anonymous text

[captain_by_the_book]

[anonymous text]

How are you supposed to go back to your life when you realize that you can't protect anyone? That you are never there when they need you the most? That you just bring them more danger?

Comments

[ Text | Anon ]

[eternal_sailormoon]

I think they'd want you in their lives, anyway.

Because, even if they were afraid and alone and needed you - they still felt like they needed you.

And staying away will just make them miss you more.

[captain_by_the_book]

But I'm a danger to them. The things I'm capable of. I thought I could do more good than harm, but lately I've only been doing harm.

anon text;

[truesmiles]

Truth time. You have to know and understand the fact you will never be able to protect everyone. It's a sad fact. Try as we might it's not possible.

But so long as you want to try is what matters. To keep trying in the hopes that next time you'll be able to. That's how I can personally. I failed, I'll just try again with more resolve.

[captain_by_the_book]

I have spent all these years trying. I thought I was doing better.

Lately I'm just failing every step of the way.

[Text | Anon]

[liveandforgive]

[he sees this message on his phone and leaves it on this as he goes to wash his face. looking in the mirror. who did he see? months ago, he would have said he saw someone who wasn't fit to help anyone. not his family. not his friends. nobody... but...]

You just do.

[sent. ... types more.]

Life's not fair or easy. If you care about something, you need to try harder. If trouble follows you, fight harder to protect them.

[captain_by_the_book]

What if I'm what they need to be protected from?

Anon text

[spidertwerp]

That is the worst feeling. To know that you couldn't protect them, or even be there when they needed you.

All you can do is stand up and keep trying. That's what I have to believe anyway.

[captain_by_the_book]

I'm not sure if I trust myself to be there anymore.

Lately I have never been there when they needed me most.

[ Text | Anon ]

[mortal_son]

you don't

[captain_by_the_book]

And do what?

text;

[ghostofrazgriz]

[This hits a little close to home. He won't bother with going anonymous- he'd probably out himself with whatever he would say anyway even if he wanted to be.]

I'll repeat what was already said- You have to know and understand that you can't protect everyone, and you can't be there all the time. It's impossible, no matter how hard you try.

[Typing that makes him feel a pain in his chest.]

You have to get back up and carry on. No, things won't be the same after the fact. Yes, you might carry that guilt for the rest of your life.

But you don't lay down and accept defeat.

[captain_by_the_book]

[ There is a certain irony to getting a message from Blaze of all people, when Cassian is certain that he's one of those who must be most disappointed in him for his repeated failure to guard Attleton properly. For even now that he's back, hiding from his responsibilities. ]

I just keep thinking that the more I try to do good, the more harm I cause.

Every step forward comes with two steps back. I have endangered more people than I have protected, just by being me.

[Anon]

[aurabble]

I think most of us know we can't protect everyone. But it's different when you fail all the time.

Staying away seems like the safest option. But I don't know.

I hope you find out.

[captain_by_the_book]

I don't know either.

I know now that I carry within me the capacity to do harm to the people I want to protect.

I don't know anymore who I am.

text; not anonymous

[whiteas]

I know this is supposed to be anonymous and no one wants to admit they think things like this, but frankly what I'm about to say would be so ridiculously easy to trace back to me it's a waste of everyone's time to try to hide. So here we go.

I've failed. A lot. I've been kidnapped no less than four times here, two of which were while I was City Guardian. The first time, it was by a villain from my world named Roman Torchwick. I was tied to a chair and tortured and had to be saved by my boyfriend and my partner at the time. My left wrist would've been permanently damaged from what he did if it weren't for supernatural healing techniques available here. He made sure to go for my sword hand so I couldn't fight anymore, and made sure it scarred with his symbol in it.

Obviously it wasn't easy to recover from, but I decided I was going to be strong. I was going to be better, and I was going to be able to protect people like I set out to do in the first place. I wasn't going to be the damsel in distress anymore, and I worked hard and I eventually became the City Guardian of Nova City- a position I could truly make a difference in. No one believed I could handle that and running Schnee Company, of course, so I had to designate someone else to do that in order to get elected. My boyfriend disappeared from this place, but I still kept trying. I kept fighting, and I did a very good job increasing relations between the cities' different Guardians, becoming stronger and able to handle myself.

