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etrayamemes2024-02-23 01:16 pm
etrayamods) wrote in etrayamemes2024-02-23 01:16 pm
Entry tags:
TDM 001
 ⏵ arrival⏴ Arrival goes as anticipated. Characters awaken in the pristine, new hospital, greeted by Aurora and potentially getting a rundown of what's happening depending on their approach to being dropped somewhere new. The door to their room opens, and new arrivals are left free to explore their new environment. Or what exists of it anyway. Exiting the hospital will show that there isn't much of anything just yet. Generally, Echo can build new facilities before new arrivals awaken, but it appears that this time… well, it didn't happen. The apartment complex exists, standing just beside the hospital, and there are a few facilities that are half constructed, companion bots carrying around rebar and other necessary bits and pieces, but they're not quite ready. Oops. But maybe, just maybe, one of those half-built facilities is familiar - a childhood home, a favorite supermarket, the run-down garage they worked at as a youth, a grounded spaceship in the middle of one of the massive bridges connecting land over rivers. The companion bots will offer quiet apologies if approached; they were expecting new arrivals to touch down, but not quite this early. They'll be ready soon! A few more days at most, they promise. In the meantime, do not stray too far from the hospital. While most of Etraya looks habitable, they have not finished verifying that it's safe for its new inhabitants. The apartment building and hospital are safe, and the land directly around them is fine, but beyond that? Stay away. But hey, the hospital's cafeteria is fully stocked with cuisine from across the multiverse! Please feel free to settle in, choose an apartment, and get to know your new friends.  ⏵ water you doing?⏴ Decide not to listen? Well, the companion bots had offered their warnings. Etraya is a new establishment, one that received newcomers before it was ready. And as such, the land has not quite been prepared for their arrival. Wandering off the land the apartment building and hospital are settled on comes with very, very poor results. Take a step down into the river below, and you'll find yourself uncomfortably hot. Or cold. Or hot and cold, because whatever that 'water' is, it wasn't meant to be played in. The only way to resolve the temperature regulation issue, as Aurora informs, is finding a buddy to cuddle up with. Those who are lucky may have a nearby friend they're familiar with and don't mind leaning a shoulder against. Those that don't? Well. . . have fun having a very uncomfortable conversation with a stranger, asking them if it's alright if you lean into them or hold their hand for a bit. Any physical contact will do, as long as it's directly skin-to-skin. Except that's not where the contact stops. Characters will find that, for the next several hours, they'll feel everything that their companion feels. Frustration, anger, amusement, homesickness that comes from being so far away from their families and friends - all those feelings? They're not your feelings, they're our feelings now. No explanation is given for how the empathy bond and the temperature regulation are related, but it may have to do with how since they had decided not to listen, it was time to test how well they could cohabitate with their new friends.  ⏵ bonding bingo ⏴ Maybe it feels a little too much like Obi-Wan had when receiving Leia's message, but all new arrivals are their universe's only hope. Except they're not the only ones arriving, and not the only ones who are trying to keep their worlds safe. Instead, they've arrived with several others who carry the same weight on their shoulders. And they aren't meant to go through this alone. The people they've arrived with are both their new companions and their competition. Both comrades to fight beside and enemies to battle against, depending on what the specific mission of the month is. But currently? They're here to bond. It's important to get to know those who they'll be spending the next unspecified but lengthy amount of time with, isn't it? To that extent, Aurora's hologram waits just inside the hospital's front doors, offering bonding bingo cards to those willing to participate. It's not necessary, but she does specify that this is one way to get ahead: cooperation is important, especially given what they're going to face together. Bingo cards are three long and three across, and offer a multitude of activities you can do to check each box off. Some examples include:
 ⏵ matchmaker ⏴ When the earpiece is put on, a nice green HUD(head-up display) lights up in front of new arrivals. It asks them for their name, which is fairly standard for these. Except it seems it wants them to put together a profile to help pair them off with other new arrivals. For some, this information may autofill with what Aurora was able to discern about them from watching them in their home worlds. But some lucky individuals may catch their profiles before they're posted live, and have the opportunity to edit out information included in fields, even if they're not able to clear it out entirely. Welcome to Aurora's idea of matchmaking. Have fun getting paired off with a buddy or four, with your profiles exchanged between one another. Maybe they're the perfect match. Maybe this is a nightmare in the making. Welcome to our first TDM! We're excited to have you here. For more information on character arrivals, click here. For any questions relating to the TDM please reply below. All other questions can be directed to the FAQ. |
no subject
Probably. [ Noelle doesn't know much about the underlying physics. But she can analogize to boats, and the wings of planes, and other things that glide through fluids. ] We can't change the surface tension, though, so maybe try a different angle. Upwards, instead of flat horizontal.
