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[abrightboy]

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Re: [Backdated to right before the beginning of the Sticks and Stones Flood]

[deuceoftears]

Jedao smiles as he arrives; he loves oceans of all kinds. The heat here isn't as oppressive as on James's Nassau, but he can still feel the rolling weight of the water, the pull of the distance spectral moon. The sunshine is always a new shock; he forgets, in between, what it really looks like, compared to ship lights.

"This is lovely. Is it a real place?"

Re: [Backdated to right before the beginning of the Sticks and Stones Flood]

[abrightboy]

"Uh, yeah. In Florida, I think. I just remembered the sky over the water going on forever," Malcolm tells him.

Re: [Backdated to right before the beginning of the Sticks and Stones Flood]

[deuceoftears]

"It's cooler than Nassau but warmer than New York was," Jedao muses. "Kind of just right." Not that he didn't love both of those places. Jedao takes a seat.

"Do you...want to start, or should I?"

Re: [Backdated to right before the beginning of the Sticks and Stones Flood]

[abrightboy]

Malcolm fidgets at the handle of the teapot before admitting "I don't really know where to start." A beat. "Do you want some tea?"

Re: [Backdated to right before the beginning of the Sticks and Stones Flood]

[deuceoftears]

"Tea would be very nice, thank you."

Something to hold, at least; something to sip when the words won't come quickly.

"And I can start. I'll just - lay out what was happening in my head, at the time."

Re: [Backdated to right before the beginning of the Sticks and Stones Flood]

[abrightboy]

Malcolm pours, setting a cup in front of Jedao and just... listens. He's been trying to be better about interrupting.

sorry for the novel ;;

[deuceoftears]

He puts his hands around it but doesn't drink right away; he loves the warmth of a teacup in his palms.

"As you...surmised, I was badly triggered by what had been done to Eiffel. You asked, once, if I'd never lost my temper, and - I don't, really. When I'm in too much pain to function strategically, actually no I'm not. Actually I'm dissociated to fuck and I'll deal with that later."

He swallows, takes a slow breath. It's been more than two months, for him, after going to Hakkai's world to fight the Ox King demon. But it's still a shiny pink scar-seam in his soul, still a little bit excruciatingly vulnerable to just tell someone. Malcolm struggles to trust, though; going first is the best Jedao can do to show his sincere intentions.

"So - metaphorically. Emotionally. When I would otherwise be bleeding out, lashing out - I cut my heart out with a hatchet and I put it in a box and I do the work. Whatever it is. And that was getting Eiffel's mind free. And then once it was done, I had to put my heart back in. With all the original pain coiled up in it, waiting, and a bunch of axe wounds besides. So. After. When everyone wanted to check in on me or punish me for not handling it sedately enough, I was just - curled up in a ball, drowning. Letting myself drown because the only way out was through. Occasionally fighting my way up to the surface enough to say words to people, because otherwise they'd fret at me about the drowning and I'd have to say more words to help them feel better so they'd leave me alone, because they wanted to help me but the only things I needed were time and safety, and being seen didn't feel safe, and having to come up with the right words to reassure people was agonizing and - exhausting. The thing about actually understanding other people's emotions most of the time is that you also feel very responsible for them. Or I often do, anyway."

He takes a long gulp of tea.

"And when you called, at first, you were - good. You seemed to get it, some of what I was trying to say about my mental state, that was so hard to explain. I felt really grateful, and...that's why I kept talking to you, instead of just hanging up, because it was a relief, that someone was getting it. And when you kind of honed in on something that was...minor, in comparison. How I do or don't feel about home, if you recall. Which was not really relevant to the whole debacle, but still emotionally fraught. And I just did not have the capacity to deal with that. I told you so, and - you didn't keep pushing that thing but suddenly the conversation we'd been having about what I was going through right that moment, turned into why I should come to therapy with you in general. And you've told me to just be honest with you, not to imply things. So I just told you, very bluntly, why I thought that would be most likely unproductive, and at that particular moment more than I could deal with. And you accepted that with all the good grace anyone could have reasonably asked for."

Jedao is trying to be scrupulously fair, as he wasn't capable of being at the time.

"But I wasn't feeling reasonable, and I could tell you were upset. And I was so fucking mad, because it was precisely that - that I would have to watch myself, manage myself, be so careful in the midst of my own pain not to upset you that was part of why I hadn't wanted to get into things. And I felt very - disgruntled, I suppose. And bitter about it. But I don't anymore, now that it's not quite so raw. I don't think you did anything wrong, like - anything meriting an apology. You were just clumsy for a moment, and it hurt me because I didn't have any fucking skin on. Nobody could touch me without it hurting. But that wasn't your fault, or really anybody's fault but mine and the skullfucker who hurt Eiffel."

