[he almost doesn't send the message, caught in a frozen state of helplessness, but -- he'd left the suite without a word, hiding at tim's to make it a little less real.
it's not working, and eventually he'll be missed (maybe), so:]
Quentin's gone. I'm with Tim. Just In case you were wondering I guess.
[ In case you were wondering / I guess, as if what has passed between them is still so insignificant and unweighted that Koby still feels he has to justify contact with Set. It stings, especially in the wake of Quentin's dwindling, lingering scent. The shape of him, missing. He feels resentful of the text and what it insinuates, and types out as mild a response as he can. ]
I was. Wondering.
If Timothy Laughlin is not generous with you or fails to meet your need in this time, inform me.
[normally koby would tiptoe around things, would hold them at arms length longer, to try and shield himself from hurting, but there's so much hurting just then, its all he can think or feel or conceptualize.
and the words are staccato and brief, but after a moment there's the reach of koby's mind, his presence, and all it holds is hurt and hurt and hurt.]
im sorry
[he doesn't know why or what for only that the sudden idea of set also being distant, also slipping away lights panic in his soul.]
i couldn't be there alone but I dont know how to do this. i dont know how to do this. im Sorry i im saying everything wrong
[ ( He looks back to Heliopolis only once, when he leaves. When he's at a distance and knows that even if he does see anyone standing on the ramparts, in the windows, at the front gates, he won't be able to identify them — he won't have to know whether Nephthys saw him off, or not. He never gets to say goodbye to her, it's as if they no longer exist to one another. ) His own separation from his wife of thousands and thousands of years was abrupt, it was empty, it was shattering. There was no closure. There was nothing more to them. ]
And the answer is "however you see fit to". When one is in pain, one should not be expected to be palatable or graceful in it. Your beloved is gone, [ ( and he was someone to set, too. oh, he was someone indeed. ) ] you have no need to apologize.
[he wants to keep apologizing, something old and desperate inside him insisting that if he isn't palatable, isn't nice and easy to digest like always, he'll wake up alone for the rest of his life. he wants to rail against the injustice of it, of meeting and loving and being with someone who vanished so easily, of how unfair it is that he'd been so, so happy and now he's somewhere so miserable he can't even cry about it.
what he says instead:] He was the first person to say he loved me. The first in my whole entire life. I almost asked him what was wrong with him, that he thought that.
[ Except. Koby has been nice and easy to digest, and he still woke up alone. ( What scale does he think he needs to balance while he yet lives? ) ]
Unless he returns by equal whim, it is likely so. This is the end of your lives together. Some might tell you to focus on what you had, but that is for a later time. Right now, you need to mourn your loss. To scream, wail, rend garments and cry.
Because of course he loved you. Nothing about you is unlovable. That is why it hurts.
[it's the straightforward, blunt sort of response that set gives -- reality and truth, softened by the permission to mourn, a strange duality that koby's always getting used to. it nudges up against the tightly-clutched veil of numbness that had descended when koby had woken up, reached out for that blue-sky calm he'd slept beside for over a year and found: nothing.
and it shivers, apparent shield made of cards, of cobwebs, breakable and impermanent. the grief won't go away, hasn't left, it's waiting for koby to let go, to break, to let out the hurt and he's -- scared. he's afraid if he lets it happen, lets himself grieve, it'll never stop. yet, all the same, it's inevitable. he's already slipping sideways into it, with every moment he breathes in and out in a world where quentin no longer exists.]
What if it's one of you next? [set, shanks, presences koby ached for and runs from simultaneously, because maybe this is him, maybe this is what he's meant for, the one left behind, the one standing on the deck and waving, the one forgotten, set aside, unneeded, unnecessary, unchosen. maybe getting too close means spreading his destined loneliness, and it'd be safer if he stayed at arm's length all his life, instead.
and behind it: the knowledge it's already too late, that every person koby loves, he loves with his whole heart, his entire self, holding nothing back, no reserve to protect himself when the end comes. nothing but that void where someone he loved used to be.]
Koby. One day, we will part. That is inevitable — it is but the method of parting that will change.
[ Here, they will be parted by an unknowable distance. There, it would be the discrepancy between their existences — the limited time with which a mortal lives, and the eternity of a god. ( He had entered his own relationship with Shanks, acknowledging that one day they would come to mourn one another. That they would part, and to live together without regret because of that. )
The truth, is that Koby was not made to be alone. And Set has little patience for those who would think choosing loneliness could be safer than loving — when he was not created with the right to choose his destiny at all. ]
So. Do not be an arrogant child, to even consider that you could be the one standing alone at the end. You will die as a fragment of my years, and I will be the one carrying your name from dawn to dusk, to the end of all existence.
I know this is not a peace you can make readily. Still, you cannot start quantifying those you love by who would be most painful to next lose. That is obscene.
[huffy, momentarily distracted:] I'm not a child. And I'm not Quantifying. It'll all hurt. I've always known it would hurt.
