darkinferno | [narrations + overflow]

"They probably can," Dante agrees. "But why would they bother recreating monsters any of us remember when they can make their own nightmares to taunt us with? They can already erase entire colors; it can't be that much harder to make mutated half-breeds, right?"

He meets Togusa's eyes when the other man looks at him, but after a moment he's got to look away. "You don't know the half of it," he says, but the snort that goes alongside it is halfhearted at best.

He's seen a lot of shit so far. And he's sure there's only more to come.

"The worst possibility is that it's easier to pull something through that exists in another world than it is to make something up wholesale. Still not convinced that's what's going on." But Togusa has to keep his eyes open the second something happens to definitively prove that idea.

He looks at Dante, and it's hard to think of how to put what he wants to say. "Whatever it is Retrospec is showing you. Even if you do think this is something another version of you did or saw, something they lived? Something terrible. Nobody's going to think less of you for it. Everybody's been damn good about not conflating the people we are with the people we're remembering."

"So if it'll help to tell somebody, don't be afraid to. If it's nobody else's business, that's good, too."

How is it that the people in his life seem to see right through him sometimes? Dante doesn't look back toward Togusa, instead fingering the objects on the table with the pretense of looking for more clues. Sure, he can say that people wouldn't judge him for what apparently happened to him in his other life, but... that doesn't mean that he doesn't judge himself. It doesn't mean that any lessons the other him might have learned would have carried over into this life. It doesn't mean that, were he put in the same position, Dante wouldn't make the same choices himself.

Take care of her. If the "her" in question were Ari, Dante's positive he would have made the same decision, as final as it felt.

"They're just flashes of someone else's life, right?" The words feel fake, coming out of his mouth, but Dante pulls up years of experience to make it nonchalant, disdainful. "They don't mean anything about me."

Aside from the fact that he'd apparently been the type of person that would kidnap princesses to reach his own goals. The type of person that would lose his heart to the darkness.

Dante shrugs. "They're not that important."

Dante's words are what Togusa hopes to hear, but his body language is too tense, he's doing the sullen teenager thing again. This has to actually be bothering him because, as Togusa has pointed out before, Dante is a very good liar. When he is motivated, not a damn thing will show.

"Even if," Togusa holds up a hand, "I know some people are thinking this way so humor me on this." Because of course we couldn't be talking about you. "Even if there is something that is really personally reflecting in what they're showing us. You can actually see yourself taking his actions. Or maybe you want to be able to see yourself doing what he's doing. It's still the best way to think about it to envision it at someone else's life."

"It's no different than thinking back on your own past and losing yourself to regrets about actions you might've taken. What if I had stayed in law? What if things had worked out with that one girl? It's all a big what if. And if you focus on it too much you can lose sight of what's right in front of you."

Togusa looks back at the television screen and huffs a sigh. "Which, in our case is monster movies."

Edited ( I did not click that icon what ) 2017-07-25 16:14 (UTC)

Is it that Dante's tells are showing? Or is it that Togusa's gotten to know him well enough to see past them? "Sullen teenager" is part and parcel of his entire "asshole" persona, after all...

Still, there's a subtle shift to his shoulders that Togusa might notice if he's looking closely. His eyes are still on the desk, but his hands still as Dante tries to tell himself the truth of the officer's words.

It's no different than thinking back on your own past and losing yourself to regrets about actions you might've taken, huh? Is it losing himself in the past? Or is it worrying for his future? Because there's a part of him that's scared of the picture these memories are beginning to paint for him, a part of him that's scared that the idea he'd tossed out to Ardyn months ago--that Retrospec might be trying to make them into the people they're seeing--might be right. Where's the line between this guy that he's remembering and Dante? Yeah, the other him had done bad things... but wouldn't he, if he were fighting for someone he really cared about?

He's falling into that trap that Togusa just warned him against. Dante's breath catches as he realizes it, and he shakes his head, pushing those thoughts aside for now. If you focus on it too much...

"I know. I just don't want..." He has to pause, unprepared for the sudden twist of his goddamn heart. But it makes him finally lift his eyes, and to Togusa he might look entirely unguarded for once, his uncertainty plan in Dirk's orange eyes. "I don't want to lose everything I've got right now because I made the same mistakes he did."

There's a matching stab into Togusa's heart when he sees the look on Dante's face, the regret that wasn't even there when he was sitting in a police interrogation room. Forget the investigation for a minute, then, there's something more important. There's no look of pity on Togusa's face, but an open look of understanding when he nods.

