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we're fine tell me if you want

That's not super convincing and this is kind of a big thing to talk about and I don't want to do it if I don't know 100% where we stand? Like I don't know if I'm okay opening up to you if all you're going to give me is "we're fine". I think maybe if we're going to talk about my feelings we should talk about some of yours as well?

Okay, no, you're right. That was too insincere and so is text.

[he pauses for a moment, trying to Words.]

It-- look, I'm not gonna lie about being okay after what happened. I know it fucked me up, but I don't hold any of it against you. That place was set up for the worst case scenario and if I hadn't died, you probably would've. That's what I had to learn about each room I went through, if I wasn't the one that supposedly failed and got my companion killed, then they were the one who fucked up and got me killed. It wasn't built for us to win. The fuckin' guy said it every time we went into a new room, y'know?

I'm not trying to, like, call you out. Just, I think it would be good for us if we talked.

[ he goes quiet, listening to everything Archie says, sort of struggling to absorb a couple of parts of it. odin doesn't... know what to think, really. there's long, long silence after archie's done talking, and he's probably about to prompt odin or ask him if he's still there just before odin finally fuckin says something. ]

Did I ever tell you why I started acting all melodramatic and verbose about everything? Screaming about my aching blood or whatever.

I know.

[he frowns, even though odin can't see it.]

...A distraction, if I had to assume. For you and the person you're with.

No.

When the Risen first struck, Lucina, my cousin and the eventual heir to Ylisse's throne, was brilliant. She took to the sword like a fish to water. Granted, she had always been a prodigy in combat and she had my uncle's training under her belt, but she was the oldest of us and defended us against the Risen time and time again. She, alone, saved my life countless times. I looked up to her, wishing I could be like her, or, even more truthfully, like my parents and the ancestors who came before them - these strong and powerful men and women who either excelled in combat or else died protecting the weak. Grand, amazing people who did grand, amazing things. In my childish way, I imitated them.

I thought if I didn't become a hero deserving of my bloodline, I wouldn't be able to survive in a world that had come to its end, nor would I deserve to. I spent a long time wishing I would die, because I knew that no matter how many Risen I would slay, I couldn't measure up to the people who came before me. It's something I still think about a lot - that despite having saved my parents, in whatever timeline that may have been, and despite having left that world far behind me, grieved for it, mourned it, replaced my life with a new one time and time again - I still let them die, somewhere. I let a lot of people die in the world I was raised in, and it isn't fair that a weak and childish coward like myself lived on to fight in shoes too big for me.

So - the point of why I'm saying all of this - is that I don't know why I ran. I don't know why I was scared when the Risen attacked you in that house, especially when I'd faced so many of them on my own before then. If there's been a part of me, however small, that has always wanted to die - a part of me that still festers and keeps me awake at night when there's no distractions to shut it down - then why did I buckle down and run when I thought I couldn't save you? I've been going over it and over it in my head. I wouldn't have cared if I died there, even if it had been permanent. It would have been a fitting end, and I'm genuinely okay with that fitting end coming whenever it needs to. But I just ran, like I valued my own skin over yours, which I categorically don't. It doesn't make sense, unless even after a decade of trying to become strong enough to protect the people in this world who mean more than I do, I'm just intrinsically not capable of it. I'm just hardwired to be anything less than a drain on those I love.

I think it's just wired into me to let people down. I'm not saying that to be melodramatic, or self-pitying, but because I've spent so much time wondering why I didn't just die alongside you and it's the only logical answer I can come up with. If I'd stayed, gotten you out of there, I would have gone out a hero. I should have done it. When I failed, I should have let them kill me. I don't know.

I don't know if any of this is making sense again.

[he's quiet, listening. it's probably for the best archie hasn't consciously realised just why he's so upset about that room in particular.]

Odin... you're only human. What you're describing is just human error. You're thinking of these people through rose coloured glasses -- I'm sure they believe themselves to have messed up multiple times like you think you have. There's only so much you can do and it's not a poor indicator of your character that you mess up sometimes. You were probably scared because you watched people you love get hurt and die because of them.

[not counting himself there; he means purely in odin's home timeline.]

You can't always be a hero and do the right thing, especially not when the odds are actively against you. I don't think any less of you for what happened, you were just acting according to your instinct. You think it would've gone down differently if I was in your position? Would you be saying the same stuff if I'd been the one that supposedly fucked up?

My ancestors literally saved the world, where as I grew up surrounded by men and women who saved dozens if not hundreds of lives, all while I made innocent people suffer through my own inaction. It's hard to think of those who felled literal Gods as just normal dudes. It's hard to think of my parents as just human when I saw what they did and what they sacrificed for me. For everyone. I dunno. I had a point, somewhere.

[ he sighs, like he has a headache. ]

It wasn't my normal instinct, letting you go. I don't know what was wrong with me. I'm a soldier and I just froze up. I feel like a child again. [ he doesn't say anything like "of course i wouldn't say this kind of shit if i died, because that would've been fine", because that is just pedantic and argumentative and stupid. just moves on. ]

Owain is my name and it's the name my mother gave me. When I met her again in the past and tried to name her weapon for her, she dubbed it Owain, because she said there would be no better protection than that. It is a name that is warm, and it feels like home. I've said it before, but you remind me of home, too. The good, happy parts of it. So I want to feel like that around you as much as I can, which means, yeah, I'd love it if you called me Owain. [ he-- hesitates. ]

But you're messed up over the house. I still don't know why you got me those swords. I know you said it was just because you saw them and you thought of me, and, like, I get it, but it's-- I don't know how you even left your bed after what you went through. I didn't think I would see you for weeks. I thought you would be, like, recovering, if not from what we went through alone, then certainly from whatever it was in there that targeted you instead of the room we were in together that targeted me.

