

"You can be both," says Tim. "...sorry. I know I'm not the best guy to be talking to about this. If this place had a therapist, they'd make bank."

In this economy-less island, sure. They'd be making theoretical bank.

"Or a curandero." he says, with a ghost of a smile. Some people are old fashioned and always will be, don't mind him.

"But... no, don't be sorry. It's not your responsibility to talk out my problems. I came out here so no one would have to deal with it. I'll be okay, once I get back to being dead." Someday. Please say it'll be so. "Things were turning around. They really were."

"You know that's not a given, right?"

Tim's been here two years. Two years and change, given the time he spent in the Castle, and then the time he spent dead but not really going anywhere. Just time he lost, which is fine and good for someone like him. Loses time all the time.

"You can't know if you're ever going back."

"Don't say that. Please don't say that."

His voice has gone hollow again, empty of everything but despair. No. Not that. It can't be forever. Because it could be forever, decades and decades of not aging, not fading. He hunches in on himself, fingers clenched.

"Not that. I can handle a lot, anything else, but... not that. Not again. I don't think I can."

"It's not like you have a choice in it." Tim shrugs, very slightly, a small jerk of his shoulders. "I don't have a choice in whether I stay here or not. No one here does. Some people just disappear and head home, I guess. Some people die, and we don't know what happens to them. Some people are just...stuck here."

The reality of that possibility has never bothered him. But then, he's not the one with anything to go back to.

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