all of a sudden you're a hostage to things you thought you wanted

[closely]

( open for messages, action, overflow. )

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[elanprime]

[ ... Is it over? Has Elan said the right thing? The instant Four's breathing quiets and his frame goes still takes whatever tension's left out of Elan's shoulders. He feels it go from his body with a sigh -- of relief, bone-deep exhaustion; from having been -- no: continuing to be -- overwhelmed. Aren't I just a saint, he thinks, leaning back on his arms, for giving somebody else the time of day after my own company's tried to kill me...

... Hang on, is that...?

It's less conscious thought than lurch of nausea in Elan's stomach. Seconds pass as he inclines his head slightly forward, stares at Four in disbelief -- watches the permet bloom in places he's never seen it before, glowing faintly through the fabric of the other's clothing; notices how only a sliver of green yet rims Four's pupils. At this point, he's beyond checking his impulses, channeling their expression, repackaging them in more palatable form: Elan Ceres may not touch people for any purpose other than manipulation or out of sheer caprice, but Elan is far too greedy, too clumsy with his emotions for any sense of propriety or disgust to prevent him from cupping Four's face in his hand and running his thumb under the other's nose to confirm -- yes, it's blood. Hot and sticky like Four's skin, searing against his palm like it was in Four's bedroom at Asticassia -- and not.

This time, nothing comes at a remove or through a filter. Elan knows what it means when his chest aches as his heartbeat accelerates; when he breaks out into another cold sweat; when his hands -- the one still on Four's face, the other gripping Four's shoulder -- start to tremble with a strength he wouldn't be able to suppress even if he wanted. ]

Stay with me.

[ Soft, at first, in a tone that would surprise him if he were in any position to evaluate its difference from his usual. ]

Listen to my voice.

[ So easy, now, to say what he couldn't moments earlier, to tell the other what to do. ]

Don't... do this, don't let yourself go, don't leave me alone here, don't...

[ Why? Because -- ]

I need you, alright? I need you.

[ -- there's no strategy to it, no plan; he's too afraid. That nothing that's been gnawing at him -- since Three's execution, since Two ran way, since One was pronounced as good as dead on arrival; since they asked him to give everything, everything, away to the very idea of Elan Ceres: a prettier face, a straighter posture, a smoother speech, a sharper mind, a shrewder character; since those parts of the day he could call his (his?) became ever smaller; since the day he was born -- it hits him, suddenly, with all the force of the poison he'd expelled from his system earlier, raises his voice. ]

I can't have you doing this, I won't have you doing this, you have to last --

[ Distantly: There's no coming back from this. ]

-- at least until I can get out of here, at least until they've fixed you, at least until it's all gone, I don't give a shit about what you want or your stupid death wish, you will do as I say or...

[ There's no saving him from becoming like Four, because their similarities are what drew Elan to him to begin with -- they're in the way his hands burn, his eyes itch, in the bile he tastes in the back of his throat, and if it weren't for his unrestrained desperation, the pressure in Elan's head would give way to vertigo and horror at what he's said, what he's shown. He catches on the "or," because -- there's nothing he can, could, do.

Farther still: Is this what you wanted a break to catalyze?

Whose break -- his, yours?

Does it even matter? ]

[closely]

( on the outskirts of the thing that sufficed as a city because it didn't quite look like a town, all was dusty roads and beaten earth saturated with the runoff of some company's drones. not particularly visible, given the state of things out there, though it always struck sela even as a child to be inherently wrong. rain was rare but came; he would know, laying out jars like they'd regressed centuries, to catch the fresh water. and earth was earth. wasn't it?

the way four is now, he doesn't remember that. but he had these questions: why won't anything grow? what can i do differently? what can i do? even if it isn't the best way.

even without the memory, something of that question idles under the surface in layers: where elan ceres reaches through ice and water and the curious cat's cradle of negative space and connections that would as soon strangle as save. despite the earth still being mostly, even more so, ocean, four of course has never seen it. but after he started his education with peil, he would sometimes find himself drawn in by images and information about it. depth. temperature. pressure. distance that was also right in front of you. lightless unless you knew how to look or would be close enough to the surface.

he doesn't remember this either even though it was never taken from him: when he stopped asking questions, when he stopped trying to know about things he could not reach and replaced them with philosophy that also felt unreachable but less...

...less?

it hurts.

like he's drowning.

elan ceres grips him tightly but four can't feel it. with spotty vision and disorientation, he grapples with awareness: a hand on his face, a hand on his shoulder. doesn't it burn? don't touch me. a voice that is not his voice that is his voice that isn't saying:

alone.

need.

do as i say.

do as i say.

sometimes what a person needs is not what's objectively good or right. in his desperately unmanufactured display of fear and humanity, elan ceres —

— says the right things.

the problem: tenuous supports holding four together in an ill form of control and decorum and the mirage of not-wanting could be likened back to water but instead of an ocean, a river that breaks the dam. he couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to, held at bay by something that was good until it wasn't. walls aren't boxes. cages are not homes. no matter what four told himself. elan ceres says all of these things and these things are breaths and blood and the honesty to bear them safely.

somewhere in peil's most buried and locked archives is four's real name, where he came from, and the procedures to follow if or when he runs up his usefulness.

he doesn't have the wherewithal to think of that or even how it doesn't matter. four can only manage and poorly, what is in front of him.

blood. the taste of it in his mouth. saturating his sense of smell. nonsensically: is he hurt? four thought it was poison but had it caused some external rupture? that it is himself gets lost as he looks at the face he took on and only sees the differences through his blurry haze.

i need you.

the permet does not relent, but the tension that looked like shocked inertness gives way. four collapses and murmurs an apology in his head, not unconscious but not exactly coherent either. his mind feels like the frayed candle wick that won't light. his heart wants to leave him. if elan ceres catches him it is a shame in a way because four cannot feel his own body except the livid heat in his blood and the sense of the permet prying his head apart to better use him than peil or anyone else ever could. despite his temperature, he shivers inconsolably. sweat mats his hair to the back of his neck, the side of his face. he is so tired.

but,

he is alive.

he is,

needed.

elan ceres says do as i say and...four does. he "stays".

the heart on the threshold, looking back. )