KER-ESSAY
So Ikki fucked up with Dera (AGAIN) and I felt an essay explaining just how he managed it this time was in order.
To start things off, a quick summary of Dera's overall thoughts re: Ikki up until this point. Ikki's someone very important to Dera, and also someone Dera doesn't entirely trust for a lot of reasons. Ikki's been too nosy in the past, he's dominating, he's agressive and boisterous and prone to the shounen style of Speaking Through Violence, and all these things are things that will make Dera see a person as a risk! Someone that he can't put all his trust in because they're a type of person (in his personal world view) who is likely to want to either use him for some purpose or decide they're better off not associating with him -- which is another thing! Dera often has the opinion that Ikki thinks he's better than him, which isn't cool at all. :( So yeah! There are a lot of issues between them, but Ikki's also someone Dera thinks of as a friend even if he'll never say it outloud. He does a lot of shit for Ikki's sake; saving him from Dietrich and being quietly (for him) supportive in a very tsundere way during the cfuw death game terribleness. Dera places a lot of weight in Ikki's opinion of him even if on some level he expects Ikki to just not have a very high one, because that's the kind of person he sees Ikki as!
And okay, Ikki's been working hard to change this view Dera has of him. It's been really tense because changing Dera's view of people he's known as long as he's known Ikki is Ridiculously Hard To Do, but the thing is Ikki has been making progress. Because he's also that stubborn kind of person who won't let Dera get away with a skewed view of him and tops him with aggressive shounen jesusing at times. |( So -- more recently Dera's trust in Ikki had been going up! This was a person he could possibly really rely on and not have to expect backstabbing of some kind from! Even if he's a total dick at times.
EXCEPT THEN THIS HAPPENED. Dera has been spending a great deal of time this week putting his own worries aside to lend Ikki some support since the CFUW death game has been going down, and Ikki and his team have just been getting shafted at every damn turn. He's gone out of his way to, in round about ways, tell Ikki that he's there to support him if it's needed. (Things like "The boss will lend you Vongola's support." "We're allies. You don't have to tell me to [give you information relating to the death game].") He even offered to stay with Ikki one night to wake him up periodically since Ikki was worried sleeping would get him dragged into the game. Let me repeat that: He offered to stay somewhere away from Vongola in the middle of people falling into goddamn comas just so he could help Ikki get some sleep. That is not something Gokudera would ever, ever do lightly. So for him to have done all of that and have Ikki suggest that he could have ever been responsible for the destruction of his entire base -- that really, really hurt. Even if Ikki says he didn't mean it that way, Gokudera knows what a suspicious look means. He's grown up rough; he knows what it means when someone looks at you that way. It really isn't something Ikki's going to be able to take back easily, not even remotely.
In a way though, Dera . . . isn't terribly surprised. Like I said, Ikki's a type of person he expects to act this way. Even though Ikki had been making progress in changing that, on some level Gokudera has always "known" that Ikki was someone who was going to pull something like this eventually. That's just the way things work! People you trust will turn around and leave/hurt/betray/distrust/SOMETHING you. Aside from his interactions with Vongola and to lesser extents, Zexion and Haine, this is his interpretation of basically every relationship he's had in his life. People Suck. So while he is very angry and hurt, he's also just. Accepting. It's a very bitter and resigned feeling along the lines of "Oh, I was right again after all." basically.
And because this is going to come up in questions if I don't explain it, yes Dera did tell Zexion about Ikki's problems before he said anything about himself when Zexion asked what'd been going on while he was away. But the thing is, Zexion arrived literally minutes after Ikki had asked Dera if he was responsible. There wasn't really any time for anything to sink in for Dera before he was completely distracted with one of his most important people in camp returning from a month long absence. There wasn't any time for him to think about it or settle on how pissed off it's going to make him. And even then, he still has a lot of history with Ikki as a friend and ally. Ikki has been getting hit ridiculously hard with the CFUW fallout, and Dera knows it pretty fucking well It's not like all that concern was just going to immediately blink off when he's spent the entire week thinking "Fuck Ikki's got it so bad 8(". SO YEAH HE DID THAT. But this is still a serious thing; Dera isn't going to take it lightly at all. He's going to be resigned and hurt and bitter and all kinds of angry and just plain not want a goddamn thing to do with Ikki, he just needs the time to really realize wtf just happened. And that's not happening while he's dealing with Zexion being back. \o/
I could probably write more but it would be really incoherent at this point (and would be mostly predictions which aren't always right anyway), I think. So I'll just stop now. ARE THERE QUESTIONS?
