[ Okay, well. Dokja didn't think this conversation would round on him. There's a growing unease that wells up inside of him as he gingerly tries to maintain the line crossed on the ground between them. ]
I'm doing what I can.
[ He joined the Meridian, didn't he? For the longest time, he'd felt so lost and directionless, but the arrival of Sooyoung and Joonghyuk has prompted him back on his feet in order to safely shuttle those two back home. Away from him. ]
I guess it's up to you if you want to help or hinder me.
[ Dokja speaks but Eustace only partly listens, too busy trying to cross the line Dokja tries carefully to maintain. ]
Do you even need my help? Don't you have Han Sooyoung for that?
[ The namedrop is purposeful this time, his tone almost challenging.
Han Sooyoung and the clear concern he'd felt from her, even if she'd immediately tried to pack up and feign indifference. The fact that she'd felt the need to confide in him, a third party she barely even knew. He thinks too of the brief sputter in Dokja's good cheer when they'd mentioned her on the beach, a despondency that doesn't slot into any normal definition of friendship.
It'd never been his business to nose into, but now that he's found himself accidentally caught up in it he's not about to let go so easily. ]
Why do you keep pushing her away?
[ Because that's obviously what he's doing, isn't it? (Maybe not, but he sure isn't going to find out by sitting around and saying nothing.) ]
[ Here's a familiar spike of anxiety, a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach, and for a moment, the Communion's strength seems to weaken like Dokja is one panicked second away from severing it outright. He struggles to regain control, and it's a bit touch and go on whether or not he'll respond to the question.
There's no use denying it. He knows it himself that he's been doing everything he can to keep both her and Joonghyuk from getting too close. He's dodged their questions, avoided their looks, and postponed the talks he's promised them.
And now Eustace is getting involved?
He steels his heart, a coldness creeping up to it in order to brace for what he's about to say. It won't sit right with him, this much he knows, but Dokja has always built his walls even with the closest of companions. Eustace is no exception to that... is what he chooses to convince himself wth. ]
... Stay out of it. That's none of your business.
[ It hurts the way it always does. The slapping away of a hand reaching out in an attempt to help, to understand, to learn. But Dokja doesn't fold, only meets Eustace's challenging tone with his own frigid response as he forces down the part of him that desperately protests. ]
[ This is familiar, easy territory for him, them sniping back and forth like a pair of children both unwilling to let go of a favorite toy. People telling him to fuck off? Yeah, that's familiar too, and he doesn't bat a single eyelash as he keeps barreling forward. ]
You made it my business.
[ Or rather Sooyoung did, but right now they're one and the same, Eustace not bothering to differentiate when the root problem remains the same. Sure, he could fuck off right now and keep his nose out of things, but how much longer will it be before he stumbles across Han Sooyoung again and she complains about Dokja again, real worry in her eyes despite how much she proclaims she doesn't care?
And for all that his actions seem to imply the opposite, he cares too, the faint memory of their time on the beach still lingering in his heart. ]
You asked if I would help, earlier. Would you have actually let me? Or would you have pushed me away as well?
[ Kept him at arms-length while treating him as some sort of mindless pack mule willing to do his bidding. ]
[ And still Eustace advances. Dokja hadn't prepared himself for this outcome, fully expecting their Communion to end so he could sulk in a dark place somewhere, but it keeps going?
Cornered like this, he feels his panic grow. His first instinct is to run, his second is to lash out, but he doesn't act upon either of those urges. Had the wall between them always been at such a height? He thinks if he cranes his neck, maybe even goes on the tip of his toes, he could look past the barrier to see Eustace working away at the surface on his side. And what has Dokja been doing but halfheartedly reinforcing his own side? Not out of any desire to, but because it's just what he does. What he's always done.
Eustace must feel it too, the way Dokja shrinks in on himself like a frightened, wounded animal. But past that is a small glimmer of something he dares not name as he struggles with his answer. ]
It's different.
[ Though he would never promise that it would stay different. Eventually the same fate Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk had had to face could have come barreling into Eustace, too. The thought causes dread to pull at his heart, the anxiety rising to catastrophic levels. ]
I... [ His voice falters and shakes. ] Because of me, they... And if you, too...
