thebastion | Day 255

Entry tags:

Day 255 - Yeah no

When: Day 255, midday
Who: The Helmsman and anyone who trips over his prone body
Open/Close: Open
Where: The middle of the Bastion, facedown
What: You know what's nice? Grass is nice.
Format: I'll match
Warning: Blood warning/minor self harm in Aoi and Disciple threads

Ever since he'd been brought to the hospital in the middle of the night by Aradia and the Disciple, the Helmsman has been quiet. His throat has been in no condition to really speak, which had been one thing, but besides that... Any attempts to speak with him have just earned a narrow eyed look and thinned lips, although he'd gone along with attempts to feed him and put him into some cleaner clothes.

Apparently, today's the day that changes because anyone going about their business in the Bastion is liable to notice the gray-skinned and horned alien laying facedown in the middle of the little settlement. The clothes he's wearing are far too big for his food-deprived skinny body but despite what it looks like, he is breathing and is alive.

Don't mind him, he's just gonna be here for a while. If you trip, well, that's your problem. Suck it up.

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She'd watched him from afar, lips pursed, as she had come across him collapsed in the middle of the town. Space, she'd told herself. Space. As much as she wanted to wrap her arms around him, space was what he needed. She was still his hallucination to him. Still his mind coming up with unlikely scenarios of rescue. Rescue she could have provided before now. Rescue from eternal life.

This lasts ten minutes before she walks over and crouches beside him.

"22. You alright?"

Oh. Oh it's her again, or, well, not really her but what his mind has crafted from old memories and expectations and "I wonder"s that he had stored over so many centuries. From the familiar olive eyes and the roughness living solely in the wild would bring... It's a pretty good hallucination. He'd tip his hat off to his own broken mind, if he had a hat to tip.

And hands that could functionally work.

He shrinks a little bit when he hears her voice, even as much as he marvels at it a little bit. Usually his hallucinations of her are so much more judging, so much more upset and betrayed. It's nice to hear her all soft and concerned for him again, like it's 'before' and he's just suffering from another migraine that would normally have her sweeping her fingers across his face.

There's a muffled sort of noise but even with the grass in his mouth it wouldn't make sense.

"Well. You made a noise so I'm counting that as alive, if not okay. I suppose neither of us are okay, you least of all."

She shifts on her heels, eyes running over the healing scabs, the lines that will scar. It's an odd position to talk to him in. Odder still to contemplate how he will heal. If he will heal. The mental part seems to be going just swimmingly.

"You don't have to talk to me. Or look at me or whatever is going on where you think I'm still fake. I thought a half dozen nights would convince you I'm not going anywhere but who knows how long your hallucinations lasted."

Her voice feels rough around the edges, hesitant in a way it never was 'before'.

And that tone hurts to hear. He hates it when his mind gets creative and finds new ways to hurt him. You'd think after so long, it would just give up... but nope. A shame, because every new trick still manages to hurt.

He nudges his head to the side, still staring with tired mismatched eyes and those goggles attached to his face. Hazy and thin, psi forms in the air to spell out words in Alternian. 1'm t1r3d 0f th12 2h1t d11

The flicker of psionics in the air is what makes her turn her head from the ground it had settled on. Her breath catches in her throat and her eyes burn with the sudden twin emotions of relief and sorrow. He's speaking to her. She'd waited so many patient nights for that. She tries to blink away a tear before it falls, keenly aware that tears solve nothing like this. She'd only be pushing her pain on him. Her voice cracks at first, then steadies.

"I--I understand. I got tired of the dreams. Reliving it all, imagining you there, saving you only to have you slip from my grasp at the last moment. I imagine--a thousand sweeps is a long time to dream of rescue. Nothing to my dozen or so." She fixes her gaze to his and whispers.

"I'm so sorry. I should have saved you--or--you would have wanted me to kill you but you and I both know I couldn't have. I'm so sorry."

Edited (html fail) 2014-12-04 07:27 (UTC)

She's saying so much he wants to hear- sympathizing with him, still wanting him, wanting to have killed him before they could have buried him in wiring and prying tentacles and binary and the suffocating scent of salt.

Yeah. Yeah, this has to be a hallucination. Only hallucinations are remotely kind to him, which says something about what's become of his life.

The psionics fade out, rearrange themselves into something new. D1d y0u d13 n1c3ly?? 1 l11k3 t0 pr3t3nd y0u d1d. 0n3 0f u2 2h0uld h4v3 b33n 4ll0w3d to. Not reassuring, not like he thinks it is, but maybe out in the wilds she could have lived and died quietly. Signless didn't, he'll never be allowed to, and Dolorosa...

