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Entry tags:
one; audio
Hello Cave-dwellers.
[Hadrielians? Hadrielites? Eh.]
I'm going to assume, since we have nothing better to do, that you've been paying attention to the wave of people offering up other people's junk. Praise be to our all knowing gods, airing everyone's dirty laundry all over the place or whatever.
[he pauses, quiet as he checks out the thing he's found.]
So this either belonged to a cop or someone with some really freaky tastes, but it appears to be a picture of an old dead guy hacked into pieces?
[this is fine this is absolutely FINE and not triggering in any way whatsoever to connor.]
In the interest of not traumatizing anyone, I'm not going to go flashing it all over the network but if you have reason to believe you're the lucky owner of some dead guy's photo, let me know.
Also - if this is some weird necrophilia kink, please, please keep that to yourself. I'm not usually here for kinkshaming, but that's pretty much where I draw the line.
[Hadrielians? Hadrielites? Eh.]
I'm going to assume, since we have nothing better to do, that you've been paying attention to the wave of people offering up other people's junk. Praise be to our all knowing gods, airing everyone's dirty laundry all over the place or whatever.
[he pauses, quiet as he checks out the thing he's found.]
So this either belonged to a cop or someone with some really freaky tastes, but it appears to be a picture of an old dead guy hacked into pieces?
[this is fine this is absolutely FINE and not triggering in any way whatsoever to connor.]
In the interest of not traumatizing anyone, I'm not going to go flashing it all over the network but if you have reason to believe you're the lucky owner of some dead guy's photo, let me know.
Also - if this is some weird necrophilia kink, please, please keep that to yourself. I'm not usually here for kinkshaming, but that's pretty much where I draw the line.
private; text;
private; text;
where should i bring it to
private; text;
[ It's not just that he's disinclined to give out his apartment number -- he's also on the eighth floor. He's not going to ask him to climb eight flights. ]
private; text;
private; text --> action
[ It doesn't take long. Hard to keep track of the time or how quickly he moves. He's in his apartment, he blinks, and he's standing on the outskirts, staring at a tree. It has to be alien, but for all his esoteric information, it's not like Uryuu knew every tree on Earth. As far as he knows, it could be any tree. Yeah, trees are what he's thinking about. ]
no subject
but he makes it to the park without and fail and finds uryuu pretty easily. he's more of a mess than he made it seem on the network. audio had let him pretend like he'd gotten his shit together but the reality was less. the photograph was freaking him out. it seems too horribly fitting that he'd be the one to find this.
connor doesn't want to show that, he really doesn't. he knows this is about uryuu and about his family and he'd already been shitty enough to him with the way he'd been talking. so he's trying hard to stay calm. maybe this'll be quick and painless and they can both go on their separate ways to freak out separately. it didn't have to be a joint exercise.]
Hey.
[#nailedit]
no subject
Trees can only get him so far. Eventually, Walsh-san will arrive, and eventually, he does. Uryuu should have spent the walk down, the walk over, fortifying himself. He'd lost the time and now he's empty-handed, empty-headed. Only, he's fine, isn't he? He'd seen it before and in a worse situation. Just because he had not thought of it again, had not let himself, (had not needed to not let himself because why would he, it was done, gone, he had almost killed the one responsible, or spared him, or missed, just missed), and that's healthy. It is healthy, because he doesn't need to cope with anything, he never has, he's fine.
The worst of it is that someone else found it, but there's not much collateral damage. Only Walsh-san, and lucky for him, Uryuu's too focused on micromanaging himself, on the arrow point precision of his thoughts, to notice anything amiss in a guy he'd met on the brink of a panic attack, anyway.
They're both calm, professional. Just a simple exchange. ]
Hello.
[ ...
Right, he should step forward, hold out his hand. Easy. If he doesn't think about how tight his jaw is, it won't actually feel like prying the words out. ]
Thanks.
no subject
[he takes the photo out of a pocket, still in the same condition he found it in and hands it over, with the back up so neither of them have to look at it.
yup totally fine]
no subject
[ It's reflexive, those kinds of statements. Just about trademark at this point. No need to thank me, I don't need to answer that, No need -- something cool and dismissive -- but it catches in his throat.