[ It finally tips over, the attack seizing him by the throat and tearing at his chest as the overwhelming emotions rip through their Communion. There's grief, hard and poorly dealt with, along with a deeply entrenched agony that's left scars on his very existence. But it's the guilt that outweighs everything else, crushing and suffocating in its intensity, an amount that no regular human being could ever hope to stand against. ]
[ That crashing wave of guilt catches him off-guard, his whole body tensing as if to withstand a physical attack and not simply an assault on his mind. He doesn't even realize his nails have curled so tightly into the flesh of his palms until he tastes the scent of blood in the air, faint and metallic.
This is none of his business, this violent soul-crushing guilt that surrounds him on all sides like a typhoon. He should have left ages ago, turned around and done what he does best - walk away without a second glance back. But he's already come this far, sunk his teeth deep in enough that letting go would be a monumental waste of time. Besides, what's he supposed to do? Leave Dokja there all alone, stranded in the middle of this raging ocean without a single life-preserver in sight?
They have their differences, sure, too many to count, and sometimes it seems like all they do is fight. But even despite that Dokja had stretched out his hand time and again without being asked, even though every logical reason in the world dictated he do the opposite. There's a deep debt between them that needs to be repaid, but beyond that is the burgeoning seed of respect, a like beginning to outweigh dislike that prompts him into trying to help, no matter how out of his element he is.
Even if that 'help' right now is aiming a knife directly at his heart and carving until every last drop of guilt and misery comes oozing out, like pus from an infected wound.
It's hard to hold his ground, the unfiltered agony feeding directly into his own worst insecurites and fears, but he grits his teeth all the same, channeling years of practice into keeping his emotions and tone stable. ]
If I....?
[ He can theorize all he wants, try and puzzle together the pieces he's painstakingly collected over the last half a year. But it won't mean anything if he doesn't hear it directly from Dokja. ]
[ This is the sort of wound that can't close or heal. It's festered and rotted after thousands upon thousands of years, spreading across every surface of his body until it becomes all of him. Kim Dokja will not permit himself to recover. This self-inflicted punishment is the retaliation that he deserves because no one else will give it to him.
... And he doesn't know if he can survive more than that.
It feels like the air's been pressed out of his lungs as his eyes sting and his throat burns. This isn't the sort of confrontation he wants to face, but he's worn down, made weak, and he feels his makeshift conviction collapse from within. ]
If you get hurt because of me, then I'll really be nothing more than a monster.
[ His voice comes out hoarse, small, afraid. Defeated. Dokja had tried... oh, how he had tried to maintain his distance when he'd first arrived to that world called Horos, convincing himself that he wouldn't grow close to anyone in fear of causing the usual destruction he leaves in his wake at every turn, but what had happened? Eventually, one person, then another, then even more than that had wiggled their way into a heart that had finally learned to love, and it had been so easy to turn his gaze away and tell himself it wasn't anything to grow concerned with.
But now, faced with the truth and reality of the situation, faced with one of the very few people he has left in this new world, the understanding that he could lose it all a second time because of him becomes too real. ]
[ i thought about making this a joke tag again just to see if you would finally kick me from your life but i will spare you this time
It's a short answer, and not that much of a suprising one, but it manages to slap him across the face all the same, prompting a disbelieving exhale that manages to rise above the torrential maelstrom of misery threatening to suck them both in. ]
Are you always this self-centered?
[ Don't actually answer that. ]
If anything happens it'll be because of my own actions, not because of you. [ As it always has been and always will be. ] I chose this path for myself. If I get hurt, if I die again, [ because he won't discount that possibility especially with the way he is now, unharmonized and powerless ] it'll be no one's fault but my own.
[ Not Dokja's, not whichever person on the opposing side threatening harm, not even Yima or Cyrus or whatever greater power had brought him here to this place. (Though he certainly isn't feeling particularly kind-hearted towards either of them at the moment.) For someone who's always been straining at the leash and allowed freedom only at the whims of someone else, to be told yet again that his fate might lie in someone else's hands, even tangentially, stings.
There's a curl of bitterness that wraps around him, turning his voice quiet and sharp. ]
Don't take that away from the people around you. Don't invalidate their choices by making it all about you.
[ A silence falls after that, the turbulent waves of Dokja's emotions swirling without further direction as he finds himself at a loss for words. He almost doesn't want to listen, almost wants to block his ears and squeeze his eyes shut to remain deaf and blind to the obviousness of what Eustace is saying.
