ic inbox ( ruby city ) Ⅲ

[digiorno]

buongiorno! sorry i missed you; i'll happily get back to you as soon as i'm done with whatever business i'm on. leave a message!

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Comments

[roseblooms]

I have a suspicion that I'm going to, regardless of whether I want to or not.

[...]

Which, itself, rather demonstrates the answer to the question in and of itself, doesn't it?

[digiorno]

Yes. It does, actually.

[Sure as shit isn't gonna stop him, though. He folds his hands in his lap and adjusts his shoulders, looking at Kurama with near-clinical interest.]

Once upon a time, technically in my future but also not really, I looked at someone I'd known for a few days months ago and saw that he wasn't happy. I did research, and I decided, based on the results of my research, that I knew what he needed in order to be happy. That I could make it happen. That I had the right to, and that I should, and that once I'd done it, he'd be happy and so would I.

Then I did it, apparently. And it even sort of worked. And although I haven't done it yet, technically, I won't regret doing it when I do.

Now you.

[roseblooms]

Once upon a time, I told a friend of mine that he —

[But then he stops, letting the thought die off as it gradually occurs to him that there's something disingenuous about what he's offering here, in return. It's a story that fits the criteria, to be sure — telling Hiei how he ought to handle the question of Yukina certainly qualifies as thinking he knows what's best for someone else — but it's not the one that was on his mind when he'd said it, and that's what gives him pause.

More tentatively, he chooses his words carefully, and tries it over again.]

No. Pardon — let me try that again.

Once upon a time...I made the assumption that if there were one constant that must be universally true, it was that the thing that all living creatures value most highly is just that: their own life.

I...wanted to grant that person a gift. The most valuable gift I could offer. So I sought to trade my life to objectively better theirs.

...I assumed anyone would value their own life, most. But I was doing what I wanted for them — not necessarily what they might have wanted, overall.

[digiorno]

[It's like someone's dumped a block of ice into his stomach.]

[It wouldn't be so bad, he tells himself, if he weren't so brittle about the whole issue right now. Except that's not true, as he's finally beginning to realize: he's always brittle about this particular issue, this one very particular and specific issue that everything and everyone reminds him of.]

[He struggles a little to maintain a neutral expression.]

I'm assuming that didn't go well.

[roseblooms]

Yusuke stopped me.

[And he's not particularly careful with his tone and inflection, not right now, not thinking about it — and the words are simple but the quiet emotion in the underpinnings is what says it all:

When I first knew my fox, he was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.

He'd gained something that night, courtesy of the Forlorn Hope, and it'd had nothing to do with the wish of his heart's desire, and yet it had been everything he'd needed most.]

His job was to bring me to justice, not preserve my life. He did that part of it all on his own accord.

[digiorno]

[Oh, that hurts. In a good way, though--at least part of it. Because he remembers. The two of them and their stupid costumes.]

[He glances down at the table and sighs a little.]

I knew I liked him.

[He doesn't like the way these cycles repeat. But he likes Yusuke. He's glad that Yusuke exists, and that someone like Kurama loves him.]

I think it would have ripped his heart out if he hadn't done that. Hadn't saved you. Just based on personal experience.

No one had done anything like that for you before, I bet.

[roseblooms]

...No. One person did, once. That was why I was trying to exchange my life in the first place — from the...loyalty? Sentiment. The...circumstances, born of that.

[He hesitates.]

I still believe I did the right thing. I can't regret the choice I made or the end I chased. But I'll admit I would've done more harm than good, if I'd succeeded in my aims by the methods I chose. I'm...glad, that I didn't.

[digiorno]

He prevented you from dying and from being an idiot.

[There's the ghost of a wry smile.]

Sounds like he's a keeper.

[roseblooms]

I'd like to. Keep him, that is.

[He laughs a little under his breath, almost ruefully.]

I wonder if I don't want that a little too much.