deuceoftears | TLV IC Inbox

"Of course."

Give him a moment, he's been put on the spot, and he rolls his next stone in his hand as he thinks.

"She's a ferocious guardian, of whoever she decides needs defending, and cares about her people with mad fervour. She's not afraid to acknowledge the darker parts of herself, not in shame but recognition of their necessity." The rock ends up in both hands, tracing the rough shape with his blunt nails. "She's compassionate, and empathetic- when she lets herself be," he admits. "She's wickedly intelligent and won't stand down if she has a point she wants to make, but she'll suffer fools gladly if she thinks she'll get through to them."

He whiffs the stone, getting a few wild skips in. "I don't love that she refuses to acknowledge her shortcomings, though I recognise where that denial comes from. Or that she sees me as akin to the Cap'n by virtue of existing in a position of power over her, but we're working on that."

He doesn't like her. Worse, he doesn't want to like her, for reasons he can admit are at least half his own petty bullshit.

"I hate it when immortals don't have their shit together. It always feels like a bad omen."

"Well, there's a reason she's an inmate," he says wryly. "We're working on her, uh. Ominous-ness."

"I've gotten hints," he mutters.

That gets an amused little huff, but he won't push the topic. If Jedao's jealous then telling him he'd probably get along with Sokie if he gave her a chance won't help.

"How are you feeling now?" he asks softly instead.

"Tired," he says eventually. Like he's run and run in circles, and puked his guts out about it, and not actually gotten anywhere, but at least he isn't actively retching anymore.

"Empty. Sad."

He hums sympathetically, leaning to press against Jedao again.

"People always say you're supposed to feel better after getting it all off your chest," he says sympathetically. "But mostly I find that I always just feel nauseous. Like it's somehow more dangerous than fighting for my life."

To be fair, he has very much not gotten it all off his chest.

"I don't feel in danger. I just...feel like I failed. So that sucks."

"To your credit, then, this is the most perfectly normal fuck-up for a person that I've ever heard of," he comments.

Jedao is surprised into a hiccuping little laugh for a few moments, although it trails off into a miserable sort of croak.

He shifts so he can rub Jedao's back with one hand.

"I don't think you've failed unless you use this as an excuse to give up on your feelings for John entirely," he says gently. "You're allowed to make mistakes, Jedao. This one's not irreparable."

"It doesn't...feel like a mistake. A mistake is something you do, and you can chose to act different. But I can't actually just...choose to feel different. The mistake is who I am. I'm just never going to be the person he deserves. I'm never going to be the person I wanted to be. I'm just going to hurt him, a little bit, forever. And he loves me, so he's going to let me."

It's awful.

"I don't believe that the way we feel about things can be... that that is the mistake we make."

His hand doesn't stop its gentle circuits of Jedao's back.

"When I was with my wife, Bella, I- I didn't love her. Not- romantically, I suppose, not the way you're supposed to love your partner. But the mistake I made, in all that, was... not realising that our arrangement was wrong soon enough, that it- it wasn't something I could just try harder to feel differently about her. She was brilliant, a-and I adored her as a friend, but... but loving her was..."

He sighs, and his hand stills for a moment. "My mistake was not telling her sooner. Or- at all, really. To give her the ability to do something with that for herself."

Edited 2025-07-18 01:10 (UTC)

"It's going to hurt him," Jedao says, low in his chest, deep and quiet and awful, even as he leans into the touch a little.

"I know not telling him will too. I just. I just hate it. I wish I could take a big knife and crack my sternum like a walnut and cut all the rotten bits out of my heart. Like a piece of moldy fruit."

"More like plucking the thorns off a rose," he muses. "Just because they're unsightly doesn't mean they're not a part of you."

"Okay, Andan," Jedao mutters, and he doesn't actually roll his eyes but it's there in his voice. "That wasn't in contention."

Of course they're parts of him; it'd be easier to throw them away if they weren't. That's the whole problem.

Arthur can't help the surprised huff as he glances away.

"Well if you want to make it sound like psych surgery, then."

Edited 2025-07-18 02:34 (UTC)

Jedao stiffens, shocked that Arthur would bring it up, and then more appalled that he can't even refute it.

"That's not - I mean - uhgh."

"If you cut off everything that you think is rotten, how much of what's left over is still you without it?" he asks, his tone deceptively casual for the way his eyes are laser-focused on the river. "What happens when the only darkness left is a bruise and you can't stop cutting?"

He closes his eyes for a moment, before he looks back at Jedao, and while he can try to keep the intensity off his face, he can't hide how the golden scars in his irises burn like stars. "Where does that person go, that you evicted from yourself?"

He pulls himself in again, mantling up, knees in closer to his chest, arms tight around them, shoulders hunched. When he speaks, his voice is small, defeated.

"This isn't like, a cool and effective proof that I'm being silly. You're just reminding me of all the reasons I used to be suicidal."

What happens is he peels everything away and drowns in the dark and doesn't have to be here anymore.

Edited 2025-07-18 03:13 (UTC)

"I never thought you were being silly," he replies immediately, with a shake of his head. "I thought you were in pain. I just... couldn't see how badly."

"It is stupid. It's not - I just -"

He tips his face down, pressing it against his knees, making himself a little closed ball for long seconds.

"It's like I have - that pit inside me. And I can cover it over and leave it alone for a long time. But if I get a little lost and trip over a little rock and I'm scrabbling around trying to find my way back to level ground and instead I just....slide right back there. I was just - just a little bit tripped. But I try to get back up and somehow I dig myself here instead. I don't know how to stop."

Arthur's silent, for a minute, but Jedao will notice the way he tenses at the turn of phrase for a few moments.

Turns out it's impossible to leave the fucking pits behind him.

But he still tugs the little ball of Jedao against his side and gives him another squeeze. "You let someone help you climb out. Someone who can see the edge."

"What does that mean, though," he half-asks, half-protests. "We're not even working on the problem anymore, we're just..."

He shrugs. "What's left in there to work on? You've hit bedrock, my friend, and the only thing left there is suffering. So you can either bury yourself in it, or let someone help you try and make the pit a little less overwhelming."

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