isleofavalon | you go ahead and dance, I'll just sit (August stuff)

🧙 WHO: Shinji and whoever!
⚔️️ WHAT: Don't Treep quest, SEES House shenanigans, some asshole completely forgetting his own birthday is a thing.
🕒 WHEN: early August
🗺️ WHERE: farms, SEES House
⚠️ WARNINGS: none anticipated

A. Don't Treep, Man (OTA)

Shinji can't, as a general rule, be bothered with the quest board. He's tired, okay. He was tired before he got here. Frankly, he was burnt out before he got to Liminal Space.

(He'd say the animal-parts curse didn't stick on him because he has built-in magic resistance, but he's honestly not sure if that's the case anymore or not.)

But. Tell him there's danger of a food shortage and he will do anything in his power to fucking well make sure there's not one. He's done his time with little to no food available, and he's not about to let it happen again.

He's on-site more than once in the time it takes to get the farms back to rights. Sometimes he's helping with the heavy lifting; others, he just shows up with some food for the people doing the heavy lifting to eat.

B. SEES House (closed to people who'd plausibly be there)

It's kinda weird, actually living with people from the dorm again.

In Liminal Space, Minako had her own room, Shinji didn't even live in his since Helena gave him a bed first and it would've been weird, and no one else from SEES overlapped with him. Not long enough to actually need a place to stay, anyway.

It's a good weird, but it's still kinda weird. In any case, it's no one he minds bothering him, if he's there to be bothered, and if nothing else he's bound to make sure everyone has dinner.

C. Some dipshit completely forgot about his birthday (closed to close CR)

It's August. Shinji's birthday is the 11th.

He hasn't thought about that fact at all, between his abysmal self-esteem and Liminal Space's general lack of... well, coherent time, really. Between-jaunts time was guesswork at best, and the jaunts themselves tended to have very weird calendars if they weren't on alternate Earths (and sometimes if they were).

If anything's gonna happen, it'll be up to his friends and acquaintances to make it happen. Mitsuru might be the only person here who even knows when Shinji's birthday is.

(OOC: Basically, a place for a partything to be plopped, if a partything is to be had. ICly, Shinji won't be remotely bothered if there isn't one; OOC, I won't either, since I only thought of this myself on Sunday. XD)

D. Kotone's the Wild Card here-- I mean, what?

[None of those appeal? Feel free to hit me with something else! Shinji works in the kitchen at the karaoke bar, and can occasionally be found Just Chillin' in other places.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

...ah. One of those kind of things. "You actually talked to him about it?"

"That depends on what you mean by 'talk'," Keith said. "We talked a bit about it back home, but Shiro here... he's not from the same point in time as me. I don't know if he talked to me about it, yet." Timelines! Fun!

"And... you plan to find that out without talkin' to him how, exactly?" The 'dumbass' is heavily implied. "Pretty sure he'd rather be down an arm than mind controlled."

Odds are high it's a bit hypocritical of Shinji to say this, if this conversation is happening before his birthday. But that's also slightly different - he didn't have a chance to say much of anything about it to Ken back in Iwatodai, and it's also very obvious when someone in SEES has made it past the beginning of October 2009.

(There's a little variation, sure, but the basic shape of it's the same.)

"Well, unless there was a version of me in liminal space, too, at some point, I get the impression that he didn't, since our memories from home line up until the point shortly after that fight, and I know everything that happened after that up until the point in time I'm from..."

Keith sighed heavily.

"But... I mean... yeah. And, either way, I already know what he's going to tell me." Keith and Shiro were a lot alike in some ways.

"Even if there was, you specifically haven't talked to him specifically." There's stuff he talked to Minako about that he probably won't be telling Kotone any time soon.

(Not least because Kotone's still working on that whole 'do I really have to Be Okay for everyone else' thing.)

"So stop beatin' yourself up over it and clear the air. Don't be me."

Keith considered the words, then gave Shinji a curious look in regards to that last bit.

"Don't be you, huh?" Okay... Keith was more than happy to flip this conversation away from himself, and he went for it to see if Shinji would go along with it. "That sounds like it has something of a story."

"All beatin' myself up for shit ever got me was shot. Don't be me."

You sure you still want to know more?

Honestly... yes?! Keith blinked, visibly concerned.

"I doubt that'll be the case here," he said. "What the heck happened?"

"Probably not. My point stands, though." Shinji's not sure how much of the clusterfuck could have been avoided if he'd tried to talk to Ken sooner, but... well.

He's quiet for a long, long while before he actually answers. "An accident. But Ken's mom still ended up dead and it was still my fault. By the time he was ready to give me hell about it, I would've let him, but someone else interrupted."

"Mm." Keith frowned, looking down a bit. Another case of 'not your fault but taking the blame'... Okay. So, it made sense then. He nodded. "Does it make me sound like a hypocrite if I say that an accident isn't something to beat yourself up over?"

"No. But I did it anyway. Bein' able to actually call it an accident is... it took a lot to get there." And he still doesn't ever expect Ken to fully forgive him for it, and that's all right.

"If Liminal Space was good for anything, it helped me stop that shit, more or less."

Took a lot... Keith had a feeling it was going to be similar for him and probably take a lot for him to be okay with what he did. It wasn't really an accident. He'd done it on purpose, both to save Shiro and out of self-preservation considering Shiro was trying to use that arm to slice open his skull with a hot energy blade. He had the scar across the side of his face to prove it. That still didn't make it easy to think about.

"Yeah..." He gave a tiny sigh. "It is a lot, and I know he wouldn't want me blaming myself. It's just hard not to." If anything, Keith was pretty sure Shiro blamed himself, and he had even less reason to blame himself considering the whole clone and mind-control issue. Keith hadn't been angry at Shiro at all. He'd been angry it had happened, at the person who did it to him, at the situation... but not at Shiro.

"Yeah, well. Still bet he'd rather be down an arm than mind-controlled."

And they can probably agree that while it sucked, it needed to happen.

Keith gave a mirthless sigh of a laugh, and shook his head slightly.

"Yeah..." He'd heard a little bit about how Shiro had been acting-... well, the clone, anyway... had been acting on the ship while Keith was in the Blades. Another thing he regretted because, had he been there, he might have finally caught on sooner and been able to help before things had gotten as bad as they had. But, again, he needed to stop blaming himself. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I'll talk to him," he finally said quietly. "I just... need to work my way up to it."

"Long as you actually get there."

But actually doing this shit is the hard part, so that's as far as Shinji plans to push the point.

Keith nodded.

"Yeah... I know."

It was definitely the hard part.

"Thanks... you know, for listening..."

Shinji shrugs. "No point in you sittin' and stewing forever."

That's... probably a 'you're welcome,' after filtered through a general lack of polish and specific 'what do you mean I helped.'

"Yeah..." Keith shrugged, too. Honestly, knowing himself, Keith knew he would have likely done exactly that. He was good at just holding things in and brooding over them, often with pretty negative results.

"I should probably get back to work." He was finished with his sandwich, and it had definitely helped. "I'll see you around?"

"Yeah, probably." He sure doesn't expect to be going anywhere any time soon, anyway.

you go ahead and dance, I'll just sit (August stuff)

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