"You won't. The one advantage you've got is that you get to learn from his mistakes, and yours. You remember doing something, that keeps you from doing it again. These are memories. Not premonitions. They're over and done with. So they don't have to happen again."

Togusa's hands go to his hips. "Even if we don't know every single piece of the context that led up to it? The little flashes of memory we're getting in isolation? We can still tell if something was unacceptable. And know not to do it ourselves."

Even if Togusa isn't willing to give in to it, himself, he can empathize with the fact that other people are. That what Ardyn, and Lucian, Yoon-sung, what they are seeing is resonating with them too strongly. And it's hard not to take it personally. And now Dante, too.

It would be a good reminder, if Dante wasn't shaking his head already. "That's the problem. I already know why he did the things he did. And I know that if I were in his shoes I would've probably done the same things. I probably still would."

He already knows he'd walk into hell for Ari. Knowing how that story ends doesn't mean he wouldn't try and do it if it meant saving her anyways.

"If you would still do it, then is it really a mistake?" And which one of the two of them was that aimed at? File that away for later, focus now. Togusa holds out a hand.

"You know the reasons, the lead up, and the costs that came with it. Was it a mistake then? Or was what he gained out of it actually worth it? And, in that case, is it really an action you need to be afraid of?"

Oh, that look on Dante's face is rapidly becoming a deadpan.

"He made a deal with this witchy-looking woman to find this friend of his that, when he found her, was pretty much comatose, started using these dark powers along the way, and got killed because of it. But he had to have saved her in the end, because he told someone else to 'take care of her' as the two of them shut these giant doors between whatever afterworld he was in and the real world."

There's a second where Togusa has no possible way to know how to react to that. Dante was right; he didn't know the half of it. And now we put Dante on the worst list of all: people who have memories of their own death.

Why is it always the kids?

Togusa walks around the table, and he puts a hand on Dante's shoulder, ready for it to be immediately shrugged off, but he does it anyway.

"Is learning that you'd do anything for a friend so bad? Because...you didn't answer the question. Was that a mistake? If making a deal with a force we don't understand is the only way to get what you need to save people?" Because isn't that precisely what they're doing now?

"If he saved her in the end? Wasn't that worth it?"

Dante's shoulders do instinctively shift when Togusa reaches out to him--he's not used to people trying to offer comfort; it feels strange for that weight to be there. It's not that he's intentionally shrugging Togusa off, but it may be what happens nonetheless.

"Maybe. I don't know. I don't think he knew what was going to happen after he died."

He has to take a moment here to sort his thoughts out, to revisit all the different memories he's had and try to figure out the order they all belong in. There are so many, of all these different places and people and events... he thinks again that it seems too much for one life, that he can't imagine how it all fits together.

"And you're misunderstanding me," Dante says, the rest of Togusa's words sinking in belatedly. "It's not 'a force we don't understand.' When he started using the darkness... he could summon monsters. They obeyed him. That's what got him killed.

"In one memory I have, someone was arguing with him about it. He tried to tell the other me that he was stupid for siding with them and that 'sooner or later they'll swallow your heart.'" He runs a hand through his hair, shaking his head. "I think that's what must have happened. Wherever he wound up, he was fighting those monsters. That was the first thing I ever remembered, fighting the Heartless in that afterworld. It didn't matter how many of them I killed, more kept coming back to take their place."

He doesn't want to see the look on Togusa's face. He knows how bad it all is--there's a reason he hasn't been telling many people about these memories, after all. "When I first showed up in that place, I could feel myself wanting to fade away. Like it'd be easier if I just let it happen and became nothing. How long he managed to hold on... I don't know."

Edited 2017-07-25 20:05 (UTC)

Togusa lets his hand slide off, and he silently listens, lets Dante look away from him. As if he has something to be ashamed of in the memories of another man, another life?

"He knew what the power was, he knew what the cost was, to himself," Togusa has to clarify. The specifics are confusing, just as monstrous as he expected, but the feelings behind them are understandable.

Dante is scared he- a bolt of absolute fear jolts through Togusa when he realizes it. The other Dante made his choices out of a self-sacrificial drive, but what Dante is saying there at the end is out and out suicidality. The man fought the unspeakable for the sake of a friend, and it killed him, and if this goes on, Dante is going to be afraid to make attachments to people, if he isn't already, because he thinks it's capable of literally killing him.

Choose. Your. Next. Words. Carefully. Togusa.

