[netbook] everything happens so much

[forwander]

[The note is scrawled in Passenger's indelicate handwriting... about an hour after this whole thing happens.]

This is Passenger. I did not think this note would be necessary, but in case this somehow went missed: The black stone on my forehead is not decorative and should not be touched. It's an Originium shard from my Oripathy, and touching it is likely to infect you. The disease is incurable and 100% fatal, and we Infected would not wish Oripathy upon anybody.

Do not touch the strange black rocks. I know it's tempting. Do not do it.

Thank you.

Comments

[forwander]

You are tone-deaf.

Oripathy destroys the body from the outside in. I know people who were infected purposely by someone who simply wanted to see them suffer. I know people who are going deaf and blind from it, who have no hope of survival because it has progressed to complete organ failure. I've read about the atrocities of Lungmen, where the Infected were rounded up and slaughtered and left in the sewers to rot in a mass grave. I've known people who were kicked out of a proverbial paradise because they caught Oripathy, to no fault of their own. I've witnessed the injustices of world powers against us, I've seen Originium bombs detonate and infect anyone who survived the blast, and I have first-hand witnessed the mutations that come from an illness that seeks only to corrupt, contaminate, and turn us all to ash.

The things I have lost to my own Oripathy are not something I would joke about, yet unlike some, I still stand, and I still function.

This may be funny to you, and you may be laughing. I am not.

[oleaeuropaea]

[Vash wants to argue about this, that bristling up instead of laughing probably isn't the best way to go about it anything. Thankfully guilt overrides his stubbornness for once in his life, and he avoids shoving his foot further into his mouth.]

look.
i'm sorry.
how i cope... probably isn't the same for other folks.
shouldn't have assumed.

[forwander]

[Reads this... mulls it over...

Ugh, fine, he shouldn't have lightning-bolted the outside of your house.]

I appreciate reading those words. I understand you do not fear your biology making you a victim, but even so, I'd rather not take a risk.

Thank you for apologising regardless, Vash.

[oleaeuropaea]

yeah. i mean. thank everyone else here that smacked some sense into me.

but. just to... be clear. and not to justify or act like i was in the right or anything!

i might not fear my biology. but i know what it's like to look in a mirror and know how it feels to be... a threat. a danger. different by circumstances i can't control. sometimes the humor makes it a little more... bearable.

but like i said. assuming that i know better than you about what feels right, and making jokes about things i'll never be able to understand... that wasn't okay.

[And to think he hasn't even seen the worst of it yet! Both in canon and in the Forest! :)]