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]

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.

[postictal]

Okay, well I don't think a hallucination is gonna count.

[He hasn't started seeing...things yet. That'll start to happen later, when more time starts elapsing between swallowed pills, and when the pain sends fresh flurrying shocks down the base of his spine.]

What scares you about it? Saying stuff aloud?

cw: connor being connor

[yourattention]

It doesn't scare me, it's just like. What am I gonna do? Go up to random people and dump "hi, my name is Connor Murphy and I'm a fuck-up who killed myself because [I wanted attention.] I wanted to send one last "fuck you" to my dad." on them? That's just rude, people have their own shit to be dealing with.

[Attention, attention, attention. Everything he does is for attention and he can't. Dumping your shit on people is like the worst form of attention-seeking because then they have to respond to you. They have to give you what you want.]

cw: suicide mention

[postictal]

You didn't kill yourself because you wanted attention.

[It's tired, like - like he's just offering some clarification.]

That's kind of the point of killing yourself. There's no guilt to a corpse, or attention, or anything. You don't get anything out of it but...it just being over.