exnihilo | 12. ibidem

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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?

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[He shakes his head.]

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.

It's. Might be.

[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.

[Simon can't exactly go pale anymore, but something drops from his expression all the same: he looks almost scared for a moment, like in all this resonating they've been doing between each other, she found an echo he doesn't want to hear in himself. His fingers twitch against hers, his eyes darting away from her face, wide and unhappy as they take in their clinical surroundings again.

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.

What way? They're -

[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.]

You're not off. You're yourself.

[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?

They are. It's just - just - stuck on the last setting.

[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.]

Wait, what?

[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?

[His focus helps her focus, though, his urgency calling forth some part of her that is more professional, calm. She takes a shaky breath, meets his eyes unblinking.]

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.

[He looked a little scared before; now, for just a second, he really does.]

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?

[She has not, historically, made wonderful decisions about trust. It's not a quality she generally spends too much time considering, too caught up in what someone makes her feel. But she's lost her taste for it, a little, after Anita. Ironically, it's Simon she most wants to fling herself at now, let him fill up the place in her that wants answers, orders, a place in the world, even if that place was the shadows.

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.

[That doesn't mean what she thinks it does, he thinks; John and Victor had wanted to move slowly, too. Eleven months of slowly. More, if he'd let them.]

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.

...I don't know if I even know what that means, really.

[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.

It's not the number that worries me.

[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?

Yes.

[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.]

[He pauses.]

If Mal turns your DI back on?

[He has, like, no idea what any of the words in that sentence mean, Mira.]

Oh - direct interface.

[She taps her temple.]

It's how most things work in my time. Alerts and - appliances, or whatever. The admiral turned it off too.

Is that how they...?

Oh. No, the DI is standard consumer stuff. Like a handless communicator, not - influence.

The controllers are mostly in in my ovaries and my endocrine system. The ones we've found so far.

In your--?

[Simon tries not to look slightly horrified, but he is. More than slightly, really. He'd assumed they'd be in her brain, and that's more than terrible enough, but there's something horribly invasive, too, about controlling her that way.]

Christ, Mira.

[Even Victor and John had left those parts of him alone.]

It's efficient. If you want to hack something, you use the systems it has for regulating itself.

[No wonder she wants the things out of her. Still... He wishes he trusted Cambridge more. He wishes he knew more about biology. He wishes he could be the one to save her from this.]

Try asking him, okay? If you could turn the DI on. If he still seems trustworthy...

I'll ask.

[It makes her smile, though. Being worried over.]

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12. ibidem

cw: mental illness

cw: mental illness

cw: mental illness

cw: mental illness

cw: mental illness

cw: mental illness

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