This is the Sound of Settling

[unfavorableinstigation]

Who: Nita and YOU!
Where: All around! Please note preferred room in toplevel.
When: 12th through 15th Horseshoe
What: Chores, and some private catch-ups.
Warnings: ... Feels????


Nita's able to bounce back from the mission much more easily than last time - no huge magics, just the slow drain of wizardry and losing people alike.

There are some people she knows she needs to talk to, but she doesn't precisely need to hunt them down - after all, she's got rooms to clean. She'll get to them eventually.

She has time for more friendly chats, as well - or a helping hand or two!

Comments

[blitzcheer]

Accepting what you were made for. He goes over those words, without being able to guess they would be. Did he accept in? In a way, but because he didn't have any other choice. But at the same time...

"Would you accept it?"

[unfavorableinstigation]

"I don't know. I struggle with being a visionary, with sometimes just being a cog in a machine trying to make things work out right - All is done for each - but I know that's not the same."

The answer comes easily enough, certain, particularly the part where she's quoting - and then her face falls, pulling her arms in.

"But, what you can't accept, you can't work with, let alone change."

[blitzcheer]

"It's too late for me to change." He says it without really thinking about it, about where to take it after that. Looking down at the space between his feet and the bathtub opposite them.

"...There's wasn't anything I could change." There wasn't any other choice. He sighs, leaning his weight towards the side his pillows, a hand on them. "People were kept alive just to dream us. My own old man became part of the cycle. People were dying. The world was dying. There wasn't any other way."

But there's something weak about that end, hollow in its delivery.

Spoilers for Wizard's Holiday (the 7th book of Nita's canon)

[unfavorableinstigation]

Silence falls. Long enough for Nita to take in what Tidus is really saying.

Long enough, maybe, for him to doubt she'll speak up again.

"... I went to a place, once. Kit and I. A place where there were no wars, no societal struggles - a vacation world, practically. There was only one wizard there, and she was horrified by how terrible life on other worlds - like the Earth I'm from - could get.

"Their world - it wasn't dying, but it was stagnating. And Kit and I - and Ponch, Kit's-"

For a moment, she stops; remembering Ponch, and wondering just how to explain him.

"Someone Kit brought with us, convinced her that, while it was okay, even right, to be afraid of what would happen, her people had to move on, to embrace whatever came next, to let another species have their time in the sun."

Silence resumed; worry that she was overspeaking.

"I can't say if it's the same thing, but - it's what we have now, the chances and choices available to us wherever we are, that we have to work with. Whether we're home, or- Away," she finishes, somewhat lamely.

[blitzcheer]

Stagnation? He doesn't really understand Nita's story, what was there and why people had to move on. There had to be something else, surely, and he trusts that about Nita. So his mind focuses on the rest. Light told him the same too--Your time in this world is what you make of it, no matter where you came from or what you're going back to.

And it's more familiar than either of them, but as he is now, as things are now. His brow knots hard, mouth lining tight.

"Nothing I do now will make a difference to the people who deserve it. I'm just here 'cause this train decided I should be." He shakes his head. "And as soon as it's done with me, it'll throw me out. It doesn't make a difference."

So what did any of it matter.

[unfavorableinstigation]

"You're not the only one on this train who's dead back home, Tidus," Nita points out.

True, she doesn't know all of them that well, but the point is the same.

"And... you'd be surprised how much hearts can take, connecting to new people in new places. They're hardier than you think. That doesn't mean that our connections, how we relate to each other here, don't matter."

Hopefully that... all made sense? Together?

[blitzcheer]

"They don't-- they do," he amends, not wanting to sound like he's disagreeing right off the bat. "Everyone should make the most of their time here. They should make connections. Friends. Whatever-- whatever makes their lives better here. No matter what they're going back to."

A beat. "But I...I'm not gonna act like I deserve that. It's got nothing to do with what happens to me after I'm gone."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"We've got murderers among us, Tidus," Nita says - another reminder, of a different sort.

"Some even of people on the train. We've got people who kill for money, people who aren't team players, and people who just want to be alone.... And just people who make mistakes. It's not about whether what you've done is as bad as any of those things, it's just... being people. That hasn't changed. That's still the same."

That idea of deserving has clearly sparked something in Nita; her arms are unfolding, but apart from that her stance is the same.

[blitzcheer]

It's not like she has to remind him, when they're in the room of that first guy mentioned in proxy. But he's not following her line of thinking, of if there's more in what she's saying that he isn't getting.

"Then call it a personal belief. I'm not gonna go out there and say what everyone else should be doing."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita nods - and then asks the question that is probably more important than the rest of what she's been saying.

