[L wouldn't have ever guessed that he'd draw a strange sort of comfort from being told by someone roughly 60% his age that he had growing left to do, but here they are. I ruined myself, and let others help, he might as well have said, I may have ruined others... but here they are.
He desperately wants to not ruin Paul. People instinctively seem to know that he is a ruiner, so they treat him the way he deserves, with caution and revulsion. L thought Paul would have realized, by now, but maybe he was intentionally and selfishly poor at communicating it. Isn't it nicer, after all, to have potential and promise, and to be told so?
His haunted eyes are wide and uncertain for a moment, but L recognizes fundamentally that he could live his whole life in Trench inside the glowing walls of this sanctuary, dreaming in a soft cocoon. It would be a lot like the life he'd led before, but if he wants more out of this new life, as well as connections worth having with others? He's poorly equipped for it, as things stand, and recognizes it.
He reaches forward, fine narrow bones catching the rippling shadows of the glowing chamber as he gingerly initiates contact, touching the heartbeat he might have mistaken for his own.
His eyes slide closed, and it could be his own... except it isn't. His is somewhere else, out of synch with his mind and his breath. His body exists and survives, scrabbling through with no rhythm or harmony beneath a mind that is detached and truly above it all.
It's a terrifying several moments and he has to actively fight the urge to break away and peel the skin away from his shoulders and ribs in tattered, bloody rags. He'd willfully let the knowledge stay hidden for a long time, but when he opens his eyes, it lives behind them, new and uneasy and repulsed.]
Let me try again... it caught me off balance, at first. Listening like that...
[An understatement. He still wants to shred his skin with his fingernails, and it's a testament to his willpower that he's managing not to.]
[Paul doesn't need a reciprocal sensitivity to Lazarus' thoughts to notice his raw, visceral agitation. It's natural human empathy that draws up an answering flutter of anxiety in him as he watches Lazarus struggle to manage the connection. He has the impulse to end it then, retract, provide the immediate relief of cessation -
- and then he releases the impulse, lets it drift from him on the ebb of his breath. The anxiety follows, then the attachment to judgment. He visualizes a sequence of ripples, clear water on a shoreline of polished grey stones, and the deep-set autonomic responses of his body unfold at the brush of his awareness of them.]
You are listening. There's nothing to try.
[His eyes seem only half-focused, but Lazarus will know better. Paul's focus has turned inward, a clear and non-judgmental observation of the slowing rhythm of his heart, of the pulsed, sequential relaxation beginning around that organ and radiating outward. Where Lazarus strains at the edges of his nerves, Paul settles into himself like sand drifting to stillness in water, and this is the gravity he offers to Lazarus in turn, a drawing out and down of tension.]
'My mind controls my reality.' Internalize the thought.
[He reiterates it internally himself, and the sequence of ripples repeats itself, the conditioning encoded in it unfolding for Lazarus' observation.]
[Asked with the tense trepidation of someone who knows where to close away pain, until he's closed in with it. Complicating matters, it isn't pain in the classical sense; it doesn't hurt, rather he feels the blood in his veins, the air moving through his lungs like the thrust and ebb of a tide. Polished grey stones.
His mind controls his mind, those agitated thoughts insist. Everything else is there to be combatted and if he fails, and accepts, then he will in fact be peaceful and still and silent, as he was, under that polished grey stone forever.
Still, he listens. Heartbeat, breath, strong and even tools there's no reason he can't master. Gravity is a limit, it's true, but he tries to visualize a hand to hold, instead of a restricting chain or a crushing weight pinning him down. A string on a balloon; a cushion of gentle sand, sinking under the weight of a being that has a place in the world, and not just a chalk outline left behind.
The waves gentle and still, gradually imitating the contained spread of rounded ripples in a still and tranquil pool. The grey stones all have names and dates on them, utterly incomprehensible, while still being recognizable for what they're supposed to be.
Murstg Catarkeric, 1943-7384
Figr Torcvaei 8845-9421
Hvareain Ysavea 5500-1817
Wcahnr Creabieal 6390-1446
Bka Mawynrp 7157-2071
He wants to scrub them out. There are so many and they're all nonsense, all interchangeable, all clutter and redundant and eroded by time. His mind controls reality, he thinks insistently, like a mantra in a language he doesn't understand but wants to invoke. His mind; his reality, his control. His effort, shaky and fledgling as it is. L is diligent and takes the exercise seriously; it's also a sharp-edged challenge to sit calmly and quietly and listen to what he's grown so adept at tuning out, understanding even better why he wanted to.
