[open] you told them all I was crazy

[onlyhymns]

WHO: Cade, Simon, and anyone brave enough to visit them
WHAT: Blue Flu Boogaloo: Two Dudes Askew, Hijinks Ensue
WHEN: Phase II
WHERE: Simon's room, now with more Cade
NOTES: Ultra mega content warning for a variety of topics that might come up in flashbacks, most notably childhood sexual abuse, graphic violence, and possibly more which will be added as necessary.

I. Visit Both!

During the day, when they're both awake, the room is just a regular disaster zone. Simon's tools are laid out with no rhyme or reason, anything that could have at any point been tidy is in total disarray, and the room contains a frightening sense of lost control.
For more specifics, see their individual prompts:

II. Just Cade

Being easily worked up at the best of times, the lyrium problem has Cade nearly out of his mind and dissociating for what began as small spurts and has expanded to nearly all of his waking hours. It can be difficult to tell, being that it most often manifests as reclusiveness, with the thirty-something man sitting with his knees curled to his chest at the far end of his bed, his demeanor that of an eight-year-old with a monster in the closet. When it looks different, it's endless pacing, agitation, frantic muttering, the telltale signs of someone in danger of hurting himself.
Sometimes Simon or visitors can bring him out of it; sometimes he doesn't know who they are, or where he is. Dosing him with more lyrium results in pockets of lucidity, which rapidly turn despairing as he realizes he's losing it again, and they often aren't worth the trouble.

III. Just Simon

Anyone entering the room could be forgiven for not immediately realizing that Simon is there, when he is. It may be the first time in his entire life that he hasn't been the most immediately noticeable person in a given space. His bed is strewn with tools and books, the blankets pulled over his head to dampen whatever noise Cade makes, and beneath the covers, he shivers faintly.

He doesn't sleep, though, when he can help it--not here. Never here. He fights sleep now as hard as he's ever done, and if it means hauling himself out of bed inch by freezing, head-pounding, light-sensitive inch to go seek pharmaceutical help for it, he does as often as he can manage. His ability to manage grows increasingly less frequent by the day. He's promised himself to the researchers as a test subject, all but flinging himself at them in his desperation to find something that will help, magic or otherwise, but his memory of that commitment fades in and out and gradually dissolves altogether unless he's reminded of it.

He knows how this goes. It isn't the first time he's found himself in this lyrium-deprived boat with no memory of how he got there. The powerlessness is the point.

Comments

[paladingus]

It's a good thing that Cade is fit to open the door, because leaving Wren out there to wait would be cruel, but damned if Simon is going to budge from the fetal position. Every noise feels as though someone has stomped directly on his forehead.

But for Wren, when he does half-realize that it's her, he'll at least roll over and peer out from beneath the sweat-stained pillow. It does not, perhaps, register with as much meaning as it might if he had dosed himself more recently--his mind floats important and pay attention, sweetened with a strain of disconnected good to see her, but he can't completely grasp the why of it through the fog.

"D'you need us?" His voice, too, is rusty.

[limier]

Her glance skates from Cade's chest to the bed in the corner. Well, none of that’s good.

"No," She steps in, sees the door shuts behind her. "At ease."

As though that's anything any of them are much capable of. She fishes a shaking hand into a pocket, holds it there a moment, willing stillness that won't come. A beat, several pages and ink withdrawn. Clearing space on the desk (a wider sweep than she means to) is half an excuse to relieve the urgent pressure to move, and half,

Well. They’ll get to that. First things first, and second things second, and this would all be a great deal easier to think through if her veins would stop humming up through her teeth. An eye across any pitchers, glasses present; they’ll need water, for all it won’t feel it helps. She gives up on the hunt as abruptly as it begins — remind someone else to do it — to stoop beside Simon’s bed, get as close of a glance as the pillow allows. A frigid hand to his forehead, she pulls away, turns to Cade.

"Do you know how this goes?"

Either of them. She should have asked before, but this isn't something you ever speak of. It’s far too late to hope of a sensible answer now, but the manner of it might at least give her something.

[onlyhymns]

Cade backs up to admit her, still looking like he isn't at all sure what's going on, but is confident that someone does and they'll deal with it. Watching her attend to Simon, he stands there stupidly, hands at his sides, fingers occasionally giving an odd twitch.
"What?" he asks, when Wren turns to him. How what goes? Was she talking?

[paladingus]

The chill of her hand soothes him, even if the marrow-deep ache in his own from the cold of them makes a subconscious part of him hurt with empathy for how it must be paining her too. Nonetheless, he leans into the touch, just-perceptibly, while it lasts. Safety and support, you are dear to me, before that too floats away again.

He's given up on water long ago. It hasn't occurred to him even for a moment that the negligence might be why his head is screaming the way it is.

Still, he should know that--should know it better than Cade, who was always the dutiful knight, always the platonic model of pious obedience, who would never have defied orders at all, let alone so routinely as to know this whole dance like muscle memory. But Simon had never been alone in confinement when they'd cut his rations. It had never been incumbent upon him to fetch his own water, or keep track of the guards' comings and goings as their names and faces grew increasingly foreign in his mind. It's a different matter entirely when he doesn't know what brought this punishment on.

"Too well." He might remember only intermittently who Wren is to him right now, but the answer to that question is seared into his mind. "Doesn't get easier."

[limier]

"No," She agrees, and how Simon knows is a point to consider later, when considering things is altogether less intensive of a task. "It does not."

Another glance, sidelong, to Cade. She braces against the desk, fingers dug like claws about a pen. Let him stand. Better to stand, however shakily. Better to keep moving.

"Your names are Cade Harrimann, and Simon Ashlock." Ink tracks the jagged blocks of script, records word for oversized word. "This is home. You are safe."

What little use any of that is. A token for her sake, as much as it's anything; there's nothing to be done of this, nothing she can do directly,

But Maker knows they have to do something.

"And this will end."

One way or the other. She blows on the ink, shoulders tensing at the wait.

[onlyhymns]

The platonic model of pious obedience is about as useful as a dog on sedatives, so unused to the lack of lyrium-- and affected by it so extremely in tandem with his typical undercurrent of anxiety-- that saying Cade is working at even half-capacity is too generous.
He watches Wren fixedly, nods when he understands his name, nods again but less certainly when she reassures him of where they are, then seems to ramp up with nerves again at her conclusion.
"Am I-- ser, am I in trouble?" The question is urgent, life or death. "I don't... I don't remember." The last time he was in this room for an extended period, he was waiting to be executed. Or... did he never leave it? Is that still now?