But the truth of it remains bare. This entire time, Dokja had been neglecting the feelings of others. He's always been that way, short-sighted and narrow-minded, and it doesn't take a genius to pick that out of him.
It does, however, seem to require one very blunt man to call it out.
The temptation to argue back is strong, the sharp rebuttal of how it can't be about him resting at the very tip of his tongue. Eustace can't understand. He doesn't know the lives lost on account of Dokja, the lifetimes, the worlds, the scraps that had later returned to haunt him. As painfully obvious as it is that he's selfish, it's also just as obvious how much damage he's done. How many lives he's ruined.
Don't invalidate their choices by making it all about you.
His heart wavers now, torn between two directions, and the storm hanging over them dies down to a dull roar as he wars over the opposing thoughts. It feels so difficult now to change his perspective when the guilt he's carried for thousands of years is still buried deep within every inch of his skin. ]
[ He isn't sure if he'll get a response or not, if his words end up too harsh in the end and Dokja decides he's had enough and cuts their connection. (Who could blame him, really, when an acquaintence-not-even-friend decides to butt in on personal affairs?) When their tenuous connection holds even after the tick-tock passing of many seconds, he lets out the silent breath that's been building inside his chest.
i had something witty i was going to put here but it's 11:15 pm and my lone brain cell has already crumbled to dust so you get nothing ]
It's not going to happen overnight.
[ His own grief is an empty mockery of what Dokja's feels like, and if he can't shake off the shackles that have been chaining him for the past decade and a half there surely there's no way Dokja can manage such a feat in the space of a few months.
Even so... ]
It definitely won't be possible if you believe it isn't.
[ The mind is a man's worst enemy, etc etc. The most insidious too, because it's a voice that can't ever be fully purged. But sometimes it can be muted for a short while, suppressed by a louder and more cacophonous group of voices. Family. Jovial coworkers. Friends.
He sighs again, this time audible. But his voice is muted when it follows, the shallow reserves of his energy depleted. He's pushed enough, he thinks. Everything that's left is up to Dokja now. ]
Take the hand the next time it's offered to you, instead of pushing it away.
[ How many people have tried to help him now? Dokja's quickly losing count and the more he thinks about it, the more he doesn't understand.
But maybe he wants to.
So caught up is he in his suffocating guilt, that he hasn't had the proper moment to step back and assess the connections that he's made. It had made certain things easier that way, and he'd been able to turn his face away from the loss of people he'd grown to care for as they'd disappeared one by one. He'd shuttered the windows of his heart, devastation carefully packed away and compartmentalized into another part of him that he wouldn't revisit, and that had been that. Selfishly, subconsciously, he had thought the world and people around him were ever-moving, while Dokja remained the same.
He can't continue on like this, is the slow realization as Eustace's words sink in. He has... people... that he cares about here. People that... care about him in return.
As hard as that is to believe.
There's no response from Dokja's end, but a hesitant acknowledgement passes through the connection they share. He wants Eustace to know, as much as he can't use his words right now, that it's there. Quiet, stifled, and present. He won't reach out in return just yet, fingers curling and uncurling as he works to undo the thousands upon thousands of years of damage dealt to his mind, but it's better than a refusal. Better than his usual method of pushing away.
And with that muted acknowledgement comes an end to their Communion. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
I'm doing what I can.
[ He joined the Meridian, didn't he? For the longest time, he'd felt so lost and directionless, but the arrival of Sooyoung and Joonghyuk has prompted him back on his feet in order to safely shuttle those two back home. Away from him. ]
I guess it's up to you if you want to help or hinder me.
no subject
Do you even need my help? Don't you have Han Sooyoung for that?
[ The namedrop is purposeful this time, his tone almost challenging.
Han Sooyoung and the clear concern he'd felt from her, even if she'd immediately tried to pack up and feign indifference. The fact that she'd felt the need to confide in him, a third party she barely even knew. He thinks too of the brief sputter in Dokja's good cheer when they'd mentioned her on the beach, a despondency that doesn't slot into any normal definition of friendship.
It'd never been his business to nose into, but now that he's found himself accidentally caught up in it he's not about to let go so easily. ]
Why do you keep pushing her away?
[ Because that's obviously what he's doing, isn't it? (Maybe not, but he sure isn't going to find out by sitting around and saying nothing.) ]
no subject
There's no use denying it. He knows it himself that he's been doing everything he can to keep both her and Joonghyuk from getting too close. He's dodged their questions, avoided their looks, and postponed the talks he's promised them.
