a farspeech announcement

[yourattention]

Emotions. [The lack of introduction is partially because Connor rarely bothers anyways and partially because he's trying to minimize the amount of speaking he's doing.] They were banned on Ai'tuoh and I couldn't figure out why then but that's - the more you bottle it up, the faster the flowers grow. Every. Single. Time. You say "I'm f" -

[There's a hiss of pain and then a slow, shaky breath. Yeah, alright. That was maybe not a great idea, given that he knows that's literally how it's triggered.]

Every time you lie about how you feel, something new grows. Every time you tell the truth, I think - I think that's how you cure it. That's why the robots didn't get it at first. That's why the rates of dying were all different.

[Should he take his own advice? Probably. But he's not gonna.]

I have fluro, if you want it. It makes the nausea worse, but it makes it easier to breathe.

Comments

[yourattention]

[Because it's Tim, Connor's voice is suddenly light and almost breezy.]

Yup! We're fucked.

[postictal]

What kind of...truth do you have to tell to get rid of it?

[He'll be smothered in his own lies. It's poetic justice, at least. Finally, the consequences he's been waiting for.]

[yourattention]

Lup told me my hair sucks [Which, like. Fair?] and it didn't work so we're thinking like. It has to be the deep-down repressed shit. So like I said: fucked.

[postictal]

[A pause. Silence. Repressed doesn't bode terribly well, but what about that which he already knows? Does that render him immune to a confession?]

Does someone have to hear it?

[yourattention]

Jury's out on that one. I'm thinking probably yes, but if you wanna write it down and burn it to test it can't hurt.

[postictal]

No shortage of shit to burn around here.

[He breaks off to cough - the sound of retching probably comes through clearly, despite his half-hearted efforts to shield it behind a cupped hand.]

I'm gonna burn that whole place down. [It's said offhand, a vague remark. He doesn't specify what place he plans to set alight, but at this stage, he doesn't really care for specifics.]

[yourattention]

Well, wait until we mine it dry at least. [The metal is useful, in terms of resources, but everything else can go.] Maybe one of the tech-people can get this redstone to do stuff.

[postictal]

This...what?

[Does Tim lOOK like someone who majored in Minecraft]

[yourattention]

[Normally, he would try to explain vaguely. Right now, he's not having a great time talking so:]

Floriocite. There's a vein of it down at the other end of the island.

[postictal]

And we're all in peak physical condition to mine it right about now. Yeah.

[He'd be ready and willing to do exactly that, if he wasn't...in a right fucking state at the moment.]

cw: suicidal ideation

[yourattention]

I mean, I could just die. That'd solve the problem.

[No it doesn't.]

[postictal]

I think there's some holes in your logic there. Dying kinda sucks here.

[He knows that you don't come back all the way right, at first. It's better than being turned into a shadow, but not by much.]

cw: suicidal ideation

[yourattention]

Well, yeah. That's why I don't do it all the time. This is kind of an exception though, right? Like, it would solve at least two of my problems, which is more problems than it usually solves when I die.

[WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS.]

[postictal]

Not sure it'd be worth it.

[Not that Tim's about to take his own advice here. He's absolutely going to fuck off and just let it happen.]

[yourattention]

When is anything ever worth it? Living, dying - we're all still stuck here and the same shit is going to happen on whatever fucked up island we get next.

[He doesn't even remember what the last choice was, which is probably a good thing since it's animals and animals were the most likely to suck after civilization.]

[postictal]

[Tim's quiet for a moment. Breathing through the flowers that have started to work their way into lungs that have always had it out for him. Coughing, spitting spots of blood clotted with stems and zinnias.]

You have people who give a shit if you live or die, Connor.

cw: past suicide

[yourattention]

I know. I haven't died in like six months. [Not "since I got here."] I'm trying.

[It's hard to unlearn the impulse to solve problems by dying, particularly because it keeps working for him.]

[postictal]

[Six months. Tim hasn't died since he got here, which...probably speaks to his self-preservation. He was always infuriatingly good at not dying, despite literally every circumstance that suggested he should.]

I died on my way here. I ever tell you that?

[yourattention]

No. [He could say he extrapolated from the way Tim talks, but he assumes there's some kinda lesson here.] How?

[It's not actually "how did you die," exactly. He doesn't care about the specifics, just the circumstances, so it's more of a "how did you arrive at a situation where you ended up dying."]

[postictal]

[How does he put this in a way that isn't, how do you say, fucking horrifying? That Chara stabbed him in the soul in an attempt to exorcise their remnants from him, and killed him in the process - and that he stood there willingly and let it happen, and thanked them for trying the way they did?]

I was trying to help someone with a problem. It involved some risk to myself. [Those are some very vague terms, but he'd rather not incriminate the kid while he's at it.]

I knew what I was getting into. Knew that I might not be heading back out.

[yourattention]

Okay? [Now he's confused, because this sounds like some kinda hero bullshit and he doesn't really understand how it relates.] Is there a lesson here?

[postictal]

I was out for something like six months, but it didn't feel like six months. I wake up here, no time at all.

[The bottom line is: it's not fucking worth it, he's learned, because you don't even get a break from all of it. No time to just shut off and sleep.]

People have been a lot more...thorough than I have in seeing what kind of lengths it takes before this place stops bringing you back.

We haven't found a limit yet.

[yourattention]

. . . I don't lie to you enough to have anything to confess.

[There's still things he could bother to say explicitly to Tim, instead of leaving them for extrapolation buried under sarcastic quips and bizarre tidbits of information, of course, but he's bizarrely honest about himself to Tim. He thinks? That's what Tim's trying to get at here?

That if the cure really is telling the truth, he should just do that and not die a horrible, flowery death.]

Well. Stuff that's important, anyway.

[postictal]

It doesn't have to be me. Just...if you can, you can say it someone. Anyone.

[This is Tim's stupid convoluted way of saying he really doesn't want you to die, Connor. He should probably be guilty, because he's lied several times in this conversation alone. Guilt is too ordinary a thing for him to pick it out from the mess of the rest anymore.]

Death here isn't worth it.

[yourattention]

Yeah, uh. That's the problem, Tim. I only have two people I talk to about shit.

[Which, in fairness? It's a 200% improvement over him before he arrived here, but also it vastly narrows down the pool of people he's comfortable enough with to confess more than (1) thing to.]

One of them knows more about me than my own family and the other one is [Shion, who he's actively keeping secrets from.] a hallucination, which is just talking to myself.