butterflyfactor | (no subject)

"I know it's not the same, but that doesn't mean it's not valuable to note. Most people are lucky if they have one true moment of clarity in their lives, and your odds are a lot worse than most peoples," Layla pointed out.

She only moved one hand, and that one only dropped as far as his shoulder.

"Should I not?"

"No, it's not that, it's just..." he cut himself short with a sigh, blinking in his confusion. Very little about this adventure of theirs was making much sense, and how close they were standing made even less, serving only to muddle his thoughts further. "It's fine. Valuable to note, if you will, but fine."

Yeah, maybe I should not. It's a lot easier to be patient when you know how long you have to wait. Pretty sure most people would say the exact opposite of that was true, though, so maybe it's just a matter of experience. I am very, very experienced.

Well. With some things more than others.

She dropped her hands, but let the one on his shoulder trail down his arm to squeeze his hand.

"Why you wanted to jump," she said, seamlessly swapping out the word drown since, given where they were standing, it was pretty loaded, "and the feeling of clarity can be mutually exclusive, though, right? You had an epiphany, you had a feeling of clarity, and at the time, you had a desire that motivated the two. So is it that they're too wrapped up together in your mind to be separate issues, now?"

I'm not leading him into an answer- I'm genuinely asking him. Leading him here was the bulk of the plan. Anything beyond really is him working through it. I don't know what happens here, tomorrow. I can't just put him at the end of this, where he needs to be.

Technically, I never could. I've always had to lead him by steps. But this is harder.

Edited 2010-03-26 03:21 (UTC)

If he was at all disappointed that she'd let go, he didn't show it, too caught up in her question to pay much mind to anything else. A part of him, though, buried somewhere behind all the doubt and self-loathing, really wished she hadn't. If nothing else, she was a distraction from all the water.

"I thought-- No, I knew I was right in wanting to die. I'd planned it. I was... methodical. I weighed all of my options, considered the pros and cons of each of them. I didn't just get up on that ledge on a whim. I was there because I made a decision to kill myself. The clarity was in dying, so, no, I can't... I can't just separate the two, because they're intrinsically linked."

Layla nodded slowly, turning the words over in her mind.

"But now you don't want to die. Why?"

"Well, that one's easy," he said frankly, eyebrows hiked up towards his hairline. "Because I'm a coward."

She pressed her lips together and watched him, and didn't say anything for a few moments.

"Explain?"

"I've died before," he said. "Or dupes have, at least, and they... They managed it just fine. Me, though?" He let out a laugh that bordered on self-deprecating. "I don't want to die, Layla, because I'm terrified -- of the unknown, of the uncertainty, of... everything. Life is bad enough, and that, at least, is observable."

"There's a difference between dying and ending your own life," she said, body lifting slightly as a larger wave rolled past them, sending her momentarily up onto her toes.

"How many dupes have actually committed suicide, Jamie."

It probably says a lot about my life that I have to honestly think on that question... That I don't just know. Yet here I am, scratching my head as I try to work out just how many times I've gone and killed myself. It's... absurd. Completely and utterly absurd.

"Even in eliminating dupes who've killed other dupes?" he said after a few moments, his mouth set in a frown. "A lot more than you'd think."

"So you're choosing not to do something because you're afraid of the consequences," she said.

"That was your first thought when you realized you hadn't died?"

"It's all kind of a blur," he said, running his wet hand back through his hair, almost exasperated. A few droplets dripped down his face, and he wiped them away with his arm. "But I'm pretty sure they ran closer to I'm sorry. I don't... Do the first thoughts really matter? I'm afraid of the consequences now, and whether or not I was then, right after it happened... It doesn't play into it."

Layla shook her head once.

"It does. Because it is shockingly easy to bury the important things under mountains of other stuff- excuses, circumstances, guilt. You know better than anyone that every angle counts. What you thought and how you felt when you were staring something in the face is at least as important as when you're looking back at it. And sometimes... distance isn't as helpful as you'd think."

She pressed her lips together for a moment, gaze hovering somewhere past his arm. It looked like she was debating something.

"And I don't believe the only thing keeping you alive is fear."

It almost sounds like she's speaking from experience, and I file it away for later, as something to consider asking about in the not-so-distant future when we're not standing in the ocean after nightfall, me fighting off a persistent, if low-level, panic attack.

"Oh," he said, sounding curious, though, admittedly, he had something of an inclination of where she was heading with an opening like that. There were only so many options, after all, and he could already name a few of them. "What else?"

"Every action has a reaction equal in magnitude and opposite in direction," Layla said, shrugging a little, and noticing she was cold from the air, not the water, when she did so. She shrank back a little and ducked down to re-wet her hair, leaning back momentarily to do so. She came upright again, wringing it out a little and pushing it away from her shoulders.

"Say fear is enough to keep you from actively ending your life. What is it, then, that keeps you actively living it? Because from what I've seen, you're not exactly cowering in a corner waiting for the inevitable to hit."

"I've been actively cowering from water," he pointed out, his arms crossed. Though there was only so much he could make out of her in the moonlight, his gaze lingered over chest, seeking out every distraction he could get. A part of him wanted to get it over with, just dunk his head under the water and call it a night -- accomplish whatever it was Layla had set out to do by bringing him out there in the first place -- but he couldn't bring himself to move. "Which, I mean, save for the dinosaurs, is one of the more obvious means of dying on this island."

She sighed and leaned back, letting her feet leave the sand again as she started swimming, lazily, but at least it was moving.

"So you don't want to live?"

"Nope, didn't say that," he replied, letting his voice carry so that she could still hear it. "Just that you weren't entirely right."

"I'm doubling back," she replied, although apparently she meant in the conversation, because she didn't start swimming back to shore.

"I asked you why you didn't want to die, anymore, and you said it's because you're a coward. Okay. Are there any reasons you want to live?"

"There'd have to be, wouldn't there?"

As Jamie watched her swim with a keen eye, his panic never quite subsiding, that twisted, impulsive part of him that still spoke up every once in a while whispered to go join her, that the water was fine, and he had nothing to worry about -- not when one of his reasons for wanting to live was right out there with him.

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

She groaned, rolling her eyes, but smiled, and let her head fall back and her body follow, disappearing under the water. She stayed gone for a few long moments before she came up again, hair heavy with water and not pushed back, considerably closer.

"You're about to officially lose your right to give me crap about straight answers."

"What can I say?" he replied, flashing her a quick grin that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I learned from the best."

"Come on," she prompted, crossing her arms low across her ribs, half in the water, "one good reason you want to live."

I could say Moira or Rahne or the fact that Theresa hasn't had to live through the hell of watching me reabsorb our son. I could even just deflect with another glib remark, because glib remarks are something I excel at. Of all the things I've learned over the years, avoidance is unique in that I'm pretty sure I picked it up all on my own, no dupes required. In the end, though, I can't quite shake that voice nagging me in the back of my head -- do something unexpected, it says, tell the truth.

"You," he said simply after a moment's deliberation. He was breaking every rule in the noir handbook -- if such a thing existed -- with such an admission, but it was undeniably true. Still, he averted his gaze, and when he spoke again, his voice was only just loud enough to be heard over the water. "You're a good reason to want to live."

Layla's expression slipped a little from sheer surprise that was being tightly reigned in by habitual nonchalance. Her fingers dug into her arms so that they wouldn't.

"I wasn't angling for that," she said, after a moment.

I really wasn't. It's actually surprising as hell to hear. I could almost feel guilty, but I guess I'm a better alternative than not having a reason.

And it's nice to hear.