driftfleet | Windrose, where the wind blows

[For the crew of the Windrose, Souji brings over a selection of traditional Japanese New Year's foods, or at least his best approximation, given the ingredients he has to work with, between what's available on his own ship and what he's been able to gather on the planet. He's a skilled cook even without the augment, so everything should be fairly tasty. He'll hang around for a while to be social, answer questions about the food, and keep an eye on Nanako.]

[The sight of actual food on the kitchen table is enough to bring Natasha in past the doorway, greeting Souji with a fleeting smile.]

Anything in here from our haul the other day?

[He nods, returning the smile, and points to several of the dishes laid out on the counter.]

A lot of it, actually. It's a nice change from the protein pastes. Thanks again for going with me.

Any time. Fishing's not normally my thing, but that could change.

[It had been a surprisingly good time. The conversation was interesting, to say the least.]

I take it the kid following Officer Snuggles around is Nanako?

It's usually a little easier when it's not so cold. But I think you're a natural at it.

[Yeah, that'd been a good talk, about a lot of things Souji's been carrying around inside of himself for probably too long.

He laughs quietly; of course Nanako would immediately befriend Office Snuggles.]

Yeah, that's her. You should talk to her sometime. She'll want to be your friend, too.

[A small smile, almost invisible.]

Seems like it's mostly about patience. I've always been pretty good at waiting.

She seems friendly. A very bright kid. How's she doing, out here?

Patience and timing.

[He nods, and his expression sobers some, coming back to the topic of Nanako.]

She's doing all right, I think. I'm glad we're on the same ship, though. She's very capable - she kept things running on her own at home, since her mother was killed and her father works all the time. Keeps. Sorry.

[He frowns as he corrects himself. She's alive; there's no past tense here.]

So I know she can take care of herself. But ... I still worry. So I'm glad I can keep an eye on her, here.

[It's a struggle for him, balancing the desire to keep almost-smothering tabs on her to ensure nothing bad happens to her again with the knowledge that she needs to be her own person, needs to have space to grow and flourish.]

[Patience and timing, and having a good partner, maybe. He was easy to listen to. took himself too seriously, but who could blame him? He'd had a few lessons to learn hard and fast, and he's still learning to cope with them. She understands, better than most.]

She's still a child. Just because she is capable, doesn't mean she should have to run everything on her own. [And it doesn't mean that this place won't try and break her in other ways. She can't believe Atroma has anything good in mind for any of the children of the fleet. She keeps tabs in her own way.]

And it seems like she enjoys having you around. Time alone with her cousin.

[Having a good partner definitely helps. Souji's only ever fished solo before, so having someone along was a welcome change. And they'd talked about a lot of important things, too. Like Nanako. Souji's felt a lot lighter in the days since that excursion; talking about what happened to someone who didn't know Inaba helped a lot. He feels less guarded around Natasha; she understands, on a fundamental level, what it's like to have such a heavy burden to carry.]

She calls me "Big Bro." It's pretty cute. I think ... she's lonely, a lot of the time. [He smiles, wistful.] I guess I know what that's like.

[She does understand. So does he, just a little; not that he knows anything about her history, really, but he'd seen enough in her calibration to know her closet held entire graveyards, and he wasn't afraid of it. There was no judgement, only understanding. She appreciates that, even if she isn't planning on sharing much more about it.]

You mentioned moving a lot, the first time we spoke. Inaba was the longest you'd stayed in any one place, right?

Mm, it was about the average, actually. My parents always tried to avoid disrupting my studies, so we'd move either at the end of the school year or during the summer break. It's important to them that I study hard and do well in school.

[He wonders how his parents are doing now, if they've noticed he's gone missing. If they're worried about him.]

Do you think the people we've left behind know that we're gone? Back where we're from, I mean.

That's a complicated question. I've got a few theories, but that's all they are. We don't exactly have a lot to go on. There's people here from different versions of the same world, people from different times in the same world--multiple-world theory isn't exactly my strong point.

I guess whether they do or they don't, there's not much point in worrying about it here. There's nothing we can do except keep looking for a way back.

Yeah ... I guess there's really no way of knowing.

