Work Text:
Latula doesn’t like it when you say you appreciate that she stays with you.
It doesn’t change how you feel, though. You know that everyone else thinks you’re hard to be around now — balance issues, problems finding words that aren’t just swears, a tendency to get overwhelmed and have breakdowns at the drop of a hat, self-injurious behaviors that pop up at what other people might think of as very small problems.
If they don’t think you’re obnoxious, they think you’re retarded; if they don’t think you’re retarded, they think you’re mean; if they don’t think you’re mean, they think you’re obnoxious. When they still cared to let you try to enter into conversations, the conversations slowed down significantly every time you entered them, because you were fumbling for the puzzle piece that was the word that made sense in a specific spot or stuck in a loop of tics for thirty seconds.
Most of them never said it out loud to you, but they’d awkwardly stop talking when you came around. You aren’t stupid enough that you didn’t get the hint.
Latula never stopped talking to you, though.
After you burnt out, she probably adjusted better than you did. It took months before you were lucid enough to even want to get back on your skateboard, but she was the one who stood there and spotted for you, catching you before you fell. She had to basically re-teach you from the ground up, because the way your brain processes space now is completely different from how it did before you burnt out, and you never even noticed any annoyance in her eyes after she told you where your feet need to go for the fifteenth time. She made you the helmet you use now, painstakingly painting sharp lines on it to match the clothes that you like wearing, after an especially brutal meltdown where you expressed, as best you could, that the idea of wearing a helmet like the stupid kids in every half-baked comedy movie made you want to blow your brains out. She congratulated you when you did your first half-decent ollie after the burnout, with no pity that you could sense.
In some ways, the pity was worse than the aggression.
The thing about burning out, you see, is that you remember being smart.
You know there was a time when you had all the knowledge in the world. You know there was a time when you could do complex algebraic equations on the fly, plugging in the numbers necessary to literally plot graphs in your mind. You could handle eight to ten tasks at once, effortlessly keep an eye on your experiences as well as everyone else’s.
You can remember doing it. You can remember being in the cockpit, heart racing but head solid as ice, keeping tabs on everything like a waiter balancing six dishes on their arms, like a DJ paying close attention to dozens of sliders and knobs, like a circus performer keeping eight plates spinning at once. You know that was you, sitting there.
But then your brain exploded. You pulled on too much electricity, it short-circuited the connections in there, and it’s all gone now.
“I saved them,” you repeat for what must be the five hundredth time, hyperventilating at 3am as she cradles you in your arms, holding both your hands in her hands tightly to keep you from gouging your own eyes out. “I – I – I gave up my fucking brain to fix things, I fixed it for them even though I TOLD them everything was going to end badly, and they fucking hate me for it, they hate me and I should have just let them all fucking die if this was how they were going to fucking repay me for it-"
“I know, hun,” she says, the gentle words muffled against your hair, the hair that is only partially tamed at this point because she and Kurloz take turns hand-cutting it, because the buzz of the clippers sends you into a panic attack. “I’m sorry.”
This is not how quadrants are supposed to work. This is usually the purview of the moirail exclusively — they’re the ones who pacify you, who keep you in your own brain. Matesprits are supposed to be who you’re with when you’re in your own right mind.
That’s another reason you’re so grateful Latula is still with you. Most trolls, you think, would be uncomfortable at best and openly grossed out at worst by the idea of acting as moirail and matesprit at the same time. But after burning out, anyone who wants to be close to you has to take on the role of pacifier at some point.
Your emotional instability is another upsetting part of having burnt out. It only takes one poorly placed word or glance to send you into a meltdown spiral, with at this point thousands of years of words and glances available to ruminate on and bring back up when you’re freaking out. It’s not intentional, and it even happens with trolls who aren’t especially mean to you, because your fried brain just makes connections you don’t ask it to make.
You can’t hold any blackrom because of it — you’re a loose cannon, and your brain can’t parse the difference between romantic and platonic hatred.
You’re aware that Cronus is probably trying to flirt with you most of the time, although Latula says he’s also just an asshole, and you know she’s tried to get him to stop. It doesn’t matter what you consciously know. You have a panic response to seadwellers, your built-in discomfort with the caste system having turned predominantly to outright hatred with your brain’s new and improved muted sense of nuance, and he doesn’t respect you enough to develop any kind of healthy blackrom anyway.
