lockon2urheart

Because the urge to get this down onto paper (.....metaphorically) hit me before, and it got.....ridiculously huge. Like, '1700+ words of babble' huge.

What's going through Lockon's head in regards to the Tieria situation?

A large part of him is still kicking himself for rationalising it away for so long and not taking the hints like he should have done. He always did think he was pretty good at picking up on small details about people, then the thing with Lyle happened and shook that because he totally missed how deep that went, and then this. Where he saw a lot of the signals, he just read them completely wrong.

He's trying to act normal around Tieria right now because while he's oblivious sometimes he ain't stupid, even he can see that Tieria seems to be expecting the other shoe to drop any day, and for that other shoe to be, at best, a cessation of friendship on Lockon's side.

And he hasn't the heart to drop the other shoe, or at least doesn't know how to do it without really hurting Tieria. Because this isn't a schoolgirl crush or a woman hitting on him in a bar, this is Tieria. Lockon knows he's attractive - not in a bragging yeah-i'm-hot-bitches way, but in the irrelevant-fact kind of way - and he also knows that women in a bar won't be too broken up if he doesn't respond/steers them towards his friends because he's not the only attractive guy around, and he knew that schoolgirl crushes would woe for a while and then find some other hot guy to crush on.

But Tieria's different; he's so….unsexual that Lockon can't see him falling for someone on the basis of looks, which means that this runs deeper and will cut deeper if-- when he gets rejected. And even he can see when Tieria started to change, he just chalked it up to other factors, so he can hazard a guess that this has been going on and building for a hell of a long time. This isn't some little crush that Tieria'll bounce back in a day from, and it'd be unfair to treat it like that. And while he's pretty sure that the whole rescue and eye injury thing is wrapped up in this - he'd be utterly stupid to think that that didn't still bother Tieria, after all - as much as he wants to rationalise it away as Tieria just. feeling like he owes Lockon something for that, because that's something he can reassure Tieria about and have things be back to normal, he's painfully aware now of how much rationalising this away he's been doing and how little rationalising any more will help.

But the big issue is that it's not really Tieria at all. Why he's so hesitant about reciprocating, I mean. It's almost entirely his own problems: his self-worth and survivor's guilt and general issues. Sure, he can rationalise it, he can fall back on how bad an idea it is to have a relationship in the workplace, especially a workplace as fraught with high tension as Celestial Being, how Tieria's love-borne protectiveness has already proven to interfere with his tactical decisions……..but that falls a bit flat in the face of the fact that Tieria's Tieria. If anyone could disconnect and do the mission, it'd probably be him; the issue was that he was trying to keep Lockon out of the fray without Lockon knowing why. If they could actually talk that through now, with the truth out there, (and preferably when Lockon wasn't on the tense edge of grief this time...) it'd probably work out.

But that whole thing is just one more nail in the coffin, because if Lockon had come that close to outright attacking Tieria, whatever the circumstances, how can he comfortably slip into a relationship? How can he know how much anger rolls around in his heart and knowingly expose someone else to that, in a relationship? He's got so much more of an understanding of himself than when he was 16 and in the single non-virus relationship of his life. A friendship is one thing, even a close one. He knows he can be a good friend. But a boyfriend? A lover? That's different, and he has no confidence that he could ever offer someone something they couldn't get and more, and better, from someone else in that regard. Even if he deserved that kind of…normality, that chance at happiness, which he just. doesn't. believe. It's why he can't let himself think back to how happy he was in the virus with Tieria and Michael, especially why he can't think of the virus with Yukari, without guilt.

He's never managed to pull himself out of guilt. Survivor's guilt. He was the only survivor (that was actually inside the shopping centre, that is) of the bombing, and he managed to convince himself back then that the only reason he was still alive was to get revenge, and to protect Lyle as best he could with their strained relationship while he was at it. The happy, normal, bright future, that was for Lyle, not for him, that wasn't why he survived. That thought only solidified when he found Celestial Being; changing the world for good was something concrete he could give his life to and actually make a difference. And something that would find him the KPSA/Ali, of course.

When he woke up out of the coma, when the Doctor told him he'd killed Ali, it was one of those moments of what now? He'd expected to die killing Ali, would have been happy to, because that's all he was for, although he would never have said that out loud to anyone - and he hadn't. So his world-axis wobbled a little, and found footing again in the secondary goal of changing the world. Mostly for Lyle. And now Lyle's a member of Katharon, and Lyle knows about Celestial Being, and Lyle's sure he's going to get brought in to the organisation - so Neil's having to cling to the idea of changing the world because that's vague enough to at least stay possible in a world where his plans keep changing.

