goodweather | IC INBOX ( SAIL )

The chill of his Mantle almost feels good. Almost like home.

The way he breaks off, and the words he says right before it, feel like her heart has clenched like a fist in her chest.

Cassandra swallows hard, and works so fiercely to keep any wrong note out of her voice that there's almost none at all when she says it: "Still?"

A long silence.

"I don't know if you want me to keep talking."

I wish --

"If you want to talk," she says, barely over a whisper, "then I want you to keep talking."

...

"T-the flares, they've... gotta be from him. What he did. It wasn't an issue before. I can't, I... I can't fly when it's bad. Or technically I guess I can, but it's s-still... you know, if they say you'll never die as long as your memory persists, you know, that works for people we don't like too--he's not dead, he'll never die, he l--he lives. In my skin. My mouth."

...

"And I want to kill him."

His warm breath steams in the cold air.

For a horrible moment, when he begins talking, she thinks he means that Number 2 is still alive somewhere and sending these flares of pain, somehow. One kind of horrifying prospect if that isn't true; another kind if it is.

He continues, and the momentary horror collapses into one much more drearily familiar.

I don't know if I'll ever believe she's really gone.

"Are you ..." She swallows again, tastes that tang in the air that should mean snow on the way. "I don't know exactly how to ask this. Is it his memory you want to kill, or ... to somehow have him alive again so you could kill him? Or something else?"

Phil shrinks in on himself then. He--should. Say something. Be honest. But God, look at Cassandra, both so young and so god damn weary already, but, but--silence like this never helped anyone. Not ever. But there has to be someone else he can talk to. Who? Who?

(Fucking look at him. It's pathetic. He's supposed to be the adult in the room and he can't even manage that with a century and change on her. What was the point of any of his "self-improvement" then?)

His breath seizes. Phil's expression collapses into some kind of horror; he turns away, banging his head into the wall and pressing his hands over his face.

"Master Connors --"

She reaches out with both hands but (I don’t want anyone’s hands on me) pulls back short of touching him.

"Please, you -- you don't have to answer anything you don't want to. My word on it."

Who does he tell and who does he hide from? He doesn’t know anymore. Darcy would throttle him for keeping anything from her and yet it’s proven twice over that he can’t show the whole of his affairs even secondhand, even just in words. He sifts through his memory of people he knows and people who remain and nothing comes up.

… Except Fever. But what a terrible burden for a single person. No matter what she’s weathered from him already. (He can handle it on his own, he promises, he just needs to get it out and tell someone—bullshit, like hell he can, no one can. But what does he do? … Are you a fucking idiot, Connors? Talk to an adult like an adult. Not that Cassandra is a child, but decades make a difference.)

“… Maybe I shouldn’t,” his voice comes out weakly. What a mess. “Sorry. I’m sorry. F-forget it.”

Her throat hurts abominably.

"If you don't wish to," she manages to say, "I won't press you to. But ..."

(Gods, look at her. She's supposed to be his liege lady, and whatever made her or anyone else think that she could handle that responsibility? That anyone could ever rely on her? Too weak, too selfish, too young --)

"... but if it will help you. To say it. Then please."

Please let me help.

(... He shouldn't. He has to. He has to. He has to. He has to. Please. Please, Phil. No one can do it alone. ... But her?

Any way that will get him to do it, even hiding his face like this--do it. At the very least, it will be one more scared and disappointed face to think about whenever he finds himself on the verge.)

He takes a breath.

"I've... told you about the loop, right? The... the things I did to myself."

...

"The problem is that it's so easy for me now. And I can't stop feeling like he's under my skin, or he's in me, and I need to, to dig out what he left inside of me or undo it with the revival reset or kill him or all of those, so, so there's--I see opportunities everywhere. Everywhere. I've had to keep my talons blunt for months now, but this, it's--exhausting."

She keeps a vise grip on her own hands to keep them from reaching out again, on her lungs and throat to keep her breath steady and silent, in and out and in. Her control almost fails her when she remembers -- easily, gently, like snow settling -- how she learned to do that, and why.

And I need to dig out what he left inside of me --

The words that would help him are nowhere in reach, nowhere in sight. She doesn't even know what they would look like.

"Oh," is what she says instead, barely more than a breath, because she can't say nothing at all; if she can't say anything that will help, at least she can say something that means I'm here.

It’s better than dead silence, but—that all she is moved to do in the face of him is say oh, is reflexively humiliating. Is it better or worse than Darcy throwing up, he can’t tell. What he wants, he doesn’t know—maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe anything and everything would be absolutely mortifying because no matter what here he is spilling everything he’s got all over the floor and he wants to run and shut himself in his cabin, but didn’t she just talk him into not doing that, wasn’t there a point to this?

His Mantle goes colder and more humid, gaining a stinging edge. Phil sinks to the floor.

