Sure, if it lines up that way. But in some cases, it can be a lot of pressure. Everyone's music is different, and some people can't help but compare themselves to people who they think are better at it than they are.
And there is a difference in skill there, but... At the same time, skill can only go so far, you know? There's more to music than just how well you can move your fingers or control your breathing. It's got a heart.
The same can be said for any skill, artistic or not. Or that's my opinion on it, anyway.
[ Martial arts, her father's style, has a heart too: a useless one, a painful one, but a meaningful one. It's not the skill she has in knowing how to move like that, but that it matters, deep down, who she learned from. One single point of communication between a father who sold his daughter to the War before he realised all he was giving up and had already lost in the process.
Come home alive. She wonders if he's still living, if Paradis has done anything with the Colossal Titan, what Zeke was up to, what the mess of their shitty world has become. She simply doesn't know, and she's closer to dying simply by existing unchanged and untouched and so freaking ignorant. ]
[Kazuki could feel a bit of underlying pain in Annie's expression, even if he didn't know its source. And this encounter was beginning to help him understand that there was only so much he could do about it. He set his trumpet aside for a moment to pour her another drink.]
[ She makes a small humming sort of sound in thanks when he finishes pouring her another drink, taking it and................... downing it all in one.
Elegant drinking partner she is not, but she appreciates that he's not so simple that he presses on points she can't say out loud. Even if Armin didn't try to keep her cornered, she already doesn't want to harm the lives the rest of them have built here. Even Bertolt.
If he doesn't fill the silence, she'll settle into it, saying after some time: ]
You're a good person.
[ Not special, because when she says that, it isn't flattering so much as aware of potential and the drive that changes lives, for better and worse. Changes societies, introducing that chaos the rest have to muddle through.
And there's that joke of an edge to it still, because she can remember Armin's response when she'd posited that question: Do you think I'm that good a person?
You can be a good person to me. The world is viewed through a personal lens, and always will be. Kazuki is good to her. And she suspects, from many perspectives, he is good, for varying definitions of the word. She's glad for that, she thinks. ]
[Kazuki chuckled when she downed her drink like someone with experience, and poured himself another glass as well. He just sipped at it. He didn't have experience. At all.]
[He normally wasn't a silence kind of person, but he was able to get comfortable with it after awhile. Annie's silence wasn't awkward or sad, just contemplative. It gave him the opportunity to appreciate the softer sounds of the nature that surrounded his house.]
[When she finally spoke again, he couldn't help but quirk his head at her comment. He didn't yet know the significance she placed on those words, so they sounded strange to him.]
Thank you? [It was a compliment, after all... Right?] I mean, I hope that I am. Do you not know many good people?
[ She goes quiet again, holding the empty glass in her hands, remembering. All her memories... the ones she can access, they talk about a time four years past. They're closer to the surface now than they should be, refreshed in a way that paired with the terror behind discovering her own lost time. ]
A... friend once told me that it's not a matter of good or bad people. Everyone is good or bad to someone else, in some way. He said it's a matter of someone being a good person to him, in that moment.
[ Her smile now is both bitter and wry. ]
Convenient logic, if you ask me, but compelling in its own way. Even by that measure... no. [ She says, expression going neutral, returning to how she usually faces the world. Resting neutral face, sometimes tending toward resting bitch face. ] I don't know many good people who last.
[Kazuki, again, has to give himself a moment to try and understand her words. He'd never had such a view on the world, and people. He believed there was good in everybody. That everyone was just trying their best. Truly bad people... He considered them a rarity. They existed, but he didn't know any personally.]
I guess... Whoever said that, they're not wrong. What everyone thinks is good and bad, it's different for each person.
If you really believe that, then... Why aren't people good to you?
[ For a moment, she wears the ghost of a very, very tired smile. Then she holds up her empty glass, tipping it toward him in silent entreaty while looking out over his garden. ]
Would you like to know a secret? It's not a good one. It's caustic enough to burn, and it's true.
[ He's so kind, filling her cup again. She probably... proooobably shouldn't drink it as fast as last time. She hasn't eaten enough today to offset how this might hit her system.
Ah. ]
I was born into hatred, and raised to be despised. And I've never fought against either.
