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[indignitas]

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Comments

[indignitas]

The quirk of a wry smile. That's his own fault for using such a loaded term as 'peace', of course that's the answer he gets. Mine's appearance in the town hadn't Daigo any peace, at all. It brought him a cold dread that their failings were going to be repeated. All he's thinking now is that he doesn't want that for anyone else. He settles into the protection of his cigarette, hand covering the lower half of his face as he looks contemplatively into the curl of smoke.

"Words can bring it all too close to home."

He understands, even if he's been hurt by that particular defense mechanism many times in his life.

[iamthecrucible]

"Spend long enough not speaking and inertia takes over."

Maybe like wearing his armor, his helmet. It no longer feels natural to go without, to the point that his own skin feels alien to him sometimes.

He sighs. "Anyway." It's something to think about, another struggle to have with himself later when he has the time and patience with himself to do so, perhaps. "I know you prefer to be very private about things, so I haven't told him your name. But I think he'd like to meet you. He'd like you."

[indignitas]

He doesn't have any particular objection to introducing himself to any of Shaxx's circle, but there's a precise difference between introducing himself and being himself. Despite his time and efforts in Sumarlok, Daigo is really no better at taking off his armor sometimes. Maybe no one calls him that anymore, but the chairman lives and breathes.

"Of course," he was never going to say no. "It would be customary to take you all out on the town, even."

That's how the yakuza do it, anyway. Your sworn brothers people are your people and they receive the same hospitalities. Although, usually the scene is that your brother has been in jail for however many years, and that is why you're celebrating finally seeing him again.

[iamthecrucible]

He is well aware that the Daigo Felwinter will meet isn't going to be quite the Daigo Shaxx knows, which is regrettable... but they're all a bit like that in their own way. He certainly knew a side of Felwinter no one else did. Daigo's just a bit more private than most. He might hope eventually that there will be a deeper sort of friendship there, but that's not for him to determine; all he can do is put them in the same room.

"He'd like that, actually. Not necessarily a drink and party person, but... this city is very much what he dreamed the Last City could be." For all Titans are creatures of the City, Shaxx's place has always been watching over it, not poking his nose in all the doorways like he knows Felwinter would like to do. "You're also welcome to just come by the house. Whatever you're most comfortable with."

[indignitas]

He won't tell Shaxx that's sweet, that will come off too condescending here, but his emphatic reassurance is also bemusing. Daigo will be fine. Aside from the residual grief he gets off Shaxx himself, there's nothing uncomfortable here.

"I'm sure I will," all agreement. Daigo knows how to say no when he needs to, but when he doesn't he falls right in to the cultural habit of agreeing politely with everything.

"I'll look forward to it," he offers reassuringly. He is not as effusive as Wanda, but all he really cares about is that Felwinter's presence makes the Guardians happy in the end. Whatever needs to be done to support that will be done.

[iamthecrucible]

He lets it go at that; he trusts Daigo to speak his own mind when he's got an opinion. Shaxx wouldn't have been attracted to him in the first place if he didn't have that level of personal strength.

Though now that part's all sorted out, since he knows Daigo has been in a similar situation, he finds there is something he wants to ask. The emotional side of this has been a lot to sort through. He leans back against the wall of the building as he tries to put words to what's been quietly bothering him.

"It's awkward," he finally says. "I feel awkward around Fel sometimes. Like I no longer remember what to do. Did you ever feel that way?"

[indignitas]

A faint, sad smile of understanding. He's a little bit surprised to hear Shaxx put an emotion like that into words in the first place, but he is probably the person to ask.

"You nurture a version of them in your mind for a long time," he says softly. "And that's not really them. They don't know anything about all the times you thought of them, with what emotions and with what need. How they've comforted and aggrieved you."

His eyes are down, focused on the tip of a shoe as he smokes. "You start the relationship over, and try to see who they really are again."

[iamthecrucible]

It's a measure of how badly it's bothering him, this uncertainty, this inability to be purely happy when he damn well should be. He doesn't like this feeling, and he doesn't want to weigh Felwinter down with it when the man's been through enough and doesn't need this burden.

Daigo's words at least clarify what the problem is, and offer a solution. Not an easy one, but an existing one. Even when he's spent a lot of time trying not to think about Felwinter, not to feel his absence, he's still been that imagined person. It would be impossible for him to not be.

He lets his head fall back against the wall, looking up at the sky. "You don't really feel change as it happens," he says. "But it's visible in the aggregate. I'm not the same person I was a hundred and twenty... hundred and thirty years ago." Before the losses on the moon, before the Red War, before Saint and Osiris's return, before fucking Twilight Gap. He looks down at his hand, the one not occupied by the half-finished beer, slowly opens and closes his fingers. "Not by a long shot. Guess he gets to figure that out, too."

Much of how he's changed, he'd credit to Felwinter... but half the impetus for that shift in his dedication, the way he'd thrown himself into the work he'd found, was that Felwinter hadn't been there to push Shaxx, himself. He isn't afraid, exactly, that Felwinter won't like this new version of who he is. He gave up needing the personal approval of anyone a long, long time ago. But it would be pointless tragedy for Fel to come back to him, only to discover they no longer fit together.

It's a long term concern, and he's never been good at solving those. His talent has always been in dealing with the immediate crisis. And that, thanks to Daigo, he's got a plan of attack for now. A shockingly simple one, all the harder because it requires him to be patient and let things be until they both figure out where they stand.

But it's better than no plan at all.

[indignitas]

He can see the motion out of the corner of his eye and moves his cigarette into the same grip as his drink so that he can reach out to pat Shaxx's arm reassuringly.

"It all feels up in the air now, but it will settle."

He and Mine hadn't actually gotten to that point, no chance to find a familiar routine that encapsulated them. That routine is inevitable when given more time though. Daigo supposes he just won't posit the idea that Felwinter could be gone in a month. He'll chalk his own experiences up to the usual hauntings and curses and be done with it.

[iamthecrucible]

He reaches up to lightly catch Daigo's hand for a moment, gives it a small squeeze.

"I'd rather deal uncertainty that involves whether I'll be shot," he says, though in a joking tone. But it is the kind of thing he's a lot more used to.

"Thank you."