In a way… she guessed this would be it. That Matsukaze would have a horrid tape, one that would be a hard watch, just as hard as Abel’s but for entirely different reasons. Viper watched. She watched, and winced at every proclamation of hatred, of despair, of their utterly crushed dreams.
Pneumonectomy.
Their reaction to her ultimately insensitive questioning made a lot more sense. F-ck. They hadn’t chosen to stop playing Oboe, it had been cruelly ripped from their hands and stamped all over. Guilt washed through her like a tsunami, her stomach churned with the very real realisation that she could have killed them. Viper could have killed someone innocent purely because she took it way too far.
She didn’t have to hit and wail on them as she had, she could have left it once she knocked them down. But she had felt the need to prove a point, to make an example and show anyone else who witnessed it that she wasn’t going to let them hit her around. But she could have regretted her decision a lot more than she already did. After the initial wave of guilt came a rush of fear.
To know that she could have killed someone. And that at the time, she hadn’t cared.
Viper was a little scared of herself.
Was she no better than her own attacker?
Matsukaze tells their parents they hate them, and Viper finds herself thinking about home. To Kanna. Such hatred for their parents, their dreams gone from their grasp, because of some illness or another, mental or physical… they were at points so similar, but…no. It wasn’t right to compare the two. Matsukaze was suffering, and it wasn’t the time for her to be reminiscing. She needed to understand what she had done, who she had hurt.
She isn’t sure when she started crying again.
Perhaps it was when Matsukaze was so thoroughly alone, excluded by their friends after pushing them away, or perhaps it had been earlier, after hearing them tell their parents they hated them, and that they should have just been left to die. She shouldn’t be the one crying and snivelling… Viper fought hard to get her own emotions under control, taking a breath and wiping her eyes, holding onto Abel tighter, even playing with his hair to try and distract her, but as Matsu drops to their knees, she knows they need someone. Even if that’s the person who almost killed them.
Quietly, she asks Abel to put her down, and as soon as her feet hit the ground she hurries to their side. Someone sobbing in despair was never nice to witness, but something about their desperate cries gripped her heart in a vice, threatening to clasp shut at any moment.
“Hey, hey…” Her voice is soft, but trembles as she reaches out, placing a hand on their back to avoid startling them too much as she brings her arms around them, pulling them against her. Viper brings their head to her shoulder and hugs them, rubbing their back with one hand, the other petting their hair as she softly shushes them.
Her bottom lip trembles, and the corners of her eyes sting. Her hands tremble.
“Matsu- Ito- Matsukaze-” Viper can’t tell what one would feel better to use right now. “I-” Her voice cracks.
“I’m so- I’m so sorry, for- for being such a bitch, that I took it too far…(hic), I could have killed you- and- and- the fact, I did that, it… it’s scary…!” Still fighting to keep herself under control, she buries her face in their hair as she holds them.
Maybe it’s her own self preservation talking. Perhaps she’s truly changing as a person, or maybe it’s the concussion still speaking for her, but… she doesn’t like feeling this way. She came onto this train as someone with little interest in others and even helping them better themselves- but Abel, and now Matsu- Viper couldn’t shake the fact she cared.
She so deeply and fully wanted them both to just be okay. They’d hit her emotional side, the side that told her ‘keep people at arms’ length’ side to shut the hell up. How she wished Matsu’s life could have been different. For a long few moments, she simply holds them, comforting them (she hopes) and letting them simply feel out the emotions they were feeling.
“You don’t have to forgive me.” Her voice is small when she says that part. Without a second thought, she presses a kiss to the top of their head as she comforts them. It’s a gesture she’d gotten so used to when comforting her roommate that it’s not even a consideration that it might be a little weird. “But- I… I wasn’t lying when I said you were strong.”
This tape had just confirmed that. Going through so much, and yet they were still here… Their parents loved them, tried so hard to get through to them… but nothing could repair the damage that had been done when they had chose to save their life, as any good parents would.
Life really wasn’t fair.