"Even when it's more painful to hang on and fight, I believe you'll do it. He's got the memories of fighting. You don't have to throw yourself into this fight," a gesture at the room around them, Retrospec's own headquarters, definitely a fight, "just to try to make up for it."

"But I know there's also no chance you're backing away. So. Keep talking to your friends. If you're so worried about what you'd do on your own."

Again, he shakes his head. Wrong again. He doesn't want to go into more detail, not one bit, but Dante can recognize that he's not explaining this well enough to get the point across.

"I don't... think he did," he admits, taking a long, deep breath to steady himself. "That witch I mentioned... she'd made a deal with him. If he helped her, she'd help him find the girl he was looking for. I... he kidnapped someone. A princess. I remember--he brought her this princess, and she had a ship waiting to take him to where his friend was."

His eyes close as he remembers the conversation between him and the woman, remembering that first inclination of something being wrong with the stuff he remembered. "I asked her what the catch was. She said... she said that I was like a son to her, that she only wanted me to be happy." Dante reopens his eyes, looking at Togusa and shrugging. "He didn't believe her, but he thought things would be all right because he knew better than to trust her.

"I don't know exactly what happened after that. But I've got another memory of him on the ship, later. The third friend showed up and instead of asking about the girl, he wanted to know about the new friends he'd made instead." He doesn't mean to, but there's a bitterness that creeps into his words. He can remember how it felt, looking at the boy on the decks below him, the burn of betrayal he'd felt when the boy hadn't cared at all about him or her. "He'd replaced us. He didn't care about finding her--he'd let the other me do all the legwork and once he'd found her, then he was worried. He was the one that told the other me he'd lose his heart to the Heartless. And I.." He looks away again. "He said that there wasn't a chance, because his heart was too strong for that."

Obviously he'd been wrong about that. And that's what Dante's afraid of: that like his other self, he might make choices based in his own overconfidence, that he'll dig himself into a hole he can't get back out of. That he'll make the same sort of mistakes his other self did and that, like him, he'll wind up alone in the end, tormented by his own failures and shortcomings.

Your heart is empty. It's a refrain that he hasn't been able to quite block out, ever since he'd first heard her say it back in March. You should be grateful. Were it not for the darkness it contains, you'd be entirely alone.

"I'm not doing this because of him, though." It's true, though weak as a defense against Togusa's words. "I'm not trying to make up for anything."

Besides. Togusa wants him to keep talking to his friends? That requires having friends he admits this sort of thing to in the first place.

Again, the details, the specifics, it's all a little much. Things that make sense resolved in Dante's head, a world that he understands but is hard to explain. But it doesn't matter.

Kidnapping, hurting someone else to do a favor for the woman to get power. A friend, forgotten about, betrayed by someone else. And that power that Dante, or other Dante, eventually succumbed to. He wanted it to end.

But Togusa's response is simple. "You think there's some detail that's going to change my mind. Like I'm still here because I don't see something that you see. You can keep trying to pile on the reasons you think nobody should bother with you. And I'm still going to stay."

"What?" Dante can't help but jerk his gaze back to Togusa, startled. "No, that's not what I'm doing--it's just, you're giving me--him--credit when it wasn't..." When he doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve the way Togusa points out that he'd known the cost to himself. Sure, he'd known that the Heartless might swallow his heart, but he hadn't expected it. He'd thought he was so strong that he would avoid it! He'd been an idiot; he doesn't deserve to be described like he'd done something noble.

For a moment, he can only stare at the other man. What does he mean, he's going to stay? And how does he know that Dante doesn't think people should bother with him...?

It slips out before he can stop it--faint, but audible if Togusa's listening hard enough. "Why...?"

"Because you're my friend." He says it like it's the simplest thing in the world.

"This isn't quite the time or the place to go into specifics, but if you're convinced you're still a bad person deep down, then look around you. You're standing here, in this building, right now, because you're trying to figure this out. Not for the self-serving reasons, but you always keep in mind that there are a lot of other people stuck in this situation with you. And that they're at risk. So you'll do anything you can to help."

"You can try to tell me it's selfish. I know better." That smile of Togusa's turns a little knowing. "So. I'm staying."

Yeah, that look on his face isn't going anywhere. Friends? That easily? It seems impossible. Togusa's everything he isn't, the sort of guy that gets respect just by being himself. He's softer, even if he is a cop, gentler, more willing to give someone a smile and a helping hand than he is to ignore them or rub salt in the wound. The only similarity between the two of them is their refusal to let the Retrospec matter go, the fact that they're both here in this moment.

