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This is not a story about saving the world.
This doesn’t have earth shaking implications. No one outside of this room will be affected, and tomorrow, when the sun rises, they’ll get up again and nothing will have changed.
So, no, as much as they feel like they’re drowning right now, this is not a big deal.
This is just Raine having a meltdown in the bathroom of some stupid community centre.
They don’t know how they got here.
It’s a new building, sort of. It was a police station, but after it was almost entirely destroyed during the Collector’s reign and the police were abolished, it was decided that something more productive would be done with the building after it was rebuilt. This is the first day it’s officially open, and Darius and Raine decided to swing by and see how things are going.
They can feel the cold cinderblock on their bare skin as they’re huddled against the wall, curled in on themself. Their dress is backless, something they used to wear to useless coven formalities after they were inaugurated as Head Bard and before they started trying not to give Terra a reason. It’s a bright red. They almost never wear bright red anymore, they always hated the particular shade associated with the Bard Coven.
Darius gave up trying to verbally comfort them who-knows-how-long ago, and now he’s just leaning on the wall outside of the stall while they try to stop shaking. He’s tapping his foot slowly, each beat half a second apart. It’s very methodical. They’re not sure if he means for it to help them or if it’s just for the hell of it, but it’s nice to have some tiny predictable thing right now, just a simple grounding rhythm.
Overall? They’re not having the best time right now. Pretty horrible, in fact.
It’s just- everything. Everything at once, sickly-sweet tea in their mouth and slime in their bones and wooden skin, they feel like every fucking thing is trying to control them at the same time. But they’re not, they’re perfectly safe. Just their brain reacting to a threat that isn’t there.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong now?” Darius asks, sounding slightly impatient. They don’t blame him, this was supposed to be a fun little victory outing and instead he’s trying to get his currently nonverbal friend to tell him what the utterly nonsensical problem is.
They can’t talk, though. They can figure out what they want to say, they can open their mouth a little, even, but there’s that familiar tightness in their throat that stops the words from coming out. Trying just makes them frustrated.
“I don’t know what you want me to do, Raine.” He says, and his foot goes still, a final tap that’s strangely resonant, even over their shaky breathing. “Can you just talk to me? I want to help.”
They make a sort of awkward croaking noise when they try to say I’m sorry, I don’t know why this is happening, I can’t talk.
“Do you want me to leave you alone?” He asks tiredly after a moment of silenc. They shake their head quickly, before realizing that he can’t see them, so they grab his foot almost frantically and hope it gets the message across. They don’t want him to go, they don’t want to be alone with their thoughts.
A sigh, sounding tired and a tiny bit exasperated.
“Okay.” He says. “I’ll stay.”
They sit there for a while in relative silence, and Raine doesn’t take their hand off his foot. They start drumming the fingers of their free hand against their thigh in some attempt of calming themself, and it helps a little. They still can’t talk.
“I don’t know what to do to help you, Raine.” He says. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
They don’t even know what triggered this. One minute they were talking to a high schooler who had spent the last few months volunteering to help fix the place up, they took a sip of the fruit juice they’d been serving in those red plastic cups- they’d significantly overdressed, apparently, the tone of the event was much more casual than they had thought- and it just tasted exactly like that sickly sweet tea. And suddenly there was slime in their lungs and their skin was wood and there was vines around their wrists and ankles and-
But that wasn’t it, of course, even if it felt real as it had when it happened. They’d already drunk half the cup by then, it was fine. Nothing was wrong. They’d even whistled into it before they had their first sip, that usually helped with this stuff.
But alas, here they are.
They took their scroll out, took went to the notes, and typed out an explanation.
I can’t talk right now. This happens when I get overwhelmed sometimes. I had a flashback, I don’t know why. I’ve calmed down a little but I’m still nonverbal.
They pass the scroll to him, and he crouches down to take it from their hand, then reads it.
“Do you want to leave?” He asks after a moment.
They stand up and step out of the stall. Darius understands that as a yes, nodding, and starting out of the bathroom. They follow, arms crossed over their chest.
***
They make it out of the community centre without incident, thankfully. Darius says a final few words to Heather, the director of the facility, before they leave, and then they’re off.
Raine has always liked flying. It’s an odd sensory experience, but overall good. The air flowing fast over their face, their hair getting windswept, looking down and seeing the landscape blur below them.
“So what- can you talk about it yet?” Darius asks after they’ve been in the air for a while, looking back.
They open their mouth, checking to see if the sort of tightness in their throat is still there. It is, but they don’t feel very distressed anymore, just the sort of shakiness that they always feel after incidents like this. They want to curl up in the nest for a little while and be alone.
They shake their head.
“Okay then.” He says, the same practiced air of calm in his voice that they’ve heard a million times when he doesn’t want to let his actual feelings on the matter be known. Pretty much every time he’s not bored or exasperated. “I’ll just, uh… take you home.”
And that’s that.
Just a mundane little meltdown.