...Aoba didn’t want to be doing this talk. Not having this conversation, but doing this talk. He was upset and distressed, focused more on what Ghost had told him, which had snowballed in rapid order by one unexpected confirmation after the other that the Guardians all died over and over, for reasons that Aoba so far could only see as either trivial or ineffectual. It didn’t matter that he knew it had to be more complicated and involved than that, but it was where his thoughts were stuck as if snagged by thorns.
Declan was trying to comfort him after being expressly told not to…or, granted, that he didn’t need to. Aoba wasn’t in the headspace to hear it properly, though he knew he could reflect on it later. He should just drop the topic before—
Something happened then, something unexpected only because Aoba didn’t yet know how to be alert to the signs. He heard our lives were already lost and it made him a kind of angry, except instead of remaining something low and quiet that he could keep a lid on until it died down, there was someone else right there with him that took hold of it instead. It was like a hand on his shoulder, a growled let me at this, someone stepping ahead of him—
Aoba’s hand came up, clenched into a fist, and struck Declan’s arm with the side of it. Not a punch but a blunted strike, born of a rather more literal urge to knock some sense into him.
A desire, if you would.
“Only because they were stolen from you!” snapped the golden-eyed aspect.
no subject
Declan was trying to comfort him after being expressly told not to…or, granted, that he didn’t need to. Aoba wasn’t in the headspace to hear it properly, though he knew he could reflect on it later. He should just drop the topic before—
Something happened then, something unexpected only because Aoba didn’t yet know how to be alert to the signs. He heard our lives were already lost and it made him a kind of angry, except instead of remaining something low and quiet that he could keep a lid on until it died down, there was someone else right there with him that took hold of it instead. It was like a hand on his shoulder, a growled let me at this, someone stepping ahead of him—
Aoba’s hand came up, clenched into a fist, and struck Declan’s arm with the side of it. Not a punch but a blunted strike, born of a rather more literal urge to knock some sense into him.
A desire, if you would.
“Only because they were stolen from you!” snapped the golden-eyed aspect.