But even with such a vague goal, it's still a goal, and Lockon is nothing if not goal-oriented. A relationship, even with another Meister - even though he's killed Ali (to his knowledge, at least) - he hasn't earned happiness, he's still only alive for a greater purpose than his own happiness, a relationship is at best a distraction, at worst an abandoning of his purpose in living. And while he might not be a deathseeker as such, he doesn't exactly place much value on his own life beyond being a tool - to complete his goal, and try to help people on the way - and it's bad enough to inflict that on friends when it hits its inevitable conclusion. To put your heart in the hands of someone who doesn't care about their own is asking for your heart to be broken. Lockon doesn't want to do that to Tieria (…again) if he can help it.

And then on the other hand, there's the part he doesn't want to acknowledge, doesn't want to face, which is that because he shoulders that responsibility, because he wants to deny himself that ability to live for his own sake, and because he carries the shadow of his family's corpses behind him all the time, he is incredibly lonely, and there's a part of him that is touched by Tieria loving him despite seeing the hints of his uglier nature that have come out, a part of him that craves that kind of closeness that's just one step further than a friendship, that love. Hell, part of him can't believe Tieria does still love him, having seen - and borne the brunt of - that ugly side more than once, considering how - apart and judgemental he was when all of them first met. He'd happily take some credit for bringing Tieria into his humanity, but it's still strange to think that someone who was so willing to judge all those years ago would love someone as flawed as him.

And really, talking of the Tieria of old, Lockon's always….held him apart, in a way. Mentally, I mean, and not in a bad way - but he never got drawn under the filial feelings umbrella like Setsuna, or under the easy friendship one like Allelujah, but equally Lockon never dismissed him or anything like that. Tieria was always kind of Other, but in the interesting way that made him want to pursue a friendship and find out what was under Tieria's tsuntsun. He's always cared about Tieria, and in a different way to how he cared about the others - he's always had a protective streak for Tieria that ran parallel with his family-protective one. There's always been something there, curiosity, a project, friendship, he never disliked Tieria for all his strangeness, even that became something he was rather fond of. He sensed how brittle and fragile Tieria could be - hell, had to be, wound up that tight - and it made him warm to him in a way that the others didn't really, to begin with. He was never lying when he told Tieria he was human; where it counts, he is, to Lockon, regardless of any strangeness of attitude, thoughts, or computer-based activities. He likes Tieria, even after their couple of big arguments, he always comes back to liking him in the long run.

But he never saw that protectiveness, that fondness, that warmth, in a romantic light, because he just didn't think that way about him. About anyone. Habit, not to do that, and because he's really not all that libidinous anyway.Even so, he's always known Tieria's attractive - beautiful, objectively, it's hard to miss. And a number of community-based events, coughcough, made that clear as anything.

If he let himself think it, he might admit that if things were different - he were different - then Tieria, this beautiful, cutely-strange, tsuntsun, squishy-centred person who he cared deeply about, being in love with him wouldn't be this complicated. Wouldn't be a bad thing. Strange, but not bad.

But he's just. Not letting himself do that train of thought. Because he's still too stuck on the first part, on how it would be horrible to reciprocate, while being stalled on how to call it off. Because he can't help but think that anything he says will sound horribly trite/false, because he can't exactly get down to the nitty gritty of his own issues. Especially not when he won't - can't - plumb the depths of them himself. It'll take a Shadow to pull those out of him. And even aside from all that, he's just lost the closest thing he had to a father in more than a decade, which just. reminded him how much it hurts to lose someone who's crossed a line from friendship. He can't help getting attached to people in a familial way, his big brothering thing is just too strong, but he can at least try to keep this friendship from crossing into something so potentially painful - for both him, and for Tieria.

Because most of all, he just. doesn't want to hurt Tieria. He doesn't want to make all that progress in their friendship and build up Tieria's ability to become close to people and then break it all, and he knows Tieria doesn't take emotional pain well. But both options, rejecting him or reciprocating, will hurt him in different ways, it's just a matter of time, at least in Lockon's mind. A rock and a hard place. So he's stuck in limbo and hoping that acting like everything's normal will make "We can still be friends" hurt less when he can finally say it. Like he should.

Really.

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I did say it was long. /cough. Uh....questions? :'D