auroraexpress | (no subject)

[ shake shake shake ]

[ SHAKE SHAKE ]

[ SHAKE ]

[ She's practically radiating discomfort, her feathers all bristled up and her ears pinned. Her wings spread out the rest of the way and give a single hard flap. Which, somehow … that helps? A little. Not enough. ]

[ Swings her head around to stare at Dusk. And, you know what? She's just going to say it. Not to whine, not to complain, just to make sure that it's absolutely, emphatically clear. ]

I. Hated. That.

Obviously.

[He opens his mouth to say something else.]

[Then he shuts it.]

[Sighs again.]

But are you okay now?

No! [ She's full of bees and she needs - ]

[ She needs out. ]

I want to fly. That'll help.

It should be safe outside as long as you avoid the singing.

Never trust sounds out there.

[ She immediately starts off towards the door, less her usual bounce and more a jittery stride. ]

[ But then she pauses. Looks back at him. ]

Coming with?

Do you want me to?

If you want to? Yes. If you don't? Okay. [ Her end of her tail twitches and flicks slowly. ]

I like company and we should talk. But I need to fly. [ The bees, they are a problem. ]

[He doesn't know what he wants. If he lets himself feel, everything is conflicting.]

[It's easier not to so he's just going to continue to do that, face very blank.]

[He gestures for her to go ahead and he'll follow.]

[ She doesn't know what to make of that response. Doesn't like the blankness, doesn't like the cold, stone-walled shutdown. It sets her teeth on edge almost as much as everything that came before. With an effort she bites her tongue and just goes, walking fast but not so much so that she ditches him, until they're out of the train. ]

[ The moment she gets a breath of fresh air, she bunches her muscles and leaps up into it with a cry of relief, hard wingbeats taking her up, up, up. ]

[He doesn't know if it sets her off edge. It might. He tries to compromise and that fails. He's concerned and somehow that's bad. He doesn't know how to react that isn't going to go badly.]

[So he doesn't. Because he doesn't trust himself to be emotionally delicate. He's bad at it. He knows he is, and it's worse when he's]

[He's not doing well himself.]

[It's so much easier to just stop the feeling, but he also doesn't want anything bad to happen to her. So he follows her silently and will take a seat outside of the train and just keep an eye on her.]

[ It might be difficult to see her through the patches of dense, drifting fog. She darts and weaves and spins, dancing through the sky, visibly mostly as a flash of brilliant colour as sunlight catches her feathers. ]

[ But then she starts to sing, wordless and beautifully melodic. It's the kind of music that sinks right into a person, reverberating through them, like phoenix song. There's joy and relief and freedom in the air, and she's basking in it. Sharing it as best she can. ]

[He is tracking her, best he can. Looking for disturbances in the mist, timing when he can't find her, but it's never too long for him to get a hint.]

[The music worries him, until he realizes it's different from whatever has been in the mist so far. And it's. A little bit of a relief. If she's singing like that, she's fine.]

[It helps that tension, but he's still not poking the rest. Which makes it hard to deal with it.]

[But that's fine.]

[He's fine.]

[He's always fine.]

[ It's around half an hour of some serious flying and some equally serious singing before she comes back down, touching down lightly a few feet away from Dusk. ]

Better! [ Stretches herself out, wings, tail, paws and all. ]

That's good.

[He's still blanking hard.]

[A little less cold blanking, but still very much blanking.]

[ Now that she's (much) calmer than she had been, she plods closer to him. Not too close, though; she still leaves some distance, parking her butt down a couple of feet away and regarding him solemnly. ]

We need to talk.

Do we?

Yes. Obviously! We're team!

[ Pack. ]

That all went wrong, so we talk and work together and fix it.

Hm.

Then how did we do it wrong?

[And tension is back.]

We upset and hurt each other.

[ Her tail is doing the twitchy again, her ears back but not pinned. ]

You were trying to help. Yes? I know you were. But that wasn't the help I needed, the way I needed it, and then we didn't hear each other.

I'm always trying to help. That's what I do here.

[Here, very much here its always help.]

Yes. You try. [ She's willing to give him that much. ] I want you to help me! I want to help you! We're a team.

But that, that wasn't helping me. It felt like you weren't listening to me at all. That's what I needed. I need you to stop picking me up without asking. I need you to tell me when you're uncomfy, because making you uncomfy when there's other options makes me feel bad and doesn't make sense to me. I need you to listen when I tell you I can do something.

What do you need?

[There is a long pause.]

Do you want me to be honest?

[Sighs, bowing his head, rubbing at it with one hand.]

Because it's going to boil down to I care and I'm too tired to fight someone else because I care.

I want you to be very, very honest.

[ She gets extremely emphatic there, because! yes! god yes! ]

Say it all. Say as much as you can.

[There is a very long pause. Because there are times he can be very honest.]

[But it's hard when he feels like he's walking into a minefield. When he's just so very tired.]

I wasn't there.

I should have been there. I've barely missed a trial and the one I miss is that one with the newbie alone.

And then when I try to be mindful, try to be careful, I have a reaction to something I can't remember, where I don't even know if it was discomfort, I haven't even had a chance to think about the reaction....

I'm told I can't help. I have to fight to be able to help.

[He doesn't look up. His voice barely has any emotion, with only a slight crack on certain words.]

The thing I've always been good at, the thing that let me save people again and again, is putting my emotions to the side so I can deal with a problem that needs an immediate solution. Then the one time I let something through, I'm unable to help the person I should have been there for earlier.

For something that wasn't important then.

That would never be important then.

Nothing is anywhere near as important as helping my people and nothing will ever, ever will be.

[ They are such, such different people. That much is eminently clear. She listens carefully and as calmly as she can, trying to take it all in. ]

[ To hear him she like she wants to be heard, herself. ]

It's important to me. Your feelings? Your comfort? They're important to me! You didn't have to do something uncomfortable; I had another way and you didn't want to give me a chance. That hurt.

[ ... ]

To me, help doesn't mean pushing and forcing. It's asking and receiving, working together, honest and equal. It's that simple.