Sharing the burden [Luka]

Tap... tap... tap...

Luka's slow footsteps brought him closer and closer to 'home', and he didn't know how to feel about that. Home... was it really? In his less charitable moments the young man had felt that he had no home anymore, and hadn't in over a year. Their family had been broken by the events of the previous year, and it didn't seem as though it had ever really recovered. He had gone to U.A. after Father's death, while Mother was comatose. He'd been staying there in the dorms for the most part, and with the various ups and downs of the last twelve months he couldn't find it in himself to consider the place a home any more. Without Father, without much contact, how much was actually left of their family? His sister's unexpected withdrawal from U.A. without any explanation certainly didn't lend itself to the idea of them still being close, that was for sure.

His fists clenched slightly at that, the hurt and just... tiredness he felt from the whole situation starting to kindle within his chest as something else, something more unpleasant. He realised with a small amount of shock that it was anger, he was actually angry that this was what had happened. He wasn't too sure how to handle that, to find himself well and truly angry at his family over the current circumstances. Maybe it was unreasonable of him to feel such a way, but he couldn't help it, it seemed that this christmas was going to require a number of painful conversations one way or another if they were going to resolve the tension that had sprung up between them.

The small boy came to a stop outside of their front door and stared at it for a few moments, his mix of anger and hurt making him consider briefly just turning around and going back to the dorms. Part of him wanted to just give up, if he was going to be left in the dark and alone like that, why bother reaching out? But he was too stubborn to do something like that, and after he indulged in the petty thoughts he took out his key and unlocked the door, stepping in. He couldn't bring himself to say the customary 'tadaima' though... after all, he wasn't quite sure if this was home anymore.

Stepping into the house, he was almost immediately met by his sister and her desire to talk, something that he knew they needed to do but equally didn't want to. It was only through a careful manipulation of his face, essentially partially turning it to slime beneath the skin, that kept his expression neutral, the translucent blue of his true form visible in his irises as he stared blank faced at Elise. His appearance like this was toeing the line to the uncanny valley. "I'm going to put my stuff away first," he declared in as neutral a tone as he could manage, his movements somewhat unnatural as he resisted the urge to turn fully into his slime form, even though he'd find this whole situation easier if he could hide behind his inhuman true form. It just wasn't considered polite in their household to use that form in such a way, so instead he went to his room to drop his stuff off and collect himself, the urge to lash out at things rising even as he tried to remain calm. 

It took him five minutes to settle enough to decide he could look at his sister with yelling, at which point he stepped back out of his room.

"Where?"

Luka frowned slightly at the indication to go to their father's old office. He hadn't entered there in over a year, and wanted little to do with the room. It stung too much to even think about most of the time. Ultimately however his desire to get this conversation over with overrode his trepidation and he followed his elder sister into the room. Stepping in after Elise, the small boy deliberately refused to sit, his arms folded over his thin chest as he stared at the older slime, a small frown still evident on his features and blank, gel blue eyes staring at her without their usual twinkle or cheer. He was displeased with a great many things, and he wasn't even remotely sure how to go about fixing everything that had gone wrong. In his more self-depreciating moments he felt as though his attempt to keep from being a burden on his family had led to him essentially being forgotten. Out of sight and out of mind.

It was a singularly unpleasant feeling.

The frown on his face deepened as she spoke, his throat tightening as she explained what had happened and tried to justify the situation. His skin began to take a bluish hue as he tried to contain the myriad of things that he wanted to say. It wasn't fair, there was no way he could vent his feelings without sounding like a brat, and yet he still felt the way he did. It had all built up in the last year, and he could no longer contain the sheer pressure of his own emotions. His fingers twitched slightly, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he tried to force himself to be mature, to say he understood, but the words couldn't come out, and he didn't know how to make them.

"...It's not fair" he muttered, his head hanging so that his hair covered his face, his hands coming up under the curtain of blue strands and seemingly rubbing at his temples. At least, that's what it would look like from an outside view. In reality his nails had lengthened and sharpened as he scratched at his hairline and forehead, his skin parting to reveal the slime beneath as he tried to vent the pressure within him as best he could. He couldn't lash out at Elise, couldn't lash out at his surroundings, so that left his own body. "You couldn't even let me be upset, it's not fair..." The downside of his physiology, at least for him at this moment, was that he wasn't really even injuring himself, he felt the sting but that was it, the scratches flowing back together shortly after he had made them. Ultimately an exercise in futility that only helped fuel his frustration.