”Sorry,” he beats out again, voice thick, because it’s all he can do. All he’s good for.

There's a faint rustle and thud as she drops to the floor beside him, her skirts pooling around them both.

"No," she says, "Master Connors, no, this isn't -- you don't need to be sorry for this. Not for feeling it, not for telling me."

There's a shuddering sigh.

Phil drops his hands, still staring at the floor, eyes and face all damp. "The fact is, it's not... not new. Well--" gestures, "--you knew that. But even before the loop, long before it, I'd... I've always had thoughts like this. It's j-just something I live with. Always managing. But I've... it... it's just bad right now. And I need to figure it out real fast before something happens."

Before something happens. And -- she can't pull too hard on his oath, not when she's put it under such terrible strain so recently, but it's all she has --

"You asked me recently," she says, soft and tremulous, "to bid you remember something. If ... if that's been any help to you, do you think something like it might serve here?"

He grimaces. It sounds good on paper, but although he can’t quite reason the whole of it out, something in him says that this idea has a chance of going very maladaptive very quickly. He does enough ‘everyone would be so upset’ as it is without the negative weight of becoming an oathbreaker on top of that. Doesn’t need more equating his survival with avoiding disappointment.

“N… no, I don’t…” He hesitates. There… there still has to be something, right? There has to be. And—look at her. He can’t just leave her with nothing. There’s enough helplessness going around the ship already.

“… Maybe just for a while. And—and then we can see how that feels…?”

He grimaces, and before his mouth even begins forming the word no, her heart sinks in her chest like a stone in water, settling cold and still and very far away.

I'm not the wise and gentle lady on her throne, she remembers saying to Erin once. I'm not the Everlight.

She's never wanted so desperately to be what she's not.

Maybe she shouldn't even be trying to help. Maybe she's a fool for thinking she ought to. Maybe there's nothing that could help, nothing she or anyone else could do, and trying will only make things worse --

(I have strong reasons, she told Darcy not long ago, to be wary of despair.)

"Suppose," she says, and it comes out almost inaudible, and she tries again. "Suppose I told you to come talk with me again, in a week's time. Nothing more than that, for now."

Nothing more than a commitment, on his part, to still be here in a week.

Phil... nods. He turns, and his gaze isn't pointed at her at all, but it is at the floor near her feet. "One week, for now."

She nods in turn, and struggles not to feel wretched about it. One week. One week isn't nothing. Especially not when everything might change, at any moment.

"I don't know how to help you get rid of him," she says, very low. "I'm sorry. I've never been able to get rid of Delilah either."

Phil sighs and turns to lean sideways against the wall. He looks all a bit like a dying bird in the sun. Or maybe he just feels that way.

Especially as she says that, he is made all too shamefully aware of how much he is being, how much space in the lives and burdens of others he’s taking and how heavy it is, how much of a drag he’s become. And they keep inviting him in anyway. What mercy.

“You don’t have to do everything. It’s only been… what, a month? I just needed… something. Anything.”

He must tell someone else. If not Fever, then someone. Cassandra shouldn’t—can’t bear him alone.

“It’ll probably be something I live with for a good decade at l-least.” He makes a show of checking his watch. “These things’re… they’re measured that way. It takes that long. But I—hah—have to make it there, first.”

The way he says I just needed something, anything ... she wants to ask was this something?, and squashes that urge as flat as she can, recognizing in it the selfish desire to be reassured.

"I hope," she says instead, "I hope you know -- you understand -- that you can call on me at need. For whatever help I can be. That you have that right."

... Man. And all the usual barriers to asking despite offers still persist.

"... Sure. As long as you tell me when you c-can't help me any more. I mean it. The second I become too much, and you need t-to stick to yourself, even if it's not some horrible situation... tell me. You gotta say something, and you can take care of yourself, and I'll find someone else to pick up the slack. Okay? I... I'm never gonna feel safe if I don't know when I'm crossing lines."

She's quiet for a moment, considering that, going over it in her mind. Nods.

"I understand," she says. "I will."

He very nearly says you had better as an automatic response before remembering that he's talking to his boss.

"Good," he sighs, "good."

He shifts, wincing again. He moves, then... stops and goes back.

Phil holds out a hand. "Would you help me up, please?"

And it's visible to her, the moment when he decides to ask for her help, and it makes her throat ache again -- but for a better feeling this time, complicated and tangled and better.

"Of course," she says. And she straightens up to stand, sets her feet, and reaches to take his hand.

She's much smaller than he is, but not so much that she can't be a counterweight, pull with just enough force at just the right angle to help him to his feet.

(no subject)

goodweather - 2024-02-09 19:38 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

not_the_last - 2024-02-09 21:24 (UTC) - Expand

IC INBOX ( SAIL )

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw sideways suicidal ideation

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)