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[oddswerebad]

[There's just a brief click.]

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[oddswerebad]

I couldn't be around the cameras.

But it's better now.

[He couldn't be in the Roci until those particular memories of always being watched had been filed away again. But as much as he hides away on the ship it is...nice to have company he can avoid.]

[ninefox]

Understandable.

[Not - fair, because fair means nothing, and also Nico doesn't precisely need a legitimate reason to go where he wants, doesn't need need Jedao's approval. But Nico does have his understanding. I miss you, he'd said, not a command or even a request, but an answer to the question. Nico isn't annoying, or imposing. Jedao still wants him around.]

I think I'm going to leave you on my door access. You don't have to use that, either -

[But the cabin is there, if he wants it. Indefinitely.]

I'll set out some extra food tonight.

[If Nico doesn't sneak through and eat it, Fives will polish it off in the morning.]

[oddswerebad]

[It's not a reason he would offer to many people as an explanation, mostly because it's a honest one. He had forgotten what it had felt like when the assumption of always being watched wasn't bone deep. Even more because he thinks it's stupid on the barge where he assumes everything is watched.

But he'd wanted to give Jedao an answer, not just because it's important to always have a reason (not that it always helps but it's something, and a way to make people stop looking).

Maybe it's just because Jedao is one of the two people he can remember ever having said I miss you.]

Thanks.

[He can't quite say what for or even if it's for anything at all. Or everything. He hesitates for a few moments, even more uncomfortable than usual, but;]

I, uh, have a question. I was wondering about. If you're...around? [He could ask over the communicator but he knows he won't.]

[ninefox]

Sure. Do you want me to come down, or...?

[His own cabin being one level down from Holden's, and Nico's favorite haunts lower than that.]

[oddswerebad]

I'll, uh, come to the Roci.

[He's missed her computer. And he'd rather not to talk in one of the places he prefers to hide in.]

[ninefox]

I'll be here.

Spam

[oddswerebad]

It doesn't take Nico too long to arrive, slightly more pulled into himself than usual, though he relaxes a fraction when he's inside. Until he manages to steel himself to actually ask the question, where he goes from blocked off to several degrees more tense than his baseline.

"Uh. I was wondering..." He seriously considers asking something about the files he's read on codes, he thinks that Jedao would probably let him get away with it. Which is part of why he manages to continue. "I was wondering about, uh, feelings. Stuff." That's about as many words as he can manage at the moment.

Spam

[ninefox]

Fire and ash, he thinks, with a feeling of impending horror like the time he realized his needlemoth's brakes were sabotaged. I'm not ready for this. But when are people really ever ready for anything? It probably can't be worst than war.

"Feelings are hard, sometimes," he agrees sympathetically, and then tries to do the kind of low-key bustle he'd watched his sister-in-law do a few times, when the girls were wrestling with something. He gives Nico a warmed-up plate of leftover breakfast fried rice just to pick at, and starts trying to figure out whether Holden has accumulated enough ingredients for him to try making some kind of dumplings.

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[oddswerebad]

'Feelings are hard' seems like an understatement of impressively massive degrees, but at least an accurate one. He pokes at individual pieces of rice, hunting for the ability to put together an actual sentence. One that isn't about one of the many, many other topics he would prefer - all of which pop very easily into his mind.

"What do you...do. When you, uh, feel something."

Spam

[ninefox]

"Well, historically, I ignore it until we leave for separate planets, or until someone has an emotional breakdown. Which seem like maybe not great options here."

He's working on it.

"But, hypothetically, if I was a person who were healthier, like James or Quentin," hint, hint, "I guess I'd say. That feelings can't be wrong on their own. They might not be...always good ideas to act on, or healthy, but it's okay to have the feelings."

It's not wrong to want him, James told him, and Jedao is trying to hold on to that.

"So it's okay to...sit with your feelings, and - figure out what they mean, even if it takes awhile, and - who could get hurt, but also what could make you happy. Because you should have more in your life that makes you happy."

He doesn't use the word deserve. Nico isn't going to believe him anyway, but Nico asked Jedao, and that's what he damn well thinks about it.

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[oddswerebad]

Honestly, the complete avoidance that could be attained by traveling to a separate planet sounds like the best advice about dealing with feelings. As for the second part -

"Emotional breakdowns are not a great option. It's the worst option, probably." The one that has already happened and is making this ten times more terrible than it would already be. It's also a comment mostly muttered into his rice. He semi-regrets even saying that much but adding 'hypothetically' would probably just make it worse.

He looks back up at Jedao, open enough that he can't manage to hide that he's not exactly convinced that feelings can't be wrong on their own. Or that it's okay to have them. Probably one of the many reasons he's' not talking to someone healthier.

He'd also doubt the part about having more in his life that could make him happy, but he doesn't have to think about that part too hard as he's pretty sure that isn't really one of the possible outcomes.

