[ the whirlpool of Bad does not dissuade hulkenberg from coming closer to vi as she peels her carrots, because she can feel the other emotions under the annoyance and agitation. and so she sits down and works on her task, stewing. thinking. trying to absorb some of the negativity. ]
... I would not be, either. [ surprised, that is. she already has a feeling about how and why that happened the way it did. ]
[ he looks at vi, for a long moment, watches her peel the potatoes - girl me too - and for a moment lets things fall quiet as he's trimming the fat from the meat in his hands with expertise and a sharp knife.
pause. ]
Vi. [ directly addressing her this time, after a brief glance to hulkenberg. ] Don't stew in it - let's hear it.
[ as if he can talk, but it's a callback to their conversation the other night. ]
So much for justice or whatever. Really convenient that they had a backup plan.
[ but like, past that - like sure, she's mad about that, she thinks it's bull that they decided to vote for the guy who killed the literal embodiment of war weeks ago and that person is now alive again so it's not even revenge anymore. she doesn't like that he got voted for because they liked the idea of killing him more than haru, because it's a slippery slope. but also, it's not really that if she's being honest. she's not angry at them, that's not the tone here. she flicks a potato peel into the sink. resigned, with a sigh: ]
You wouldn't get it because you haven't been here as long, but you start to fucking go crazy at the thought of people you care about ending over here because at least you'd get to talk to them again.
[ it's better to get everything off their chests, one way or another, so she nods and remains even keel for the time being. there's a lot of complicated thoughts about it, but in the end she does agree with vi on this. there's no silver lining to their scapegoating siffrin, even with the achievement that was unlocked, but with this, it just...
leaves a sour taste in her mouth. surprised as she was that totty made it through to this point, it's not really right to her, either.
but what vi says after makes her slow, then pause in her work, looking up at her, a glance to strohl, then back again. they don't really get it, not in the same way. even if they missed her... they were still the ones on that side. vi could still see them but nothing more than that. ]
... I wish 'twas not something that you had to feel in the first place, Vi. But I still don't think it wrong to want to see them here, the same as we had told you in our letters when it came up.
[ there's a little flinch in his emotions - brief, sharp, but he lets it go. exhales out slowly. ]
...Anders told me once - justice and vengeance are separated by a thin line. And it's not the first time the others have closed rank, either.
[ with rin, too. he didn't like it then, either. it never sits right with him - it's the same reason being on this side infuriates him, sometimes, with people like seodore or scaramouche rolling their eyes at people who give a damn about other people. calling it asinine. all the people that he loves here are people who care so much they make stupid fucking decisions sometimes. the heart's a muscle the size of your fist. i'm not going to punish a teenager who must've been terrified out of his damn mind because he wasn't himself just for the right answer.
he exhales out himself, shakes his head, cuts down into the meat a little harder than he needs to, and... well - the second thing vi says gets him, too, because it makes his heart ache. all they talked about, at the beginning of this week, rings through his head, and he nods to hulkenberg when she finishes. ]
...No, I think I get it. [ quieter, this time, lacking any steam. he's only been here for a week, and he's been climbing the fucking walls about it each day. he's really climbing them now, the sense of longing for his team at the moment pulsing through his emotions, a fugue. ]
Death's all wrong here. [ finality, thunk goes the knife. ] Everything is. May as well hold onto the bonds we make tightest. They're the realest thing of all.
[ she is being really violent with these poor potatoes, throwing them into whatever basket or bowl or whatever.
she's trying so hard to not be bitter here because she doesn't, like - she doesn't want to hurt them. she loves strohl and hulkenberg so badly that it hurts, and there is so much relief that they're here. there's a reason she's been like a burr with the two of them, latching on and digging her nails in. they're the people she wants to go home with. and the other people in the graveyard, she likes them, she gets along with them fine. she has some people she likes a lot. but all of the people she'd been latched onto the most in the one week she had have survived or been revived. letters are not enough.
it's like a tea kettle, the steam rising up and screaming behind her eyes, in her throat. haru sent her a letter saying she'd made an impact on him enough to show up on his trip. that fucks her up.
strohl has his longing and she understands that. she appreciates hulkenberg validating her want, feels grateful a bit. but her own emotions are just resignation, now.
silence, then: ]
Yeah, well. At least you had time to make the bonds in the first place.
