*** HARMONIA has joined 710.35.155.17 <HARMONIA> Buongiorno, sorry I missed you. <HARMONIA> I'll happily get back to you as soon as I'm done with whatever business I'm on. <HARMONIA> Please leave a message.
[It's so strange. Because he's still the one who feels like he's intruding, sometimes. Was the one intruding. Was. He was so happy and horrified when Max and Will showed up, because he knows, knew, Steve didn't want them to suffer this place, but still, having them there, having them close, it — meant something.]
[Means something. Meant something.]
[They were family in the way that only people who have been through something terrible together can be family. Time and space don't matter when it comes to that. He should know. The person he would give the most to have back at his side besides Steve and Riley is someone he knew only a fraction of the time he's known most of the people in this house. A thin slice of time, but so indescribably significant.]
[Of course he felt like he was intruding. Of course he wanted to do for Max anything he could. Steve loves her. She's his family. It's not a decision. It's just how things are.]
[That's not over, of course. If anything, he has to take it more seriously now. If Steve isn't here, then he has to do what Steve would for them. Which is a concept Max would hate, but it's not a decision. It's just how things are.]
[These are all things he has thought about in a distant, abstract way, too far removed from his reality of distorted time and pain, nonphysical and distracting. Now, looking at Max standing before him with her eyes shining with tears, he just thinks: why is this happening?]
Oh, [he says, quietly; and then after a moment,] I see, [and he is so small. Compared to the larger-than-life presence commanding the mobile camp in Felfri, the version of him she first met, this is paper to steel. There's barely anything to him. And he doesn't know what to do. Apologize, maybe. Again. That's his instinct.]
[She'd hate it, though. So he doesn't. Instead, he — somehow, for some reason, without thinking about it, sits again. Folds himself small, like a child hiding from a storm, presses his back against the headboard, knees up to his chest, arms wrapped around them.]
I don't want to leave. [A quiet admission. His gaze is fixed somewhere around the floorboards on the other side of the room.] But you don't have to. Leave. Either.
[ Eyes shining, light behind her in the doorway—Max must look so much like an animal at this moment, still.
It's true. He is different. A shell of himself. She hasn't seen him like this, but he's seen her. Physically shredded to pieces, ankles literally cracked open, tears purely from pain and distress. Still not a way she'd want anyone else to see her, but at least with physical pain there's something tangible to point to as an excuse. Wouldn't anyone feel hurt about this? Emotional pain, that feels more subjective.
Even though right now watching this it feels worse than having her arm blown open, worse than her feet breaking off at the ankle, because at least she knew one of the only people to fight for her was still there. She knew when she could see him.
Someone who knew. Who she didn't have to tell about all of it.
It makes Max very scared. As the people she knows start vanishing one after another, even if she's known none of them for as long as Steve knew just about any of his friends here—what if Will's next and she's alone, the sole occupant from the nightmare of Hawkins, Indiana.
Is she here because she deserves that? This as a second chance at life, forced to kill and only to temporarily see her friends before everyone—good or bad—leaves eventually so what's the point of trying, and Max very swiftly scrubs her eyes with the back of her hand, because those are the kind of thoughts that sent her down a very dark road that she can't really say she's found her way back down. ]
Okay. [ It sounds a little thick. Max doesn't know where to go and after a long moment settles for simply sliding down the wall near the door and resting on the floor.
And, for awhile... She just doesn't say anything more. ]
Edited (tfw your cws get deleted when you reload the page and you forget to retype them) 2023-06-14 04:16 (UTC)
[He doesn't feel better. Not even a little bit. But the worse that he expected to come, doesn't. Instead there's just the same. Nothing better, nothing worse. Equilibrium.]
[She sits on the floor. Maybe he should offer her something to sit on. A pillow. Instead, he grabs the pillow to himself again, feeling a spike of territorial instinct not dissimilar to the way he mantled over Steve's corpse during that long month he was dead and gone. Mine, he thinks, and ducks his head to press his face against the fabric and breathe it in and hide and think about how much time he's wasting, how many better things he could be doing.]
[He should be comforting her. Steve would be, no matter what else was going on. But he's not Steve. He's just him. And everything he was ever told about the things that make him good, the work he's done to make himself the way he is, all those words are too far away to hear right now. They're out there somewhere, muffled and quiet, but they can't reach him.]
[It feels like something is carving out his heart. It's hard to breathe with his face pressed against the pillow, and he thinks for a moment about just staying and seeing how long it takes for his body to panic; but he doesn't want Max to see that. He doesn't want Max to see any of this. Still, he's not mortified, somehow. It's just all switched off.]
[Eventually he comes up for air. He hasn't cried, but his eyes are wet and shining with tears that haven't fallen simply because he's out of energy. Tucking his chin against the pillow (because if he tries very hard he can pretend, he can pretend, he can), he watches Max with dull eyes, trying to understand, even if it feels like polishing rocks with more rocks. What is he . . . supposed to do here? What does he do? There's a responsibility, he knows there is, but when he reaches out to find it, he can't find anything at all.]
[He wants to be alone. He very desperately does not want to be alone. The problem, it occurs to him, is that neither of them want to be alone, but the person they want to be not alone with is gone. And here the two of them are, near enough to be strangers.]
[Letting out a slow, shuddering breath, he leans over the side of the bed to a small closed box that is usually kept there. It holds — not much. Granola bars, pudding cups, water bottles. He pulls two of those out; then, making a face, a granola bar as well, which he lays on the comforter in front of him and proceeds to ignore. One of the water bottles, he rolls across the floor to Max.]
Headache, [he mumbles, thickly and pretty incoherently, and cracks the seal on his own. Because he hates to cry. He hates the way it makes his skin feel, tight and crackly, and the way it makes his head feel, overstuffed and aching. People say it makes you feel better to cry, better out than in, and all he can think is that they're phenomenally stupid and have never cried in the real way, which is ugly and brutal and nauseating, an awful storm contained in a too-small body.]
[ Time stretches and Max just drops her eyes to the floor. When Giorno starts watching her, she can tell. She's quiet, and he's quiet, but there's a fundamental shift in the energy of Steve's basement getaway. She's waiting for...something.
There's a fear in Max's heart. That now that Steve's gone, she'll be made to leave. It's irrational, because they aren't those kinds of people. She doesn't think either Giorno or Fugo is the sort to throw anyone out on their ass, but at the moment she feels miserable and it's so much easier to let that marinate her.
Let it tell her that her tie to this place is gone.
They're shitty thoughts. But sometimes, she's a shitty person. She hates them as soon as they wrap around her, especially with Giorno like this. Especially when he rolls her the water bottle and she feels something squeeze her dead heart.
Not entertaining those. Not entertaining those thoughts, not right now. Not today.
She lets the bottle roll into her outstretched hand, nodding slightly. ] Thanks.
[ Soft and mumbled, not the most put together herself. Max doesn't yet open the water, but she places it in front of her knees, up and near her chest. Much like Giorno, Max struggles with what to do now. If there is anything to do. She doesn't think there's anything she can say—nothing that wouldn't sound hollow, so she'd rather not say it. Isn't sure what there is to do, because she's never known how to deal with loss herself, so how can she comfort someone else? ]
[It's easier to feel like a shitty person now, he's finding. Or maybe more accurately, it's hard, almost impossible, to feel worthless when Steve Harrington gives you the time of day. Once upon a time, Giorno thought someone like Steve had to be full of it, but — instead he is, has always been, the most honest and forthcoming person Giorno has ever met. Without him, it feels like waking up from a dream that made perfect sense asleep but withers to nothing when you're conscious. The logic isn't there. He can't find the connective tissue that made the goodness Steve saw in him true.]
[It will occur to him later that she feels the same, probably. Right now, that numbness seeps behind his eyes and into his temples, the pounding beginnings of a headache, water be damned. He looks at the granola bar again. Looks away.]
[More time passes.]
[When his voice comes again, it's rough. Light. Quiet, quiet. Small. There are echoes of fear in there somewhere, but other things too. Guilt, mostly. That's a heavy, heavy counterpoint.]