To start things off, a quick summary of Dera's overall thoughts re: Ikki up until this point. Ikki's someone very important to Dera, and also someone Dera doesn't entirely trust for a lot of reasons. Ikki's been too nosy in the past, he's dominating, he's agressive and boisterous and prone to the shounen style of Speaking Through Violence, and all these things are things that will make Dera see a person as a risk! Someone that he can't put all his trust in because they're a type of person (in his personal world view) who is likely to want to either use him for some purpose or decide they're better off not associating with him -- which is another thing! Dera often has the opinion that Ikki thinks he's better than him, which isn't cool at all. :( So yeah! There are a lot of issues between them, but Ikki's also someone Dera thinks of as a friend even if he'll never say it outloud. He does a lot of shit for Ikki's sake; saving him from Dietrich and being quietly (for him) supportive in a very tsundere way during the cfuw death game terribleness. Dera places a lot of weight in Ikki's opinion of him even if on some level he expects Ikki to just not have a very high one, because that's the kind of person he sees Ikki as!
And okay, Ikki's been working hard to change this view Dera has of him. It's been really tense because changing Dera's view of people he's known as long as he's known Ikki is Ridiculously Hard To Do, but the thing is Ikki has been making progress. Because he's also that stubborn kind of person who won't let Dera get away with a skewed view of him and tops him with aggressive shounen jesusing at times. |( So -- more recently Dera's trust in Ikki had been going up! This was a person he could possibly really rely on and not have to expect backstabbing of some kind from! Even if he's a total dick at times.
EXCEPT THEN THIS HAPPENED. Dera has been spending a great deal of time this week putting his own worries aside to lend Ikki some support since the CFUW death game has been going down, and Ikki and his team have just been getting shafted at every damn turn. He's gone out of his way to, in round about ways, tell Ikki that he's there to support him if it's needed. (Things like "The boss will lend you Vongola's support." "We're allies. You don't have to tell me to [give you information relating to the death game].") He even offered to stay with Ikki one night to wake him up periodically since Ikki was worried sleeping would get him dragged into the game. Let me repeat that: He offered to stay somewhere away from Vongola in the middle of people falling into goddamn comas just so he could help Ikki get some sleep. That is not something Gokudera would ever, ever do lightly. So for him to have done all of that and have Ikki suggest that he could have ever been responsible for the destruction of his entire base -- that really, really hurt. Even if Ikki says he didn't mean it that way, Gokudera knows what a suspicious look means. He's grown up rough; he knows what it means when someone looks at you that way. It really isn't something Ikki's going to be able to take back easily, not even remotely.
In a way though, Dera . . . isn't terribly surprised. Like I said, Ikki's a type of person he expects to act this way. Even though Ikki had been making progress in changing that, on some level Gokudera has always "known" that Ikki was someone who was going to pull something like this eventually. That's just the way things work! People you trust will turn around and leave/hurt/betray/distrust/SOMETHING you. Aside from his interactions with Vongola and to lesser extents, Zexion and Haine, this is his interpretation of basically every relationship he's had in his life. People Suck. So while he is very angry and hurt, he's also just. Accepting. It's a very bitter and resigned feeling along the lines of "Oh, I was right again after all." basically.
And because this is going to come up in questions if I don't explain it, yes Dera did tell Zexion about Ikki's problems before he said anything about himself when Zexion asked what'd been going on while he was away. But the thing is, Zexion arrived literally minutes after Ikki had asked Dera if he was responsible. There wasn't really any time for anything to sink in for Dera before he was completely distracted with one of his most important people in camp returning from a month long absence. There wasn't any time for him to think about it or settle on how pissed off it's going to make him. And even then, he still has a lot of history with Ikki as a friend and ally. Ikki has been getting hit ridiculously hard with the CFUW fallout, and Dera knows it pretty fucking well It's not like all that concern was just going to immediately blink off when he's spent the entire week thinking "Fuck Ikki's got it so bad 8(". SO YEAH HE DID THAT. But this is still a serious thing; Dera isn't going to take it lightly at all. He's going to be resigned and hurt and bitter and all kinds of angry and just plain not want a goddamn thing to do with Ikki, he just needs the time to really realize wtf just happened. And that's not happening while he's dealing with Zexion being back. \o/
I could probably write more but it would be really incoherent at this point (and would be mostly predictions which aren't always right anyway), I think. So I'll just stop now. ARE THERE QUESTIONS?