"...People get hurt. I know people don't, uh, stay dead here but that's still not good. And there are lots of other ways they get hurt." He considers that an accurate description of what happened last time he thought it might be okay to having feelings.

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[ninefox]

"There are," he agrees, since that's....mostly what he meant. He pauses for a moment.

"You know how pressure valves work, on machinery," he says, and hopes he's not getting his vague memories of invariant gas mechanics completely wrong. "The barge is - too small, and the pressures are too constant, to just avoid people and let things subside. And understanding your feelings is like - having more gauges to look at, and a little bit of a release all on its own. If you don't let yourself look at them, you can't begin to find safe ways to have them. If there's no pressure valve - that when you get meltdowns."

He wonders if he's making even the slightest bit of sense.

"I know sometimes it's not safe even to look. I know how much that - feels like it's true always and everywhere. But that changes based on conditions. And here, I think, it's less safe to not look. In the long run."

Re: Spam

[oddswerebad]

The metaphor makes sense, but while it fits, it doesn't quite line up. Which isn't the sort of thing Nico says and he seriously considers just leaving it.

He nods his understanding - because he does understand what Jedao means, which makes it...truthful, and is quiet as he eats the warmed up rice. He doesn't really taste any of it but semi-mechanically eating food is an escape from talking that he's used a lot.

He would really prefer to leave it there, he would've preferred not to have any of this conversation but there's still the problem and the chance someone could get hurt and so many patterns mixing together - he becomes more consciously aware of the fact he's pulling at his hair with his free hand.

"I, uh, look at my feelings. Sometimes I don't know if I could manage to not look at them, I have to watch my own patterns. It's just -" Safe ways to have them. That's what he can't find.

Spam

[ninefox]

"Do you remember the ceremony on the space station, when we were there? Writing things down, and then destroying it? It doesn't seem like it should do anything, but it does. It feels different from just thinking. And it can be safer than talking to a person. Or just easier. But anything that - that leads outside your head, can make the endless cycles quieter. Siphon them off, a little."

Jedao honestly doesn't have a lot of experience with expressing feelings instead of transmuting them into a psychic singularity made of doom and fire, but.

"Sometimes I used to find ways to tell the hardest truths to people I knew wouldn't believe me. It helped, putting the words - out."

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[oddswerebad]

The ceremony doesn't loom large in his memories of the space station but he'd heard of it. He has a hard time believing anything written can truly be destroyed enough someone can't find it, but he could understand the release.

"I would do that, sometimes. Not with...secrets but with all the stuff that's in my head."He makes an abortive motion with his hands, he doesn't quite know how to express the endless rush of information, how little he can control it sometimes. "It was easy, sort of, because people never believed me. But it happened." Not that most people believed him then, either, but he gets why Cassandra had been the one hurt.

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[ninefox]

"It's easier to - do something about, after you've said it. Even if that only means putting it on a shelf and getting it to stay."

He finds a pan to wash, but of course the Roci doesn't have anything like a sink, just a scour drawer. Jedao stars at the offending implement.

"And - I can't promise to not believe you. But I promise I'll always listen, and I won't tell. There are places I can put things in my head where even I don't remember them." Whether Nico ever takes it or not, the offer is there.

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[oddswerebad]

He listens carefully. It's a nice offer, though he has a hard time imagining ever taking Jedao up on it. On the other hand, he's having a hard time imaging that he's even having this conversation, while he's actually having it.

At least there's another topic that he can grasp at.

"Do you think it's, uh, okay to help someone forget things? If they ask you to?"

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[ninefox]

He manages, barely, not to tense up. Forgetting things. He can't - it's not - he didn't think there was a topic he'd be worse equipped for.

"I think. It can be okay," he says slowly, very carefully, forces himself not to think only about himself, about the rawness of the Admiral's silence, about everything he doesn't know -

"If they ask you to, and if they want to, are not - always the same things. And I would. Try to make sure I knew they coincided. If it were me."

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[oddswerebad]

"It's definitely what he wants, because he thinks it will achieve a goal. I don't know. Sometimes I think it would be nice not to remember everything and that's a lot smaller scale."

He scrapes the floor with one shoes.

"You talked with Ruby."

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[ninefox]

"The thing about forgetting, is if it doesn't work the way you want, you don't have a way to ask for it back."

He knows Nico knows this; it's a very basic strategic loop. But it is worth - the focus, of saying aloud.

"Once, yes. Why?"

Re: Spam

[oddswerebad]

"She could remove memories. It wasn't...precise, but she only did it on purpose a few times." With training, it might have been different, but that was a training the League didn't want to give and he doesn't think Ruby would've wanted.

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[ninefox]

"It sounds like....a difficult tool, for someone like her to have," he says eventually.

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[oddswerebad]

"Yeah. Though better than if someone like Martin had had it." He looks down at his shoes a moment. "It's...hard. And the stuff they would say didn't make it better. Being Green or Blue - the others...a tool you're told you should be killed for, doesn't help with any sort of balance."