[ open ] bad memory catch all

[photosympathies]

WHO: Vash / Geto + OTA.
WHAT: Memory share stuff for both my guys, I just figured it was easier to compile them in a log.
WHERE: N/A
WHEN: Throughout the event.
WARNINGS: Separate trigger warnings in each post.

ooc: just what it says on the tin. i'll link each memory post in my characters top levels and you can send whomever you like. please heed the trigger warnings and if i've missed something please let me know. ♥

Comments

gomen 😔

[copy]

[ Yuta is tired and hurting in the wake of everything that's happened, but so long as he's alive and there are people he cares about — something guaranteed to happen when he's always starved for connection — he will pick himself back up and keep fighting. Like a perpetual self-sacrificial motion machine; he simply must. ]

You say that like dying by Gojo-sensei's hand wasn't the conclusion you'd been angling for all along.

[ Because that was the inevitable outcome even if Geto had succeeded in killing him. From that secret shared just now, it all seems like one very long drawn-out suicide to him and Yuta has no qualms pointing it out without remorse when there's no love lost between them, direct and pointed, piercing gaze remaining on Geto now that they're the only ones left in the room. It had not been fair to Gojo and he cares far more about his teacher than he does Geto's feelings on the matter. It isn't really about "domesticating" him when it indeed hasn't seemed necessary. Maybe a little more about making him see the error of his ways, yes, but Yuta suspects he already knows, deep down, and so this is mainly about drawing out more of that glimpse of honesty from before. ]

I just want you to understand, for his sake if nothing else.

[ Everything Gojo worked so hard for and how, even for the strongest, it could not be done alone. ]

And I guess I would like to know... If you could go back in time to this moment, knowing everything you do now, would you really do it all over again exactly the same?

[gorb]

tw: suicidal ideation ig but the whole thread has that so i'm being overcautious /o\

( A flair of his nostrils, another clenching of his jaw, a further direct hit by Okkotsu Yuta.

Because he is not wrong, neither is it very much of a secret. Something had been unspooling dangerously in Geto since the moment he left, all those years ago. He'd treated the threat of his end with an almost religious fervour, building it into an erratic frenzy that coated everything he touched. Yes, Satoru would kill him. Yes, Geto would welcome it. He couldn't do it himself, he had too much reliant on him, a cause he'd been trying to claw for with desperate hands, a family in need. But someone else snuffing him out? The strongest? How fitting! How right! It had ticked away in the back of his thoughts for years, and finally, fruition.

If he'd been a little sad for the weight he was placing in his one and only's arms, then that was his business. There was no other way. )

It's too late. ( What he focuses on instead, this moment, the dead edge of his voice. ) At this point I'm already -. ( What had Satoru called him, all those months ago when he'd shown up here? Broken. He'd been right, of course, he usually is. ) - this isn't a moment I can change, Okkotsu-san. There is no universe where I come here and do not do what I did. I was already too deep. And if not here, then some other time, some other place.

( Fushiguro Toji and his gunshot. The thought that Satoru was dead. The knowledge that he could not handle loss. The helplessness of it all. He knows the moment his life could have been different, and it is not here. He crosses his arms over his chest, defensive. The memory will fade soon. He will not see his girls again. He looks at the door with something akin to heartbreak, and then laughs. )

You should save your energies for the more deserving. I'm very stubborn.

[copy]

[ Yuta would never call himself an optimist nor is it likely that anyone else would given that his reputation for being gloomy is well-earned, but there's such a bleak defeat to what Geto says that even he finds hard to swallow. It's what giving up on oneself looks like. Yuta knows that feeling intimately well. It's sitting in a chair, feeling small and utterly broken beyond repair, and deciding never to go outside again. He also knows, from the very same experience, how untrue the feeling had turned out to be and what the solution had been to make him see it — to listen to reason put plainly in the words 'but living by yourself gets lonely', to accept a hand offered, to rely on others and learn to put himself back together again in doing so. He's made himself a patchwork of all the traits he admires in his friends — their examples of unyielding strength and kindness the golden urushi lacquer filling in the missing gaps in the cracks — and he's come out so much stronger for it even if he never did recover the capacity to care about himself.

