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He didn't.

[Neither did Paul, but he still only gives that half-agreement. He still can't accept Daniel's generosity, as much as some part of him knows he's being stupid, knows he's being transparent. He can practically step outside of himself to see it: a shame-faced youth left on his own to try to salvage the scraps of honour he has remaining.]

He was protecting your dojo. It was the right thing to do.

May I seek him out to give him an apology directly?

[Would it be all right if he did?]

Of course you may. In fact, I am fairly sure that is not something you need my permission for.

[ His fingers type on, initially. 'I'm not his father, after all,' but Daniel wonders just how much of that sentiment is true in his own heart at this point, and he feels like the f-word is probably way too sensitive to use here in the first place, given what went down today.

But he knows it's still the reason he typed that in the first place. ]

I don't think it's my jurisdiction whether you can talk to him or not. It is something Robby has to decide for himself.

I want your permission.

[He almost wrote approval.]

I know he doesn't have to talk to me. But I want to do this properly.

My House and my dojo offended against yours. It was my responsibility to facilitate a formal rapproachment between Miyagi-do and Eagle Fang. I failed.

[Daniel isn't going to understand. Paul barely knows where to begin to explain, and if anything were different, he might not. But he wants to explain. He wants it to be understood that he knows how he has transgressed, and seeks to make amends.]

Do you remember when we talked about adoption?

[ It's true that all of this is very different from what Daniel is used to. But on the other hand - it's not like it doesn't remind him of something either. The value Paul seems to place on concepts so close to honour, to families, despite his young age.. it feels a little like Daniel's Okinawan vacation all over again.

Briefly he wonders if Paul's home was anything like that. It would certainly explain a few things.

It's a thought Daniel keeps to himself for now though, instead just writing: ]

I remember. Why?

[ He'll let Paul speak first. ]

I was talking about Sensei Lawrence. I'm sure you know that, by now.

I took him into House Atreides. It means that I answer for the things he does, that it's my House's name that he takes with him.

I allowed myself to behave as a child, and not according to my position or my responsibilities. I am Duke Atreides, and if a member of my House falls short, it is because I permitted it to happen.

[His hand is lighter without the ring. He touches the place it used to sit, and he does not think about it.]

Were you talking about Robby?

[ .. wait, hold on.

This is so much all of a sudden, and that's before Daniel even reads the last part. First of all there's the elephant in the room of how awful it is that someone as young as Paul truly thinks he has to take responsibility for the actions of adults, rather than the other way around. Yes, Daniel gets that this is probably how things happen in Paul's world, but that doesn't make it right for that sort of responsibility to be placed on the shoulders of someone so young, let alone for Paul to carry it even into this place.

Then there's the instant question of oh god, does Johnny even know this? Because Daniel has no idea. He figures not, because surely even Johnny freaking Lawrence would act a little more reasonable if he knew that Paul would feel responsible for his actions-- and does that mean Daniel should tell him, since Johnny would never figure it out himself? Should he have conversations with that man about both his sons?!

And then there's finally that really, really obvious implication in what the other is writing that Paul's parents aren't alive anymore. Or that he's at least lost one parent. After all, why else would a teenager be walking around calling himself a duke?

The implications of this all are so much, enough to make Daniel's head spin, every single worry sensor in his head going off, creating pure chaos. ]

[ He breathes, trying to calm down, because the question the other asks him is enough of a problem all on its own. Daniel would love to lie about this, to keep it entirely to himself, but.. if he wants to address the stuff Paul is saying with the kid in a serious way, he has to show first that Paul can trust him.

.. which means being honest, even if he doesn't want to be. ]

Yes.

[ At this point maybe even more so than he had been in that moment. ]

Please don't tell Robby though. I'm not going to tell him either. He is already having such a hard time with Johnny, and I don't want to mess that up even further by making things more complicated.

I just want him to be happy. As long as I can watch over him to try and help make sure he is, then it's fine.

[ Even if he'll never be able to fill that very specific other role, when it already belongs to someone else. ]

Edited 2022-11-28 20:18 (UTC)

I won't tell anyone. You have my word.

[Including Johnny, although Daniel didn't ask about that - and is it because he trusts Paul to have the discretion to refrain from lighting the fuse on that bomb, or because his concern for Robby's well-being? Is it both? Or is it, as everything here seems to be, more complicated than that?]

I understand better why you're unhappy with Sensei Lawrence. [To put it lightly.] I know what it's like to want to protect someone in a complicated situation. It's difficult to

[Navigate. Fair winds and following seas. A crown of fronds.]

negotiate.

Thank you.

[ He trusts that word too. Not even just because Paul seems to come from the sort of place - judging by everything else he's saying - where giving your word like that truly means something, but because he has definitely opted to put his trust in the boy now, after all this.

Which gives him more room to focus on what comes after. He could tell the boy that there's many more reasons why he's unhappy with Johnny, but he won't. Paul obviously seems very fond of Johnny, and the same counts in reverse, and while Daniel can be petty, he certainly wouldn't want to break up something both people perceive as good.

So instead of focusing on that, he writes on-- ]

Honestly, you shouldn't have to deal with that.

I understand that it is how things work where you come from. [ Or so Daniel has inferred, anyway. He's pretty sure about this one, or Paul wouldn't speak of it as if it were so natural. ] But you are still so young. You shouldn't have to carry the burden of having to protect others, or take responsibility for them.

People should be doing that for you. It is a parent's duty to do that so their children don't have to.

I would tell Robby the exact same thing.

