And Aoba thought: what did he really want to come back for?
He observed the Earth, the blue and green whole of it, and how the Traveler itself had gone from a tiny moon directly overhead of the city to a tiny neighbor clinging to the planet's atmosphere. Declan spoke of hope, and it wasn't that Aoba disbelieved him, exactly, but suddenly he called himself into question.
He thought of his own journey, the passage of portals. If Declan found him an expedited way home, then to Aoba it was nothing more than a long walk to complete the circuit from the past Midorijima to the future City. Were his thoughts too trivial? Was he just... infatuated? Was coming back to this war-torn version of the Earth even worth it?
Did he want to come back here only to be protected?
Aoba rubbed his fingers together quietly, very conscious of the second-skin fit of the gloves, of the Hunter's gear shaped to his body. And he thought about the absurdity of his life back home, working as a desk clerk in a junk shop on an island he could never leave.
"You have so many more important things to do," he found himself saying, apologetic in tone. The scale of everything Declan had done, was doing for him, seemed so much vaster now. "... Thank you for the time you've spent on me."
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He observed the Earth, the blue and green whole of it, and how the Traveler itself had gone from a tiny moon directly overhead of the city to a tiny neighbor clinging to the planet's atmosphere. Declan spoke of hope, and it wasn't that Aoba disbelieved him, exactly, but suddenly he called himself into question.
He thought of his own journey, the passage of portals. If Declan found him an expedited way home, then to Aoba it was nothing more than a long walk to complete the circuit from the past Midorijima to the future City. Were his thoughts too trivial? Was he just... infatuated? Was coming back to this war-torn version of the Earth even worth it?
Did he want to come back here only to be protected?
Aoba rubbed his fingers together quietly, very conscious of the second-skin fit of the gloves, of the Hunter's gear shaped to his body. And he thought about the absurdity of his life back home, working as a desk clerk in a junk shop on an island he could never leave.
"You have so many more important things to do," he found himself saying, apologetic in tone. The scale of everything Declan had done, was doing for him, seemed so much vaster now. "... Thank you for the time you've spent on me."