[ Not in any meaningful way. Sparing lives, only certain lives, wasn't enough. Blood stained her hands, and she had put it there, one death at a time. ]
To imagine the kind of hatred someone would have to incur to make me palatable for the world... that's a truly horrible thought.
[Kazuki didn't understand. How could someone be born and raised to be hated? He had to repeat her final words in his head several times before they made any sense to him.]
[Trying to find a reply was even harder. His mouth opened to begin speaking a few times, but no sound emerged. Nothing he could think of really felt right. There was no way he could match her suffering with his own words.]
...Even if you think you're awful, I don't... I don't see how you could blame yourself for something you were forced to do.
[He has no idea what it was, but despite the chilling feeling that it would be something unfathomable to him... Kazuki saw this sad, distant girl, and as began to understand a small fraction of her suffering, he knew it was nothing she was proud of.]
[ She lolls her head back, looking up, then shifts so she looks his way. There's resignation there in her eyes, but an awareness, too, of why things are this way. People are shitty. The pressure of a society is the flow of events that moves her. This place has a whole different flow, and it's why she's here, why she fought at gyms, though none of the elite battles yet.
So it goes. So it goes. ]
Saying you just followed orders is a statement of fact, and an explanation, Kazuki. It's never an excuse. Do or die, lives are made up of choices. Sometimes nothing but shitty ones.
[ No matter what she did not want to do, she still wanted to live. She's culpable for that, and well aware of it, and not quite fully apologetic because she can't wish herself dead. ]
[Kazuki wanted to tell her that it wasn't really an excuse, that she shouldn't feel so burdened by whatever she had done... But the truth of it was that he didn't know, and making assumptions about whatever she suffered through would be insulting.]
[He was quiet for another moment longer.]
...You may not think you're a good person. But, if what your friend said means anything to you... You're a good person for me.
[ She regards him for a few beats of her heart before she looks away, hair falling across her face, and she laughs, rough and low and short lived. ]
Ah... if you say so. [ She has to grant him the respect of acknowledging that he knows his own mind. If he says that for him, she is a good person, then it is true. Here it's unlikely to need to become false. ] To good people. May I decide one day if you're one for me, too.
[ There's the glass held up toward him, not empty, and not asking to be filled. Cheers. ]
You haven't decided yet? [Kazuki's tone and expression carried several emotions, like laughter and feigned hurt. Surprise, however, was not among them.] Usually people get along with me right away! I'm really going to have to work for it, huh?
[Despite his lackluster protests, he readily lifted his glass to clink against hers.]
[ A not quite smile curls her lips up at the corners. Perhaps too good natured for his own good, but unlike so many places, that shouldn't harm him here. ]
Never said I was easy.
[ And then she takes a drink, just enough to fill her mouth before she lowers the glass and swallows. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsaintcecilia
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-18 11:36 pm (UTC)And there is a difference in skill there, but... At the same time, skill can only go so far, you know? There's more to music than just how well you can move your fingers or control your breathing. It's got a heart.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 05:36 pm (UTC)[ Martial arts, her father's style, has a heart too: a useless one, a painful one, but a meaningful one. It's not the skill she has in knowing how to move like that, but that it matters, deep down, who she learned from. One single point of communication between a father who sold his daughter to the War before he realised all he was giving up and had already lost in the process.
Come home alive. She wonders if he's still living, if Paradis has done anything with the Colossal Titan, what Zeke was up to, what the mess of their shitty world has become. She simply doesn't know, and she's closer to dying simply by existing unchanged and untouched and so freaking ignorant. ]
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 05:53 pm (UTC)[Kazuki could feel a bit of underlying pain in Annie's expression, even if he didn't know its source. And this encounter was beginning to help him understand that there was only so much he could do about it. He set his trumpet aside for a moment to pour her another drink.]
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 06:04 pm (UTC)Elegant drinking partner she is not, but she appreciates that he's not so simple that he presses on points she can't say out loud. Even if Armin didn't try to keep her cornered, she already doesn't want to harm the lives the rest of them have built here. Even Bertolt.
If he doesn't fill the silence, she'll settle into it, saying after some time: ]
You're a good person.
[ Not special, because when she says that, it isn't flattering so much as aware of potential and the drive that changes lives, for better and worse. Changes societies, introducing that chaos the rest have to muddle through.
And there's that joke of an edge to it still, because she can remember Armin's response when she'd posited that question: Do you think I'm that good a person?
