legionworld | (no subject)

Rich is in one of the private rooms instead of one of the beds on the main Medbay floor. Dr. Gym'll and Dr. Ry'kerr had thought it best for him to have some peace and quiet.

He doesn't see Robbie at first, but it's not because his attention is occupied by anything else. He's just staring straight ahead, at the bare wall.

There's a tension in his jaw that shouldn't be there, when all he's staring at is nothing. It suggests that he's simply...somewhere else.

He's not alone. A nurse has been put on one-to-one with him, to make sure he's okay whenever his friends aren't in the room. The nurse smiles when Robbie comes in.

"If you want some time alone, I can leave," he offers. "But you need to let me know when you're leaving so I can come back in."

Rich himself says nothing. It'll take a little more effort to get his attention.

“Hey, Rich.” It’s hard to take in the tableau and continue breathing. Luckily, Robbie doesn’t have to breathe properly. He can blame gasps and wheezes on the ribs.

He tries to breathe right anyway. He spent the better part of a year … probably looking exactly like Rich does right now. Robbie knows how much you can hear and notice while “ignoring” everything. Sometimes, he caught the tiniest details. Others, he saw so little he lost track of time for days or weeks.

He doesn’t like the scene. Rich not even glancing at the newcomer, the nurse just chilling there – like Robbie doesn’t know why medical people sit in rooms.

But Rich isn’t in a padded cell. And he’s not wearing a straight jacket. Those are solid improvements. Robbie doesn’t know how he’d have handled seeing that forced on a friend, but this is manageable. “You can go. I’ll stay until he kicks me out. If that hasn’t happened by the end of your shift, just pop your head in and make sure I didn’t pass out.”

Robbie’s hand rests on the back of an empty chair as he stares at the patch of wall that Rich is focused on. He wants to sit there, force Rich to see him, acknowledge him, talk to him.

Rich doesn’t have much control over his current situation, though. After a moment, Robbie pulls the chair up in the traditional hospital-visiting bedside position. “I got you something. Well, I got Ne'ekg the Space Station Orderly to get it for you.”

Robbie reaches into the bag and pulls out a lump of heavy brown folds, sitting the terrycloth overcoat (overrobe?) on Rich's lap.

It still takes him a moment. It shouldn't take this long, with Robbie talking to him and dumping something on his lap, but it does. His brain has to work hard to drag itself up out of the pit it's in.

But it does. And he finally comes back down to Earth.

When he's back, he suddenly breathes in, like he's surprised to find himself in the Medbay, and he looks up at Robbie with wide eyes, taking him in, checking to make sure he's all in one piece. It's clear that he didn't hear anything Robbie just said.

"Hey. Hey, Robbie. Hey."

His speech is flitting around all over the place, incapable of deciding if it wants to manic or slurred and it's making a mess trying to be both at the same time.

He looks at the robe.

"Aw, is this - is this for me? That's nice."

He starts running the fingers of his flesh and blood hand over it, methodically, like the very idea of "soft" is a novelty he's forgotten and he's trying to remember it again.

"You're okay, right? You look okay. They said you were okay." He adds quickly, "M'sorry. I let them hurt you. M'sorry. Sorry."

That didn’t take long. Apparently, the thousand yard stare got boring. Robbie smiles a little. He didn’t have to cause a powers-related distraction. “Hey, Kid Nova.”

The scrutiny makes him more uncomfortable. He knows he’s not breathing deep enough yet, but forcing a deep breath will make him wince. He’s not going to try to pretend and make it worse.

“I’m okay. Everything's stitched up and accelerated healing gooed so you can’t tell at all.” Robbie hikes up one side of his shirt, to show off that there aren’t even stitches anymore. “I think that goo fades the old stuff too, but it could be in my head.”

He lets the shirt drop and, while he’s fumbling it into place, adds quietly. “Don’t be. I know it’s not the hammer’s fault. Doc tells me that a lot.”

Robbie doubts Rich will listen, but he says it anyway and reaches over to touch Rich's good shoulder. "Nothing to be sorry about."

His hand reaches up and grabs Robbie's in a death grip. It's not an "I'm alarmed" motion, it's more that he just wants to touch him, make sure he's solid and real and actually there and okay.

"Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah."

'The old stuff.' New stuff. Old stuff. Too much stuff. Robbie's faced too much stuff.

And Rich had added to it. But it wasn't his fault, right? There are lots of things that weren't his fault.

Even though they weren't, he still has to fix them.

"I still hurt you," he says, his voice dropping to a quiet whisper. "I still hurt you. I remember it now. It kinda...blends. What I said and what I remembered saying. But they were different things, I can tell now."

