Office #2 at the school, Thursday mid-morning.

[biotic_psychotic]

[CW/TW: Jono's thread goes some dark places. Torture/etc.]

Jack had decided on office hours so once she hit the coffee shop for the largest to-go cup they had she went and camped out in her spartan school office. After about twenty minutes she became bored and out of coffee. Examining the lock on her door, she pulled a multi-tool from her pocket and began disassembling it. Once it was off the door she took pictures of the whole rig and reassembled it. It was tossed carelessly into the bottom desk drawer.

The door was propped open with the wastecan. From another pocket came a tennis ball. Leaning back in her desk chair, she began doing a slow bounce with it from floor to wall and back to her hand.

The teacher is in.

[Open office hours!]

Comments

[furnaceface]

//Get better at resisting gods, I suppose,// Jono replied, lifting a shoulder. //For all that I'm a functionally immortal firestorm, there'll always be stronger.//

Never failed, really. He looked up at the ceiling for a moment.

//World's a mess. World'll always be a mess. Better me than somebody who doesn't know what to do with it.//

[biotic_psychotic]

"Is that like the thing where when you have a trauma you try and invalidate your own trauma by saying someone somewhere else has had it worse?" Jack asked slowly. "Because that's horseshit, Jon. 'Better' would be it happening to fuckin' nobody."

[furnaceface]

//Would be, wouldn't it? But that's not how anything works.// Jonothon looked at her quietly for a moment, considering his words carefully. //It's not entirely that, though. It's... better me than any of the students under my care. Better me than someone with less control over the shadows in his head. I've seen what happens when people with too much power can't keep their shadows in check. Hell, one of them put me through the whole bloody thing over again. Me, everyone at my other school. Most of them opted to have the experience wiped from their minds entirely. I couldn't afford to.//

He shook his head a little.

//We call shite like that 'Wednesday.'//

[biotic_psychotic]

Jack nodded after she mulled that one over for a minute. "I could see that. Specific someones and not a general somebody-out-there like a damn Disney song," she said slowly. "I'm a control freak. Don't think I could fuckin' stand having something missing from my memory. Got one thing like that and some days it drives me goddamn insane."

She wasn't exaggerating.

"The only reason I don't go off the damn rails over that is because people I trust know. They know the truth of it and they've told me I don't have to carry that." Jack shrugged, "I could. I've carried worse. Knowing what it is, though, it hurts them. To know it'd be in my head. I wouldn't care. I almost never care. But they do. Some days, that's the fucking worst. To know that my shit's living in their heads. Not in mine. Not where it belongs."

That mattered. She wasn't even sure why. It just did.

[furnaceface]

Jonothon got it.

Goddamn, did he get it.

//For me, it would've taken out a link in my head that would've broken all the context for how my body had been fucked with, too,// Jono... complained, mostly. //Because that seems to be the running theme with all these bastards. New mind, new body. At least th'first one I agreed to, more or less.//

The body part, anyway. Having a face again had been nice, while it had lasted.

[biotic_psychotic]

Jack frowned a little bit and looked him over. She puzzled over what that meant. "So the key to fixing your body is keeping everything that's 'you' contained somewhere? That's shitty. What an asshole thing to do. Even if you did agree to the first one more or less."

[furnaceface]

Jono tilted his head a little. Lifted a hand and made a so-so gesture with it.

//All for different reasons, from different means,// he noted. //The Weapon X thing... I'd gone in undercover. They pieced me back together, made me look human again. Left my mind alone so long as they were convinced they had my loyalty. It was just the moment they were given cause to question it that they stripped my head away. Second time...//

Hooboy. Where to even start with the second time?

He just shrugged, reached into his pocket, and pulled out his phone. Flipped through his camera reel. A long way back.

It was... a look.

He did kind of miss being huge, though.

[biotic_psychotic]

Jack looked at the picture and then between the picture and Jon. Twice. She lifted a shoulder. "I like you better now. That guy looks like a real douche."

[furnaceface]

The sensation of 'amused snort' when broadcast telepathically was probably more like a mental tickle than any actual noise.

//That real douche once shattered th'bathroom mirror because he was angry at his own face,// he replied. //There was a bit of overcompensating for things that were out of my control, but overall, he was still me.//

A pause.

//Shame I don't have any photos of me being utterly bloody overwhelmed by hot chocolate.//

Taste. Taste was a thing. He missed having a sense of it of his own.

[biotic_psychotic]

"I'd be angry at my face too if I had lips like that," Jack pointed out, "That takes 'trout pout' to a whole new level."

A beat.

"Hair wasn't bad."

She thought about the cocoa statement and nodded slowly. "Probably similar to someone peaked on E. Yeah, I can imagine it. Flavor, tactile sensation, heat.. I get it."