He was that kind of slave, once. No slave ever gets a nice quiet death. You can only pray it's quick.

She shakes her head at him, and her hands curl up in her lap, betraying her uncertainty with the topic. She's still sure he thinks she isn't real but she can't ask for more right now.

"I didn't die. I haven't--that I remember. If this what happens after death, I'm okay with that. But I don't remember it and I'm not old enough to die in my sleep. Or brave enough to end it before then."

She takes a deep breath and forces her fingers out straight, smooths them against her legs.

"I don't think this is the...afterlife or whatever. You were still alive in there. I woke up alive out there."

Now trying for an afterlife spin? His mind isn't keeping its story straight now. He shouldn't be bothering with all of this, really. Maybe he should just go along with it for once, pretend he really has been rescued and Dii really is alive and things can maybe be okay for a while longer.

Problem with that is that it's always more disappointing when he comes back to reality.

So the alternative choice is just to say nothing at all, wait it out in stubborn silence like he was at the hospital, but... He's a sucker for the people he cares about. So many sweeps, and that hasn't changed. So he replies again.

0f c0ur23 1'm 4l1v3. 2h3'2 t00 9r33dy t0 l3t m3 d13. 1 2h0uldn't h4v3 t0 expl41n th12.

"How was I--I mean I could...gather that she wouldn't. If she kept you alive this long. Emissary thought that's what happened. She said her empress kept her alive for a thousand sweeps and--it's complicated and honestly makes little sense."

She breathes in slow, then lets it out in a rush.

"You still think I'm in your mind. Okay. I don't know how to prove I'm not. Except it's a really long hallucination but I guess it isn't in the grand scope of things."

Little sense... He'll say. There's a tired sigh, and energy moves his hand almost like he's thinking of touching her knee. It vanishes in an instant, however, and his hand flops down lifelessly against the ground.

He'll stick to making words. Those can't disappoint him.

D0 y0u h4t3 m3??

It makes her breath catch, the thought that he might reach for her, but she doesn't seem disappointed that he doesn't. She reaches for him instead, hand just resting on his softly.

"I don--Do you think I do? Do you worry I hate you? Oh Psiioniic. Dear, I'd never hate you. Nefur." The pun is pushed out almost awkwardly, so unused to the playfulness inherent in it. She tries to smile as she says, "You're my Psiionic. My 22. My tuna."

That's her hand. He knows it too well, and he hates that his mind knows it too well, because he knows there's no way to prove it false, no way to show it for the lie it must surely be, and he starts to shake. It's suddenly a horrible feeling, mind trapped in his own body and forced to feel the shaking and the tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. He wants this to be over. He wants this hallucination to be done with.

He tries to make the words form again, but it's just a tangle of energy that falls apart and clings to his horns in jagged messy lines.

He's hurting again, maybe mental, maybe physical, and she snatches her hand back like it might burn him. The tangled mess of psionics just makes her nervous, worried.

"Shh shhh," said Disciple, "Shhh I won't touch you if it's too soon. I promise, you have my word. I didn't meant--to hurt you, if I hurt you."

All the ways to comfort him fall short, mostly because she remembers holding him in her arms, brushing her hand through his hair, nudging him with her elbow when he started sparking, and pressing leg to leg when he was withdrawn, when being engulfed in her and them was too much. Her words seem to fall so short.

"I was just...touch can be comforting. Sometimes. You know...Shooosh. I'm sorry Psii..."

It's hard, it's hard to get the words out when his throat and his tongue won't cooperate. Everything he tries to say just comes out garbled and broken. It's so fucking frustrating. This is in his head, shouldn't he be allowed to speak just fine?

The sparking increases, and the words it finally eventually forms are 1m 20rry 1m 20rry 1 m2122 y0u

It's just noises right now, noises and broken attempts at words. Her shooshing only gets louder, trying to pacify him in the only way she can. He's not a harm to anyone but himself right now but she knows the harm he can inflict on his own body and mind when he feels low.

"Oh--Oh Psii, I missed you too," whispered Disciple, rubbing at tears on her cheeks with rough palms, "You have nothing to be sorry for. Nothing in the world. I know you don't think I'm real, but I am, I am. I purromise."

Eventually, the shooshing seems to do its work, and he chokes back his words with a hiccup. His throat is sore, but he ignores it- it's easy to ignore a lot of things because he hasn't known anything else for a while now. It takes some breathing, rasping down through his throat and into his lungs, for him to craft words again.

Why w0uldn't y0u h4t3 m3 1f y0u w3r3 r34l? He can't understand it.

