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Sure Got Kafkaesque in Here
[It comes on Saturday's comm, during a lull in the fighting, when the liquidators have all been stopped. It's text but the text-to-voice options means people can hear the message on the go, especially since people can have their comms float along with them as they move.]
[It's difficult for him to hit the buttons without messing words up. He opts to keep his sentences short and simple. Thank goodness for auto-capitalize and auto-spell]
Using Saturday's comm. She found me outside.
Brainiac 5. I'm alive.
Fell in Stuff. Was dying.
Alive but changed. Bad. Typing is difficult.
No thumbs.
[It's difficult for him to hit the buttons without messing words up. He opts to keep his sentences short and simple. Thank goodness for auto-capitalize and auto-spell]
Using Saturday's comm. She found me outside.
Brainiac 5. I'm alive.
Fell in Stuff. Was dying.
Alive but changed. Bad. Typing is difficult.
No thumbs.
no subject
But... yeah, Robbie doesn't care. ]
I still want to make sure you're safe. You're REALLY bad at it. Where are you?
no subject
Will go to the gardens. Through vents. Easiest place to hide. Camouflage.
[And Farmer Bob proudly uses no pesticide or weed killer so it won't make him sick.
Will hide near orchard.
[An area that has lots of nearby shrubbery and berry thickets for Robbie to hide in too.]
Bring comm, leaving this one with Saturday. Need text to voice.
No longer able to talk.
[It's that bad.]
no subject
[ He doesn't make a joke about how he's sure to have the last word for once. Because Brainy doesn't want to fight. And, maybe worse, he's not discouraging Robbie from taking himself off the board to check on him.
So, it's THAT bad. ]
-> action
[At first.]
[But then some leaves in one of the shrubs starts to move, flowing down to the ground. They hesitate in the shadows of the bush. This is not easy. This is horrifying. This is painful. It is an anguish he doesn't want to share. He wants to find a hole to crawl into and never come out again.]
[But he knows relationships involve sharing in the pain, not just the joy.]
[So he crawls out slowly, a mass of green and blue flowing vines, gliding across the ground. His overall mass is probably less than what it once was but there are enough tentacles to conceivably be made from a humanoid body, now unraveled.]
[Strange little glowing stalk eyes stare up at Robbie.]
[He tries, again, to take on a humanoid form and manages slightly better this time, the torso holding for a little longer, the face almost right - if you could call a face that looks like the composited greenery on a parade float right - glowing eyes put where there used to be irises.]
[He still can't manage legs.]
[Little harder pieces of greenery come together to form something that resembles a voicebox, some softer pieces form a membraneous air bladder. He tries to force air through the voicebox and use some vines to fill in for lips, a tongue. He still can't make words. Only a sad little wheeze comes out.]
[He extends a hand towards Robbie, but it unravels and so does the rest of him. The vines rise but can't take shape again. Fall.]
[Vines wrap around the mass closest to his stalk eyes and the yellow flowers that were briefly his hair. Like someone wrapping their arms around their head in shame and embarrassment.]
[Again, like with Saturday, the harmonica wheezing takes on the rhythm of someone sobbing.]
Re: -> action
He’s known people to experience negative secondary mutations, even a few that were fucked over by the first one. It’s not a laughing matter.
He does appreciate the warning, though, because his mental image was… fairly accurate, minus the flowers. Robbie doesn’t flinch away or try to defend himself, but he’s not sure he believes what he’s seeing.
It isn’t until the eye stalks pull a pseudo face together around them that his brain starts to redefine Brainy. And when a hand coalesces and reaches for him, Robbie starts to reach back with his unbandaged arm only to draw it back slightly when the green hand falls back the loose mess of Brainy’s vines and leaves.
Seeing the shape fall back into tendrils dredges up bad memories of other friends who skirted being an eldritch horror temporarily. ]
Querl?
[ Robbie doesn’t read entish body language, but he gets the sense of hugging knees to chest and hiding your face in the space. He sits down what he hopes is in sight of the eye stalks - which, uh… are a thing he will have to get used to - and puts his comm down between them. It doesn’t take an expert in xenolinguistics to grok that Brainy’s crying, or near enough. Those aren’t neutral sounds. They’re the sort of cries that rip him apart because he can’t make this better. There’s nothing he can do, but he’d do anything to fix it.
One hand reaches to hover over the yellow flowers. Flowers are delicate, right? So easy to damage or tear. ]
Are - are you fragile? I don’t have to hug you - I won’t touch you if you don’t know. I don’t want to hurt you.
no subject
[The wheezing continues.]
no subject
Robbie probably would try platitudes if Querl could raise an eyebrow at him and say something snarky and syllabic, but he doesn’t have eyebrows anymore.
And that, of all the stupid thoughts, is what makes him start to cry. Wanting to get closer to proper hug, Robbie scoops up as much of Brainy as he can gather onto his lap. ]
I thought I lost you.
[ It’s selfish to feel any sort of relief, but everyone’s always said that he’s a selfish idiot. Robbie chokes down the apologies, but he can’t hide how sorry he is. ]
I should’ve been there. I’m not letting you out of my sight again.
[ At least next time, they can shoot at Robbie first. ]
no subject
[He does have a shortcut, though. One vine goes to Robbie's temple, the way Brainy's hand sometimes did, when he used his empathic power to calm him.]
[And even despite his sadness and horror there is still that pervasive sense of calm. Of love. That is still strongest. Brainy makes that the strongest that he projects over. The other - worse - feelings are there, being felt, but held back from the link.]
[Of course he'd comfort Robbie at a time like this. Of course.]
no subject
Robbie’s head is an agitated bee swarm of emotions that he doesn’t have under control at all, so there’s no hiding any of it from the link. He’s just so overwhelmed by everything that a different emotion is proclaiming itself king of the mountain every two minutes. Grief, anger, confusion. Pain. But they all stem from the same place: love. ]
I’m okay. I love you, too.
[ Brainy’s current state doesn’t change the truth of that. They just need to get home. Everything will be fine if they can get back to ultra modern medicine and bizarre body-modifying ice cream flavor research scientists. ]
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought there’d be a better time. And then… there wasn’t. This still isn’t. It’s just… I’m not getting another chance to mess this up.
[ If they can’t get back home, then the poor circumstances won’t matter anymore. With the rapid restructuring put into place by Jorgmund, something’s gonna change pretty quick. Might as well have something nice while to hang onto. Querl knows that Robbie loves him.
Querl probably already knew. Querl also probably knows that Robbie hasn’t read his letter now. Which makes him almost laugh, and the inappropriate amusement and sheepishness crowd out affection and regret. ]
If we’re still alive in a few weeks, you have to let me know when it’s okay to make stupid jokes that needle us both. For now, you get a exasperation vacation. Except for that one. And… that one. This is how I cope.
[ The hand that he wasn’t sure what to do with? It finds a natural resting spot on the vine touching Robbie’s face. No further anguish or thought. Just seeking contact. ]
voice