[ throws another potato in the bowl, and then throws the peeler in the sink and hunches over it with a sigh. ]
[ there's a small look thrown strohl's way, an unhappiness to them closing rank, but - she looks away, after. none of them can control what their teammates say or do, they can't force their hand when it comes to a vote, and they certainly hold no sway when they're beyond them in the grave. they can just control themselves, here. their suffering and clawing at the walls, their anxieties growing so much that hulkenberg is grateful every single damned day that it hasn't manifested as magla crystals, something that would take root with no effort in these terrible terminals.
(besides, haven't they closed rank a little, themselves, in the past?)
she doesn't disagree with the thin line, though. they've all seen it, one way or another. in the airport, in euchronia, in piltover.
and piltover is what she thinks of, now, as vi's emotions spill over into the kitchen, with the clatter of the peeler. of loss and choice and every second of abandonment. longing. hurt. carefully, hulkenberg sets her work and knife down on the board, looking over vi's hunched form at strohl for a different reason, now, ears twitched down a notch.
what winds up communicated there doesn't really need emotionshare. she steps closer to vi, bracketing her on one side and hooking her arm low across her back, cheek coming down onto her shoulder and head bonking into the side of hers gently. ]
[ look sorry man his team is insane he doesn't know what to tell you
anyway. he's feeling all kinds of ways about all of this - the heartache of vi's reaction and her loneliness, that isolation he's never lost sight of. he and hulkenberg lock eyes, and he's in lock step, setting the knife down, and brackets vi's other side, slinging his arm around her shoulders, a little roughly. jostling, a touch, but squeezing in close all the same. trapping her in a hug, in between the most fearsomely loyal dogs you've ever known in your life.
(a pack of them, really.) ] Maybe you're unfair, but this place's been damn unfair. That's the whole jist, isn't it?
[ that this airport fucking sucks. it's unfair to everyone. to the people trapped on this side, to the people that have to jump through hoops of achievements for a life they already earned. even to that goddamn stupid horse. the whole thing's unfair.
he exhales out. bonks his head now into vi's from the other side, too. the thing is, this is a place he can help. maybe he can't be there for haru, for rin, for his team. but he can be here for vi, who needs him, who needs them, and like hell he won't be.
besides. none of his words are anything but truths. ]
I needed approximately twenty-four hours before I was stuck on you. [ stuck to you in the fondest of ways, easier to joke about it even if there's nothing here that feels like joking, necessarily, but it lightens some of the heaviness, and it's no less true. ] I have a feeling I'm not the only one in this place who feels that way, either.
[ she is so EMBARRASSED to have them do this, like - not in a bad way, just in that way where it's been so long since someone has responded to her in this way. the emotional bracing is so, so nice, but having people pay attention to her and validate her emo baby feelings also makes her want to crawl out of her skin. she does not deserve this sort of treatment, she's meant to be giving it to other people. the emotional vibe is a mix of something grateful and a little ashamed, undeserving. like she feels guilty for enjoying the fact that they love her enough to hug her like this.
vi grips at the sink, but she doesn't push them away. of course she doesn't. ]
Okay, okay. You don't need to - okay. [ is her response, ducking her head.
the jostling, the bonking, she takes it easily enough, and even though she's having a hard time with accepting it emotionally, the loyalty she feels to the two of them is enough to knock someone off their feet. that, at least, there's no doubts about. it's been like that since the start. ]
... Sorry you guys are stuck over here.
[ sigh. she knows they want to be with the living, to take care of them. if she could've sent them, she would've. ]
[ three caretakers, all of them damaged in their own ways, but so fiercely loyal that they're intrinsically woven together now. to unravel one without the others would be impossible, in their own ways. hulkenberg wouldn't have it any other way, and it makes her all the more sure that vi will fit right in with the rest of their motley crew in euchronia. they'll all love her, welcome her with open arms, the same way they all have with one another, and that'll be it.
the healing will truly be able to begin, she thinks. ]
'Twas our choice, in the end, and a mess of our own making. [ lightly, as she squeezes her arm around her waist and holds her more tightly in the process. while she does, though, she lifts her head up to peer just over the top of vi's pink hair across the ways, almost in a warning.
if strohl so much as has a guilty feeling about being the one that answered the phone, she will stab him with the carrot knife. ] That besides, you've no need to apologise. If there was anything to apologise for, in that regard, 'twould be accepted, anyways.
[ surety, as she settles. and, easy as anything, hulkenberg folds her hand over one of vi's on the sink to squeeze. unclench, girl, it's alright now. you can do that. you can let go and there'll be people there to catch you, who know you'd do the same for them. ]
There is no stuck when it comes to you. Strohl is right - there are many who miss you just as much as you miss them. This place has delighted in twisting the knife and finding the best ways to make the situation worse, but you are worth knowing in all of it.
well, because it wasn't a choice really but it was a mess of strohl's making, but he says nothing, and if he feels some kind of way about it, he will be keeping that to himself. for as much as he does worry so deeply for his team, for as badly as he wants to be with haru and the others at the moment, it doesn't superscede the fact that he knows this, right here, is where he should be. they should all be together on the other side, still, but - well. they're all together here.
so. he hums in agreement to hulkenberg's statement, and loosens a little as vi starts to shy away verbally, only because he knows what that's like. there's empathy there, in his emotions, but he keeps it quiet. ]
Don't need to do anything. [ it's never a need, it's a want. ] I'm sorry you've been stuck over here with this many clowns for so long, honestly.
[ there's a pause, and then - she turns her hand over. stops squeezing the sink so hard so that she can hold hulkenberg's hand in her own. that works. she isn't ready to let go of all the tension yet, but she can lean on them a little. it makes her feel a little less desperately lonely, having them on either side. pack animals, the lot of them.
a slow sigh, and then: ]
Made it fine. Not everybody here is awful. [ she's okay.
she shifts to take strohl's hand, too. ]
Are you guys okay?
[ because she knows them watching everything on this side is hard, especially when you're not used to it. ]
[ you'll catch strays until she's beaten the guilt out of you, metaphorically or literally.
vi asks after them, though. it makes her feel a fondness in her chest. ]
'Tis fine enough. [ she has to consider the past week for a moment. the cyoa, the murder night, the trial. execution. the chaos of everything feels the same, leaving her exasperated as always, frustrated in some respects, but... ] I would have liked to change how Sunday went, but I've made it fine, too.
[ what's done is done, in all respects. so she's decided that all they can do is keep moving forward, chaining themselves together like this by the hands. there's still good people, here, and day by day they get closer to leaving this place.
[ like, he won't lie. it'd be strange if he didn't - strohl's not really the type to hide, anyway. just about anyone can see that he wears his heart on his sleeve, emotionshare or otherwise. he lets vi take his hand, and gives hers a little squeeze of his own. ]
But, it's done my heart good to be here, in many respects. There are things I can experience here I'd have missed out there, and vice versa. [ things like bonding with vi, havin the conversations they desperately needed to have. things like being here, when rosamund arrived. things like keeping guard over her on a night where she was terrified she'd lose herself and attack someone for a new reason entirely, and staying awake of his own volition. morale boosters.
and of course, the little moments like this, too. wrestling with vi over strohl jr, doing stupid things with hulkenberg. it's not perfect, but it's theirs. ]
Makes me even more determined to break loose, though. Looking forward to that.
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... I would not be, either. [ surprised, that is. she already has a feeling about how and why that happened the way it did. ]
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[ he looks at vi, for a long moment, watches her peel the potatoes - girl me too - and for a moment lets things fall quiet as he's trimming the fat from the meat in his hands with expertise and a sharp knife.
pause. ]
Vi. [ directly addressing her this time, after a brief glance to hulkenberg. ] Don't stew in it - let's hear it.
[ as if he can talk, but it's a callback to their conversation the other night. ]
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So much for justice or whatever. Really convenient that they had a backup plan.
[ but like, past that - like sure, she's mad about that, she thinks it's bull that they decided to vote for the guy who killed the literal embodiment of war weeks ago and that person is now alive again so it's not even revenge anymore. she doesn't like that he got voted for because they liked the idea of killing him more than haru, because it's a slippery slope. but also, it's not really that if she's being honest. she's not angry at them, that's not the tone here. she flicks a potato peel into the sink. resigned, with a sigh: ]
You wouldn't get it because you haven't been here as long, but you start to fucking go crazy at the thought of people you care about ending over here because at least you'd get to talk to them again.