Her hands curl in her lap simply to keep them from reaching for him. Had he ever seemed more pitiful? She reads his words but they simply make her shake her head, slow and sad at first, then insistent.

"Why would I hate you? I can hate so many people, the Condesce, the Grand Highblood, that executor, why would I hate you? For not saving us? Is that what's in your head right now? It wasn't...I couldn't save us. Him. Her. You," whispered the Disciple, eyes on empty hands in her lap. Empty because she couldn't hold onto anyone.

"If you don't hate me for not rescuing you, why would I hate you for not being able to do the same. For anything. I've never hated you. Nefur. Annoyed perhaps, when you take the world on your shoulders and act like you know my thoughts. What I think and feel when we both know it's not true. Well mostly. You know my thoughts like he did, but you tended to overlay your own insecurities on them." Her voice steadies as memories fill in old details, renew her grasp on him.

"I'd never hate you. You know me. You know I wouldn't. You just have to get past the part of your mind that blames you for everything."

Edited (word failure) 2014-12-05 17:14 (UTC)

This really is the nicest hallucination he's gotten by far. (Because it has to be a hallucination, has to be.) Telling him she doesn't hate him, doesn't blame him for anything... Telling him she's real. Insisting she's real.

The shaking starts up again.

What if you are real? This doesn't seem to comfort him at all.

It's hard to just watch him shake but she promised she wouldn't touch him without permission and he hasn't given it. Her shoosh starts up again, only to fade when the psionics crackle back to life.

"...Then you have a second chance. We both do. I was sure I was dreaming in there, only my dreams never captured the sheer...horror of it. If you weren't real, I was still going to save you. But you are. I am."

She takes a breath that sounds like a sob, then shakes her head, as if to clear it.

"We don't have him or her, but we have each other."

1 d0nt w4nt 4 23c0nd ch4nc3

It's selfish but it's true. Everything is ruined, everything is fucked up, that he only found any meaning in living by pure fucking spite. He needs that or he needs death, and he knows only one of them would happen.

A second chance. What is he even going to do with one?

"Are you sure you're my tuna? I thought he was all about twos. Though maybe it's not your second chance. Maybe that was when we found you, led you away from your old life. Maybe this is your third."

She keeps talking, keeps trying to work her way under the walls he's built to keep the world out. She wants to pry them loose, get to the person she knows is still in there underneath.

"I know it's not the same. Nothing...will ever be the same after that. After it all. It's selfish to ask you to keep living," admits the Disciple, "But I got you from that fish bitch in the end, and you're here. She may not have let you die, but she didn't really let you live. I can let you live."

Yeah... He was- is?- all about twos. But this is too much, he doesn't know what to do. This is so much more than two and he's scared. He draws in on himself, psi crackling over him to help draw his legs and arms up against his chest.

wh4t w0uld 1 d0

wh4t w0uld 1 d0 1f th12 w42 r34l

That's a good question. What does he do. What does she do? She has no idea and that's sort of scary in a way. Liberating in another. She has nothing to run from. The people here are kind enough. She has a hive, tip top of the building just like she thought he might like. Not easy to run from, but easy to defend. She doesn't have the answer he craves, but maybe that's the answer.

"I don't know. Based on your current behavior, you're going to either decide I'm real and in which case, we both cry some more because we're emotional idiots. You decide I'm not real and I sit beside you until you feel hungry, thirsty, or tired. Beyond those two option, it's hard to say. We pick ourselves back up. We stay by each other. Same thing we've always done."

Her lips curl into a smile she's not sure she feels. It doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"Just without the specter of the highbloods. Without the rest of them. ...It'll be hard. You and I lived, for some definition of it. It'd be easier to do it together."

Awkwardly, weak and soft, he moves his hand to lightly touch her knee with just the tips of his fingers. The words come a moment after.

1'm 2c4r3d

Scared of this being real. Scared of having to continue living, of facing an uncertain future and having to deal with everything again.

His touch, soft and hesitant, sets off a tremble through her. She blinks back tears and nods. It's quiet for a little, as she gathers up her words.

"I'm scared too. I don't know what to do either but here we are. Making the best of a shitty situation is what we do best, right?"

That feels fake, even if she really feels that way. Fake and off, because she's so scared, so tired. Relentlessly hoping is exhausting. Waiting in the skyway for something that shouldn't have come. Would she have spent her life out there among the islands, wasting away, staying alone, separate from these people? She's not sure.

Having someone to take care of is exhausting too, but helpful. It gives her reason to stay close, not to run, not to hide.

"Can I touch you? Just quickly."

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talk of death and mercy killing

Mention of suicide

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