✨

DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVENT READ AFTERIMAGE! When Sin is in danger of termination after the whole almost killing Boyd thing, Boyd is surprisingly calm when he accepts the possibility of Hsin's death. After their heartfelt moment in the psych ward, Boyd cleans his attic while he worries. Most would be hysterical over a former lover's possible death, especially someone you loved so passionately and admittedly still loved. If Hsin had died, would it have hit Boyd harder than he expects later on?

Thanks for doing the spoiler warning in the question itself :D That’s awesome :)

You know, it’s been years since we wrote that and I reread it, which means my memory is less stellar of Boyd’s mindset at that time than it could be ^^; I’d probably have to reread from the start of the series up to that scene to make sure I remember all the thoughts at that time to give a 100% answer but I can give you a 90% one instead lol 

The short answer is: yeah probably :)

But, being me, I wrote a long ass answer with more context as well XD See that one below! (SPOILERS FOR ICOS THROUGH AFTERIMAGE, obvs ;p)

From what I recall (which could, again, be totally wrong ^^;;), I think if he seems relatively calm there it would be not unlike what you see him do in other parts of the series, best example I can give is early Fade. There, he reacts quite calmly to really terrible news at first, and holds everything together until he’s alone when he loses it. He was way less stable in Fade at that point than he is in Afterimage in the scene you referenced, but generally speaking Boyd tends to initially distance himself from things he thinks will be problematic or make him too emotional, and then later on deals with the emotions. 

Sometimes he doesn’t do that step and goes into immediate full freak out mode lol, but if you look at when he was younger after Lou and all of that, basically he determined back then that the best way to protect himself/live/etc was to have an emotional barrier there, just like his mother. An additional aspect in Afterimage in particular is he was trying to find a way to stand on his own, to be less codependent, etc, and part of his codependence, part of the issues he’d had that had turned everything into Major Drama Mode previously, was him freaking the fuck out over stuff related to Hsin and sometimes acting less logical than usual when it came to Hsin or his worries about Hsin. Or like, doing things that are reckless, whether or not they end up turning out okay. Example being, it was reckless as hell to break Hsin out of 4th in Evenfall, but he did it because he was worried about Hsin. At the same time, taking more drastic measures like that could end up backfiring on Hsin, or Carhart, or Ryan, or others–making others into the collateral damage Boyd usually was for others instead.

Boyd has an arc across the whole series of him slowly growing as a person, slowly shifting the way he views the same topics, slowly working on how to address things differently for a more stable and healthy response, and constantly adjusting things along the way as he messes up or finds something that works. 

But for all of that work, like you said, he loves Hsin. Like, REALLY fucking loves Hsin. So there is probably always going to be something a little illogical for Boyd when it comes to Hsin– some part of him will always want to do the thing that doesn’t make conventional sense with Hsin, because after having not felt any emotions for so long and after having lost so much, now having such intense feelings for Hsin to the point of recklessness and having such a fear of losing Hsin tends to make him over-correct himself in his pursuit to Do The Right Thing and Be The Person He’s Supposed To Be. When you consider he learned How To Human from Cedrick and Vivienne, two people with in many ways polar opposite views on love and humanity and the meaning of emotions and connections, and how he primarily learned friendship and love from Lou who was a bit reckless himself, he has a lot of competing views on things. A lot of expectations he holds for himself or others hold of him, a lot of back and forth in his emotions and his reactions. 

He kind of doesn’t know what the fuck to do with himself for most of the series, because he’d always been someone who only got support from one person at a time while everyone else judged or hated him. And his experience in life was that The One Person Who Loves Him always dies. That kind of background naturally can make a person hyperfocus way too much on a person once they get involved with them, and for a person like Boyd who additionally takes on the responsibility or fault even of things that aren’t his fault, he fears both being the reason that person dies, and not doing enough to stop them from dying. He simultaneously thinks he has to do everything to protect them while also feeling like he himself may be the greatest danger to them of all. Like he is inherently not worth loving, and anyone who pursues loving him will violently feel the consequences. Part of him feels like the best thing he can do for the people he loves is to leave them, and part of him feels like if he leaves he will lose everything of himself.

That kind of back and forth, that uncertainty for what is The Best Thing To Do, can lead to a lot of variation or experimentation in reactions. And sometimes it can also fuck things up.

So anyway that was a long way of saying, I don’t remember all the reasons leading up to that scene but I think all this went into why he may have seemed unusually calm. He has a lot of give and take in his responses to All Things Hsin throughout the series, and especially in Afterimage he was trying to build in that distance so they had time to focus on themselves more, so they could stabilize themselves with the hope that they would be more stable together. And one of those ways of stabilizing himself and hoping Hsin could stabilize himself too, was in trying to give a little more credit to others, to give up a little bit of the obsessive control that otherwise could easily be formed. 

So iirc, I think Hsin’s situation was beyond Boyd’s control at that time, wasn’t it? It’s been so long I’ve forgotten lol But I think at that point he realized sometimes he does more damage by trying to affect things than he does by letting the others like Carhart do their job to help. It isn’t always an easy thing to acknowledge or follow through on, but that’s where Boyd’s tendency to distance himself or try to downplay things internally to make himself freak out less comes into play. 