At about the time his fingers brush, then close on the photograph.
He shouldn't look at it. There had been the photo via text to confirm it. He doesn't want to look at it with Walsh-san right there. He doesn't want to look at it ever again.
Only, as he's reaching to slip it into his satchel, in a notebook, there's enough of an angle, enough for periphery, enough for red, red, red. Then he can't look away, though it's just a corner, just a glimpse. He swallows, remembers himself, but his voice is thick, strained. ]
--need. It was a long time ago.
no subject
Connor takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself. Uryuu's voice, strained and tense cuts through the haze of the smell of fire and burning bodies, the haze of smoke and shovels heavy in hands, the haze of garbage bags filled with dirt and body parts and moving one foot in front of the other and michaela's pained sobs.
He wonders if Michaela is alright. It's the first selfless thing he's thought since he's gotten here. Michaela. She'd begged him not to go to Stanford. She told him she'd never be alright alone and now he'd left her alone with the others, alone with Annalise who was just going to keep fucking them up more and more. And if it weren't for Michaela --
Connor swallows thickly. Uryuu has said something. He tries to focus on the present, on Uryuu's words. It was a long time ago, but both of their wounds are fresh and the stilted way he speaks is like looking into a mirror.
He reaches over and puts his hand on Uryuu's arm. He'd always thought of himself as a cool, aloof person. Detached, emotionally, from others. But he'd found (and was maybe only sort of introspective enough to realize) that taking care of other people in times of crisis had helped him a little bit. Being there for Michaela, even if it didn't always come out the right way, had kept the panic from boiling out on more than one occasion.]
Hey, you don't have to look at it. [his words are almost forced. they're slow, steady. he's Trying here, shoving back all of his emotional baggage and focusing in on uryuu.] You can hide it away somewhere where it can't hurt you.
no subject
He wouldn't study it. He's fine -- then Connor Walsh touches his arm.
Connor Walsh, some just about stranger with nice clothes and a smart mouth, found his picture, handed it over, and now, is offering comfort. Where it can't hurt you, as if he can be hurt, as if he's hurt, and he can't be, he's fine.
When was the last time anyone had done this? -- Sensei, of course, his grandfather, of course, because Ishida Uryuu doesn't need it, everyone knows, he's cold, he's unaffected, not even Inoue-san would and Kurosaki would sooner kick him. Sensei's hands had seemed so big, back then, just one covering his head. So big, so capable, until the Hollows snapped his bones, gnawed him down, and that, that wasn't the end of it, thanks to Kurotsuchi Mayuri.
The touch throws him. It knocks him off-kilter. Uryuu stares at Walsh-san's hand, frozen, tangling. He feels young again, lost and seeking, and when was the last time he'd felt young? When his mother died and he found his father cutting her up (it was a dissection, he knows, not like that, but...)? No, again, always sensei, and he'd watched him fall, his fingernails breaking in the bark of the tree behind which he stood. The sixty minutes after he died, before the Shinigami came, the longest in his life.
Longer still, until his father collected him, handled his own father's corpse, that old man, and Ryuuken hadn't even looked at him, so furious he'd been there--everything in Uryuu had been screaming, had been breaking, had been shutting down, ossifying, sharpening, and his father hadn't even looked at him, little wonder he couldn't get out of that house fast enough, had to wait five years --
and he hadn't even killed the man that did this. Hadn't killed, had spared, had missed. In the end, he'd been there in Hueco Mundo, made it possible for Uryuu to go on, to help Kurosaki and Inoue-san, and he wouldn't exchange that for anything, but right now, with the damn photograph back, with the memory of learning that sensei had shouted his name while that man cut him apart, he can't help but remember what he asked that man's abused daughter -- she'd been glad, but --
Uryuu would wrench his arm away, would snap that he isn't hurt, would, he doesn't know, he can't handle this, but he has to, he's fine, he's been fine for nine years, for seven years, for two years, but he doesn't know what to do with a gentle hand, with comfort.
