used to care, but times have changed. [ catch-all ]

[insertdadjoke]

Who When Where What Warn

"Jacob Kane" (Cain) & You Catch-all for the rest of August Various places in Keeliai Cain reacclimatizes to life on a a turtle floating through the Dreaming. Basically just make something up and I bet you Cain is there somewhere. The thread with Gene delves into imagery of torture and child abuse. (If you could take a moment, consider filling this out!)

There was a whole lot that hadn't actually changed in the city. Small things, different businesses here and there, maybe a few more houses in one district and some converted or otherwise gone in another. It was familiar in the way any city was after a time lapse, although Cain would be the first to admit that it was a significant enough change for hardly a year's time since his last visit. At least that meant it was easy to catch up on old ground.

However, now he found himself staying at and working at the Hotel however temporarily until he got his feet truly underneath him. That was good, a simple task to keep an eye on people and make himself comfortable again. Working with the Metalworkers on his own projects kept the rest of the time occupied. The vast majority of Cain's free time, however, was spent exploring the city and feeling out the atmosphere, talking to kedan and foreigners alike. He had cleaned himself up and changed his wardrobe just enough to look older than his usual early-twenties for a change of pace. Usually, this wasn't the sort of thing Cain would care about; usually, this was the sort of bed the city could make and lie in all on its own for the denial of taking responsibility they'd dragged in themselves; usually, he wasn't stuck here forced to be a part of it with a bunch of others who were in much the same situation.

Usually, it sucked to have a sense of responsibility for those he felt close to.

Most of his days consisted of hitting up local businesses, making himself known to the locals as someone helpful and harmless and getting whatever gossip he could. Cain checked in on the few friends he had, and looked to make any more to improve his own situation. It never hurt to make use of a specifically positive image, after all. He might as well have a bit of fun with it.

Comments

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene kept a mental tally of who was around and who wasn't. Between Kane and Bianca, this was turning into Old Home Week. Or month. Or whatever.

He nodded, confirming his identity. "Not really. Finishing some errands. Adjusting back to Keeliai okay?"

[insertdadjoke]

One could only hope older, less-welcome faces didn't show back up with them. Such as Malicant. Thankfully, that one seemed dead as a doorknob and staying that way, leaving them with other problems to deal with instead.

"Well enough," he said with a dip of his head. "Starting from scratch a second time isn't so great, but there isn't really room to complain. Got plenty to catch up on still."

[wrathfulkhan]

We can only hope. And it wasn't like the population of Keeliai didn't have any problems to deal with now that Malicant had been defeated. Nature, as the saying goes, abhors a vacuum.

"Luckily, we all seem to be decent at looking after each other," he noted. "We've kind of had to be."

[insertdadjoke]

There were so many things going on, Cain wasn't really sure it was nature abhorring a vacuum so much as they were probably in some kind of nexus for constant karmic reshuffling. If anywhere couldn't possibly ever come to permanent peace, some kind of metaphorical realm holding actual physical objects seemed like the place for all the universe's restlessness to lie.

"Those are my thoughts," Cain said. "What do you think, lately? Heard a lot about the major things going on, but not exactly what general opinion on them are. There's the drought, the Chihuleans, the temporary alliance of the family, not to mention all the smaller things in comparison."

[wrathfulkhan]

Six of one, half a dozen of the other?

"Ask ten kedan, get twelve opinions," Gene said dryly. "The drought is obviously no good, and at least the temporary truce between the families has removed that headache for now. The Chihuelans...that's a different story. Not to mention what happened to Jintou."

[insertdadjoke]

Essentially where the problem lie. It didn't matter so much in the end, except for settling Cain's nerves on feeling like he had more control than he did.

"Jintou," said Cain, perking in interest. "That's a new name. Who is Jintou and what happened to them?"

[wrathfulkhan]

"A kedan defector," Gene said. "He was under Anton's guard at the Hotel, but Anton was attacked a few months ago and Jintou was kidnapped. Yunxu's people found him after some time, but he's been...not himself, as far as I'm aware."

He needed to revisit that case, in point of fact.

cw: imagery of torture, whoops

[insertdadjoke]

"Defector?" Cain tilted his head as he considered what that would mean. Defecting from what, exactly? To what? Gene kept going, though, and he was rapidly adding questions to the pile: about the attack; about what Yunxu's people had to do with Jintou; or how they'd come to the conclusion he—

—wasn't himself.

