—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

[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. )