Finding Nemo: How To Land
“I’ve said several times that I’m afraid of falling but not landing. And the difference between falling and landing is that landing means that you can take off again...So, no matter how desperate the situation is, if we choose landing instead of falling, choose not to give up, and just land, we’re ready to fly again.”
-Min Yoongi
**
Summary: Robbie rats out Nemo to Marlin. They go on a road trip to bring Nemo home. Takes place December 14. tw: anxiety, depression
Part One: Failing Nemo
Part Two: Something Else
@robbie-ryeo
@moon-yeongtae
@baenxietydad
Marlin x Robbie Texts
Marlin: [deleted] idk why I’m bother—
Marlin: have you heard from Nam-min
Marlin: Olaf called and said he skipped his exams and isn’t in the dorms. He hasn’t answered me
Marlin: what do you know?
Robbie: Im going to assume this is Marlin.
Robbie: Hello to you too
Robbie: Ugh, he left, though and he told me about it. I know where he is but I was hoping he would be back by now :(
Marlin: And nobody thought to tell me my son disappeared aiya this is great, I bet Tae knows too, eo?
Marlin: Tell me where he is.
Robbie: he's actually with Tae I could take you there.
Robbie: to be honest I want to go get him too
Marlin: of course he’s wife Tae, who else would encourage him to run away at least you’re more responsible 🙄
Marlin: So it’s far away, mm
Robbie: yeah they went camping. Where are you I can come pick you up.
Marlin: In town, near the market
Robbie: I'll be right there
ROBBIE:
Spending the last what felt like 17 hours in the car with Marlin Bae had not been ideal. It wasn’t terrible, but the offhand comments about his driving were…annoying to say the least. Was it really so bad to obey traffic laws? Yes, he understood that perhaps they were in a rush because seeing Nemo and making sure he was okay, those things were important, but if they died on the way to the campsite who did that benefit?
Anyway, they were here now and Robbie pulled into the nearest parking space and shut off the engine. The guilt bubbled inside of him as he wondered how furious Nemo would be with him when he saw him approaching with his father of all people. Maybe Robbie should’ve kept his mouth shut, but he was worried same as Marlin and well, anxiety did things to a person. Nemo would eventually understand.
Maybe.
“I think that’s Tae’s truck over there,” Robbie said, pointing to the familiar farm truck. “They can’t be that far–”
Robbie abruptly stopped talking as he spotted Nemo. Nemo hadn’t seen him yet, but suddenly this felt like a much worse idea than it had two minutes ago. Nemo was clearly fine and smiling and—fuck he was going to hate Robbie.
MARLIN:
Mu-yeol was angry but it was less about Nemo skipping exams and running away than it was about…Nemo not talking to him. What was all that bullshit about how they were a team and in it together, huh? He let Nemo work instead of him handling it all with a second human job because Nemo insisted. But school, work, his Hollow duties, his social life…maybe something or multiple something’s had to give. He worried about as much. But always thought Nam-min would come to him and talk about it.
He buried that anger because it was right to feel but wrong to express, and simply said. “Nam-min ah. Did you not think I should know my son is skipping town?”
Because look. The real root of his anger wasn’t that Nam-min must not be taking to school well, because he didn’t expect his son to be his mother. It was a little that Nemo didn’t tell him and a little that Nemo ran off and let Olaf tell him his son was missing. He was an adult and could make these choices. But an “Appa I’m dropping out and need a few days camping with Tae to clear my head” would have sufficed. Maybe he’d try to talk him out of it but he wouldn’t force Nemo to take his exams if he didn’t want to.
Was he worried he would?
“You really should make your escape plans a little more logically.” He gently, sarcastically chastised him, moving to sit down next to him.
He looked around at Tae and Robbie and sighed. “Both of you, forget how to speak Korean.”
NEMO:
The first few hours into escape, Nemo felt amazing. Weightless. Free. For the first time in moons, there wasn’t something that he was going to have to rush to, or come from, or do. He was just going to curl up with Tae in the back of the truck and become a stranger in the middle of nowhere. He even turned off his phone, after fixing things with Robbie (kind of.)
And things really were good. That first night, they nicked into a gas station for snacks and cheap coffee. They listened to albums and talked and then went for a walk ‘round the campsite, just a short one, before falling asleep in the truck just like they talked about.
When the next morning came though, the pit in Nemo’s stomach had returned. His brain kept buzzing, telling him he was making a huge mistake. He was trying to ignore it though, because what was the alternative?
He and Tae were gonna go make smores– yeah, this early in the morning, why not?-- when Nemo’s choices caught up to him.
He spun around, eyes going wide. At first, his brain shortcircuited. How was Appa–? That didn’t make sense! There was no way he would even know that Nemo was gone!