Yet sitting in that chair he thought it had been too late as well. He'd been wrong. Geto is wrong too, he thinks, giving the boy who gave Gojo the framework to build his principles upon too little credit. But where the past is concerned, Yuta can yield a little. ]

Maybe the past can't be changed, but you can still change now. It's never too late. You've been given a second chance, it would be a shame to waste that and not do things differently.

[ Learning from past mistakes, finding new reasons to live (and not just reluctantly survive). The power of a fresh new start cannot be underestimated.

But more than anything, after forcing Gojo's hand like Geto did... ]

You owe him that much, don't you think?

[gorb]

( It rises, childish and frustrated, the vitriol that follows. Geto knows he shouldn't allow it, that vexation. But the fact of the matter is he has changed. Perhaps not as fully nor as swiftly as people would have wanted from him, but he's not the same man he was almost a full year ago. Trying to be different feels a little like wading fully clothed through a vat of thick muck, body too heavy, mind furious. It feels like beating his skull against a solid wall. He makes a noise, aggrieved.

What he wouldn't give to just not care. )

What I owe Satoru is nobody's business but ours. ( Peevish, too sharp. Around them the memory pulses, fades, the hallways returning to normal. Geto's breath catches in a snag all the same, knowing he can't follow his girls any longer. Grief is heavy. He has known the shape and weight intimately. That doesn't help. ) And I'll waste what I like.

( With too much teeth, despite how dishonest the statement is. Because he'll keep going, he'll drag his battered soul around with him, despite the hate, despite the pain, despite the fact that he's still the same. Because no matter how badly he'd like to sink into the ache of things and give in, there are still things to protect for him now. So he breathes in, a whistle through his teeth. )

You people. ( And then louder. ) I'm not a side project, Okkotsu-san. We have other things we should be focusing on.

[copy]

[ Geto isn't wrong. Yuta's sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, but when he's in the unique position of having seen Gojo's memories and to know his teacher's feelings, it's simply too hard for him to ignore. That it's taken this long for Geto to snap at him after already having so many vulnerabilities exposed and prodded at is probably something of a miracle. It's telling, too, that he is already not quite the same as the mania-driven man Yuta knew before. So he takes the snappish retorts on the chin, does not bite back or point out anything else he perceives. The changing surroundings are only spared a quick glance before his gaze slides back, impassive.

His only visible reaction is the slight raising of his eyebrows at 'you people' that he can't quite help. Who? He wonders, but does not ask. The raised voice is met with a calm, even tone instead. ]

Do with it what you will, I have no intention of making you a "side project" or any such thing.

[ He does not have that kind of time or energy to spare when he's already having to deal with the consequences of his own monstrous actions wearing him down; not helped at all by how he's been running himself near-ragged in an effort to outrun it altogether. ]

I only want what's best for Gojo-sensei and he cares about you, despite everything.

[ Unfortunately for everyone involved here. ]

[gorb]

( He makes as though to storm off, irritated, heartsick in a way he doesn't like, really ready to hit out at the next thing that upsets him. Back when Yuta knew him, this would mean something violent. Now, Geto might just get riotously drunk. But he stops either way, shoulders heaving, not quite looking the boy's way. )

I care about him.

( Ground out through his teeth. )

More than you know, Okkotsu-san. I've always cared about him. I know that I should have been better. I know that I don't deserve this chance to have him back. But I'm not here to hurt him. I am trying not to. Whatever's done is done, that I can't change. But I've been careful with him these days.

( It's complicated, it's always been complicated. Geto's done enough navel gazing to know his feelings about his best friend were a twisted, entangled mess. He has a chance here to drag it back out into the light, and while he's been reasonably secretive about the changing nature of their new relationship, he still feels the sting of assumption that he might not harbour that same fragility. They had to move forward, separate paths, heavy weights. But a part of him will always be that teenager who turned towards another like they were the sun. ) Don't think that I don't. Don't think that at any point in all of this that I didn't. I was trying to make it better.