Then at a charity event- a date auction, I was won by a man named Battler Ushiromiya. It was a charity, so I went on the date and it turned out he was actually kind of sweet. We talked, and I got to know more about him- I started having feelings for him, and at the time I was still scared of losing people, so I pushed him away and chose to go for an easier relationship, one that didn't require love; just fun and friendship. Battler had.. he'd just wanted to hurt me, make me fall in love with him and then tear my heart out, possibly literally. But since I didn't let myself fall in love, and he kidnapped and tortured a handful of people I did. He kept me drugged, half-frozen, and made me watch. He recorded parts of it and posted it on the network. He took friends, family, the person I was in a relationship with, people I'd just spoken to. He made me watch as he tortured and killed them and saved me for last. No one came to save us. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't protect anyone, not even myself, and even if it wasn't my fault that he did that- the people he chose were because he wanted to hurt me. I never saw it coming, never saw a single crack in his mask because I was too scared to open myself up so I wouldn't let myself really look at him.

I was broken. Completely. The only reason I even came back- because it's always a choice when you die, you have to still want to live- was because the one thing I could still protect was whether or not Sun was alone here. After that I hid, and my deputy Artanis took over as Guardian for about a month. I couldn't face myself, let alone anyone else. Sun found me and took care of me, and for a while I didn't want to do anything. But I was still Guardian. I still had people I had to protect and I was terrified. That's the real reason I used to money I made at Schnee Company to start paying for extra deputies. I didn't think I could do it. So I broke Nova City up into sectors, a deputy for each, and I acted as a leader and organizer for a team because if there were that many other people, then maybe we could protect the city from people like Battler.

It worked. Things actually got better- crime rates fell, people felt safer, I felt safer. Then I learned how to summon, which.. is a very powerful, useful skill if I can control my emotions. But I was still having panic attacks, nightmares. At one point I summoned a Grimm in my bedroom- which I shared with Nora at the time. I could've killed her if she hadn't woken up, all because I was scared and because my summoning reacts to my emotions. That accident could've killed my friends, and it would've been my fault because I couldn't control it. Things had gotten better and I still couldn't move forward and ended up being a threat to the people I cared about. I moved into a back room in the Guardian Skyrise, sleeping on a couch because at least if I was there and I had a nightmare-induced summon, no one else would be sleeping there. This was after I was supposedly "better" to the public eye.

Then I kept trying, I did some things that even my friends questioned, and at one point I made some questionable hiring choices because of things I believed that other people didn't trust- Mercury Black, a known murderer from my world who worked with the people who killed two of our friends. An associate of Roman Torchwick. But he asked me if I would give him a chance, and I said I would think about it. I wasn't confident in myself at that point, I hated how weak I felt.

Then Dr. Seek infected the waters with his serum and I was split into two people. One of them was.. more like my father than I'd like to admit, and after all of the loss I'd experienced, I decided that I was going to go forward with what I thought was the right decision regardless of what my friends thought, and I was going to treat myself in a way that made me feel better, because for everything I'd done and all my failings, I'd still done a good job. I still deserved to not feel like I didn't deserve to be happy. Maybe that side of myself was selfish, arrogant, bossy, aggressive, and had my priorities all mixed up- but when I realized that at least a few parts of what that part of me had said were right. I didn't deserve to hate myself for what had happened, and just like in the past, I needed to find a way to become more than I was. If you've become the thing that brings more danger, then you need to become better.

There's a mentality that "be yourself" means never change, but that's wrong. We always need to change, we always need to improve and look forward, and we always need to think about who we are and compare it to who we want to be. Accepting that you can't protect everyone or that you don't recover from being harmful, or that you can't go back to your life? Those things aren't going to change anything. If you want things to change, you have to figure out what your next step is. Right or wrong, move onward. It's okay to just live while you figure it out.

Not here

[aurabble]

[She only came back for Sun.

It hurts. More than he expects, but he should have known... He doesn't say anything and he doesn't keep reading. He just shuts his phone off, deciding to avoid her too.]

locked, not anonymous

[captain_by_the_book]

Thank you, Weiss.

Right now I don't know what else to say, but thank you.

You have given me a lot to think about.