I'm not— [Mm. He clears his throat.] Not good at. Things like — normal, normal things. Not like him. I can't — do, um—
[He closes his mouth. Bites down very, very hard on the tip of his tongue. Stop, stop, stop. Try harder. Do better. Come on. One thing, just one thing.]
We — had a deal.
[I'd like to know you, if I can find a way to be a little more — communicative.]
[Is that something that would help you? Is that something you'd want?]
[His expression is in real danger of crumpling for good. But he's trying. He takes shallow breaths and holds them; breaks the seal of his water bottle and holds the lid on for texture under his fingertips.]
. . . don't need to do things perfectly, or have the right words. That's okay. Just trying to understand, and get better, that's the deal. No j— [His words catch in the back of his throat, just for a moment, on the verge of hyperventilating.] —judgment.
There aren't — good words.
[For this, here, now. All of it's bad. He doesn't — know if she'll even understand, he knows how he sounds, how difficult it must be to piece the words together. But he's trying, with every ounce of will that he's got, to explain: he can't do this, and he doesn't expect her to be able to. If she's willing to be imperfect and fucked up about this right now, he is too. He has to be, here of all places.]
[ Max honestly isn't expecting anything other than a grunts and mumbles, monosyllabic answers like he's taking a page out of Eleven's book. When not just one word but two rises from his mouth, when two turns into three, turns into sentences—her ears perk up without her permission, going from hanging limp and floppy to rigid and alert. After a moment, her eyes follow, lightly flicking up from the spot on the floor she's had them trained on for the last...however long they've been here.
Only now she remembers the water in front of her, seal still unbroken. She tentatively lays a hand on it but does nothing more than listen, still blood in her veins colder than usual as she realizes what Giorno's really talking about.
He and Steve, they'd communicated about it. How Giorno isn't very good at words. Not good at talking to people, what Max had accepted at a young age after a few too many disastrous conversations. How it's okay to be...imperfect.
Had accepted that, too, that what she did couldn't be. Not for other people.
In an already vulnerable moment, it's like Giorno's cracking himself open a little bit, to explain. ]
Giogio—
[ What his friends call him. It's easiest to say right now, as her tongue feels heavy in her mouth, but in a sudden moment of indecision and insecurity, Max wonders if it's insensitive to say it. When what brought them together is gone, when she's been cagey and evasive, even harsh because of the position Giorno takes in her mind as head of the household, creating a stupid invisible wall despite how he's been unfailingly kind to her at every turn.
Her hooves lightly tap on the floor, the anxiety in her having to go somewhere. ]
I- I don't...need you to say anything. [ At last, she finds her voice. ] You're right, there aren't any. But—
[ Just trying to understand and get better. Of course Steve offered that kind of grace. Max wonders if she'd reached out to him in those months she floated through life like a ghost, if he'd have extended them to her too. No, of course he would have. Like Giorno, that's who Steve is—unfailingly kind. ]
I don't need any. It- it's okay, to just...sit.
[ Everyone always tried to find it. The right thing to say, after Billy. After her life started taking a nosedive. Already when it came to her family, no one could find the words, but as it only grew more and more complicated? Max decided she stopped wanting to hear any of them. Any halfhearted attempt to cheer her up or offer condolences, because they wouldn't change anything. Rather, she'd just like a nonjudgmental presence.
It sounds like she and Giorno have that in common. ]
[He reacts. Physically, not audibly, and it's subtle — fingers clenching around the neck of his water bottle briefly, relaxing — but it's reflex, because the name said in this room causes a surge of joy to rise in his chest and deflate immediately, leaving him heavy and hollow. It wasn't so terribly long ago that she called him that and it made him happy, almost painfully happy. Now it doesn't make him sad, but it's another reminder. One more thing.]
[It makes him feel lonely. Because he gave it as a gift. Because it made him feel hopeful, just like the crocus, that someday it would end and Steve would come back, and it's very, very hard to believe in anything right now.]
[Why was it easier when he could see the body? Why did that make death feel less real? Was it because he could see it, test the temperature of the skin, feel for a pulse? Was it that Dr. Pierce was there? Or was it that they were all together then, the whole group of them, before everything fell apart and the eighth floor dissolved and they all became much, much lonelier? They were a pack then. That's what Mukuro would say. He was able to be strong in one specific way for Steve because he had so many people beside and behind him. He could reach across the void and give a dead boy something to come back to, a notebook full of care and the first growth of springtime and a name that was special, if he wanted it. And he did.]
[Wordless, he nods. It's okay, she says. Not okay in general, but to sit in quiet, that's okay. It lets some of the oxygen back in the room, but not much. He's robotic when he lifts the water bottle to his lips, but he has to drink or he'll get dehydrated, and Fugo will be worried.]
Words like that, [he finds himself saying,] are for the person saying them, anyway. To pretend they've done something. Not for the person hearing them.
[It's part of why he's been avoiding everyone. Not the entire reason by far, but part of it. If anyone tells him they're sorry, he doesn't know if he'll be able to control himself.]
Edited (wtf was that sentence) 2023-06-15 08:35 (UTC)
cw: self-loathing, existential coma musing, referenced unstable home environment
[ A mistake. It was a mistake, once again, to just let her mouth go without thinking, and Max feels her pins and needles pepper her body. It's not that she sees it—because she's sitting too far away to pick up subtleties—just hears the crinkle of the water bottle, and it contributes to how it takes her a moment to find her metaphorical footing in this... It's something like a conversation. Something like one.
She can never just be agreeable in mourning. Mourning, that's what this is, despite the fact that he didn't die. But the Sea of Stars doesn't sound like being alive either, just drifting through stasis. An unending coma, and that sets Max on edge for completely unrelated reasons. It's the mourning of what could be. The time spent, the fact that it will pass and here they will be, without him. Seasons will change, experiences will be had, but Steve will not be here. Not to offer a comforting ear, not to joke with, not for anything.
Time will pass without him. And Max can think of nothing more horrifying. That he could never come back—or, that one day he could return to a world so very changed.
Perhaps it's because Max herself fears that. Fears experiencing that, in the wake of everything that happened to her.
So, yeah, she can't be agreeable, can't be normal, and all her sharp edges rub up against everyone else. It makes her want to leap to her feet and dash out. To separate herself from everyone else, for their own good—and hers too.
Except Giorno hits a key point that keeps her rooted there, rimmed red eyes widening a little. ]
Yeah. [ It's a surprise. Like...she hasn't heard that expressed to her. ] They're never—
[ Her voice cracks. I'm sorry, said the teachers when they heard of her parents' divorce. I'm sorry to see you go, from the principal in California when transferring her school files to the Hawkins. I'm sorry, Max, from her friends when she mentioned Neil was cracking down and she couldn't come out for the weekend. I'm sorry for your loss, from a thousand people who couldn't care a single goddamn bit about what happened in the wake of July 4th and the slow crumbling of her life around her in the months following.
It's hypocritical. She's expressed similar sentiments, when she hasn't had the words—or, when the other words would be too caustic. But Max thinks she hates hearing that.
Someone should only apologize if they're the cause. And then, they should work to make it better. Anything else feels hollow. Even when it isn't. ]
They just- fucking suck. [ Something thick and wet sits in her words, and Max drops her eyes back to the water bottle, finally unscrewing the cap and gulping down half of it in one go. Not needing to breathe has some advantages. ]
[It's — strange. Until recently, he'd never received empty sympathy. Not of this kind, anyway; there were plenty of times that impatient teachers pasted false thin smiles across their faces and offered token concern when he walked in limping or with a bruise smeared across his face like watercolor or soaking wet from where he was kicked into yet another puddle. There were people who saw him walking down the street, a very small black hole in the universe, and stared and offered disconcerted looks of sympathy if he met their eyes in his bottomless way, all worried eyebrows and mouths downturned at the corners.]
[But the people who died at home, the ones he actually cared about — officially, he wasn't mourning them. They couldn't be as significant a part of his story as they should have been if the narrative was going to work. And in any case, none of them were sure if Narancia would want to be in this story or not; he said he was leaving, he was going home, right before rebar punched through his lungs.]
