hadriel | 009 [text]

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[Part of Chris thinks he should've made this post awhile ago, and part of him still doesn't want to. But it's a compromise to do it now, and it's probably the best time for it anyway; the last event is over, and new people haven't arrived yet. It's the calm before the whatever, storm or otherwise.

But he's going with text because even though it's been a little while, he doesn't want to try to say the first part of this post in anything other than text.]

Hey everyone. So I guess I'll start off with the bad news: anyone who were friends with Ashley or Josh should know they aren't here anymore. Also, I'm going to add that if Josh owed you money or favors or whatever else, you're totally out of luck because I'm not honoring them no matter what he might've told you.

[Jokes make this not heartbreaking, right? Definitely.]

Though I guess this is also a good time to mention that if you're working on anything important or even just keeping general notes or something, you might want to consider sending them to a friend every so often. If whatever it is is just on your phone when you disappear, it's pretty much as gone as you are.

So yeah. Back up your data and all that. Even if you don't want to send an electronic copy to someone, at least keep paper notes or something.

[Semi-relatedly...]

If anyone needs help with how to send files or whatever, just let me know. And I'm finishing a program for something else right now, but then I guess I'm taking requests? If there's something you'd like a program on your phone for, I can see if I can figure out how to do it. It's not like I have a whole lot else better to be doing, so feel free and ask even though I can't totally promise I'll be able to do it.

[But still, please ask. Please give him something to do other than miss his friends.]

And okay, last thing I swear, and it's the good part. For everyone who's new here and doesn't know, we have pretty awesome coffee at the bar thanks to Delight. Usually either Emily or I are there to make it, but if we're not just send one of us a message; it's part of the deal with Delight about the coffee to make it, so you're not bothering us or whatever.

So yeah, you might be stuck in a shitty cave, but at least there's coffee. That's something, right?

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That doesn't—

[But he cuts himself off, shaking his head. He may have had a good reason for panicking, but not for turning his aural magic on Kate. There's no excuse for that, and his fears do not justify his actions.

He rubs at his eyes, frustrated as ever with himself, and moves away from the topic, hoping the distance will help his nerves.]

There are worse things to concern yourself with, such as your friends. How is Emily handling this latest development? And Josh's sister? She's still here too, is she not?

[Chris lets the topic shift, just kind of keeping the former one in the back of his mind for now. He also manages to find some sort of noodle and vegetable dish he remembers they made two nights before and was pretty good, so he won't be a bad person or anything for shoving at Carlisle.

A bowl later and it's in the weird, alien microwave, and Chris turns back to answer the questions.]

Yeah, Hannah's still here. We're um, all handling things, I guess. Hannah hasn't been told about um... You know, anything, so as far as she knows she'll just see Josh again when she goes home. Em's distracting herself with sewing, I think.

[They're dealing, as always, if not particularly well. It being down to just Emily and Chris that know what happened at home is really not easy, though, and that's without the issue of knowing that if Josh doesn't return here at some point then it's the last time they'll ever see him.]

I see.

[He's watching that weird alien microwave -- he has a similar one in his house, but has yet to figure out exactly what it does. He's not the sort to experiment with technology.]

I'm sorry you've all lost them for the time being. [And possibly forever.] Though I suppose that each person deals with loss in their own way.

[Figuring out the microwave had been a necessity at UD house; there's no way these kids would've survived if they had to cook everything on a stove. Chris still probably shouldn't be allowed to use one.]

Thanks. Yeah, um, at least Em and I are... Kind of used to it, I guess. Sam, Mike, and Jess have all been here and left, before.

[But losing Ashley and Josh so close together, especially with all the stuff about Josh, is just a lot more difficult.

He's silent a few seconds, gaze drifting to the floor, before continuing.]

I just, um... I feel like I really messed up with Josh, while he was here.

[Like he wasted the time, because he couldn't get past what happened at home no matter how much he tried.]

How so?

[Given what Chris told him before about Josh -- what he did back home, and how it affected them -- Carlisle is fairly certain he knows the answer, but sometimes, it helps to vocalize it.]

[Chris gives a small shrug, still staring at the floor.]

Things were just... Weird. I was trying to forgive him or even just ignore what happened at home, because I knew this was gonna be it, but...

