minecraft is unrealistic

[vagabone]

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.

Comments

[vagabone]

Just stuck. Just. Nothing just about it. He's far from well remembered, but he isn't being forgotten now. He'll go on. He has a future. A long one, he's sure. It could be another century.

One hundred more years, further from home than ever.

"I can't do it." Doesn't matter that it's his own fault he didn't spent the first hundred with his family. Doesn't lessen the pain. "I won't last. There has to be another way."

[postictal]

"It's not really something you can control. You just have to consider what you'd end up doing with yourself if that happens. 'Cause lying down and giving up is probably something you could do, but it's probably not gonna take you very far."

Tim's lucky. His emotional budget is limited as it is. The low-grade despair that always sits in the back of his head and marinates his brain in a constant slow-burn is basically a numbing agent for the soul. He doesn't have worry about blows hitting hard, unless they're big ones.

Really big ones.

"Just...you have to keep yourself ready for the worst. Have a plan, if it comes to that."

[vagabone]

"Wouldn't be lying here if I had a plan. I've got nothing. Used up all my best plans decades ago."

He's empty. So, so empty. So tired. And it's easier to follow than lead. His plans always were garbage. More likely to get himself or innocent bystanders hurt than do any good.

"But hey, if you have any ideas... speak up, I'm listening."

[postictal]

"Some people might figure a way outta here. You never know. But unless they do? You just..." He shrugs, incrementally, and squints up at the little triangles of sky visible through the canopies.

"You try and make a home outta this place, if you can."

[vagabone]

"...it's not a home for me, don't say that." He's hunching in on himself, unconsciously. How could a tattered thing like himself ache so badly and still exist?

"I get what you mean and I've done the best I can, far as that goes. Just... just not that word. It's a place to stay. And wait. Not a home without my girls."

[postictal]

"And what if you can't go back?" He's good at this, isn't he. Asking hard questions that no one wants to answer. He asks them of himself, he'd like to think, but he never answers them either, so maybe he's a fucking hypocrite. He's always known he's a fucking hypocrite.

"What if this is where it all stops?"

cw implied suicidal ideation or something like it

[vagabone]

"I don't know."

He doesn't have any good answers for you, Tim. He never will. He's just thinking out loud, it seems like, voice raw with pain.

"Forever really is forever for me. I'm dead. I won't grow old or fade away, no matter how long it takes."

[postictal]

"No one really dies here."

He's watched two kids walk straight into nonexistence with no intention of return, and that didn't even stick. Something about this place, maybe. Or something about them. But they're not the only ones to be thwarted by a set of islands that refuse to let them die.

[vagabone]

"No. I guess it's forever for everyone." And not a thing he can do about it. They're all so helpless. He clasps his fingers together, holding his own hands. "It's funny. I was only with them for four years. Without them for most of my... existence without them. You'd think I'd be better at it."

[postictal]

"Don't think it's the time that matters. It's the people."

There's those two kids again. And not just them, either. There are people who, in the grand scheme, should mean objectively less than they do. But he's hung up on them anyway, no matter how briefly they knew each other.

A hoodie packed away in a shack. A locket under his shirt. A notebook he regrets lending.

[vagabone]

"They were everything. My whole world. I've known a lot of good people, people I miss... but nobody like them."

His girls. The very best girls. Everything else, everyone else, no one and nothing can measure up to the people he loved when he was alive. "But then, I'm dead. It only makes sense. They were my life. I wouldn't want eternity without them. Good or bad."

So, what, he'll sit in the dirt and complain about it to a guy who can't help him? He hunches in on himself, but looks up, not exactly smiling. No, he has the self awareness to realize how wrong what he's doing to Tim is. "...you really don't have to listen to me."

[postictal]

"Is it helping?" He doesn't imagine that he really is helping all that much, but he's got no idea. Mostly he just feels the way he always does - like he's trying to smother someone else's fire with gasoline. Making things worse, the way he knows best.

"...talking about it, I mean. Is it helping?"

[vagabone]

"I don't know." Kneejerk response, first three words that make it out his mouth. His thoughts are so sluggish, thick as molasses.

Is it helping? Can anyone? No one can take him home. For once, people would be willing to try... and there's not a single thing to try.

