dec catch all

[deconstruct]

Who: Andyr + plotted peeps
When: all of December
Where: planet sad times
What: stuff, lori. things.
Warnings: will warn in thread headers


[ see threads below for starters, hit me up at wuzzafuzzle if you want a thing!! there's an OTA top level over here as well! ]

Comments

[alterplex]

[ Venom turns his cassette player off with one hand when Andyr starts talking, cutting off the quiet undercurrent of Laura Branigan's "Gloria" humming under the downbeat of their sparring session.

("you really don't remember; was it something that he said? are the voices in your head calling—").

Sweat pools by his temple, and Venom grinds it with his heel where it lands in dust. Listening to the spread of Andyr's words, a steady stream of consciousness accompanying the rise and fall of their pulses.

It's a lot to consider. ]

How real this place is, huh.

...That depends.

[ He finally says, after he gives himself a moment to digest. As if he has to dismantle this loaded weapon carefully, not that he thinks Andyr needs anyone to be delicate with him, to treat him like a breakable object. ]

If this isn't real [ posing the hypothetical first, without discrediting the possibility altogether ], then you're gonna have to think about why it is that you're choosing to see what you're seeing.

[ His forearm swipes along his brow, shrapnel-horn glinting dully in uneven light. ]

What you described, I'm guessing those things were for utility. This... [ a wave towards their surroundings. ] ...if this is supposed to benefit you, someone has a bad sense of humor.

[deconstruct]

[ as venom speaks, andyr's listening intently, because ahab has been someone he deeply respects since the day he'd met him, but he can't stay still while having this talk. too much nervous energy in him. he makes his way to an out cropped tree branch or piece of debris that he can latch his hands onto, and starts doing pull ups.

the burn in his body helps him to feel more real, more present. something deeply needed when going over this. V makes a good point - the VRs were mostly used as something pleasant, and while he hadn't ever been in one personally, he'd expect that the House utilized versions would try for something calming and blissful for the sake of saying they were being humane when someone came inspecting. and yet, he still barks a laugh at the concept. ]

No one running those places wanted to benefit me. Just keep me still. [ how many in the labs or the guard staff had probably argued for just euthanizing him years ago? they'd never gone out of their way to make him comfortable. the use of a VR system would be to keep his distracted, and not fighting treatments and operations physically, he'd think. ]

Maybe they think I'd catch on to it quicker, if everything was perfect. [ perhaps it's another form of torture, there's certainly several on the House team back home who'd be more than happy to get back at him for the harm he's gladly done to either them or their coworkers. and yet, even that doesn't entirely fit, for one very obvious reason. ] But even like this, all the monsters and shit, and the ship crashing, and people leaving, I--

[ andyr's voice seizes up, body following suit, as he pauses after the last pull up, going still. it's feels like a betrayal to everyone he'd sworn he wouldn't leave behind. to everything he'd promised himself he'd never let go of, and all the rage still burning under his skin. things andyr's drilled into himself never to accept. ]

I don't wanna leave.

[alterplex]

[ There's mercury in Andyr's blood, a freeform anger that pulses with each breath. Venom can fancy that he smells the corrosion on Andyr when he exhales— a cloud of malaise.

A rock uproots itself under Venom's foot when he digs at it with his heel, contemplating. He toes at it, then applies pressure until it crumbles from the fissure that he'd seen in its side.

Some small fragment of his nonexistent heart aches in time to the grind of pebbles under his boot. ]

...Then that's your reality.

[ 'A' reality. What Andry feels, that's unequivocally, inextricably, infuriatingly his own to nurse; Venom understands, and his footfalls take him by Andyr's left to put a broad palm on his heaving shoulder. The real hand. ]

Can't speak for you, but I know what it's like. Dreaming with my eyes open. [ Artifice taps artifice, bionic to horn. Metal fingers click against the protrusion in his skull, proving a point: some parts of me are less human that I would like. ] There were dreams I didn't want to wake from.

WHY IS YOUR WRITING SO GORGEOUS FFFFF

[deconstruct]

[ there's a warm palm settled over bones that feel too fragile at the moment, with a heavy, reassuring weight, and this too, is something that aches in andyr to leave behind. ahab's been something treasured and desperately needed to him, something that almost feels like too much of a replacement for a man no longer able to look over him. a tremor pulses through him, though his features remain unfocused, blank and distant. there's only so much that can be held in.

he wants to crumble, wants to scream, wants to rend whatever's nearby until someone can tell him why, and its such a familiar frustration that bubbles up in him, rising in his chest to feel like it's choking, clogging up his throat.

a hand lifts, scrubbing over his face, heel digging against his eye until he sees white spots on the back of his eyelid. maybe it would've been easier, he thinks, if this was all some digital pipe dream made up to keep him complacent. maybe then, he could leave it behind without looking back.

knowing it's real almost feels like the worse outcome, and andyr hates himself for that too. ]

How do you do it? When you have to let it go. [ discolored eyes lift to ahab, looking to him as if he has all the answers to this world and the next and the next. ]

BECAUSE YOU'RE SO GOOD... the true MVP?!

