middleofsomewhere | Conclusion

Conclusion

Thank you.

For those inside the system the voices of the Great-Seasons ring out around them once the red mass has vanished and the blue plinth it was smothering is freed once more. They don't have all that much time to reflect on that before they find themselves waking up once more in their bodies around the tree trunks.

Or at least, around the tube that is the Great-Season they entered through. All illusions have vanished now, all that is left are pipes and metal.

The Great-Seasons allow them passage out from the centre, no sentries or pipes attack them this time. Everything seems to have been put to rights, the walls in the Autumn sector have stopped moving, there is no strange weather effects in the Summer Sector, no engineering problems in Winter and all the camaloid creatures in Spring are calm. Any Helpmates they come across are doing their jobs and no longer malfunctioning.

After a small amount of time, enough to check that all is well, their SCA's light up. All Passengers are to return to the Voidtrecker Express.

Considering the vast distances involved it is probably best that they use the evacuation function to return to the Luggage carriage.

Once all Voidtreckers have returned the train returns to the Void once more.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I know you weren't!" Koumyou assures him just as quickly, reaching for Devero's hand once it lowers. "That doesn't mean I'm not..."

Considering it.

Somehow.

He uses both hands on Devero's upturned one under the water; slotting his pinkies through the bigger man's fingers. One between thumb and hand, and the other between pinky and other fingers. Then he turns his hand outwards a little, spreading Devero's palm open for his thumbs to knead into, other fingers behind his hand for support.

"If I were to teach you one thing, what would you want?"

Devero's silent and uncertain as Koumyou returns to work on his hand, watching the priest through half-closed eyes. Did he... just imply.... After what had happened between them before the mission, surely not.

He almost doesn't want to answer the question, lest it put undue pressure on Koumyou. He doesn't want to be the guy chipping selfishly away at the priest's clear boundary. He catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth and chews on it a moment, thinking not about his answer-- he knew that immediately-- but rather on whether he should answer at all.

Ultimately, the desire to be honest and straightforward, especially with the person who's so important to him, wins out. "Magic," he admits. "Being able to-- to shoot water, in the central system, and to heal just by touching, was-- incredible. It didn't--"

He pauses as he realizes what he's about to say, eyes going wide. "...It didn't matter if I had my hardware or not." He laughs, the sound a little strained, and shakes his head at himself. "Some hitek I am," he adds, as if he can't help putting himself down.

"You seem hesitant," Koumyou points out gently, and then with hesitation of his own, "...is it because it's me? I can't exactly blame you, if it is."

The incident before the mission looms large in his own mind, too. He'd frightened Devero so badly, and hadn't had a clue he was doing it.

"I'm not going to push you," Devero says, a somewhat oblique response. "I respect you too much to try and pressure you into teaching me something that I-- that I could probably learn from someone else. Or that isn't even my place to learn!"

He wraps his free hand around one of Koumyou's, stilling the massage for a moment as he meets the priest's eyes. "I don't ever want to force you to do anything you're not comfortable with, okay? I promise."

"You're not pushing or pressuring me," Koumyou returns, "I promise."

Look at these two, so concerned about each other that they're tripping over themselves.

"You know the entire reason I don't teach. If you can handle... me, I..."

That does seem to relieve Devero, and he lets his grasping hand slip away. "Okay," he says.

He doesn't respond right away, thinking back again to their fight and the reconciliation after it. He remembers another promise made back then: If I ever start to scare you again, just tell me, as plainly as you can, and I will stop.

As far as Devero's concerned, the question isn't can he handle Koumyou. The question is whether or not he'll be able to speak up when he needs to, if he even realizes he'll need to before it's too late.

He looks down and away, ashamed. He knows what it must be costing Koumyou to even think about offering this, and here he is, turning it down. "...It's probably not a great idea," he says quietly. "I don't think I can trust myself to be able to-- stop you, if things go too-- too far."

"...I see," Koumyou just goes back to the massage, digging his thumb into a tense spot at the base of Devero's.

"I don't see how it wouldn't be your place to learn it, from... someone. Or how it would make you any less of a hitek. I can fight with a sword, a gun, a spear, a staff, unarmed -- that doesn't make me less of a chi-user, or a priest. People can be many things."

His first reaction is to try and tell Koumyou how that sentiment doesn't apply in his case. He keeps his mouth closed and lets that first tide of response wash up and then recede again.

"I've been a hitek almost since I graduated from creche," he says. "Always pursuing the next upgrade, the newest Interface-- I have a full neuromuscular biofeedback rig! They don't implant those into just anybody. I've been lucky enough to work with and learn from the leading minds in their fields for years. Geniuses, really brilliant scientists and engineers, you know? Getting to contribute, in even the tiniest way, to advancing augment tech has been the most worthwhile thing I've done with my life since... since my discharge.

"And now I'm here." He gently disengages his hand from Koumyou's and clasps it with his other under the water. "I've been here for-- for weeks now, for almost a month, with nothing, and what have I done to rectify that? Bought a few books, and thought about maybe doing some tinkering."

He shakes his head. "Morraine would have a proper network up and running in this train if they'd been pulled here instead of me. Ioleya would have-- have hacked the ICP and SCA system and taken it for her own.

"Did you know Entrapta was building robots on her first day here?"

He lifts both hands out of the water and runs them through his hair, pulling his fringe back hard from his face. "What have I done since I got here? Fucked around! And now I'm sitting here thinking oh, maybe I could learn magic-- yeah right. That's not mine to learn when I've done jack all with the skills I already have!"

"You have chi whether you learn to use it or not," Koumyou points out gently, "it's already part of you. It has been since before you were born."