His hands fell from his face as the uselessness of the action became apparent to him, "I haven't mattered since Father died, why should I matter now," he mumbled, his voice thick, though whether that was from emotion or from his slowly loosening grasp on his humanoid form even he couldn't tell. "I... I can't do this, I shouldn't have come..." he still hadn't lifted his head, instead turning to leave the office, "I'm tired of pretending everything is normal, I don't know what I was thinking, I shouldn't have even bothered enrolling..." his muttering had begun to move away from the simple topic at hand as he spoke for the first time about the various worries that had filled his thoughts for the last year. It was like this one moment had finally broken the dam that had held back all of his negative feelings, and he wasn't capable of thinking clearly anymore as feelings of loneliness, self-pity, and worthlessness overwhelmed him. To the small boy, it seemed that nothing he did was good enough, and that no one was really there for him. While that may not have been true, it felt as though it was in this moment, when even his chance to be angry at his sister was denied to him.

What was the point of him, really? He wasn't naturally talented like so many of the students at U.A., he'd consider himself amongst the weakest of all the remaining second years, he went long stretches of time without any real contact with others, didn't have proper friends (at least according to his current mindset), and hadn't had any real contact with his family in months, as though they had moved on without him. He just couldn't keep trying with these thoughts hanging over him like dark clouds.

He wished things were like they had been before the incident, back when he thought he was happy. Now he just tried to pretend, and he was oh so tired of it. So very tired.

Lukas tensed slightly as Elise went to hold him, flinching a little at the contact. He hadn't been actually hugged for quite some time now, and the sensation was somewhat difficult to tolerate. He listened to his sister's words stony faced and agitated, he could tell she was trying to be inspiring but the words weren't really sticking to him. Some of them even reignited the anger he had felt over the situation, that irrational yet all consuming anger. His jaw clenched until a more clear-headed boy might have been concerned with cracking his teeth, the pressure on said teeth leading his entire mouth to lose cohesion until there was nothing behind his lips but the slime that made up his true form.

With an inhuman motion that removed him from Elise's arms, Lukas spun to face his sister, hollow eyes blankly staring at her even as his body wavered into its' gel-like form, losing human colouring until he was a true slime boy. Still humanoid, still obviously himself, but translucent and lacking in human colour or texture. "Quatsch! Who cares what Papa would have wanted!?!" he declared angrily, his voice thick and almost echoing within his own body, "he's dead! He left us! He doesn't get a say in how we feel or act anymore!" He wasn't normally an angry child, he had always taken things with a grin and a can-do attitude, but the past year had been far harder than he had realised and the lid he had slammed down on all his negative emotions had finally burst, letting them out in one vitriolic tirade.

"This is the second time you left me. You went off to U.A., even after the attack, I was alone then and I've been alone since! I probably would have ended up in foster care if I hadn't gotten into U.A., you know that right? One parent dead and another in a coma, my only family in the whole country off to boarding school to be a hero. I had to be strong, I was alone. I had so much to catch up on, I barely have any friends I'm so busy trying to keep my head above the water, not to mention I'm pathetically weak compared to the others, there are First Years stronger than I am. I don't hear anything from you or Mama, I almost expected to spend Christmas this year alone!" the words spilled out of him, uncontrollable and almost acidic across his tongue... well, if he'd had a tongue. He'd long since decided not to think too hard about the sensations of his slime body. Despite everything he couldn't stop himself, the flood of emotion flowing ceaslessly from him.

"So ein misthaufen, maybe a smile does suit a hero, but I'm obviously not one of those! I'm barely worth the space I take up, useless, helpless, hopeless. It would have been better if I had died that day, instead of him, then everyone would have been happier!" With that declaration he lost further cohesion, his slime 'melting' off his humanoid form, the urge to damage something rising in him to the point that he ultimately collapsed in on himself, the vague outline of a boy kneeling on the floor, face in his lap and hands over his ears, his slime pooling out around him as he tried not to sob. He wasn't in a good enough state to flee the room the way he wanted to, his mind focused on trying to work through the vicious feelings that he had been repressing for over a year. Once his mother had awoken he thought things would return to normal, but she had needed rehab, and then checkups, and he had been busy with U.A., and before he knew it... she felt like a stranger to him. Elise too had become more and more distant from him, until he wasn't sure that he knew her anymore either.

In his mind, it would have been better for everyone if he had died in his father's place, a feeling he hadn't even realised he'd had until he verbalised it. But it was true, obviously his mother and sister were more than able to get on without him, surely with Father still around everything would have been pefect for them. He was superfluous.