RYSLIG; ic inbox

[isawallflower]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, CHEERYCHERRY. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 019.46.820.17 *** CHEERYCHERRY has joined 019.46.820.17 <CHEERYCHERRY> It's Riley! <CHEERYCHERRY> Please leave a message! <CHEERYCHERRY> Please be someone with their priorities sorted out properly!

main: CheeryCherry
anonymous: panthera, aed
retired: gflynn (anon)

Comments

[unholey]

Sorry?

[For a moment, he's genuinely confused. What does Riley need to apologize, to him of all people, about? And then it clicks: her double. She's apologizing for her double, again, for the nasty stunt she pulled with him over the network.]

Riley-- that wasn't you. Literally, physically wasn't you. You don't need to apologize to me for what she did.

[If anything... between the two of them, he's the one who ought to apologize. For not realizing sooner. And, for after that, refusing to engage with the double to try and get information about where she had hidden Riley's body.]

[isawallflower]

[ But Riley shakes her head. ]

No, I'm not— I'm...sorry about what she did, but I'm not... I know that wasn't me. I'm sorry because...

[ She breathes out. ]

She fooled me. If she hadn't...she wouldn't have gotten my laptop. I- ...you wouldn't've been left alone.

[ Working at the orphanage, while the rest of them died or disappeared. Worried. Working. ]

[unholey]

Oh.

[Oh, he says, eyes wide and startled. His eyebrows furrow and he reaches up to nervously brush his bangs out of his eyes.]

That's-- ... it's okay, Riley. I handled it. Don't apologize for--

[Riley isn't ... the only one who apologized to him. About this. Giorno, too: I'm sorry. I left you alone.]

You died. Please, don't apologize to me when you were the one who got hurt.

[isawallflower]

[ You died. She looks away, a little. Almost guilty. ]

I know, but— ...I wasn't the only one, to get hurt.

[ Mukuro, distraught, still carrying her to the gym and meticulously washing her feathers, despite it all. ]

I'm angry at her, for- me, too, but— I'm angry 'cause I coulda done something, too. I...coulda helped. And she wouldn't've been able to hurt my friends.

[ There's an exhaustion in Riley's voice that...Fugo probably hasn't heard before. Not even at the party. ]

[unholey]

[I wasn't the only one, to get hurt.]

[He... doesn't understand. Oh, factually, logically: he understands what Riley means. Riley's apology ... is not for dying. It's for the pain that rippled out from it, a riptide that sucked others out to sea along with her. When she said I'm sorry, it's because she regrets that Fugo got caught up in it. That he was left behind, alone, forced to swallow a grief that was too heavy to carry on his own.]

That's ...

[He doesn't know what to say. It feels strange. It feels uncomfortable. ... he survived, didn't he? The pain he experienced, it wasn't truly so unbearable. Riley should focus on herself. She sounds so tired, but she still came here.]

It's ... easy to blame yourself for "shoulds".

["I should have seen it coming" or "I should have known better" or "I should have been better prepared". Things like that. All of Fugo's regrets start with I should have. They're so heavy, but completely impossible to put down.]

But-- ... isn't the important thing that you're here now? You came back to-- [Here, he visibly falters. He wants to say us. But is that really true? Is he really a part of that group? He doesn't know. He feels forever out-of-step with the friends, the family, the heart that Giorno has put together piece-by-piece in Ryslig.] As soon as it was in your power, as soon as it was your choice to make, you came back. You're here.

You don't need to apologize to me. For any of it. [Fugo untangles his fingers. One bony hand reaches up to massage his chest, tight and aching.] It hurt, I knew Giogio would come back. And I knew you would, too.

[Knew isn't quite the word for it. He believed it, against all logic and against all reason. Because if he didn't believe it, he would have simply fallen apart.]

[isawallflower]

[ Alone. Alone. It beats in her chest like a broken record, scratches and catches on the dial. Alone, in her big empty house on her eighth birthday. Alone, in the small, clinical room in the juvenile correction center.

Alone, at the bottom of a dump, dead and tied up.

Riley's life is a serious of regrets that have lead her to that. Alone. She hates to be alone. Hates to make others feel alone, once she realized how much it hurt her. ]

I...guess you're right. I just... [ She glances away, back up. Picks at loose feathers on the backs of her hands. ] I know...it doesn't mean none of it ever happened. I know it—

[ She shrugs one shoulder, her wing brushing against the ground. ]

...I just wanted to tell you. That, if I could change it? I would. For me, and the others...and you too.