[But although sometimes things could approach normal, there was always a voice in the back of his head that reminded him this was the same Josh that did everything he did on the mountain.]

[Yep. That's about what he expected. Regret is a funny thing, a creature that thrives on the hypotheticals of the world, the what-ifs and the if-onlys. It feeds on mistakes made by not making them at all, by doing something -- or nothing -- rather that risking the right choice.

Though sometimes, there are no "right" choices. That is where regret feasts no matter what.]

Perhaps he will return one day, though I'm not certain that would be any better.

I think it would, just...

[Words, Chris. He's usually good at them, even for describing his own feelings, but lately it's just been more and more difficult.]

He um, deserves better than what happened. At least here he's alive.

[The microwave gives its weird low chime to alert that it's done, and gives Chris something to focus on as he continues.]

He was here for eight months and um, there wasn't one thing he said to me that indicated he cared that what he did was screwed up. A-And I mean, I only told you half of it.

[If he'd thought for even a moment that Josh regretted the prank, or even didn't regret the prank but regretted doing so much harm with it, Chris could've forgiven him. He knows he could've. It just didn't happen.]

[His eyes flick to the microwave and back again.]

You said before that he knew all he had planned that night from which you were all brought here. But... was he aware that you knew?

Yeah. I told him the first day he got here that Ash and I both knew.

[He pulls the bowl out of the microwave and finds a fork--plastic, but whatever, it works--and sets them on the table in front of Carlisle before taking his seat again, seemingly just remembering he has coffee to drink.]

He um, asked if it was as amazing as he'd thought it would be, or something, and said I should've been impressed.

[He taps his fingers on his coffee mug, but doesn't drink it just yet.]

It was kind of um, surreal, I guess? I've known Josh for ten years, but it was like um... Like I was talking to a completely different person. I guess it was like that the whole time he was here.

[And, he realizes, maybe that was the problem the whole time. It just wasn't possible to reconcile the person he'd known so many years with the person who had been on the mountain that night, and here for months.]

[Carlisle frowns as he looks down at his noodles, though it's not the food he finds troubling.]

He did strike me as a brazen fellow.

[But to think him capable of all that he did to Chris and Ashley, to people who trusted him? Some truly took such luxuries for granted.]

Do you— [a slight pause before tentatively continuing; he knows this is not comfortable territory] —believe him changed by the deaths of his sisters? Or was such blind cruelty always there, hidden away?

Edited 2016-09-03 06:21 (UTC)

I don't know.

[He gives a small shrug as he says it, and he wishes he had a better answer. Chris had thought he knew Josh as well as he possibly could, but he'd been incredibly wrong; even worse, somehow, was that while he didn't know Josh like he thought apparently Josh knew him just fine. At least enough to predict exactly what Chris would do when, because the whole plan would've fallen apart if Chris hadn't hit the right cues.]

I think it was just... A lot of things. What um, happened to the twins had to play a big part in it, and when he explained why he did everything he said that was it, but I guess I just don't totally believe that.

[He sighs, and finally takes a sip of his coffee.]

Maybe there just isn't an answer. I-I'm not sure Josh even totally knew why he did it.

And there's no asking him now. You're right in that sometimes, there is no right way to go about things, and no answer that'd be satisfactory in light of what you've been through. All you can do is try to live with it, and not blame yourself for what you cannot change.

[This all coming from a guy who very much blames himself for things he cannot change.]

Yeah. I guess it's just kind of hard to accept it.

[Especially since he'd known Josh half his life, and not being able to get any real sense of closure about someone who had been so important to him is incredibly difficult. And that's without the added issue of feeling directly responsible for whatever Josh's fate ended up being.]

[He nods, trying the noodles. Not bad at all, but his mind is elsewhere.]

If given the chance, would you do something different? If he were to return tomorrow, would you demand the answers you're missing, or let him be once more?

[Action versus inaction: it's a sensitive subject for Carlisle these days, given his relative inaction and the consequences of it. He'd rather run than fight; he'd rather pretend things are fine rather than admit they're not; he'd rather deny the existence of his curse-borne gifts that learn to control them of his own accord. Just as he can strip the free will of others, so do his fears bar him from his own.]

I don't know.