He's a little more cognizant of the times they'd motored him around and controlled him. Initially, he just hadn't remembered at all, but now he remembers being sunk down under the weight of the Many-Angled ones, trapped. Stifled and gagged.

"I said things to you that I didn't mean. I meant other things. I remember saying other things. That's what they left me. I walked away thinking I'd been myself, but they'd made me into something else."

And now he's drowning in it, drowning in all the mistakes fake Rich...Squich had made. They almost feel like his own mistakes, that's what makes them so oily and wrong and gross, but the memories of what he thought he'd said are clear enough for him to be sure that those mistakes weren't his. He'd had to be placated with fake memories of what he wanted to say to not notice the seams.

"Too many things. Old things and new things and I added things, but I didn't mean them Robbie, I swear. I swear."

Edited 2017-12-01 04:06 (UTC)

God. Was this what he had sounded like once, falling over himself to explain his position on a cold and ruthless team like the Thunderbolts, apologizing to Rich for hurting him?

He’s not actually sure he did. He thought about it, a lot, in the space between regaining his mind and picking up his old life. Robbie suspects he thought about some things so hard that he’s permanently damaged the memory trying out other lines and outcomes.

He doesn’t shake off Rich's hand – doesn’t judge him. Robbie just listens and feels it, too, because he knows how it feels afterwards to realize your mind was poisoned and swayed to believe blue was red.

“I just walked away thinking I’d been myself,” Robbie says quietly, “but they made me into someone else.”

The intonation doesn’t leave room for doubt: Robbie’s talking about himself, not parroting. “I don’t want you to apologize anymore than you want me to. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m an adult, for reals. I asked for advice, but I made my own bad decisions. And I own them, new and especially old. I don’t put that burden on anyone else.”

Robbie cards a hand through his hair and lets out a rough sigh. “I think in the event of tentacle monster possession I’m going to walk back my whole thing about how the ends and the means matter more than intent. Intent's all you have sometimes.”

Yeah, yeah, Rich gets two presents and everybody else only got one. Robbie can't stand to have him hurting over things that were Robbie's fault, though.

The hand holding Robbie's lets go, but only so Rich can reach out his arm and hug him. It's one part relief, one part gratitude for Robbie understanding it wasn't really him, and one part pure raw desire for human comfort.

The last part is why he clings. Apparently he hasn't entirely shaken being a little squiddish.

"What I wanted to say," Rich says shakily while hugging him. "What I thought I said...was that whether you're ready - emotionally - to have a relationship or not is up to you, and it's okay not to be. Not to be ready."

Because it is. It's a lot to deal with after going through hardship and having to emotionally sort yourself out.

"But that...that you have to trust that people love you for good reasons. And right now you just have trouble seeing 'em, 'cause you've been through a lot. But whatever choice you make, you have to make it while trusting that they're real. Those reasons. That love. They're real, Robbie, even if you can't always see them. Any choice has to come from that place, trusting that."

Even now, while his while his mind crumbles, Rich loves. Effusively. His heart bleeds with it and even with trying to let go of blaming himself for what happened, he's compulsively trying to fill the void of doubt the squids tried to create with love.

It's a distinctly Rich thing to do: trying to give the brotherly loving advice even though his mind and soul feel like they've been reduced to rubble.

He hurts and rather than lashing out, his first instinct is to try to soothe hurt. And to cling.

There’s no escaping the hug of the former Elder God. Seriously, Robbie can’t disentangle himself in good conscience. Rich needs a hug, so Robbie will do his best to hug the stuffing out of the larger man without making either of them say ow. It’s delicate work and obviously requires both arms to ensconce one so broad.

So there are no extra fingers to plug his ears and keep himself from hearing. Robbie tries to not listen to them, but they seep into his brain and the effect is immediate. Like putting a paper towel to a spill, everything tinges red.

It was the squids, and not Rich, giving the advice. Robbie hadn’t really believed it until now, despite seeing the purple tentacle mess they made of Rich. Despite getting personally attacked. The advice was Rich, and the latter recitation to Grif was the squids. It had to be.

Robbie feels sick, and he’s not supposed to strain his ribs. Heaving would do that… and throwing up on Rich’s shoulder is a bad plan.

“Shut up,” he whispers. Disassociation used to come so easily, but now, when he needs it, Robbie can’t force himself into that zone where nothing that happened to him mattered and he could hear all manner of insults without blinking, because nothing was worse than what was in his own head. He was safe there. He knew all the demons. His own personal Kingdom of Yr. He’d liked that book, what was it called again? (Think about that, don’t think about Vance.) “Just shut up about it. It’s over with.”