[but it's one thing to know conceptually, in his mind, witnessing the coming and going of the household, feeling the ebb and flow of their grief. it had come close, too -- he'd lost luffy, usopp, zoro. every departure has hit on some level, if only because koby can't not feel the hurt radiating through the other guests.
yet: it's different when it happens so close. when he wakes up alone in a bed he's slept in alongside someone for months and months, secure in the delusional conviction that it can't happen to him, to them. if koby were constantly preparing to say goodbye, it'd hollow him out with bitterness, eventually. that's humanity, living beneath the umbrella of ephemeral mortality and somehow managing to live each moment as if it were decadent, eternal, unshakeable. if he'd loved quentin like he were afraid of losing him, it wouldn't have been nearly so reckless and wonderful. if he lets this loss change how he loves who remains, it'll turn him back into the fearful, timid, cowardly person he'd been for so long.
and yet. the fact of things, at it's core:] I'm sad. I'm just sad.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
@koby | early new years
it's not working, and eventually he'll be missed (maybe), so:]
Quentin's gone. I'm with Tim.
Just
In case you were wondering
I guess.
no subject
I was. Wondering.
If Timothy Laughlin is not generous with you or fails to meet your need in this time, inform me.
no subject
and the words are staccato and brief, but after a moment there's the reach of koby's mind, his presence, and all it holds is hurt and hurt and hurt.]
im sorry
[he doesn't know why or what for only that the sudden idea of set also being distant, also slipping away lights panic in his soul.]
i couldn't be there alone but I dont know how to
do this. i dont know how to do this.
im Sorry i
im saying everything wrong
no subject
[ ( He looks back to Heliopolis only once, when he leaves. When he's at a distance and knows that even if he does see anyone standing on the ramparts, in the windows, at the front gates, he won't be able to identify them — he won't have to know whether Nephthys saw him off, or not. He never gets to say goodbye to her, it's as if they no longer exist to one another. ) His own separation from his wife of thousands and thousands of years was abrupt, it was empty, it was shattering. There was no closure. There was nothing more to them. ]
And the answer is "however you see fit to". When one is in pain, one should not be expected to be palatable or graceful in it. Your beloved is gone, [ ( and he was someone to set, too. oh, he was someone indeed. ) ] you have no need to apologize.
no subject
what he says instead:] He was the first person to say he loved me.
The first in my whole entire life.
I almost asked him what was wrong with him, that he thought that.
And now I'm never going to see him again.
no subject
Unless he returns by equal whim, it is likely so. This is the end of your lives together. Some might tell you to focus on what you had, but that is for a later time. Right now, you need to mourn your loss. To scream, wail, rend garments and cry.
Because of course he loved you. Nothing about you is unlovable. That is why it hurts.
no subject
and it shivers, apparent shield made of cards, of cobwebs, breakable and impermanent. the grief won't go away, hasn't left, it's waiting for koby to let go, to break, to let out the hurt and he's -- scared. he's afraid if he lets it happen, lets himself grieve, it'll never stop. yet, all the same, it's inevitable. he's already slipping sideways into it, with every moment he breathes in and out in a world where quentin no longer exists.]
What if it's one of you next? [set, shanks, presences koby ached for and runs from simultaneously, because maybe this is him, maybe this is what he's meant for, the one left behind, the one standing on the deck and waving, the one forgotten, set aside, unneeded, unnecessary, unchosen. maybe getting too close means spreading his destined loneliness, and it'd be safer if he stayed at arm's length all his life, instead.
and behind it: the knowledge it's already too late, that every person koby loves, he loves with his whole heart, his entire self, holding nothing back, no reserve to protect himself when the end comes. nothing but that void where someone he loved used to be.]
no subject
[ Here, they will be parted by an unknowable distance. There, it would be the discrepancy between their existences — the limited time with which a mortal lives, and the eternity of a god. ( He had entered his own relationship with Shanks, acknowledging that one day they would come to mourn one another. That they would part, and to live together without regret because of that. )
The truth, is that Koby was not made to be alone. And Set has little patience for those who would think choosing loneliness could be safer than loving — when he was not created with the right to choose his destiny at all. ]
So. Do not be an arrogant child, to even consider that you could be the one standing alone at the end. You will die as a fragment of my years, and I will be the one carrying your name from dawn to dusk, to the end of all existence.
I know this is not a peace you can make readily. Still, you cannot start quantifying those you love by who would be most painful to next lose. That is obscene.
no subject
Quantifying. It'll all hurt.
I've always known it would hurt.
[but it's one thing to know conceptually, in his mind, witnessing the coming and going of the household, feeling the ebb and flow of their grief. it had come close, too -- he'd lost luffy, usopp, zoro. every departure has hit on some level, if only because koby can't not feel the hurt radiating through the other guests.
yet: it's different when it happens so close. when he wakes up alone in a bed he's slept in alongside someone for months and months, secure in the delusional conviction that it can't happen to him, to them. if koby were constantly preparing to say goodbye, it'd hollow him out with bitterness, eventually. that's humanity, living beneath the umbrella of ephemeral mortality and somehow managing to live each moment as if it were decadent, eternal, unshakeable. if he'd loved quentin like he were afraid of losing him, it wouldn't have been nearly so reckless and wonderful. if he lets this loss change how he loves who remains, it'll turn him back into the fearful, timid, cowardly person he'd been for so long.
and yet. the fact of things, at it's core:] I'm sad.
I'm just sad.