And yet... talking about it releases something in him. A little less buried inside, a little weight off his chest. "...Might be. I never talk it out. Wouldn't have been right. Half the people I know lost their family too."

[postictal]

"And?" Tim shrugs, very slightly. Tim never had much of a family to begin with - can't relate to the kind of pain that must be.

(Yet.)

"Does that make what you've been through any easier? Any more justified?"

cw victim blaming... sorta

[vagabone]

"Yes." he says, flatly, thick with bitterness. Not the answer Tim was expecting, probably.

"They didn't deserve it. They're not like me. Never would have happened if I hadn't been so stupid. I left my family, I told you. And then I abandoned my friend, too. What I said to him..." He exhales, shoulders slumping. "I treated him as badly as I did them. I was setting him up to fail. I knew it and I didn't care. Neither of us are good people."

[postictal]

"I think there's a pretty big difference between making a choice that you obviously ended up regretting and trying to kill someone." That's not even remotely on the same level, Héctor. Come on.

"You don't have to put yourself on his level."

[vagabone]

A flat, tired stare follows. "Of course there's a difference and of course I'm not a murderer. That's a pretty low bar you've got there, if that's all it takes to make someone a decent person. I've done some pretty awful things trying to cheat my way across the bridge. Been arrested for just about everything you can imagine."

So much deep rooted self-loathing, decades and decades of blaming himself for the Rivera's suffering, for everything they had to overcome. It may never go away. Even the truth hasn't changed the way he thinks of himself. Maybe nothing can... except his family.

[postictal]

"So you don't deserve to feel happy ever again?"

You'd be hard-pressed, he would say, to find someone who isn't a bad person in some way or another, but cutting comparisons isn't a productive way of passing the time. Especially now.

"Doesn't seem too fair to you."

[vagabone]

Again, not the answer Tim's likely hoping for. "Yes."

He's already slouching, already limp. It's only a question that needs to be asked because Tim doesn't understand. He wasn't there. "I want to be. Can't help that, everyone wants to be on some level. But I don't deserve to be. It's fair, believe me. I ended up exactly with what I deserved."

[postictal]

"So anyone else who's fucked up - they don't deserve to be happy either? Or is it just you?" There's usually a double standard hidden away in these sorts of things. Or, in many cases, not even very hidden. Certainly not in this case.

It's always easier to judge yourself for your own shit than anyone else. Usually, anyway.

[vagabone]

"We're not talking about someone else." Well, there it is, plain as the lack of nose on his face. "I don't know anyone else dumb as I was, stupid enough to walk away from the best things I had. Just because they're willing to give me a second chance now doesn't mean I deserve to be. It means... they're good people."

His fingers scrape against each other as he pauses. "I'd better not get it wrong this time."

[postictal]

"Well, for starters, you could try not holding yourself to this weird higher standard. You made a mistake. A lotta people do. And sooner or later, you've gotta move past that."

Easier said than done. Tim could stand to take a little of his own advice. He's well aware of that. But, hey - they're not talking about Tim right now. Which is nice.

[vagabone]

"Nothing weird about it." he says, something like disbelief in his tone for a moment. How could anyone think it's odd? "They're my family. They deserve the best. Anything they want." Which is for him to come home, after all this time, though he doesn't quite understand why how he died makes any difference.

A long exhale follows. "Anyway, it doesn't matter, far as they're concerned. I'm here, they're not."

[postictal]

"I dunno. Seems to matter a lot to you." Clearly it is. Otherwise it wouldn't be eating him up like this, the way it is.

Tim breathes out a sigh, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"Look. I'm...not the best guy to give you advice about this. But if you keep feeling like shit about this, it's not gonna make it better. It's just gonna make you feel worse about yourself. Maybe you can...I dunno, shelve it until you actually gotta deal with it?"

[vagabone]

"Guess I just couldn't today." It doesn't come out defensively, it's just the truth. Most days he's alright, isn't he? Most days the truly dark moods don't catch up to the rest of him. And so long as that's true... who cares what he thinks about himself?

Tim's right, though. This isn't doing anyone a lick of good, yet he doesn't want to get up. "It's a lousy mood. It'll pass. And... I appreciate you trying."