“I’m familiar with the concept…” Of what it’s like to be settled for. To be second place, second place to… amnesia, to the cruelty brandished instead. She was a secondary thought for so long, and perhaps that much had affected how she treated others. Perhaps she had been more poorly affected than previously thought. “I care as much as I can, Makise-san,” reclines back to respectful terminology. Being too familiar would perhaps set her off as it had the one she’d learned Japanese from in the first place.
“I care… I'm trying to care as best I can, and it isn’t all that much. I’m not healed, I’m a broken person. I never… claimed to be good for you. I think I just failed to remind you of it,” failed to speak truthfully and without omission. “No, I don’t think that…” Her replies are weakening by the minute, and Utavel’s arms pull closer around her torso in attempts to hug herself, but it feels more like she's hooking into her flesh in attempts to keep it together.
It hurts, it’s all hurting. The fact she caused this in someone else hurts all the more, and it gives rise to anger at Utavel’s own actions. Kurisu turns away from her, and Utavel at least feels spared to be able to make what facial expressions she does without trying to maintain any form of veil or mask. It’s a relief in its own right, though it shouldn’t be. Kurisu is turning her back on her, furious and rightfully so.
“No, you’re here because of you, Makise-san. Don’t sell yourself short of that much.” She thinks to keep talking, Kurisu’s back is easier to talk to than the unflinching gaze of a girl Utavel saw potential and love in. A girl that had the level of intellect to match and keep up with her, but with none of the brokeness she had been so severely clipped by. Oh, Kurisu, you did deserve better than her. Whether Utavel were a better person or not, this girl deserved someone who was not so broken from the outset. Not so different, so cruel, so violent in disposition.
"I… I-It matters…“ Damn her, and damn this fucking sniveling. ”You matter, Kurisu Makise, and don’t let whatever I’ve done make you think otherwise. I have no defense for my actions, were they intentional… o-or not, just… don’t become like me. If you have to leave me behind as an example of what not to be, so be it; so long as you don’t follow my patterns. J-Just… Just go, or I-I’ll go and… figure this out somewhere else where you aren't inflicted with my learning curve.“
“...Is this what you want?” She stops in her tracks, the heel of her left foot already off the ground. “Do you want me to leave? Do you want to be like this?” Kurisu’s voice is steady but thin, the effort she’s putting into keeping it from shaking is evident.
It’s already over of course. Kurisu has made her decision to leave, regardless of what Utavel says or does. She had to. It would be irresponsible and dangerous to enable this behavior and treatment to go without consequence, even if it were to mysteriously cease. The damage had already been done, and Kurisu had to do what was right for both of them, no matter what. A tear falls from her cheek and in the brief silence the sound of it hitting the floor is like a gunshot to her ears.
“Don’t become like you...?” She can’t feel her hands anymore but she’s sure that once she can the cramping will put her in agony. “You don’t have a patent on being broken. You’re not the only person who’s lost people you love. Who’s been forgotten by the ones most important to you. Who’s cursed to carry memories you would kill to forget,” she turns slowly to face Utavel again, furious indignation lighting a fire behind her eyes. How dare she behave like those were pains that only she could carry?
“I had my chance to be like you, Utavel. I had the choice to trap myself in bitter miserable isolation long before we ever met. I chose to make myself better,” it had been a choice, and not an easy one. It wasn’t possible to accurately represent how much easier it would’ve been to give in to despair and let herself whither away as the will to keep herself alive vanished. She could never describe how difficult it had been to get out of bed in the morning and eat simply so she wouldn’t starve. Nothing had forced her to do it. She’d survived because she chose to, nothing else.
“You don’t have to be the way you are Utavel,” had she been calmer, more rational, Kurisu wouldn’t have bothered trying to make an argument that she already knew was pointless. The logical part of her mind told her that there was nothing she could say that Utavel hadn’t likely heard before, and that if it hadn’t done anything then it certainly wouldn’t now. That part of her mind wasn’t calling the shots right now.
“You don’t have to live in your own misery. You don’t have to be so preoccupied with the pain you’re carrying that you can’t notice when you’re planting it in other people. The only thing making you do that is you.”
yousharknotpass
gracieabrams
turnnoffyourmind
gummygunk
2087
