Those golden eyes roll. "Duh. You really have to ask?"
A few taps on the keyboard and the dungeon crawler from earlier comes up. "Been working on this one for a few weeks, but I started coding when I was a little nerdling sprout. I could hax0r any system before... before I...."
His fingers twitch on the keys and his eyes go glassy for a moment, staring off into nothing. Then as quickly as it started, the moment passes, Idia shivering and relaxing with a sigh. "... sorry, malware again. Comes and goes, gotta be careful about executable triggers."
Cater stands up on his knees to get a better look at the screen, excited to hear more about the project…when Idia clams up again. What exactly happened that to him? What triggered his Overblot? He shakes his head. “Really, you don’t have to apologize. Like you said, it’s not like you can just do a system wipe or anything.”
It feels like he should say more, even though it also doesn’t feel like his place. “Just take it one day at a time. Everyone has their own pace to deal with these things.” And, is this where he should say that it’s okay to let others help him learn to shoulder the burden? That’s way too personal. “I’m happy as long as you aren’t pushing yourself too hard.”
"I tried." The words are soft, tired. "That's what the Overblot was supposed to do. Wipe it all, restore to factory default." Emptiness, nothingness.
What Cater's saying echoes the things the others told him after they saved him from himself. No one spewed hate or anger at him for what he put them through. Everyone in that room knows that Idia punishes himself worse than anyone ever could.
That last sentence catches his attention, though. He turns his face slightly toward Cater, blinking. "You're... happy? Because of me? But why?"
Suddenly, the two of them are staring at each other, faces not all that far apart, and Idia's question leaves Carter just as stumped. It's such a simple question, so honest and so...loaded. When he said he was happy, he hadn't really been thinking about the words he was using. It's not like they weren't truthful though, either.
"Well, like, we're friends now, right?" And having friends is fine, as long as there isn't much expected of him. Sure, he's already been putting in way more effort with Idia than he ever has with anyone else, but that's just because Idia's a whole different level! "I wouldn't keep coming out of my way to hang out here with you if I didn't have fun doing it. I'd be a pretty bad friend if I didn't have the most fun when you're having fun along with me."
Idia stares at him for a while. It's probably a bit uncanny with how still and silent the housewarden is, but even more so with those sharp yellow eyes boring into Cater's very soul. Finally he relaxes, shifting his gaze to his hands and the controller held in his lap.
"I'd never had friends before. I didn't want any. It hurts...." His breath catches, crackling the tail end of the word. He sounds more raw when he tries again. "It hurts when you lose someone."
There’s this moment where Cater feels as if he’s been pried open, his secrets fully exposed. It’s a relief that Idia looked away when he did, or he’d see the blank look on Cater’s face that he can’t stop from overtaking his easygoing features.
“Yeah,” he agrees without thinking. “It does.”
Ah, no, he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. Quickly, he turns away to reach for his iced coffee. It gives him just enough time to put himself back together.
“That’s why I always live in the moment! We only have so much time here at school together, and if we didn’t have shared classes we’d never have met. So it’s important to #carpediem!”
Idia tried that once, when he was a child. A single attempt to live as he wanted, to escape his family's curse. Time was stolen, not from him but his little brother. Short-sighted, unlucky, foolish: Idia was all of these, even when he tried to recreate what had been lost. Maybe it had worked out in the end, thanks to the efforts of others, but Idia had still caused everyone so much trouble simply by being selfish.
"Even if it means PvP to get what you want? Is that really okay, going after a limited quest or item when somebody else might deserve it more?"
Cater shakes his ice around in his cup, needing some kind of noise to cut through the static filling up his brain at the particularly poignant question that Idia throws into the air. How was he supposed to answer? Like what, he has a high WIS stat? And why is he mentally putting it in those terms?
"I don't think that's something anyone can answer for you," he finally decides, still looking off to the side lest his hastily re-applied mask fall off again. "What is or isn't okay, I mean. It's all about what you're willing to live with."
And can you live with yourself? Can you live with the consequences. Cater feels a shudder coming on. Can I live with myself?
"Life would be totes easy mode if we had all the answers!" He laughs. Tries to laugh. It's a little stilted. "That's why I don't bother thinking about the future. If I want something today, what happens tomorrow is something for future Cater to handle!"
But I'm selfish. Just lie. People don't want the truth from you, they want you to say what they want to hear. In the end, everyone's only thinking about themselves anyway.
Idia fiddles with his controller again. He tries not to think about his past or what's happened because of it, but everything keeps coming back to haunt him. Things are better now, Ortho is better now, but it was bad for so long and it could've gone much worse. Having friends helps, but he's still shoved down so much of his trauma.