[So the sympathy he got for them was raw and massive at the same time it was packed up tight and small, compartmentalized in the wake of changes that he had wanted but no longer knew what to do with, shifts in his reality that he felt very nearly slipping through his pain-numbed fingers. Even thinking about it now is a twist of the knife — because Mista held him and didn't ask him to speak, because Trish was there and he felt they understood each other if only a little, because he misses both of them, even Trish sometimes, even though she's here with him—]
[They didn't ask him to speak.]
[Here, loss is part of the fabric of daily life more so than in any universe from which they come. Little loss — of home, of normalcy, of stability; intangible loss — of humanity, of morality, of hopes and dreams and plans, of seeing yourself as a good person; temporary loss — the brutal death of someone you love at the hands of some other person trapped in the spiral with you, or a madman the power that be saw fit to throw into the fishbowl with you; and permanent loss — disappearances into the Sea, unceremonious and sudden. Not death, but something more uncertain. In many ways worse.]
[People tell him they're sorry here. He hasn't spoken with anyone yet about this because he knows it will be the worst. On the plus side, there aren't that many people left to tell him so.]
They fucking suck.
[An echo of agreement. They suck so much, and they're impossible to escape here, because it's constant. Just constant.]
[In Max's presence, he's capable of feeling a dull echo of the old flash of hatred. It's the Fog every time. Every twisting knife has its home in her hand.]
. . . Did he ever tell you that he died? [A moment, a breath; he shakes his head as though to clear cobwebs.] There's no way. He never talked about it — wouldn't want me talking about it.
[But there's no indication that he regrets bringing it up. It's more like he's just — thinking. Rolling things around in his mind like it's a cheap plastic hand maze, waiting for something to find its way home.]
[ It's almost nice to feel a flash of anger. It's at least familiar, and Max... She doesn't know if she likes it better than the numb, emptiness. But at least it's something. It's something and Giorno isn't telling her to mind her manners or feel something productive, so that's a plus all in itself.
And then, with just one question, everything seems to tilt on its axis. Max's fur stands on end, and the water bottle almost slips from her grasp. Her head whips back up to look at Giorno, to see if he's...joking, or something, the world's worst one—but he's not.
Of course he's not.
Impossibly, she finds herself unable to speak. So Max just shakes her head, mouth dropped open in a little 'o' and eyes wide.
He never told her. He never told her. Why didn't he—
A sour taste settles in her mouth and reaches all the way down into her stomach. No, that's not the question. Why would he? After the initial shock, Max can understand...and she thinks she needs to apologize to Will. ]
[He only has to look at her for an instant, a flash of wide green eyes focused on her before they return to the fascinating pattern of the solid-color bedspread. It doesn't take much to know, and anyway, Max is — she's just human. She's just a normal person who would be horrified to hear that. What else could her reaction possibly be?]
[It hurts to have things kept from you, especially things that hurt very badly, especially when the person keeping the secret is someone you care about. Everyone from Hawkins is part of a large, sprawling constellation, as he understands it; some know each other well, some barely at all — but everyone who's come here, everyone in the story that Steve told him of his dream, is connected in some way, large or small, that matters. Steve matters to Max. Steve didn't share something significant with her. Maybe, since it's Max, it would be easy to see it as a judgment of weakness.]
[But it's not about her.]
It was almost two years ago, and he's talked about it once, I think. And I brought it up. [He's quiet for a moment, before offering a comparison that he hopes will help.] He wouldn't tell Nancy.
[Who is gone, now, just like Eddie and Robin and Steve. But while she was here, there was only one time that Steve showed genuine fear when speaking her name, and it was during this conversation.]
[With a faint frown, he looks down at his hands. He's been biting at his claws absently, for lack of any effective, permissible ways of harming himself. They're wretched, and he hates the look of them. But they could still do damage.]
The person who did it is long gone. But it's . . .
[How to even explain? From what he saw, for Steve, it was like living with an unwelcome guest who would not leave, or a ghost, a shadow of his self whose hypervigilance betrayed his vulnerability no matter how hard he tried to move on and convince himself it was over. It was never over.]
[Is it over now, or is Steve still afraid? Better question: if he and Trish and Fugo disappear, who will remember? Most of the people who cared back then are gone or have become unrecognizable. Mukuro would remember, but Mukuro has to remember so many things, grieve so many losses, that the idea of this weighing her down as well hurts.]
[He has dreams many nights of Narancia impaled on rebar, of Abbacchio's last act, of Bruno's cold skin, unresponsive to touch. He has dreams many nights that are very realistic of waking up next to a dead and emptied body that never rouses, no matter what he does. Gold Experience is there in all of these dreams, and it does nothing, because it knows there's nothing to be done.]
[It haunts him. Haunted. Haunts. Haunted. He says none of these things. Shakes his head again, trying to clear it, which doesn't work.]
He was gone for a month. [Dead for a month, he means; a body for a month. He doesn't elaborate. No matter how visceral every instant of that month was, she doesn't need to know the details he can't get rid of.] I thought he wasn't going to come back. So I started — writing him notes every day, because I thought, if I do this, if I give him something to look at when he wakes up, then — then he'll wake up.
[He barely understands why he's saying this, but he knows it's getting harder again. The motivation behind his own actions is something he tries to keep a pulse on, but right now he's just frantic, terrified, compelled to speak and pin his memories down for fear that they'll fly away.]
[His hair, which is never down, is down, and it falls in his face as he bows his head, as he bites down on the inside of his cheek again and again and again, not hard, but persistent.]
That's when he — that's how I signed them. "Giogio." I don't — know why, I just—
[Wanted to pull him back, moment by moment, fraction by fraction, with every fragment of closeness and care that he could muster. If he just tried hard enough, if he kept it up, if he kept going and checked in every day and didn't wear himself down and waited, every day passing the same as every other day, someday he would come back. Someday he'd wake up. He had to.]
[He had to.]
[Giorno reaches up to press the heel of his hand against the side of his eye socket, suddenly exhausted all over again. This is stupid. Max doesn't want to hear any of this. But he's started. He might as well finish.]
That's why he calls me that. That's where it started. [And then, almost inaudible, almost in someone else's voice:] Sorry.
ST4 spoilers cw: existential coma musing, unintentional self-harm, dissociation
[ Of course it's not her—not about her. Just like...not being clear with Will wasn't about him. It was about acknowledging it. Giving it a home inside her. The more people knew, the people could bring it up. Could talk about it. Address it and ask if she was okay, when the one and only answer would only depress them. No one likes that. They want to hear it'll be alright or I'll get through it, not sometimes I wake up, and before I remember I'm not supposed to be breathing, I think I'm dying again.
It's never the truth anyone wants to hear. So Max stubbornly keeps it locked up, her own ghost haunting her and no one else.
Or...almost no one else. Was that how it was for Steve? It had to be. Because, as she listens—if he wouldn't tell Nancy...
Max's mouth is always pretty dry, because of the nature of being undead, the only exception being when her hunger's kicking in. Her body generates what she puts into it and nothing more—which means right now, with water fresh on her lips, it should be moist. It is. For a few moments, it is.
Until Giorno starts detailing it. Steve being gone. Writing him notes. That is when tingles run up and down her arms. Her head starts to feel light and empty. Waiting, thinking he'd never return. That he had to do something—give him something, a reason, and it—
It reminds her of Lucas.
Of his coaxing smiles and waves. Gentle invitations to movie nights. A ticket placed carefully in her hand that she refused. Like laying bread crumbs for her to come back to him. To all of them, to reignite the fire inside her that she'd let burn out. Of how desperate he was, after all of it, to save her.
And of his frantic, desperate pleading. The last thing she heard.
Is this what it must be like for him? What it's...been like? Has he written a letter, like she did for him when she thought it was the only way she'd get to express her last thoughts? Does he still have hope, with not even a body to sit beside now? Oh, god, after so many months, her own mother must—
Should Giorno look her way, he'll find Max's arms curled around her, gripping her upper arms tightly. Her claws dig into her dead skin, purple-red blood oozing lazily from the marks. So too does it from her lower lip, as her elongated canines sink into it. If she opens her mouth, she's afraid she'll yell—or, perhaps, just start crying and never stop, as her vision's blurrier than usual.
Is that what she's left everyone with? A miracle, no it sounds like hell. Like a slow but relentless march through a scorching desert. Any hope just a mirage.