Then, he saw Robbie lingering over his shoulder and everything clicked into place.
Nemo, at first, ignored Appa entirely as anger twisted his features. “You told him?!” Nemo shouted past Appa, staring at Robbie. “What the fuck, Robbie?!”
ROBBIE:
Robbie’s first instinct was to duck behind a tree as Marlin started casually strolling up to Nemo without a care in the world. Nemo wasn’t scary, obviously–Robbie loved him very much and he was so sweet and cute–but also he was a little scary and Robbie was actually sort of…impressed? Terrified? Of what Marlin was doing. It was probably all of the gnawing guilt making Robbie feel this way, honestly, and it was warranted.
Nemo proved this when he immediately turned toward Robbie with rage in his eyes and yelled.
And yes, there were definitely situations where Robbie would never betray Nemo like this, but this situation was a little bit different. Nemo was doing a very big thing right now–a very big thing that could potentially have very real consequences or spiral out of had very quickly if Nemo was left alone to overthink things–and telling Marlin was the right thing to do.
Unfortunately.
So, when Nemo yelled at him, Robbie didn’t cower or make himself smaller or let himself succumb to his guilt. Instead, with a sad look in his eyes (because hurting Nemo was never good or easy or something he was proud of), he just nodded. “I’m sorry Nemo, but he was so worried about you. We are both worried about you.”
NEMO:
Nemo wanted to shove Robbie.
He wanted to kick Robbie.
He wanted to use his wind to send a blast of damp leaves into his face.
All these cruel fantasies swirled in him as his fists curled, and the wind picked up and whipped at Nemo’s own hair. But just because Nemo wanted to do these things– punish his boyfriend for ratting him out, for ambushing him, for caring– that didn’t mean that it would make him feel good, or even get him out of the trouble he’d got himself into. No matter the size of the tantrum, he’d been caught. And so as quickly as the wind picked up, it died, the air stale and flat.
Nemo’s face flattened out too. He sent a glance toward Tae. “I’ll be back,” he mumbled.
Then he stalked past Appa. “We can talk over here,” he said.
He didn’t look at Robbie again.
MARLIN:
Mu-yeol followed after Nemo, his expression blank save for a concerned furrow of his brow.
“Nemo,” He began coolly. “Just one question. Can you even explain yourself?”
Or was he well and truly off the deep end, eh?
NEMO:
As Nemo walked away, he carried his anger with him. It was a hot and comforting thing– bigger and easier to deal with than Nemo’s pain, his guilt, his worry. But it was also as fragile and thin as a balloon. With just one sentence, Appa destroyed it.
Can you even explain yourself?
Nemo couldn’t.
And just like that– his anger collapsed in on itself into all the rest of those things, the things that Nemo had been running from. His face screwed up, and his lip trembled, and he knew that he’d disappointed Appa. He’d wasted the opportunities that Appa worked so hard to give him. He was ungrateful. He was a loser. He was stupid.
Nemo’s shoulders hunched over, his hands pressing over his face as he began to cry. “N-no,” he admitted. “No, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
He was talking about way more than just explaining himself. Right now, it felt like Nemo couldn’t do anything.
MARLIN:
Rightly or perhaps wrongly, he preferred this version of emotional Nemo to the red hot angry Nemo. Angry Nemo lashed out and left little room for getting to the root of an issue. When Nemo broke down like this he was honest and Marlin could actually figure out how to help him.
“Okay. Can you tell me anything about why you didn’t take your exams? And why didn’t you tell me uni was hard for you, eh?”
NEMO:
“I’m sorry,” Nemo said miserably, still crying and hunched, hiding his face from view. Appa standing there, talking to him so calmly, only told Nemo that his thoughts were right. Appa was disappointed in him. He had failed, miserably. This was shameful. He was nothing like–
“I’m sorry. Y-you worked so hard to help me afford everything and I didn’t want to disappoint you. I wanted to be like her, but I’m not. I’m not smart. I just– it’s so much– I can’t finish anything. I’m always behind everyone. I should be good at it. Everyone else can do it and isn’t like this.” Nemo rubbed his arm over his red, puffy face. “B-but I can’t and I–I dunno why.”
Why had Finn and Louie been fine? Why was Mim and Hunter and everyone else in his fellowship programme so smart? Why was it just Nemo who couldn’t finish the reading and who was so stressed and who couldn’t sleep and was in so much pain?
MARLIN:
“Hey, no, none of that. I don’t care if you finish uni or not, I only care that you do what you want to do regarding the issue. I never expected you to be like your eomma.” Mu-yeol said gently. “You wanted to go to uni so I worked to make it happen for you. It’s okay that you’re struggling to adjust but it’s not okay that you’re handling it by just running away.”
He always did this. Sometimes it was maybe the right decision, but this wasn’t one of those sometimes.