[ Maybe that'll counteract gravity? Something like that.
Noelle watches Krouse give it a shot and miss. It's nice to know it's not just her messing this one up - nice enough that Noelle returns a smaller version of Krouse's smile.
Krouse probably didn't mean to get her thinking about their ill-fated bout with robot science. Noelle thinks about it anyway. About not getting to do what she wanted to do, about an apology that came too late. They're not supposed to go in the river because it might mean Noelle has to touch someone. But that didn't even feel bad. It was killing the clone that was hard.
Noelle sits with the idea for a while, watching the gentle flow of waves and any other stones Krouse chooses to skip. It's important that she makes sure this is what she really wants, before she says it out loud. There's a good bit of shame and guilt to sift through first. ]
Hey. [ Noelle says, at last, soft and a little rough. ] Can I ask you something kind of shitty?
no subject
[ It sounds like it could make sense, at least, which is good enough.
He really is just throwing rocks into whatever this not-water is. As much as he tries to implement the concept of upwards in trajectory, he's not sure he's getting it.
It's the kind of repetitive failure he usually gets frustrated by fast, but this seems to be an exception, like all of this has been to a lot of things. Bend, pick, straighten, toss, plunk. After the first few, he experiments with throwing them farther, aiming at the centre of the river instead of the edge.
The sensation of wind skimming the back of his neck creeps up on him again. All the open space around them, a sky that looks like any sky overhead. No smell of cleaners or human bodies closed up together, endlessly recycling each other's air.
It occurs to him that Noelle must be feeling the same way about it, and that's a new ache in his chest that's not a wholly bad one. Nothing he'll say aloud, but something he can know. He was always looking for things they had in common.
When she speaks up again, he pauses at the top of a throw, lowering his arm as he shifts his attention back to her. The lingering sense of harmony informs his answer, but more than that, it's the lull of acceptance they've dropped into that makes him say, without worrying what the next question might be: ]
Yeah. Go ahead.
[ He throws his next rock barely looking, just to get it out of his hand, and half-startles when it bounces - once, twice, and that's it. He blinks after it, then laughs, quiet and surprised. ]
Lucky throw.
no subject
The stone skips. Krouse laughs. Noelle murmurs, quiet and genuine, like it's the easiest thing in the world. ]
Nice.
[ That's not something she says a lot, but she means it every time.
Noelle lets Krouse's victory linger for a little while, as warm as the sun on her skin. This sun isn't the kind that burns.
She can't leave Krouse hanging forever, especially now that she knows he'll wait as long as it takes. She still wants things to be fair, even though fairness, like hope or two legs, is something that was closed off to them a long time ago.
But maybe there's still something that isn't. ]
What if, [ Noelle starts, slowly, working up the confidence as she goes ] we just didn't kill them. The clones.
[ There's too much of a plea in her voice. Noelle pauses, regroups. When she speaks next, it's as a captain. ]
I mean - we know they listen to me. And it's not like either of us are trying to save the world.
[ It's not like either of them have that much time, before it all inevitably falls apart. If there's one thing Noelle knows how to expect, it's that. ]
no subject
However shitty the question she has for him is, it can't take away from this flickering moment. Even when it's this question.
