Focus Your Chi [Finished!]

[Bee]

Well, this was awkward. Jin was not particularly comfortable expressing emotions that were not directly related to annoyance, scorn, or general mirth; seeing other people emote to this degree was like walking in on a loved one copulating: you either made a joke to lighten the situation, ran away to preserve sanity, or just stood there and fidgeted like an idiot because you were too entranced by the horrific wreck to move. It wasn't a very good list of options. Jin indulged in number three for a few moments.

Hadyn looked extremely distressed, like a Bizarro World version of the sullen, brooding feline he had met in the pub earlier in the day. Why, he thought, were they suddenly on Opposite Planet? Was the Jin in this universe a kind, compassionate individual with a delicate instinct for comfort?

"Yeah, you're gonna need to--calm that down a bit and--breathe first, and then--try complete, coherent sentences."

Well, it wasn't a delicate instinct for comfort, and he sounded awkward as fuck, but it wasn't devoid of warmth, either. It would have to do.

[Dark]

Hadyn gasped for air, barely hearing Jin over the rush of blood roaring in his ears. Black dots swam at the corner of his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to get himself under control.

Rationally, he knew this breakdown had been a long time coming—he would be one cold bastard if he had been able to walk away unscathed—but he wished he had been because it hurt. It was eating him from the inside out; everything he could have done differently—being honest, asking for help, letting someone adopt her instead of leaving her in a graveyard because he’d been too much of a fucking coward....

His claws drew pricks of blood as they dug into his palm; he exhaled. He focused on getting his breathing under control, feeling the air rattle in his lungs as he struggled to make each inhalation last. His pulse slowed.

Hadyn slowly opened his eyes, keeping his gaze downcast as his thoughts stilled and reordered themselves.

“When I was fifteen, I slept with my cousin—we’re not biologically related, but we were raised together—and I got pregnant. I didn’t tell anyone; I moved out and I haven’t spoken to my family since. I tried to abort it—her—but it didn’t work. It just made me really, really sick,” he laughed humorlessly, unconsciously tracing the scar on his belly. “After she was born, I took her to the old graveyard and I left her. It seemed like a good place to forget.”

Except he hadn’t forgotten.

[Bee]

Jin just sort of stared at him again while his mind worked hurriedly to squash he disgust that was bubbling up. Throwing your helpless infant away like a piece of trash seemed like one of the more dire cruelties; even Abner, worthless and better off dead though he was, was never left to die in the Solandrian wilderness. Sana had just shipped most of her children off. It was just a kid; it wasn't like someone had planted explosives in his abdomen.

On the other hand, Hadyn looked only to be a year or two younger than Jin himself, and as...interesting...as his personality was now, it was probably unfair of Jin to expect an even stupider and brooding fifteen-year-old version of Hadyn to act rationally. Jin tried to do something sympathetic and imagine himself pregnant three years ago. It didn't work. His mental image of himself was not compatible with a distended womb. He tried harder. He got something.

Huh. His mental imagine of himself was not of a selfish jackass.

The disgust bubbled up, then, and sparked anger. Jin had been right; the cat was running away. And from--that.

"I'm glad you didn't forget. I hope you think about it every day for the rest of your life. How much of a stupid, selfish bastard do you have to be to leave your child to die? How much of a drama queen? How much of a coward? What, do you think you're the first person in the entire world who has ever gotten pregnant and didn't want the kid?"

His lowered his voice a bit. Sana was probably overhearing this anyway, because his mother somehow heard everything, but he didn't want her to come charging in.

"Suffering wasn't just invented by you and only for you. Get the fuck over yourself. Why don't you try to make it up to your dead kid and do something with your life, instead of moping about it? You're never going to change the fact that you acted like a self-absorbed little prick, but the least you can do is stop acting like this is something that your miserable abandoned child did to you and accept that this is something you fucking did to yourself and do something productive about it."

He took a deep breath he hadn't realized he needed, and stared at the feline with all the level hardness he could dredge up.

[Dark]

Hadyn knew he deserved it and on some level even knew that Jin was right, but that didn’t stop the sudden wave of hate that bubbled up from his gut. The world narrowed in a wash of red.

Hadyn would remember that day—those painful, lonely months—for the rest of his pitiful existence. He didn’t need Jin to patronize him; to tell him things that he already knew to be true. In the end, Jin could look down on him from his lofty moral high-ground and spout all he wanted about cowardice and self-sacrifice, but he wouldn’t ever really understand, would he? Jin would never know what it was like to stand on the precipice, to have his world fracture and crumble around him. Where would his morals be then?