And now Eustace is getting involved?
He steels his heart, a coldness creeping up to it in order to brace for what he's about to say. It won't sit right with him, this much he knows, but Dokja has always built his walls even with the closest of companions. Eustace is no exception to that... is what he chooses to convince himself wth. ]
... Stay out of it. That's none of your business.
[ It hurts the way it always does. The slapping away of a hand reaching out in an attempt to help, to understand, to learn. But Dokja doesn't fold, only meets Eustace's challenging tone with his own frigid response as he forces down the part of him that desperately protests. ]
rubs my little fly hands together
You made it my business.
[ Or rather Sooyoung did, but right now they're one and the same, Eustace not bothering to differentiate when the root problem remains the same. Sure, he could fuck off right now and keep his nose out of things, but how much longer will it be before he stumbles across Han Sooyoung again and she complains about Dokja again, real worry in her eyes despite how much she proclaims she doesn't care?
And for all that his actions seem to imply the opposite, he cares too, the faint memory of their time on the beach still lingering in his heart. ]
You asked if I would help, earlier. Would you have actually let me? Or would you have pushed me away as well?
[ Kept him at arms-length while treating him as some sort of mindless pack mule willing to do his bidding. ]
no subject
Cornered like this, he feels his panic grow. His first instinct is to run, his second is to lash out, but he doesn't act upon either of those urges. Had the wall between them always been at such a height? He thinks if he cranes his neck, maybe even goes on the tip of his toes, he could look past the barrier to see Eustace working away at the surface on his side. And what has Dokja been doing but halfheartedly reinforcing his own side? Not out of any desire to, but because it's just what he does. What he's always done.
Eustace must feel it too, the way Dokja shrinks in on himself like a frightened, wounded animal. But past that is a small glimmer of something he dares not name as he struggles with his answer. ]
It's different.
[ Though he would never promise that it would stay different. Eventually the same fate Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk had had to face could have come barreling into Eustace, too. The thought causes dread to pull at his heart, the anxiety rising to catastrophic levels. ]
I... [ His voice falters and shakes. ] Because of me, they... And if you, too...
[ It finally tips over, the attack seizing him by the throat and tearing at his chest as the overwhelming emotions rip through their Communion. There's grief, hard and poorly dealt with, along with a deeply entrenched agony that's left scars on his very existence. But it's the guilt that outweighs everything else, crushing and suffocating in its intensity, an amount that no regular human being could ever hope to stand against. ]
no subject
This is none of his business, this violent soul-crushing guilt that surrounds him on all sides like a typhoon. He should have left ages ago, turned around and done what he does best - walk away without a second glance back. But he's already come this far, sunk his teeth deep in enough that letting go would be a monumental waste of time. Besides, what's he supposed to do? Leave Dokja there all alone, stranded in the middle of this raging ocean without a single life-preserver in sight?
They have their differences, sure, too many to count, and sometimes it seems like all they do is fight. But even despite that Dokja had stretched out his hand time and again without being asked, even though every logical reason in the world dictated he do the opposite. There's a deep debt between them that needs to be repaid, but beyond that is the burgeoning seed of respect, a like beginning to outweigh dislike that prompts him into trying to help, no matter how out of his element he is.
Even if that 'help' right now is aiming a knife directly at his heart and carving until every last drop of guilt and misery comes oozing out, like pus from an infected wound.
It's hard to hold his ground, the unfiltered agony feeding directly into his own worst insecurites and fears, but he grits his teeth all the same, channeling years of practice into keeping his emotions and tone stable. ]
If I....?
[ He can theorize all he wants, try and puzzle together the pieces he's painstakingly collected over the last half a year. But it won't mean anything if he doesn't hear it directly from Dokja. ]
no subject
... And he doesn't know if he can survive more than that.
It feels like the air's been pressed out of his lungs as his eyes sting and his throat burns. This isn't the sort of confrontation he wants to face, but he's worn down, made weak, and he feels his makeshift conviction collapse from within. ]
If you get hurt because of me, then I'll really be nothing more than a monster.