"But it's not just future you." The gentle tapping of a fingertip on plastic. "Every button input affects the world. You open a chest in a village and you've got new loot, but what happens to the NPC it belonged to first? What did you do to their future?"
Ortho's future is back on track now. Idia was willing to give up everything to make that happen.
Everything that Idia says goes back to the past. To other people. Cater tried to ignore it, tried to keep things light, but it's not working and he can't very well just abandon Idia to these thoughts even if he feels incredibly ill-equipped to handle them himself.
So, screw it. He'll just ask. It feels like Idia needs to tell someone. And ultimately, what's one more thing to file away in his own memory banks?
"Idia, did you hurt someone?" That has to be it, right? Something is haunting him.
That's not a wince, it's a flinch that melts into a morose full-body curl. Idia draws his thighs up to his chest, feet resting on the edge of his chair, his arms hugging his legs. Before his face disappears into the protective huddle, there's an awful, haunted hollowness in his eyes. He takes a deep, very shaky breath, and the way he lets it out sounds more like a sob.
"... was a monster even before I Overblotted," he whispers.
I can't do this, Cater tells himself firmly as he watches Idia. He can't keep up his own routine while this is happening, and even aside from that, there's no way he knows what to do. It might as well have been a yes. Even without any details, Cater's sharp enough to connect the dots. And that reaction...it says it all.
Unlike Cater, Idia wears his heart on his sleeve.
It feels like they've been silent for ages, even if it's probably only been a minute. Swallowing, Cater moves himself in front of Idia's chair, sitting on the ground before him. "Hey," he finally says, reaching out to touch the back of Idia's hands before slowly curling his fingertips around his palms. "You aren't a monster. You've never been a monster, no matter what happened."
Another of those awful scraping breaths, this one even closer to a sob and likely actually is. Idia's hands are cold and clammy and trembling. His whole body is shaking, wound tight with some unspoken grief and on the brink of snapping. He drops the controller from their joined hands, it bounces on the floor and lays still.
"I... I killed my brother," he grits out, pain soaked into every syllable. "I killed Ortho, because I'm not the hero PC, he was... I was always just... a monster that ended the hero's story...."
How do you tell someone that even though you just called them your friend, you didn't mean it that way? That you don't want to know about all the shit they've been through and are going through because you don't want to be depended on? That you wanted to just hang out and play video games, maybe watch some anime or something, and this isn't what he had in mind? That they were never supposed to connect in any meaningful way?
You don't. You just don't. Cater feels himself beginning to break out in a cold sweat of panic, but he can't afford to lose his cool. It's not just the power of such an admission but...Ortho? His brother?
But Ortho is a robot.
Idia built him.
Idia built himself a brother.
Why would anyone do that?
There's only one reason, right? You put it all together and you're trying to fix a horrible, terrible mistake. You need to find a way to cope with something that's impossible to cope with. Instead of grieving, Idia did the only thing that made sense to him. Cater doesn't want to know any more. It's already way too much. But even so, his hands clench more tightly around Idia's. Gently, he asks, "How old were you?"
Every answer takes so much energy to build up, even if they tumble out of him once they're at his lips. The worst is already out in the open, so what more harm can he do? Cater will come to understand what Idia truly is and then he'll pull away in disgust. Maybe not completely, even the others who were at STYX can tolerate him sometime, but these one-on-one hangouts will be done.
Friends are so difficult to gain but so easy to lose.
"... seven, I think." His voice has gone soft and tired, thick with tears. "Tried to partition off the bad sectors, data's corrupted here and there." Shock weathered away so much of those days, except for the electric shock agony of he's gone, Ortho's gone that layered into every inch of who Idia was and is. "What I did... that's embedded in the BIOS, won't ever forget."
Seven. Christ. Even if that's just a rough estimate, that's so young. It's hard enough to get over loss when you're older, but to go through something at that age, no wonder he's never been able to move on. And that's all without touching the fact that he's effectively forced himself to live with that reminder on the daily.
"You were just a kid," he mumbles weakly. Even without knowing the details, he can say without hesitation that Idia didn't do it. Maybe he put them in a dangerous position, but kids don't know any better. They were probably trying to play, or something.
This is so much to unpack, and Cater has absolutely no frame of reference to know how to comfort him with words. He let's go of Idia's hands, and decides instead to stand and wrap his arms around the tall teenager's shoulders, leaning over him to pull him into an embrace. It seems safer than trying to pull Idia out of his coiled ball.