If Hsin had been killed, he definitely would’ve had a stronger reaction later, because at that point it would be something he could no longer undo. He likely would’ve asked himself a billion questions at that point of what he or others could have done differently for things to end differently and, being Boyd, most likely he would take all that responsibility and blame himself entirely. Personally, I think he would have been wrong to do that, because a lot of what would have led to Hsin’s death (if in fact he’d died there) would have been due to Hsin’s own actions and ultimately would have been the choice of the Agency, but blaming himself for life, the universe, and everything is how Boyd rolls so that’s probably what he would have done lol

Now, all that being said, when we’re editing we’ll end up rereading that scene and I have no idea if it might shift a bit. In the process of smoothing out other things earlier in the book, it may come to pass that that particular scene may need to be a bit more or less this or that way based on the mindset he would’ve had based on this or that circumstance. 

So you may end up reading this long ass answer and then years from now reread that scene and be like, “But none of this matches what you said???” If so, lol sorry XD Afterimage was written somewhere around 10 years ago so things shift slowly over time, my memory has faded of intricacies of his mindset or the plot, and my understanding of Boyd as a person has also increased after having had the fortune of being able to finish his story. I think it’ll be interesting to do the Afterimage editing for the Director’s Cut version of it, because we definitely don’t plan to do as much cutting or changing as occurred in Evenfall, but we do want to look at the narration of Boyd and Hsin in particular to make sure everything makes sense to us and also make sure everything has a smooth flow. 

So anyway that’s the longest way of saying that iirc his mood/reaction in that scene was part of the greater story of how Boyd changes over time but I don’t remember for sure, and that yeah if Hsin really did die there, he would’ve definitely felt more emotional impact later. At the same time-- also, if you think about it, Boyd basically knows or thinks Hsin dies or is imminently about to die in every single book of the series XD And he’d already dealt with that concept or reality a few times by the time that scene happened, which affects how impactful that concept would be initially. I think he was already slowly starting to morph from the “OH SHIT HSIN MAY BE IN TROUBLE ALERT ALERT DESTROY EVERYTHING SAVE THE CHEERLEADER SAVE THE WORLD??!?1/1/1” mode to “Oh hey, I’ve noticed a pattern of when I get too worried about a thing I’m emotional about: in my panic or fear I tend to make decisions I may not agree with later, and things get a lot more complicated” which eventually morphs into “Someone wants to fuck with Hsin? It’s cool. I’ve got a plan for that.”

It’s sort of like, I don’t actually necessarily think everyone always reacts the same way to the idea of a loved one dying or being in trouble. Especially if this is not the first or even second time a person has been confronted with the concept. 

For example, my dad has a bad heart, and I grew up with him just like, stopping breathing/his heart stopping in the middle of the night and me waking up to him in the hospital, or he’d go into the hospital almost having a heart attack, or he’d have to get heart surgery, or etc. By the time I was in college, the concept of him having a heart issue was not new to me, and (like Boyd) I’d developed an automatic reaction which to others probably seems bizarrely calm. One night I was in my dorm room watching something with my friends when all of a sudden I got a knock on my door. It was my cousin who lived nearby, wide-eyed, in a panic. She came flying into my room out of breath, freaking out because she got a message that my dad (who lived hours away in another state) was in the hospital currently having heart surgery and OH MY GOD they couldn’t get ahold of me because my phone died so she came flying over and OH MY GOD did I want to call my mom right now and OH MY GOD DANGER DANGER !!!!!! 

In that situation, she and my friends were more worried about the whole thing than I was. I was just like, “Oh, is he? Thanks for letting me know. I’m going to finish watching this show and will call my mom afterward. He’ll be in surgery for a while anyway.” Everyone else was like BUT WHY AREN’T YOU FREAKING OUT???!!! and I was like, “Why should I? I can’t control the surgery, I can’t control his heart, he’s had heart problems my whole life, he’s had other surgeries, the doctors know what they’re doing. Me freaking out does nothing except raise my stress levels and does nothing to help my dad. Better to finish what I’m doing and call my mom when some time has passed and they may actually have some updates on the surgery as opposed to calling right away when she won’t know anything but where the process of her rehashing it all to me will only freak her out more, getting her hyped up thinking it over in detail again when she has to sit alone in a waiting room because I live hours away and can’t sit there too.”

I love my dad, I didn’t want anything to happen to him, I wanted him to get through surgery and be healthy and happy, and if he’d died I would have been devastated. But freaking out to the level my cousin was freaking out (or honestly, even getting worried at all) would have done nothing in a situation I couldn’t control and which I had experienced in various forms already multiple times in my life. 

So I was calm and watched that show and called my mom afterward and dad got through surgery and everything was fine. Some people may see that as cold but I see it as a learned response to stressful situations. I imagine for Boyd, it was a little like that too because Boyd deals with grief or worry for others similar to the way I do, which is a combination of distancing myself to protect myself, and doing what is in my actual ability to help. He’s more reckless than I am in a lot of ways and I’m more open-hearted on a general basis, but I think we have similar tendencies to try to step back from stressful situations when possible and evaluate our best response or best actions. Which can mean for both of us (depending on where in the series, sometimes me more than him and sometimes him more than me) we can be really calm in the face of a disaster, and right away take control of it, looking for concrete actions that can be taken, a plan that is realistic and within reach, holding off on having an emotional outbreak to something where those emotions will only worsen or not help the situation, and overall trying to be more even-minded so that we don’t miss an opportunity for changing something for the better right now in the immediate aftermath that we would miss if we were too focused on freaking out or worrying or being scared otherwise.

It’s been so long so I could be wrong on all of this lol I could just be assuming it was like how I tend to react to things but it could be I will look at it differently when we get to that point. But for now, I’m thinking that’s the long ass answer to your question lol He would have definitely felt more upset later if the loss became reality, but until it becomes reality sometimes it’s better to focus on the littler things you can do, the tangible things in front of you, rather than obsessing on all the things outside of your power.