findingways | IC Inbox for Kaisou

All right. See you soon.

[ While she's waiting for him to come over, she'll grab some things they can snack on if he needs, though she has a feeling they won't really be doing much eating. But it's a good distraction to keep her from worrying about all the things that might be wrong. ]

Danny arrives a few minutes later. When he walks inside the first thing she might notice is that he looks bad, like he hasn't been sleeping for a few days. Which would be true. It had been a very bad few days. Ever since the explosion he hadn't been able to stop thinking about... that.

"Hey." he says with a tired attempt at a smile. It wasn't very convincing.

There's a hundred questions flying through Moana's mind, but most of them are gone as soon as she opens the door. Danny just looks so tired, and as much as she wants to know what's going on, she has a feeling that interrogating him definitely won't help right now.

So she tries for a smile of her own, but there's too much worry in her expression as she lets him inside. "Hey. What's going on?"

Danny struggles for a moment, trying to figure out where to even start untangling the knot his thoughts were tied up in.

"I..." He shakes his head. "Moana... do you believe in destiny? Do think it can be changed?"

Moana frowns, her concern steadily growing by the intense subject that the conversation is already taking.

"I..." She hesitates, taking a moment to really think about the question. "I believe that...there are paths that we can take. I don't think it's one set destiny, but several different ones, different things that we can do and achieve. But the journey we take...I feel that's up to us. It's our choices and decisions that determines what fate we end up with."

With a deeper frown, she looks at Danny, placing her hand on his arm. "Danny, what is all this about?"

He frowns deeply, as he tries to figure out how to start.

"I... I saw another memory. A few months ago. It was... My other self, he saw his future. Met him. And it was..." He flinches. "It was bad. Really bad."

With an even more worried frown, she leads Danny over to the couch for them both to sit and gently takes his hand. "What happened...in the memory? What did you see?"

He slumps against the back of the couch and curls in on himself.

"A monster. Ten years in the future and that's what he... I... was. His friends and family died, and he destroyed the world for it. There wasn't anything left but rubble and empty buildings."

So yeah... that's what he'd been living with these past few months. That ....that might be in him too.

Moana sucks in a breath. "Oh my gosh, Danny..." Her mind races, trying to think of what to say but instead just thinking back to how Danny's been acting recently, and how things started to make sense now.

"That's why you've been so overprotective lately, isn't it? You're worried that something like that might happen now, and you've been dealing with by yourself that for months?"

"It isn't exactly the kind of thing that's easy to talk about. 'I flipped out and started the apocalypse in at least one future, so now I'm terrified it could happen again here?'" Danny shudders and wraps his hands around his knees.

"But yeah.... Far as I could tell the moment everything went wrong was when his friends and family all died and he was left completely alone. I thought maybe.... If I can just make sure everyone is safe I could stop it from starting."

"I mean...you could have led with it being a memory of your other life. I would have understood then." Though she doesn't really blame him. If it had been her, she isn't sure she would have been able to talk about it either. "But really, I'm more worried that you were carrying such a heavy burden like that all by yourself."

Scooting closer, she wraps an arm around his shoulder as she leans against him. "I can't imagine how awful it must have been to see something like that. And I can understand now why you've been so protective. But you have to let us help you too, y'know? I know you want to keep us safe, but it might be easier if we know what's going on with you. The more you try to take it on alone, the more we'll try to help without understanding what's at stake. It'd be easier if we were working together. And we want you to be safe too."

"I didn't want to make anyone worry," he mumbles. "I mean, its a possible future for me. I figured long as I made sure the first step never happened, everyone would be safe."

But then the explosion had happened. And Danny had realized that he did not actually have it handled. At all.

He stiffens a little as she leans against him, but then relaxes against her. The contact helped, somehow.

"Just... promise to stay away from explosions? That's how everyone died. Then he came back and tried to make the explosion happen again."

She draws in a sharp breath at the reminder of what happened with Varian and Fern. "Oh shoot, that's right. Hearing about that must have been terrifying."

With a deeper frown, she turns so that she can look at him properly, meeting his eyes.

"I mean...I'll do what I can? But if there's something I can do to help, I can't just stand back and do nothing. Just like you can't." Letting her arm drop from his shoulders, she then reaches and gently takes his hands in hers. "But you don't think you have any choice in what happens? I mean, you said that it's a possible future for you, right? We don't have a lot of control over what happens around us, but you can control yourself. And now that you know about that future...now that you know what could happen, doesn't that mean you can choose to make sure it doesn't?"

Danny snorts.

"Hearing about it? I was a couple of blocks away when the explosion go off. I think I was the first one there after it went off." Which had been fine. He'd handled it fine, apart from freaking out on the two of them about their safety.

He curls in on himself with a shudder.

"That's the... well not the worst part. Because there was stuff that got a lot worse. But it was pretty bad. My other self, he said he would do that. That he wouldn't let that future happen. So my future self locked him in the future and went back in time to make that future happen. What if... If there's a bad future like that waiting for me, what if there's also a me who wants it to happen? Who likes being... that?"

A monster, is what he doesn't say. Someone who gave up their humanity and their ability to care about anything, and was proud of it.

"You were there?" Yeah, that's certainly worse. She can definitely understand how he might have gotten upset over something like that.

Moana shakes her head a little. "Okay, but...none of those guys are you. Your past self, his future self...even any possible future self that might enjoy being that way. Those are different versions of you, but not this version of you. You are your own person, and can make your own choices. You can take control of this life and make it your own."

"Not there, there. But I was probably there about five minutes after it went off. Everything smelled like roasted peaches."

Danny hadn't discovered yet just how much that single impulsive run to help had impacted his life.

He frowns uncertainly.

"They were both different versions of me.... But they were still me. And that means that the potential for something like... that is in me too. Even if it doesn't happen the same way." He wraps his arms around himself and shivers. "I could be so dangerous, Moana. And I don't know if anyone could stop me if I ever did lose it like that."

Edited 2023-04-01 18:55 (UTC)

IC Inbox for Kaisou

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