He sees you as a child, you’re uncomfortable with blackrom altogether, and it definitely wouldn’t work out.
You think part of the reason that you keep letting him do it is because you feel so ashamed of being unable to participate. The vacillation between “maybe I deserve this” and “if only I could make this enjoyable for both of us” is a hell of a drug.
“Would it be better if I could re- re- re-“ You shake your head to try and clear your brain, “If I could be in that for him?”
Kurloz shrugs languidly, eyes fixated on you. Staring makes you upset, unless it’s him, because when it’s him, you know he’s actually interested in what you’re saying – he's figuring out what you mean, because you often don't notice when the string of words you've said don't actually make a lot of sense. “Doesn’t matter,” he signs. “You can’t do it. That’s the final word on the subject.”
You guess that’s true. It just… feels wrong.
When people think about severe brain issues, there’s often this understanding that the person experiencing them also doesn’t understand what’s going on. Most people only have the knowledge of dementia, as well as very extreme — and in some cases exclusively fictional — situations of psychosis, where the person experiencing these issues is unaware that they’re experiencing them. The pity often arises from the idea that you don’t know what’s going on, that you’re like a lost child, with little to no understanding of the grown-up world.
You have all the same understanding of the world that everyone else does. You just can’t process it the same way.
Sometimes, it makes you wish that you really were just completely untethered from reality. You wish that you were just stupid, that your attempts at communication sounded normal to you, that your brain only reached for the small words that were easily accessible to you.
It doesn’t. Your brain still regularly reaches for those algebraic equations, those highly technical bits of language, those knowledgeable analyses of complex systems of physics. The difference is that now, when you reach for them, your hands claw through pudding and come out with something that doesn’t even vaguely resemble what you were initially looking for.
It’s also hard to process the frustration that comes from that. This is just one reason that you exhibit those “self-injurious behaviors,” usually hitting yourself when you’re having an impromptu meltdown. For you, it’s equal parts frustration at yourself, wanting to punish yourself, and having literally no other way to express that you’re upset.
It’s not a big hit with people who already don’t like you.
“I’m sorry” is an easy phrase to grab, enough that it’s what you default to when Cronus says something mean to you for the millionth time. He usually isn’t as aggressive as he seems to be right now, though, and when he grabs your shoulder and spins you around to face him, it completely melts your brain and connects enough synapses for you to have a meltdown about it. You think the gibberish you’re trying to get out is something along the lines of “I’m sorry” and “It won’t happen again,” but it’s hard to be sure.
You’re still in your body enough to hear Latula say “What the fuck is wrong with you??” in that voice that has none of her signature gamer girl mask, and to hear Cronus’s halfhearted rebuttals as she pushes him out of the way.
She smells nice. You tell her that a lot, because you know she worries about it. You really mean it, too, because she smells like home, like the life you used to live before your brain got squeezed through a toothpaste tube, like an intact love life and the ability to just say words that make sense to you.
It’s the smell that always envelops you when she picks you up like you weigh nothing and carries you back to the room you share together. You’re still mumbling “I’m sorry”, more as a way to try and self-soothe than anything else, and when you’re grounded enough to stop, the room is dark and she’s got her arms tightly around you, trying to keep you from bashing your palms against your head.
You have a headache, and it takes you a few minutes to even realize why. It takes longer to trace back your memories far enough to remember why you started hitting yourself in the first place.
Losing memories is another one of the frustrating things about having burnt out.
You and Latula have been together for thousands of years, she tells you. To you, it may as well have been a couple of years, maximum. Your short and long-term memory are both shot, with primarily anterograde amnesia, which means you usually don’t remember new experiences you have. You ask a lot of questions to try and offset the amnesia, and she takes a lot of pictures to show you the important things you do together.
Amnesia is another thing that isn’t like the movies at all. You just sort of know a lot of things without having specific memories associated with them. When she brings up a recent experience, you usually know you lived through it, but you just can’t grab the details. You just have a general sense of the knowledge that you were there.
You also know that you don’t have complete amnesia. It’s not like your brain gets wiped every morning, and you wake up not knowing what’s going on. It’s just that engaging your memories is like sifting through mud for glass. You might grab what you’re looking for, sure, but you’re just as likely to have a pretty hard time figuring out what’s going on. In the worst cases, you might not get any of the information you’re looking for at all.