[alterplex]

[ Those eyes are difficult to meet. They're a child's eyes, the intangible equivalent of small fingers tugging at a sleeve— the kind of eyes that you have to disappoint by saying "no, I'm sorry, I have to go".

(If Venom had answers, he wouldn't be the wreck that he is today; held together, yes, but only through a vague death wish.) ]

I tell myself [ he says, when he finally opens his mouth after a prolonged beat ] that losing is better than forgetting.

[ This is a subject that's still raw; it only manifests as a slight wince, a furrow in his immovable features that smooths over once he brings himself back to center. His hand squeezes once, then lets go. ]

What are you afraid of?

THAT IS A LIE, BUT I FORGIVE U BC UR WONDERFUL :>

[deconstruct]

[ 'losing is better than forgetting.' andyr rolls the thought around in his head for a while, considering the merit of it, imagining both - those he's already lost, and the thought of having them wiped from his mind instead. his mother, his sister, his father.

it doesn't take long to decide, no. he wouldn't trade what precious memories he has of them for the world. the same, he decides, goes for ahab, and ronan, and steve and dutch. it seems like a kind of death, to leave them behind, but in that case, it's no different than the others he's lost.

the more difficult thought, here, is the latter - what are you afraid of? andyr doesn't like to give voice to those things. there's a hesitation in his voice, like everything in his body is pulling at the words, trying to hold them down, and it comes out almost rasped. ]

Missing them. Not being able to turn it off. [ losing his life, his personhood, his free will, had been hard enough the first time. it'd taken something extreme to hold on to the capability to fight, and that, really, is the sole piece of importance to him. there's no point to him, after that. ]

Breaking.

[alterplex]

[ Ah, Andyr might as well drive the blade in and twist it until Venom can't feel his heart anymore. Those words hurt more than Venom can reconcile, because forgetting is one thing but missing is another; these miscellaneous aches that come without warning and leave you with no options to mediate. ]

You won't be able to turn it off.

[ He speaks with a sense of knowing, a tranquility that comes with the burden of experience. It's the sort of resignation that settles into the cracks on his face, the sort of melancholy that people don't expect from a man who looks like he's better suited to discarding emotion instead of keeping them.

But most of all, it's an admission. A quiet one that he rolls between his teeth: I hurt, too. ]

You're gonna miss it every day. It's going to eat at you. [ Not particularly reassuring, huh. ] —But you're not gonna break.

You've got people looking out for you.

[deconstruct]

[ not particularly reassuring, no, but honest in a way that's leaves no room for uncertainty, and that's what andyr needs. an answer, a finality to end the anxiety of it. if he knows what blow is coming, he can brace for it, and looking to ahab with the clear resonance of the admission in the lines of his features, andyr knows he can believe him.

something about that, the sincere, unguarded pain, and the generosity in sharing it, reaches in past everything andyr's been keeping stoic and still. if he can take that ache and come out the other side of it a man like ahab, andyr thinks that's far from a loss. the problem is, perhaps unfairly, he's assigned too much of his dad's image to the man, and the thought that he could ever be so sturdy and unmoving seems impossible.

least of all when he thinks of the sum total of people looking out for him left back home. ]

They're all gone. [ andyr's voice rasps, expression scrunched up like there's a physical pain wracked through his frame, and shoulders shaking with an effort to keep still, to keep upright, to stay strong, that says much more about what the state of his being has been for the last six years that anything else. ]

It's just me, and I'm not enough.

[ his sister, his dad, the entirety of his life, the hopes and dreams he had as a kid. it's been striped down and discarded, and he's by himself against a force he can't fight, not really. andyr's had so much more handed back to him here, and once that's taken from him too, he can't imagine doing anything else but crumbling once he's back inside those prison walls. mind swamped with the thoughts of each loved one he's found here, and the inevitable parting from them, andyr cracks, and for the first time in years, an open sob is ripped from his throat, sounding broken and painful. ]

[alterplex]

[ pain, the great equalizer. andyr hunches and bends, pulls fragments of himself out of his own body, and admits that he isn't enough; as if people are made of pliable, malleable parts instead of brittle bone that yes, do break under enough pressure. no one is amorphous.

but it's fine to break isn't a sentiment that anyone wants to hear, is it? not when you've been coached in survival, when you know that the moment you let anyone dig their fingers into you, you're done.

you're not alone isn't something venom can convince andyr of, either— that's an epiphany that's self-made. he doesn't have it in him to condescend andyr by saying things that they both already know. ]

No. It's enough.

[ he's survived— he's alive. for venom, that's more than enough.

warm shoulders and gentle palms are things he can rarely provide, but he offers them now with the same sort of awkward empathy that speaks to the fact that shares the same unforgiving lifestyle that andyr's been mired in. he bridges the gap in distance between them and places one hand between andyr's shoulderblades, lets the kid rest his forehead on his shoulder if he chooses to.

(braces himself for struggling if andyr chooses that, instead— again, violence helps.) ]