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12. ibidem
[Video, public]
For the record, these penis enlargement pills do nothing. I'd like to register a complaint.
[Infirmary spam, open to visitors, backdated to 2-4 days post-Shakespeare flood.]
[She wakes up after jumping, her skin tight and and her eyes sore and her lungs aching in her chest. She groans, rolls over, tries to sleep. Maybe she can sleep for the entire toll. She's been trying so hard to be, to live and connect. Maybe she can just not be for awhile.]
(OOC NOTE: TW for suicide if people ask her why she is tolling. Ophelia's narrative was rough on her.)
[Private to Roderick, backdated also]
...can you do me a favor?
For the record, these penis enlargement pills do nothing. I'd like to register a complaint.
[Infirmary spam, open to visitors, backdated to 2-4 days post-Shakespeare flood.]
[She wakes up after jumping, her skin tight and and her eyes sore and her lungs aching in her chest. She groans, rolls over, tries to sleep. Maybe she can sleep for the entire toll. She's been trying so hard to be, to live and connect. Maybe she can just not be for awhile.]
(OOC NOTE: TW for suicide if people ask her why she is tolling. Ophelia's narrative was rough on her.)
[Private to Roderick, backdated also]
...can you do me a favor?
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[Which he knows weren't really there, but he also knows who she was playing: Ophelia. Which also makes it partly his fault.]
The things I said... I'm sorry.
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[In spirit, if not in language. It hurt, it helped - made it easier to decide, reopened old wounds and brought the pieces left of Mira more neatly into line with the girl being foisted on her and into her, even though she thinks she would have jumped anyway, in the end. Because the pieces of her that are Mira have a habit of dying in water. She would have been Ophelia without him; maybe she has always been Ophelia.]
It wasn't you.
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[He knows; he remembers. He smiles sadly.]
But I probably didn't help anything.
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[She cries a little, brushes it furiously away with her free hand.]
It's always water. It was the ocean, the first time I died. I don't remember anything else but I remember that. I didn't want to die, I was a strong swimmer, I loved it. I felt so free out there, and I didn't want to come back in, and there was a storm.
And it was in the bath, the last time.
[She's told him she cut herself open on broken glass, but not the whole dramatic image of it, alcohol and blood mixing in the water.]
I don't know how many times I've forgotten. I sort of want to forget this time but I don't at all, too. Is that weird?
cw: drug use, overdose
Have you ever overdosed? That you remember, I mean.
[He asks it gently, almost conversationally, his thumb rubbing over the back of her hand. He looks down at where they're joined, eyes on his own wrist, where he knows the track marks are lurking just above the cuff. He's not ashamed of them any more, not afraid of them, but that doesn't mean he's not a little sad.]
Let's just say I understand where you're coming from.
cw: drug use, overdose
[But she's had a few overwhelming trips. A little choked -]
...thanks. It. Means a lot.
[Someone understanding.]
cw: drug use, overdose, suicidal ideation
It happened a few times. Only the once fatally, I mean, but there were close calls before that. And it wasn't that I meant to die. I didn't really want to or not want to, I can't say I cared one way or the other at that point.
But when I realized what was happening the last time, when I realized it really was going to be the last one... I fought for, oh, ten seconds, maybe. And then I just remember thinking Jesus Christ, finally.
cw: drug use, overdose, suicidal ideation
Like - everything was flying apart and - I didn't really think I'd die until they said goodnight right in my ear, but it was such a relief not. Fighting anymore. With myself or what I'd been made or my heartbreak or fighting to live or to care or not care or any of it.
cw: drug use, overdose, suicidal ideation
[That's really all there is to say at the end of it. He's mercifully cut off from those feelings now, ironically saved by the damage to the parts of his brain that had killed him in the first place, but that doesn't mean he doesn't remember them all too well. He lays his other hand on top of their joined two, falling quiet for a minute.]
I'm sorry you were brought back to that.
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[Feel like that, fall back to that. He seems like - too wise, too steady, too kind. But at the same time, she has a hard time ever imagining not being tied to it, no matter how fair the leash lets her wander for a while.]
cw: mental illness
No. Not anymore. But it was chemical with me, I think. Born with too much or too little of some chemical or another, spent half my life looking for terrible ways to even it out... it's different now.
cw: mental illness
[She looks away. It's hard to say, hard to admit to herself and harder to someone else.]