You can be a good person to me. The world is viewed through a personal lens, and always will be. Kazuki is good to her. And she suspects, from many perspectives, he is good, for varying definitions of the word. She's glad for that, she thinks. ]
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 08:00 pm (UTC)[He normally wasn't a silence kind of person, but he was able to get comfortable with it after awhile. Annie's silence wasn't awkward or sad, just contemplative. It gave him the opportunity to appreciate the softer sounds of the nature that surrounded his house.]
[When she finally spoke again, he couldn't help but quirk his head at her comment. He didn't yet know the significance she placed on those words, so they sounded strange to him.]
Thank you? [It was a compliment, after all... Right?] I mean, I hope that I am. Do you not know many good people?
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 09:33 pm (UTC)[ She goes quiet again, holding the empty glass in her hands, remembering. All her memories... the ones she can access, they talk about a time four years past. They're closer to the surface now than they should be, refreshed in a way that paired with the terror behind discovering her own lost time. ]
A... friend once told me that it's not a matter of good or bad people. Everyone is good or bad to someone else, in some way. He said it's a matter of someone being a good person to him, in that moment.
[ Her smile now is both bitter and wry. ]
Convenient logic, if you ask me, but compelling in its own way. Even by that measure... no. [ She says, expression going neutral, returning to how she usually faces the world. Resting neutral face, sometimes tending toward resting bitch face. ] I don't know many good people who last.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 10:00 pm (UTC)I guess... Whoever said that, they're not wrong. What everyone thinks is good and bad, it's different for each person.
If you really believe that, then... Why aren't people good to you?
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 11:09 pm (UTC)[ For a moment, she wears the ghost of a very, very tired smile. Then she holds up her empty glass, tipping it toward him in silent entreaty while looking out over his garden. ]
Would you like to know a secret? It's not a good one. It's caustic enough to burn, and it's true.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-19 11:12 pm (UTC)If you want to tell me a secret, I can at least promise I'll keep it.
this feels hilariously overdramatic so HELLO
Date: 2019-06-19 11:41 pm (UTC)Ah. ]
I was born into hatred, and raised to be despised. And I've never fought against either.
[ Not in any meaningful way. Sparing lives, only certain lives, wasn't enough. Blood stained her hands, and she had put it there, one death at a time. ]
To imagine the kind of hatred someone would have to incur to make me palatable for the world... that's a truly horrible thought.
nah my dude I eat this shit for breakfast
Date: 2019-06-20 12:04 am (UTC)[Trying to find a reply was even harder. His mouth opened to begin speaking a few times, but no sound emerged. Nothing he could think of really felt right. There was no way he could match her suffering with his own words.]
...Even if you think you're awful, I don't... I don't see how you could blame yourself for something you were forced to do.
[He has no idea what it was, but despite the chilling feeling that it would be something unfathomable to him... Kazuki saw this sad, distant girl, and as began to understand a small fraction of her suffering, he knew it was nothing she was proud of.]
i am so glad
Date: 2019-06-20 01:26 am (UTC)So it goes. So it goes. ]
Saying you just followed orders is a statement of fact, and an explanation, Kazuki. It's never an excuse. Do or die, lives are made up of choices. Sometimes nothing but shitty ones.
[ No matter what she did not want to do, she still wanted to live. She's culpable for that, and well aware of it, and not quite fully apologetic because she can't wish herself dead. ]
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-20 01:52 am (UTC)[He was quiet for another moment longer.]
...You may not think you're a good person. But, if what your friend said means anything to you... You're a good person for me.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-20 02:58 am (UTC)[ She regards him for a few beats of her heart before she looks away, hair falling across her face, and she laughs, rough and low and short lived. ]
Ah... if you say so. [ She has to grant him the respect of acknowledging that he knows his own mind. If he says that for him, she is a good person, then it is true. Here it's unlikely to need to become false. ] To good people. May I decide one day if you're one for me, too.
[ There's the glass held up toward him, not empty, and not asking to be filled. Cheers. ]
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-20 03:14 am (UTC)[Despite his lackluster protests, he readily lifted his glass to clink against hers.]
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-20 03:22 am (UTC)Never said I was easy.
[ And then she takes a drink, just enough to fill her mouth before she lowers the glass and swallows. ]