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

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

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.

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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.

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.

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?

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.

If he were feeling more like himself, he would have asked why he wasn't allowed to want the cigarette she made him drop. Then again, if he were feeling more like himself, he would have asked her for her professional opinion on the timeline of re-entering therapy after killing your therapist.

There's probably a timeline for that sort of thing, right?

None of it comes to his fingers. Nothing comes. All that comes is the knowledge his hands will be shaking if he tries--so he doesn't. The heels of his palms are instead used to press against his eyes.

He wants everything to stop. She understands that, doesn't she?

Some people would certainly say there's a timeline. There are plenty of people among them that like to nail things down to precise dates and numbers and times. Who like to calculate the depreciation of grief and horror in hopes that putting everything into hard numbers will make it easier.

Jo used to be that type. Eventually she figured out it just didn't work.

She's silent a moment. Even when your profession consists of seeing people at their worst, even when you have years of experience with finding the right words - it's still not easy to know what they are.

Jo lays a hand on Cadogan's shoulder and looks around them. "It's a nice day, isn't it?" She says. "One of those perfect winter days. I forget they exist, sometimes." Sometimes it's easy to forget good things exist.

The flinch is slight, mitigated when he lifts his face from his hands again. It's just Jo. It's just a quiet sitting on a bench, breathing with someone he knows--someone he trusts.

Time is so short. The world is so small. Trust is so changeable.

She'll forgive him for fumbling out his phone. His fingers aren't doing well at all with steadiness.

What's perfect?

"Very little." She watches his hands. She can switch back to BSL; most of the time she'd never hesitate. But Cadogan's hands aren't quite steady yet, and it's one thing to fumble while typing.

It's another to fumble while speaking.

"At all, ever," she adds. "It's why we have to appreciate the things that are. Even if it's just the color of the sky on a day when everything else has gone to shit."

There's a small amount of dignity in being allowed to type. There's a small amount of appreciation for the fact she's not asking him more about these last few weeks.

It's the same colour it is every day.

Yesterday, the sky had been the color of mercury and just as volatile. It's the kind of dry comment Jo would make over her beer if this was an ordinary sort of day, but ordinary days have been thin on the ground lately.

Her silence is the thoughtful kind. Her hand lifts to brush back the hair that the crisp winter breeze keeps trying to blow out of it's clip.

"Some days," she finally says, "we need the color of the sky more than others. Some days it's something to hang on to. Other days we don't even need to notice it."

Breathing came and went in levels of ease. Trying to move slowly, to get deep breaths and focus up, is a bit painful still.

Is it supposed to help?

Could focusing on the sky make the weight in his chest less pressing?

"Eventually," Jo tells him. "You have to give it time." You had to give yourself time which was something, she'd often thought, that Diamonds in general and Cadogan in particular had never excelled at. It made her wonder what sort of woman she'd be if the Trents had raised her instead of the O'Neills.

"You have to focus on something else besides everything that hurts," she adds, "or it isn't ever going to ease. It just hurts more."

There wasn't always time. There had, back in the day, been a need to move on almost instantly from this sort of event. Reload the gun and just keep moving.

The adjustment to having time--to being asked to actually take that time--was clearly still slightly lacking.

It's a moment before his brow furrows slightly. His fingers are moving a bit more firmly on the phone now.

Remind me why I can't focus on smoking, then.

She's seen first hand the sort of mess that can leave a person in. She'd had, in her hospital days, the responsibility of working with more than one soldier who'd returned from Iraq or Bosnia or Somalia having never processed the horrors...

And thus, had to try to process them all, on top of each other, and never really be able to.

Her smile is slight and her sigh is quiet before she tips her head at him.

"Because your mother would stop bringing me cookies," she says, "and I can't go without my weekly supply of butter and sugar. I'm a selfish woman sometimes, Cadogan Thomas."

There were better days and harder days. There were weeks of feeling absolutely like the grown person of the boy he had been at age fifteen. And then there were days like this. Weeks like this.

Weeks like this, he can't quite smile back. He can't do much more than shake his head slightly.

Don't see why it's her business.

Others - many others, probably - wouldn't understand where those words come from. Most lucky people having so many things that they don't want their loved ones to worry over. So many compartments.

She and Cadogan have had very different lives - Jo would never describe hers as difficult - but they both have learned to slot things into areas. Things that are just theirs to shoulder; things that they can let other people in on. It's a reasonable enough thought.

The problem is when other people care about you.

"She loves you," Jo says. "She worries about you. She wants you to live a long, happy life. You'll always be her business, no matter how old you get. So will the things you do," she adds. "Especially the things you do that she thinks might hurt more than they help."

A piece of him understands. The piece of him that cares deeply about his friends, about his mother, about the family he's garbled together--about his Suit.

But a piece of him will likely never be able to get around the fact he didn't care about himself the way other people cared about him. She understands that, surely.

It takes a moment to set the phone down. Trusting his hands again is a bit shaky.

/We don't know what helps and hurts other people./

She understands in the theoretical sense. She's been told that the men who don't care for themselves the way others do also happen to be the men who make the best soldiers, because there's little they won't do for the people they've thrown their loyalty to.

It takes her a moment to switch back to hands. She's done her best, and her best is very good, but there's no denying that BSL is a language she learned as an adult.

/No./

And that's all she says for a moment, just that simple sign.

/Will the cigarette give you what you need?/

That comes after a moment, the words as carefully chosen as if she spoke them out loud.

Of course it won't. Of course what he needs is something much less definable--is probably a changing, morphing sort of thing which won't settle into a single reality for the rest of his life.

That doesn't make it less frustrating. That doesn't make his mind less murky at the moment.

/Might. Was doing better than most things./

She makes a considering sound, almost like she's weighing and measuring him. But she's not looking at him while she does it.

/Are you going to try other things, after the cigarette helps some?/

Because it won't fix all that ails him. He knows that, doesn't he?

He does know it and he doesn't know it. He feels he should know it now while her hands underline it.

He does need a moment before he can properly lift his own again.

/If there's time./

She's known him for some time now. She's likely known men in his position over the years. It isn't a question of losing the will to keep going.

It's that watching another human being's last breath makes one's own next breath feel completely uncertain.

She knows Cadogan will keep going. That doesn't worry her, at least not the way you'd think. What worries her is the idea that he won't stop, that he'll keeping until he can't any longer.

And by then, there may not be much left.

/I'll only ask you to consider making time./

As a friend.

Of course there are rough edges. Of course his snort is ragged around the edges from more than just the physical constriction of his lungs.

/Professional opinion?/

Not that she hadn't been good, in the past, about making that separate. It was just a small world, where one doctor sounded like the next.

It's helped, really, that they became friends over basic alcoholic drinks and a preference for sitting quietly with them. It's easier for her to turn off the professional opinion when she has a dark Belgian beer in her hand.

She doesn't, right now. And she's not wearing the dark jeans that signify off-duty, but instead the gray slacks that indicate she's stopped here on her way back from a client.

/Maybe just a little bit. But as your friend, too, if that helps./

Maybe it helps. Maybe it helps to know there's science behind what she's saying; maybe it helps to know there's human affection and friendship. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

It still prompts a sigh to his lips, a brief digging of the heels of his palms into his eyes to just reset a bit.

It would be nice for things to stop feeling claustrophobic, some day.

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