The unfamiliar hug has Idia shivering harder, yet he does nothing to attempt escape. How does someone who killed the only person that ever loved them respond to comfort?
"We wanted to be heroes, explorers. But Shrouds... we're not allowed to leave. We had to sneak out." He's so, so tired. "I hacked the security system. I opened a door that let a black hat in. They broke the seal on Tartarus, it's where STYX researches Phantoms. One got out, and it... it found us, me and Ortho...."
He remembers screams, but he's not sure if they were his or Ortho's, his nightmares or memories.
"You didn't know, Idia. It was an accident." A horrible, fucked up, completely unprecedented accident, yeah, but still an accident. He keeps Idia close, hardly feeling warm himself but still hoping it can provide him with some semblance of balance. Or maybe for both of them.
He swallows a knot in his throat and considers asking if Idia's ever told anyone this before. He's pretty sure he knows the answer, but if he hears it, that'll make all of this even more real and there's already so much to unpack. Half of what Idia's saying about his home he doesn't even really understand.
"You don't deserve the punishment you're giving yourself."
Something changes in Idia's trembling at that. It becomes staccato, a low uneven pulse, and the quiet sound coming from the center of the curled form changes with it.
It's... laughter. A hollow, mirthless chuckle, a sound of despair rather than humor.
"Then what do I deserve, Mr. Cater? Because the others wouldn't let me die, either. I've been shown too much compassion already."
"Too much, huh? By what measure?" There's no such thing as being shown too much consideration, as far as he knows. At least not under these circumstances. "I can't tell you what you deserve, but I know it's not suffering."
Whatever happened between him and everyone that had been taken by STYX, he's glad that they saved him. That they treated him delicately--or at least as delicately as that group of people can be expected to treat someone.
"EZ for you to say." There's no sting to the accusation, only defeat. Idia barely uncurls but it's enough for Cater to see the touch of redness intruding into the blue around Idia's eyes, the dampness clinging to his lashes. "The other Overblots, plus Epel and Mr. Rook, they all saw what I caused. What happened to my brother. Even if it's better now, I can't take back what I did."
Ortho still has a technomantic body. Idia still has his nightmares. Some things can't be fixed.
It is easy for him to say. Well, not easy, but compared to going through it? Yeah, his words are a total load of bullshit. Still, they need to be heard. And maybe heard again. The others saw this whole mess but did they give him any kind of clearly-needed affirmation?
"Nobody can change the past," he agrees. "All you can do is look forward, ask yourself what your time is better spent doing. It's not a one-step process, and I think you've beaten yourself up more than enough. I'm not saying that you'll feel better tomorrow or even a year from now, but..."
But what? Cater just said he doesn't look toward the future. Not that that was exactly the truth or anything, of course, but every word he chooses feels like stepping deeper into a big, black ocean and he's nearly up to his chin already.
"You Overblotted. You made a huge step already, deciding to live. So now you have to take that life and find the best way to live it. How would Ortho want you to live it?"
Idia's lips twist, not quite a scowl but not a smile either. He almost looks a little ill. "He wants me to LFG. I have people to game with already so I guess that's done. Not much else to do but grad and go."
He doesn't want to go back to the Island of Woe, but he has no choice. He has to be near blot or the Shroud curse will eat at him.
"Glad Ortho has lots of friends now. He's a good kid. All I want for him, really."
Less than half a year to go and they'll be seniors. Another year of schooling, but considering seniors don't stay on campus, they're practically at the home stretch already. Once that happens, none of this will matter. Cater hurries to clutch onto that thought. You can't get so close to someone that fast that you'll really miss them. The two of them will go on their separate ways and he can move past all this discomfort.
He just hopes that Idia gets the help he needs. His stomach churns, knowing he probably won't. Most certainly won't. He didn't give himself nearly enough time to work through this in a place where he can be supported. Wrapped up in thought, he hasn't processed the fact that he's still cradling Idia to his chest, his eyes clenched tightly shut.
He needs to stop talking, needs this to be over, but as much as he wants to be: Cater isn't heartless. So he takes that final step that takes his feet off the ocean floor and his head sucks underneath the surface.
"Don't give up, okay?" There's so, so much out there for him, if only he could see it, Cater's sure. Maybe his whole life has been fucked up, maybe he's destined to spend the rest of his years playing out a role he doesn't want, but, still. Still. Cater's voice grows small. "Please."
Idia isn't so dense that he can't tell he's made Cater uncomfortable. No surprise there, he's the Gloomurai after all. Negativity follows him like a personal storm cloud. It's not fair to Cater, who was only making a misguided attempt to be his friend. He needs to make things right.
