Phil Connors (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goodweather) wrote2024-07-15 03:12 am
goodweather) wrote2024-07-15 03:12 am
ic inbox (PH)
MESSAGE ☀ DELIVERY ❄ ACTION
address: 499 Winter's Avenue (northwest hollow, farmland)
MESSAGE ☀ DELIVERY ❄ ACTION
address: 499 Winter's Avenue (northwest hollow, farmland)
no subject
The door opens. He shuffles out. In contrast to Ruby, he's wearing a bandanna over his bad eye; he keeps it on in the house but takes it off when he goes into town. There's a slump to him. In this light, he looks even more utterly tired than he usually is, cold-seeming and dimly lit by his Mantle. Spotting Ruby (he knew she was out here), he turns and shuffles about the kitchen, grabbing his own food and water and pulling up a chair. He doesn't really eat. Mostly he just slouches.
If they're going to be awake and miserable, the least they can do is do it together.
no subject
Ruby's head moves just enough for him to tell that she's watching him out of the corner of her eye, as he mills around and comes to join her. She doesn't say anything immediately, just leans her head on her hand in a way that smushes her cheek and stares into her milk. There are crumbs floating around the surface from a once-dipped cookie and for a moment it's like they're the most interesting things in the world.
But after a moment, she breathes a: "You too, huh?"
no subject
"Yeah."
no subject
"Something new or just— same old?"
They've all got their familiar problems, but you can never really rule out something brand new in places like this.
no subject
It's 2 AM.
"You?"
no subject
"New, I think? Sally's got me on this medication and apparently the first couple weeks are..." she pulls a face and wiggles a hand side to side in the air. Iffy, unstable, wobbly, take your pick. "I've been mostly sleeping okay until now. Which of course means all my problems were just in—" she sighs, which morphs into a yawn, "—other areas, but..."
She bops her head back and forth. Half a dozen of one, six of the other.
no subject
He fidgets with his pastry, which is marginally more destructive than normal on account of the talons. "But, it's uh, really good that you're on that process, ehn? It helped me a lot, personally. Takes a while though."
no subject
"Mmhm." She brushes some hair out of her face, briefly uncovering the empty socket before it inevitably falls back into place. "This is all... very new to me. Back home no one really... talks about it. Any of it. If they did, maybe... maybe we wouldn't all be so screwed up. I don't know."
It's blunter than Ruby would usually be, but with every step she takes along this path the more thinking she's been doing.
"It still feels strange. I want— I want to feel better, but every new thing is like climbing a mountain."
no subject
He tears a piece off of the snack he'd grabbed, a motion more absent than present.
"I'll tell you what I wish people told me, though, is that this stuff... it's measured in years. That's not meant to discourage you, just... if you start getting worried that you still flinch or have bad thoughts after 3 months of this, that's okay. That's because that's not actually a lot of time. Even eight months is only so much. I've been working on things for decades. Some things never get easier, but some things do."
no subject
"...sometimes it doesn't feel like I even have years," comes out quietly, not so much an admission of anything but as a statement of fact. She's only made it to 19, and will only make it to 20, because she was stolen away from her world before the worst could happen. Even if she survived to escape the Ever After, the war against Salem rages on and the whole world could end before she should've turned 18. "I guess maybe here."
cw suicide talk
"Man, do I know how that feels," he says, very quietly. It feels a little like a gunshot in a space this quiet. "I first felt that when I was younger than you are."
...
"You feel real tired sometimes, huh? More tired than you ever thought someone could be."
There are words on his tongue to follow that he doesn't quite let out: and it's not that you want to die, really, but you wish you could just stop.
cw suicide talk
There's quiet, for a moment, before, "...yeah. It doesn't feel like it should even be possible to be so tired."
It started out as just telling herself that taking risks with her own life was worth it if it meant saving other lives. That that's what heroes do, put themselves in danger and accept the chance that they might not survive.
And then the risks kept getting bigger, and bigger—more reckless, more pointless. Until even that thin veil of deniability fell away and there was just Ruby, the ghosts of the dead, and the tea. The ability to stop existing, right at her fingertips.