ohthehumanities | catchall; ylfa

Knew about it sooner?

Twenty years ago, my father won the competition. [He looks down.] He, too, encountered Sachin's research. I didn't know it at the time, of course. But... it threw him into extreme despair. Eventually, he left for the desert--trying to find a way to make a difference, I suppose. But he went missing, and later died.

[Which is the reason he's so sensitive about all of the curses and effects that mess with your head.]

...I'm sorry. That's awful.

[she's pretty sensitive about curses that mess with your head, too.]

I wish someone had known in time to help your father, too.

Mm. Thank you.

[He won't say "it's alright," out of respect for his mother. He has no right to say it anyway, given that it was his fault.]

What's important is that it won't happen to anyone else from now on.

At least you did something about it, Kaveh.

[the pig is still in the vicinity, so have a memory]

[

]

[SORRY YLFA GIVE HIM A SECOND TO PROCESS THIS]

[okay. she will wait, feeling more awkward with each passing second.]

Sorry you had to see that, Kaveh. I know what I did was gross.

[Well... look. He can't deny that, even though a part of him, despite how he's reeling, wishes he could. Things are so, so complicated with Ylfa and her team now, so messy and awkward--but that doesn't mean he can magically stop caring about what happens to her.

He'd had a feeling, early on, that Ylfa had been through a lot. That despite how she'd explained her background, there was something rough there. It's the same way he'd felt about Shenhe, and he'd mourned how little he truly got to know her. The same way he feels about Vash, and Kaveh is only just beginning to put the pieces of his puzzle together.

But he hadn't thought it would be something like this. And how could he? For all that Kaveh has been through, all the pain and loss and hardship, he's still lived such a soft life. Something like this--it's so far beyond his lived experience that there's simply no way he could've been prepared to see it.

But... well. He'd told someone else that he wasn't afraid of monsters. How can he go back on that now? Especially when she'd been forced into such a thing. He'd seen it himself.

So it takes a minute, but he does find his voice.]

That was your... story? [He remembers, kind of.]

[she can kind of tell seeing this is fucking him up and she feels sorry about it. it's a gruesome memory where a little girl starves and dies for a long time because she believes herself to be something too innocent for the situation she's in, she believes that her role in the fairy tale was to remain innocent and be saved, only to learn that was all a lie. it scared her, too, when it happened to her. there's no such thing as a person too innocent to be hurt, or a person too innocent to be driven to animal extremes by hunger.]

I guess you could put it that way. My story is, um, supposed to be a lot different than that. He's supposed to eat me and then the woodsman arrives and cuts grandma and I out of his stomach and kills him.

...But that's how it happened for me.

[Sometimes you're just a little guy and then you witness The Horrors, because you're in a murdergame and that's how it works.

But he does, at least, get his bearings. He's unused to things like this, yes--but he's more resilient than one might expect, given the way he is at times. And four weeks in this place have gotten him a little more used to gruesome things than he otherwise would've been. Beyond that, if he's good at anything outside of his craft, it's putting other people before himself in every capacity--so his gaze softens, and he reaches out to put a light hand on her shoulder.]

I'm sorry you had to go through that, Ylfa.

[she will allow the hand on her shoulder, sighing out in relief.]

It's...okay. I think it taught me something more valuable than any lesson my mom ever taught me when she told me to stay on the path.

Mm. [...] Some things in life can only be endured.

[Life is full of more pain than it isn't. He knows that. If anything, it's admirable that she's held onto her courage and her kindness for so long, despite going through that.

Kaveh's the sort of person who believes that it's an inherent human responsibility to help others, though he's not naive or blind to reality. But knowing that someone was going to help her, experiencing that slow extinguishing of hope--it's almost worse than if she'd believed no one was coming in the first place.]

...Why did the story change like that? Do you know?

I'm not sure I agree with that. [at least, that's not the lesson she took away from it.] I thought I could just endure it for as long as I could, and eventually someone would come along to save me.

But sometimes nobody is coming. Holding out as long as possible just prolongs it. You have to do something, even something you think you aren't capable of, or die.

[which is kind of relevant to a lot of decisions she's been making here.]

The wolf who appeared was something different than the usual wolf from my story. He was more like a god. That's why it was like that. [so weird and metaphorical, with time passing so strangely.]

I meant more... emotionally. Things like pain and fear--sometimes there's no cure for them.

[Sometimes you're stuck in a horrible situation, or you're mired in guilt and sorrow, and the only way out is through. He agrees with her point, though; he also learned to care for himself, though to a much lesser degree than what she went through.]

That seems strange... but you said there were a lot of different versions of your story, right?

Yeah. And this version is a very weird one.

Do you... [He pauses, trying to figure out how to phrase his question.] Do you know how it ends?

Oh, boy. Well. I guess it ends with however I died and wound up here.

[...]

Endings are complicated. That's kind of what we're trying to go back for. Our endings are written in ink. It's pretty permanent, but it could change.

But there are some people who don't want to try. They just want to destroy everything, because they think it can't be fixed. And it's sort of our fault they know how to get to the ink to do that, so we have to stop them.

I see. That's what you meant by saving the world, then.

[It's a little difficult for him to grasp the specifics of how her world works, even with her explanation--but he can understand this much, at least.]

Yeah. I know most of you think the Arthurs don't have anything to do with you, but...I'm pretty sure they do.

But it doesn't matter. [nobody really has to agree with their reasons. she mostly did it for rin, anyway.]

catchall; ylfa

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