IC INBOX

[hippie_ninja]

This is Jesus. Leave a message.

Comments

[hippie_ninja]

"You told me you didn't want to be owned." His voice is low. V is asleep, but still: this is private. "Do you feel like that's what's happened?"

[konstant]

"I don't know."

Mostly he feels like it doesn't matter, because there's too much else happening right now. Too much else is all tangled up in this and he doesn't know what it will look like when it settles.

"He doesn't want that. He was adamant, and he meant it. I believe him, I just don't - see how this works any other way."

[hippie_ninja]

He nods slightly, still watching K a moment before he starts arranging their sandwiches again so K isn't just pinned with Jesus's attention. "What does it mean to be owned? Besides the papers we signed, what does it look like?"

[konstant]

"That I'm something that can be owned," he answers, immediately, and kind of wishes he had his coat on, but he doesn't. He moves over to the saucepan instead, stirs the contents. "There's no other time the law states someone is responsible for someone else. Not between humans, who have rights, unless they can't care for themselves and someone else must be made to do it."

That doesn't happen often in Los Angeles. Not as often as replicant ownership anyway.

"And there are roles. Expectations. Duties to carry out."

[hippie_ninja]

"I know." He's technically owned now, too.

He hates it, too.

"Does it change who you are?"

[konstant]

"How would I know?" he asks, and it's still soft, still low, but there's just the faintest glint of an edge there before it vanishes again.

"I've always been owned."

[hippie_ninja]

He looks up at him, hurting for him, and helpless to do anything about it except be here.

"I haven't. But I am now. What should I know about it?"

[konstant]

"That you might be able to trust a person to view you a certain way, but not people as a whole. That no matter how that person treats you or insists that they always will, there are roles for a reason, and eventually they'll need to be filled as defined even one time, even temporarily, even just in public."

V's already done it to him. It was necessary, and K understood, but these things don't change that it happened.

"Hopefully it won't change you," he adds onto the end, turning the heat off, and holding a bowl out to Jesus.

[hippie_ninja]

He suspects it already has. He's run headlong into certain things as recklessly as he had done things in the old world, for the same reasons he always had then. But it's part of adapting. You adapt to your new reality, or you die.

He takes the bowl and fills it, and just thinks for a moment. "You don't have to sign again. When this contract is over."

[konstant]

"I know."

He's already thought of that, already told himself among other things that it's only three months. He doesn't want V to be in bad shape for that entire time but it's possible, depending on how much recovery time there is for this, for cyberware.

"But that's a problem for the future. Maybe there are more attacks, and I'll be more use out here. I don't know."

[hippie_ninja]

"I'm glad you're here with me right now. But I'm sorry for what you had to do to get here." He hates that K had to compromise something that means so much to him he was willing to sit in a jail cell indefinitely over it.

[konstant]

"I'm glad I'm here too."

In the end, someone needing something from him and him needing something for himself don't really compare, although he isn't capable of thinking of it quite so clearly as that. He also doesn't want that to be misunderstood:

"I'm sorry I couldn't go with you to help before."

[hippie_ninja]

"Nah, it's okay. You did help." Everyone Jesus went in to help got out. The losses couldn't have been helped by adding another person, and even if they could have, Jesus has learned not to wonder 'what if'.

Things still worked out. That's what matters.

"Is that why you decided to sign? You feel guilty?"

[konstant]

"If I had when he offered, maybe I would have been here, or we would have been together and he wouldn't have been taken."

So that's a yes. But also: "His deadline was up today, and he didn't have any other prospects. I didn't want him in jail like this. I didn't want you and Sara and Vrenille worried while your friends are all recovering - and maybe I can help there, too."

[hippie_ninja]

He doesn't have any great words of comfort. Everyone he knows, himself included, has had to sacrifice parts of themselves for something else--survival, other people. The reason it bothers him that K has had to do it is simply because K has always had to do it. He finally had a chance to do something just for himself, and this place forced him to choose another way.

But he can let K help. He can offer that.

"I met Sara while you were locked up. I like her."

[konstant]

He is not practiced at doing things for himself; he isn't, one the whole, surprised he folded so quickly. He is disappointed, but he doesn't expect anyone to understand that any more than they seemed to understand his objections in the first place, so that's a card that stays tucked in close to his chest.

Jesus mentions Sara, and K smiles, fond.

"She had the hardest time with it, I think. Did she yell at you?" She always yells first.

[hippie_ninja]

"No." He gives K an amused look. "Does she yell at you?"

[konstant]

"A lot," he admits, ducking his head in false shyness.

"Apparently I'm vexing."

[hippie_ninja]

"You?" He teases. K? Never. "She did say she might shake you when you got out. Before she hugged you."

[konstant]

"It hurt her," he says softly. "A lot."

He looks up from where he's stirring the contents of his bowl and meets Jesus's eyes.

"I didn't want to hurt my friends." And he's sorry.

[hippie_ninja]

"K, I want you to do what's right for you." He doesn't have to like what it looks like, he doesn't have to like where it puts K. If K is doing what's best for himself, Jesus will support it.

[konstant]

So this was you saying goodbye.

K will never forget the look in Jesus's eyes when he said that to him, the way his face changed as he understood.

"I can't believe that hurting people that care about me falls into the right category. How do you balance it? How do you choose?"

[hippie_ninja]

That's the eternal question. Jesus doesn't have a good answer for that, either; his only solution is to not get too close. He doesn't want that for K.

"How did you feel when you were in prison? Before everyone went missing."

[konstant]

"Better."

He knows how that probably sounds. Nonetheless, it's true.

"I knew what to expect. I knew no one could come in and anywhere near me unless they have the key to the door, and I knew what all of them wanted. It was quiet otherwise."

[hippie_ninja]

Jesus listens with no opinion on what he's hearing. It's K's experience and that's all he's asked for; his perspective of it doesn't matter right now. He just wants to understand.

"Do you feel like you don't know what people out here want?"