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leaves a sour taste in her mouth. surprised as she was that totty made it through to this point, it's not really right to her, either.
but what vi says after makes her slow, then pause in her work, looking up at her, a glance to strohl, then back again. they don't really get it, not in the same way. even if they missed her... they were still the ones on that side. vi could still see them but nothing more than that. ]
... I wish 'twas not something that you had to feel in the first place, Vi. But I still don't think it wrong to want to see them here, the same as we had told you in our letters when it came up.
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...Anders told me once - justice and vengeance are separated by a thin line. And it's not the first time the others have closed rank, either.
[ with rin, too. he didn't like it then, either. it never sits right with him - it's the same reason being on this side infuriates him, sometimes, with people like seodore or scaramouche rolling their eyes at people who give a damn about other people. calling it asinine. all the people that he loves here are people who care so much they make stupid fucking decisions sometimes. the heart's a muscle the size of your fist. i'm not going to punish a teenager who must've been terrified out of his damn mind because he wasn't himself just for the right answer.
he exhales out himself, shakes his head, cuts down into the meat a little harder than he needs to, and... well - the second thing vi says gets him, too, because it makes his heart ache. all they talked about, at the beginning of this week, rings through his head, and he nods to hulkenberg when she finishes. ]
...No, I think I get it. [ quieter, this time, lacking any steam. he's only been here for a week, and he's been climbing the fucking walls about it each day. he's really climbing them now, the sense of longing for his team at the moment pulsing through his emotions, a fugue. ]
Death's all wrong here. [ finality, thunk goes the knife. ] Everything is. May as well hold onto the bonds we make tightest. They're the realest thing of all.
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she's trying so hard to not be bitter here because she doesn't, like - she doesn't want to hurt them. she loves strohl and hulkenberg so badly that it hurts, and there is so much relief that they're here. there's a reason she's been like a burr with the two of them, latching on and digging her nails in. they're the people she wants to go home with. and the other people in the graveyard, she likes them, she gets along with them fine. she has some people she likes a lot. but all of the people she'd been latched onto the most in the one week she had have survived or been revived. letters are not enough.
it's like a tea kettle, the steam rising up and screaming behind her eyes, in her throat. haru sent her a letter saying she'd made an impact on him enough to show up on his trip. that fucks her up.
strohl has his longing and she understands that. she appreciates hulkenberg validating her want, feels grateful a bit. but her own emotions are just resignation, now.
silence, then: ]
Yeah, well. At least you had time to make the bonds in the first place.
[ throws another potato in the bowl, and then throws the peeler in the sink and hunches over it with a sigh. ]
Stop. Don't. I know I'm being unfair.
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(besides, haven't they closed rank a little, themselves, in the past?)
she doesn't disagree with the thin line, though. they've all seen it, one way or another. in the airport, in euchronia, in piltover.
and piltover is what she thinks of, now, as vi's emotions spill over into the kitchen, with the clatter of the peeler. of loss and choice and every second of abandonment. longing. hurt. carefully, hulkenberg sets her work and knife down on the board, looking over vi's hunched form at strohl for a different reason, now, ears twitched down a notch.
what winds up communicated there doesn't really need emotionshare. she steps closer to vi, bracketing her on one side and hooking her arm low across her back, cheek coming down onto her shoulder and head bonking into the side of hers gently. ]
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anyway. he's feeling all kinds of ways about all of this - the heartache of vi's reaction and her loneliness, that isolation he's never lost sight of. he and hulkenberg lock eyes, and he's in lock step, setting the knife down, and brackets vi's other side, slinging his arm around her shoulders, a little roughly. jostling, a touch, but squeezing in close all the same. trapping her in a hug, in between the most fearsomely loyal dogs you've ever known in your life.
(a pack of them, really.) ] Maybe you're unfair, but this place's been damn unfair. That's the whole jist, isn't it?