Cain stopped moving without realizing. It was warm, no breeze, uncomfortable and cloying and only a dim light above him that didn't even have the decency to flicker or sway or do anything but keep him completely disoriented. There was murmuring by his ear, hot breath brushing the skin and he couldn't turn his head or move away. The scent of blood, his own blood, was strong and sickening where hands were prying around inside of him, eyes open while he stared listlessly into the mirror hanging over his body. He couldn't breathe, but he was still alive. They had him cut open, but expected him to listen. How long had they been doing this, cutting him apart and letting him heal but not letting him rest, letting his brain simmer in exhaustion and pain and disorientation? How much longer would they keep it up? Did they care that he was still in there or had he become something other than human that they couldn't even see beyond what his body did?

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene was about to answer when he noticed Cain going quiet and still, and the reaction was so familiar to him that he mimicked it unconsciously before realizing precisely what it meant. Something - not necessarily something he'd said, but something that had happened, someone's cologne, a name called in the distance, a gait too similar to someone else's - had dredged up some memories he'd rather forget.

He'd gone into that state too many times not to know what it meant, so rather than waste his breath or try and establish physical contact with someone who might come out of it swinging, he waited, tensed to defend himself if he needed to. He'd gotten violent before; Kane might do the same.

[insertdadjoke]

There was nothing specific happening, just a mind trapped while the memories swirled and he didn't move. He had started to sweat, a light sheen appears where his muscles began to tremble. The world came back in bits and pieces, natural lighting in place of the bulb, private conversations further away, spoken in public where anyone could eavesdrop, the breeze of the turtle's movements ruffling his hair. There were still parts of him with one foot in the memory but a sweeping tiredness hit his body and he fell to his knees, hands out in front of himself to catch on the ground before his face met it, too.

He breathed, struggling to focus where memory gave back into reality. His fist clenched, relaxed, and he watched the motion, felt the scratch of road against his skin, had trouble grounding himself. Eventually Cain came back to his senses enough to remember he hadn't been alone in that episode, muttered, "Oh," to himself and glanced up to Gene with a confused squint. He was still shaking, still felt like his guts were going to spill out all over the road at the slightest movement, but at least he could see the young man there before him who didn't belong in his nightmare at all.

"Oh," he repeated. Just because he could.

[wrathfulkhan]

Since Gene had taken a step or two back to get himself out of easy attack range, that also meant that he was outside of easy catching range, so he couldn't help catch Kane up while he fell to his hands and knees. (Ouch.)

Gene watched him ground himself with the tactile stimulus, the feel of the road, the realization that this was real now, not that...whatever that had been. And when he squinted up and let out that surprised "Oh," Gene crouched down in front of him, offering a hand to help him up.

"You look like you need some tea."

[insertdadjoke]

Cain still wasn't what one could call steady. He stared even longer, trying to take Gene in rather than the copper taste in the back of his throat, the phantom feel of air against sensitive insides and blood spilling out over his legs and torso where it hadn't been cut open. He didn't want to try and hold them inside, just in case a rib might break off or he somehow made it worse. It wasn't real, but the sensation was there and his thoughts were circling in disturbing ways.

Gene's voice, the movement of his lips, was thankfully something he could grasp onto. It shuffled him closer to the now instead of the then. His hand flexed once, twice before he reached to take the hand and held it firmly, willed his legs to move and ignored the part of his brain that said he could feel organs shuffling around inside at the motion. "Tea?" he asked, mouth running on automatic into some realm between frightened, desperate and mocking at the same time. It didn't sound that great.

cw: child abuse imagery THIS THREAD SURE IS A ROLLICKING GOOD TIME

[wrathfulkhan]

If Kane asked, Gene wouldn't cop to it, but he knew the feeling; even now, so far removed from Zhang, he still could sometimes feel an armored hand closing around his throat, the bruises, the scratch at his hairline where the ring stolen from his mother had dug into his skin, the scratch that had become a tiny scar that was still visible, even now.

But he was patient. He waited for the other man to get himself more steady before pulling him up to his feet.

"Tea," he said firmly. It engaged multiple senses; sight, smell, taste, touch. It was what he'd done after that vision of the dying baby turtles: made himself some tea.

"There's a shop around the corner that caters to Foreigners."

what happened, how did we come to this

[insertdadjoke]

Cain had his own fair share of other skeletons in the closet. One didn't get as old as he did without scars etching into his psyche, sometimes beyond reach even on the darkest of days, but these were the freshest wounds and the whole situation was at the forefront of his recent distance with Abel back home. That made it more important than anything else he had gone through whether it was actually worse or not. The emotional impact of it happening was heavier than he'd felt in a while; the emotional impact of Abel being legitimately angry at him, enough to strike an otherwise-mortal blow in warning, was devastating.

