SAIL IC Inbox

[serialskiller]

Messages will be answered when I'm done with this episode of my serial.

Comments

[serialskiller]

What.

Why?

[prince_of_beasts]

Hapenede to fast
You wre e gone befor i coudl do anyhhing

("They all say that.")

Nobody posss posesde poeddeds FUCK took yuor body thouhg

Not that it would have mattered. But since SecUnit is back, he figures it might help to know.

[serialskiller]

Good. That's all that matters. My body has been used for massacre before. This time, dying was the best outcome.

[prince_of_beasts]

Why! Does everyone he cares about! Keep saying that!!!

No
Nobdy dying wsa t e bsst utcome

I couldnt asve rich or ossie or giles or dar cy o r you
Couldn t do anything

[serialskiller]

I'm a SecUnit. You're a human. Saving me is never your job.

[prince_of_beasts]

Fuck it.

Dimitri excuses himself to Fio, and steps out of the cabin to find a stairwell private enough to shout at his phone.

I don't care what you are!
I'm supposed to protect! That's my job! That's the last thing that makes me a person and I can't even do that!
Everyone I love dies in front of me and I cannot stop it from happening!
And I keep being told that it's fine and death is fine and I shouldn't care
It's!
Not!
Fine!

He hurls his phone across the stairwell hard enough it dents the wall with a crunch, and crumples into a ball against the corner.

[serialskiller]

Murderbot sends its drones out across the ship to try to find Dimitri, concerned.

[prince_of_beasts]

Dimitri's not leaving that stairwell. He picks his head up at the faint whirr of a drone, glaring at it with red-rimmed eyes. "I'm going to care," he snarls. "Whether you want me to or not."

[serialskiller]

"I know you are. I know I can't change what people feel."

There's a vague undertone of exasperation, though the drone's tiny speakers render it a bit hard to tell what it's emoting beyond that.

[prince_of_beasts]

"It hurt to watch someone I care about die. It hurts that I couldn't do anything to prevent it. Does that make sense? Am I insane? Why does no one seem to understand that?"

Dimitri buries his head back in his arms.

"Glenn, and Dedue, and Darcy, and you. What do I have to do to believe that the people I love won't die the moment I turn my back? Why do you all keep insisting it's okay?"

[serialskiller]

"Love?"

That's not doubt, that's confusion.

"What do you mean?"

[prince_of_beasts]

"I don't know! I don't know why I love people, it just happens -- oh, yes, and Ossie going out to find Ginger without asking for help like he promised, why does this keep happening? -- you're kind! You care! You want to be more than what you were made for and, and you made me feel like I could, too, and I love you for that!" Dimitri sniffs and scrubs his wrist across his eyes. "I don't. I don't wish I loved less than I do. But Saints alive it wouldn't hurt so goddamn much."

[serialskiller]

The drone hovers silently for several minutes.

And then Murderbot it-proper-self turns up. No blanket. No supplies. Just. A murderbot that was never meant to be loved. In a stairwell with a prince with too large a heart.

It doesn't know what to say. It doesn't have answers. But it is here.