He feels his pulse and the blood under his skin; he hears the life pulling in and out of his body, a soul escaping, being tugged and anchored back with each inhalation.
It's exhausting, to be so aware of such matters. The ripples seem to whisper messages, other things he's tuned out habitually. New hunger, old heartbreak, the constant ache of bones, the inability to see his own face clearly when he tries to glimpse it in the water's surface.
He sees Paul, though, because the center of his being has never been a person, who is L. It's always been a goal, a purpose, a case to work on and complete.
Lycka nudges her head very insistently into his lap, under his arms and palms. His fingers curl against her in shock before tightening for a secure hold on a lifeline.
The world, the mind, and the body (and perhaps even the soul) are hopelessly disconnected for him. It's plain to him, and probably to Paul, but...]
Thank you; I didn't realize it was like this.
[And he hates it, sitting with himself all alone and seeing the cracks and broken things. But he can hear that he's alive, and it shocks him how much that's something he needs desperately.]
[There are many complicated explanations Paul tends to build around his choices. He never does anything for a singular reason, in his own mind; he considers the rippling effects of his actions down their chain of possible outcomes and the benefits - or disadvantages - they accrue to him.
So the reasoning behind offering this lesson to Lazarus is an eminently practical one. Lazarus is his partner in an important work, one that requires optimal performance on both their parts. Supplying an incentive that Lazarus can't get from anyone or anywhere else anchors him to Paul's best interests by way of his own self-interests. It's a simple equation he's well-versed in.
But there's also this: when Paul met Lazarus, he thought he recognized the terrible demands of a mind that ignites like a chemical fire and burns, and burns, and burns.]
You're doing well. [He encourages, gently, and just as gently, he leans over and touches Lazarus' wrist in a mirroring circle.] It's an iterative process. It'll be easier next time.
Are you all right? You should eat something. It helps.
[L stares at Paul like someone who isn't sure where on Maslow's hierarchy of needs this particular boon falls. His has always been top-heavy, everything else following, and the result is a man who places his higher purpose above esteem, love and belonging, safety, and his most basic physical needs.
It's a missing piece; he's figured that much out so far, and after getting by for so long with its absence, there's a new existential ache now that he hopes isn't a harbinger of some other absence that's load-bearing, and suddenly direly needed.]
Yes, I'm alright.
[Just like someone who has no reason to believe there's a tumor until they've seen the x-ray, only to then inhabit the strange reality of nothing actually having changed between not seeing and seeing, except for awareness.
He watches Paul's hand over the protruding, sharp bone of his wrist, connecting the sight to something far less typical for him. He's been touch-starved from infancy, trained by experience to think of intentional touching in any context as for other humans.
He wants to like the strange warmth and connection of it; he's also very afraid of liking it enough to miss it when the fluke dissipates.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Lycka bumping against a particularly smooth and reflective portion of bloodstone, whistling low and plaintively, seeming to seek contact with a creature that moves and looks like her even if the illusion is understood.]
Could you--
[Keep touching his wrist? Stop touching his wrist? They're conflicting and cancel each other out. Fortunately, he has another request to sweep in and fill the void.]
Tell me why you learned this. Either it was customary, or necessity.
[Paul keeps his hand still, but not rigid, holds its weight such that it applies only the lightest of pressure on Lazarus. He doesn't look at Lycka, in her mournful striving to connect, but Sophia does as she emerges on Paul's shoulder from his collar and hops to the floor. She approaches the orca with curiosity, her ears swept up and whiskers outstretched.]
The second. [His tone is mild and factual.] I've been learning how to do that since before I was born. The nerve conditioning is easier that way.
[There's a rise and fall of a lullaby in his thoughts, one that reveals itself to follow the same pattern of the ripples, and Paul feels the soft, sweet sting of the poison of nostalgia. He lets the waters carry it away, too, with a faint half-smile.]
You can imagine some of the things control of so-called autonomic nerves make possible. Under extremes, the mind tends to either unconsciousness or hyperconsciousness - this is the basis of ensuring the latter. I thought you might already be conditioned in that direction. It seems like I was right.
