[ He spends a couple of days making choices. Some are the right ones, some aren't. Some could be either. But eventually, the choice to avoid reality slips out of his hands.
Of the handful of people who might understand, now there are only two left who were ever part of the layer beyond. He's already talked to Damian. And he knows her well enough by now to know that his staying silent would frustrate her more than breaking his silence with his own, misshapen pain. All conversations need a beginning sometime.
Bluntly, then, with jest. Making a game of it. Because it is, in its way, all just exactly that. Layers on layers. ]
I'm down a couple of mouths to feed.
[ Not a clear message, but it's a start. He can pull it around from there. ]
[Perhaps not perfectly clear, but clear enough. She knows him well enough to know that he, like her, finds meaning in feeding. She also knows him well enough to have some faith he'll read what follows as what it is: a genuine apology, not an admonishment. One she'd deliver, were they face to face, with the still, solemn sadness she always holds close.]
I can't dispense purpose. What should I do instead?
I know. You don't have to be alone with it either.
[I want to, she thinks to say, but what she wants is less than relevant right now. This feels... delicate. On the cusp of an airing of grievances, only the grievances aren't hers and they aren't directed at her either.
They've made mistakes. Mistakes that hurt. Mistakes from which she's certain they're both still recovering.
The blame does not rest as squarely on his shoulders as she fears he might imagine.]
I'm not working today. My place is quiet.
[Another message follows, after a delay that might be deliberate.]
You don't have to talk. I can teach you how to move.
[ The offer of company is kind if destined to be turned down, there's too much swirling in his immediate thoughts and too little understanding of how to sit in his own acknowledged disquiet in somebody else's presence - let alone somebody whose presence is so strangely weighted as hers is. There are too many lives and experiences shared and not shared between them. She doesn't deserve his default and he doesn't have any backups.
But then she offers him movement. He knows what she means because she's told him, shown him through touched hands. The anchor of it is instantly grounding.
A dip into more mutual loss - and evidence of parts of it that cannot be taken. ]
[There's something grounding in reaching conviction, in finding a plan of action. She doesn't know if it's the right one. Even now, after all this time, after her training and her work, she still hasn't found an answer to the question she'd asked Rahim so long ago and so far away: Where do you find the confidence to guide another person?
It's all the harder with someone so aware of and grounded in his own complexity. Stephen Strange knows what he's missing better than she does.
So maybe it's not about guiding. Maybe it's about presence. A runner does not ask the vine to climb it; it's simply there to be climbed.]
When you're ready.
[Even if never.
The address follows in short order, sent out across the network even as she stands, begins the process of finding clothing to move in, of finding the part of herself that remembers how to.]
[ Even if it's not for long, if only just a start. To have a means of moving out of his own head for a while that doesn't require him to be the author of his own distraction is a welcome offer.
[It's strange, being on the cusp of this. Nerve-wracking, even. It needs a process, it needs ceremony, it needs five. She's satisfied none of these conditions. But...
But there are cut corners, and then there are shortcuts. Stephen has tasted something of her soul; she's shown him as much as she'll ever show anyone of her own gnosis. The breadth of his own experiences make his subconscious fertile soil, too.
Then again, maybe none of that is the point. She ruminates on the topic as she picks out her clothing -- things she runs in, flexible and form-fitting enough to move without interference -- and changes. Maybe as an act of healing, this is inherently enough, inherently all it needs to be. There's satisfaction in that, a satisfaction she weighs as she ties up her hair in a loose bun, savours alongside the trepidation, alongside the sympathetic mourning, alongside the latent dread.
Half an hour. Time enough to neaten up a bit, clear some space to move and live and breathe in -- and more than enough time to brew some tea once she's done, hands hungry for something to do other than wait for Stephen's arrival.]
[ Half an hour was right about on the money. Time enough to take his time, to feel the air in his lungs as he makes the journey. It's a strange suspension, the loss of someone close here. Despite the length of his stay it's one of the first times he's felt it quite as keenly as this - there's only so long you can guard against connection, no matter how adamant you'd been at the start. People find their way in.
The walk helps clear out the worst of the sludge starting to stick in places around his thoughts and make them slow. What comes next will, he hopes, lift him out of his thoughts altogether.
He arrives at the address she's listed and slows to stop on the street outside, sends up a quick: ]
[People do find their way in. The heart is not a bordered thing; no wall can contain it. A guard of one man cannot maintain the inviolability of its boundaries.
To live here, then, means to weather a litany of hurts. People appear and vanish. Their time in this space is unpredictable but invariably intense. What they all weather together makes parting all the more bittersweet: those who remain may believe, ardently, of the vanished that they are home, but that does not free up the space now occupied by their absence.
In that way, it's like death, and like death, OA has long since ceased to guard herself against it. She knows as much as she can know of the acuteness of Stephen's loss, and when he knocks -- after a fashion -- there's no question that she's going to let him in.
She meets him at the door, opening it to admit him wordlessly, honouring for as long as she can the commitment to silence. It isn't a nice building, but the spare, compact apartment into which she leads him is neat and homely. Two mugs of tea steam gently on the narrow countertop; she gestures to them with a wry uptick to the corner of her mouth: take it or leave it.]
