#mindsafe

uri & kenny

there is no good way to start the initial negotiations between the pair of them. uri is king, & kenny is ackerman. both of them wave a white flag, & the work that uri has for kenny is bloody. the first time that uri asks him to perform a job, uri apologizes - not for the task itself, but for the things he has asked.

uri never really liked for kenny to see his preaching. it felt too much like a farce exposed -- this was something that uri didn't articulate even to kenny. his job was to sell a belief & to belief. he felt that it could do too much damage to expose his own doubts. perhaps this was proof of his arrogance.

kenny remembers names better that uri does - of people & animals. however, uri is better at remembering faces than kenny is. he rarely remembers to look at animals unless they are pointed out to him. it's been a subject of debate between the two of them, mostly in regard to horses & in modern !, the prospect of pets.

modern ! by uri's request, kenny did try to teach uri how to fight. they both respected each other a little less at the end of the sparring session because it was not particularly effective teaching or particularly good learning. they have since recovered.

modern ! kenny makes a habit of buying gifts for uri at random ass gas stations which means they have a lot of ugly ass magnets featuring camouflage that both of them think is tacky. kenny says that's half the charm though, mostly to see if he can get uri to try to criticize the gifts. he never does.

bert & annie

modern ! bert is annie's most reliable uber service. if he can't quite make it because of other work, he lets reiner drive his car which . . . honestly makes him more jittery than he'd like to admit. he doesn't like anyone but him to drive his car. he asks annie to text him updates when reiner picks her up.

bert 100% felt like he had some sort of understanding with annie when they were candidates. they both felt somewhat peripheral to things & had family with connections to marley's colonies. it is unclear whether this was a mutual feeling - at least until they were both inheritors.

annie does not know that the prospect of her suffering was weaponized against bertolt ( & reiner ) both by the scouts ( here's to you, armin ) & by zeke.

bertolt & annie & reiner have all been hangry together. they & their titans all burn a fair amount of energy. when bert & annie get hangry together, they don't even project it on one another. they just get huffy in different corners of a shared space.

modern ! annie does bertolt a favor & pretends that she doesn't know bertolt smokes as regularly as he does. she does not do reiner the same favor.

armin & annie

honestly they kinda suck so they don't have a first date exactly. they just time going to professional dinners & fundraisers in such a way that they can meet one another by convenience. at least, that way they can have reason enough to walk together afterwards & figure out another meet up. it's not a first date though.

armin makes a wrong turn when they're going somewhere together & covers it up by saying ' there's no such thing as wrong turns. ' annie simultaneously wants to kill him & also doesn't argue with it.

the pair of them don't talk about bertolt. armin has mentioned him, & he regrets it.

modern ! embarrassingly, annie finds armin charming when he has a vr set on & tries to play light saber. he's not all that great at rhythm games.

modern ! they exchange burned cds with one another even in an era when no one actually usually uses a cd player.

marlo & hitch

marlo genuinely & honest to god has no idea what hitch is talking about half of the time. to be fair, hitch ahs no idea what marlo is talking about half of the time. they keep meeting sometimes in the archives/records section where marlo volunteers ( volunteers ! ) for shifts, & honestly - marlo can never make good recommendations for her when she asks. they simply do not speak the same language.

marlo definitely recommended at least two poetry collections that included a fair amount of love poetry without processing. king of unclear signals, that one.

in canon, hitch has played a role in trying to protect marlo ( & his life ) from the consequences of his own brashness. once with annie, in their early days as mps. once alone, when presumedly, marlo was being attacked by jean kirstein. through events like these, hitch has gotten very accustomed to being protective of marlo. he does not now it.

modern ! hitch has listened to marlo's opinions on cryptocurrency far too often. her summary of his opinion: it's bad. he says that's probably a fair summation.

modern ! absolutely they love watching judge judy together. it came as a surprise.

leorio & kurapika

leorio has sent kurapika as many emails as he has left voicemails. they come irregulary because he has a habit of losing track of time, & voicemails tend to ramble more so than the emails - but he figures that maybe kurapika has a habit of checking one more so than the other.

tbh in all fairness not all the voicemails are intentional. kurapika has received more than a few voicemails from buttdialing. usually this means that kurapika hears their fair share of puns & jokes that 'seemed funny at the time.' most of the jokes don't even make sense.