[Lycka stills when she notices Sophia in her line of sight, seeming to deflate with a gentle sigh. The two alert omens regard each other with curiosity that is not entirely unfamiliar, something akin to mutual respect.]
If we've all been learning before we were born... and I know that to be true... some lessons are so much more valuable than others.
[Before a birth into light and comprehension, a way to understand a centered safety is very valuable, indeed... but certainly not available to every new human. Far from it; L knows this to be true, as well. There's a sort of warmth near him, now, like a hearth with a cheerful fire blazing as a family clusters to enjoy each other's company, but he can only really get as close as the glass window glazed in frost. Only for a moment; it drifts away, one more oddity lost and largely incomprehensible.]
Under extremes, unconsciousness is a luxury. A blessing, probably, to those who can afford it.
[Or force it, he doesn't say aloud. His mother, a scarcely remembered shadow, sang no lullabies, but she gave herself often to oblivion, shoved or dragged that way after imbibing too much for her small body. She didn't rouse easily; sometimes there was a question of if it would happen at all.]
It's like fight or flight... there's one that most people would prefer, and another that's far more dangerous and difficult, but often necessary. Even when you know that it isn't always necessary, why risk failing when the stakes are high and the potential losses catastrophic?
[The proper answer, and the one that works for most, is that each individual controls relatively little and cannot rely on their hypervigilance changing any outcome. It does not work for L, who has historically controlled a great deal and had much riding on his ability to force his will onto a fraught circumstance.]
[Paul lingers another moment, observing Lazarus with an absence of judgment and a keenness of focus born of the fading after image of his calmed nerves. Sophia settles on her haunches and grooms her face with tiny paws as Paul lifts his hand and sits back, drawing away from the physical connection while holding, at least inside himself, to the other kind he thinks they're forming.
He thinks briefly of date palms and thirst, the allocation of water away from human throats to human dreams at the price of human lives. There's a logic to it he understands, but always has found difficult to accept up close. Another shortcoming he has to work on.]
...you understand. [Paul nods, letting out a little breath of - something, some qualm or compunction or otherwise extraneous friction in the way of their mutual goals.] Not everyone does.
[The people who crack and falter, who allow themselves to risk failing and so ensure their failure in the first instant of their plans' conception.]
It seems like we know what we're doing next, then. Reciprocation.
[And on that, Paul turns to his bag and fishes out a small bag full of hard candies that he's taken to thinking of (for his own private amusement only) as wizard fuel. Lazarus is sorcerous enough to count, and is thus offered the saccharine relief of an immediate blood sugars boost.]
Come on. At least one, so I can stop feeling like a bad host.
[Said heavily, in spite of his voice's low volume. He hates that he does, really, most days, but he can't be jealous of the ones who don't. Their ignorance is a burden of its own, however oblivious they are to it.
He watches, curiously, as Paul goes for the bag of candy, and years seem to fall away from his features when he sees what it contains.]
I'll never say no to at least seven. As a rule; indefinitely.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cw: basically the worst case DARE scenario lmao
He desperately wants to not ruin Paul. People instinctively seem to know that he is a ruiner, so they treat him the way he deserves, with caution and revulsion. L thought Paul would have realized, by now, but maybe he was intentionally and selfishly poor at communicating it. Isn't it nicer, after all, to have potential and promise, and to be told so?
His haunted eyes are wide and uncertain for a moment, but L recognizes fundamentally that he could live his whole life in Trench inside the glowing walls of this sanctuary, dreaming in a soft cocoon. It would be a lot like the life he'd led before, but if he wants more out of this new life, as well as connections worth having with others? He's poorly equipped for it, as things stand, and recognizes it.
He reaches forward, fine narrow bones catching the rippling shadows of the glowing chamber as he gingerly initiates contact, touching the heartbeat he might have mistaken for his own.
His eyes slide closed, and it could be his own... except it isn't. His is somewhere else, out of synch with his mind and his breath. His body exists and survives, scrabbling through with no rhythm or harmony beneath a mind that is detached and truly above it all.
It's a terrifying several moments and he has to actively fight the urge to break away and peel the skin away from his shoulders and ribs in tattered, bloody rags. He'd willfully let the knowledge stay hidden for a long time, but when he opens his eyes, it lives behind them, new and uneasy and repulsed.]