Finally, he looks at Walsh-san's face, and maybe for once, he actually sounds seventeen. ]
No, I can't. I couldn't kill the one who did this. I was right -- Do you -- don't you think it's better someone who would do that doesn't exist?
no subject
You wouldn't -- you wouldn't want to have their blood on your hands in turn.
[maybe it should be a question. he doesn't know. but that doesn't change the bigger point here, does it?]
It's better if they don't, but it's not...it's not up to you to have to make that decision.
[this is an argument he could make, if he weren't falling to pieces. it's a standard death penalty argument. what he wouldn't give for this to be some simple academic argument about ethics and philosophy. arguments were so easy to make until they were talking about real things, until they were dealing with what he had done.
don't you think it's better someone who would do that doesn't exist?
yes, a thousand times, yes, and the weight of what he'd done was so heavy as he carried it around even when he tried to pretend it didn't matter any more even when he acted like he'd moved on. because there was always more, there was always another layer of twisted things they had to do.
sinclair's body as it hit the pavement as they covered up yet another murder and did it matter that he hadn't been the one to kill her? did it matter that he wasn't the one who had struck sam keating with the trophy? it's aiding and abetting and its felony murder and its tampering with evidence and obscuring the crime scene and the law had a hundred ways of saying "you fucked up," and sometimes he honestly wishes for prison to help him ease the weight of the guilt he was carrying.
he hadn't killed them. there were moments he believed that was enough. it wasn't me, it wasn't me. when ollie had asked if he was a terrorist or a pedophile or any number of horrible things, what he had done had seemed so simple in the face of all of the terrible things he could've been. and sometimes, sometimes that eased the pain and sometimes he thought it was gone but it never was, it was just buried.
don't you think it's better someone who would do that doesn't exist?
yes. why hadn't he gone to the cops why hadn't he told anyone at all was he really so scared of annalise? was he really so scared that they'd all rat him out? it's the prisoner's dilemma. rational only to the sense of self-interest and it had always seemed so trite until it was real and what he wouldn't give that they could still be academic discussions, what he wouldn't give to not have to confront it and realize how right the stupid thing had been the whole time.
it didn't matter that he hadn't killed when what he'd done was just as bad. when he'd let it happen and had kept letting it happen. when he'd crudely cut up one body and let another fall to fake worse injuries and there were pictures, just like this, of sam keating's body parts all laying out in some coroner's office, where everyone can look and say "how could someone so terrible be allowed to exist?" because it was never just about the death it was about how heinous the crime was and it was so bad, so horribly bad what they'd all done --
Connor's hand shakes as he steps back from Uryuu. His whole body shakes, barely containing the anxiety that boils and bubbles underneath the surface and threatens to escape, the guilt ready to tear and claw its way out of his body to make itself known, a tell-tale heart, an inability to keep it together. he pleads with it, as he always does, not again, not again and its been so long since he'd had that -- that -- since he'd fallen to pieces in from of Oliver and he wants to pretend he's okay but he's not he's not okay and it's not fair because uryuu is right]
I -- I have to go.
[he stammers out, the words catching in his throat and barely making their way out as they force past the way panic tears and fills his lungs. he had no right to fall apart in front of uryuu, he had no right to feel sorry for himself or feel hurt or feel
and what good would it do here? what good is trying to process all of this shit in this place where it was pointless where he wasn't home?
but then again, what good had logic ever been in the face of such deep and consuming self-hatred? you might as well try to bring logic to chaos of the universe and demand that it set itself right]
no subject
He can breathe, he can compose himself, he can stand on his own, support himself, without need, never any need, he does not need.
He can look at Walsh-san, his expression cooling, solidifying, and wonder if this guy with his expensive clothes as any idea, really, what it means to have blood on his hands. He can, does wonder and doubt, his basis for saying that. How easy to regurgitate popular morality without hard experience. Without having stood by while someone you loved, someone who loved you, died in agony. Without learning of the hell that followed. Without having failed to avenge them. ]
It was up to me.
[ Firmly, his voice hard. ]
I don't expect you to understand. The strong decide. The victor decides. It was my decision, only my decision. He should have died.
[ An ugly sort of morality, he knows.