I just want to understand you more. I thought I did. I thought I understood your motivations for checking on me, too, but maybe I'm wrong about those. Maybe I'm right. There are just - a lot of things I want to clear up before I keep the relationship we have at the level it's at now.

You do what you can and you try harder than anyone. That has to count for something.

[... he hadn't wanted to tell odin the other stuff that happened, but archie doesn't see a choice now.]

It was... what happened there wasn't the only time I got my dumb ass killed there. It wasn't the first, either. If I'm honest, there were two rooms I ended up in with my best friend from home and I think what happened in those... kind of overrode anything else, because they were both based off our worst fears based on what we did. I guess the room full of Risen was meant to be your worst fear? I don't know. I guess I find it easier to cope with this because when I first got here and totally shut down, trying to drink until I passed out or died, whichever came first... I know how I'll get if I don't get out of bed and it's not something I want to inflict on the people that live with me. On Matt, especially.

[archie's not sure if this is the right thing to say - that he didn't feel as much because he'd been through something worse, but it's also the [oprah voice] truth.]

Ah - okay.

[ there's a second of silence, but it's not because Odin feels hurt or concerned by Archie's kind of unexpected apathy towards what they went through together. it's because he feels relieved, honestly, to be confronted with the fact that he's been putting too much importance on the room with the Risen. it's maybe a bit of an unhealthy reaction, and a total misintrpretation of what archie's telling him, but odin feels like if he's not super important to archie compared to other people then maybe he hasn't let him down as much as he thought he did. ]

I think - I've been questioning our friendship, or something, the past few days, and, uh. [ hrgggh he roughs his hands through his hair, trying to kickstart his brain into working properly and putting all these thoughts into words that aren't stupid or purple prosey for once in their god damn life. ]

Nevermind. Just-- I'm sorry you went through that. I think you're right, that the narrator targeted our fears and put us with people we cared about so as to properly exploit our heartbreak. I don't-- I hope you're not still doing that. The, drinking until you die, thing. Which I guess is hypocritical after I just said all that stuff about-- you know what? Rambling. Let me just-- here, look.

Can we talk about what you went through? I know you don't want to. But I've been thinking-- with the swords, and the checking in on me, and now with all this talk about getting out of bed so you don't have to inflict your grieving process on the people you're with, that like-- maybe you should? I think you should. I wanna hear about it all. I think you should focus on yourself a bit.

Did you... want me to leave you alone?

[stupidly, he hadn't considered that odin hadn't wanted to see him.]

I don't, no. I'm past that, I like to think. I'm glad you're relatively past it too, because it's a real bad way to be.

[archie sighs; decides there's no point in avoiding it anymore.]

Did I ever even tell you properly what I did back home?

It wasn't... that I didn't want to see you. I always want to see you. But I was very scared about what would happen when we talked, and I had all these horrible worst-case scenarios in my head, where like-- like, I'd talk to you and you wouldn't forgive me for what I'd done, or I'd see you and I'd still just see you as this guy killed by the Risen and I'd stop thinking you as my friend and just start thinking of you as another person I couldn't protect, and just-- I was scared. And then you were right there, worried about me, even though you went through so much worse in our room alone, let alone in another room, and I don't... get it. I don't know.

[ he feels like he's making things worse. ]

... You only told me what you thought I'd understand. I don't know everything.

You're free to think whatever you want of me, but you know how I feel now.

[so does archie! snap.]

I woke up and tried to control a leviathan that was said to be the personification of the sea itself. I wanted to use it to raise the sea levels back to what they once were so nature could reclaim the planet, because I hated seeing how Pokémon were suffering thanks to humanity's callousness. I still feel that way but... not so much world-endy. What I did was unforgivable; I let my anger get the better of me and paid the price for my arrogance.

[he sighs.]

One of the rooms had Kyogre in it. Just seeing it brought back everything I felt after I awoke it, watching the thunderous rainstorm and the beginning of the deluge I thought would save the world actually started to end it. When I was standing in the middle of the storm and realised everything was going to die because of me... that was how I felt when I saw it again in the room, even though the situation was completely different and removed. I was with Maxie, who in my timeline tried to stop me doing what I was doing. In that room, Kyogre killed him. It was floating in the middle and after judging us, lurched forward and ate him.

[archie lets out a shuddering breath, clearly hating even talking about it.]

Then it happened again, only with Maxie's nightmare. The timeline he's from is one where he woke up Kyogre's opposite, Groudon. A behemoth of land. I couldn't tell you the inctricate details of his plan, but I think he wanted to expand landmass so there was more space for people in housing crisis. For him, I was the one that tried to stop him. Y'see all the weird timeline shit going on there? We had no idea about this until he arrived. Anyway, Groudon did the same as Kyogre only it was kind enough to shake it up a bit and hit me with one of its earth bending moves. I got impaled on a spike of rock and-- well, I guess I died pretty quickly because I don't remember anything after that.

[ Odin holds it together until the end, keeping quiet and saying nothing, but the second Archie says how he died against Groudon he lets out a pretty fucking pathetic whine. He can't handle the imagery in his head and has to hold the phone away from his ear and cover his eyes with his hand for a second to block shit out and get himself together. eventually, he's back. ]

I have a lot of thoughts, but they don't matter right now, I think. Can we just--

Can we spend time together? In person? It's been really weird, and I get that most of it is either my fault or just both of us being rattled by what happened, but I don't like this. I miss being, like. Comfortable with you. If you don't want to, though, that's okay, just - before I go to space, or something.

It's fine. I miss you too. I'll come to yours.

[truth be told, he was already on his way. get friendshipped on fool.]

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Re: text

Re: text

>voice

voice, cw suicide talk further on in this thread

oh nodin

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