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Entry tags:
[open] you told them all I was crazy
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.
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.
I. Both!
So. Hello. I'm Mal.
[She goes with an official sort of looking nod and a Bright Fake Smile, before she nods at the tray.] Healers sent me by. See if you needed, you know, food or maybe some potions to help you sleep, or, you know. Other stuff.
[A pause.]
.... I don't do baths. Just letting you know.
no subject
Is her hair really pink? Is he imagining that?
no subject
"I am ... really here. Just to let you know. Really here, really me."
no subject
But Mal has done them both the service of explaining what she's here for, clearly and without the kind of ambiguity a lyrium-deprived mind likes to latch onto and twist, and it gives Simon the anchor he needs to declare her trustworthy enough for the moment.
"Do you--" It takes him a moment; the catch in his too-dry throat forces him to start again. "Do you have any elfroot? Or anything stronger, even, but I'd take the elfroot." Sleep is out of the question as long as he can avoid it, but pain relief is another matter.
no subject
"I have regeneration potions? And elfroot, and oh! Royal elfroot, that's better. And, oh, crystal grace! That's really good. So take your pick. Ah - I can't mix things together? No healer, just helper."
no subject