The world around her feels like white noise, but Giorno's saying something still. Sounds are forming words are forming sentences but she can't comprehend them. Does that mean she's dying again, here? Is her body just waiting for the right moment to give out for real?
Sorry jabs at her like a hot poker, and very suddenly Max gasps—futile, useless, no need for air anymore—and shakes her head so hard her braids smack into her face, smearing the sludge-like blood on her lip so she gets a taste.
And that, of all fucking things, really snaps her out of it, as she yanks her claws away from her arms and with shaking hands wipes the back of her mouth. As it feels like her whole body comes uncoiled from being wound impossibly tight, but the tension doesn't leave, just makes a home in her. One of her legs twitches and kicks the water bottle, spilling the rest of it all over the floor. ]
—Fuck- fuck, don't- sorry- shit. Sorry. Shit, I didn't mean t-to—
[ To what? Ah, wait, no, the water, that's concrete.
Very suddenly, all Max can think is that she has to leave. Can't explain just what happened, but her legs have chosen this moment to completely lock up, leaving her to try and collect herself on the floor of Steve's basement bunker while his boyfriend mourns the possibility of never seeing him again. ]
[Some other time he would have noticed it sooner. This kind of thing, oh, he's an expert. The feeling in the air when someone simply leaves, it's burnt into his hindbrain: a palpable absence, the displacement of air, the scent of ozone but softened. It lives in the same space of his brain as Fugo, and as such with Purple Haze; the similarities are obvious, at least to him, how atmospheric changes crawl over your skin long before you could ever realize what's actually happening. A feeling before a feeling before thought before recognition. Your body rejecting your self for its own good. Temporary necrosis of connection to form.]
[Today, he is so painfully, inescapably in his body that he doesn't feel the signs. It's the nature of the silence when he stops that catches his attention, nothing more, because while he isn't expecting her to respond instantly or, indeed, at all, the air suddenly feels like it's trying to eat them both alive.]
[He looks up, grip loosening on the pillow enough that it slides from his lap onto the bed. He sees her. He — sees her, the holes she's piercing in herself, the deadness she has to hold in herself every moment of every day. He sees her and he knows that somehow he has done something that shattered her walls more effectively even than the Fog ripping her feet clean off at the ankles. He has done something so devastating that it's forced her to leave.]
[There's a moment, an unbalanced instant, where he waits for his own internal verdict, expecting it to be what it always is: guilty. But the guilt doesn't come. Not for this. She is in so much pain, and he knows he is the cause but it also doesn't feel like his fault — like he's done something awful. He can't really understand this, pushes it to the back of his mind anyway because it doesn't matter.]
[Instead of hating himself, he stands.]
[Not for long, though. It's a few steps at most before he kneels on the hard floor in front of her, with no thought to avoiding the spilled water. (The bottle skids away from under his knee as he settles, fabric soaked to the skin almost immediately.) This close, he can see the coagulated blood smeared across her face, near-uniform globules, some whole, some burst, screaming for the world to hear how incredibly, cruelly, undeniably unalive she is.]
[He leans in and hugs her.]
[That's all. Not particularly tightly or loosely, not well or poorly. He just wraps his exhausted arms around her and holds her, a warm and solid presence. Whatever he just conjured for her, he's not naive enough to think he can protect her from it, but — that doesn't mean he has to just let it take her, too. As though anyone or anything has the right to take her anywhere.]
cw: allusions to domestic violence, brief suicidal ideation+intrusive thoughts
[ Giorno stands and approaches her, and Max thinks—
She doesn't know what she thinks. There is a leap so far between what's happening here and anything from home. It is not Billy or Neil or Vecna or any other danger that she's faced that comes to mind. But all the same, Max feels danger. Because— Because she's fucked up Steve's space. Because she's gotten all of her this in it, when Giorno was just trying to quietly mourn the absence of his boyfriend.
Because, like always, her grief is inconvenient, and maybe it would be better if she wasn't a presence at all, if the force that raised her just hadn't, if instead of that horrid limbo those she loved could just let her go and be better off for it—
And then, Giorno kneels before her.
And then, Giorno hugs her.
And every horrible thought running around her mind silences.
At least, for the moment.
The tears that rest in her eyes break and it's perhaps unexpected when Max hugs back, tight and desperate, suddenly sobbing into his shoulder. This isn't what she wanted to do, not with anyone else here. Not with...anyone to see her. Especially not Giorno. The safest person Steve could think to take her to when her arm was blown open. The one who opened his home to her, who stayed with her while her hooves shoved their way out of the bloody stumps that were once her feet. Giorno who wants to help. Who gives those he loves underground getaways and would love a room full of crickets.
Max doesn't need to breathe. But she sounds like she's hyperventilating while she cries nevertheless. She's crying for herself, but that's not all. She's crying for Steve, and she's crying for Giorno—and she's crying for every person who's waited by her bedside. Who will keep on waiting. ]
[It surprises him when she starts crying. It also doesn't. Max has never cried before in front of him, not even when she was in excruciating pain human beings were not meant to withstand. She's clearly someone who hates to cry, especially in front of people.]
[Those are the people who most need to, though, the ones who shatter like poorly-made glass when they finally break down, exploding outward in a fit of sorrow verging on violence. So it surprises him, and it doesn't, and most of all — he feels relieved.]
[Her claws hurt where they dig in, but not in a way that matters. They pin him to the spot, to the moment, to the pain, and as much as he hates it he doesn't mind. Steve loves Max like his own family, she is by all intents and purposes his family, and his arms secure around her are for Steve, yes, but mostly they're for her. Max Mayfield, someone who's had his respect from the moment they met, bloody and beat-up as she was, who's been suspicious of him from the word go, who looked at him and Steve and didn't say anything, who holds everything tight-tight-tight in her chest at risk of cracking her own ribs — he does it for her.]
[When he bows his head, presses his cheek to the crown of her head, and begins once again to cry, he does so silently. Who does he think is going to hear him? The truth is that he doesn't. Thought has nothing to do with it. He learned, bit by bit, trial by trial, that it was safe to make sound when he was upset, that nothing bad would happen, that he is safe here and now, especially here, buried deep underground in the warmth and realness of someone who has no reason to understand or forgive someone who has done what Giorno has done and yet sees nothing about him that needs forgiving — who is so different that they shouldn't work but fits by his side and hand in hand like it was always going to be this way, somehow, not fate but a gentle downhill slope to something good in a world of darkness.]
[Beside Steve Harrington — who offered to help him when he didn't understand how to do simple, normal things; who took him kayaking in the middle of chaos because it's important to make your own good days; who saved his life and whisked him back to life and hugged him tight in the back of a filthy van after days and days of searching; who woke up and cried on his shoulder and let him help, let him show every way he had been loved and missed; who pouted about being alone on Halloween; who trusted (trusts) him; who loved (loves) him — he could be strong and broken at the same time. He could cry without stifling his breath and his voice. It was safe. He was so, so safe that after a while, he began to forget what life felt like without that feeling.]
[He remembers now.]
[But if nothing else, he can be shelter. He can weep, but he can do it in silence. When she tightens her hold, he does the same, pulling her into his body and making a shield between her and the world. His tears drop onto her hair and onto her shoulder, and he shakes, all aspen and willow, too light to hold still and too heavy to lift at once. He's too much and he's not enough. Right now, he's all there is. And he has to try.]
[Even as his own breath starts coming in still-silent gasps — he's trying, as hard as he possibly can.]
Edited 2023-06-18 11:11 (UTC)
cw: abuse logic, reference to past domestic abuse, cycle of abuse talk
[ The times Max has let herself cry here in front of others are few.
Her death. The pale fog, caught limp in a memory of her stepfather's fury—or stuck reliving the overwhelming guilt of Billy's death. The aftermath of her first kill, cut off swiftly upon realizing she had company. Returning from Lake Fors, the Sjörå's song wringing every bit of hidden vulnerability from her and hanging her cruelly up to dry, on display.