[copy]

[ He's more or less expecting Geto to walk away now that they're free from the memory's confines so that the man pauses to still address him, even if he's refusing to look at him, comes as something of a surprise. What he says is... well.

It isn't that Yuta thinks he's lying when he says he cares. It's just that all of his actions as Yuta knows them contradict that very statement. Like abruptly casting a stone into still waters, his own temper makes itself known in the subsequent ripples flaring out. It's a rare thing yet inevitable where this topic is concerned. It's touching the one raw, exposed nerve that's bound to draw it out no matter whether it's a friend or foe pressing on it. It makes him livid every single time when his teacher deserves so much better than what's been forced upon him again and again. It's an injustice Yuta cannot stand. ]

Better? [ Incredulous, anger continuing to rise despite himself — shoulders hitching, expression fierce, a fine tremble winding its way throughout his frame with the sudden tension. ] How was never confiding in him, making him discover his best friend committed mass murder seemingly out of the blue, and then forcing his hand better? Everyone always places the burden of being a monster onto Gojo-sensei just because he's the strongest and you did it in the worst possible way. It's like everyone forgets that he's a person with feelings too. You, out of all people, should have known better. If you cared, none of that ever showed it.

[ He has a final blow to give, one that he knows he shouldn't, but now that he's built momentum, he can't seem to stop himself; beneath the anger lies a well of grief he's yet to process, a terrible knowledge that whatever time he's being granted here is borrowed and precariously finite. He's going to lose Gojo eventually and he's grasping with desperate fingers to make things better for him while he still can without even fully realizing it. ]

And still [ still ] you were on his mind until the very end.

[gorb]

( The anger seethes, he can feel it behind his teeth. Geto does not need for anyone to understand him, he knows that, he's managed so far without. And yet it rises, unyielding, the same scrambling desperation of his youth. Is he better now? No. Does he know how to pretend? A little. He thinks of all the things he could say, that he knows, that he wasn't fast enough or clever enough for another solution. That he thinks about it all the time, the sharpness of the wound he inflicted. That if Satoru was to become a monster, then why not Geto too? At least he could do something with his, the hard call, the cruel choice, at least then they wouldn't make Satoru into what they threatened he was. At least then would they not have the time and space to stop.

And he'd been drowning. He'd clung to anything that might have saved him. Selfish, he knows. )

I don't want to know that, Okkotsu Yuta.

( Bland, lifeless. All at once the fight goes out of him. Because it's a lie, the same as many. He can pretend all he likes that he never once thought of his best friend the ten years he was alone, but the truth of the matter is that he'd taken a scalpel-precision to his memories with a fervent desperation. Did it matter? Did it mean anything? Why did it still bleed without any pressure at all?

He takes a breath, rubs at the knot between his brows. ) Are we done?

[copy]

[ The hard exhale that leaves Yuta's mouth isn't quite a huff, but it's close. Accompanied by the sharp narrowing of his hooded eyes, the effect is still that of an air that is distinctly unimpressed and peeved. He is angry for Gojo. Or maybe it's the ghostly vestiges of his teacher's anger that linger subconsciously in the same way Yuta sometimes catches himself reaching for sweets instead of the savory snacks he himself prefers. Perhaps it's both. It doesn't really matter right now. ]

Stop lying.

[ Geto can't claim to care and then say he wouldn't want to know what goes on in his best friend's head. One of the two is a lie.

But the defeat is obvious and Yuta's keenly aware he's treading into waters that have him encroaching on Gojo's privacy. He shouldn't say more. Those are not his secrets and feelings to spill. Continuing in this vein is unlikely to lead to anything more productive anyway; Geto is aware and Yuta has made his point. So, he reels it back, lets the ire subside with the sinking of his shoulders, and gathers his composure, forcing tensed muscles to relax. What's left is a hard expression and a cold edge to his voice. ]

Yes, we're done. [ And because he's still mindful of his manners and not forgetting the fact they're meant to be working together: ] Again, sorry for the intrusion.

[ It's all he'll apologize for with only a slight inclination of his head to constitute a bow before he's the one turning on his heel and walking away. ]