Even with Togusa's warning against getting into it here, Dante still can't prevent himself from disagreeing aloud. "That's not... why I'm doing it, though." He looks away, not wanting to say anything more. Why is it that Togusa can see so much good at him? Why is it that Togusa is missing the obvious explanations for his actions and choosing instead to attribute them to some sort of benevolence he just doesn't have?

"I don't sneak in for other people's sakes. I sneak in because it pisses Retrospec off. Because if I can get my hands on information they don't want us to have, it'll make them feel less secure in their bunker. I want to make them feel the same way they've been trying to make us feel. How can you say that isn't self-serving?"

Again, his voice seems to fail him a little bit. "How can you say we're friends just like that?"

"It's true, isn't it? The two of us have been watching out for each other enough, we've got to be friends."

Togusa gets it, or at least he thinks he does. Dante's been abandoned by so many people in his life, Togusa had tracked the inability to trust other people. Him and Ardyn get kept at arm's length because Dante is waiting for them to decide he isn't worth it any more, like every other adult in his life. But, no, it has gone farther, and Dante is also starting to wonder what it is that's wrong with him to make everyone leave. He's the common denominator.

"There's nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with wanting revenge, either. So, if that's really what you're doing it for, then cool, keep doing it, because it's helping other people out." But, that tone in Togusa's voice says that he doesn't fully buy that that's the reason Dante is here.

[It's mind-boggling, really: is that really all there is to it? If so, then by Togusa's standards, Dante's got a whole plethora of friends--except Dante doesn't feel that level of comfort he attributes to a friend around most of them, the way he feels when he's around Ari, or Prompto, or...

His expression breaks again in surprise at Togusa's next words. Where is this coming from? Nothing wrong with him? Has Togusa met him?

But it's that tone in the other man's voice that makes him frown.]

If there's something you want to say, then say it.

How does Togusa want to put this? If he goes too heavy-handed here, it's only going to piss Dante off. So, keep it simple.

"If you take a look at what you've been doing, instead of worrying about why you've been doing it? Then the result is that you've been helping out a lot of people. And I don't know if anybody's thanked you for that, so thank you." You care, Dante. And I know you care. And it's not wrong to.

Togusa shrugs easily. "Actions are always more important to me. I wouldn't be standing in this room, myself, if they weren't."

Unfortunately, it's easier than not to annoy Dante, especially in a situation like this. His frown deepens. "I don't need your thanks. I already told you I'm not doing it for anybody else's sake. You don't always need to try and bolster my confidence or whatever it is you're doing."

Whoops. Sorry, Togusa.

"Well sorry, then." He keeps his tone light, shrugs it off. "Investigation's a thankless job, I know that better than most. It's the same I'd do for anybody working in the field with me." He pushes off from the table he's been leaning on.

"You got pictures? I'm probably going to split before Retrospec decides we're not amusing any more and they kick us out." A good point to disengage, let Dante think over what he's said. Togusa's different when it comes to fighting, but the parts he's okay with Dante helping with, he'll try to encourage.

"Hang on." Dante pulls his phone back out, taking a few pictures of the room for record. A few of the room at large, some closer shots of Maurice's research and the various items around... he doubts they'll be able to get back into this room again or, if they do, that it'll have the same items. They need to get as much detail as they can right now.

But after a few minutes, he'll straighten back up, nodding toward Togusa. "All right. Let's get out of here."

They've gotten some good information here, but it's definitely time to take a step back before he says something he might regret later.

There's really not anything more to be said, Togusa will continue to back off. "Some time you're going to have to explain how the hell you snuck up on me," Togusa comments, but it's with a smile. He heads down the stairs.

"I have to get back, but I get the feeling we're going to find out what this was for sooner rather than later." He nods casually to Dante. Don't make too big of a deal about it. But he'll keep an ear out for whenever Dante wants to follow up on this.

There's a flicker of Dante's usual smirk as he follows Togusa toward the stairs. "I don't know about that. I may just have to leave you guessing."

He's just... going to wait a couple moments to make sure that the stairs aren't going to turn into a slide on Togusa before he follows after him, suspicious of them the entire time--he's not going to be caught twice by that!

Once they're outside of the building, Dante gives a flippant wave. "Later, Togusa."

Edited 2017-08-13 23:14 (UTC)

[narrations + overflow]

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