The number of people... Well, that's small too, isn't it? There is only one—perhaps two—who she feels safe opening up like that in front of again, and both she'd led out of the hell that was the pale fog, both had seen inside of her and continually accepted it. Everyone else—even Will, even Steve—she's shied away from. And even then, she would rather not cry in front of them, if she can help it. If you show that sign of weakness, it can be used against you, just like revealing something you love can get it hurt or broken. Just like offering help to a fellow victim can hurt them worse, can destroy a tentative truce.
Every bit of vulnerability is like handing someone the tools to hurt you. It's why, she understands now, Billy would go silent more often than not, when Neil laid into him. He let it build up until he exploded on a safer target—more often than not, her. So she had to protect herself. Loyal friends became few and far between, even ones she'd had since childhood, once Billy turned his wrathful eye on them. What she learned was, no one else was going to protect her, certainly not Neil or Billy, and certainly not her mom.
Until Steve.
Steve, who about an hour after meeting Max put himself between her and a monster. Who listened seriously to her fears about Billy and tried to defuse the ticking bomb. Who got himself beat to shit for it, for protecting her and Lucas. Steve fucking Harrington, who despite it all Max still kept her walls up around.
And still he kept trying.
It's maddening to think about now, as she clings to Giorno and cries so hard it shakes her body. Her broken antler leaves bloody velvet on his shoulder, possibly also in his hair. She can feel the top of her head growing steadily wetter, knows Giorno's also weeping. But he's still here, trying too. The amount of people who kept doing that. Trying for her, whether it turns out or not, it makes her dizzy. It makes her almost think she deserves it.
Almost.
In this moment, it's... Not enough. Nothing can ever feel like it's enough, when she's full of gaping holes and maladaptive coping mechanisms. But it's something. It's more than she had, even if right now, she has less.
So Max is content to stay like this. Just to cry until there's nothing left. Until the endless, breathless sobbing subsides because there's no more tears left to cry, no matter how long that takes—and it's awhile, a consequence of building it all up inside.
But, no matter how many tears she has and how many people she's crying for, it does, as all things do, end. Her body goes through the motions, inhaling and exhaling only because her brain's still wired in some way to think it'll help. An association from countless nights in her room, door locked and headphones on, cries muffled by her pillows. It's only then that her grip starts to loosen. That her sobs turn to whimpers turn to silence.
And she dare not move, in fear of shattering the fragility of the moment between them. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[Means something. Meant something.]
[They were family in the way that only people who have been through something terrible together can be family. Time and space don't matter when it comes to that. He should know. The person he would give the most to have back at his side besides Steve and Riley is someone he knew only a fraction of the time he's known most of the people in this house. A thin slice of time, but so indescribably significant.]
[Of course he felt like he was intruding. Of course he wanted to do for Max anything he could. Steve loves her. She's his family. It's not a decision. It's just how things are.]
[That's not over, of course. If anything, he has to take it more seriously now. If Steve isn't here, then he has to do what Steve would for them. Which is a concept Max would hate, but it's not a decision. It's just how things are.]
[These are all things he has thought about in a distant, abstract way, too far removed from his reality of distorted time and pain, nonphysical and distracting. Now, looking at Max standing before him with her eyes shining with tears, he just thinks: why is this happening?]
Oh, [he says, quietly; and then after a moment,] I see, [and he is so small. Compared to the larger-than-life presence commanding the mobile camp in Felfri, the version of him she first met, this is paper to steel. There's barely anything to him. And he doesn't know what to do. Apologize, maybe. Again. That's his instinct.]
[She'd hate it, though. So he doesn't. Instead, he — somehow, for some reason, without thinking about it, sits again. Folds himself small, like a child hiding from a storm, presses his back against the headboard, knees up to his chest, arms wrapped around them.]
I don't want to leave. [A quiet admission. His gaze is fixed somewhere around the floorboards on the other side of the room.] But you don't have to. Leave. Either.
cw: depression in narration
It's true. He is different. A shell of himself. She hasn't seen him like this, but he's seen her. Physically shredded to pieces, ankles literally cracked open, tears purely from pain and distress. Still not a way she'd want anyone else to see her, but at least with physical pain there's something tangible to point to as an excuse. Wouldn't anyone feel hurt about this? Emotional pain, that feels more subjective.
Even though right now watching this it feels worse than having her arm blown open, worse than her feet breaking off at the ankle, because at least she knew one of the only people to fight for her was still there. She knew when she could see him.
Someone who knew. Who she didn't have to tell about all of it.
It makes Max very scared. As the people she knows start vanishing one after another, even if she's known none of them for as long as Steve knew just about any of his friends here—what if Will's next and she's alone, the sole occupant from the nightmare of Hawkins, Indiana.
Is she here because she deserves that? This as a second chance at life, forced to kill and only to temporarily see her friends before everyone—good or bad—leaves eventually so what's the point of trying, and Max very swiftly scrubs her eyes with the back of her hand, because those are the kind of thoughts that sent her down a very dark road that she can't really say she's found her way back down. ]
Okay. [ It sounds a little thick. Max doesn't know where to go and after a long moment settles for simply sliding down the wall near the door and resting on the floor.
And, for awhile... She just doesn't say anything more. ]
cw intRUSIVE THOUGHTS WHY NOT
[He doesn't feel better. Not even a little bit. But the worse that he expected to come, doesn't. Instead there's just the same. Nothing better, nothing worse. Equilibrium.]
[She sits on the floor. Maybe he should offer her something to sit on. A pillow. Instead, he grabs the pillow to himself again, feeling a spike of territorial instinct not dissimilar to the way he mantled over Steve's corpse during that long month he was dead and gone. Mine, he thinks, and ducks his head to press his face against the fabric and breathe it in and hide and think about how much time he's wasting, how many better things he could be doing.]
[He should be comforting her. Steve would be, no matter what else was going on. But he's not Steve. He's just him. And everything he was ever told about the things that make him good, the work he's done to make himself the way he is, all those words are too far away to hear right now. They're out there somewhere, muffled and quiet, but they can't reach him.]
[It feels like something is carving out his heart. It's hard to breathe with his face pressed against the pillow, and he thinks for a moment about just staying and seeing how long it takes for his body to panic; but he doesn't want Max to see that. He doesn't want Max to see any of this. Still, he's not mortified, somehow. It's just all switched off.]
[Eventually he comes up for air. He hasn't cried, but his eyes are wet and shining with tears that haven't fallen simply because he's out of energy. Tucking his chin against the pillow (because if he tries very hard he can pretend, he can pretend, he can), he watches Max with dull eyes, trying to understand, even if it feels like polishing rocks with more rocks. What is he . . . supposed to do here? What does he do? There's a responsibility, he knows there is, but when he reaches out to find it, he can't find anything at all.]
[He wants to be alone. He very desperately does not want to be alone. The problem, it occurs to him, is that neither of them want to be alone, but the person they want to be not alone with is gone. And here the two of them are, near enough to be strangers.]
[Letting out a slow, shuddering breath, he leans over the side of the bed to a small closed box that is usually kept there. It holds — not much. Granola bars, pudding cups, water bottles. He pulls two of those out; then, making a face, a granola bar as well, which he lays on the comforter in front of him and proceeds to ignore. One of the water bottles, he rolls across the floor to Max.]
Headache, [he mumbles, thickly and pretty incoherently, and cracks the seal on his own. Because he hates to cry. He hates the way it makes his skin feel, tight and crackly, and the way it makes his head feel, overstuffed and aching. People say it makes you feel better to cry, better out than in, and all he can think is that they're phenomenally stupid and have never cried in the real way, which is ugly and brutal and nauseating, an awful storm contained in a too-small body.]
no subject
There's a fear in Max's heart. That now that Steve's gone, she'll be made to leave. It's irrational, because they aren't those kinds of people. She doesn't think either Giorno or Fugo is the sort to throw anyone out on their ass, but at the moment she feels miserable and it's so much easier to let that marinate her.
Let it tell her that her tie to this place is gone.
They're shitty thoughts. But sometimes, she's a shitty person. She hates them as soon as they wrap around her, especially with Giorno like this. Especially when he rolls her the water bottle and she feels something squeeze her dead heart.
Not entertaining those. Not entertaining those thoughts, not right now. Not today.
She lets the bottle roll into her outstretched hand, nodding slightly. ] Thanks.