But it does throw him, and it throws him because of what it implies. He stares up at her with his mouth half-parted for a second, then flushes, cheeks darkening more starkly than usually in his sun-starved complexion. He has to look away for his own privacy, this time around, studying the river like it's going to tell him how to answer that. He clasps his hands behind his back, feels stupid about doing it, doesn't stop. ]
I'm okay with that.
[ It shouldn't be so easy to agree, but it's a shouldn't he's pretty much moved past. If he cared that much about the damage the clones do, he'd have done things differently a long time ago. Besides - ]
I mean, it's not like there's much damage they can do anyway, if they don't listen.
[ They're not hiding anymore, on the run. They're not accountable to the capes that hold whatever city they're in. There's no one left on the team for the clones to fixate on, except the two of them, and Krouse is still thinking around the subject of who the clones will be. Like there's some outside possibility that Noelle could be talking about cloning anyone else, which only happens if -
He squeezes his hands together, his stupid heart tripping at the top of a flight of steep stairs. He should feel guilty twice over, for wanting anything, and for wanting it after he already let her kill one. He is guilty, a slimy coil twisting in his stomach. But guilt isn't enough to stop him from wanting. ]
no subject
Noelle looks away the second Krouse starts staring, so she doesn't see him break that gaze through her human eyes. Now they're both looking at a river they can't go in, like there's something on the other side they'll never be able to reach.
Or maybe that's now how Krouse feels. It'd be another question, if she were to ask, and there's only so much of those Noelle can dredge out of herself right now.
The river doesn't have any answers. Noelle looks back down at Krouse. He's so small, all the way down there. Smaller than he was before prison, the cage making him washed out and tired. It feels like she's stumbling in on something private, looking at him without that cloak of confidence he usually wears. How he can stand her looking at him, Noelle will never know.
A limb beside Krouse uncurls. This one is sort of like the leg of a chicken, except larger and scalier, its talons moving like human fingers.
Krouse used to do this at movies. Put his arm on the armrest, palm up if he was feeling brave, palm down if he didn't want to pressure her. Once in a while, on the good days, Noelle took it. ]
Okay.
[ She twists the limb, turns it palm side up. ]
cw: eating disorder, ableism, fetishization
Part of that is him. There are people out there fascinated by Case 53s, even a furtive handful of people with a sick affinity for the Endbringers, but Krouse isn't one of them. He doesn't know for sure if Noelle ever came across them online, but it's hard to imagine that she didn't. He doesn't know how she felt about it; he knows he could only read so much before he tabbed away in a spurt of unexamined and complicated guilt.
Which is the other part of it. The part that's her, and how uncomfortable she was with herself long before anything happened. He had learned fast that mentioning anything about how she looked, ever, was a fraught minefield. It was like she preferred not to be reminded she had a body at all, especially not one other people could see. It was one of the first things that gave him an idea of what she was dealing with. So he adjusted, and it wasn't like she lacked other qualities to praise that he cared about more than how cute her nose was when she scrunched it in thought. Most of the time, he'd been able not to fuck it up.
Touch had been more complicated. There were so many sharp boundaries, the razor's edge of what was okay and what wasn't shifting at the influence of mostly unknowable factors. He'd still been figuring it out, before there was nothing left to figure out.
But the safest place had always been her hands, touched as gently as skittish wild animals. He'd thought about her hands a lot. Their little flinches, their awkwardness curled inside of his. The rare and perfect moments when something would click, and he'd feel her forget to not like knowing she had skin.
If her upper arms had been off-limits, and forget her waist, or hugging without enough insulating layers, how much more sensitive is this? A part of her not somehow imperfect in her mind, but glaringly mutated, every detail stark in the light?
She's asking him to touch her where it hurts, and he doesn't know how.
All of this goes through his mind in seconds, compressed to a sticky slideshow of regrets and fears. On the outside, he unclasps his hands, moving them without exactly knowing where they're going to go. He scrubs his palms on the legs of his jumpsuit to dry off half-imagined sweat, pulse thudding in freefall.