The red faded from his vision, leaving Hadyn feeling drained. He was so tired. He’d just been a stupid, scared kid and still was in many regards; he knew he was a coward.

He rubbed at his face ineffectually with one paw, “You don’t need to tell me what I already know.”

[Bee]

"Somebody needs to tell you, apparently," Jin said impatiently.

Because something wasn't sticking, and Jin was now in a perfectly foul mood for dealing with one stupid teenager's stupid pathetic life. Hadyn could know he was a spineless dick all he wanted; the knowledge wasn't going to do him a damn bit of good--aside from fueling his own useless self-hatred and woe--until someone forced him to do something about it, since apparently Hadyn was not the self-motivated type.

He wasn't even putting up a fight, now. Frustrating. Boring. Jin was just about to try to provoke him again when his mother poked her head again. The large canine looked at her son, the cat, and then back to her son.

"You two are being very disruptive," she said in a low voice and their own tongue. "Get him out of here. Do something with him. Take him to a town. Drop him in a lake. I don't care. You don't come back until you've taken care of it."

Jin looked at her resentfully. Sana stared back. Jin rolled his eyes and turned to Hadyn.

"We're going out."

[Dark]

Hadyn didn't particularly care for the look shared between mother and son; he didn't understand anything of the conversation, and maybe it was not knowing the language that made him paranoid, but something about the entire tone of the exchange made his fur stand on end.

Leery, he quietly thanked her the hospitality and followed Jin out into the snow. He didn't ask where they were going.

His thoughts drifted as they walked, lingering on what Jin had said. The disgust he could understand--what he had done was considered abhorent in almost every sphere of society--but what he couldn't was the anger. Jin had acted as if Hadyn's sins were a personal afront.

Hadyn frowned, mentally shaking himself. Whatever Jin's reasons, they weren't important. Hadyn didn't want to argue with him--Jin might be right, but Hadyn couldn't change what happened.

[Bee]

Jin tromped along in the snow, for the moment fully content with the notion that he was leading Hadyn to a watery, icy abyss. Being out in the cold had caused him to lose a little bit of his zeal, especially since it had started to snow with great alacrity; mostly he wanted to drop the feline off somewhere convenient and then head back to his nice warm house and reflect on what a poor decision it was to bring strangers to the house no matter how interesting they seemed at first glance.

He shook a little bit of snow off his head. They weren't near enough to a town or a lake for his comfort; he had a sneaking suspicion that the snowfall was going to get worse, as it was wont to do. The weather seemed to like spiting him. He looked skyward; it was a thick, uniform blanket of dark grey.

He sighed, and walked faster.

[Dark]

Even Hadyn was beginning to become vaguely aware of the temperature drop, and he glanced at the uniform expanse of gray worriedly. It had hardly been snowing when they left the house, and now the world was being smothered with it. He marveled at how quiet it had become, and how quickly the storm had moved in.

"Uhm. Does this seem to be picking up?" The last thing they needed was to be stuck in a snowstorm. The situation was making Hadyn uncomfortably aware that he had no idea what to do in a situation like this. He cursed himself for an idiot; he really must have a death wish.

The snow was beginning to get thick enough that he couldn't see more than a few yards in any direction, but he thought he remembered seeing foothills to their left. What were the chances of finding a cave in this weather? He asked Jin.

[Bee]

It was beginning to get quite difficult to see any useful distance ahead through the whirl of flaky white. It was coming in even quicker than Jin thought it would; there was definitely no way to get to town now, as it was still a great distance away, and likely they were too far away from the house to make it back there, either. It was looking like their best bet was a cave.

Jin scowled. He knew of a few in the area, but being able to navigate toward them was going to be another matter entirely, and being stuck in a cave with someone wasn't particularly striking his fancy. Still, there was really no option but to try, lest they freeze to death.

"There's one not too far from here," he said, and he was pretty confident that this was true. "I can get us there."

[Dark]

Jin seemed relatively confident in his ability to find shelter, and Hadyn trudged through the snow behind him in silence. If--when--they found shelter, they could address Jin's foul mood; Hadyn doubted it was simply because of a snowstorm, and if they were going to be trapped in one anothers' company for any period of time they would either have to clear the air or kill one another. Darkly, Hadyn thought he fancied the latter.

The world had become a writhing mass of white and Hadyn could barely see his own paws let alone Jin; it was no surprise that they almost missed the cave. He reached blindly for where he thought he'd seen Jin, paw colliding with warm flesh; he pulled Jin towards the cave.

He shook the snow from his fur and looked around; the wind must have picked up at some point, but it wasn't until the sound was muffled that Hadyn become aware of the distant, angry howl. He shivered.

"What now?"