notrosecolored | Duplicity Contact Post

did i ever tell you about the version of you i met? obviously not here but where you're from. did i?

Not that I remember - which doesn't mean it isn't or wasn't important but my memory is... somewhat fragmented around certain points in time.

we met twice. the first time you freed me from where i was held captive. you didn't know who i was, you were just freeing prisoners. the second time you blasted me in under five seconds when you thought i was hurting jean but it was just psychic backlash from our minds. i sometimes don't know what to expect from you and maybe that's what makes you a good leader.

[ It takes Scott a little while to reply. Mostly because there's a lot - probably more than Nate knows - there. ]

To a degree, it is. there's more than one person out there who is more afraid of me when I don't seem to have a plan than when I do. Maybe more relevantly, for all the shit you've experienced, maybe because of it you're still... a person. You function as an individual, not a tool or within a role.

That's very rarely true for me. It isn't about being unpredictable as a tactic. It's more about the roll itself and... some other shit that comes along with it that makes some interpersonal shit hard for me to navigate and my responses... less than ideal or expected by people with a stronger sense of individual identity.

( for a second he was worried scott might take that as nate thinking he might hurt him and he's glad scott doesn't seem to, since that's not what he meant. he does remember what akihiro had told him: how scott was coming from a particularly low place and to try and be patient with him. how if scott didn't care, he probably wouldn't still keep talking to him. )

i don't want to be a tool or a weapon, no. maybe that's why i'm here, but it's not what or who i want to be.

( why, while he doesn't realize it just yet, he tends to go it solo rather than join any teams. but that's something he'll [unfortunately] come to learn in the future at some point: how teams either want him for his power or to take his power for themselves. )

believe me when i say i'm being nice with saying this but i don't think you really know how to chill. i feel like you're always on guard, even if you don't realize it. i can't say i get it because i don't know everything you've been through but i know you've been through some hard stuff and so i can't really blame you for being that way when you're used to being that way.

i'm sorry that i get frustrated sometimes. i guess i'm just more reactive and you're more proactive.

Reactive vs proactive is a good way of putting a lot of those differences.

Though for what it's worth, I don't want you to be a weapon or a tool, either.

[ There is... a lot more there, most of it not feeling like it needs a response but. ]

Logan once said I was a good war general and asked me if I knew how to turn it off.

I don't.