[ Soft and mumbled, not the most put together herself. Max doesn't yet open the water, but she places it in front of her knees, up and near her chest. Much like Giorno, Max struggles with what to do now. If there is anything to do. She doesn't think there's anything she can say—nothing that wouldn't sound hollow, so she'd rather not say it. Isn't sure what there is to do, because she's never known how to deal with loss herself, so how can she comfort someone else? ]
no subject
[It will occur to him later that she feels the same, probably. Right now, that numbness seeps behind his eyes and into his temples, the pounding beginnings of a headache, water be damned. He looks at the granola bar again. Looks away.]
[More time passes.]
[When his voice comes again, it's rough. Light. Quiet, quiet. Small. There are echoes of fear in there somewhere, but other things too. Guilt, mostly. That's a heavy, heavy counterpoint.]
I'm not— [Mm. He clears his throat.] Not good at. Things like — normal, normal things. Not like him. I can't — do, um—
[He closes his mouth. Bites down very, very hard on the tip of his tongue. Stop, stop, stop. Try harder. Do better. Come on. One thing, just one thing.]
We — had a deal.
[I'd like to know you, if I can find a way to be a little more — communicative.]
[Is that something that would help you? Is that something you'd want?]
[His expression is in real danger of crumpling for good. But he's trying. He takes shallow breaths and holds them; breaks the seal of his water bottle and holds the lid on for texture under his fingertips.]
. . . don't need to do things perfectly, or have the right words. That's okay. Just trying to understand, and get better, that's the deal. No j— [His words catch in the back of his throat, just for a moment, on the verge of hyperventilating.] —judgment.
There aren't — good words.
[For this, here, now. All of it's bad. He doesn't — know if she'll even understand, he knows how he sounds, how difficult it must be to piece the words together. But he's trying, with every ounce of will that he's got, to explain: he can't do this, and he doesn't expect her to be able to. If she's willing to be imperfect and fucked up about this right now, he is too. He has to be, here of all places.]
no subject
Only now she remembers the water in front of her, seal still unbroken. She tentatively lays a hand on it but does nothing more than listen, still blood in her veins colder than usual as she realizes what Giorno's really talking about.
He and Steve, they'd communicated about it. How Giorno isn't very good at words. Not good at talking to people, what Max had accepted at a young age after a few too many disastrous conversations. How it's okay to be...imperfect.
Had accepted that, too, that what she did couldn't be. Not for other people.
In an already vulnerable moment, it's like Giorno's cracking himself open a little bit, to explain. ]
Giogio—
[ What his friends call him. It's easiest to say right now, as her tongue feels heavy in her mouth, but in a sudden moment of indecision and insecurity, Max wonders if it's insensitive to say it. When what brought them together is gone, when she's been cagey and evasive, even harsh because of the position Giorno takes in her mind as head of the household, creating a stupid invisible wall despite how he's been unfailingly kind to her at every turn.
Her hooves lightly tap on the floor, the anxiety in her having to go somewhere. ]
I- I don't...need you to say anything. [ At last, she finds her voice. ] You're right, there aren't any. But—
[ Just trying to understand and get better. Of course Steve offered that kind of grace. Max wonders if she'd reached out to him in those months she floated through life like a ghost, if he'd have extended them to her too. No, of course he would have. Like Giorno, that's who Steve is—unfailingly kind. ]
I don't need any. It- it's okay, to just...sit.
[ Everyone always tried to find it. The right thing to say, after Billy. After her life started taking a nosedive. Already when it came to her family, no one could find the words, but as it only grew more and more complicated? Max decided she stopped wanting to hear any of them. Any halfhearted attempt to cheer her up or offer condolences, because they wouldn't change anything. Rather, she'd just like a nonjudgmental presence.
It sounds like she and Giorno have that in common. ]
cw broadcast
[It makes him feel lonely. Because he gave it as a gift. Because it made him feel hopeful, just like the crocus, that someday it would end and Steve would come back, and it's very, very hard to believe in anything right now.]
[Why was it easier when he could see the body? Why did that make death feel less real? Was it because he could see it, test the temperature of the skin, feel for a pulse? Was it that Dr. Pierce was there? Or was it that they were all together then, the whole group of them, before everything fell apart and the eighth floor dissolved and they all became much, much lonelier? They were a pack then. That's what Mukuro would say. He was able to be strong in one specific way for Steve because he had so many people beside and behind him. He could reach across the void and give a dead boy something to come back to, a notebook full of care and the first growth of springtime and a name that was special, if he wanted it. And he did.]
[Wordless, he nods. It's okay, she says. Not okay in general, but to sit in quiet, that's okay. It lets some of the oxygen back in the room, but not much. He's robotic when he lifts the water bottle to his lips, but he has to drink or he'll get dehydrated, and Fugo will be worried.]
Words like that, [he finds himself saying,] are for the person saying them, anyway. To pretend they've done something. Not for the person hearing them.
[It's part of why he's been avoiding everyone. Not the entire reason by far, but part of it. If anyone tells him they're sorry, he doesn't know if he'll be able to control himself.]
cw: self-loathing, existential coma musing, referenced unstable home environment
She can never just be agreeable in mourning. Mourning, that's what this is, despite the fact that he didn't die. But the Sea of Stars doesn't sound like being alive either, just drifting through stasis. An unending coma, and that sets Max on edge for completely unrelated reasons. It's the mourning of what could be. The time spent, the fact that it will pass and here they will be, without him. Seasons will change, experiences will be had, but Steve will not be here. Not to offer a comforting ear, not to joke with, not for anything.
Time will pass without him. And Max can think of nothing more horrifying. That he could never come back—or, that one day he could return to a world so very changed.
Perhaps it's because Max herself fears that. Fears experiencing that, in the wake of everything that happened to her.
So, yeah, she can't be agreeable, can't be normal, and all her sharp edges rub up against everyone else. It makes her want to leap to her feet and dash out. To separate herself from everyone else, for their own good—and hers too.
Except Giorno hits a key point that keeps her rooted there, rimmed red eyes widening a little. ]
Yeah. [ It's a surprise. Like...she hasn't heard that expressed to her. ] They're never—
[ Her voice cracks. I'm sorry, said the teachers when they heard of her parents' divorce. I'm sorry to see you go, from the principal in California when transferring her school files to the Hawkins. I'm sorry, Max, from her friends when she mentioned Neil was cracking down and she couldn't come out for the weekend. I'm sorry for your loss, from a thousand people who couldn't care a single goddamn bit about what happened in the wake of July 4th and the slow crumbling of her life around her in the months following.
It's hypocritical. She's expressed similar sentiments, when she hasn't had the words—or, when the other words would be too caustic. But Max thinks she hates hearing that.
Someone should only apologize if they're the cause. And then, they should work to make it better. Anything else feels hollow. Even when it isn't. ]
They just- fucking suck. [ Something thick and wet sits in her words, and Max drops her eyes back to the water bottle, finally unscrewing the cap and gulping down half of it in one go. Not needing to breathe has some advantages. ]
cw child abuse
[But the people who died at home, the ones he actually cared about — officially, he wasn't mourning them. They couldn't be as significant a part of his story as they should have been if the narrative was going to work. And in any case, none of them were sure if Narancia would want to be in this story or not; he said he was leaving, he was going home, right before rebar punched through his lungs.]
[So the sympathy he got for them was raw and massive at the same time it was packed up tight and small, compartmentalized in the wake of changes that he had wanted but no longer knew what to do with, shifts in his reality that he felt very nearly slipping through his pain-numbed fingers. Even thinking about it now is a twist of the knife — because Mista held him and didn't ask him to speak, because Trish was there and he felt they understood each other if only a little, because he misses both of them, even Trish sometimes, even though she's here with him—]
[They didn't ask him to speak.]
[Here, loss is part of the fabric of daily life more so than in any universe from which they come. Little loss — of home, of normalcy, of stability; intangible loss — of humanity, of morality, of hopes and dreams and plans, of seeing yourself as a good person; temporary loss — the brutal death of someone you love at the hands of some other person trapped in the spiral with you, or a madman the power that be saw fit to throw into the fishbowl with you; and permanent loss — disappearances into the Sea, unceremonious and sudden. Not death, but something more uncertain. In many ways worse.]