[ And there's so much he wants to say about her story, about who she is and has become, and the admiration he feels for her - and she's so young, younger than him! But right now a "thank you" is all he has. ]

Anon Text

[nrgsvr]

Get help.

[captain_by_the_book]

I don't want a counselor.

[text]

[spacepeterpan]

[...there are some feelings the Doctor knows well. He makes no attempt at anonymity; quite to the contrary, he wants Anon to know who they're speaking to.]

Ah. Hello, the Doctor, here. You do the best you can to fix it, to make up for it, as long as you can. And when you can't, you move on. Of course, even if they don't stop you, they may not like it, and it WILL hurt them, so before you do anything drastic, take a care to make certain, CERTAIN, that it's what's best for them, what you really need to do, and not just what feels easiest at the moment, because they can be difficult to tell apart.

It's a lot easier to make amends for a price they willingly pay than it is to put things back how they used to be, after you've made that kind of choice.

If you need to talk to someone who's got a little experience, well, a thousand and some years of space and time, I've been around a bit. Totally confidential, don't hesitate to give us a ring.

Re: [text]

[captain_by_the_book]

Thank you, Doctor, that is helpful advice. In particular that I could do more damage by acting rashly now. That's something I had not considered enough. I know the last thing I want to do is cause further harm.

Is it okay to just move on from mistakes? I have never been very good at moving on from anything.

Text; I will use proper format when I'm not at work :'D

[heroes_never_die]

There's... a lot of things that happen. A lot of things we can't help or fix, no matter how hard we try. I've learned that the hard way. The best thing you can do is try to do what you can, while trying to improve yourself from where you were before.

[There was a small pause before he'll get another.]

In the end... sometimes when the closest bonds break, all you can do is pray you stay out of the cross fire. But if you can, just ask yourself what you did wrong before and what you can do to avoid that. How can you grow stronger in order to protect those you care about?

[captain_by_the_book]

Your advice sounds reasonable.

I know I have to try harder. To become stronger and better, and make less mistakes. Some of my failure was mistakes that could have been avoided.
Others couldn't have been avoided, they are just part of me.

[ He couldn't have avoided his nightmares come alive being Stormtroopers marching through Attleton, but he could have avoided panicking, and making sloppy decisions because of his panic. ]

I just wonder if the best thing I could do is back off. Not from the persons I care for most, but in a broader context.

Anon/text

[carrythesin]

Anon. Are you me?

[captain_by_the_book]

Apparently I'm not the only one.

I'm not sure if this makes me feel better.

ANON

[redcinemareel]

as someone with multiple enemies, I've learned to not care about the danger I bring. mostly because the majority of people I ally myself with can take care of themselves. those that can't are easier to protect because they usually know their limits. just remember that not everyone wants to be babied. most people can't be in two places at once, and thus, can't be everywhere.

Re: ANON

[captain_by_the_book]

I don't know if I can simply accept the danger.

I could accept it, when it was a danger posed by others. Danger was a part of our lives.

But now I'm the one who is a danger to them. That's harder to accept or forgive.

[gotabadfeelingaboutthis]

I've felt it at times...it's too common with my own kids. I'm supposed to protect them and make sure they get to actually grow up, and sometimes I just feel like with my wife and I being well known back home and way too busy with work and stuff that I hate it sometimes.

All we can really do is our best...and sometimes it helps knowin' that maybe even if we can't get out of things alive, it'll keep someone else we care about a little safer, you know?

[Han can't see who it is because it's anonymous, but he knows the feeling.]

[captain_by_the_book]

That's the one comfort I have.

[ And if he let himself think about it, his death being the most comforting part of his life would probably be pretty sad. ]

It's one step forward and two steps back all too often, isn't it?

[Text | Anon]

[bigbadrose]

That's not true. Survivor's guilt is a terrible thing to deal with, and it can understandably shatter your self-confidence, but you need to understand, it's not factual. Watch the movie It's a Wonderful Life, get a pet, and do your best, but every life is important. You just can't save the universe sometimes, and sometimes when someone else does, there's a consequence for them.

[captain_by_the_book]

It's not just survivor's guilt.

[ But that's in there, too. He's never let himself think of the deaths on Scarif, or let himself grieve for them. ]

I just. Wasn't there when I was needed. I don't know how I can trust myself not to have it happen again. It keeps happening.