Can't Have Forever

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

Title: Can't Have Forever
:Location: Stacy; The Sensoriums





It was strange how quickly the laughter of a pillow fight could turn.

Logically, Renne knew the questions were simple, innocent, and very easy questions. He'd been asked those questions hundreds of times through the years and had rarely felt what he did now when answering them. Logically, he shouldn't have felt much of anything beyond the distant pang that was usually short lived.

And logically, the seaside tavern he'd asked the Sensorium chamber to produce should have done more than the little it did. Cooking was therapeutic most often and cooking in a place he knew, a place he loved, had most often doubled that.

Why it wasn't working this time, he had no logical answer.

Comments

[sonofether.livejournal.com]

The scent alone is like a gut-punch and brings back memories from when he was a little boy. Being the only child for a good span of years made his sisters' arrival something of a blow, and treacle? That had been one of the ways his mother had treated him. Stephen often thought it was a miracle that he hadn't ended up fat.

"Uh. I--" Willpower be damned, he really couldn't find it in himself to refuse. "Ah, thank you, Renne."

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Eee, Rrrr-enne sha-rrre." Chirp.

Hopefully no one minds a communal plate. Sliding it on the bar, the oddity finds (or "creates") one of the duller knives he'd often use and splits the treacle down the middle.

[sonofether.livejournal.com]

"Good. I definitely don't need to eat all of it," he said, chuckling. "So...do you want to talk about it at all? Not treacle...you know. I'm not trying to pressure you or anything, though."

He's aware he's pretty much a stranger still, but Stephen has found that sometimes it's easier to vent to a stranger than to a close friend.

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Eee. Ea-t." Chirp.

And then he pauses in mid-bite; both shoulders drooping down a bit. Even his ears go down. Still, the oddity finishes his bite and then at least tries to put the confusing, not-well-known sensations into words.

"Rrrr-enne noh un-derrr-stahnd why. Why it...hurrr-t naow. It noh ah-pose to."

[sonofether.livejournal.com]

"I'm not a psychologist. Or a xenopsychologist, for that matter. I don't know the particulars, either. But I know the human psyche--my own at least--to know that humans, at least, have a bad tendency to sabotage themselves." He took a bite of the treacle, and considered while he ate it.

"Maybe it's a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I don't know." But it's not like he didn't understand. Stephen reached out to gently scratch one of Renne's ears.

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Eee. Rrrr-enne noh trrrus-t Sai-co-dist. Th-ey noh be strrron-g fohrrr Rrrr-enne." Chirp. His tone is just a wee bit derisive there, disdain held for the line of so-called "mind healers" that never stuck around for more than a week.

"Pose wha-t? Eee?"

[sonofether.livejournal.com]

"Post-traumatic stress syndrome. It's like...certain events damage a person so greatly they tend to relive them at times, or they can't disassociate themselves from it. I'm trying to put this very simply, now." But it wasn't like he was unfamiliar with the phenomenon.

"Mind you, I'm just guessing, here."

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Eeee. Rrr-enne rrrre-mem-berrr Hew-mahns say tha-t. Bu-t...noh li-ke it. Th-ey say is ba-d." He trails off then, unsure of what else to really say.

[sonofether.livejournal.com]

"Well. It's...difficult to classify, really. It's not good, because there's a risk of hurting yourself and others, and that's why humans think it's bad. It's not well understood, even in my time. And humans fear what they don't understand." Stephen sighed, then.

"You understand that something can be bad, and not make the person who has to deal with it, a bad person, right? I mean...even I have some post-traumatic stress disorder issues, myself." Swimming through zombie soup will do that to a person.

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Eee. Rrr-enne noh kno-w why. Rrrr-enne go-t bad thin-gs but..."

For a moment, the exchanges of less than an hour ago fly through his head loudly enough that no one need to try breaking into his head to hear it.
...not natural... The words echo like the bell of a long-forgotten monastery in the middle of nowhere. And with it, come flashing mirages of a memory. Something that only he and the fabric of space-Time itself were there for.

And Space-Time had rejected him.

[sonofether.livejournal.com]

The reactions that pass through Stephen at that revelation happen within a matter of seconds.

The first: that Renne might be from Outside, and that was not a Good Thing. But then the Scientific mind takes over. It tells Stephen, quite frankly, that he's being an idiot. That not only did those things manifest differently, but that they never 'got along' with anything. While different in every way, Renne is definitely not hell-bent on destruction. Next theory.

The second: Renne defies description. This is, in Stephen's mind, entirely accurate. Even though the critter has been classified into 'solid emotion' and it seems like an accurate description thereof, it's a bit difficult to quantify. Nothing else in his experience has prepared him. And yet, that is something that he can accept without reservation.

This, then, is what Stephen chooses to embrace.

"That doesn't matter. You are here, now. You are real in every way that matters." To most humans, anyway.

In the end, Stephen doesn't care about the particulars; it's the person he cares about. The person--Renne--he accepts, with all the sincerity he was known for back home.

'Not natural.'? That phrase could suck it.

[bluebrassmonkey.livejournal.com]

At that, he feels his face nearly burn, glow, with the beginnings of a blush. When his eyes blink to hold back a tear or two, the oddity's ears give a flick. It appears like any other ear-flick but those big ears flick a few strands of hair into his own face.

"Eee..."

Yes, he's blushing. And yes, that actually brings a reaction like this out of him. Why? The simple right to exist is rather precious.