Work Text:
“Can I confess something potentially morally abhorrent?” Occtis had paused in his reading for maybe half a minute before speaking up, staring at the wall with various documents and letters from Venatus held loosely in his hand.
Thimble doesn’t even pause in her current task, which is pulling on Pin’s ears and avoiding the lighthearted nips the fox aims back at her. “I’ve never stopped you before have I?”
Occtis shifts but doesn’t turn to look at her fully. “I’m jealous”
Thimble pauses in her roughhousing to look at him now. “Of?”
“Azune”
She laughs a little, “you’ll need to be more specific than that. What are you jealous of? Hal doting on him? The weird sunset eyes? The rugged muscles?” Her tone was definitely teasing, but Occtis could tell he had her attention. He thought to the day before, Azune sobbing and pleading to Murray and Thimble. He had been covered in tears and sweat, snot dripping from his face, begging to be remembered, struggling to breathe. From an objective point of view it should be disgusting. Pitiful, at least.
“I’m jealous of the panic attack”
“Oh” Thimble stood still a moment, then moved to the table in from of him and took a seat, swinging her feet slightly of the edge. She waited for him to continue.
“I think I miss it.”
“What’s there to miss about having panic attacks?”
“It’s hard to say,” Occtis’s hand raises to rest over where his heart used to be. He’d want to call it an unconscious movement but the truth was that every movement was very conscious these days. Like putting on a play. Or rather, closer to being a prop he supposed. He remembered what that lack of control was like, the nights in his dorm room trying to catch his breath, leaving bite marks on his arms, his hands, the sides of his fingers. Anything to combat the feeling that gravity was gone. That the air had been replaced with helium and he was unmoored and floating. The buzzing at the very top layer of his skin and behind his eyes.
“I think I miss the illusion that someone is coming to help,” he said after what felt like a long silence. This seemed to take Thimble aback.
“What does that mean?”
“It means…” he gathers his thoughts a moment, “Babies cry so that someone will come help them. If they’re ignored enough they actually lose the instinct to cry. I was ignored plenty but I never learned the trick to indifference I guess.” Not technically entirely true. He had learned how not to cry as a child pretty quickly, but it would just build until something broke and he would scream and kick and bite until a nursemaid pinned him to the ground.
“When I was still alive, I knew I was alone. But there was a plausible deniability in the very back of my head you know? That, in theory, someone could hypothetically find me and help me.” He thinks of Murray plying Azune with promises of ice cream, acting like he was a crying child. Pitiful. Disgusting. Something in his chest felt like it was stretching to try and grab it. Like he could hoard sympathy. What a terrible dead thing he was.
“And now?” Thimble breaks him out of his thoughts.
“Well I’m dead now. My brain doesn’t release norepinephrine, my heart doesn’t race, and certainly nobody can save me.” She’s quiet. Perhaps he’d been a bit too maudlin. “I mean, I miss cake too.” He jokes, “not just my neurotic episodes. Lots of things to miss.” He is absolutely not hitting the mark right now, oh no.
“No, no I get it I think.” Thimble starts petting Pin again, who has somehow magically teleported onto Occtis’s lap without him noticing. “Thjazi did all kinds of things I hated. He hid things from me, he cheated at cards, he hoarded all the snacks even though I would barely make a dent in them!” She takes a deep breath, “and I want so much for him to be around to do any of those things.” She sits on Pin’s head. “I dunno, I think we all miss the things that suck when they’re attached to things we love.”
Thimble thinks of how she hasn’t cried since the farramh. How people keep asking if she’s ok, but having nothing else to say when she responds that No she absolutely isn’t. She thinks of revenge, and rain-soaked wings, and the loss of the illusion that someone can help.
“I think,” she says softly, eyes still and forever dry,
“I understand”