He sighs and settles back against the edge of the pool, letting his hands semi-float in the water in front of him.

"Would there be a purpose to you setting up a network the rest of us wouldn't even know how to use? To interfering with the ICP and SCA systems? To building random little robots? Or is that just the sort of thing you think you should have been doing this whole time?"

"I have a living body that passively generates electricity and potential energy, just like any living body," he says. "That's all it is." His voice is unwontedly bitter. Where is this coming from?

"It would make things better!" he insists. "Imagine if we had a way to send and store information that everyone can access, that doesn't just disappear when a conversation's over. Imagine if we had 'bots to take over the cleaning, the laundry, the drudgery, so the rest of us could focus on real work. Imagine how much we could accomplish!"

"What 'real work' would you have us do, between missions?" Koumyou asks quietly, "most of us aren't... very special outside of combat. For lack of a better way to put it."

He's not trying to put himself down with that statement, it's just a fact.

"As for storing information, we have paper." Sorry Devero, there's analogue stuff aplenty. "Stick everything on computers, and someone like me won't be able to do anything with it."

"So I teach you," Devero says insistently. "Computer literacy, emotional literacy-- we teach each other. Share our knowledge, shore each other up. Improve things, for everyone stuck on this goddamn hell-ride!"

Koumyou just goes quiet at that, staring down at his own hands semi-floating just under the surface of the water.

Devero's so caught up in manufacturing reasons to blame himself for things that it takes him a moment to realize what he just said-- or, specifically, who he just said it to.

"--Koumyou, I'm sorry," he says immediately, as soon as he sees the priest looking so solemn and connects the dots. "I didn't mean--" What you literally just said, Devero?

He stands up, displacing water in sloshing waves as he paces the couple of steps to the other side of the pool, and then turns around and comes back. "I shouldn't be generalizing," he says. "I got-- carried away.

"I'm the one who's not doing enough. Just me. It's not fair of me to fuckin'-- project that on to you or anyone else."

"I know you're... wired to think you need to do more, and more, and more," Koumyou says gently, looking up at him, "but... just being is enough, too. You're enough. And if it's enough for everyone to learn from each other, then that includes you."

Not from someone as unsuitable to teach as Koumyou, of course. But still.

Devero shakes his head in automatic denial, and this time the first sickly seafoam spray of response surges out of him. "I have to earn my place," he says, parroting what she's ground into him all these years. "Otherwise I'm just a drain on our resources."

Well, Koumyou doesn't have to sit there and consider his response to that one.

"Bullshit."

It's still gentle, but there's no hesitation.

"Who told you that?"

Is there someone on the train Koumyou Sanzo needs to have a little chat with?

"...Administrator Valdana," he says slowly. His hands curl into fists where they hang under the water; he doesn't seem to notice. "It was Administrator Valdana."

"Ah, that explains that," Koumyou sits up a little in the water, and then leans forward to try to take Devero's fisted hands in his and draw them forward. If successful, he'll place a little kiss on each knuckle.

"You are you, and you are enough," he murmurs in between, "I promise. And I'll keep telling you that for as long as you need to hear it."

Devero lets Koumyou take his hands and kiss them, though his fingers remain tightly clenched. He takes them back soon enough, though, and retreats to the other side of the pool.

Heavily, he sits, bracing his elbows against his knees and lowering his face into his hands, muffled into his palms. "It doesn't feel like it," he admits from behind his hands. "Everyone here is so amazing, Koumyou."

Koumyou sinks back down past his chin in the water, long bangs splaying out on the surface once more.

"You're the only one I want to kiss, and it's not just because you're so pretty. You're wonderful, Devero. We can all see it."

He lowers his hands again, so they hang between his knees even in the buoyancy of the water. He remains hunched in on himself. "It'd be okay if it was just because I'm pretty," he says with a bitter laugh. "It's my-- best feature, isn't it?" Sure sounds like he substituted an innocuous phrase for a more unpleasant one right there, doesn't it?

Apparently, he's just full of Valdana-isms right now.

He rubs one wet hand over his face and looks away. "Sorry," he mutters. "Shouldn't be talking like this. You're just trying to help."

"I'd feel the same way about you even if I was blind," Koumyou tells him gently, "if half your face was burned off I'd still want to kiss it every morning. You're the sweetest, gentlest, kindest person I've ever met on any world, and I would literally fight anyone who tried to hurt you."

Including himself, as proven by his state just before the mission.

"You're biased," Devero protests in a weak whisper. "You like me."

As if no one could actually like him, or as if the only reason anyone would think highly of him was if they 'liked' him. But what did people like about him back home? His pretty face, his big arms, his charming smile? How wide his legs could spread? How well he could eat out a pussy or take a dick?

That's sure what Valdana had made him think. And as he'd retreated from everyone else in his life, afraid of provoking her ire and ashamed of revealing what what she was turning him into, he'd pulled away from the only people who could have reminded him otherwise. She'd wrapped his fingers around a knife and made him carve a cycle of insecurity and self-loathing into his soul so deeply that he could scrape at it himself, with next to no prompting.

Suddenly, he feels very sick. He draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around his legs, hiding his face.

Another weak little whisper threads out and over to Koumyou's ears. "S... say it again...?"

"I love you."

Koumyou doesn't know if that's what he meant, but he's saying it anyway, even though saying it makes his heart pound in his throat, and his throat try to close with fear.

"I'd fight for you without hesitation. I'd kill for you without hesitation."

He'd die for him without hesitation, but even Koumyou knows better than to voice that. Devero's in an exclusive club of two (2) members, of people Koumyou would shield from danger with his own body and a smile on his face while he did it.

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cw getting explicitly into the sexual abuse stuff

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