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when you care about a person, it hurts to see them suffer. archie... if you're trying to make amends for the things you've done, i think you've got the mental capacity to try and accept that sometimes people are gonna suck, even when they've got good intentions. it is not easy to comprehend the complete and total annihilation of humanity. it's not that people don't "care", it's just - okay, it's like war. if i told you a horrible story about a person i killed and how it haunted me, you would probably say something like, "i'm sorry you had to go through that", and quietly hope that one day the scars in me will ease. because what else are you supposed to say? you've never been in a war, but you know what i'm like now, and you know that i'm not running around stabbing people in the chest in the same way you're not running around trying to piss off a whale. all you know is that it sucks and you love me and you want my future to be brighter. that's what your friends want for you, too. it must be hard for civilians with no grasp of death to see the man you were. it must be hard for your friends who have never witnessed the end of things imagine all you've done. not when you're in front of them recovering, so much better and so much stronger than the archie you've been in the past. that doesn't make their love for you less valid. just, a little more naive, than the love i have for you. if you think you're going to repeat the cycle again, then you will. if you genuinely want to move forward in your life, you need to do more than just prime yourself for whatever punishment might come your way, one day. you need to put the work into actually becoming a man who would find the idea of pain in other people completely reprehensible. you need to rewrite yourself. but like i said - you're still growing, i think. yeah, you might be aware that there's a dark part of you that could flare up again, especially without people like me and magnus and your friends from home around to reign it in. that just means you're not done growing up yet. because one day, alongside your conviction and with the distance you've put between your present and your past, you're not going to need anyone but yourself to do the right thing. but if it helps i promise i'll come kill you if you fuck up again. ok?

[it's still hard for him to grasp this. that people truly care about him. it's a selfish belief to fall back on, but... he can't help it. his kneejerk reaction is that he's stupid scum, no one does or should care about him and he deserves to die alone. pretty standard self-hate, really.]

i don't

[his typing bubble stays up. goes. stays up. stays up for 20 minutes.]

know how to convince myself it's not inevitable. that i'll do that again.

[another pause.]

please don't do that

[ Odin watches that bubble, staring at it like a lifeline. It's - awful, what he's doing, but Archie is distracting him from his own problems, and waiting so long for him to talk again is starting to make Odin focus on his own heartache. He feels selfish when the silence creeps in enough, starts making him panic enough, to make him want to disconnect and go. But he stays, and he sighs long and hard when Archie finally says what's on his mind. Fuck, that's rough. ]

Yeah... I know. I'm sorry. If I knew how to stop insidious mental bullshit from fucking over personal growth, I would be a lot less painful to be around.

[ The things he's done, the ways he's felt about himself - he's not going to go into them, not here, but there's an empathetic sadness in his chest that aches for Archie. He thinks about getting the spotlight off of himself, embarrassed, suddenly, by writing that, but when he types out a quick "hey, my friend back home who tried to end the world had a couple of kids and that worked out okay (except for when one of the kids went evil and tried to kill everyone), so maybe you could knock matt up and become a stay at home dad", he erases it, deciding deflecting this with humor is not the way to handle things. whoops. ]

I wouldn't ever hurt you. But like I said - You are a work in progress. There is so much more ahead of you than the way you're feeling now. Can you tell me you haven't changed - on any level - between when you first arrived here and now? You've made a lifetime of bad decisions. That hollowness is not going to go away in the eight or nine months you've been in America. But there has to be some part of you that realizes you're changing for the better, in some small way.

only physically. i don't do self destructive shit as much as i used to.

[there's that bubble for ages again.]

i still i still think if i hadn't used the relic wrong that it would've worked

[even over text, the apparent shame he feels for even thinking this is clear.]

[ there's no bubble, on Odin's side. just a long, stony silence that stretches for a few minutes as he works out what he wants to say. ]

That's still change. I think you're more than that, but protecting yourself is very difficult and something to be proud of.

[ but - fuck. he breathes out. he has to handle this right. ]

That is a lot to carry with you. You came closer to your goal than I thought you did. If you get ported back home with the memories you've made here - And if you're ported to a point in time before you "used the relic wrong" - Would you use it right, this time, do you think?

no if i had those memories i wouldn't do it at all i'd give it to shelly when she told me to stop i know there's no way to undo what was done i just in that moment when i used the relic to wake kyogre up i hated so many people so much there's a lot i don't remember about that day, but the only two feelings i really remember from it are regret and hate and i don't know which one was stronger i honestly don't even know how i'm still coherently sane

Not doing much to dispel this notion I have of you that you're good and you're trying.

[ he runs his hand over his face, though. as more and more of this conversation goes on, the more Archie reminds Odin of - somebody specific, somebody big. he wants to tell Archie about him, but he thinks if he does, it'll only hurt.

because that somebody is destined to repeat his cycle of destruction until he dies, mourning himself and his pain, ruined in a way no living being should ever be. ]

Regret is not an emotion held by evil, Archie. Hate can be justifiable. What would it take for you to hurt people in America? Can you foresee yourself trying to end the world here, as you did back home? In any circumstance?

sorry.

[that's... just how it is, he thinks. if odin decides after this that archie isn't who he thought he was and he isn't interested in knowing him anymore, then... he'd have to live with it.]

no

[...he doesn't have the heart to tell odin he doesn't like this world for the same reason he fell into villainy in his own, and that that in itself is a slippery slope.]

at the very least i know maxie is from the timeline where i tried to stop him and he was the one that went batshit instead of the other way around even if i don't trust myself, i trust my friends to tell me i'm being a shithead. especially maxie, because he knows what to look out for more than anyone.

No, I mean - so much of you is good. I know you can't see it, but-- you are. To me. I wish I could make you understand that, but I know what it's like, being unable to judge yourself when there's so much wrong at your back. It's kind of funny that you've never condemned me for the things I've done.

[ though - he understands why archie might hold back on being harsh with him, if that ever happens. with how quick odin is to internalize things and dwell on them, people treat him like glass, sometimes. he hates it. ]

It's just, A lot of your answers don't sound like what I would expect to hear, from someone destined to fall back into the old habits you've fallen back into once before. If you were to ever value the pain of others higher, again, than you do right now - you would lose a lot. I don't think you want to lose what you have. And I don't think any of us are going anywhere any time soon.

Edited 2017-11-28 23:21 (UTC)

[hey odin have you tried not being so shit at existing? that might help!!

though the true reason why archie is never harsh with anyone unless they earn his ire is because he feels he has no place to judge.]

i won't i can't just thinking about it makes me sick

[ cold? ]

That fear and that sickness is going to stop you from treading over old mistakes. I don't think you're going to turn back into the monster you think you might become. Not while you feel like that.

[ HE SAYS, WHILE ON A MISSION BACK HOME TO KILL SOMEONE WHOSE FEAR AND SICKNESS ABOUT BECOMING EVIL TURNED HIM INTO AN EVIL WORLD-DESTROYING ULTRA-NIGHTMARE ]

i hope so thanks. again. sorry if this made you feel worse.

Odin Dark is too cool and badass to be so encumbered by the petty problems of the every man. It's fine, seriously. Thanks for talking to me about this. I hope I helped, on some level.

you did i know i'm being a miserable old sod but you did

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