[He feels like he's saying it a lot, but this situation--and a lot of the things that have happened in the past year--are so outside his element he feels like he's just getting through them by improvisation and luck.

Chris is silent a few seconds before continuing.]

I-I don't, um... I don't think he has an answer I want to hear, so...

[So no, he probably wouldn't ask. He'd just keep trying to find a way to get past it on his own, and enjoy the time he would have with someone who had been such a close friend for so long.]

What I want to hear is some sort of explanation that would make it, you know, make sense and we could go back to being friends. But I just spent a lot of the time he was here worried he'd pull something like that again, and... I dunno. Being afraid of your best friend kind of sucks.

[And that's ultimately what had been the worst; knowing that someone he'd trusted and cared so much about could do something like that to him and their friends and not ever regret it.]

That is indeed awful. And as you said, even if you could ask, there might not be an explanation at all.

[Some things just can't be fixed, whether a broken friendship or an unfortunate condition. They simply have to live with them, and learn to manage them. Chris hasn't yet figured out how to do so with Josh, and neither has Carlisle with his curse -- it seems they're alike in that regard.

But as someone who isn't terribly versed in the world of friendships, Carlisle has to know:]

But if he was so unabashedly unapologetic, why still would you consider him a friend?

[It's not all that unexpected of a question; Chris has wondered the same thing, albeit not in those words. He doesn't have a great answer but he does have one, or rather several.]

I um... I don't think I would've, if he'd... Made it.

[It's hard to say, even though he's accepted that Josh is dead at home logically. Emotionally is a little more difficult, and he's quiet after that for several seconds as he tries to decide whether to continue.

Finally he does, but his voice is a little weaker and he stares firmly at the table instead of Carlisle.]

B-But he didn't, and it's my fault.

[So it's kind of hard to be angry and hurt enough to justify truly no longer considering Josh a friend, when he's done something worse. Once again logically Chris knows it isn't truly his fault--he could've made different choices or been better or faster or something but he'd been trying to do the right thing for everyone including Josh--but that doesn't make the guilt any less.]

[Carlisle isn't entirely sure if Chris means it is literally his fault, or if guilt pushes him to feel that way; he assumes the latter, not wanting to press further as he hears the shift in Chris' tone. For Josh to have done something so awful and so remorselessly to his friends, even if it was some twisted way of lashing out for his sister's deaths, is truly sickening. The greatest tragedy seems to be that Josh managed to turn Chris, someone who obviously cared so much for his well-being, against him with his own actions.

And that's something with which Carlisle can't help but relate, given what happened in the jungle so long ago. A part of him knows he needs to be more careful, needs to learn to control his fears before they control him; another part is too terrified of the consequences to even try.

He takes in more noodles, hoping to drown that feeling in his gut with food.]

How does Emily feel in all this, if I may ask? Is she able to commiserate with you in some way?

Em and I um... Don't talk about this part of things all that much. We got separated most of the night, and we've only gotten to be really good friends here, so it's just... It's all kind of a mess.

[So while she knows what happened and he can talk to her if he absolutely has to, he doesn't really want to go into any of this much. Not only is it hard for him to talk about, Emily has her own stresses from that night--especially with Hannah here--and her own feelings about Josh, and it's all so complicated.

Trying to ignore and repress everything is a much better tactic, right?]

Besides, her boyfriend Matt is one of the people we don't um, know about what happened to, exactly. So...

[So it just seems wrong to complain too much about missing Josh.]

Edited 2016-09-09 03:14 (UTC)

Ah. I suppose I just assumed that since you live together, you talk.

[Because what's the point in living with people otherwise, though he can fully understand that their histories are precarious topics, given what happened to them before they were drawn to Hadriel.]

Though some subjects are better left alone.

Well, I mean, we do talk; she knows what happened and I know what happened with her, but we um... There's only so much we can do to help each other with things.

[Neither of them is a therapist, is mostly the problem. And talking about pretty much anything from that night--or their situation here--is stressful for them both.]

But... Yeah. I guess we're just kind of trying to get past things.

[Not the healthiest way of dealing with things, but if they spent the time and energy on attempting to truly work out every single awful thing that happened or happens they wouldn't be able to handle surviving whatever next event is thrown at them.]

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