[ His voice comes out hoarse, small, afraid. Defeated. Dokja had tried... oh, how he had tried to maintain his distance when he'd first arrived to that world called Horos, convincing himself that he wouldn't grow close to anyone in fear of causing the usual destruction he leaves in his wake at every turn, but what had happened? Eventually, one person, then another, then even more than that had wiggled their way into a heart that had finally learned to love, and it had been so easy to turn his gaze away and tell himself it wasn't anything to grow concerned with.
But now, faced with the truth and reality of the situation, faced with one of the very few people he has left in this new world, the understanding that he could lose it all a second time because of him becomes too real. ]
no subject
It's a short answer, and not that much of a suprising one, but it manages to slap him across the face all the same, prompting a disbelieving exhale that manages to rise above the torrential maelstrom of misery threatening to suck them both in. ]
Are you always this self-centered?
[ Don't actually answer that. ]
If anything happens it'll be because of my own actions, not because of you. [ As it always has been and always will be. ] I chose this path for myself. If I get hurt, if I die again, [ because he won't discount that possibility especially with the way he is now, unharmonized and powerless ] it'll be no one's fault but my own.
[ Not Dokja's, not whichever person on the opposing side threatening harm, not even Yima or Cyrus or whatever greater power had brought him here to this place. (Though he certainly isn't feeling particularly kind-hearted towards either of them at the moment.) For someone who's always been straining at the leash and allowed freedom only at the whims of someone else, to be told yet again that his fate might lie in someone else's hands, even tangentially, stings.
There's a curl of bitterness that wraps around him, turning his voice quiet and sharp. ]
Don't take that away from the people around you. Don't invalidate their choices by making it all about you.
no subject
But the truth of it remains bare. This entire time, Dokja had been neglecting the feelings of others. He's always been that way, short-sighted and narrow-minded, and it doesn't take a genius to pick that out of him.
It does, however, seem to require one very blunt man to call it out.
The temptation to argue back is strong, the sharp rebuttal of how it can't be about him resting at the very tip of his tongue. Eustace can't understand. He doesn't know the lives lost on account of Dokja, the lifetimes, the worlds, the scraps that had later returned to haunt him. As painfully obvious as it is that he's selfish, it's also just as obvious how much damage he's done. How many lives he's ruined.
Don't invalidate their choices by making it all about you.
His heart wavers now, torn between two directions, and the storm hanging over them dies down to a dull roar as he wars over the opposing thoughts. It feels so difficult now to change his perspective when the guilt he's carried for thousands of years is still buried deep within every inch of his skin. ]
I wonder if that's possible.
no subject
i had something witty i was going to put here but it's 11:15 pm and my lone brain cell has already crumbled to dust so you get nothing ]
It's not going to happen overnight.
[ His own grief is an empty mockery of what Dokja's feels like, and if he can't shake off the shackles that have been chaining him for the past decade and a half there surely there's no way Dokja can manage such a feat in the space of a few months.
Even so... ]
It definitely won't be possible if you believe it isn't.
[ The mind is a man's worst enemy, etc etc. The most insidious too, because it's a voice that can't ever be fully purged. But sometimes it can be muted for a short while, suppressed by a louder and more cacophonous group of voices. Family. Jovial coworkers. Friends.
He sighs again, this time audible. But his voice is muted when it follows, the shallow reserves of his energy depleted. He's pushed enough, he thinks. Everything that's left is up to Dokja now. ]
Take the hand the next time it's offered to you, instead of pushing it away.
no subject
But maybe he wants to.
So caught up is he in his suffocating guilt, that he hasn't had the proper moment to step back and assess the connections that he's made. It had made certain things easier that way, and he'd been able to turn his face away from the loss of people he'd grown to care for as they'd disappeared one by one. He'd shuttered the windows of his heart, devastation carefully packed away and compartmentalized into another part of him that he wouldn't revisit, and that had been that. Selfishly, subconsciously, he had thought the world and people around him were ever-moving, while Dokja remained the same.
He can't continue on like this, is the slow realization as Eustace's words sink in. He has... people... that he cares about here. People that... care about him in return.
As hard as that is to believe.
There's no response from Dokja's end, but a hesitant acknowledgement passes through the connection they share. He wants Eustace to know, as much as he can't use his words right now, that it's there. Quiet, stifled, and present. He won't reach out in return just yet, fingers curling and uncurling as he works to undo the thousands upon thousands of years of damage dealt to his mind, but it's better than a refusal. Better than his usual method of pushing away.
And with that muted acknowledgement comes an end to their Communion. ]