"I wasn't the first person who wanted to change things," the Finn of the Farmworld says. Listening to him talk hurts something in Simon. He's the same age as the Finn he knows, and just the other day he remembers.
Finn smiling bright, an almost feral and guileless openness to the boy that makes it hard to ever be mad at him, so reassuring and good in a world that hasn't been particularly good to Simon. It's an alien feeling thinking about this world.
This Finn doesn't smile. His face is set and tired, and looking at him hurts Simon too. Some part of him keeps comparing them, and he winces inside. That says a lot; Simon is a tired man, and its an effort to care, but somehow he can't stop himself from immediately thinking about what this Finn must have endured to become like this.
Maybe its the world. It's a hard, cold world, and this Finn is tough as nails, calm and uncompromising. He can't imagine this Finn biting a monster's claws off with his teeth, but he can imagine this Finn killing a man without blinking, or crying, or feeling anything more than a flicker of regret.
This is a man that has killed. Not happily, not eagerly, but he has killed, and as they say, practiced hands make quick work.
And it hurts him. He thinks this Finn picks up on it, too; when he speaks to Simon, its with a care that he thinks doesn't come naturally to him.
"What do you mean?" Simon asks, already knowing what he suspects will be the answer. It's close to dinner time, before things get uncomfortable and they have to run. Here, there's enough time to sort things out, figure out each other, and he wants to try; Finn is Finn, and Finn is his friend. He wonders if the Simon of this world ever met him; somehow he doubts it, or that they knew each other personally. Finn didn't react to him, so he doubts his face or name is familiar.
Though, that said, Finn's expression did flicker very briefly when he heard his name. 'Simon Petrikov'. It wasn't in the way of something familiar; possibly he heard the name a long time ago, in circumstances he didn't like thinking about.
"There was a... a boss lady, you might say," Finn says. "Long time ago; before the Destiny Gang steamrolled over everyone. She was a good lady."
"A hard woman for a hard time," Simon says without thinking about it. Something in him froze a long time ago, even without the crown, and his brain-mouth filter probably wasn't much good to begin with.
Finn looks at him. For a moment, Simon wonders if Finn is going to smack him upside the head. A moment passes, and the man's shoulders untense a little. "Yeah," he says, without much emotion in the way that suggests a lot of it being carefully hidden away, in case it might be needed later. Certainly it did no good now to scream about it. "She was." He smiles, for a moment. "Times were tough, and she was tougher."
Finn lifts his head up and blinks, just once, and for a moment his expression twists a little bit.
"Boss Bonnie," he says. "She said she was going to make things better. She was going to fix everything, or go down trying."
"Bonnibel," he says, and his voice is extremely calm. Too calm, too steady, and his hands don't shake, and he doesn't let his voice falter, and Simon is paying very close attention to the things that aren't happening, and he sees a lot of control being put into holding things back, so a father doesn't scare his children by being anything but uncompromising and strong.
The air is thick with grief. It's not a new one. It's an old and comfortable kind of pain; a loss that has grown heavy into the boards and the grass of this land.
This isn't a world friendly to magic, and its not one where sweetness takes root. Simon isn't surprised.
"I'm sorry," he says, and means it.
Finn's head nods, very curtly. It's appreciated, certainly, but he doesn't want to open himself up to strangers.
"She tried," he said.
There's a long silence.
It's filled with a lot of things that go unsaid, that don't want to be said, that hurt too much just thinking about.
Finn doesn't say that the Destiny Gang has a lot to answer for, or even name any names. He doesn't really have to. Simon suspects, for all that might matter.
"Didn't work out," Finn says. He rolls a broad shoulder. "That's the way of things."
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I think something a lot of other people can relate to is the way that you get so conditioned to discomfort that you stop registering it.
I remember sitting at the table with my family, eating dinner as a child. I’d try to eat, because of course I was hungry. But sometimes the flavor or texture was so repugnant that it moved into a category of Not Food.
“Two more bites before you can leave the table.”
“I can’t,” I’d say, trying to explain the impossibility.
But because I was a child they heard, “I won’t,” and made me sit at the table. I’d sit in dull agonized silence, bored and hungry for hours until bedtime when they’d give up. I’d hate myself for not eating and my parents for forcing me to sit there. The few forcefeeding moments ended in vomit.
They’d say, “If you don’t eat this you can’t eat a snack later,” and I moved past trying to communicate my discomfort into accepting that I’d just be hungry.
That state of affairs didn’t last, because my parents realized nothing could force me to eat so they catered to my palate, worrying they’d starve me. But the message stuck. If you can’t do anything about a situation, just accept the suffering.
A few years later my mother called me off the playground to ask, “Are you limping?”
I shrugged. My feet had hurt for a long time, but that was just the way things were now. My mom pulled my socks and shoes off and gasped. The soles of my feet were covered in huge painful planters warts.
“Why didn’t you say anything?!” She demanded but I could only shrug at her. I’d learned a long time ago that saying things about my discomfort didn’t matter, so now I had no words. Sometimes things hurt and sometimes they don’t. I simply accepted and did my best.
Now as an adult trying to learn to improve my own conditions can be hard. If I make food that I can’t eat I’ll force myself to sit at the counter still, full of guilt and self loathing, trying to will myself to eat it.
At first I needed my betrothed to gently take it away to present me with something I could eat. Now on my own I can usually admit that it’s not happening before too long and get something else, but I still feel guilty.
Laying in bed at night waiting for my betrothed to finish getting ready I let out a huge sigh of relief when they turned the lights off.
“Why didn’t you turn them off if they bothered you?” they asked the first time it happened.
“I didn’t even know it was bothering me until it was gone.”
Assessing my physical state now to see if I can improve it is something I’m still relearning but I’m relieved to finally have the space and support to do it.
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my favourite thing about chuuya nakahara is that he's just kind of. chill. about everything. he's like, my tragic backstory has no hold on me, i went to therapy and i'm all good now. i'm a bad guy cuz it pays good and my found family happens to be here. what do you mean that's not a good reason, you a cop or something?
someone will betray him and he'll go ok well that's pretty upsetting. they probably had a good reason though. i'll forgive them if they let me get a good punch in. if they're really just a hater they're giving me bad vibes and i don't wanna deal with 'em at all tbh.
things have been done to him that would warrant a lifelong crusade of revenge for anyone else, but for chuuya nakahara it's just, that was super not cool but i'll let it slide if you get therapy with me.
chuuya is down for any crime and thinks moral boundaries are for losers and stuff but he's the nicest guy in the port mafia when it comes to not mistreating his subordinates and probably helps old ladies cross the street. he shows up for a solid 10-20 minutes of screentime per season and makes all the fans fall in love with him while doing the bare minimum, and despite technically being a villain i don't think he's worked against the agency a single time (although to be fair this is often not on purpose). he also does the bare minimum every time he's asked to help in-universe and clearly isn't even trying, and he sweeps anyway because he is ridiculously overpowered and could probably kill literally everyone if he actually wanted to, and i just. no one is doing it like him. you go you unbothered king.
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