You'll want to stretch first. May as well drink while we're at it.
[ Tea welcomed him into one of the biggest, most total changes of his life. It became quickly a common enough greeting that it made its way into his own welcome routine too: fellow Masters, students, gods, new arrivals, returnees, people with a need for a moment of calm, didn't matter. Tea.
So to have a cup waiting for him now feels fitting. An extension of the familiar and an earnest hello. A promise of a pocket of peace. ]
Thank you.
[ He'll take it up, offer accepted, for a quick sip to reset himself a little from the walk over. Then it's time to get down to reminding his body how to be gentle to itself, intentionally and with purpose. ]
[The heat and the steam are a good initiation. The body is there, in the hands curled about the mug, in the warm, grassy scent rising from within, in the bitterness of the tannins. They're all momentary things, all facets of the here and now, something to anchor the body to.
She takes a quiet mouthful of her own, eyes closed, drawing in and sighing out a slow, deep breath. Right.
The second act is just as intentional: eyes still closed, she sets down the mug and reaches up to tie her hair back, gathering it between her hands slowly and deliberately. This too grounds her, this too gives Stephen space to settle in, to prepare.
It's only once she senses him shifting, senses the mood in the room change, focused and electric, that her focus shifts and she takes up a place across from him, offering a smile.]
What matters is the feeling. The fuel.
[The work of hands may falter, just as the tongue may stumble on a word. His may hold him back, but they won't stop him.]
You'll find it.
[She settles, reorients herself -- feet apart, just a bit further than hip width, arms loose at her side; she rolls her neck, shifts her shoulders. Be the body, be here, be now.]
We'll start with the first movement, my movement. Ready?
He knows it. Knows it from example and experience, from a moment he tried to make his incapacity to connect the fault of the parts and not of the whole and had his folly made clear. The hearing of it warms him just beneath the skin, a thin layer, familiarity made flesh.
This is known territory. The new with a friendly face.
He echoes her stance, rocks his weight from heel to ball and comes to balanced rest. ]
Ready.
[ There's energy in the waiting, body abuzz with anticipation of a knowledge not confined to words or thoughts. The gift of a reminder of who he is. Who they are.
He's ready as he ever has been. Mind the clearest it's been in days.
[She watches him shift, attentive. Waiting. He finds the balance, finds the limen. A faint, slow smile grows on her face, corners of her eyes crinkling with mischief, with shared secret.
Good.
Slow and watchful, she sketches the first gesture. Elbows bent, hands to chest with palms out, forefingers and thumbs joined, a triangle of empty space bound between them.
One.
He echoes, and it's necessarily imperfect, but she doesn't correct him. Not yet. First the feeling, the flow, then the precision.
The hands push out, head tilting back; the spine arches just faintly, that triangle of empty space drawn out, elongated into a tunnel.
A tunnel the size of a coffin.]
Show me.
[The first secret, compounded. Echoed. The first phrase leads into the second -- it'll be easier to follow if he has the heart of it in his mouth.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
@stephen.strange, backdated to the day before the earthquake
Of the handful of people who might understand, now there are only two left who were ever part of the layer beyond. He's already talked to Damian. And he knows her well enough by now to know that his staying silent would frustrate her more than breaking his silence with his own, misshapen pain. All conversations need a beginning sometime.
Bluntly, then, with jest. Making a game of it. Because it is, in its way, all just exactly that. Layers on layers. ]
I'm down a couple of mouths to feed.
[ Not a clear message, but it's a start. He can pull it around from there. ]
no subject
[Perhaps not perfectly clear, but clear enough. She knows him well enough to know that he, like her, finds meaning in feeding. She also knows him well enough to have some faith he'll read what follows as what it is: a genuine apology, not an admonishment. One she'd deliver, were they face to face, with the still, solemn sadness she always holds close.]
I can't dispense purpose. What should I do instead?
no subject
[ She's done enough just in reading and responding. He had to finally make it fact. ]
Thank you.
no subject
[I want to, she thinks to say, but what she wants is less than relevant right now. This feels... delicate. On the cusp of an airing of grievances, only the grievances aren't hers and they aren't directed at her either.
They've made mistakes. Mistakes that hurt. Mistakes from which she's certain they're both still recovering.
The blame does not rest as squarely on his shoulders as she fears he might imagine.]
I'm not working today. My place is quiet.
[Another message follows, after a delay that might be deliberate.]
You don't have to talk. I can teach you how to move.
no subject
But then she offers him movement. He knows what she means because she's told him, shown him through touched hands. The anchor of it is instantly grounding.
A dip into more mutual loss - and evidence of parts of it that cannot be taken. ]
I'd like that.
no subject
It's all the harder with someone so aware of and grounded in his own complexity. Stephen Strange knows what he's missing better than she does.
So maybe it's not about guiding. Maybe it's about presence. A runner does not ask the vine to climb it; it's simply there to be climbed.]
When you're ready.
