hippie_ninja | IC INBOX

hippie_ninja

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From:

hippie_ninja

"What happened with V was not your fault." He knows saying it won't convince K, but he'll go on saying it if only to be a voice against whatever K is holding in his head.

From:

konstant

"I didn't help," he counters, but it's not a real argument; maybe if V had had another option, someone the city hadn't already labelled a problem, it might have shifted the scales just enough. Maybe not.

He had K, and less than even a full month later he was gone. K sets his plate down and turns so he can rub his face with both hands, trying to shake it off. Doesn't matter.

"You're almost up for renewal. Are you going to? With Drake?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"Yeah." He runs his hand along K's side and sets his plate down, then urges K to come sit with him on the couch where Nibbles is lounging. "He's a really good partner to have. I like him a lot."

From:

konstant

K is happy to follow over to the couch, and he takes a long several moments to devote to crouching down eye to eye with Nibbles to murmur to him warm, fond nonsense while he rubs his ears.

Then he moves up to sit on the couch properly, glancing sidelong at Jesus.

"Did you come out of Tumenalia alright?"

From:

hippie_ninja

He sits with a groan. "I came out of it very happy. And very sore."

He was in a fight at the end, the remnants still showing on his face in the shadows of bruises and a scab on his lip.

"Are you okay with everything that happened?"

From:

konstant

The comment gets a quirk of a smile out of K, and a long moment of watching him settle, watching that happiness where it sits in his bones - how it's different from before, how it's the same.

"I am," he says, lest that be in question. There's nothing he came back to himself wishing was different, certainly not with anyone he actually knows, even if he wouldn't exactly jump into another orgy now.

"It's - I needed some time. To think."

From:

hippie_ninja

"What did you end up thinking?" He studies K, knowing that processing doesn't always lead to regret, but knowing too that K has had a lot of negatives in his life lately.

From:

konstant

"Because it wasn't entirely me - whatever effect the tattoo and the festival had, or the charm, they changed me. But they didn't change me too much. I needed time to work out... how. And what was different, so I would know how it was and wasn't who I am."

He needs the time now to work his way around to it, to try to explain. To try to convey how important it is to him that he does know who he is now.

"And I decided it was mainly this... otherness I always feel. It doesn't mean anything to you that I'm a replicant, but I view everything through that filter. I expect others to do the same, it's just how I relate to the world."

From:

hippie_ninja

"I understand that," he nods slightly. He may not be able to understand what a replicant sees, or what K expects him to see when he sees a replicant, but he knows it impacts every angle of K's life.

"But it was different for you during the festival? How?"

From:

konstant

He nods - it was different. Even before the festival, just with the talisman, it was different.

"I... knew I was an equal. To you, to Vrenille, to - everyone. Anyone. And not just because you had given me that right, not because you chose to treat me that way. Because it just... was true. Inherently. And no one could change that."

From:

hippie_ninja

"It was. For me, it's still true." He doesn't reach out to touch him, doesn't want to influence him any particular way right now. "Does it still feel that way for you? Even just here with me?"

From:

konstant

"Yes - and no." He shakes his head.

"I've never had the chance to be around someone that doesn't think of me differently. I believe that you mean that - I don't know what that looks like, what it will continue to look like. Does it last until you're bored with me? Until you're angry with me? Until you find someone you like better? How does it change then? How will it feel?"

Which is a question he's never had to ask of himself before: how will it feel?

Do you feel that there's a part of you that's missing? Interlinked.

"And I trust you. You and I don't have a contract. It's worse for me when those aren't true of someone else - when I can't know that everything I like about living here isn't dependent on someone else... if not allowing it, then not actively opposing it."

From:

hippie_ninja

"I can understand that. If I wasn't able to provide for myself, I don't know that I'd have been able to settle in like I have." Such as it is. He feels a little less settled every week he's here.

"K...I worry about that, too. If you'll get tired of me. If you'll be done with me if I hurt you unintentionally. Those are normal things to worry about but I think they might be harder hitting for you because you've never been free to have attachments before. You've never been able to test them. You're trusting something that's so new to you..."

From:

konstant

"I know."

That smile again, a small, swift quirk of one side of his mouth. He hadn't been able to tell what the similarities were and what was specific to him though, not until now.

"That's what was different: I knew that even if any of those things happened, it wouldn't change me. That my value was inherent. That I had the ability to... defend my own worth. I wasn't a person because you treated me like one, although I liked that. I just was."

From:

hippie_ninja

"You still are." He's smiling though. "A lot of people go their whole lives never learning what you learned, K. Most of the people in the old world I knew never learned about intrinsic worth."

From:

konstant

"I'm still learning," he offers, because that doubt - that fear - came right back when it was all over. That's what he learned, too: it's not reliant on people like Jesus treating him well. It's a shift somewhere in himself.

"I can't just stop being afraid of something like that. Especially when it has been true - it has happened."

From:

hippie_ninja

"You want to know the truth? It's something I'm afraid of, too. That if I cause too much trouble or argue too much, people will leave." Because they have in the past, multiple times.

From:

konstant

It's not the sort of thing that people can just tell him not to worry about anymore; K knows that from his own experience. People keep trying to tell him it's alright, he's safe now, but it doesn't take. He doesn't relax, or doesn't think about it the next time.

"When did it start?" he asks instead. "Do you remember?"

From:

hippie_ninja

"My mom left me for the first time when I was three. I don't remember it much, but probably it started then." He says it with a lopsided, resigned smile. It's been with him his entire life, is what he's saying.

From:

konstant

"Was there ever anyone you trusted? Anyone you knew wouldn't do that to you?"

K's too, but he doesn't try to compare them. He was never a child, never three years old, never had parents - even though he remembers all of that on a truncated timeline, too.

From:

hippie_ninja

His expression flickers, just the tiniest bit, betraying just the smallest hint of a pain that doesn't ever quite heal.

"No." Never anyone who stayed. "There were kind people along the way. But no one who stuck it out."

From:

konstant

K smiles back, a bittersweet expression of his own along the same vein.

"For me, either," he does offer then. They're both starting from scratch. They're both batting a thousand.

From:

hippie_ninja

"We're doing pretty good, considering." He reaches up, touches K's cheek. "You are."

From:

konstant

"We are," he agrees, emphasis ever so slightly on the we.

He reaches, too, to set his fingers along the back of Jesus's hand on his face.

"Are you okay with everything that happened during the festival?" Which is a slightly different question than are you okay.