leorio does not think that all of the decisions kurapika has made are justifiable, even if they are forgivable. he feels sometimes as though kurapika is choosing continued loss, & he doesn't understand why anyone would make that decision. he manages to be opinionated even if he is not judgmental.

modern ! leorio waits until the car's fuel tank is negatively empty to fill up because he has a favorite gas station, & kurapika is certain that leorio singlehandedly has given them trust issues because of this.

modern ! leorio has needed to borrow money from kurapika, & he hates it. he hates borrowing money.

hisoka & illumi

the first time that hisoka interfered in one of illumi's kills might not have been the first time. the zoldycks are hard to track, & so hisoka had not been a nuisance until he knew where to look. but before then, he had been timeless in the way that he always been. it guaranteed that he floated with surprising balance between the nobodies & the somebodies. at some point, he was made to be curious: what happens ? when you make an enemy of a nobody with the appropriate amount of money ? do they call in a somebody ?

hisoka prefers to add himself as a contact to others' phones. it gives him more time to be a spectator, to try to nose into hidden affairs. illumi had not granted him that courtesy, at first. hisoka had only been granted the courtesy of the family phone line. but then hisoka had continued to be a nuisance to the family line, & it was starting to be an embarrassment. sad!!

illumi has tried to educate hisoka on current events. hisoka proved to be a terrible student because he did not care.

modern ! illumi has not yet figured out that hisoka has programmed himself into illumi's phone face recognition. hisoka uses illumi's phone for doordash without permission.

modern ! neither can cook, actually. they make toast. illumi, because he doesn't know what else to do do. hisoka, because he can function on vary barebones meals.

erwin & kenny

despite the same name of such a man, she still gets forgotten about at the end of events. despite the ' praises ' he sings of her accomplishments, she still gets forgotten about at the end of events.

nevertheless, she looks at the menu like she's hungry. she'll even suggest that the pancakes here are the best, even though she prefers waffles. historia shrugs at the jacket over her shoulders, something @mindsafe had given when they found her at the bus stop. “ are you hungry? shall we order something? ” when she speaks she flips to the next page, eying the breakfast offered there.

Flesh cloaked in skin so pale it was almost translucent, her head crowned with fine hair that ran through parted fingers like silk, but was inclined to vicious tangles. That was to say nothing of the severity of her features – the pronounced hook of her nose, the jut of her lower jaw, together formed a facial harmony shared with the sickle-shape moon. Annie understood she could not be considered beautiful.

It had been a mercy in the days of her youth, when she toddled into the heart of the internment zone, a wicker basket balanced in the crook of her elbow. To be pretty, and Eldian, could invite terrible violence from leering Marleyan soldiers.

Standing now in front of the claw-footed mirror, she felt for the first time a strange longing, paired with a shame that bubbled thick and cloying. It stained her, sent her teetering on the edge of disgust. It demanded she turn her hoarfrost gaze on herself, raking harshly over the dress that hung from her frame. Simple in its cut and design, its neckline fell off-shoulder, revealing the tilted columns of her collarbones. While the bodice was not particularly tight, it was still fitted to her silhouette, fabric of the palest lilac smoothing over breasts and waist to flare outward at the hips. Her short stature was her saving grace, the flowing hem modestly kissing the narrowest part of her calves.

“This is stupid. I don’t wear dresses.”

Not entirely true. When she prowled the labyrinthine streets of the Interior, she draped and disguised herself in skirts and shawls unbecoming of Warrior Leonhardt. Perhaps therein lay the issue – she was less a person, less a girl, and more a weapon, more a means to a selfish end. Anything beyond the strike of fist, elbow or heel was superfluous.

Unimpressed with her reflection, Annie turned to her roommate. Her defeated expression was immediately confronted by Hitch’s self-satisfied smile, by eyes that twinkled girlishly in their triumph.

          levi doesn't demand respect because he inherently deserves it. he, like ymir, is not a good person, and that doesn't even begin to include the things he did when he was young, starving, and alone. it doesn't include all the things he did to survive before his name was called for the games--- what a sick fucking joke, to fight tooth and nail to keep yourself alive just for the capitol to rip you out of the hands of the only family you have left right after he takes you in--- but because he earned it. he didn't do any of this to sit across from a teenager who was going to discount him at his word because she's bitter and he's short. if he did all of that for anything, it was for this: to try to help someone who desperately fucking needs it.

          district twelve's mentor leans forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands wrapped securely around a warm mug of tea. that's maybe the only thing he really likes about the capitol: their tea is, for lack of a better phrase, to die for. "what i'm saying," he begins, making sure heavily lidded eyes meet those that mirror them, "is i don't think anyone is inherently good or evil; people are shaped by their circumstances. no matter how you feel about the people in the capitol, you haven't been given the chance to be a good person." for a moment his eyes move over to land on the boy from twelve, and a hint of sadness crosses his face. that boy is going to die.

