no rights, no lights, no signals

Teen And Up Audiences | Major Character Death | Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Video Game), Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)

Gen | for Starsoarer | 444 words | 2023-04-11 | Crossover Events | AO3

Noah (Xenoblade Chronicles 3) & Laura | Lora

Noah (Xenoblade Chronicles 3), Laura | Lora

Responsibility, Mortality, Inspired by Art


I never thought about it before. What life could be like.

That life could be...undefined. What you make of it, but also wholly uncontrollable.

You can't take responsibility for everything. You can't! And yet, you have to take responsibility for some things, at least.

You have to be kind to people, no matter the span of time for which you know them. It's basic human decency. We're all responsible for that, bar none. It's difficult, and terrible - yes, interacting with other people. You can't only prioritize yourself. It's not...well, it's not possible.

And yet, if you make a mistake, you can't let it dwell on you - because that's what it's doing, drying up all your time and concentration and that same dratted decency - forever. Not for more than a moment. Not any longer than until the next time comes around.

You have to. They aren't rules, set by people who think they know better than the rest, they're...callings. Guidelines, set by the world. Or, no; not the world, but the people in it.

I never thought we could love each other so much that we just let the world go, entrusting in the basic power of humanity. Is it a privilege to be able to do that? Absolutely. One we fight for, side by side and hand in hand.


Waking up in the morning is wonderful. Yes, there's breakfast to be eaten, conversation to be made, plans to be embarked upon, but before that, when the world is still, just for a moment, and then we get to hear the chirping of the birds, the flitting of the insects, the fawning of the flowers...

I'm grateful for every ounce of it, every glint and glimmer. If it wasn't there, if we all weren't here, that would be terrible, tragic, almost unbearable, but we wouldn't have to bear it, would we?

I think it'd be alright.

It's the dying I don't like. The leaving. The unevenness. One of us before the other. One of us forgetting because that is the very nature of time, and people, and memory; we will be forgotten.

That's dying, really. It's a very long process. A slow process, except for the parts that are, ooh, terribly fast.

The fast part is, in some ways, the easy part. The hard part's coming. The impossible's already done.

People very often remember the parts we don't want them to: the awkward conversations, the less-than-shining moments. We have no control over that, much as we want it.

I'm fine being gone. I just don't like the going. I don't like having the choice, or not, and then...it all being over.