Tobias (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wing_attack) wrote2016-01-05 07:32 pm
wing_attack) wrote2016-01-05 07:32 pm
|12| [Video]
[Tobias... doesn't look so good right now. The holidays had been nice, with people around him, but he couldn't help but think about the person who should be around, celebrating the holidays with him.]
[Should be, but isn't. Can't. Even if she came here somehow before -]
[- it'd be weird, knowing she was supposed to be dead.]
[So it's with the Lake of Rage in the background that Tobias looks up at the camera, blinking slowly. Maybe he should have set it to text, but whatever. It's too late now.]
If you... wanted to honor someone who wasn't here... who'd died... how would you do it? They... she was a hero. She died a hero. So I want to do something, but I don't... it's not like I have her ashes with me.
I know... that as long as I'm around, she's... I mean she's dead, but... I still remember her. I still...
... But she's dead, so... does it even matter anymore? Does... it really matter what I feel about... everything? She wasn't the only one who died that day but I... she was... I...
[He drops the 'Gear, his face in his hands, and a big furry brown paw reaches down to shut it off.]
[voice]
... It was a bunch of them that attacked at once, but... she took out the guy who she was sent to take out. I watched it on the screen with the others - she was on a different ship. I... she got blinded, and I had to direct her, and she got him. Bit down on him. You'd think it'd be easy for a grizzly to take out a cobra but... it wasn't so simple. He's dead, though. Both her cousin and the Yeerk that infested him.
[Even though he'd thought of Tom as the Yeerk for a long time, there was a human in there, somewhere.]
Rachel... Rachel was fierce and... she got the nickname Xena. Like the warrior princess? She did gymnastics and shopped a lot but was the fiercest fighter of all of us. She kept us going in battle, dragging us along even when we thought we couldn't keep it up... and I'd visit her at night. Land on her window and talk to her. She... helped me stay human, really. She was... there were a lot of times I thought I'd lose myself, but she helped me find myself. She was gentle and fierce and kind and practical and...
[He breaks off, sniffling.]
[voice]
He listens quietly. He doesn't understand all of it, but he gets the important part: Tobias's friend went down fighting. He would hardly believe a teenage girl could do that, before he met Heather.]
She must've been tough.
[That's one of the highest compliments Blake knows.]
I've known people like that. If they went out with a bang like that...they'd be proud.
[voice]
I... I wish she was here. I don't... for three years she was with me. It... sometimes feels like it wasn't real, even... though I know it was.
[voice]
Here, it's easy to feel like the past never happened. But it did. All you gotta do is remember it.
[voice]
... I can't exactly forget it, Blake. There's a reason I keep Regal close when I sleep.
[Fight or flight, just in case he wakes up to trouble... and a nice fluffy friend to help keep him calm.]
[voice]
[Blake knows plenty about nightmares. That's a great thing about Pokemon - if you wake up shaking, they never say a word.]
The good ones, too. The things they'd want you to remember.
[voice]
[Relatively fresh, anyway.]
[voice]
[Or when the good ones were stained and turned ugly.]
You gonna be okay, kid?
[voice]
[Even if his voice still strains on the word 'home' sometimes.]
[voice]
[The quiet is long enough it'd be reasonable to think Blake has hung up.]
You get used to it.
[voice]
[There's a little bit of a smile in his voice, at least.]
[voice]
That's one great thing about being here. It's the perfect place to be an idiot.
[voice]