[Even if never.
The address follows in short order, sent out across the network even as she stands, begins the process of finding clothing to move in, of finding the part of herself that remembers how to.]
no subject
[ Even if it's not for long, if only just a start. To have a means of moving out of his own head for a while that doesn't require him to be the author of his own distraction is a welcome offer.
Location set, a few minutes later he heads out. ]
no subject
[It's strange, being on the cusp of this. Nerve-wracking, even. It needs a process, it needs ceremony, it needs five. She's satisfied none of these conditions. But...
But there are cut corners, and then there are shortcuts. Stephen has tasted something of her soul; she's shown him as much as she'll ever show anyone of her own gnosis. The breadth of his own experiences make his subconscious fertile soil, too.
Then again, maybe none of that is the point. She ruminates on the topic as she picks out her clothing -- things she runs in, flexible and form-fitting enough to move without interference -- and changes. Maybe as an act of healing, this is inherently enough, inherently all it needs to be. There's satisfaction in that, a satisfaction she weighs as she ties up her hair in a loose bun, savours alongside the trepidation, alongside the sympathetic mourning, alongside the latent dread.
Half an hour. Time enough to neaten up a bit, clear some space to move and live and breathe in -- and more than enough time to brew some tea once she's done, hands hungry for something to do other than wait for Stephen's arrival.]
no subject
The walk helps clear out the worst of the sludge starting to stick in places around his thoughts and make them slow. What comes next will, he hopes, lift him out of his thoughts altogether.
He arrives at the address she's listed and slows to stop on the street outside, sends up a quick: ]
Knock knock.
[ Guess who's there? ]
no subject
To live here, then, means to weather a litany of hurts. People appear and vanish. Their time in this space is unpredictable but invariably intense. What they all weather together makes parting all the more bittersweet: those who remain may believe, ardently, of the vanished that they are home, but that does not free up the space now occupied by their absence.
In that way, it's like death, and like death, OA has long since ceased to guard herself against it. She knows as much as she can know of the acuteness of Stephen's loss, and when he knocks -- after a fashion -- there's no question that she's going to let him in.
She meets him at the door, opening it to admit him wordlessly, honouring for as long as she can the commitment to silence. It isn't a nice building, but the spare, compact apartment into which she leads him is neat and homely. Two mugs of tea steam gently on the narrow countertop; she gestures to them with a wry uptick to the corner of her mouth: take it or leave it.]
You'll want to stretch first. May as well drink while we're at it.
no subject
[ Tea welcomed him into one of the biggest, most total changes of his life. It became quickly a common enough greeting that it made its way into his own welcome routine too: fellow Masters, students, gods, new arrivals, returnees, people with a need for a moment of calm, didn't matter. Tea.
So to have a cup waiting for him now feels fitting. An extension of the familiar and an earnest hello. A promise of a pocket of peace. ]
Thank you.
[ He'll take it up, offer accepted, for a quick sip to reset himself a little from the walk over. Then it's time to get down to reminding his body how to be gentle to itself, intentionally and with purpose. ]
no subject
She takes a quiet mouthful of her own, eyes closed, drawing in and sighing out a slow, deep breath. Right.
The second act is just as intentional: eyes still closed, she sets down the mug and reaches up to tie her hair back, gathering it between her hands slowly and deliberately. This too grounds her, this too gives Stephen space to settle in, to prepare.
It's only once she senses him shifting, senses the mood in the room change, focused and electric, that her focus shifts and she takes up a place across from him, offering a smile.]
What matters is the feeling. The fuel.
[The work of hands may falter, just as the tongue may stumble on a word. His may hold him back, but they won't stop him.]
You'll find it.
[She settles, reorients herself -- feet apart, just a bit further than hip width, arms loose at her side; she rolls her neck, shifts her shoulders. Be the body, be here, be now.]
We'll start with the first movement, my movement. Ready?
no subject
He knows it. Knows it from example and experience, from a moment he tried to make his incapacity to connect the fault of the parts and not of the whole and had his folly made clear. The hearing of it warms him just beneath the skin, a thin layer, familiarity made flesh.
This is known territory. The new with a friendly face.
He echoes her stance, rocks his weight from heel to ball and comes to balanced rest. ]
Ready.
[ There's energy in the waiting, body abuzz with anticipation of a knowledge not confined to words or thoughts. The gift of a reminder of who he is. Who they are.
He's ready as he ever has been. Mind the clearest it's been in days.
He nods in welcome. Let's go. ]
no subject
Good.
Slow and watchful, she sketches the first gesture. Elbows bent, hands to chest with palms out, forefingers and thumbs joined, a triangle of empty space bound between them.
One.
He echoes, and it's necessarily imperfect, but she doesn't correct him. Not yet. First the feeling, the flow, then the precision.
The hands push out, head tilting back; the spine arches just faintly, that triangle of empty space drawn out, elongated into a tunnel.
A tunnel the size of a coffin.]
Show me.
[The first secret, compounded. Echoed. The first phrase leads into the second -- it'll be easier to follow if he has the heart of it in his mouth.]