The Gods - the. Things that made me. They put little chemical controls in. Crank me up for missions, press me thin and flat and dulled for storage in between.
cw: mental illness
Fuck, he really doesn't want to be in here.
But he doesn't pull away, and he's able to compose himself after a moment, steadying.]
I don't want you to think that way, Mira.
cw: mental illness
[She chokes, coughs.]
I hate to think about it but they're there. I've been off for a year no matter what I -
[Frustration, desperation. The closest she gets to clarity is when she kills.]
cw: mental illness
[It's harder; there's an edge to it that wasn't there before.]
It's not a bad thing that they're not controlling you anymore. The compass, remember? The ocean?
cw: mental illness
[Crying, ugly, messy. She brings her other arm up, hides her face in her wrist, in the flop of her sleeve. Turns very quiet.]
I want them out. I want them out. He says he will - the doctor. I'm so scared. God.
[What if there isn't anything left of her? She knows it doesn't make sense, and yet - it's always been there, lurking under her skin, sturdy little shackles even when they went dead, welded in one position.]
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[Simon doesn't need to breathe, but somehow, he still feels like all the air has just gone out of the room. He turns to face Mira fully again, all his attention on her -- maybe a little too much, his voice a little too rushed.]
He said what? What is he going to do?
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Take them out. Their - puppet strings. They tangle in my joints even with no one to pull them.
[She doesn't know all the science of the little modules. Cambridge doesn't either, but he promised her to learn enough to remove them safely.]
I want that. I asked.
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How?
[But they're in her brain: he's going to have to cut into it, he assumes, and that's what scares him for her sake, a fear that's twofold. He doesn't know Cambridge, doesn't trust Cambridge, certainly not enough to know that he won't only make it worse or put his own form of control in Mira's mind.
Then, too, there's this: his own memory of being cut to pieces and put back together by men who thought they were helping, and how little he wants that for someone he already cares about. He shifts his grip to take both her wrists in his hands, his pale eyes showing a surprising depth of concern.]
How do you know you can trust him?
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But she does trust Cambridge. In a much less familiar, less obsessive way. And she bites her lip, really thinks about why.]
...he won't let me rush him.
He wants to make sure he can do it right.
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Mira...
[On the other hand, if she's right, what's the alternative? He's seriously tempted to tell her to just forget it, that he'll take care of her somehow, but she's not like the untreated undead he was so eager to adopt back in Roarton. He hadn't known much about how to treat them; he doesn't know the first thing about fixing whatever this is.]
Be careful, okay? Be safe.
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[She's never been safe, never bothered to try. She's always been at the mercy of forces completely beyond her. The Gods, the Admiral, Anita. Not Bianca, though, despite how it seemed. Not Iris, not Arthas, not Simon. They could all hurt her more than Cambridge, she reckons. Suffering for Mira has never correctly directly to pain. He's so scared, and she smiles.]
But I have more people looking out for me now than I ever have.
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[He offers her a pinched, anxious smile, but it's a fleeting one. He doesn't know how to let this go. He doesn't know how to believe it will be good for her. He wants to, but... he's wanted to believe a lot of things before.]
You think he'd stop if you said no?
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[She thinks of Jean, the strange consuming mistletoe kiss. Please, don't hurt me.]
It occurs to me, now. To try saying it.
I think he's more worried I wouldn't than I am.
[In this, she knows what she wants. Cambridge is authoritative but not overwhelming, not alluring in the way she is weak to.]
If Mal turns my DI back on, I could probably shut down his instruments in the middle, if I wanted. Would it. Would it make you feel better if I asked?
[She has left her DI deliberately dead; the Gods forbade her to turn it off again, and it's not compatible with the comms here anyway, she doesn't think. But it's a useful thing, without them. And she is...learning, awkwardly, to consider the feelings of others.]
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If Mal turns your DI back on?
[He has, like, no idea what any of the words in that sentence mean, Mira.]
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