[People tell him they're sorry here. He hasn't spoken with anyone yet about this because he knows it will be the worst. On the plus side, there aren't that many people left to tell him so.]
They fucking suck.
[An echo of agreement. They suck so much, and they're impossible to escape here, because it's constant. Just constant.]
[In Max's presence, he's capable of feeling a dull echo of the old flash of hatred. It's the Fog every time. Every twisting knife has its home in her hand.]
. . . Did he ever tell you that he died? [A moment, a breath; he shakes his head as though to clear cobwebs.] There's no way. He never talked about it — wouldn't want me talking about it.
[But there's no indication that he regrets bringing it up. It's more like he's just — thinking. Rolling things around in his mind like it's a cheap plastic hand maze, waiting for something to find its way home.]
no subject
And then, with just one question, everything seems to tilt on its axis. Max's fur stands on end, and the water bottle almost slips from her grasp. Her head whips back up to look at Giorno, to see if he's...joking, or something, the world's worst one—but he's not.
Of course he's not.
Impossibly, she finds herself unable to speak. So Max just shakes her head, mouth dropped open in a little 'o' and eyes wide.
He never told her. He never told her. Why didn't he—
A sour taste settles in her mouth and reaches all the way down into her stomach. No, that's not the question. Why would he? After the initial shock, Max can understand...and she thinks she needs to apologize to Will. ]
cw compulsions, magical thinking, mild self-harm
[He only has to look at her for an instant, a flash of wide green eyes focused on her before they return to the fascinating pattern of the solid-color bedspread. It doesn't take much to know, and anyway, Max is — she's just human. She's just a normal person who would be horrified to hear that. What else could her reaction possibly be?]
[It hurts to have things kept from you, especially things that hurt very badly, especially when the person keeping the secret is someone you care about. Everyone from Hawkins is part of a large, sprawling constellation, as he understands it; some know each other well, some barely at all — but everyone who's come here, everyone in the story that Steve told him of his dream, is connected in some way, large or small, that matters. Steve matters to Max. Steve didn't share something significant with her. Maybe, since it's Max, it would be easy to see it as a judgment of weakness.]
[But it's not about her.]
It was almost two years ago, and he's talked about it once, I think. And I brought it up. [He's quiet for a moment, before offering a comparison that he hopes will help.] He wouldn't tell Nancy.
[Who is gone, now, just like Eddie and Robin and Steve. But while she was here, there was only one time that Steve showed genuine fear when speaking her name, and it was during this conversation.]
[With a faint frown, he looks down at his hands. He's been biting at his claws absently, for lack of any effective, permissible ways of harming himself. They're wretched, and he hates the look of them. But they could still do damage.]
The person who did it is long gone. But it's . . .
[How to even explain? From what he saw, for Steve, it was like living with an unwelcome guest who would not leave, or a ghost, a shadow of his self whose hypervigilance betrayed his vulnerability no matter how hard he tried to move on and convince himself it was over. It was never over.]
[Is it over now, or is Steve still afraid? Better question: if he and Trish and Fugo disappear, who will remember? Most of the people who cared back then are gone or have become unrecognizable. Mukuro would remember, but Mukuro has to remember so many things, grieve so many losses, that the idea of this weighing her down as well hurts.]
[He has dreams many nights of Narancia impaled on rebar, of Abbacchio's last act, of Bruno's cold skin, unresponsive to touch. He has dreams many nights that are very realistic of waking up next to a dead and emptied body that never rouses, no matter what he does. Gold Experience is there in all of these dreams, and it does nothing, because it knows there's nothing to be done.]
[It haunts him. Haunted. Haunts. Haunted. He says none of these things. Shakes his head again, trying to clear it, which doesn't work.]
He was gone for a month. [Dead for a month, he means; a body for a month. He doesn't elaborate. No matter how visceral every instant of that month was, she doesn't need to know the details he can't get rid of.] I thought he wasn't going to come back. So I started — writing him notes every day, because I thought, if I do this, if I give him something to look at when he wakes up, then — then he'll wake up.
[He barely understands why he's saying this, but he knows it's getting harder again. The motivation behind his own actions is something he tries to keep a pulse on, but right now he's just frantic, terrified, compelled to speak and pin his memories down for fear that they'll fly away.]
[His hair, which is never down, is down, and it falls in his face as he bows his head, as he bites down on the inside of his cheek again and again and again, not hard, but persistent.]
That's when he — that's how I signed them. "Giogio." I don't — know why, I just—
[Wanted to pull him back, moment by moment, fraction by fraction, with every fragment of closeness and care that he could muster. If he just tried hard enough, if he kept it up, if he kept going and checked in every day and didn't wear himself down and waited, every day passing the same as every other day, someday he would come back. Someday he'd wake up. He had to.]
[He had to.]
[Giorno reaches up to press the heel of his hand against the side of his eye socket, suddenly exhausted all over again. This is stupid. Max doesn't want to hear any of this. But he's started. He might as well finish.]
That's why he calls me that. That's where it started. [And then, almost inaudible, almost in someone else's voice:] Sorry.
ST4 spoilers cw: existential coma musing, unintentional self-harm, dissociation
It's never the truth anyone wants to hear. So Max stubbornly keeps it locked up, her own ghost haunting her and no one else.
Or...almost no one else. Was that how it was for Steve? It had to be. Because, as she listens—if he wouldn't tell Nancy...
Max's mouth is always pretty dry, because of the nature of being undead, the only exception being when her hunger's kicking in. Her body generates what she puts into it and nothing more—which means right now, with water fresh on her lips, it should be moist. It is. For a few moments, it is.
Until Giorno starts detailing it. Steve being gone. Writing him notes. That is when tingles run up and down her arms. Her head starts to feel light and empty. Waiting, thinking he'd never return. That he had to do something—give him something, a reason, and it—
It reminds her of Lucas.
Of his coaxing smiles and waves. Gentle invitations to movie nights. A ticket placed carefully in her hand that she refused. Like laying bread crumbs for her to come back to him. To all of them, to reignite the fire inside her that she'd let burn out. Of how desperate he was, after all of it, to save her.
And of his frantic, desperate pleading. The last thing she heard.
Is this what it must be like for him? What it's...been like? Has he written a letter, like she did for him when she thought it was the only way she'd get to express her last thoughts? Does he still have hope, with not even a body to sit beside now? Oh, god, after so many months, her own mother must—
Should Giorno look her way, he'll find Max's arms curled around her, gripping her upper arms tightly. Her claws dig into her dead skin, purple-red blood oozing lazily from the marks. So too does it from her lower lip, as her elongated canines sink into it. If she opens her mouth, she's afraid she'll yell—or, perhaps, just start crying and never stop, as her vision's blurrier than usual.
Is that what she's left everyone with? A miracle, no it sounds like hell. Like a slow but relentless march through a scorching desert. Any hope just a mirage.
The world around her feels like white noise, but Giorno's saying something still. Sounds are forming words are forming sentences but she can't comprehend them. Does that mean she's dying again, here? Is her body just waiting for the right moment to give out for real?
Sorry jabs at her like a hot poker, and very suddenly Max gasps—futile, useless, no need for air anymore—and shakes her head so hard her braids smack into her face, smearing the sludge-like blood on her lip so she gets a taste.
And that, of all fucking things, really snaps her out of it, as she yanks her claws away from her arms and with shaking hands wipes the back of her mouth. As it feels like her whole body comes uncoiled from being wound impossibly tight, but the tension doesn't leave, just makes a home in her. One of her legs twitches and kicks the water bottle, spilling the rest of it all over the floor. ]
—Fuck- fuck, don't- sorry- shit. Sorry. Shit, I didn't mean t-to—
[ To what? Ah, wait, no, the water, that's concrete.
Very suddenly, all Max can think is that she has to leave. Can't explain just what happened, but her legs have chosen this moment to completely lock up, leaving her to try and collect herself on the floor of Steve's basement bunker while his boyfriend mourns the possibility of never seeing him again. ]
no subject
[Today, he is so painfully, inescapably in his body that he doesn't feel the signs. It's the nature of the silence when he stops that catches his attention, nothing more, because while he isn't expecting her to respond instantly or, indeed, at all, the air suddenly feels like it's trying to eat them both alive.]
