[ota] join jack and the boys; be in a band

[diemwnt]

The world gets small. That's the worst part.

The period of probation is good, really. Being away from work, sitting in the solitude of house arrest, makes the loss of interest in the rest of the world less damaging. Lets him work his way around to a normal sleep schedule again; get through the sharper periods of nightmares and into the dull sort of sleep he lives with generally. Gives him time to work on the shakiness in his hands and the way he jumps at tiny noises, to refocus on what's immediately before him rather than letting his mind skitter everywhere.

But the world gets small. The world stays small even when, with a firm slap on the wrist, he's let back into his office. The future sits on the end of his desk, barely extending to the end of the week.

He barely notices he's gone out to the gardens. Barely realizes he's bummed an actual cigarette off one of the kitchen Threes and settled in for a proper smoke.

Fifteen months was a good run. And the world is so small. And yes, the smoke entering his lungs spikes the pain of each breath at first, but the nicotine hit--real, proper, after all these months--is more than worth it, in a world that surely isn't going to last more than through the rounding of the next few days.

He'll drop the cigarette if approached, of course. He'll even pretend it was on purpose, and not the shock of tension at the sudden sound of another human being.

Comments

[thecutdiamond]

She'll pretend, for his sake, that the dropping of the cigarette is on purpose. Her expression is something like sympathetic as she approaches him, movements a little careful as she leans against the cane she's had to use the past couple days. Apparently intervening in fistfights tended to aggravate old injuries. Who knew.

"May I join you?"

[diemwnt]

It's kind of her. She hasn't always been kind to him. It's been so much better, recently--he's been so much closer to calling this woman friend, despite the fact his instinct still tells him is his Queen.

But the flinch at her approach is a much older instinct that this recent accord between them. Is as old as the last life he took four years ago, when he had been a new Eight standing uncertainly before her.

Sitting up straight, scuffing out the cigarette, is a suddenly juvenile motion, like a child caught misbehaving. His head is jerking as he nods and shifts over on the stone bench.

[thecutdiamond]

It's a familiar flinch, though it's been years since last she saw it. Her settling beside him is hopefully a calm motion, something that won't get him even jumpier than he already is.

Hopefully he'll read the silence as something closer to a companionable one than a judgmental one.

[diemwnt]

Settling into knowing where--when--they are takes a moment. The exacting straightness bleeds a bit from his shoulders.

The slight tremble in his fingers doesn't quite fade. Taking out the phone doesn't hide it well.

I'm sorry.

Not just for flinching. Least of all for flinching.

[thecutdiamond]

"You don't need to apologize to me, Cadogan."

And she means it in the kindest of ways.

[denythyfather]

The forced smile drops from Adrien's face just as the cigarette does. Which is maybe for the better, because forcing anything around Cadogan feels unnatural and wrong.

Still. Even if forcing a mood he doesn't feel isn't what he wants to do, Adrien has a feeling it'd be better to not show the extent of his shock at seeing the lit-up cigarette on the ground. Better to keep a passive, apathetic expression on his face, allow Cadogan to try to pretend his way out of this.

In a very un-Adrien-like action, he moves to stand next to Cadogan instead of speaking. Raises a hand to his elbow instead of asking what's wrong. Because he knows what's wrong - with Cadogan, with the Deck, with the heavy atmosphere that's trying to crush them. He's starting to feel like there's no point in putting the hurt into words.

[diemwnt]

Everything's wrong. Everything's wrong, and yes, everything's always wrong, but right now everything's wrong in a way that he can't put his head down and force through.

He should be able to. He should be able to for Adrien.

But scuffing out the butt of the cigarette under his shoe just brings a shaking to his shoulders. The weight of the world is too heavy, even with his friend holding him up carefully. The slur of his fingers is slight.

/Doesn't matter./

[denythyfather]

Cadogan never has to do anything for Adrien. Especially not right now. Especially not when Adrien has to take his arm properly, lead him somewhere where they can sit next to each other.

/What doesn't matter?/

[diemwnt]

Sitting is a little easier. Sitting means he doesn't have to hold himself up.

It doesn't fix the way his fingers are forming shapes that stutter.

/Lungs./

It doesn't matter if he puts more tar in them. It doesn't matter if they get infected now.

[denythyfather]

Sitting means that Adrien doesn't have to hold Cadogan up. It means that he can grab at Cadogan's hands instead, shake his head, form /It matters./ over and over again with his fingers until the other man's fingers copy his.

They will get through this, goddamnit. Adrien can't allow any of them to give up. Not Sitara, not Sophie, not Cadogan.

[gardenplots]

She'd promised Roisin she'd stop and check on the boy after she finished her errand at the Crystal Palace. It's like a mother to worry, and Maggie's not above using the innate guilt of a good boy if it helps to put her friend's mind at ease.

She changes her mind when she sees him, hunched and lost and alone. Poor boy. Dear boy. They never understood what they asked of them, did they, their leaders? They should be happy to have the matter taken from their hands rather than be forced to deal with sticky political situations.

Heaving a silent sigh, Maggie slips up to stand beside him, tsking at the dropped cigarette.

"Don't stop on my account."

[diemwnt]

Better Maggie than his mother. Better indirect guilt layered onto the mix. Probably also better to let the cigarette lie.

It takes a moment before he ducks, lifts it again from where it was left smoldering in the grass to suck in another painful lungful.

[gardenplots]

"Everyone smoked back in the day. Social exchanges were so much easier when you had a cigarette for a prop. Your mother's given me my orders."

Maggie's smile proclaims she doesn't mind them in the least.

