[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.
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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.