melodiesoflife | Well...What Now? [Luffy/Open: Aqures Tosf]

August 14 - Aqures Tosf
[Luffy:]

Once Jack comes out of the Crystal Stasis, it doesn't take him long to figure out what's happened. The vortex manipulator now reads the "right" date again. City destroyed, them, what, removed from time?

Jack sighs deeply, and the first person he approaches is Luffy. He slides the treasured straw hat off his head and offers it over.

"Well. That didn't work."

Pause.

"You owe me a new sword, you know."

[Open:]

There is a principle at work here, one that Jack swears used to even be in the Torchwood handbook. Everything has gone wrong: somehow Jack's partly to blame.

This isn't a surprise or even something that is a problem. But Jack will wait for his fellow Heroes to come to him. They'll be expecting answers, either on the stunt he pulled at the Temple, or on what has happened to them, now. He had the answers last time, didn't he? In the meantime, though, there's a laboratory, no, a whole island to explore. Twenty eight years. How much has changed?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Owwww.

Jack doesn't even have time to process before his left cheek is stinging sharply. It's an unexpected expected response. Maybe he didn't anticipate this particular response out of this particular person, but as soon as it happens, he knows he was foolish not to. He can't bullshit Chiaki. Especially not on this specific point. She has already seen her friends killing one another and been unable to do anything about it once. Why the hell did he put her through that again?

"I'm- sorry." Quiet. "I didn't think about how that was going to affect anybody else. I wasn't thinking."

Sort of. But he was. He was just thinking about something else. "I can't die. You know that. Or I couldn't before I came here. Now, it's like- everybody can't die. But-" Jack tenses. "Even if my connection to the Time Vortex is gone? That thing, it wanted death, it fed off of death, and I've died hundreds of thousands of times. What if- What if there was even a chance that it was going to work? That if it took me, it didn't take the other people on this island?"

Jack finally raises his head again, cheek still red, eyes beginning to hold back tears. "Was I just supposed to not even try?"

Yes.

[The answer is quick and unequivocal.]

You're contradicting yourself, Jack. You're the one who told me about fixed points in time - events in history so important and pivotal that they can't be changed, no matter what. The destruction of Aqures Tosf twenty eight years ago is undoubtedly such an event, considering the chain of events it set off.

[Frowning, she shakes her head with a sigh.]

It isn't even that, though. What you did back there... that wasn't hope. That wasn't believing in the rest of us, or yourself. All it was, was throwing your life away. And I'm tired of watching my friends do that. It was just...

[Frustrated, she huffs a bit, casting about for the word.]

...disappointing.

"I do that a lot." Disappoint people? Contradict himself? Throw his life away? All of the above?

Jack looks down again, because Chiaki's quiet but still harsh and unflinching truth hurts more than that slap. There's still an urge to explain, as if the right combination of words could counter the hurt he's caused. "After- talking to everybody, I thought I'd found a loophole. The Crystal had to explode, or overload, or whatever it was actually happened there. The city had to be destroyed. But the people? I thought they could be saved. Still a disaster. But with less death? Even one fewer?"

"If we come back, why shouldn't we take the cost, instead?" A question he's really asking, not just rhetorical. Something he keeps coming up against, time and time again.

I understand what you're saying, and even what you were trying to do, but...

[She shakes her head again.]

...But you have to think of how your actions will look to other people. No one in that room knew why you said what you did, or why you thought it would work. All they saw was someone making what turned out to be a senseless sacrifice and looked more like a death wish, aided by someone who I'm sure a lot of people are now afraid of because of how easily he was able to kill one of his own allies.

[Chiaki herself is probably one of the people here who understands Jack and his motives the most, after all, and she was still shocked.]

We may not have been able to stop what happened to the island, but at that moment, we did have a chance to potentially affect Kalki's opinion of us. But instead of looking like Heroes, all she saw was a group of people as dangerous and unpredictable as the Crystal of Fire itself.

That gets a very deep frown. "Pardon me if I'm not concerned with the opinion of somebody who's willing to torture and sacrifice the Heroes to get what she wants. Those actions are set in time, too. If she'd seen us all as people trying our hardest to help, but ending up just victims like everybody else, would that have- what? Made her sorry?"

Jack isn't quite buying it. "Give me the choice between looking like we're trying to save the world, but failing, and actually doing something that might save peoples lives, but looking completely insane? There's no choice there."

The bite that has entered Jack's tone disappears quickly. "At least now I know it doesn't work. So you know I won't be trying it again."

I don't know, but I'd rather not prove her opinion of us right either. She's been right about too many things already.

[Chiaki's more or less been frowning this whole time. There's a lot she doesn't like about all of this.]

I'm just worried about what this means for us, going forward. Kalki's opinion aside, this is probably going to be a pretty big blow to morale.

"Fighting against fate only to find out that it was unchangeable all along?" Jack breathes out a long breath. Something he's used to, yes, but not everyone else is.

"Maybe me being a dumbass will make other people think twice before they sacrifice themselves, too. I don't know." And that mutual admission that neither of them has the answers is a little scary.

"I'm just-" How to even put this? "Not used to people- caring. Or trying to stop me. Let alone so many at once. Why? Luffy, the Marshal. Even you? Why does it matter?" There have only ever been two people who have looked Jack dead in the eye and told him that he's not allowed to sacrifice his life, before yesterday. Or, 28 years ago yesterday, however you want to measure it. It's visible in the way Jack keeps fidgeting that the entire thought is something uncomfortable.

Every life matters. And caring about each other is what friends do, isn't it?

[Granted, she hasn't been around as long as probably anyone else in this place, but she's pretty sure that's the lesson she's learned both at home and in Crystallis.]

Well...What Now? [Luffy/Open: Aqures Tosf]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject