xavier_institute_logs | Opening Day [OPEN]

There's the other shoe. Hijikata feels it again, another punch to the gut when he's already reeling, and he finds himself taking a step back, as if that will help him find his footing; instead, he ends up sinking into his chair, feeling the world grind to a sickening and disorienting halt, just managing to avoid dropping his cigarette on the carpet.

What can he say? If Souji doesn't know him -- he was so young when they first met. Did he keep anything? There's no conscious decision to close off his body language, to try (somewhat uselessly, for once in his life) to wipe the emotion off his face-- his heart is going into triage mode, cutting off as much as it can afford to in hopes of saving something with his world so rapidly rebuilding itself and collapsing again.

He speaks in Japanese, perfectly native, the tone suddenly empty and cold.

"Everything?"

He recognizes denial trying to set in -- it's not true, because it can't be. He knows the world isn't fair, but to give Souji back and take him away again in the space of one sentence...

Souji feels his back hitting the wall, realizes he has flinched away from the other man at the exact same time as he does the same thing; it must look pretty strange from the outside, and he's not quite sure why he does it. Well, except for the part of him that is screaming that he doesn't know what to do with this situation at all, the part which isn't sure if anything has ever been as intimidating as having to deal with hurting another person in this way. He is used to causing physical harm, and he's been told that his attitude toward such things is unnaturally unfeeling - maybe that is true, but he has no protection against doing this to someone.

(Has anyone ever cared enough about him for him to be able to?)

(And why does he care this much?)

He can feel his heart speeding up, his breathing growing shorter and more strained, and he is all too aware why. People use long words about it all the time, but what it all means is that some mutations are the same as powers, and some are more like a disease.

"Everything," he echoes softly, reaching out one hand and closing the still open door, a small and rather pathetic attempt to at least shield the man in front of him from some other indignity. "Except- Except it's more correct to say that I remember everything, but it's not the same as what you remember. I don't remember this place, I don't remember you. I remember... other things."

Edited 2014-09-05 18:13 (UTC)

The thought he's managed not to have as all the other students came out of stasis finally pushes its way into his mind:

Why are they fine, and not Souji?

He feels sick with himself, because he knows, deep down, he'd trade any of them for him without a second thought. It isn't as if it's a thought that's really on the table or ever could be, but he knows he would, and the thought feels at once completely natural and unforgivably treasonous.

"Don't play around, Souji. We were here nine years before..."

Before that day. His throat goes dry, and his head spins; he puts it in his hands, forcing in each breath.

The stasis thing he'd heard about still seems absolutely unbelievable, like something out of the old Sci-Fi flicks that his friend back at the psych ward had made him watch. Oh, he supposes that this probably is a pretty childish thing to say, in a world where mutants can do just about anything with their powers, but that doesn't actually make believing a word easier.

Or well, that's not entirely true. Souji's suspension of disbelief is usually uncommonly wide, to the point where he will often be ready to believe things that most other people would dismiss. But not when it directly pertains to himself like this; not when it's supposed to be the reason why everything he knows is a lie.

"Nine years ago," he replies thinly, "I was kicked out of school for the first time for hurting another student. That happened a couple of times more until my sister had me put into foster care." He's not saying the words the other man wants to hear, but they're the only ones he's got, and if they're true or not doesn't actually change this. "I'm not playing. I don't think I'm capable of being that mean, and I hope the person you remember wasn't either."

Deep breaths; breathing techniques he's been taught to counter the panic feeling, the one that squeezes his chest like someone stepping on it, forcing the air out. Souji can't explain why, but the unreasonable thought that he's somehow letting the other man down seems to him impossible to bear. "This... is what I remember. I have no way if proving it, but... for you, I'm not sure if that changes anything."

Does it change anything?

No. Because Souji is alive, is standing before him again with his small shoulders and his clever eyes, with his soft lips drawn into a rare, but still familiar frown. Souji exists in this world again. Nothing matters next to that, does it?

But of course, it does. Souji doesn't know him, can't trust him-- that foundation of the world they once shared is gone, ripped out at its base. He wants desperately to reach out and hold him again, to feel like they'll figure everything else out if they have that, but he's a stranger in Souji's eyes-- worse yet, possibly even a threat, not something he wants to be seen as in light of Souji's mutation.

The concept of proof stands out of the dull wash of Souji's words, and his eyes are drawn in a flicker to the bookcase.

"I believe you aren't lying to me." Not that he's right, but that he's being honest. He can see the old photos burned into his mind without so much as reaching for the book. Will it help him, if he shows him, or only shake up an already unsettled mindset?

He catches that small flicker of eyes - always so observant, that's what people have kept telling him, usually citing hypervigilance as the reason. Now he knows that this isn't true, but if his mutation more or less does the same thing, he supposes the difference really isn't that big. He hesitates only a moment before bridging the distance with a couple of swift steps, one hand going up to run along the spines of the books there. What was it that the other man had been looking at? Considering his words, he can at least make an educated guess.

"There is proof in here somewhere, isn't there? Proof of... of us knowing each other." Probably photographs, right? That's such a strange thought. That's something normal people from normal families have, isn't it? Photo albums. Memories neatly pressed between the pages like the flowers his sister used to dry and keep, still beautiful even as the fragrance went away.

Souji doesn't have anything. Not a single picture, not a memento, nothing. Is that odd? It strikes him that he doesn't even have any luggage - he remembers it getting lost at the airport, but why had he not tried harder to find it again? He looks down, and the clothes he's wearing don't even look like his own.

He can't breathe. He can't breathe. His heart is beating too fast.

"I want to see," he manages to get out, his voice sounding strange in his own ears. He turns around, eyes seeking the other man's. "Please?"

He can't answer, for a moment, confronted directly with that question. Souji has always been perceptive, especially when he least wants him to be, but it's just... it's uncanny, and between that and the striking familiarity of the exact clothes Souji disappeared in all those years ago, it cements a certainty in his mind that doesn't bring him much comfort at all.

This is Souji. The quiet child with the lonely eyes, who reached for his hand all those years ago and never really let go. The young man who sat in his office until the work was finished or he wasn't really getting anything done anyway, who could be so sharp and ruthless one moment and laughing and innocent the next, who littered his room with candy wrappers and teased him about his writing and he couldn't even bring himself to care about it when he turned that smile on him.

His Souji isn't somewhere else. He's standing right here, but he isn't -- he's far away, so far that he wonders if there's any hope at all of ever reaching him again. The thought is like acid, bitter and sick, burning through him and leaving emptiness behind.

And yet he can't tell him no.

"It's the blue one." A ridiculous, feminine shade. Souji, of course, had chosen it.

It's... uncomfortable, he can't deny it, to see that man's gaze fixed on him and be able to imagine at least some of what he's feeling. The absurd wish to not disappoint persists, and he can't really tell for sure why it bothers him so much to be such a let down. If he's to believe everything he's been told, this man has been waiting for him for five whole years, but Souji doesn't even know why. What was it about him that obviously made this stranger love him somehow? Was it still something he had, even like this? And did that make it hurt more or less?

His hands dart to the right book, resting his fingertips against it as if looking for a pulse for a moment before pulling it out. And then he hesitates, gripping the thing rightly. It was he who asked for it, after all, and he really wants to know, but... whatever is inside will be proof against everything he believes, he's almost certain now. So for a moment longer, he'll hover on the edge, trying to breathe before the plunge.

And then he even manages a small smile, somehow. "I like the color," he remarks softly, turning the book over, but making sure it stays shut. It remains that way as he steps over to the other man's side, placing it on the desk in front of him. It's not his memories, after all - even if perhaps it used to be. Hovering by his side like this feels strange, but what else is he supposed to do?

"Show me."

"You chose the color." There's no point hiding that much from him, if he's going to show him the rest.

He takes a long, long drag from his neglected cigarette, rolling his chair off to the side to let Souji stand near the desk as he brushes a hand over the cover of the unlabeled album. He handles it like a priest bringing out a relic, careful and methodical, with a reverence bordering on fear.

And then he opens the cover, turns a page or two, and there they are -- the both of them, Souji no older than ten or eleven, dressed in yukata and seemingly unaware of the photographer and even of the fireworks overhead, lost in over-serious conversation with each other. Despite how much he's grown (in a number of senses) since his mid-teens, Hijikata is unmistakable -- the sharpness of his facial structure and the half-hidden warmth in his dark eyes. His hair was short back then, to try and fit in at a Japanese school at his brother's insistence, but there were hints already of the body he's grown into since, broad at the shoulders and narrow at the hips. On the opposite page, they're about the same age, dressed casually, with Souji draped over Hijikata's shoulders and Hijikata struggling to look unhappy about it, his hair askew.

Those precious memories are only his now, his alone. He wants to give them back, to share them again, but how can he even begin?

"Mitsu took most of the early ones. My brother can't see."

He had figured that he was going to get to see something like this, and still it's like someone punching his lungs, pressing hard on his throat, his heart squeezed in between feelings he can't quite make sense of. He doesn't even think to ask before reaching out and touching - he has never thought too much before acting anyway, and that's his face, isn't it? And the boy next to him is unmistakably the other man, although more years have clearly passed for him than for Souji. But this... this is a fantasy, an impossible thing. He's out among strangers, at a festival, and his sister had obviously been there since she took the photo.

He doesn't remember her as uncaring, or ever unkind, just as worried eyed and worried hands and a voice that slowly frayed as helplessness started overtaking it. She hadn't wanted to do what she did. But he remembers that it had still felt as a betrayal at times.

"She used to be afraid even to take me to the store." He can hear the disbelief in his own voice, but also... longing? The latter is far more upsetting. The pictures look so nice, and he really can't remember anything like that from back then. "And most people were afraid of touching me. You... don't look afraid at all."

Edited (500 edits across the sky) 2014-09-06 14:46 (UTC)

There are things that Souji never speaks about, even to him, except with a diverting smile on his lips -- that's one of them, the conscious awareness of how feared he is by most. He dresses it up with laughter -- I'm such a dangerous person, aren't I? -- and it hurts to hear it so raw and stinging now.

"Nothing you do," he says, quiet but firm, fingers brushing over the bangs of the Souji in the other picture, "is going to make me afraid of you. Never has, and never will."

Souji was always strong, but he was vulnerable, in ways that had been his alone to see. More than anything else right now, he wants to shield him from the things that have always haunted him, to let him know he isn't facing this alone.

"I manifested early, too. My brother took me in, but... he was young. It would have been a burden even with a human child.

"He met your sister in a support group. Years and years ago."

He's really not used to speaking about these kind of things at all. With time, he has gotten used to deflecting just about anything that might hurt if he lets it get too close. He just doesn't think about it much, and smiling and making jokes comes so much more easily to him anyway; he just lets himself be carried by events, ever present in the here and now, because what point is there to dwell on all the painful things? He can't change them, he can't make them any better. They're just there, and he lets them, but he doesn't have to acknowledge them.

He doesn't know why he would say something like that now, except the sight of himself cut out of context and pasted into a life he'd never had enough imagination to properly dream of... it all leaves a sick feeling clawing on his insides, burning in his throat.

"And you could restrain me, is that it? My sister never had to give me away because she didn't have to be afraid of me anymore." He's not sure if he's trying to mock the idea, a scenario far too perfect to belong in the real world at all, or if he has some other need for hearing the words spoken aloud. He'd met this man - or rather, the boy he had been - and the course of his life had changed. Was that it?

He didn't want to believe it could have been that simple.

The disbelief in Souji's tone, like he's mocking the idea that what happened even possible, drives something else home to rest uncomfortably, painfully in his heart. To Souji now, it's unbelievable that anyone ever gave him that kind of a chance, ever cared for him that much. Something that simple sounds impossible to him. What kind of a life did he live in his mind?

"It was hardly a one-sided arrangement. My brother, I suspect, hoped that it would settle me down to have some kind of responsibility." It isn't exactly an answer to Souji's question, which perhaps just shows that he has no way to argue with the younger man on that point. It's what happened, isn't it?

He turns a few pages, and they're a little older, perhaps three years or so. His hair has started to grow out, and he's dressed well, in jeans with a sweater and blazer for the oncoming autumn. Their second autumn in America, he thinks, with his hair that long. At his side, the Souji in the photo looks like he's laughing to himself at some unknown joke; his own face is stern, but softer about the eyes than before.

"You came with me, when I decided to come here for school." He suspects Souji rather insisted on being allowed to.

"I came with you," Souji repeats slowly, once more reaching out to touch, as if he needs to assure himself of the physical existence of the picture. It's not just something he is dreaming, some absurd nightmare - is it a nightmare? - that he'll soon be shaken awake from. Back in Japan, back where life was sterile rooms and calming voices, but at least it made sense.

If that's what happened at all.

He continues to follow up on Hijikata's story with the events as he remembers them; the bleak negative of every impossibly idyllic picture. "Back then I think I was still being passed around in foster care. No one really wanted me to stay for long - I can't really blame them, right?" A muted laugh. "It... didn't really matter if the families I came to were good or not."

He almost feels childish for telling the other man at all. He has his own set of memories, ones that can be proven and quantified as more than mere ghosts in someone's mind, so what does he care? Except he really does seem to care, deeply and personally. That in itself is a thought Souji has to back away from quickly right now, because it opens up like a chasm before his feet, and he can't seem to see the bottom at all.

"But in this place... Did I learn to get any better at controlling myself at all? Is that really possible?" And still he can't resist asking.

He watches Souji's fingers on the page, hears the interlaced hope and disbelief in his voice, and knows one thing.

Even if this feels like losing Souji all over again, like watching him slip away in each moment, he will protect him. He'll do every single thing in his power to help him feel safe, feel accepted, feel like he has a place again. His own feelings (like twisted shrapnel inside him, tearing him apart with each breath -- why had they been turned on again at all, after so long?) are secondary. They're irrelevant.

All that's important is to teach Souji what he can of what he forgot. To give him that hope again.

"Troublesome students aren't too unheard of here. They welcomed you. They welcomed us."

Because he'd been his own fair share of problems, hadn't he? Cold and sharp and selfish, untrusting, always getting into trouble with women and their boyfriends.

"You got better, and you will again. Even when we were young, there were some things I could teach you. There are more people with more specialized knowledge here. You'll learn again."

Again. As if he's already been taught before. As if he's actually had the ability not to be either a danger or a bother - or both - to everyone around him, and then it got taken away from him. And instead, he gets to remember a lifetime of never having anything even close to that kind of control; of not even knowing what was wrong with him in the first place.

If what they tell him about his memories is true - and he just isn't ready to truly believe that yet - then it really isn't fair.

Still, these thoughts aren't helping him. He knows they aren't. He's being illogical, silly, and probably a burden to this poor man. After all, Hijikata is only trying to help him, isn't he? And now more than ever it seems as if Souji needs help, and so that alone really does deserve a smile, and a kinder approach than he's given him so far.

The panic feeling is still there, but it's always there to some extent. He can ignore it. He knows he can.

"Well, I have definitely heard that I can be very troublesome, so I'm glad I fit right into the student profile, in that case. Last I heard, I think I might actually have left troublesome far behind me. Or at least I had the very last upgrade." He tilts his head forward, ending up watching the other man's face upside-down since he's leaning on the desk still, his hair for a moment spilling over the polished wood and the album. "Is that how I was before? Is that how you were before too, Hijikata-san?"

It's his posture, the ridiculous way he sort of bends himself around him, that strikes Hijikata in the chest this time. The fall of long, dark hair over the smooth wood of his desk, the little smile, the Hijikata-san...

It's suddenly hard to breathe. He leans back, taking another drag, grasping desperately at his calm.

"I never saw you that way. I was, though, by all accounts."

Oh. That certainly seems to have done more harm than good, didn't it? Souji supposes that makes sense, in a stupid and tragic kind of way. If he's tense and unhappy, he probably reminds the other man a lot less of the sweet, smiling version of himself in the pictures, after all. His shoulders slump just a little bit, and once more that feeling of being a disappointment eats away at him.

But what can he do? It's a choice where no answer is right and wrong, and it leaves him stranded, so he has to go with what still feels more useful. And so he laughs softly, perhaps even a bit apologetically. "Maybe I just needed a chance to become just as much of a delinquent." A pause, and then he adds in a quieter voice, "I'm sorry that I don't know what's going to upset you before it's already done. I don't mean to."

Souji can always goddamn tell, can't he? He sees that slump to his shoulders, and hates how powerless he feels.

