—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

039, v early.

[raw]

[ Elliot is unobtrusive when he wants to be, so maybe at first it just feels like Juno's thinking about him. And maybe it's not even Juno, since Darlene probably has Elliot on the brain, so often does she worry about him under her facade of not-caring, and then there's the link through Peter, and—

But no. Like a spider in the corner of the room, once he's noticed he's unmistakably there. Not rifling or projecting or doing much of anything, just present and waiting. Juno can probably pick up that he's tired, run down. A lot's happened lately, and nobody got much sleep. They all have to pack up and move this morning, and usually this is the time of day that Elliot would catch up on his z's.

He doesn't know how to start this conversation. ]

[iuno]

[ Juno would be tired enough on a normal day, not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination — but this is worse than a normal day. he's exhausted, bruised and sore from the use of his symbiote ability with Bakugo, head aching from pushing the Theia to try and get something useful out of it. the entire Nest feels heavier than usual, this cumulative weight of everyone's tired minds, leaving Juno with the familiar sensation of dread for another day ahead of him.

so he ignores Elliot, even once he's noticed him lingering there on the edges of his awareness. rolls over and pretends he's not paying attention. his irritation is ticking away on a countdown timer, though, and it isn't too long before it eventually hits the limit: ]

( What do you want, Elliot. )

[raw]

( Fries. )

[ Hey, it's an honest answer. He's had a craving for a couple days now — think the next destination of the pilgrimage might be a McDonalds?

Something bubbles up, an emotion, a memory, it's not even clear which of them it belongs to. He seems to consider reaching for it and again, doesn't. There's some monotonous noise in the distance, muffled monologue — again, it's not clear which of them it belongs to. ]

( There's this thing I can do now. Where I can make people feel calm. Pleasant. If they let me. )

[iuno]

[ Juno listens, but his attention is a half-caught thing, waiting to pull away. ]

( I'm guessing that's a symbiote thing. )

[ it gets a little curiosity out of him, at least, through the static haze of annoyance and exhaustion. these symbiote abilities are a bunch of bullshit and even when they're right in front of him, he tends to treat them with the same disdain and skepticism he would any kind of supernatural. but Elliot's makes a sort of sense. they're already dealing with a parasite in their brains, it hardly seems a stretch that it could alter a person's mind like that. ]

( Gotta admit, it doesn't sound all that useful if they have to let you do it. )

[ there's a thread of impatience underneath his chatter: what do you want. he can't imagine anyone who's met Juno Steel already coming to him if they don't want something out of him. even if — he considers — that something is to give him a shot of sedative so he's not a low-grade headache in the back of their mind. ]

[raw]

( Symbiote to symbiote connection requires advanced permissions. Managed to whammy a couple of ordinary aliens last night without their consent. Felt like shit afterwards though. )

[ That last bit is mostly tacked on like an afterthought, he's not really paying attention to what he's actually saying, because this isn't the point of anything, this isn't why he's here at all, this is the offer of a paracetamol before he cuts out your heart.

Fuck, he's so tired. ]

( Hadrian won't wake up. )

[ And there it is. ]

[iuno]

( What do you mean he won't— )

[ although he's prone to restless anxiety, on any given day Juno's mind, for the most part, holds itself steady. it's not necessarily a good thing, since it's usually consistent in a feeling something like being pinned to the ocean floor by the crushing and insurmountable weight above him, but it's fairly settled at its core. resigned.

this is not settled. this is a black hole opening up inside of Juno's ribcage, the roaring force of it; the gravity and a terrible yawning chasm of such emptiness that it's violent. he's never once been truly afraid that Nureyev was dead or otherwise gone, because Juno was always there to intercept the bullet and Nureyev always promised— (there are vague memories that Juno's tangled snarl of thoughts catch on, more sound than image, a voice that is Hadrian's but not quite. a different pitch, tone, feel. it's warm and low and sincere: I won't leave you here, do you hear me? I promise you I won't disappear.) and so the thought of him being gone is... unthinkable. it's unacceptable.

Nureyev has too much to offer the world to just— just fall asleep and never wake up again, like the others left behind on the Station. it's too dull for him. he wants too much, he's the one that could actually make something worthwhile out of himself out here (Juno is so in love that it hurts) and if anyone deserved to just fade into the background, it's Juno. those are pointless thoughts, useless, but they come anyway: that this is somehow Juno's fault. it always is, isn't it? or that he could have stopped this somehow, that he shouldn't have been a stress on Nureyev's mind, shouldn't... but Nureyev will still be asleep no matter what Juno blames himself for now. that doesn't stop the background hum of something much worse, like the low tenor of a plucked string, a feeling Juno has never put into words because he doesn't want to examine it too closely, just — I should have died. I should be dead. I wish it were me.

painkillers won't fix this. by delivering the news, Elliot may as well have gutted him. ]

( Where is he. )