Then again, what had Mu-yeol done when faced with his guilt, his shame, and his fear? He fled Korea and came here. They weren’t so different.
“There’s no such thing as a smart person, Nam-min. There’s people who are very good at certain things, but there’s no smart people. Surgeons and rocket scientists are just as capable of being complete dickheads as anybody else outside of their fields. Your area of skill is in dance and science, maybe not other areas uni is making you tap into and that’s okay. It doesn’t make you a stupid person.”
NEMO:
Appa talked very kindly– kinder than Nemo knew he deserved.
And it was this kindness that made him cry a little harder. Appa was probably right, because Appa was right about most things. Wasn’t that how kids always felt about their parents? It’s what made standing up to them so hard sometimes. And it made leaving them hard too. For this entire semester, Nemo had tried to do his best, to be an adult without Appa’s help, but the truth was he didn’t think he’d been ready.
“S-so what am I supposed to do?” Nemo asked– wanting desperately to be told the answer, for once. He’d really tried to figure it out himself, and he’d failed. Couldn’t Appa tell him the answer, just one more time?
MARLIN:
“Right. I think it’s very obvious you have three options. I doubt you’ll be allowed to make up your final exams, so one of these three things is going to happen and it’s up to you which feels right for you.” Mu-yeol said gently, reaching forward to pat Nemo’s hair.
“One. You retake all your classes next term. Full time student. You stay in the dorms or you can move home and I’ll pay the housing contract severance fee. You might lose your scholarship but it’s okay. I think I can afford it next semester. Two; you drop out and come home. We can try uni again if and when you’re ready. Three; I don’t think they’ll let you stay in the dorms if you stay in school but drop down to part-time, but, maybe they will? If so you can choose to come home or dorm, drop down to part-time hours, and if you lose your scholarship I’ll cover it.”
A beat.
“Also, you’re nineteen. I don’t expect you to have your life figured out or even know what’s going to be the right decision for you a month, six months, a year from now. But one of those options is the right one for you for the now. You have to pick which one, Nam-minnie, I won’t force you to leave or stay in school one way or the other. I presented you a middle ground of going part-time if neither staying nor leaving feels right. You don’t have to decide immediately either. Sooner is better. But you can think it over some.”
NEMO:
All three options stressed Nemo out.
He’d wanted to quit uni about 24 hours ago. He was just so exhausted, so exhausted that the only thing that appealed to him was what he’d done– gotten the fuck away from the campus, disappeared and become a nobody in some sparse campsite far far away. But of course, deep down, he knew it wasn’t what he really wanted. He wanted a break. He wanted help. He wanted a fresh chance. He wanted all of his professors to tell him he didn’t have to take the exams (this was super unrealistic).
If he dropped out, he’d never be a dancer, though. He knew that. A fairy like him needed the connections uni could bring. So he didn’t want to drop out.
Full time filled his brain with bees all over again, bringing back the panic so big, he could choke on it. Thinking about it made him wanna hop in Tae’s truck and drive even further away.
So– part time. Part time it felt like was the only actual option, even though he didn’t know what that meant or would look like, and if he had to leave the dorms– which was the only part of uni he’d really enjoyed so far– he’d be so disappointed.
“Okay,” Nemo uttered in a small, defeated voice. “I’ll…think about it, I guess.” For the first time, he glanced back up at Appa, his eyes still puffy, leaking tears. “I really am sorry,” he said one more time.
MARLIN:
“You have to communicate with me when you’re having a hard time. I can’t help you if I don’t know you need help,” Mu-yeol said gently, resting a hand on Nemo’s shoulder.
He sighed.
“Since I know you aren’t missing and are safe. Do you…want to come home? Or no?”
NEMO:
Confusion fluttered across Nemo’s face. The way this usually worked was– Appa took him home. It was that simple. Whether he had run away, gotten lost, or had to escape from his grandparents, Appa appearing always meant that Nemo had to get in a car or on a train and that was it. It could be comforting, in a way. No matter how nutty things got, Appa would arrive, and Nemo knew he’d be safe.
He’d never been given a choice before. Then again, he was 19 now.
It still, sort of, felt like a trap. He knew what the right answer was. If he went back now, he could maybe take one of his exams– his contemporary dance exam. Which was just a paper, but it was a paper he’d written the most of. Maybe he could finish it, or turn it in unfinished, and explain. It was weird– this had always been an option, Nemo knew that, but only with Appa here did things feel easier to think about. Was it always going to be that way? No matter how old Nemo got?
He still hesitated. “Home,” he said, after that beat. “..Tae needs to return the truck anyway.”
MARLIN:
He nodded slowly and held an arm open for Nemo to curl up to his side.