Because what can he do? How can he possibly soothe him? Comforting Souji was, for a long time, very physical. Not sexual, at least not until the end and not necessarily even then, but intimate all the same, and he's a stranger now. He can't reach out and touch his cheek, or wrap an arm around his shoulders -- Hell, knowing Souji, the attempt might get him seriously hurt. But without it, how can he help?

"I'm not upset. Don't worry about a thing like that." Anything was going to upset him at the moment, he felt sure. The differences were bad, and the similarities were worse.

"I'll make one thing clear. Whatever you remember and whatever you forget, I'm here."

"I think you are. But I won't bring it up again if you think it's pointless to talk about it." After all, he could remember endless people trying to get him to talk about things that were upsetting, things that hurt, and whether these memories were true or not, that didn't change how frustrating the thought was even now. If he said that he'd felt betrayed and alone when his sister gave up on him; if he talked about what it was like to beg someone not to beat you, because you were afraid of what you might do to them; if he admitted that it had felt good to get into gang fights simply because it meant he was doing something right... would that make it better? There was no changing either of those things now.

If he asked Hijikata what it was that hurt him every time something he did managed to, could he be sure he wasn't making it worse?

"Thank you." A soft, rueful titter. "I imagine that you don't feel thanks are necessary, but I can't actually remember ever doing anything to deserve that, so it still feels like the right thing to do. And I'm going to need someone, I think."

Edited 2014-09-07 02:03 (UTC)

It's not pointless. He needs to talk about it, feels utterly overwhelmed by the scale and the destruction of the things inside him, but he knows already he isn't going to -- Souji was always the one who could understand him, and it's not right to burden him with his own feelings now.

Hasn't he borne it in silence for a long time already, anyway? It's just another boulder on the mountain. He doesn't need to tell anyone. If he acts as if it isn't there...

"You've done more than you know. Don't worry about it too much more than that."

There's so much pain there. Souji knows that with the memories he has right now, he hasn't exactly had an easy life. There really has been a lot of things that have hurt him, things which have been scary and confusing and overwhelming, and things he will probably never stop regretting.

Right now, it feels as if a lot of those things are hitting him all at once.

But... it's not the same, is it? Souji's never really had much at all, and he's made himself an existence out of nothingness. But Hijikata seems like a man who has rebuilt himself around some huge and aching void, and suddenly the foundation is crumbling, letting the darkness out.

Had Souji really done that? Had someone loved him so much that this is the result? That is a horribly compelling thought, and he's probably unkind for feeling that way. "That's the second time you tell me not to worry about things, which makes me think that I probably should." And how did his hand end up on Hijikata's shoulder, suddenly urging forward gently? No matter what he does, Souji seems incapable of teaching himself not to touch people. "But I admit you're making me curious and these-" the other hand gently touches a page of the photo album "-aren't my memories to root around in right now."

Edited 2014-09-07 02:41 (UTC)

The touch burns like the first breath back into empty lungs, and it's only his extreme control over his body that keeps him from flinching away. Why is lying to Souji so much harder than lying to everyone else, even when it's for their own good?

"Curious?"

He wishes he wouldn't be. Souji doesn't need anyone else's pain right now, let alone his.

Edited 2014-09-07 03:11 (UTC)

It's not the first time Souji wonders why his first response to any reaction is always to push against it; to poke and prod and try to reach deeper into it, understand it. He finds himself leaning in closer, body half propped against the desk as it seems to make decision all on its own accord. Even this close, he can hardly smell the cigarette smoke at all.

"It's hard not to be. You're someone who loved me so much that even after five years, losing me is still hurting you. And I-" His voice falters a bit, and so does the smile as he leans away once more. When it comes back, it's wistful. "I've never really had a person like that in my life. So I want to know more. And that's... probably rather selfish, I think."

The word buried in there cuts to the core of him -- not the least because, for all the truth of it, it was never really something they said.

He always regretted not saying it -- but there had never been a reason to. Souji knew what was important whether or not he said the L word, didn't he?

He takes another drag, looks away without drawing away physically.

"What do you want to know?"

Opening Day [OPEN]

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/wakes up, tags gently, passes back out <3

/tucks you in gently

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