A part of his hypocrisy, which he does not know, which he cannot recognize. That he does not like to kill, that he has avoided it. That he knows his arrows pierce and destroy Hollow souls, when Shinigami would purify them (if they were ever on time, if they were competent, if they were not corrupt and bribed) -- strange, really, that Urahara-san would hire him for it, and obliterate what might have ascended, might have balanced. He knows, yet against hated Shinigami, against the natural enemy of Arrancars, he had killing intent, yet chose again and again to cripple, to remove their ability to fight, to pursue, rather than kill.
What Walsh-san says, what irritates, what would spark disproportionate anger if not for the instability of this moment, of the photograph burning at hand -- the sentiment, the blood on your hands, it is not so different from his own justifications. His decision, yes, and it had been his decision to spare, not play by the eat or be eaten rules of the Arrancar. To let that woman live. I have no intention of doing things their way, because he would not bloody his bloodied hands.
Yet, when thinking of Kurotsuchi Mayuri, when thinking of his grandfather screaming, when holding that photograph, it is difficult to remember.
It's better if they don't, Walsh-san agreed that far.
Uryuu was the only one -- the only one who would make that decision, who had the right. Soul Society permitted him, encouraged him. If the system failed, if the Shinigami government allowed him to blow up his own men and torture, and bribe, and burn them alive, cut them up, assault, break -- who else? That was justice.
But he'd spared him. (What would sensei have wanted? This he often forgets to ask--)
Uryuu might have said more. He might have, bristling, needing it understood, that it was his decision and he'd failed, and he'd allowed a monster to live, he might have -- but as he gains ground, untethered from comfort, untethered from need, he can better see Walsh-san, can better see outside the memory of his grandfather's kind face, can better see beyond the four corners of that photograph and the memory of that skeletal, stretching grin.
And before Walsh-san stammers, he shakes.
And maybe Uryuu's initial judgment, that fancy clothes and potato chips couldn't know, was incorrect.
If not for that, he'd have let him go, saying nothing, focusing on steadying himself further. Why should he stick around after handing it over? Strange enough that he'd have offered comfort to begin with. This was the sort of thing best done quickly and quietly, then forgotten, to pretend as though it had never happened, less than a memory. No need for comfort. No need for words.
Something in the whites of Walsh-san's eyes. In the strain in his voice. Uryuu is less inclined to reach out, to pry into depths, and he cannot begin to imagine why the guy's starting to unravel, but it's only fair, isn't it? ]
...What is it? I won't apologize.
[ And what could it be, why this transition from acknowledging that the photograph was horrible, but able to comfort, able to moralize, to this? It can't be the simple disagreement as to the right, though no, he won't apologize. He takes a step, not yet reaching, only maintaining the distance. ]
no subject
connor walsh had hardly made his reputation on fair. in fact, when it came to emotions he gave little and expected little and truly even wanted nothing less. Better to be guarded. Better not to know other's secrets and to let people see underneath the put together exterior. then they might realize you aren't as capable as you seem.
not that he needed to prove capability to uryuu.]
Apologize?
[he's so stuck inside of himself that he doesn't realize the connection, doesn't understand what uryuu is saying. he understands that he's asking what's wrong - of course he does. who wouldn't, when it was so obviously written out for everyone to see? who wouldn't, when he's so obviously messed up? but the apology doesn't feel right.
he's not done berating himself for being selfish. the context is off. all of it is wrong. all of this is wrong.]
I don't -- why would you...
[somewhere in the mix of his mind he register's uryuu's reasoning. the victor. being his decision. some bullshit from his world, but it doesn't matter. not anymore, when he's too busy thinking about how badly he messed up. why should it matter what kind of mentality they had wherever uryuu was from? he'd pretty much gotten off the philosophical debates train awhile ago now.
and from somewhere, he remembers he's supposed to be answering a question. "What is it?" where did he even start? was he even willing to concede and be fair?]
It's just... [couldn't he see, though? couldn't they save the embarrassment of having to say it out loud? wasn't fair giving him the out and letting him run away from his problems? but life had hardly ever been fair, and this situation wasn't about to work itself out short of him just turning tail] Something happened back home? Something bad. It reminded me of it.