"So, why should we treat you differently, Tidus? I know, you don't have to share it," she adds, hands raising palms-up, because private reasons are private reasons.

"But, how is it going to hold up against others' compassion? And I don't mean pity. Why should we shut you out?"

[blitzcheer]

He takes in a breath. "The only person who's got to do anything different is me - I'm not saying anyone else has to do anything."

How else to say it? "Just...do what you want. Nothing's gotta change for you and everyone else. This is just to do with me. No one else."

It was his problem, his guilt. What he thought he deserved, and no one else on the train fitted in that.

[unfavorableinstigation]

And it's at that point Nita leans forward and-

Offers her hand.

"We're not going to shut you out. That's not changing, either. Whatever's on your mind, you're not alone, regardless of how you choose to handle things."

If Tidus gets nothing else out of this conversation, she wants him to remember that.

[blitzcheer]

It's the shift of the bed that gets Tidus to look from somewhere off by the side of the bathtub to Nita, to see the hand in the first place. Catching the look in her eyes, he turns back away--ignoring the hand, closing his on her side into a loose fit.

He doesn't know what to say--he has nothing to say--so he stays silent, if not happy with it.

[unfavorableinstigation]

"... I know there's people here you can still talk to. I'm happy to be one of them, if you want me."

She doesn't get up just yet, but Nita gets the feeling this conversation isn't going to yield that much more progress.

While bringing up Inigo is probably a bad idea, at least unless either or both of them volunteer the information on where they're at, there's still another name she can offer.

"I know S'reee will listen, and Lightning."

Okay, make that two.

[blitzcheer]

"...I don't need anyone to listen. It's fine," he says quietly, softly. "Lightning--she already knows about me. It doesn't really matter, anyway. I'm fine with it."

He speaks lighter at the end, aiming for reassuring. It's awkward, he knows, and he doesn't know how to make any of this better. Wishes that he could, but--he didn't want to change his mind. Who would he be if he did? And that was the thing, for the longest time: Not knowing who he was.

A coward, maybe.

[unfavorableinstigation]

And the wry look comes back.

"If it's enough to stick around in your head, believe me, it matters. No matter who's thinking it."

She can be reassured, AND worried, all at once! It's a talent!

[blitzcheer]

"There's nothing stuck in my head," he answers, a note of exasperation that continues; less pointed at anyone, and more for the point he's failing to explain. To get across.

"Look, I get I was going about things differently before: live life to the fullest, make the most of your time--whatever. But it's different. Everyone else can do what they want here. But before, I was putting myself first. And maybe it's not easy to keep doing that when your choices got people killed, and maybe-- maybe I deserve to feel like shit. I never even tried, Nita. You get it?"

His voice peaks at the end, becoming emotional, slightly erratic. His fist at the side tightening, his head turned away more.

"I'm an asshole."

[unfavorableinstigation]

Nita nods, letting the words settle, echo even in the otherwise-quiet room.

"... And you're sure it's going to stay that way?"

It's not entirely inflected as a question, certainly it's quiet enough, though Tidus can easily read that into it.

[blitzcheer]

It starts to sting, his own words; pushed out from a desire to dig in the point, some increased emotion in him in the moment. But it doesn't keep, and it's uncomfortable. But he can't take it back. It's not untrue.

"...You can't change the past."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"No."

Nita's been a part of her own past - but time travel's not on the table here, and Nita couldn't change what had happen; whatever else went on, time's arrow was always seen to run straight.

"But that's the beauty - and pain - of a present. Without that, where would the future be?"

Nita's not looking up at this point; she's looking at S'reee's bunk instead, contemplative expression on her face.

"What can it be?"

[blitzcheer]

"Dunno if you noticed," he says, kicking the heel of one of his feet again some against the stiff carpeting, "but I'm not the philosophical or- whatever that is -type."

There's a humorous note to it, hollow as it is.

"And whatever the future is, I'm not gonna know."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"... You think that, when whatever's going on here is done, we're just going to go back home?"

Philosophy or no, that's where Tidus' response points her. Nita looks genuinely baffled.

[blitzcheer]

"I don't know what's going to happen - I don't even know what happens to us now," he says with a scoff in his words.

"I don't even know what this train plans to do with any of us, but I know I'm not planning for the future one way or another."

[unfavorableinstigation]

"... The only way to do that easily is to not connect with people," Nita points out.

"And that's not entirely under your control - or mine, and definitely not the train's."

[blitzcheer]

"What are you even trying to say?" he asks, bewildered. "I can't not plan for the future 'cause I don't know what's going to happen? What?"