[He nods, solemn.]

My parents would probably be OK if I was missing, but Nanako's father, my uncle ...

[Well. Souji knows how well he'd fare without her. He's seen it.]

I'd worry about him.

Worry is a slippery slope. It's normal to be concerned, but worry...you worry too much, and it ends up a distraction. Ends up making you stay gone longer.

[A shrug. She also knows not everyone is...like her, exactly, when it comes to that sort of compartmentalization.]

[He nods again; he can see the sense in that, and he does recognize that there are some things beyond his control, so there isn't any point in worrying about them. It won't change anything. Still ...]

He almost killed the man who kidnapped her, when she died.

[She nods, pulling herself onto the edge of the table, legs swinging just slightly off the ground.]

Understandable. That's what parents do, or ones that give a damn about their children, anyway. I can't imagine what that must be like.

[From a different perspective, perhaps, but she''ll never have her own children.]

[She understands; of course she understands. Souji was right to talk to her about this.]

Do you think it would have been wrong, if he had taken the law into his own hands like that? The police would never have been able to close the case, even if they were shown the TV World. Even if they believed what they were shown.

[He frowns down at the dishes on the counter, making minute adjustments in their alignments.]

My uncle didn't believe me when I finally had to tell him about it. He suspected me of being involved with the murders.

Edited 2016-01-05 22:07 (UTC)

[She doesn't answer the first question. Her views of the law are complicated. Malleable at best. She operates under a moral code composed completely of greys.]

[Even so, some things are clear enough. When you can't contain a threat, you eliminate it.]

Why would he think you had anything to do with it?

Because he's a good detective. [Souji smiles ruefully, glancing up to Natasha again.] Inaba's a small town - there isn't a lot of serious crime there, like in the cities. The murders started right after I came to Inaba. And he wasn't wrong - I was involved, just not the way he thought. My friends and I were trying to help.

[Souji finds an empty space of counter and leans forward on his arms, hands clasped together in front of him.]

There was an incident, right at the beginning - Yosuke and I were picked up because we had weapons at Junes, and Yosuke was goofing off with them and it drew some attention. My uncle was right to be suspicious, I guess. He wasn't around a whole lot because he works so much, but I'm sure he probably noticed that I wasn't always around, either, or that I'd come home with mysterious bruises sometimes after being out all day. And there was the letter.

[Souji nods to himself, frowning as he recalls that night.]

He brought me a letter one night - it was addressed to me but had no return address, and it threatened that if I didn't stop rescuing people from the TV World, someone close to me would be put in and killed. My uncle put his foot down when he saw that, and I tried to explain it to him, about the TV World and Personas, but he didn't believe me. I guess I can see why - it does sound pretty crazy. So he took me down to the police station and questioned me, and Nanako was left at home alone. That's when she was kidnapped.

[Souji's head drops, and his shoulders sag as he leans against the counter. The responsibility he feels over his involvement in Nanako's kidnapping is a heavy burden. If he'd been home that night, she wouldn't have been harmed.]

I don't blame him for suspecting me. He didn't know me well - before this, the last time he saw me, I was younger than Nanako. And ... in at least one world, it turns out I am the murderer.

I guess crazy gets kind of relative after a while. If you hadn't already seen the TV World, you might have felt the same.

[She's really good at reading between the lines. After their time in each others' heads, their time spent talking on the ice, she's gotten fairly good at reading him, too. Not that he's a hard read. Souji wears it all in his hands, the tension in his shoulders. The way his eyes turn inward. She recognizes the signs when she sees them.]

Way I see it, if that Souji killed Namatame, he was doing what needed to be done. The police couldn't stop him. He wasn't going to stop hurting people. And after what he did to Nanako? Doesn't matter what he thought he was doing. It needed to stop.

His name was Seito. My uncle's partner, Adachi - he was Traveling with us for a while, too. The Inaba he came from was different, and the Seta he knew was called Seito. My face, just a different name.

[He smiles thinly, thinking about what it means that he has so many different names in different worlds, where everyone else's names are the same.]

He killed a lot of people, I'm told, but I don't think Namatame was one of them, because he was the one putting people inside the TV World to be killed, not Namatame. He killed a lot of my friends ... Yosuke, and Chie Satonaka, and many others.