Let me try again... it caught me off balance, at first. Listening like that...
[An understatement. He still wants to shred his skin with his fingernails, and it's a testament to his willpower that he's managing not to.]
no subject
- and then he releases the impulse, lets it drift from him on the ebb of his breath. The anxiety follows, then the attachment to judgment. He visualizes a sequence of ripples, clear water on a shoreline of polished grey stones, and the deep-set autonomic responses of his body unfold at the brush of his awareness of them.]
You are listening. There's nothing to try.
[His eyes seem only half-focused, but Lazarus will know better. Paul's focus has turned inward, a clear and non-judgmental observation of the slowing rhythm of his heart, of the pulsed, sequential relaxation beginning around that organ and radiating outward. Where Lazarus strains at the edges of his nerves, Paul settles into himself like sand drifting to stillness in water, and this is the gravity he offers to Lazarus in turn, a drawing out and down of tension.]
'My mind controls my reality.' Internalize the thought.
[He reiterates it internally himself, and the sequence of ripples repeats itself, the conditioning encoded in it unfolding for Lazarus' observation.]
no subject
[Asked with the tense trepidation of someone who knows where to close away pain, until he's closed in with it. Complicating matters, it isn't pain in the classical sense; it doesn't hurt, rather he feels the blood in his veins, the air moving through his lungs like the thrust and ebb of a tide. Polished grey stones.
His mind controls his mind, those agitated thoughts insist. Everything else is there to be combatted and if he fails, and accepts, then he will in fact be peaceful and still and silent, as he was, under that polished grey stone forever.
Still, he listens. Heartbeat, breath, strong and even tools there's no reason he can't master. Gravity is a limit, it's true, but he tries to visualize a hand to hold, instead of a restricting chain or a crushing weight pinning him down. A string on a balloon; a cushion of gentle sand, sinking under the weight of a being that has a place in the world, and not just a chalk outline left behind.
The waves gentle and still, gradually imitating the contained spread of rounded ripples in a still and tranquil pool. The grey stones all have names and dates on them, utterly incomprehensible, while still being recognizable for what they're supposed to be.
Murstg Catarkeric, 1943-7384
Figr Torcvaei 8845-9421
Hvareain Ysavea 5500-1817
Wcahnr Creabieal 6390-1446
Bka Mawynrp 7157-2071
He wants to scrub them out. There are so many and they're all nonsense, all interchangeable, all clutter and redundant and eroded by time. His mind controls reality, he thinks insistently, like a mantra in a language he doesn't understand but wants to invoke. His mind; his reality, his control. His effort, shaky and fledgling as it is. L is diligent and takes the exercise seriously; it's also a sharp-edged challenge to sit calmly and quietly and listen to what he's grown so adept at tuning out, understanding even better why he wanted to.
He feels his pulse and the blood under his skin; he hears the life pulling in and out of his body, a soul escaping, being tugged and anchored back with each inhalation.
It's exhausting, to be so aware of such matters. The ripples seem to whisper messages, other things he's tuned out habitually. New hunger, old heartbreak, the constant ache of bones, the inability to see his own face clearly when he tries to glimpse it in the water's surface.
He sees Paul, though, because the center of his being has never been a person, who is L. It's always been a goal, a purpose, a case to work on and complete.
Lycka nudges her head very insistently into his lap, under his arms and palms. His fingers curl against her in shock before tightening for a secure hold on a lifeline.
The world, the mind, and the body (and perhaps even the soul) are hopelessly disconnected for him. It's plain to him, and probably to Paul, but...]
Thank you; I didn't realize it was like this.
[And he hates it, sitting with himself all alone and seeing the cracks and broken things. But he can hear that he's alive, and it shocks him how much that's something he needs desperately.]
no subject
So the reasoning behind offering this lesson to Lazarus is an eminently practical one. Lazarus is his partner in an important work, one that requires optimal performance on both their parts. Supplying an incentive that Lazarus can't get from anyone or anywhere else anchors him to Paul's best interests by way of his own self-interests. It's a simple equation he's well-versed in.
But there's also this: when Paul met Lazarus, he thought he recognized the terrible demands of a mind that ignites like a chemical fire and burns, and burns, and burns.]
You're doing well. [He encourages, gently, and just as gently, he leans over and touches Lazarus' wrist in a mirroring circle.] It's an iterative process. It'll be easier next time.
