victormakesart | (no subject)

She holds onto his hand tightly, scootching in closer to him, feeling a little childish, and she doesn't know if it's the situation or the fact that he's so much bigger than her. "What do you do? I have kids, and, and all I can think of is their parents, their sweet little faces, the way they must've clamped onto their daddy's hand when they crossed the street, the way they must've slept in their cribs, and I'm basically, almost, a doctor, and I couldn't do anything. They were already gone."

"You gotta let it go. If they were gone before you even got there, there really wasn't anything you could do." It's not a helpful answer, he knows, and while he can tough it out she might not be so skilled.

"If we would've gotten there faster we probably coulda saved them. Man, their faces, though. That first night I could sleep, but--"

"But you didn't know. You can't blame yourself for them dying. The only people at fault are the bastards who killed them."

She shakes her head, swings his hand lightly back and forth. "I just wonder why I bother sometimes. Like, why keep with medicine when patients die. Why keep heroing if you can't save everyone. I never planned to have to save everyone, but now I feel like... the little I can do will never be enough."

"You can't think that way. Those people you've saved, you made a difference to them."

"I guess," she says, running her fingertips along his knuckles. "I just don't know how to stop feelin' awful."

"There's no one set way for everyone... and it might not completely go away. Probably won't. Is there anything you can do for them? Tell their parents, take care of the bodies...?"

"I don't think I can face their parents. I don't even know if their folks're still around, I think, I mean, I think the apocalypse was goin' on?"

"Where were you?"

"A friend's home-planet."

"Was someone attacking? What happened?" He gives her hand a squeeze, and curls his tail around to lie parallel with his foot, the tip twitching slightly like a cat's.

She leans against his leg, not putting much weight against him. "It's all my fault. Everything. All of it. My friend's husband got switched with a bad guy, so she called me, and I made her get out of the situation. I made her PIN away. She PINed back to her world, where, none of us knew it'd gone to he-um, had gotten so bad. She's pregnant. And on her world, her kinda pregnancy is a big deal, a vampire pregnancy. So she got kidnapped by a cult, who tried to feed her innocent blood, which means the kids, and she didn't, but the kids were killed anyway. So if I hadn't insisted she'd gone-- Jake, this is all my fault."

This is all crazy talk, and he only knows one vampire, but he's not going to ask just yet. "How the hell is it your fault that her world's screwed up?"

"If I hadn't made her leave the situation, she never woulda ended up there to start with."

"Yeah? What would've happened if she'd stayed?"

"The guy was dangerous, but maybe he would've left her alone if I was obnoxious enough."

"Look, did you know her world had gone to crap?"

"I had no idea. I thought she was just gonna go to the Nexus."

"Then it's not your fault." Again, Victor.

Sniffle-sniffle, she wipes her eyes on her wrist, leans against him just a little more. "I feel like it is."

"It's not. So stop it." He tries to say that as gently as he can, and his tail brushes up against her leg. "You didn't know, and blaming yourself is only going to make you feel bad."

"I just wanted to make sure everyone was safe," she says, eyes shut tightly, focusing on how she's feeling, focusing hard on how to make how she's feeling better.

"Sometimes all you can do is save as many as you can."

"This planet is one of my favorites, right here. Do you wanna look around?"