He really hadn't wanted to come back to the whole ordeal, and now it seemed his brain was insistent on dredging it back up despite his best efforts. Trauma had a way of doing that, and Cain had a way of usually talking it through with family, processing it and moving past it in the best way he could. Not this time, though. Bringing himself to admit to this one was... impossible.

Before his brain could slip-slide down that avenue, he latched once again to Gene's presence. There was plenty of other things going on around him, but this was someone with him. A lifeline that seemed to understand on a personal level how the human brain could be its own worst enemy.

"But is their tea good?" Not that he cared, he was just trying to follow a conversation despite feeling vaguely like he was underwater.

we play characters with terrible histories

[wrathfulkhan]

"Not as good as Iroh's was," Gene admitted, "but it's far from the worst tea in the city." And he began to head off in the direction of the tea shop, keeping one eye on the other partly to make sure he was following and partly to make sure that he wasn't about to slip back into another episode. These could come in waves, Gene knew, and a crowd was the worst place to be when you were having one. At least the shop would be a little more secluded.

also, we're awful too, that probably doesn't help

[insertdadjoke]

The comparison was lost on Cain, but he held onto it regardless. It didn't make sense, in the way that the world didn't make sense simply because he didn't know everything. That made more sense than that little room, those gloved hands and sickly sweet words he couldn't remember, the whole incident that made his stomach churn and mind recoil just to skirt around. He swayed partially as he walked with Gene and kept his head vaguely down; not staring at their feet but avoiding eye contact. He hadn't been given any eye contact in that room, and taking in too much of it now just made him nauseous.

His senses were warring over where they wanted to be. He could feel the breeze but only tasted stillness in the air; the crowd's murmur buzzed and twisted into a drone at his ear before warping back; the person in front of him transformed into blood and flesh and a mirror, himself pulled to pieces on their chair. He blinked and the blood was gone, sometimes the mirror with it and sometimes it was an amalgamation.

"Gene," he said, strained. He reached out for the young man's sleeve, grasp unsteady while he tried to keep himself grounded to something undeniably real and alive and not back there. How Gene would react wasn't part of the equation, Cain just needed something more than the nothing of his own body and confused senses.

or does it SUPER help

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene froze as Kane grasped for him, one hand involuntarily curling into a fist. He stopped short of using the other man's size and momentum against him and toppling him to the ground like his first instinct was to do. He'd been getting better at not giving into his first impulse out of panic or anger, and though his heart rate had spiked at the grab for his arm and the hand on his wrist briefly flickered to an older man's hand with gnarled, pointed fingernails, he did not flinch or shout or fight.

"I'm still here," he said, trying to keep his voice level.

SUPER helps the SUPER terrible

[insertdadjoke]

Twisting his head away, Cain pressed the palm of his free hand to his eyes and missed the flash. Not the way Gene had reacted, but that only added to the feeling of disproportionate misplacement and he shifted his hand to something less like a vice and more like he was just trying to hover. After a moment, the hand at his face dropped and he turned to look at Gene, his profile more than directly at him. Cain was so tired and frayed, and the kid in front of him was scared and probably having a hard time of it himself.

Cain needed help, but getting it from someone who was likely to be affected by his own distress wasn't the way to do it. He just wasn't sure how to verbalize that or make his point with everything jumbled up as it was. Tea was a good idea for a distraction but he wasn't sure if they would get there at this rate.

"Okay," said Cain after a long hesitation. His hand jerked, an aborted motion of letting go, and he exhaled. Was this doing either of them any good? "Drop me off at the shop?"

because we're SUPER awesome

[wrathfulkhan]

To his credit, Gene had been able to keep a lot of the strain from showing on his face, but being with Tony (and Tony's inability to let sleeping dogs lie) had cracked his poker face, a little, and if he could see himself he'd be ashamed of how comparatively vulnerable he'd let himself look.

The hand on his wrist jerked but didn't let go, and this time Gene could fight back the flashback. Zhang wasn't here. Zhang wasn't here. And Zhang wouldn't be a threat to him here, either; rings or not, power or not, he had people here who actually for some reason gave half a damn about him and wouldn't let that happen to him again.