Are you all right? You should eat something. It helps.
no subject
It's a missing piece; he's figured that much out so far, and after getting by for so long with its absence, there's a new existential ache now that he hopes isn't a harbinger of some other absence that's load-bearing, and suddenly direly needed.]
Yes, I'm alright.
[Just like someone who has no reason to believe there's a tumor until they've seen the x-ray, only to then inhabit the strange reality of nothing actually having changed between not seeing and seeing, except for awareness.
He watches Paul's hand over the protruding, sharp bone of his wrist, connecting the sight to something far less typical for him. He's been touch-starved from infancy, trained by experience to think of intentional touching in any context as for other humans.
He wants to like the strange warmth and connection of it; he's also very afraid of liking it enough to miss it when the fluke dissipates.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Lycka bumping against a particularly smooth and reflective portion of bloodstone, whistling low and plaintively, seeming to seek contact with a creature that moves and looks like her even if the illusion is understood.]
Could you--
[Keep touching his wrist? Stop touching his wrist? They're conflicting and cancel each other out. Fortunately, he has another request to sweep in and fill the void.]
Tell me why you learned this. Either it was customary, or necessity.
no subject
The second. [His tone is mild and factual.] I've been learning how to do that since before I was born. The nerve conditioning is easier that way.
[There's a rise and fall of a lullaby in his thoughts, one that reveals itself to follow the same pattern of the ripples, and Paul feels the soft, sweet sting of the poison of nostalgia. He lets the waters carry it away, too, with a faint half-smile.]
You can imagine some of the things control of so-called autonomic nerves make possible. Under extremes, the mind tends to either unconsciousness or hyperconsciousness - this is the basis of ensuring the latter. I thought you might already be conditioned in that direction. It seems like I was right.
no subject
If we've all been learning before we were born... and I know that to be true... some lessons are so much more valuable than others.
[Before a birth into light and comprehension, a way to understand a centered safety is very valuable, indeed... but certainly not available to every new human. Far from it; L knows this to be true, as well. There's a sort of warmth near him, now, like a hearth with a cheerful fire blazing as a family clusters to enjoy each other's company, but he can only really get as close as the glass window glazed in frost. Only for a moment; it drifts away, one more oddity lost and largely incomprehensible.]
Under extremes, unconsciousness is a luxury. A blessing, probably, to those who can afford it.
[Or force it, he doesn't say aloud. His mother, a scarcely remembered shadow, sang no lullabies, but she gave herself often to oblivion, shoved or dragged that way after imbibing too much for her small body. She didn't rouse easily; sometimes there was a question of if it would happen at all.]
It's like fight or flight... there's one that most people would prefer, and another that's far more dangerous and difficult, but often necessary. Even when you know that it isn't always necessary, why risk failing when the stakes are high and the potential losses catastrophic?
[The proper answer, and the one that works for most, is that each individual controls relatively little and cannot rely on their hypervigilance changing any outcome. It does not work for L, who has historically controlled a great deal and had much riding on his ability to force his will onto a fraught circumstance.]
no subject
He thinks briefly of date palms and thirst, the allocation of water away from human throats to human dreams at the price of human lives. There's a logic to it he understands, but always has found difficult to accept up close. Another shortcoming he has to work on.]
...you understand. [Paul nods, letting out a little breath of - something, some qualm or compunction or otherwise extraneous friction in the way of their mutual goals.] Not everyone does.
[The people who crack and falter, who allow themselves to risk failing and so ensure their failure in the first instant of their plans' conception.]
It seems like we know what we're doing next, then. Reciprocation.
[And on that, Paul turns to his bag and fishes out a small bag full of hard candies that he's taken to thinking of (for his own private amusement only) as wizard fuel. Lazarus is sorcerous enough to count, and is thus offered the saccharine relief of an immediate blood sugars boost.]
Come on. At least one, so I can stop feeling like a bad host.
no subject
[Said heavily, in spite of his voice's low volume. He hates that he does, really, most days, but he can't be jealous of the ones who don't. Their ignorance is a burden of its own, however oblivious they are to it.
He watches, curiously, as Paul goes for the bag of candy, and years seem to fall away from his features when he sees what it contains.]
I'll never say no to at least seven. As a rule; indefinitely.