maybe your memories will be... better...?

[softlyfalling]

Who: all y'all
Where: wheremstever you want to take memories
When: Day 354

[ decent odds your memories will be better than what's been going on around here, right ]

Comments

[selfpreservationist]

Aren't you the one who encouraged me to buy them, to keep up with you? I'm only now reaching twenty.

[auguryofinnocence]

Yes, but do you really want to do that all at once? Have a few every couple days, don't wait a month between and suddenly load them all on.

[selfpreservationist]

That would be easier if what happens "every couple days" was more predictable.

...

It's... not like I want to remember it. It's just...

[auguryofinnocence]

Hm. Better to get it out of the way, rather than be expecting and fearing it.

[selfpreservationist]

That, too.

[...]

Do you have plans? For today, I mean.

[auguryofinnocence]

Not particularly, no.

[selfpreservationist]

I'd like to take a walk in the park, if you'd deign to join me.

[auguryofinnocence]

I was heading there myself.

[So yes! He'll start leading the way immediately.]

[selfpreservationist]

[raven follows along, quiet, only stopping to admire some of the plants]

[auguryofinnocence]

[He doesn't mind stopping for that, Vergils like plants. Maybe demon plants are especially nice but regular is good too. They can make their way over slowly, and the same once they're there. If it's just a walk anyway there's no rush.

It's...kind of nice to just casually spend time with Raven like this too? But he also has Raven's new memories on his mind, figuring out what he thinks about it is tough. Eventually he speaks up.]

...Why did you save those people? To gain whatever it is I lack, to be like Dante?

[selfpreservationist]

[he carefully holds a flower in his palm, admiring it without plucking it from the stem]

I'm... wondering about that, myself. It was an impulse, but... it felt right. It felt better than just watching them die, anyway. Perhaps I simply tired of all that pointless death. Perhaps I thought... they were worth saving.

[auguryofinnocence]

[His brow furrows, but his voice is soft. Both in volume and quality.]

They would die anyway, anyone still in the city at that point without the means to defend themselves...how could they possibly escape. What is the point in it.

[Conscience? Caring about people in general? Does not compute.]

[selfpreservationist]

You remember saving that boy and his mother. You remember what that felt like.

[auguryofinnocence]

...That's different. Still pointless in the end but it is more...personal.

[selfpreservationist]

Yes, it was. But it still felt... right. Didn't it? It felt... good.

Why do you think I wanted to stop Urizen in the first place? The whole affair was exhausting, and painful, and nearly killed me on more than one occasion. I hated it. But I still did it--because otherwise, the whole human world would have been consumed eventually. It wasn't just for my own survival that I was fighting.

[auguryofinnocence]

The entire human world is somewhat excessive. But bothering with a few individual humans who are doomed regardless... I don't know.

[He just can't wrap his head around it!]

[selfpreservationist]

It's puzzling to me, too. But I think... I understand where that instinct came from, even so.

[auguryofinnocence]

[He thinks for a few moments.]

Perhaps it is what Sparda would have done.

[selfpreservationist]

... you are his son, after all.

["you", not "we"]

[auguryofinnocence]

Don't make it sound as if you aren't the one who did it.

[selfpreservationist]

I'm not denying that. But no matter how I may think of them, I'm not the son they had. Eva and Sparda only had two children, a pair of twin boys.

Where I fit into the picture... is hard to say. Still, I agree--I think Sparda would have done the same, and if it's his legacy I carried in my actions, I can hardly be ashamed.

[auguryofinnocence]

[He sighs.]

And you come from one of them, you have those memories, you can call yourself their son.

[selfpreservationist]

...

[he carefully plucks the flower, saying nothing, and goes over to vergil, holding it out to him]

[auguryofinnocence]

[


???

He looks at it for a few seconds just kind of, dumbfounded, before accepting it.]

Is this a peace offering?

[selfpreservationist]

Is a flower still beautiful, after it's been plucked? When its been cut off from its source of life?