It also means you repeat things a lot. It’s one of the reasons you don’t talk to other people that often anymore — they’re the most likely to scowl and say “You’ve already told me that” instead of just humoring you. It’s the only reason you know you repeat things, because Latula just nods and asks questions like she probably did the first time you said anything.
As much as you love her, you also know your quadrant mixing doesn’t just reflect on you. It’s not really a secret that Latula and Kankri have a weird on-off pseudo-relationship that you’re sure is partially because of you.
To be fair, Latula also thinks Kankri is pretty annoying. She’s told you as much, usually when you’re complaining about how he handles you with kid gloves even more than he does everyone else. You doubt they could probably be quadranted for longer than a couple weeks at a stretch. But that doesn’t stop you from worrying that you’re holding her back.
“Why do you like him?” you ask Latula, carefully positioning your skateboard under your feet to try and master this kickflip. “No one likes him.”
Latula thinks over the question, which is one sign you’ve learned to pick up on that you probably haven’t asked that question in at least a long time. “I think he does care about people, ya know?” she says, grabbing your arm and keeping you standing as you lose your balance. “He’s annoying about it, but it’s because at his core, he thinks everyone deserves to be respected.”
You frown a little. “I guess,” you reply, kicking the skateboard about halfway as far as it should go and stumbling away from the ensuing crash. “W-w-would—" you get stuck in a cycle of blinking your eyes and hiss angrily at it, shaking your head, before it subsides and you can figure out what you were saying – "Would you actually want to quadrant with him?”
She laughs, a charming sound that mimics the protagonists’ laughs in all her favorite games. “Nah,” she says. “Prolly not.” She shrugs and spins her skateboard on its head, a repetitive motion she does to process her thoughts pretty frequently. “I kinda like the setup we have, anyway. Stepping outta those boxes is kinda fun. And between you and me—“ she puts her hand up to her mouth in a mock whispering position, even though there’s no one else around to hear her “— I think he’s too normiecore to not be weird about the quadrant mixing I like to do.”
That gets a laugh out of you, breaking your concentration a little and causing your foot to hit the side of your board, sending you on your ass. You don’t mind that much; that’s what the helmet is for. “He’s a piece of shit annoying vanilla ally, I guess,” you say with a grin.
“Exactly!”
Your insults tend to get received as a lot meaner than you usually mean. It’s that aforementioned lack of nuance — you’re usually just trying to engage in the same fun banter you used to do before you burnt out, but it’s hard for you to choose words that get received that way.
You just sort of call it like you see it. You think Kankri's fucking annoying, so you say as much. When someone you care about upsets you, you tell them. You don't usually have enough foresight not to mock Cronus, who you also fucking hate, even though the way he bites back is pretty mean and tends to make you spiral.
And yet, you know that it can be upsetting to the people you love, too. You're not trying to be mean, so you just say things, and then you have to try and see whether that hurts them.
You don't remember this, but it was pretty hard on your relationships for the first few sweeps – you would call someone a "fucking dipshit" when you were trying to express that you thought they were being silly, they would be frustrated at you, you would flip to a fawn reaction, they would get upset about it.
Today, there's been enough experience with it that when you do it, they check for other signs that you're actually upset, then let it go. You take it as a general sign that they're nicer to you than everyone else, with some slight knowledge in the back of your mind that they probably developed these skills over years and years and years of knowing you.
You know that you'll never know exactly how much work Latula and Kurloz put into caring about you. You know they've probably had their own issues that they had to deal with without talking to you about it, the same way you know you try to avoid bringing the mood down by talking about how frustrating this experience is all the time.
Without them, you would be lost. Even more so than you feel like you are sometimes.
You aren't able to express exactly how important Latula and Kurloz are to you. Your words get twisted, and your brain flips back on itself, and the big words that you had access to in a previous life no longer express the emotions that you have in your brain.
So instead, you just let yourself love them.
You repay them by trying your hardest not to be ashamed of everything you are now. You repay them by trying your hardest to just enjoy yourself. You repay them by trying to store things away that they find important, so you can return to them whenever possible.
You know it's enough for them. One day, you hope it'll be enough for both of you.