[He looks up, grip loosening on the pillow enough that it slides from his lap onto the bed. He sees her. He — sees her, the holes she's piercing in herself, the deadness she has to hold in herself every moment of every day. He sees her and he knows that somehow he has done something that shattered her walls more effectively even than the Fog ripping her feet clean off at the ankles. He has done something so devastating that it's forced her to leave.]
[There's a moment, an unbalanced instant, where he waits for his own internal verdict, expecting it to be what it always is: guilty. But the guilt doesn't come. Not for this. She is in so much pain, and he knows he is the cause but it also doesn't feel like his fault — like he's done something awful. He can't really understand this, pushes it to the back of his mind anyway because it doesn't matter.]
[Instead of hating himself, he stands.]
[Not for long, though. It's a few steps at most before he kneels on the hard floor in front of her, with no thought to avoiding the spilled water. (The bottle skids away from under his knee as he settles, fabric soaked to the skin almost immediately.) This close, he can see the coagulated blood smeared across her face, near-uniform globules, some whole, some burst, screaming for the world to hear how incredibly, cruelly, undeniably unalive she is.]
[He leans in and hugs her.]
[That's all. Not particularly tightly or loosely, not well or poorly. He just wraps his exhausted arms around her and holds her, a warm and solid presence. Whatever he just conjured for her, he's not naive enough to think he can protect her from it, but — that doesn't mean he has to just let it take her, too. As though anyone or anything has the right to take her anywhere.]
cw: allusions to domestic violence, brief suicidal ideation+intrusive thoughts
She doesn't know what she thinks. There is a leap so far between what's happening here and anything from home. It is not Billy or Neil or Vecna or any other danger that she's faced that comes to mind. But all the same, Max feels danger. Because— Because she's fucked up Steve's space. Because she's gotten all of her this in it, when Giorno was just trying to quietly mourn the absence of his boyfriend.
Because, like always, her grief is inconvenient, and maybe it would be better if she wasn't a presence at all, if the force that raised her just hadn't, if instead of that horrid limbo those she loved could just let her go and be better off for it—
And then, Giorno kneels before her.
And then, Giorno hugs her.
And every horrible thought running around her mind silences.
At least, for the moment.
The tears that rest in her eyes break and it's perhaps unexpected when Max hugs back, tight and desperate, suddenly sobbing into his shoulder. This isn't what she wanted to do, not with anyone else here. Not with...anyone to see her. Especially not Giorno. The safest person Steve could think to take her to when her arm was blown open. The one who opened his home to her, who stayed with her while her hooves shoved their way out of the bloody stumps that were once her feet. Giorno who wants to help. Who gives those he loves underground getaways and would love a room full of crickets.
Max doesn't need to breathe. But she sounds like she's hyperventilating while she cries nevertheless. She's crying for herself, but that's not all. She's crying for Steve, and she's crying for Giorno—and she's crying for every person who's waited by her bedside. Who will keep on waiting. ]
no subject
[Those are the people who most need to, though, the ones who shatter like poorly-made glass when they finally break down, exploding outward in a fit of sorrow verging on violence. So it surprises him, and it doesn't, and most of all — he feels relieved.]
[Her claws hurt where they dig in, but not in a way that matters. They pin him to the spot, to the moment, to the pain, and as much as he hates it he doesn't mind. Steve loves Max like his own family, she is by all intents and purposes his family, and his arms secure around her are for Steve, yes, but mostly they're for her. Max Mayfield, someone who's had his respect from the moment they met, bloody and beat-up as she was, who's been suspicious of him from the word go, who looked at him and Steve and didn't say anything, who holds everything tight-tight-tight in her chest at risk of cracking her own ribs — he does it for her.]
[When he bows his head, presses his cheek to the crown of her head, and begins once again to cry, he does so silently. Who does he think is going to hear him? The truth is that he doesn't. Thought has nothing to do with it. He learned, bit by bit, trial by trial, that it was safe to make sound when he was upset, that nothing bad would happen, that he is safe here and now, especially here, buried deep underground in the warmth and realness of someone who has no reason to understand or forgive someone who has done what Giorno has done and yet sees nothing about him that needs forgiving — who is so different that they shouldn't work but fits by his side and hand in hand like it was always going to be this way, somehow, not fate but a gentle downhill slope to something good in a world of darkness.]
[Beside Steve Harrington — who offered to help him when he didn't understand how to do simple, normal things; who took him kayaking in the middle of chaos because it's important to make your own good days; who saved his life and whisked him back to life and hugged him tight in the back of a filthy van after days and days of searching; who woke up and cried on his shoulder and let him help, let him show every way he had been loved and missed; who pouted about being alone on Halloween; who trusted (trusts) him; who loved (loves) him — he could be strong and broken at the same time. He could cry without stifling his breath and his voice. It was safe. He was so, so safe that after a while, he began to forget what life felt like without that feeling.]
[He remembers now.]
[But if nothing else, he can be shelter. He can weep, but he can do it in silence. When she tightens her hold, he does the same, pulling her into his body and making a shield between her and the world. His tears drop onto her hair and onto her shoulder, and he shakes, all aspen and willow, too light to hold still and too heavy to lift at once. He's too much and he's not enough. Right now, he's all there is. And he has to try.]
[Even as his own breath starts coming in still-silent gasps — he's trying, as hard as he possibly can.]
cw: abuse logic, reference to past domestic abuse, cycle of abuse talk
Her death. The pale fog, caught limp in a memory of her stepfather's fury—or stuck reliving the overwhelming guilt of Billy's death. The aftermath of her first kill, cut off swiftly upon realizing she had company. Returning from Lake Fors, the Sjörå's song wringing every bit of hidden vulnerability from her and hanging her cruelly up to dry, on display.
The number of people... Well, that's small too, isn't it? There is only one—perhaps two—who she feels safe opening up like that in front of again, and both she'd led out of the hell that was the pale fog, both had seen inside of her and continually accepted it. Everyone else—even Will, even Steve—she's shied away from. And even then, she would rather not cry in front of them, if she can help it. If you show that sign of weakness, it can be used against you, just like revealing something you love can get it hurt or broken. Just like offering help to a fellow victim can hurt them worse, can destroy a tentative truce.
Every bit of vulnerability is like handing someone the tools to hurt you. It's why, she understands now, Billy would go silent more often than not, when Neil laid into him. He let it build up until he exploded on a safer target—more often than not, her. So she had to protect herself. Loyal friends became few and far between, even ones she'd had since childhood, once Billy turned his wrathful eye on them. What she learned was, no one else was going to protect her, certainly not Neil or Billy, and certainly not her mom.
Until Steve.
Steve, who about an hour after meeting Max put himself between her and a monster. Who listened seriously to her fears about Billy and tried to defuse the ticking bomb. Who got himself beat to shit for it, for protecting her and Lucas. Steve fucking Harrington, who despite it all Max still kept her walls up around.
And still he kept trying.
It's maddening to think about now, as she clings to Giorno and cries so hard it shakes her body. Her broken antler leaves bloody velvet on his shoulder, possibly also in his hair. She can feel the top of her head growing steadily wetter, knows Giorno's also weeping. But he's still here, trying too. The amount of people who kept doing that. Trying for her, whether it turns out or not, it makes her dizzy. It makes her almost think she deserves it.
Almost.
In this moment, it's... Not enough. Nothing can ever feel like it's enough, when she's full of gaping holes and maladaptive coping mechanisms. But it's something. It's more than she had, even if right now, she has less.
So Max is content to stay like this. Just to cry until there's nothing left. Until the endless, breathless sobbing subsides because there's no more tears left to cry, no matter how long that takes—and it's awhile, a consequence of building it all up inside.
But, no matter how many tears she has and how many people she's crying for, it does, as all things do, end. Her body goes through the motions, inhaling and exhaling only because her brain's still wired in some way to think it'll help. An association from countless nights in her room, door locked and headphones on, cries muffled by her pillows. It's only then that her grip starts to loosen. That her sobs turn to whimpers turn to silence.
And she dare not move, in fear of shattering the fragility of the moment between them. ]