He turns his cup a few times in his hands, sips again.

"But I don't know why it hurt you, at the end. I don't know what I'm missing, or misconstruing. And I'm sorry I did, for whatever it's worth."

Re: sorry for the novel ;;

[abrightboy]

Malcolm's brow creases faintly.

"I don't want an apology either. I wasn't mad at you. I was trying to respect the boundary you set because I've been told I'm bad at that and overstep all the time and that's why people don't like me." A beat. He tilts his head slightly in concession. "One of the reasons." He pauses and looks into his tea, like it has his cue cards in it or something, then he looks at Jedao. "You were in a bad place. You encouraged me to accept your help when I was in a bad place. I thought that was... a gesture of friendship. An offer of... connection. And I wanted to reciprocate that gesture by being there for you when you were having a hard time. But when I offered to help you when you were in a bad place, you said it was... not worth it. Too much pain and effort for the likely thin end result, basically. Because our conversations require management and that management is fully on you. You're not the first person who's described me as requiring... management. And it occurred to me you weren't trying to be my friend. You were trying to instruct me. Or even... fix me. Fix my defective social circuit. And of course you were too tired and messed up to work. It just hadn't... connected in my brain before that that I was.... a job. And once I realized, I was... I think 'hurt' is too strong a word. Disappointed, maybe. But that's not your fault. That's my fault. Because I jumped to the conclusion about what your efforts meant."

[deuceoftears]

Yes, he had said that about not wanting to be repaired, hadn't he? Jedao should have remembered.

"I think you did a good job at listening to my boundaries in that conversation," Jedao says honestly. He takes a breath and lets his shoulders relax a little, deliberately, and smiles a faint, rueful smile.

"Do you realize that framing - being a job - is you jumping to conclusions too? Or, well." He supposes he also hasn't explained himself well enough. "A mutual misunderstanding, at least."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm frowns, again at himself more than Jedao.

"...You said it was too much work to manage me. How did you mean that?"

[deuceoftears]

"I meant it for right then. When I was drowning and didn't have anything left in me for making that effort. Or for - trying to be extremely vulnerable, in a deliberately-digging therapy way, and doing that work at the same time. But it's not too much all the time, or even most of the time. I meant it for 'this is why I don't want to do this specific thing.'"

He turns his teacup around in his hands again, rubs his thumb on the rim.

"I think friends are worth making an effort for, whatever kinds of effort they happen to need. And I don't know if we're exactly friends, but I do want to be. That's...the way I see it, I have tried to instruct you, and I know sometimes that's overbearing. But I'm not trying to fix you, I'm trying to fix your problems. Because that's - I was made to be useful, right? That's my default, for trying to be friends. No greater love than a binder full of mission plans, or something."

Truly, the Shuos way.

"But I'll try to be better about listening, too, if you still want that. Just being there, sometimes, instead of always trying to be problem-solving."

[abrightboy]

He always wants that.

"I... don't object to problem solving per se. Just... I didn't think I was offering you intensive introspection. Just... someone to talk to. To talk out your feelings with. I don't want... it feels like being fixed when that's all it is. When I don't matter and I'm just an annoyance to be dealt with so I'll be less annoying."

[deuceoftears]

Jedao shakes his head.

"If you were just an annoyance, I wouldn't bother. We wouldn't speak. You wouldn't even know I was still on the ship without checking my door."

For a moment, his smile takes on a grim, savage edge.

"Doctor Hilbert, for example. One of his complaints against me is that he didn't even know I had a problem with him, before this. Because we'd barely ever spoken. I don't like him and I'll never like him and if he were on fire I might perhaps condescend to fling him into the sea and not pull him out again. Day to day I simply do not engage. He isn't worth the effort. To me."

Scrupulous fairness and Eiffel's unstinting generosity of spirit require the additional qualifier, but it still sounds momentarily like pulling teeth.

"You're not just an annoyance. You can be frustrating, and sometimes I want to rattle you until all your teeth pop like popcorn, but I wouldn't feel that way if I didn't care. I feel like there's a lot we have in common, actually, and...if I want you to be less annoying, it's mostly because I think you'd be a lot happier if people were annoyed less. You try so hard all the time, and I do want to fix the things that go wrong but...because I can see the tangle hurting you, too. And I don't want you to be stuck hurting, if you don't have to."

He bites his lip for a moment.

"When you say therapy - to me, that's always going to mean the deeper work. I've had to do enough introspection already that I don't often need to talk out my feelings. And I don't...I have different cultural barriers, to a lot of people here. If I do need to talk through my feelings, I don't need that context for it. Right at that moment...I felt like you had been there for me, and I liked it, and then it felt like you got sidetracked into wanting to pick something apart or - wanting validation for counseling as your job, over and above just being a friend. So I misinterpreted that.