There's probably something he should say, but he can't think of what it is. He can only settle his fingertips on the scaled palm of her claws, a jolt of surprise arcing from them as soon as they make contact. He'd expected it to be cold and hard, but it's not. There's vivid warmth and slightly spongy give, the texture smooth on the caps of the scales and faintly rough at their overlaps.
He watches his fingertips slide over the bumps until they slot between her talons. He's seen this limb punch through a wooden door like styrofoam. She could wrench his arm out of its socket with one quick, clean clasp and pull, and he still doesn't feel like he's the one in danger. Carefully, gingerly, the way she taught him, he curls his fingers down to knit with hers. ]
Is that - ? [ His eyes flick up, wide and dark. ] Is that okay?
cw: eating disorder, ableism
She'd hugged him after their last match - the last one that they won. But that hadn't felt like she was asking for anything. That hug was something she'd earned, and so she hadn't felt disgusting receiving it.
It must have been when she was a kid, before she learned the secret of the world that everyone is supposed to pretend they don't know. The one that puts you in the hospital if you act on it too much, if you follow it to its logical conclusion.
But she's asking for it now. It's something Noelle never thought she'd miss, but there's another secret she learned, locked in bathroom stalls and warehouses and bunkers: when all you are is a body, not being touched is the loneliest thing in the world.
As Krouse unclasps his hands, Noelle gets ready, too, a process that occurs behind the locked door of a carefully neutral expression, inside her own brain. He wipes his hands on his jumpsuit, clearly as nervous as she is, and Noelle resolves not to flinch. He's frightened. (Of her.) It wouldn't be fair. (To him.)
He touches her palm. Noelle still flinches. The reflex courses through all her talons as they curl inwards, her stupid body once again blowing up all her problems to monstrous proportions. Loathing twists in her stomach, as reflexive as the flinch, because of course she's still too sick to get this right.
Still, she doesn't pull away. She leaves her talons slightly curled, and it's almost like holding hands. Like someone leading her up and out of the dark. ]
Yeah. [ Noelle rasps through a wet chunk of feeling stuck in her throat, meeting his dark eyes with glassy ones of her own. ] Sorry - I just - it's new.
[ But the longer they stay in it, the less frightening it is. There's a light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. If this place won't fix her, then nothing will, which means this is the best she's going to get. It might even be okay. There's soft, gentle warmth against something hideous and ugly, but it's all for her. It can't be that awful, if he's willing to touch it.
Maybe she isn't so terrible, either. ]
no subject
But it's also familiar, and that somehow feels worse. Everything she was afraid of didn't change. It just happened, twisting up and out of her, until everyone treated her like she never wanted them to. All the empty reassurances in the world couldn't add up to cancelling out what she could see - or not see, more and more, as they stopped even trying. ]
Uh-huh.
[ His voice doesn't get quieter, but it does get softer. An impulse sweeps down from his wrist before he can second guess it, and he squeezes her talons in a pulse. The structure underneath the scales is hard to understand, the way muscle and bone fit together not quite making sense, but it's not bad. It doesn't feel wrong, just strange.
She said her power fizzed when she touched things. Sometimes he tried to imagine what that was like. If it felt bad, or if it felt right, like how his power does when two things click together just so. When he thinks about it now, he can almost conjure an echo in his own palm, pop rocks on his tongue and butterflies in his stomach. ]
We can just stay like this. And we can take a break whenever you want.
[ A break, less final than stopping. A break means they could pause and restart, slip a breather into things. He smiles when he says it, warmth only faintly tinted with nerves slipping through, and ventures a tiny brush of his thumb over the curves of no more than three scales. ]
Does that feel okay?
no subject
He brushes a couple of her scales, and Noelle tries her best to return the gesture, curling the tip of one of her talons over so that it rests against the back of Krouse's hand. The end of it is pointed, so Noelle doesn't drag it along Krouse's skin. She doesn't want it to cut him. She doesn't want to know what will happen if her lower half smells blood. ]
Yeah.
