—MENTAL LINK.

[iuno]

DESPAIR you can't save everything	STUBBORN i just have to think it's all for something
BITTER no one has ever been happy forever	GUILT but all of this was my fault!

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[incinerates]

[ He wishes Juno would. Shove at him, give him an excuse, let him cut loose and really lay into something. This knife edge he's walked is a barely-contained secret, bleeding out of his pores as he jockeys the nests elbows and hisses and snaps at olive branches and kind words. ( He shoved that girl on the beach; that murderous girl, who sounded no older than him. The one who thought heroes were killers, and they aren't they aren't they aren't -- ) Part of him wants to hurt Juno, and that part figures it'd be in retaliation. Juno earned it, Juno started it, Juno's the one who's begging for it --

And that's what keeps him at bay.

That faint, barely-there sense that Juno's just waiting for the hit. Denying him that is a lot sweeter, then. ]

Don't you dare look down on me like that.

[ The words are a whipcrack, lightning in the sky. ( "None of your business", you made it his business. ) Don't you DARE dismiss him, he'll come back a thousand times harder if you do.

Even now, it's spurring him forward. Harder and faster, the words tumbling from him -- his mind to Juno's, even as his mind fractures and schisms and handles a conversation with Hadrian Black at the same time. It's a little too much, in one go, for such a new hosts. One who hates that he can juggle two conversations at the same time, one that hates how he reaches out mind-to-mind because it's the easiest way for him to hear the answers he's given and to miss none of the nuances. He doesn't miss that inky, sticky-thick pain that Juno bleeds. It feels like that fucking villain, the one that ate him up and tried to crawl inside of him to wear him, like some puppet. Juno feels like a puppet, being worn by something darker and sadder. ( Why's he like this? Why's he have to be like this? What does Black see in him? Why does he CARE so much? ) ]

Ha, [ the laugh is small, mean, bordering the edge of something he's tucked away deep, ] You're both useless, it's a wonder you made it here at all.

[ ( Rooms away, he stands over Hadrian Black; ready for a fight. ) Here, he braces his toes up against Juno Steel and snaps his teeth at him. Jockeys and jostles his mind, gets in his face. ]

What makes you so sure that he knows? I'm talking to him now, and he seems more like some high-class moron you're giving too much credit to.