IC Inbox

[ninefox]

Comments

[ninefox]

i haven't been touching anyone. i just

[Which says more than it says, in Jedao's case.]

I haven't told you about my days because there's not a lot to tell.

[It's not that Jedao actually wants to hide it from Quentin. It's just so hard to say. Where does he start? When is it just...rank self-indulgence, whining and begging for comfort from someone he's already hurting, someone he can't even face?]

[magician_king]

well you know you can talk to me no matter what if there's anything good or bad you want to talk to someone about

[ninefox]

just because I can doesn't mean I should




....okay I realize I've never said that before in my life, but still

dear Q-shei, today i stayed in bed staring at the wall for five hours. Fives brought me breakfast and made sad faces until i managed to swallow four slices of bacon and half a muffin. then i switched to laying on the floor. managed to sit up for an hour and watched the fish tank, then ran away to the roci and hid in the smallest compartment i could find until i started getting muscle cramps up my neck. i sneak around like a kid after curfew because most people looking at me feels like ants all over my skin. i miss you more than i used to miss my own hands and i hate myself for it. i go to bed and sleep for three hours and cry for half of that. about-face, repeat.

its pathetic and its boring. you don't want to hear it and i don't want to talk about it, i don't even want to be doing it. i just keep not doing anything else

[magician_king]

[First, Quentin cries his eyes out for sixty solid seconds, on his behalf and for his own stupidity.

Then he writes and deletes five questions.

Then he asks;]

can I tell you about something that helps me when I start getting flashbacks? which isn't often but does happen and sometimes makes me not eat, not move, sit fully dressed in the bottom of the bathtub

[ninefox]

[Jedao is breathing slow and careful, refusing to let himself hyperventilate. He can't take it back once he hit send, so there's nothing to do but go on.]

okay

[magician_king]

it's a stretching routine with a lot of deep breathing. it's not exercise because obviously fuck exercise rn, but it does get you, like, shifting? a bit. and it involves a lot of breathing down through your feet and hands which is supposed to do something for grounding your body in the present

I don't know I feel like a moron doing it a lot of the time but if you wanted I could read you the cues for it with the right time intervals between shifts and you could try

[ninefox]

[He really should still be training. He has a body again, and bodies need practice. He keeps thinking of endlessly, fruitlessly failing to condition the deliberately hobbled bodies Kujen gave him, ways to past the endless time and remind himself how to be disciplined.]

meditation can go bad for me

but stretching could be okay

[magician_king]

ok let me know when

get barefoot and maybe on some kind of rug and wearing something you can contort in a bit

[ninefox]

[He's already barefoot - boots have seemed entirely too much, lately. And he can move in the uniform, at least at the field service setting where he usually keeps it. He doesn't have a rug but he does have a few bolts of cloth crumpled in a crate from his short-lived experiments with quilting and piecework, and after a few minutes, he manages to dig one of them out and and bowl it across the widest empty space in the room. He has more than enough knives on him to slice off some of it, but it's unrolled over the floor, and that's good enough for now.]

ok when

[magician_king]

[He turns the feed on, clears his throat, and instructs him,]

Stand up straight with your hands at your sides, and draw in a deep breath.

[And Quentin leads him inexpertly through a yoga sequence, by audio alone.]

[ninefox]

[It's good, for a little while - gets him moving without having to think about it, or decide, gets his blood moving. He thinks maybe he could train after this, just coasting on momentum - and then the thoughtlessness of it catches him in the ribs like a fishhook, the way he obeys and obeys, I wish to serve, sir, and he leaves the communicator on the rumbled fabric and escapes to the little bathroom, elbows on the sink, saliva pooling in his mouth as a precursor to vomit that doesn't quite precipitate. After a few minutes, he goes back.]

thanks

[magician_king]

of course, no problem

I feel like you need some other hobby like painting or smth

[ninefox]

[He thinks, yes, Quentin-zho out of reflexive memory of Mikodez hassling him about hobbies in another life, and almost throws up after all. He breathes carefully through his teeth.]

i have hobbies. i lose to nico at pattern-stones and teach Fives to dance and duel and i'm trying to teach my fish to do tricks and i have made so many lopsided glass birds, quentin

fuck im sick of hobbies i want a goddamn war and when we were in fantasia i didn't even pick a good one


fuck

sorry that wasn't about you just

i think maybe the barge is finally getting to me

[Kujen always kept him in neat miniature worlds, too.]