          "but... that isn't a bad thing. at least--- not in this situation." levi sits back again, crosses one leg over the other, and takes a sip from his mug. "because you don't need to be a good person to make it out of the games. you need to be a survivor. you need to do whatever it takes to make it out of that arena when the time comes."

it is easy for uri to find poetry in the cadence & timbre of kenny's voice. at the same time, he understands that kenny speaks like a boiling kettle set to infinite -- he will never run out of steam, never lose the urgency of hot water.

so kenny will talk, & uri will not fool himself into thinking that kenny will wear himself out.

he'll listen anyway, & he will not have to understand half of what kenny says.

in two lives, the name reiss has made him a figurehead & a dreamer. he does what is required of him & strives for little else. it makes it easy for him to lazy schedule & continue naming himself a dreamer. unless he is scheduled for meeting, then he sets no alarm. he names himself dreamer, & the clock flashes an hour past nine. uri leaves bedsheets unmade when twenty-four hours kicks into a new day. he looks at himself in a bathroom mirror & cannot tell if his reflection is a mirror.

he ages terribly. in one life, it had been true by the weight of a curse. in this life, it becomes a needless insecurity.

the reflection doesn't have crow’s feet - he has never smiled enough to gain them. but the reflection starts to show lines at his brow, at the corners of his lips. they make him appear severe. it’s fitting. he passes severe judgement on the way that years tell-tale him.

he ages terribly. it can’t be helped. he thinks it’s a lingering consequence from a first life – he was slated only for thirteen years. he had volunteered thirteen years. when he inherited & when the timer began, he lost his voice. dreams became warped. time lost its linearity, & information of consequences, networks, & people came to him in abundance. he lost his voice to a god; as the founder, he saw the end of paradise that he once thought was cursed. & there was very little choice in what had could be done. even among the gods, there was very little choice.

he tasked upon himself to preserve paradis. his voice grew smaller

his inheritance aged him terribly. it aged him fast. it made him feel as though weight & sky were crushing his spine downwards. it diminished him.

he had volunteered thirteen years, & now he feels as though he’s stealing more time. it’s a selfish thing. it’s an indulgence. he savors it.

in the first life, kenny were thick with ackerman blood, & it was a relief to to see a man across past, present, future. & so kenny became a selfish thing. talking with kenny had been a selfish indulgence, & so too had been the bond between them.

uri makes himself selfish, too, when he finds kenny again – when they meet in the second life, kenny does not yet remember, & uri pretends to be a rooted version of himself.

he pretends that he is less of a dreamer than he had been the first time around, that he hadn't seen a world decay, that he hadn’t once abandoned humanity for godhood.

uri avoids churches & temples nowadays. it amuses kenny when he makes longer commutes to avoid traffic from popular religious centers. uri never tries to explain himself. when kenny remembers, uri doesn’t need to explain himself.

uri avoids most public spaces when he can, lets himself be fanciful. he sequesters himself in a home that he can only call his. kenny stays there more often but not, but he refuses to call it his. to give substance to his refusal, he leaves for weeks at a time – takes jobs that will let him travel.

uri thinks he hates the distance, but it is difficult for kenny to admit a shared life.

they argue about this. with memories & without. uri expects no resolution to this argument because kenny is a man built from movement & from running & from coping in solitude.

still – uri takes selfish satisfaction when kenny comes home to him, when he preens when uri casts a hand through his hair.

stretched out on an aging couch that cost far too much, uri watches him & thinks that kenny ages much nicely. he weathers in the sun & wrinkles & he wears his years like proof of survival.

he doesn’t age like uri does. he isn’t diminished.

they argue about age, too. they argue more about a lot of things. they had not previously had the opportunity, & kenny had not fully had the chance to know uri before he was a vessel for a god.

truthfully, uri hadn't had the opportunity to know himself before he was a vessel either.

they argue about habits, about substance, about responsibility, about privilege. they argue that uri has no real drive for himself but he has peculiarities. they are argue that kenny has family that he treats gruffly. it’s cowardice, uri has said. it stems from kenny’s insistence that he is a disease.