[ Noelle says, in response to his question, a small word that isn't nearly enough to describe what Noelle feels. It's okay, but it's also more than that.
It's like being tucked back into bed after a nightmare, safe and secure in the knowledge that the worst that happened to you won't come back this night. It's grief that it didn't happen sooner, that they wasted so much time separated by invisible walls that later turned gruesomely visible. It's hope, because when Krouse says they can stay like this, he's planning for a future. That future might only be five minutes, or an hour, but it's more than Noelle ever thought she'd get. ]
Is it okay for you?
[ Noelle tries not to think too much on her own about what this feels like on Krouse's end. She might be holding a hand, but he isn't. It probably feels weird. He might not like it. As soon as that crosses Noelle's mind, the same old pit opens up in her stomach.
This time, though, she doesn't flinch, and she doesn't pull away. The expression on her face doesn't even change that much, save for the way that she bites down on the inside of her cheek a little.
Someone once told her that she couldn't have a good relationship with others if she didn't have a good relationship with herself. That same person told her that the good relationship with herself shouldn't come from praise, or external factors, but rather, some mystical well of self-esteem that everyone else somehow fucking has, and Noelle was born without. Or something.
That well is something Noelle still can't tap into. She can listen to Krouse, though, and believe him if he says he doesn't mind, and stop if he says he wants to stop. There's just one thing. ]
It's okay if it isn't. I get it. Just - tell me the truth.
no subject
That's always a more complicated subject than people think it is, or it is for him. People want you to come up with one clear, straightforward answer, something fixed and immutable about a feeling or a situation, and he doesn't see the world that way. Everything is contingent on everything else around it, a set of factors that could change or be changed at any time. Truth is a relationship to the things you see, the things you know, and the things you expect. It's never just one point, crystallized and perfect.
He thinks that's one of the reasons he's hard to believe when he tries to be honest, besides how often he lies. When he tells the truth, it feels as much like imposing order on chaos as a lie does, and something about that must slip into his voice, his face, how he holds himself. He tells the truth he wants to believe in, knowing he can't ever be as sure as everyone else seems to be about theirs, and it's no wonder that no one ever buys it.
She didn't, anyway, and sometimes he thinks she knew more about what he felt than he did. If he couldn't convince her, then maybe she was right. Maybe the hesitations and the fuck ups and the doubts always counted for more than whatever abstract thing he felt. If you love someone, and they don't believe you - not even don't love you back, but don't believe you - does it even really mean anything? Is that true?
The tap of Noelle's claw on the back of his hand is the gentlest thing he's ever known this part of her to do. That's true. The pad of her talons has the give of firm muscle, barely skinned over with fat. That's true. Her scales are warm and smooth against his skin, and the sun's still shining, and he wants to say something true enough that she'll believe it like he does. ]
It's okay.
[ He traces his thumb over scales again, slower and more sure, pressing down just enough to feel the slightest spring back as he goes. His face has shifted without him paying close attention to it, concentration a thin line between his eyebrows. ]
You're really warm.
[ And now so are his cheeks as he wishes he'd just bit his tongue. He shakes his head, self-consciousness almost making him look away from her set expression, but he makes himself stay with her. Touching her is a lot; talking about touching her, what it feels like, is more. ]
In a good way. It's nice. Like - did you ever use those hand warmers inside your mittens? The gel ones at the rink.
no subject
So when Krouse says it's okay, Noelle believes him. She nods once, quick and sharp, then tucks some hair behind her ears to give her hands something to do. She doesn't feel the need to hold herself together as much, and that's nice. It's a weight off. A lightness of being, like the wind gently weaving through her hair.
That Krouse tells her that she's warm only helps his case. That's not a lie. She's glad it's only warm, and not the feverish feeling she felt during the fight.
Noelle steals a look at the river. She thinks about the ice rink, and tries to remember what it felt like to be cold. She never thought she'd miss it.