[ that this airport fucking sucks. it's unfair to everyone. to the people trapped on this side, to the people that have to jump through hoops of achievements for a life they already earned. even to that goddamn stupid horse. the whole thing's unfair.
he exhales out. bonks his head now into vi's from the other side, too. the thing is, this is a place he can help. maybe he can't be there for haru, for rin, for his team. but he can be here for vi, who needs him, who needs them, and like hell he won't be.
besides. none of his words are anything but truths. ]
I needed approximately twenty-four hours before I was stuck on you. [ stuck to you in the fondest of ways, easier to joke about it even if there's nothing here that feels like joking, necessarily, but it lightens some of the heaviness, and it's no less true. ] I have a feeling I'm not the only one in this place who feels that way, either.
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vi grips at the sink, but she doesn't push them away. of course she doesn't. ]
Okay, okay. You don't need to - okay. [ is her response, ducking her head.
the jostling, the bonking, she takes it easily enough, and even though she's having a hard time with accepting it emotionally, the loyalty she feels to the two of them is enough to knock someone off their feet. that, at least, there's no doubts about. it's been like that since the start. ]
... Sorry you guys are stuck over here.
[ sigh. she knows they want to be with the living, to take care of them. if she could've sent them, she would've. ]
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the healing will truly be able to begin, she thinks. ]
'Twas our choice, in the end, and a mess of our own making. [ lightly, as she squeezes her arm around her waist and holds her more tightly in the process. while she does, though, she lifts her head up to peer just over the top of vi's pink hair across the ways, almost in a warning.
if strohl so much as has a guilty feeling about being the one that answered the phone, she will stab him with the carrot knife. ] That besides, you've no need to apologise. If there was anything to apologise for, in that regard, 'twould be accepted, anyways.
[ surety, as she settles. and, easy as anything, hulkenberg folds her hand over one of vi's on the sink to squeeze. unclench, girl, it's alright now. you can do that. you can let go and there'll be people there to catch you, who know you'd do the same for them. ]
There is no stuck when it comes to you. Strohl is right - there are many who miss you just as much as you miss them. This place has delighted in twisting the knife and finding the best ways to make the situation worse, but you are worth knowing in all of it.
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well, because it wasn't a choice really but it was a mess of strohl's making, but he says nothing, and if he feels some kind of way about it, he will be keeping that to himself. for as much as he does worry so deeply for his team, for as badly as he wants to be with haru and the others at the moment, it doesn't superscede the fact that he knows this, right here, is where he should be. they should all be together on the other side, still, but - well. they're all together here.
so. he hums in agreement to hulkenberg's statement, and loosens a little as vi starts to shy away verbally, only because he knows what that's like. there's empathy there, in his emotions, but he keeps it quiet. ]
Don't need to do anything. [ it's never a need, it's a want. ] I'm sorry you've been stuck over here with this many clowns for so long, honestly.
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a slow sigh, and then: ]
Made it fine. Not everybody here is awful. [ she's okay.
she shifts to take strohl's hand, too. ]
Are you guys okay?
[ because she knows them watching everything on this side is hard, especially when you're not used to it. ]
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vi asks after them, though. it makes her feel a fondness in her chest. ]
'Tis fine enough. [ she has to consider the past week for a moment. the cyoa, the murder night, the trial. execution. the chaos of everything feels the same, leaving her exasperated as always, frustrated in some respects, but... ] I would have liked to change how Sunday went, but I've made it fine, too.
[ what's done is done, in all respects. so she's decided that all they can do is keep moving forward, chaining themselves together like this by the hands. there's still good people, here, and day by day they get closer to leaving this place.
it'll be fine. ]
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[ like, he won't lie. it'd be strange if he didn't - strohl's not really the type to hide, anyway. just about anyone can see that he wears his heart on his sleeve, emotionshare or otherwise. he lets vi take his hand, and gives hers a little squeeze of his own. ]
But, it's done my heart good to be here, in many respects. There are things I can experience here I'd have missed out there, and vice versa. [ things like bonding with vi, havin the conversations they desperately needed to have. things like being here, when rosamund arrived. things like keeping guard over her on a night where she was terrified she'd lose herself and attack someone for a new reason entirely, and staying awake of his own volition. morale boosters.
and of course, the little moments like this, too. wrestling with vi over strohl jr, doing stupid things with hulkenberg. it's not perfect, but it's theirs. ]
Makes me even more determined to break loose, though. Looking forward to that.