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[ninefox]

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[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

[magician_king]

jesus I wonder if he and I even speak the same language or is like the barge translation software malfunctioning because we sure do do this like clockwork


ok so you called me and said 'don't come find me for a bit' and I was not doing that, not doing that, when I got a call from Fives saying you'd shot Newt and were peeling out into the wilderness in a blaze of fire and glory. I did some magic to make sure you weren't in huge danger and that came back clean.

and honestly to me that all sounded weird but fine because I have a higher than average tolerance for immolation and weird magic jags of fury, plus I was missing you like crazy, plus I knew you'd asked me not to come after you so I kind of said 'sorry, I won't help' and he said 'so much for being family,' or smth and hung up on me

Then he called me and said your heart had been ripped out but by then he was already pretty mad at me for ignoring him the first go around, and he said 'fuck your boundaries,' which is a phrase that will probably echo in my ears for months (and I'm not super sure either of you will get why because you both come from horrific violating hellscapes but just never say that to anyone ever and tell him not to either) and kind of coloured how I responded because I then did the rational thing and started swearing at him which obviously helped the situation so fucking much.

he showed me your goose heart and it was more of the same- I don't talk about this a lot but magical soul truncation is also just a fact of life back home. ugly as fuck and definitely worrisome enough that I immediately wrote him a spell to help but I'm sure it seemed like too little too late

I was already steaming mad because I am so done with being someone's family until the minute I disobey them. it just felt like such a fucking typical

he found you and that was all okay, and my brain caught up to my mouth and I realized that probably we were talking past each other- that he symbolically felt like I'd rejected him first by refusing to help with what he was experiencing as a life or death situation, so I called him and asked him to come over and apologize for not reacting appropriately. Even if I thought he was overreacting I should have been nicer to him about it. I was so caught up in not stepping on your toes that I didn't see he was really freaked out. But from his perspective I guess it was already too late, because he got here and it was just. a wall. Which is within his rights. Being owed an apology doesn't mean you have to accept it?

None of which is what you were asking about. Short version; I think I made him feel like I didn't care, and of course I did, I really love him. That's what I was trying to apologize for.

[ninefox]

[Jedao switches to voice; he wants to show this to Fives later, and there are things he's going to say that Fives doesn't necessarily have to see.]

Yeah, pretty much.

Don't rub it in his face, or anything, but I'm - I'm grateful you didn't. Come after me, I mean. Which is selfish, because I know he was so fucking scared after days of me being almost catatonic, and alone except the heart thing, but -

- for what it's worth. Thanks.

[That, first. He thinks - hopes - it will be some comfort.]

[magician_king]

I don't think he and I are going to be able to talk again for awhile. He's badly hurt, in a way that isn't going to make it possible for us to talk about the fact that he really fucking hurt me too, although probably to a lesser extent. I can't just swallow it, and it'd be inappropriate to ask him to help me work through it. But the alternative is just to let it fester, and that's not going to go well. And you can't mediate when you can't look at me.

So.

[ninefox]

I can do anything, watch me.

[He has to break off for a minute coughing, right after. But there's your boy, Q.]

I guess that's why you told him to leave? So you wouldn't have inappropriate feelings at him? When all he wants is some hint that he's worth a real person having feelings about, because he doesn't really believe it.

[His tone is as soft as his throat can manage right now, a rueful gentle mourning.]

He still thinks I'll get bored of him, you know. Every single time I have a crazy and pull away, he thinks it's forever.

[magician_king]

I told him to leave because I was starting to cry and I am not his problem.

[He says, and he's starting again now, god damn it, when will this be over?]

And you can tell him so? Fuck, you can play him this if you think it'd help. But I'm so fucking mad at all of you jackasses who don't believe I give a shit about you when you're the most important people in my lives. It keeps happening and it's such a horrible feeling. Spending months doing the math and magic to, you know, save all the clones, but he's prepared to believe on a dime that I'm a piece of shit who doesn't care about him at all? I didn't do it so he'd owe me but I thought I deserved the benefit of the motherfucking doubt. Oh my god I could have cursed him into a fucking newt, I was so mad. Tell him to stop making his own self-worth issues other people's god damn damage and get a fucking grip.

[He pauses, blowing his nose somewhat noisily.]

I don't mean that. But Jesus, Jedao, you love some complicated people.