So he nods gingerly. "I'll try. Promise." It's the best he can do. He doesn't want to die, but what does that really mean when he still has days where he feels like the living dead? Sighing, he tries to uncurl a little so Cater won't have to cling to him in worry like this anymore.
"I... I think I need some time AFK in sleep mode."
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A few taps on the keyboard and the dungeon crawler from earlier comes up. "Been working on this one for a few weeks, but I started coding when I was a little nerdling sprout. I could hax0r any system before... before I...."
His fingers twitch on the keys and his eyes go glassy for a moment, staring off into nothing. Then as quickly as it started, the moment passes, Idia shivering and relaxing with a sigh. "... sorry, malware again. Comes and goes, gotta be careful about executable triggers."
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It feels like he should say more, even though it also doesn’t feel like his place. “Just take it one day at a time. Everyone has their own pace to deal with these things.” And, is this where he should say that it’s okay to let others help him learn to shoulder the burden? That’s way too personal. “I’m happy as long as you aren’t pushing yourself too hard.”
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What Cater's saying echoes the things the others told him after they saved him from himself. No one spewed hate or anger at him for what he put them through. Everyone in that room knows that Idia punishes himself worse than anyone ever could.
That last sentence catches his attention, though. He turns his face slightly toward Cater, blinking. "You're... happy? Because of me? But why?"
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"Well, like, we're friends now, right?" And having friends is fine, as long as there isn't much expected of him. Sure, he's already been putting in way more effort with Idia than he ever has with anyone else, but that's just because Idia's a whole different level! "I wouldn't keep coming out of my way to hang out here with you if I didn't have fun doing it. I'd be a pretty bad friend if I didn't have the most fun when you're having fun along with me."
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"I'd never had friends before. I didn't want any. It hurts...." His breath catches, crackling the tail end of the word. He sounds more raw when he tries again. "It hurts when you lose someone."
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“Yeah,” he agrees without thinking. “It does.”
Ah, no, he wasn’t supposed to say that out loud. Quickly, he turns away to reach for his iced coffee. It gives him just enough time to put himself back together.
“That’s why I always live in the moment! We only have so much time here at school together, and if we didn’t have shared classes we’d never have met. So it’s important to #carpediem!”
There. A truth wrapped up in pretty words.
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Live in the moment. Only so much time.
Idia tried that once, when he was a child. A single attempt to live as he wanted, to escape his family's curse. Time was stolen, not from him but his little brother. Short-sighted, unlucky, foolish: Idia was all of these, even when he tried to recreate what had been lost. Maybe it had worked out in the end, thanks to the efforts of others, but Idia had still caused everyone so much trouble simply by being selfish.
"Even if it means PvP to get what you want? Is that really okay, going after a limited quest or item when somebody else might deserve it more?"
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"I don't think that's something anyone can answer for you," he finally decides, still looking off to the side lest his hastily re-applied mask fall off again. "What is or isn't okay, I mean. It's all about what you're willing to live with."
And can you live with yourself? Can you live with the consequences. Cater feels a shudder coming on. Can I live with myself?
"Life would be totes easy mode if we had all the answers!" He laughs. Tries to laugh. It's a little stilted. "That's why I don't bother thinking about the future. If I want something today, what happens tomorrow is something for future Cater to handle!"
But I'm selfish. Just lie. People don't want the truth from you, they want you to say what they want to hear. In the end, everyone's only thinking about themselves anyway.
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"But it's not just future you." The gentle tapping of a fingertip on plastic. "Every button input affects the world. You open a chest in a village and you've got new loot, but what happens to the NPC it belonged to first? What did you do to their future?"
Ortho's future is back on track now. Idia was willing to give up everything to make that happen.
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So, screw it. He'll just ask. It feels like Idia needs to tell someone. And ultimately, what's one more thing to file away in his own memory banks?
"Idia, did you hurt someone?" That has to be it, right? Something is haunting him.
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"... was a monster even before I Overblotted," he whispers.
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Unlike Cater, Idia wears his heart on his sleeve.
It feels like they've been silent for ages, even if it's probably only been a minute. Swallowing, Cater moves himself in front of Idia's chair, sitting on the ground before him. "Hey," he finally says, reaching out to touch the back of Idia's hands before slowly curling his fingertips around his palms. "You aren't a monster. You've never been a monster, no matter what happened."
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"I... I killed my brother," he grits out, pain soaked into every syllable. "I killed Ortho, because I'm not the hero PC, he was... I was always just... a monster that ended the hero's story...."