but still, kenny is closer with his family in this second life. he sees them often enough. he lets uri meet them, though he had been restless at the meeting.

the first time uri meets kenny's family, it had been odd.  he never knew them in the first life, but he saw them. he followed them down the pathways & looked through others' eyes & saw them in their dirt & in their glory.

he cannot say this to kenny, to kuchel, to levi. so instead he watches kuchel glow when he compliments her cooking. he discusses her hobbies & tells her that he would love to host her for dinner. kenny bristles at the merging of two worlds, & levi follows his lead.

levi ( @chaoslulled ) follows kenny’s lead. he looks at uri with suspicion; he looks at his him as though he weren’t part of their world, as though he couldn’t understand things that made up his daily life.

it’s a fair assumption. it makes uri hum & tell levi that he reminds him of kenny - just a little.

levi hates the comparison. his relationship with kenny is difficult. uri chides himself with the click of his tongue, but he can’t apologize. so he explains his reasoning to levi (then a child) that he thinks well of kenny, & he only means to communicate that he thinks well of levi too.

levi’s relationship with kenny is still strained. years after that first meeting, uri finds that they still  scoff at each other & think of the others' weaknesses as cowardice. they take too much hurt in their vulnerabilities & bite at each other like wounded dogs.

years after that meeting, it is still difficult for kenny to concede a shared life. he stays with uri more often than he doesn’t, but he forces a distance & still leaves for weeks at a time.

he forces the distance & hates it. he exposes himself when he calls uri at night, clears his throat, & tells him not to find another lover. kenny thinks himself a disease, thinks that uri is holier creation than he is. uri murmurs assurances into the line & waits for kenny to spin into a narrative laced with rough language & honest perceptions. uri likes listening to him. kenny knows he likes listening to him.

but still – distance is distance. kenny leaves for weeks, & uri occupies solitary nights with three lamps that burn amber, with a cup of tea on the coffee table, with nothing that he cares to do.

half-heartedly, he tempts himself to perform concentrated interest by holding a dog-earred book against his knees – a used copy of a biography of man that he supposes he works with -- biographies are very telling , he thinks. memoirs even more so. they resemble the information he used to know about common people through pathway exploration, but he finds that their narratives never say enough –

it's curious. it's quiet. it's rain splashed against the windows, tea growing cold, the intrusion of desperation knocking at the door.

when uri opens the door, he sees the pathways again.

 he closes his eyes to regain himself. he can see other men 's perception of levi in another life - grief on a child who was hungry & forgotten, grief on a man recruited into a military branch pretending freedom, grief on a man that was associated with triumph & victory & strength.

uri opens his eyes, & there is levi now. the pathways were a separate life, & levi’s desperation comes as a punch.

uri ushers him in, & the door is quiet click behind him.

he doesn't know what boundaries levi will allow. they are not quite family, but they are.  so he purses his lips & steps forward enough to press his hand against levi's shoulder - a soothing gesture. he feels older than he is.  

' your uncle is out. you can stay here tonight. in the guest room. tonight you will eat. you will drink. you will do what you have always done before remembering. & then we will talk. you are always welcome here. '

it's good that kenny isn't here. kenny doesn't know what to do with remembering either. neither does uri. but he knows that it makes him age poorly. he knows that it hurts. he knows that it feels like time has been frayed.

uri is accustomed to time’s fraying. still, for a second, he wonders how levi knows that he remembers.

he closes his eyes again & remember pathway perceptions that surround levi. the ones that had faded away before levi ever grew to be an old man.

the minecraft server might have originally been colt's -- or at least the hobby might have originally been colt's. that's part of the problem. he doesn't remember giving falco the information to access the thing. but falco is adept that way sometimes, at winning small victories from colt in games that he didn't even know were at play. so that's part of the problem ( part of his reluctance to join falco's minecraft server ).

the second part of the problem is more humbling : even if it had been colt's server, it is no longer recognizable. he tries not to remember, but he thinks it's likely he hadn't gotten much further than building a small army of chests.

when colt has spotted falco playing the game recently, he's seen a much more elaborate set up -- castles & protections against monsters & weapons that probably were the product of a burst of energy from gabi braun. in truth, he didn't even know that had been possible in minecraft.

the third part of the problem is logistical. falco emails him now ( colt, pls join my minecraft server ) to an email address that colt didn't even know he had. it's his work email - with a domain name that matches zeke's practice & everything.