[diemwnt]

She's someone who understands. She's someone who's going to let him exist, hurt this way.

She's bringing up his mother even tangentially and it's got him dropping the cigarette again. Fumbling to get his phone out again.

Don't tell her.

And it doesn't matter that he's all but a teenager all over again, asking not to be ratted out to his mother.

[gardenplots]

"Tell her what, love? The one she knows. The other she'll discover just as soon as you join us for dinner tonight." Poor man. "It'll be on your clothes and hands and hair. A nonsmoker can always tell."

She smiles. "But I won't say anything if that's what you mean."

[onlytolerable]

Sophie notices the dropped cigarette. Of course she does. She's only surprised it's taken him this long for the stress to break him down. One more crime to add to Nicholas Lancaster's slate.

She's glad he's dead, hopes he suffered and reeled with shock and pain before he took his last breath. She only wishes she could have dealt the blow herself. It shouldn't have been Cadogan. He felt things too deeply, breathed in guilt and recriminations like they were air. He'd defended himself. They oughtn't to have made him feel a criminal for it. But those are words she's not allowed to say. She can't even express thanks for bringing Charlotte's killer to justice.

But she can stand silently beside him and ignore the still burning cigarette nestled in the grass. She can shift so that their arms don't quite touch, offer the warmth of friendship and love.

[diemwnt]

He can't see justice in death. Then again, he can't ever see much in recent memories of such things. Dr Lancaster's face won't join the lineup for a few months yet.

He can't lean on her. She's grieving for other people, after all, not only for herself. She's not even out of mourning.

But his fingers crawl, after a moment, for hers. He'll be able to keep his hand steadier if he can cling to her.

[onlytolerable]

He's always so protective of his hands, understandable really. So it's surprise that makes her hesitate a moment before she gently squeezes the fingers laced with hers. He's been there for her through this, through everything. Now it's her turn to be there for him.

At last she heaves a ragged sigh and slips her fingers from his but only to rest her arm behind his back, to lean tiredly against him and perhaps for him to lean on her. She doesn't want to leave him without his voice.

"I'm sorry."

[diemwnt]

A few seconds is good. A few seconds of having himself literally in her hands.

It makes it easier to stand properly when she pulls her hand away. It makes it more easier to let her lean and feel he's actually helping hold her up.

It doesn't make it easier to understand why she's apologizing. His head tilts slightly, looking for an answer.

[onlytolerable]

She'd like to shore him up for once. They're so alike in some ways with a need to be useful. He needs her now and she doesn't have the words. She'll say the wrong thing. She just knows it. How to explain in a way he'll accept? It's never good to take a life, but he did so in the line of duty and while defending himself. It's okay if he felt anger or fear or even satisfaction. Anyone would.

She briefly lays her palm against his heart and settles for, "This." All the world's contained in that one little word.

[heartsandminds]

She'd never taking up smoking. It made her a rarity among medical students and doctors, actually, who despite knowing exactly - exactly, in minute detail - what cigarettes did to your insides...smoked in droves. There was a simple reason for it; several times a day you had to get out of the hospital before everything about hospitals choked you, and smoking was one of the best excuses around.

Jo had, when she'd been in Seattle, taken to doing plies on the hospital roof, on the other side of the helipad. Sometimes the 'plies' had taken the form of leaning against the railing and taking huge, gulping breaths of air.

She'd tried to help when Cadogan had quit smoking. He'd gotten a quarter every time they were in a bar and he reached for a cigarette but put the pack back - and she'd gotten one every time he'd actually lit up. It's that that has her reaching her hand out, palm up.

"Pay up."

[diemwnt]

They'd gone through the other things to do for stress, for oral fixation; for keeping from relapsing during the critical few months it takes to break a bad habit. And he'd been good about them, over the last year and change. He'd kept up even against the ghost cravings which had haunted him even when the six month mark had been survived.

He'd completely forgotten all of them in finding himself out here.

It takes a moment to actually move. To get his heel on the smoldering cigarette on the ground. To overcome the shake in his hands to pull out a coin for her, press it into her hand because he can't trust himself to toss it.

[heartsandminds]

It had, honestly, been one of the least stressful things she'd counseled anyone on since she'd returned home. One of the least stressful things she'd counseled anyone on ever, considering she'd worked the psychiatric ward of a hospital.

She drops the coin into her purse. It will settle there, at the bottom of her bag, along with stray lipsticks, the odd hair elastic, and the pen she can never find when she wants to take notes. She sits down, on the bench that faces one of Diamond Castle's elegant horticultural displays, and she brushes her long hair back as she gives him a searching look.

Then she raises her hands.

/Want to talk?/

It's an offer, not a demand. They're in a lovely garden, not a warmly decorated medical office. She only hopes that helps.

[diemwnt]

It's such a different question coming from hands.

Dr Lancaster had always asked out loud. Written it down like that could bridge the gap. Known that, at the end of the day, the Jack was going to have to fold and say something or other, because wasting both their time for hours every week was too frustrating.

It's different from hands. It's different from someone who isn't his doctor but his friend.

It still has his shoulders tensing slightly before he forces himself to take another deep, painful breath.

/Am I supposed to?/

Did people who wanted to talk actually do better? Did it really jump any steps in accepting what happened?

[heartsandminds]

A sense of obligation is useful when you start therapy, at least it is if you can't force yourself to talk any other way. But it doesn't go very far. In the end, you have to want it to progress.

She smiles a little, shrugging before she speaks again.

/You're only supposed to want the things you want. Sometimes talking helps. Sometimes cigarettes or popcorn or bad movies helps./

Most times you might need some of all of the above.