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You don't. You just don't. Cater feels himself beginning to break out in a cold sweat of panic, but he can't afford to lose his cool. It's not just the power of such an admission but...Ortho? His brother?
But Ortho is a robot.
Idia built him.
Idia built himself a brother.
Why would anyone do that?
There's only one reason, right? You put it all together and you're trying to fix a horrible, terrible mistake. You need to find a way to cope with something that's impossible to cope with. Instead of grieving, Idia did the only thing that made sense to him. Cater doesn't want to know any more. It's already way too much. But even so, his hands clench more tightly around Idia's. Gently, he asks, "How old were you?"
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Friends are so difficult to gain but so easy to lose.
"... seven, I think." His voice has gone soft and tired, thick with tears. "Tried to partition off the bad sectors, data's corrupted here and there." Shock weathered away so much of those days, except for the electric shock agony of he's gone, Ortho's gone that layered into every inch of who Idia was and is. "What I did... that's embedded in the BIOS, won't ever forget."
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"You were just a kid," he mumbles weakly. Even without knowing the details, he can say without hesitation that Idia didn't do it. Maybe he put them in a dangerous position, but kids don't know any better. They were probably trying to play, or something.
This is so much to unpack, and Cater has absolutely no frame of reference to know how to comfort him with words. He let's go of Idia's hands, and decides instead to stand and wrap his arms around the tall teenager's shoulders, leaning over him to pull him into an embrace. It seems safer than trying to pull Idia out of his coiled ball.
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"We wanted to be heroes, explorers. But Shrouds... we're not allowed to leave. We had to sneak out." He's so, so tired. "I hacked the security system. I opened a door that let a black hat in. They broke the seal on Tartarus, it's where STYX researches Phantoms. One got out, and it... it found us, me and Ortho...."
He remembers screams, but he's not sure if they were his or Ortho's, his nightmares or memories.
"I... I had to fix it... it was my fault...."
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He swallows a knot in his throat and considers asking if Idia's ever told anyone this before. He's pretty sure he knows the answer, but if he hears it, that'll make all of this even more real and there's already so much to unpack. Half of what Idia's saying about his home he doesn't even really understand.
"You don't deserve the punishment you're giving yourself."
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It's... laughter. A hollow, mirthless chuckle, a sound of despair rather than humor.
"Then what do I deserve, Mr. Cater? Because the others wouldn't let me die, either. I've been shown too much compassion already."
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Whatever happened between him and everyone that had been taken by STYX, he's glad that they saved him. That they treated him delicately--or at least as delicately as that group of people can be expected to treat someone.
"Nobody deserves what you've gone through."
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Ortho still has a technomantic body. Idia still has his nightmares. Some things can't be fixed.
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"Nobody can change the past," he agrees. "All you can do is look forward, ask yourself what your time is better spent doing. It's not a one-step process, and I think you've beaten yourself up more than enough. I'm not saying that you'll feel better tomorrow or even a year from now, but..."
But what? Cater just said he doesn't look toward the future. Not that that was exactly the truth or anything, of course, but every word he chooses feels like stepping deeper into a big, black ocean and he's nearly up to his chin already.
"You Overblotted. You made a huge step already, deciding to live. So now you have to take that life and find the best way to live it. How would Ortho want you to live it?"
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He doesn't want to go back to the Island of Woe, but he has no choice. He has to be near blot or the Shroud curse will eat at him.
"Glad Ortho has lots of friends now. He's a good kid. All I want for him, really."
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He just hopes that Idia gets the help he needs. His stomach churns, knowing he probably won't. Most certainly won't. He didn't give himself nearly enough time to work through this in a place where he can be supported. Wrapped up in thought, he hasn't processed the fact that he's still cradling Idia to his chest, his eyes clenched tightly shut.
He needs to stop talking, needs this to be over, but as much as he wants to be: Cater isn't heartless. So he takes that final step that takes his feet off the ocean floor and his head sucks underneath the surface.
"Don't give up, okay?" There's so, so much out there for him, if only he could see it, Cater's sure. Maybe his whole life has been fucked up, maybe he's destined to spend the rest of his years playing out a role he doesn't want, but, still. Still. Cater's voice grows small. "Please."
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So he nods gingerly. "I'll try. Promise." It's the best he can do. He doesn't want to die, but what does that really mean when he still has days where he feels like the living dead? Sighing, he tries to uncurl a little so Cater won't have to cling to him in worry like this anymore.
"I... I think I need some time AFK in sleep mode."
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