[ If Robby were to somehow claim responsibility for him in a similar way, he means. But thankfully Robby is a normal boy who got to grow up without space feudalism. ]

[Old Imperial contempt rears up in Paul like a snake stirred out of tall grass, hooked fangs dripping venom. The pap of an underdeveloped world and its underdeveloped people, soft and sentimental, fit to be spoonfed to children, and nothing else -

A threat display to ward off everything that wells up at Daniel's well-intentioned words, reflexive, defensive, the cut-glass edge of inexplicable incipient panic.]

What does it matter about should?

This is my burden. If I set it aside, no one else will take it up.

[He isn't alone. He has his House, his friends, his allies. He has his teachers. He has survived in strange waters motherless and fatherless. He doesn't need Daniel's pity.

(He needs Daniel's kindness even less. Paul needs his kindness like Paul needs his chest cracked open and his heart quivering in the cold.)]

My father taught me that.

[ It's hard to tell tone across text - especially at a moment like this. It's easy to take the words more neutrally, but it feels like there's a little bit more behind them. Maybe it's all of Daniel's experience with teenagers, but it's also easy to imagine a bit more bite to it. What does it matter, so familiar.

Though maybe it doesn't matter. Regardless of the sentiment that underlies the other's words, Daniel just breathes, and types on calmly. ]

Would your father have wanted you to hurt?

[ Paul's father, a nebulous entity. Daniel has no idea what the man must have been like. One might imagine it'd be something like Johnny, considering how much Paul latched onto him - but Daniel knows very well that doesn't have to be the case. After all, for how much he personally loves both his father and mister Miyagi, he wouldn't necessarily call the two alike. Sometimes you find a new father in a different type of person entirely.

He likes to think he's right about this one though. That Paul's father wouldn't have wanted him to. That he, as most fathers, would just have been wishing for his son's wellbeing, his son's happiness. ]

You can share that burden here. [ He's careful to draw that distinction, not wanting to say much about whether he can or can't in the place he comes from when Daniel knows so little about it.

But he likes to think he knows about Trench. ] With everyone who loves you.

You don't have to hurt yourself by carrying all responsibility on your own. No one would want you to, Paul.

Edited 2022-12-02 20:32 (UTC)

[The first thing Paul writes, furiously, is Don't talk about my father.

He leaves it there for almost a minute while he stares at the message, unsent. He deletes it, cursor eating up the letters one at a time, but their afterimage clings to him.

(His father never wanted him to hurt.)]

I'm not hurt by it.

It's a privilege to be asked to shoulder responsibility. It demonstrates the trust others put in you.

What I regret is falling short of that trust.

[Retreat, recede, pull away like a tide from the waterline. Never mind that the very act reveals as much vulnerability as a strong reaction would, if not more - all the things Daniel said that Paul doesn't address left abandoned like starfish between them. Love, fathers, no one wanting him to.]

As I fell short of yours when you agreed to allow us to visit your dojo and demonstrate our style.

[ There is so much going unaddressed here. Paul may as well have put up a neon sign, it's that obvious. But it feels hard to push the boy about that when so much already happened today, and when Paul is probably in no state to accept or receive any of it in this moment.

.. it's information to file away for later, Daniel supposes. To try and convey to the other at another time, when feelings are perhaps a little less bruised.

(He hopes Paul will be okay in the meantime. That Johnny steps up. Sure, it's clear to Daniel that the other man cares about Paul, but Daniel just hopes that means he will follow up to that feeling by caring for the boy at a moment like this.) ]

Nothing about what happened today influences my opinion about you in any negative way. [ He instead types, hoping it's at least the tiniest bit reassuring.

He does mean it, after all. Awkwardly dodged issues or not. ]

So please don't worry about that in the light of everything else. Just talk to Robby soon. That's all I want, for you two to be okay.

[ Not even necessarily 'with each other', though that wouldn't be bad either. It's just that Daniel doesn't want the main outcome of this to be that both Paul and Robby will have to carry a sore spot with them into the future. ]

[Midoriya told Paul that he'd know the right words to express what he felt when the pieces fell into place, like looking at a taiyaki in a microwave and understanding yourself as another shape that heat and power move through. What Paul didn't ask him, because there is no answer, is when he would stumble across that understanding.

It isn't here, where Daniel's persistent kindness stirs up feelings in him like silt. He knows less about what he feels than he did before in half a dozen directions. The only clarity he has is in his determination to keep swimming through the murk until he finds whatever lies at its heart like a hard, hidden knot.

(Daniel's given him a mission. Paul's obedience comes as instinctively as when Paul settled under his restraining hands and the familiar resonance of his tone at the end of the fight.)]

I will.

I'll make sure that these events don't repeat themselves. It serves no one for this to persist into a feud.

Thank you for your forbearance. I won't disappoint you a second time.

[ Daniel's fingers almost automatically type 'you didn't disappoint me', but it kind of feels like Paul wouldn't believe him on that one, even if Daniel told him it at least twenty times.

So it's useless, right? He shouldn't keep typing it. And yet-- ]

You didn't disappoint me.

[ He finishes typing it anyway. He sends it anyway. Even if it might not get through to Paul, he still wants to have said it, to keep saying it, until the boy one day might realise it after all. ]

If you end up needing anything, and you can't reach Johnny [ Sure, Daniel is hoping the guy reached out to Paul, but with Johnny you just.. never can be quite sure.. ] just let me know.

Otherwise.. just rest up.

[Daniel LaRusso is a rival to Paul's teacher, the author of the great calamity of his life. Until very recently, this had been easy to remember, even if sometimes he might have wavered under the intrusion of certain contradictions.

He doesn't know what to do with that anymore.]

I am.

[He wants to say more; he doesn't know what it is. Something unfinished itches in him like a wound. He knows he's not done, but he also knows the ending to it is not here. Not yet.]

You trained him well. I look forward to seeing more from your students.

Until we speak next, Sensei LaRusso.

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