[magician_king]

yeah that makes sense.

You've been here a long long time and it sandpapers everyone down.

The only way out is through. I love you and I have no way to help. I'm so sorry.

[ninefox]

it's so fucking gentle

like rubbing your skin off on nothing but silk with a few mean knots thrown in it for surprises

[Which Jedao did, once, when Kujen left him tied long enough.]

i feel like my own brain is made of pressure mines now. i ripped off the topsoil and there's nothing left but shrapnel, i can't move any direction without setting off something and

and the only way out is through. because fuck air support, i guess. this is not a perfect metaphor

i'm trying to wade through but i keep stopping to pick pieces back up and i hate

splattering everyone

i wish i could take it all at a run and just scream until it was done with but healing is the one thing you can't

who came up with that anyway, fuck that guy with a fusion candle

[magician_king]

would you like to be a dragon?

you could raze some enclosure city

but you'd have to see me

tw war crimes, gore, suicidal thoughts

[ninefox]

[how many people could you stand to watch me kill he thinks, even types most of the way out, but thankfully text slows him down enough that he deletes the words without actually sending them.

He wants to do it in his own skin. He wants to watch a world writhe under the winnowers' corpselight, and then step into it. He wants to shoot his way through a station, tireless and unstoppable, his hands steady and his breathing slow because that's how you shoot. He wants to kill until someone kills him, wants to be ripped apart with his own weapons, a gaping thing of wounds and eyes and teeth and light, the thing he always was underneath. He wants to stop fighting it and fight everything else. He wants to sleep forever. He wants to be with his king, peaceful and obliterated. He wants to kneel for a monster who cares about bitter justice.

He thinks of Fives' defeated, devastated face if Jedao killed himself, even for a little while. He can't. It hurts. He won't.

The only way out is through, and doesn't he know it. Pick a direction, soldier. March.]

can you

always wear something with color

Re: tw war crimes, gore, suicidal thoughts

[magician_king]

ok

will you take me shopping some time?

mostly i own black t-shirts

[ninefox]

i'll paint them if you leave them at a dead drop

put my hand prints all over you even when I can't be there

[magician_king]

[One more crying jag- Jedao can be so confusing. But.]

Box in the bow stairwell?

[ninefox]

yeah okay

also speaking of dead drops do you like the hedgehog

[magician_king]

he's cute, his name is Pope, but i'm a little nervous i don't know how to take care of him properly. it's the one thing we don't have a book on here

[ninefox]

space to trundle around in and a high protein diet, they're mainly insectivores, not herbivores, although some plant food won't hurt them. a covered place to hide in, and some tubes and bells and things to play with. shallow, heavy water dish or a drip tube.

[magician_king]

It was really nice of you. It was what I needed, desperately, right when I needed it. I love you so much- and I'm sure you've heard by now I got into a fight with Fives, and it's really hard not to feel like you're so far apart.

Think you could do another fox visit tomorrow maybe?

[ninefox]

[Jedao burned his whole forest down. But he'd been safe under a very damp log, and - Jedao hadn't had the heart to crush the thing, even with no heart at all. He'd carried him around in the hollow of his back for a while, right where it should have been.]

i'll slot you in between the muffin and the fish

and bring back at least a few shirts

i did hear. and i meant to ask, what actually were you trying to apologize for? because Fives has no idea and even I can't be sure from his somewhat garbled report