“Okay. Sounds good— and you tell me when you decide what we’re doing moving forward, okay?” Mu-yeol said, voice even as the calm spot in a river.
“You’re an adult now, this is the part of life where you make the decisions. I’m just here.”
NEMO:
But what if I don’t want to be?
Nemo didn’t say it outloud. He probably didn’t have to, as he accepted Appa’s hug. The entire time they’d been talking, he’d wanted one desperately. He’d wanted one, actually, since he’d gotten injured, but there was a voice in his head scolding him, telling him, You’re too old for that. Too old to ask for help, too old to rely on Appa, too old to miss him.
“I don’t feel like an adult,” Nemo confessed this, at least. “I dunno how to be one.”
MARLIN:
Mu-yeol smiled sadly and played with the hair at the nape of Nemo’s neck, pressing a kiss to his temple.
“I don’t either, kid.” He admitted. “I’ve been faking this whole adult thing for twenty-three years.”
Some years better than others.
“You’ll get there too, as you get older.”
NEMO:
Would he?
Nemo doubted it. He wasn’t even sure he believed Appa, who was always the biggest and most adult-like person in a room, at least to Nemo. He didn’t think that would ever change. Even when Appa was depressed, didn’t Nemo still expect him to know everything?
The future just felt like a complex problem that Nemo was never going to be smart enough to solve. That’s why he kept running from it. He had to stop though. If he ever wanted to get smarter – braver – more capable – to be anything like Appa.
After a few more flits in which Nemo lingered in Appa’s arms and sniffled and wiped at his cheeks, he finally pulled away. It was time to go, he knew that. He trudged back toward Tae and Robbie, and only when he glanced up from the wet grass did he see Robbie looking at him – he’d probably been watching Nemo the whole time.
Nemo’s face went red and he looked away. He probably should apologize to Robbie too, but he was too ashamed.
And so he walked past him again and went to Tae. “We gotta head back,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for dragging you out here.”
TAE:
Tae immediately opened his arms and pulled Nemo in, turning so they were sort of hug-shuffling back to the truck. "Hey you didn't drag me anywhere I didn't want to be, okay? I love you."
3 notes
·
View notes
People & countries mentioned in the thread:
DR Congo - M23, Cobalt
Darfur, Sudan - International Criminal Court, CNN, BBC (Overview); Twitter Explanation on Sudan
Tigray - Human Rights Watch (Ethnic Cleansing Report)
the Sámi people - IWGIA, Euronews
Hawai'i - IWGIA
Syria - Amnesty International
Kashmir- Amnesty Summary (PDF), Wikipedia (Jammu and Kashmir), Human Rights Watch (2022)
Iran - Human Rights Watch, Morality Police (Mahsa/Jina Amini - Al Jazeera, Wikipedia)
Uyghurs - Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) Q&A, Wikipedia, Al Jazeera, UN Report
Tibetans - SaveTibet.org, United Nations
Yazidi people - Wikipedia, United Nations
West Papua - Free West Papua, Genocide Watch
Yemen - Human Rights Watch (Saudi border guards kill migrants), Carrd
Sri Lanka (Tamils) - Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch
Afghans in Pakistan - Al Jazeera, NPR
Ongoing Edits: more from the notes / me
Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh/Azerbaijan (Artsakh) - Global Conflict Tracker ("Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"), Council on Foreign Relations, Human Rights Watch (Azerbaijan overview), Armenian Food Bank
Baháʼís in Iran - Bahá'í International Community, Amnesty, Wikipedia, Minority Rights Group International
Kafala System in the Middle East - Council on Foreign Relations, Migrant Rights
Rohingya - Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, Al Jazeera, UNICEF
Montagnards (Vietnam Highlands) - World Without Genocide, Montagnard Human Rights Organization (MHRO), VOA News
Ukraine - Human Rights Watch (April 2022), Support Ukraine Now (SUN), Ukraine Website, Schools & Education (HRW), Dnieper River advancement (Nov. 15, 2023 - Ap News)
Reblogs with Links / From Others
Indigenous Ppl of Canada, Cambodia, Mexico, Colombia
Libya
Armenia Reblog 1, Armenia Reblog 2
Armenia, Ukraine, Central African Republic, Indigenous Americans, Black ppl (US)
Rohingya (Myanmar)
More Hawai'i Links from @sageisnazty - Ka Lahui Hawaii, Nation of Hawai'i on Soverignty, Rejected Apology Resolution
From @rodeodeparis: Assyrian Policy Institute, Free Yezidi
From @is-this-a-cool-url: North American Manipur Tribal Association (NAMTA)
From @dougielombax & compiled by @azhdakha: Assyrians & Yazidis
West Sahara conflict
Last Updated: Feb. 19th, 2024 (If I missed smth before this, feel free to @ me to add it)
39K notes
·
View notes