"And...even on top of that, rejecting the offer wasn't about you being uniquely the most difficult or whatever. I was feeling like almost everyone was too much effort to manage. I didn't talk to Eiffel for a week afterward. I only talked to most of the people I did talk to through text. I just...I couldn't manage anyone. The only person who wasn't even a little bit hard to be around was Hakkai, and that's because he's really good at boxing stuff up too. And after three weeks, I told him, okay. I've got my pieces back together, I'm okay to take a turn making an effort for your shit again. And - that works for us. That's kind of how I think about it. That it was my turn to get managed, not manage, and...you can't put things in the box, which means you're a friend who isn't the one I need in every mood. But that's true of most people, you know? Not every friend has the same strengths. That's okay. That doesn't make you not a person to me."

[abrightboy]

“I have… ongoing problems with… well, I do try. Like you said. And I’ve been not worth the effort a lot. Like. A lot. So… I guess the words ‘not worth it’ mean a particular thing to me. Maybe I need a box to put things in. Pack up my head like one packs up a desk after getting fired.”

He swirls his tea in his cup.

“I was like this in a lot of ways before the trauma, you know. It’s not the only thing that’s… wrong with me. Shaw and I have been in mediation with Kiryu. We can’t talk to each other at all without a third party or disaster descends. And we’re from fundamentally the same world. You do pretty well for a guy from space.”

[deuceoftears]

"It's not about packing things up to take away. It's like...cleaning things off the surface of the desk and putting them into drawers, so you have a space to work on something else without the other pins and papers getting mixed in. Does that make sense?"

He pours himself some more tea; it's pretty good, as far as his ability to enjoy normal food and drinks goes.

"You put something in a drawer, it's not lost forever, or forbidden or destroyed. You can take it out again later, when you need it, or to work on it again, when it's the right circumstances. When you're with the right person, or have the right tools, or just - the time. Like any big project. If you work on it one little piece at at time, it's easier. I'm hearing that...that doesn't come naturally to you at all, and I think that's okay. It's a skill people can practice. And I think it would help you."

He tilts his teacup side to side, in time with the nearby waves.

"What kind of ways, before?"

[abrightboy]

Malcolm considers him for a moment.

“I don’t know if… things like this even exist where you’re from, so maybe you don’t have any context for it. But. I have a neurodevelopmental disorder and - among other things - it diminishes my capacity to… self regulate. I have physical neurological impediments to down regulating emotions or…. or moderating my response to things in the moment. So I will, when I feel strongly about something, be unable to stop myself from having an outburst or arguing until… something outside of me stops me. …Or triggers something inside me to stop me. Like… shame. And that whole…. Thing is just dialled up by the complex PTSD, a natural developmental lag augmented by an arrested development. A natural emotional dysregulation augmented by the heightened emotions of a trauma response. It’s volatile in here,” he says, though his hand hovers over his chest rather than pointing at his head. “And people find displays of strong emotion offputting and they find argumentativeness offputting and they find having to explain things they feel are obvious offputting and they find an encyclopedic knowledge of things they find distasteful offputting and they find too many questions offputting. But the problem is, I put things in drawers, then turn around for just a second and when I look again, they’re all back on the desk. How do you get things to stay in drawers?” Malcolm asks earnestly.

[deuceoftears]

"My head keeps wanting to translate PTSD to 'echo damage'," Jedao muses, then repeats the phrase in High Language, something with liquid tones similar to Mandarin. "So we definitely do have the concepts, even if my therapy team didn't expose me to all of them. I don't think I ever would have encountered someone with your precise profile there. Not because they wouldn't exist, but they wouldn't pass the screenings for faction service, and I was never allowed to be around civilians."

Not a judgement; just facts. He ponders the question a little longer. It's the opposite of the problem he has, which is getting the drawers un-jammed to even look at what's in there. Which makes sense, doesn't it. If he follows it from first principles.

"I think, a lot of the things our minds do that aren't fully in our control are about a sense of safety. That's why partial drowning is so effective as torture, because hypoxia cuts right through pain resistance to tell the body you're in danger on an animal level. When I first came here, it was really hard for me to get things out of the drawers to look at them, because it didn't feel safe to me, to have them where someone might see them. And I think your brain keeps spitting things back out because with most people, there's no trust earned that anyone will ever tend to those wounds or acknowledge them if you don't keep them present. You're trying to tell your brain 'we can deal with it later' and your brain just doesn't believe you, that later will ever come. And partly that's about whether you trust your interlocutors, but also I think it's a little bit about whether you trust yourself. Whether it's safe to wait. And that means that getting better at leaving things in the drawers can only happen by building that trust over time, so that eventually your animal brain knows that even if this person you're talking to doesn't acknowledge what's going on, you can trust yourself to find an time and place and people where it will get helped. It can trust you enough to wait. Does that sound like it makes sense? Like it fits with your experience?"