I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. (Truer words were never written.) How did they say hello in the book? “I texted Vance that day and took care of it.”

Oh, right. Suffer, victim. No one loves you. (Think about the book, don’t think about what Rich is saying and it won’t hurt. Don’t think about it, don’t think, don’t think…)

He can hear the thick, wet sound in his own breathing. Maybe he could’ve hid how upset he was in the hug, Rich can’t see his face, but he had to go and make noise like Rich isn’t dealing with enough. “I’m just glad you’re safe, buddy.”

"It...hurts. Everything. Everything hurts. Being here."

He's not going to lie. Not to Robbie. Not after the squids messed with him like that.

And he knows Robbie will understand that feeling. Everything hurting.

"Right now I can't be glad to be here. I don't have it in me. But I think eventually maybe I will be."

He hugs Robbie tightly.

"We didn't know if I had to go back. To die. But I never died at all, I guess. Or at least I did and came back. And now I don't have to go back. Now I can just go home. With you and Vance and Sam."

It'd been hanging over their heads, all this time. Schrodinger's resurrection. Was the Time Trapper going to send him back to his death or not? Only they were asking the wrong question the whole time and that death wasn't waiting for him.

Now they have an answer.

And Robbie now has has some truths to replace the falsehoods.

"And I'm proud of you. For getting help. You're not...I never would've called you..." Crazy. It's not what he'd really felt and the words had felt alien on his tongue for a reason, even with his own strange double standard that he held for himself. "It's a hard thing to do. It's been hard for me and I'm only doing it 'cause...'cause I'm that far down that I can't...I can't get away with not doing it. But you keep trying to get better, even when it's a fight. I'm proud of you. For...for confronting the kinds of things I fly away from."

It's okay if he needs to hide everything in the hug. Rich is glad to give it, glad to hold onto the people he loves since he still can.

It'd been so lonely. He and Worldmind had tried to keep each other sane - and failed.

Edited 2017-12-09 10:33 (UTC)

With the smorgasbord of topics Rich offers up, it’s so much easier to keep his train of thought chugging along. The mess with Vance, the squid advice, it fades into the background.

“I know. I know how much it hurts, but it gets better. It gets easier to keep breathing,” Robbie says softly, giving Rich a good squeeze. It’s more of an estimation, but Robbie thinks that working with bad facts and being ground down into dirt by everyone else in the world can, in hindsight, look and feel as if he hadn’t had any free will. With informed volition, he might as well have been a squid puppet.

“I’m still glad, all right? I’m happy enough for both of us – I get to have a friend back, permanently. We're going to give you the Mount Wundagore penthouse, you wait and see.” He can feel his mood swinging wildly upwards with the idea that he has something so powerful to give: a room, a home. For his friend who is finally coming back. “And you won’t have to do anything you don’t want to – you don’t have to now, either, screw anyone who says different.”

Having blinked away the tears and replaced them with a fiery willingness to beat up anyone who dares force Rich's compliance, Robbie pulls out of the hug to look Rich in the eyes. “I don’t think you’re crazy, and I think you should try and work through it, but the only thing you have to do is what you want. I want you to be happy and well and know that I was always proud to be your friend. Nothing you decide'll change that. I’ll support any path you want to take.”

He means it with the ferver of a zealot, too. If Rich told him it was helping, there’s nothing Robbie would try to talk him out of.

The thing is when Robbie says it gets better... Rich believes him. He knows that Robbie still struggles, but he's also seen how far he's come, from being someone trapped into his own pain to now being someone that can feel joy again sometimes, that can lose himself in caring about people.

It makes him have hope. People can get better. The hurt doesn't get undone, no, but still, they can get better.

And he has a future again to get better in now. The possible death sentence isn't hanging over his head anymore.

Rich turns away from Robbie but it's to finally pull on the robe Robbie gave him as a gift.

"This is nice," he repeats. "Really."

It's warm and cozy. He can be warm and cozy again, there's a world of sensation he's allowed to have again that isn't just pain and deprivation.

His words become clearer and as he talks it's clear that he's getting a little more tethered down to reality again.

Tethered back down to Earth. That's what all this has taught him. He doesn't have to take it all alone anymore. Even Peter told him to rely on his friends, but then Peter was the one person in space that tried his best to make it so he never went into the fire alone.

"I'd like that," he says. "The penthouse room. Ain't never had a penthouse before. You know how it was: sometimes I was lucky to have somebody's else's couch."

He has a home to go back to. And a second family besides the one he was born into. (And the one he was born into isn't perfect but they love him, too).