[furnaceface]

//Gets worse when you know how I got those lips and who else they belong to,// Jono muttered, shaking his head. //Hated those almost as much as that bloody tattoo. Almost happy to have my chest blown off again, thanks to that./

Stupid cults.

//... Was okay with the hair. Still not sure how I felt about auburn.// Being a ginger was weird. //But... yeah. This?// He waved at himself. //Not so much with being able to feel things, like this.//

What with being half there, a mess of ruined nerve endings or no body at all.

[biotic_psychotic]

"The tattoo was pretty awful," Jack allowed, "I try not to judge other people's ink unless it's garbage scratch."

She judged other people's ink so hard. So hard. She was just very good about not saying anything unless she wanted to be insulting on a deep and personal level instead of the surface insults she threw about.

"It went well with the blue. The hair," Jack clarified so he didn't think she was still on about the tattoo, "Now? Nah."

Frowning with a small crease of her lips while she looked him over, she asked, "No feeling all over or just around the open part? I mean, there's still the rest of you. You're not all numb, are you?"

That was kind of a horrifying thought.

[furnaceface]

//Not completely without feeling,// Jono replied, lifting a shoulder slightly. //Not as much as I'd like, either. The open part, obviously not. But there's a lot of... damage.//

He shook his head.

//S'not the end of the world. I can feel. Just can't feel much.//

[biotic_psychotic]

That resonated with her in a way she wasn't sure he meant it to. Wasn't a bad thing. Just strange to hear it said about physical parts. "You gotta feel a lot of something to feel it at all?" she asked.

She got that.

Jack tapped the side of her head. "Same with me in here. Or wherever the fuck emotions live."

[furnaceface]

Jono gave a small nod in confirmation at that. There was a reason he and Hannibal tended toward slightly less... ah... traditional ideas of intimacy.

Well. There were a few reasons. He wasn't about to get into those, here and now.

//Makes sense,// he said, finally. //Connections get carved away, things go numb, you make those connections with whatever else you've got left. Makes it hard to be certain if you're feeling pleasure or pain, sometimes?//

Worked well enough when talking in a physical or a mental sense, didn't it?

[biotic_psychotic]

She gave the smallest shake of her head. "I don't feel pain as pain anymore. Not since I was a kid. It's always pleasure. First thing they did to me. The only way I know the difference is because regular pleasure doesn't leave me craving more. Shit that should hurt?" Lift of a shoulder.

"Real easy to forget I'm all fucked up inside because I been this way all my life I remember. Real easy to hurt other people when you think everyone feels shit the same way you do because pain doesn't really hurt."

[furnaceface]

//I've been so many things in my life, it's hard to tell what's wrong and what isn't, anymore,// Jono noted. //Even emotionally speaking, sometimes.//

He shrugged a little.

//Get a bit of that in a physical sense. Feel a sting to feel anything at all. When you don't get much, that alone can be intoxicating. Still... generally had enough experience before all this to be able to rationalize where other people's lines are drawn.//

For the most part. There was the fragment of his mind that had survived to Fortress X who didn't give a flying fuck what other people's lines were. And the ember of Weapon X would have pushed those lines just for fun.

[biotic_psychotic]

"I almost never know until someone tells me," Jack said and then forced a shrug. "Then there's the other side where I gotta want to listen to what they're saying and give enough of a shit to do something about it. It's new."

Both the giving a shit and the trusting people enough to give their words any weight at all.

[furnaceface]

Jono nodded a little.

//I get asked sometimes why I don't use my powers all the time to make people just not notice or care about what they're looking at when they see me,// he offered. //I know it's not entirely the same, but...// A shrug. //I have to give a shite enough to want to. And by that point... generally the people I'd want to put that much effort into aren't the ones who'd actually care.//

[biotic_psychotic]

"Well that'd be just fucking exhausting," Jack blinked, "Everyone all the time? What the fuck? People suck. They're not worth that kind of tired."

[furnaceface]

//Used it for children before, mostly,// he admitted. //A child who had just lived through a bombing didn't need to see this flaming ruin. Otherwise... people can just sod off, really.//

Fuck 'em. People were exhausting.

[biotic_psychotic]

"Kids," she agreed. Kids were different and broke all the rules for everything.

"When people try to put you out, can't you hit 'em with a loud 'don't'?" she wondered, "If people want you to ninja yourself all the time, would that be a thing you could do?"

[furnaceface]

//Could,// Jono agreed, but hiked up a shoulder slightly. //Suppose having my own head fucked with enough makes me... reluctant to do the same to others, unless the situation calls for it.//

[biotic_psychotic]

She squinted at him for a second. "I'd think having someone try to fucking extinguish you would call for it."

[furnaceface]

Jono hiked up a shoulder.

//They never will. It's more an annoyance than an emergency, generally.//