[It's unsettling to think that someone who was a version of him, even with a different name, could be so cold, so callous. But Souji remembers what the other Seta said to him once, when they'd first met, when he'd asked how to address him and suggested Seta-kun: Doesn't that seem a little cold, all things considered?

Maybe he's a colder person than he ever realized.

Souji brushes away those troubling thoughts in favor of focusing on what Natasha says instead, about stopping Namatame, about his death being justified in the end.]

That's about the same thing my uncle said to me, right before I left Inaba.

[If there was evil in the world that had to be dealt with, but no one would step up to see justice done, it might fall to the closest person at hand to bear the burden of punishing them. Don't you think?

Yeah ... maybe so. Souji nods, thin-lipped at the memory, swallowing hard in preparation to make his confession. Natasha will understand; he's sure of it.]

He never asked me about it directly, but ... I think he knew what we did, after Namatame turned up dead in the same way as the others. There were only so many people who knew about the existence of the TV World. And he's a good detective. But ... it had to be done. So no one else would lose someone they loved the way we lost Nanako.

[Still leaning over the counter, Souji brings his hands up to rest the heels of his palms at his forehead, fingers pushing up through his hair. His heart hammers loudly in his chest, echoing in his ears. It's the first time he's spoken to anyone about this since it happened, and he can't tell if he feels better for having given the deed form with words. He's silent for a few shaky breaths, then says, quieter:]

I guess sometimes there are no good options.

Edited 2016-01-10 20:23 (UTC)

[Names are a fluid thing. Not a good way to really describe a person; she's worn them before like she wears a suit, pulling it on and taking it off with ease. Names are easily changed, erased. Actions are the only true identity. Actions leave deeper marks. And his actions she understands. Maybe that other Seta thought he was doing the right thing, too. Maybe there was no good option for him.

But that Seta isn't this one, and this one she likes almost despite herself; likes, or at least recognizes something familiar in him, something that she can call to and that responds in return. So she reaches out one hand as he squeezes his eyes shut, pushes fingers roughly through his hair. Rests a hand on his shoulder, fingers squeezing slightly.]

We all do what we have to. And we all carry that weight in our own way. You're right. Sometimes there are no good options. But you made your choice. There isn't anything wrong about that.

[She's right; he knows she's right. He made a choice, and it's over and done, no way to go back and change it, even if he wanted to, which he doesn't. There were no good options, but he picked the best of the bad. Souji pulls his head out of his hands and turns his head to Natasha, a grateful, subdued smile on his face. He reaches up and lightly covers her hand on his shoulder with his own.]

Thank you ... I haven't talked about this with anyone since it happened. I guess maybe I needed to.

[And he laughs quietly; it's the exact sort of thing people have said to him, over and over again, not just during the year in Inaba, but for as long as he can remember. He's always been considered a good listener, someone trustworthy in whom to confide secrets or ask advice. Now he sees what it's like being on the other end of it, and he's doubly grateful to Natasha for it.]

[The decision was what it was. She carries her own decisions, acknowledges the results both bad and good. That's all you can do, ultimately; carry your choices with you and use them to determine your future. She thinks that, maybe, he's got a few more choices of his own ahead of him.]

I'm a good listener.

[There's a faint wry humor to the words, an allusion to her previous position before the augment swap. Her fingers tighten again, briefly, and after a moment she extracts her hand, taking a deep breath.]

If you ever need to talk about it, I can listen. I know what it's like.

[That could be a generalization, but he might get the feeling that she means it literally. Maybe because she does.]

[Life is a series of choices: join basketball or soccer club; spend time studying with one friend or quietly talk things over in the diner with another; push a man into the TV World or let the police deal with him instead. Different weights and different outcomes but the mechanics, in theory, are the same. Souji knows this.]

You are. [He nods, and stands up straight again; his heavy burden is lighter for having been shared with Natasha.]

Thank you ... I know we don't know each other very well, but you've been sort of like a senpai to me. And I appreciate it.

Windrose, where the wind blows

souji seta; in the kitchen; come at me bros

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