He's guessing; he's not sure that will resonate with Malcolm or not. But it makes sense to him, based on what Malcolm has said.

[abrightboy]

Malcolm looks confused. “I… I have a brain disorder that I was born with,” he replies, trying to simplify it further. “It’s… there are some symptoms from the trauma and some are augmented by the trauma, but fundamentally I just…. Have drawers that were never built to shut.” He watches Jedao’s face carefully.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao looks pensive. He props his chin in his hand, looking at Malcolm directly for a long time.

"The brain is enormously plastic. That's precisely why trauma is able to fuck us up so much, because our brains change pathways to calibrate to that experience. Now, I happen to believe that even if you were born with your brain working in a way that makes something much harder for you than most people, that doesn't mean you can't still build that skill. You're alive; your brain is alive. It's remodeling itself constantly, just like your bones."

He takes a breath, rolls his shoulders in a half-shrug. His voice stays measured and calm.

"Now, I don't know your specific medical history in any more detail than you've given it to me. I'm willing to learn more, if that's what you want. If you'd like me to take it on faith that you're incapable of improving and not bother you about it, that's fine. I can accept that as a limitation you have and treat you accordingly. If you want me to help you develop skills that are difficult for you, I'm willing to put in the work to help you do that. But you don't get to ask me for help, to ask me how you can learn to do those things, and tell me you're fundamentally incapable of learning, and it's a bit unreasonable of me to try."

He drums his fingers on the tabletop for a moment, considering.

"If you're telling me it feels impossible, to jury-rig a new latch to help you, and that's scary, that's fine. It is scary, and hard to imagine. But I...I don't want to hurt you, by pushing something too hard. So if you want to try, you can let me know."

[abrightboy]

“No, that’s not… I just want you to understand first. How can you… “ He stops, pressing his lips together. After a moment, he takes a breath. “How can there be any solutions without understanding the problem? I’m not saying I… “ He halts again, frowning at himself. “I can learn things; I’m not stupid.”

He looks faintly distressed for a moment at his inability to convey… anything, apparently.

“Maybe… we could call Will. He gets it. He’s good at explaining. So. He could… help.”

[deuceoftears]

Jedao listens, considers that, then nods.

"Okay. So the answer to my last question, does that match, was no, at least not entirely. That's fair; that's why I asked. I wasn't sure if I understood yet, and I wanted to check, because you're right, that's a necessary step. Maybe you don't have a desk. Maybe you're working with a table, and we need to build some things from scratch for you, and at that point, metaphor doesn't really cut it, does it?"

He smiles for a few moments, a wry flash of self-deprecation.

"I think the first step should be to give me some actual medical literature. If I need to understand these conditions in depth to help you, I'm not going to get that from casual conversation. Although I think it would be helpful for you to tell me what aspects of your experience you attribute to trauma versus baseline. And if you want me to talk to Will about it, of course I will."

[abrightboy]

“I can… get you that literature. I’ve never suggested there aren’t things I need help with. Will and Neal have been helping me with some of them. And… we came to talk out what happened when… we tried to talk before and it went wrong. But. I thought…. We were going to try having a…. a connection without me being…. your project to fix. I mean. I thought you were offering that,” Malcolm says carefully.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao hums.

"I'm a very...objective oriented person. I feel like we succeeded in understanding better where we went wrong before, and I'm grateful for that. Before I address the future, do you feel like we succeeded at that part too?"

[abrightboy]

“I… think so? I mean. I still annoy you. But apparently that’s not a dealbreaker, so.”

Malcolm takes a deep breath and studies the table for a moment, then suddenly looks up.

“What are the things you think we have in common?”

[deuceoftears]

"We've both been treated as...extensions of monstrous people who created us. We've both been very lonely at times, because of that. We've both had to reckon with that sort of legacy. We've both felt that we couldn't trust almost anyone with the truth of who we are. I think some of that one is more - still present for you than for me, but it's not gone."

That's the first one, the big ones, the most somber ones. "We're both wardens who fell in love with inmates. We're both a little exasperated by some of the," he waves a hand, "Weird hangups around Earth masculinity and accepting help, and used to poking our friends about it. We both have some bad triggers even if we have really different reactions, and we're both in our heads a lot. We both liked the high wire. I feel like there was other stuff too but I'm not remembering it right now."