She isn't paying attention to her face, either. There's a little smile on it, when Noelle gets lost in memory, and the smile stays when she comes back. She won't laugh at Krouse's blushing, but it's a near thing. ]
Yeah.
[ That's not the important part of her memory. The important part is Marissa, holding one of her hands through thick winter mittens, trying to teach Noelle how to do a skating trick, and only laughing a little bit when Noelle landed flat on her ass. She hangs onto that sound as tight as she can, one that she hasn't heard in years, and won't hear ever again. ]
Mars and I used to go.
[ He probably doesn't want to talk about her. The logical part of Noelle doesn't want to, either. The heart Marissa burned up does. The last person Noelle ever got to see, and her mask hid her face. Like it was just Sundancer there, and Noelle didn't even get to say goodbye. ]
no subject
There's what Marissa means to Noelle and what Marissa means to Krouse. Those have always been different things. His opinion has veered farther away from hers than it ever did before, but he can tell himself it's a matter of degree, not kind. The change in trajectory happened long before Marissa made her last choice.
It started with the small choices. Not being up for a conversation here, wanting to go to bed without saying good night there. Excusable, understandable faltering at dealing with a problem that had grown beyond the scope of what Marissa signed up for. Krouse had covered for her as much as he could. She didn't even ask him to, which was fine. He didn't do it for her.
Or maybe he had, once. It's hard to remember it kindly. There had been a time Krouse thought he and Marissa had one important thing in common, something that meant he could count on her when it mattered. ]
Yeah. [ He squeezes her talon, nodding. ] It's like that.
[ They're not really talking about Marissa. They're talking about Noelle's Mars, the one she kept in her head. The friend she had when she first really needed one. ]
I'm guessing she was a good skater. She was always good at everything like that.
[ It'd be winter on Earth Aleph. He wonders if she's gone skating since she got back. ]
no subject
What Noelle's doing now isn't like that. She's lost in a memory, but it's one she's chosen. A good one. It's how she wants to remember Mars. Doesn't Noelle deserve a nice memory? They all wanted a nice one of her. That's the last thing Luke said to her. That was why he had wanted Noelle to die. So it's only fair, in this life where so little is fair, that Noelle gets to pick a nice memory too.
She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand before she looks back down at Krouse. Just to be safe. ]
She was. [ Was, because this is a memory. ] We used to race each other sometimes, and she always said it was fair that she kicked my ass, because I never went easy on her in Ransack.
[ Mars probably can't skate anymore. She'd melt the ice. But neither can Noelle, so maybe that's another thing that's sort of fair.
That's a dangerous line of thinking, though. Picturing Mars melting the ice on a rink isn't that far off from picturing Mars melting the ice that the heroes used to bind Noelle, which isn't that far off from picturing Mars melting -
A shudder courses through Noelle's body, making it all the way down to the talon Krouse is holding. ]
Sorry. I just - I wanted to choose how I remember her. [ It's a stupid thought, now that Noelle is saying it out loud. ] We can talk about something else.
no subject
The first time she'd leaned into his side she'd shivered. He didn't know if she was cold, or excited, or scared. He'd been terrified the way you are at the first drop of a rollarcoaster, heart crammed in his throat, even then so afraid of fucking it up. Off the rails and into the clear blue air. ]
We can talk about her.
[ And here he goes, all over again. ]
We can talk about anyone you want.
[ When she'd tucked herself under his arm with trembling nerves, he'd wanted to be brave enough to deserve her bravery in turn. If she was willing to take the risk to close the gap, what good would he be if he fell short?
He doesn't know how many hearts she has now. The fluttering throb under his palm doesn't feel like a pulse should. But it really doesn't matter while he traces a small, gentle circle over one gnarled knuckle. ]
She was right, you know. That it was fair. You were ruthless. Do you remember when I started showing up? You were testing out the new meta, roped me into a warm up game? I'd been practising all week, and you moped the floor with me. Three minutes, tops. It was brutal. And you just [ He laughs, a little curl of soft breath at the top of his throat. ] looked at me. You weren't even pissed, or disappointed, just - I don't know. It was like you could see right through me.