he thinks zeke gets a fair amount of satisfaction of having an email domain that contains his name.

so colt glances sideways surreptitiously before deciding he can get away with making a personal call. he waits until falco's voice chirps across the line before summarizing the crux of the matter : ' falco, i don't get paid to play minecraft. '

he had been beaten in a public square for addressing corruption, & pride flared so righteous in him that his hand burned hot — as though he had already reached for an abandoned weapon & fired a shot as a vigilante. 

this sticks with him, leaves a burn. marlo is always rigorous, always adamant. he is efficient in the ways that he cannot see. he knows he’s prideful, & still he is quick to be humbled, to bow his head to new reasoning if he sees that he was wrong. he doesn’t know this about himself. 

hitch knows, though. she says so in the way she laughs about all the ways that he’s efficient. marlo can never tell why she’s laughing – but he watches her tilt her head as though she knows something that he doesn’t, & he can’t bring himself to argue the point.

marlo prides himself in strengths that make him efficient – he sleeps six hours & rarely feels tired. but hitch laughs sometimes, & he thinks that she might have him beat for energy. though he rarely feels tired, she conjures some unworldly energy to laugh the way she does. it’s an impressive performance. 

he’s not good at laughing, not good at jokes — but recently, he would concede that he’s reluctant to cave to laughter. 

annie had been lost, & that had been a battering ram. although marlo had been optimistic ( remains optimistic ) in his purpose to instigate change within the military police —- death had been a slim prospect in this elite world. he had been young, & so too had hitch.

annie went missing that day in the city, & her absence felt like the muffled distortions of a concussion. they remembered her. 

hitch didn’t drop a beat. she played the game with a sharp kind of cheer that made marlo trust her resourcefulness more. 

he doesn’t understand her. he respects her. she proves that she’s resilient, too. that’s enough for them to do better together in paired shifts than they once had. it’s a habit to which they stick even after they learn that annie had been lost & that she had also had been the crystallized titan. 

it’s sobering. it makes marlo want to laugh even less, & it makes hitch furious when he translates his discomfort with ongoing politics into treason. 

he can’t blame her. after all,  drags her into treason, & she tells him that he really couldn’t have made a stupider decision if he tried — but she stands with him, carries on with the pretense of pairing with him for shifts until he transfers officially to the scouts. 

he doesn’t understand her. she keeps laughing.

at least by now he starts to recognize the different ways in which she laughs — when it’s artificial. they wait for their meal rations together in the mess hall, & a party of arrogant-tongued soldiers stand together with grapevine rumors about those who had been arrested for being complicit with the survey corps’ treachery. 

something in marlo’s jaw jumps when he serves himself stew. 

hitch is distracted, too, so he spoons her some of the stew as well — & realizes too late that she sinks into the soldiers’ company as though it were natural. she picks at loose threads for conversation, & her laugh is a false thing. 

it occurs to marlo that she is genuine with him.

still, he watches the casual way she trails her touch over another man’s forearm as she encourages conversation, & his jaw ticks again. he is certain that she might be a type of demon. it’s not hte first time this thought has occurred to him.

marlo doesn’t understand her. it must show in her face because she rejoins him & stirs at her stew & complains that he should have gotten her a bread roll too. he breaks his own in half & passes it to her. she winks at him & promises that she’ll tell him what she’s learned, though marlo doubts that it was anything consequential. the soldiers who passed rumors were too low-ranking to know anything consequential. 

from @mindsafe : ❛ if i didn't know any better, i'd say you were jealous. ❜ ( hitch )

but she dives further & laughs ( it’s a genuine sound ) : if i didn't know any better, i'd say you were jealous.

marlo blinks & doesn’t understand her. he prides himself in strengths that make him efficient, so he’s quick to answer diplomatically : ‘ you’re welcome to do as you wish. that is your right. ‘ 

it’s an inappropriate response, because what hitch’s choices were not her question. she kicks him beneath the table, & marlo resists the urge to reach down to rub at his shin. still, he takes her cue to correct himself : ‘ i’m not jealous, ‘ he answers more directly. 

belatedly, it’s uncomfortable to realize that he is uncertain whether it’s a falsehood. 

he does not understand her. it is possible he is jealous, that he does not understand himself either. 

however, he trusts her capacity for resilience & the steadiness of her company. he is not jealous because he knows she does not laugh around him with the same falseness.