Page 92 of Damian & Jun, Episodes 9-12
“He’s in a cell where he’s going to stay.” Damian breathed out his nose. “I should be having nightmares about Bak.”
“Richard and I talked about nightmares a few days ago. That’s not how they work. The people we see in our dreams are placeholders—what do you call it—the building-type stuffs.” He repeated himself in Korean. The lack of sleep was getting to him.
“Archetypes.” Damian supplied the word in English.
Jun nodded. “The people in our dreams are archetypes. Your father is the one who hit you, who used the most violence.”
“He was quiet for years. I thought I was over it.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Jun dropped his head back against the crate. “The things that happened—happened. They’re part of us. They don’t control us, but there are versions of us that exist now because of what we saw—what we lived through.” He lifted the notebook, looking at the words he had just written.
There’s more than one way to die
For my existence
You are unforgiven
Damian looked at the words again as well. “I’m more the man I want to be now than I have ever been. It’s hard to understand why now I feel most like a failure. Why it hurts more now. I don’t even care what they think of me. I don’t miss them.”
“It’s the fear.”
Damian met his eyes. “Yeah?”
“Once something happened once, we know, in our bones, it can happen again.”
Damian squeezed Jun’s hand. “I won’t let them take you.”
“I know. Richard reminded me yesterday just how far he and you were ready to go. It’s hard to understand that you’re both ready to fuck with an entire economy for me.”
“They’d survive. But they’d remember.”
Jun laughed, wetness on his cheeks. “I shouldn’t be comforted by the idea you’d burn the world down for me.”
“They’re sick. Just like my father, like my sister. I’m not burning down the world. I’m hunting down evil.”
Jun blinked back tears, smiling at Damian from behind his fringe. “It feels so strange. Of the two of us, I’m the one who’s actually killed someone.”
“You fought for your life.”
“So did you.”
“And it was only a freak of fortune I didn’t take a life, too.”
“Sometimes I look at Armada and I wish you had.”
Damian grimaced. “Same.”
“But then you might have spent your life behind bars. I never would have met you. Richard may have never become the man he is today. And then I’m glad that you didn’t. And then I feel guilty.”
“You’re not wishing the abuse on her.” Damian squeezed his hand. “I know the feeling, but it’s not the same. Not our choices to take responsibility for.”
Jun’s lips quivered. “Survivor’s guilt’s a bitch.”
“There’s always someone left behind.” A tear ran down Damian’s cheeks. “This is why we all lose.”
“Rei,” Jun whispered. “I keep thinking about him. What if I’d realized the fraud earlier, would he still be here? Would he still be with 5N?”
Damian wiped Jun’s tears with his thumb, his own still falling free. “We may never know.”