"I think I might need some tea, too," he said, and tried to make it into a joke.

or SUPER nutso, one of the two

[insertdadjoke]

All Cain really wanted to do right now was get his head on straight. He wanted to fight the flashback, the helplessness and jumbled emotions gently shredding his mind to ribbons, but he didn't have any tools for that. His support net was in another dimension, his spot of safety in the city unreasonably far away considering his state, and all he had was someone he hardly knew apparently trying to help. Cain couldn't totally guess at why as he was, but he figured it was close to home in some way that Gene didn't want to abandon someone going through this.

He was grateful and frustrated by that at the same time. It felt like he should have more practice or control at dealing with this, alone or not, but that wasn't how it worked. Not with something like this, not with something as unpredictable as a mind overflowing with memories good, bad and buried. Sometimes it could be combated, sometimes it just took over so completely that he wasn't even cognizant enough to fight. He was somewhere between that right now, still unable to find his footing.

"It's on me," he said, watching in quiet fear and faint disassociation as the scalpel sliced through his body along lines they'd sharpied onto his skin that had yet to fade. Like some kind of horrific ziploc bag; reseal it and save the rest for later when you wanted more.

why not both?

[wrathfulkhan]

"If you say so," Gene said, opting to humor him. They'd about reached the shop by now; if Kane could hold on just a little bit longer, they'd be in and seated before anyone knew it.

Luckily, it was a slightly off hour, and there were many open tables. Gene found one where the other man would have his back to the wall and led him there. At least it was quieter in here, less overwhelming than it was outside. That was a double-edged sword: it took away some of the stimulation, but at the same time the quiet environment made it easier to focus on the phantoms inside one's own head.

is it possible to be both at once?

[insertdadjoke]

Cain held on. Literally and metaphorically, keeping whatever senses he could tuned to Gene and the crowd around them until they stepped into a building, slightly stuffy from the heat and the lack of proper cross-breeze, and it was only Gene's continued movement that kept him in motion. When they got to the table, he stared at it blankly before making a rather coordinated falling motion into the chair while letting go at the same time. It was quieter, more private, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to be thankful for that or not.

Seated, it changed some of his perspective. He could finally sit back and look at himself to try and dissuade the mental image that superimposed over his senses. He wasn't cut up, nor falling apart, nor in any kind of physical duress despite the signals his mind was sending out. His hand came to press protectively against his heart and he tried to simply sit and breathe. Sift through what he was feeling and what he was actually experiencing.

I don't see why not

[wrathfulkhan]

A coordinated falling motion was better than Gene could pull off, some days. Today was a good day, and he sat down across from Kane with no apparent issues or distress. But at least Kane had sat down. Gene had not been looking forward to trying to force him to sit, especially not if his knees locked in protest against the coerced movement.

Gene watched him, his own hands folded on the table, shaking off the specter of his own past by breathing deeply and focusing on what was real, trying to tell himself five truths. My name is Temujin. I am in Keeliai. I am twenty years old. I have been here for three years. He cannot hurt me anymore.

He reached up for his neck and tugged down on the necklace underneath his shirt, as though to remind himself it was still there. He wouldn't count the rings now, but if the string was still there the rings would be too. He almost missed Kane pressing against his chest; not the right place for his heart. Was he remembering an injury he'd taken, or something else?

then let us also be SUPER... up later than we probably should be

[insertdadjoke]

That one was definitely practice. Muscle memory helped where everything else was on vacation, and Cain was grateful his body still understood the motions while he was too distracted to remember how they actually went. His hand shifted from his heart to cover his eyes — then quickly snapped away when the darkness was the last thing he wanted. It was a blank canvas for his memories to paint upon. He was tired, but not close to wanting sleep.

He just wanted a reprieve.

It was more isolated here, more difficult to find things to focus on that weren't internal. He scrabbled around until he latched onto something, anything, to use to hold him upright in the storm. "Who's Iroh?"

can't be tamed! CAN'T BE TAMED!

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene kept repeating those five truths in his head like a mantra, and found himself going over the last one again and again, like the needle of his mind had gotten caught in a groove. He cannot hurt me anymore. He cannot hurt me anymore. He cannot hurt me anymore.

How true was that, really? How true could that possibly be when the shade of Zhang still lurked behind his actions, tainting every bit of his brain with its presence? Zhang hadn't been summoned to Keeliai, but that didn't mean that part of him hadn't come along for the ride.

The question seemed to startle Gene from his brief, troubled reverie. "One of the Foreigners. He'd been here for a while, but recently disappeared. I don't know if you knew Zuko, but he was Zuko's uncle."