That's probably why she spoke up for me. She'd been on the other end of it too. I don't know which of us was more surprised that she did. 'He wasn't completely terrible'. Nicest thing she'd ever said about me.
no subject
Not as crystal-clear as Krouse probably remembers. This memory wasn't one that her lower half liked to show her, so Noelle goes digging for it on her own, sifting through concrete block and warehouses and vans, past the line in the sand she marked at the rest stop.
It was obvious that he'd been, to put it lightly, full of shit. He'd made mistakes typical of a new player. But that wasn't so bad, because it meant he was teachable. He didn't have the same entrenched bad habits that Cody and Luke had to unlearn. ]
I am ruthless.
[ Noelle corrects, very nearly teasing and also proving her point. ]
Wasn't going to play against you in a way that I wouldn't play in a real match. How else was I supposed to know whether or not you were suited to competitive play? You needed practice. I wanted to see whether you would put in the work.
[ And he did. He wasn't the greatest loser, or even the greatest player, but he put in the work for her, back when that counted for something. ]
no subject
There's nothing he can do about it. Nothing except feel it, a shock crackling through the numbness that otherwise blankets him everywhere except for the things that have to do with her. He always liked it when she didn't take it easy on him. Everything got worse the more she started to worry about his feelings, however often he told her that she didn't have to.
Stupid. What else was she going to do? Noelle always fell back on what she thought she was supposed to do when she wasn't sure of herself, and being with him made her unsure a long time before he really fucked it up for good. ]
I was glad you didn't take it easy on me. I wanted to prove I could commit to it. Keep my head under pressure. You know, after my stellar first impression, I had some ground to cover there.
[ He squeezes her talon. He thinks about her hands, all the way up there in the air, her picked at nails and rapid fire reflexes. He knows it was always weird to admire how a girl worked a keyboard and mouse. ]
You made me better.
[ Krouse says, with a tiny throb of raw vulnerability. ]
Being ruthless. Pushing me to try harder. I never - I never wanted to try for anyone as much as I wanted to try for you.
[ Want to, beats his stupid, persistent, fucked up heart. Want to. ]
I don't think I ever thanked you for that enough. So. Thank you.
cw: minor self harm; body horror
Her first impulse is to say no. She didn't make him better. It's clear as day, written into the circles under his eyes and the orange jumpsuit tied around his waist and the haircut he never would have gotten on his own. He's not doing better. Neither of them are, but he always insists on pretending, a luxury that has always made Noelle furious.
But that's not quite what he means, and it wouldn't be fair to him to put the worst interpretation of his words back into his mouth. Trying hard made him better, in some abstract, ethical sort of way. He did something for her that he never did for anyone else, that he probably thought he wasn't capable of doing for anything else.
How does Noelle accept that gratitude, when what he did hurt both of them?
She's picking at her fingers now, digging one nail into the skin bordering another. She pulls off a flap, then rolls it between her fingers, over and over again, and then she lets it fall. A tongue juts out from somewhere within her lower half, slurps it right up. Nothing wasted. ]
You did. You proved it.
[ She can't say that he doesn't need to try anymore. It would hurt him worse than any claw to the chest, and so many others see Noelle as a thing that hurts people. Maybe some part of them were right. Maybe every time Noelle screamed at him to fix her, she was just taking advantage of someone who would have done anything to prove themselves.
If he wasn't going to do it, though, then who would? The two of them against the world.
Noelle can't bring herself to say you're welcome, a statement neither of them really deserve. So she tries something else. ]
You kept me company. [ She swallows, all while a few of her other mouths continue to drool. ] You know that meant a lot, right?
[ She can't pretend that the rest of what he did was good. But even before everything went wrong, he kept her company. Late nights online, walks home from school, practice sessions. When it wasn't pressure, when it wasn't some grand gesture, it was nice to not have to be so alone. ]