fe_male | memeboxing

[ For a while he just continues staring at whatever fixed point he's chosen to stare at, whatever he's actually seeing being a far cry from what's being displayed before him. It's not until she actually touches him that he breaks his one-man staring contest, and that's just to look down at her hand as she moves it to sit next to his own.

This is where the whole 'it would be so easy to take her hand, accept the help, blah di blah, but i can't, i won't' thing would go, except it doesn't go here. It's not easy to take her hand right now, although it normally is, and it's not easy at all to accept the help she's offering, the friendship she's already shown. He actually doesn't want it at all, either, so that helps with making it not-easy. He doesn't want any help. He also doesn't want to do it by himself, either. He just doesn't want to handle it at all. He wants to leave it alone like he's been doing, deal with it when it arises and then squash it back down as quickly as possible and go back to pretending it's not there. Yes, I've cleaned my room, as long as you don't open the closet. Same basic theory. ]

I don't have to. [ Finally, a glance to her face, because he knows that, he does, and she needs to know that he knows that, apparently. But it's a quick glance, and then he's looking away again. ] I want to.

[ She's trying not to look into his mind on purpose right now. She generally does, restricting herself to what can be noticed just with surface glances, because she doesn't want to overstep boundaries that become easier and easier to overstep just by existing around him. The irony is that in the moments that she could most help him by looking without permission, she is most reluctant and unwilling to do anything without him saying it's okay.

Sometimes she wonders if she's just sticking how much she values his trust above actually helping him, but this is what she's decided on and she's sticking to it.

She still gets whatever he's broadcasting, and that's harder to block out. But for right now, she's concentrating on him. There's sincerity in her eyes when he glances over for a moment, and then he's looking away again and she swallows down a sigh of frustration and worry. ]

Why? [ Simple and quiet, but maybe there's a good reason. She kind of doubts it. Her reasons are never very good. ] It's not - I was waiting to see if it got better, but it's not.

[ And he really appreciates that, honestly. He likes that she values his trust above his well-being, and that sounds really bad when it's put like that, but if she didn't, he wouldn't be close enough to her for her to bother valuing either.

He's not broadcasting a whole lot, for the fact that he's attempting not to. There's some anxiety, a high hum of it, emanating; some idle fear and melancholic worry; a large sum of irritation, though that was present before she started this conversation and has very little to do with her directly - the majority of it is in fact directed towards himself. But he doesn't want her to know these things, even if he's pretty sure she can feel half of them and whatever she can't feel is written in disorienting pastels across his face.

And why. He really doesn't ever have any one specifically good reason why he doesn't want anyone in on this. Beyond the fact that it's simply intensely personal due to the sheer amount of vulnerability sharing it creates, there's not a particularly rational reason to keep it to himself. He just. Feels like it. He doesn't want to share because he doesn't know where to even begin with it, even though he's actually shared a little bit with her in the past. He doesn't want to give anyone else those images or these feelings to deal with. He's supposed to fix problems, to be the futurist, and he almost can't handle how it goes that he can't even fix himself because he's hung up on things in the past. ]

It will. It's just... taking a while. It always gets better again. [ And no, that doesn't at all sound like 'It has to get better again.' ] It cycles. This is - it's just a long cycle.

[ Logically, she knows that math, knows that there's a good reason behind it. But sometimes she can't help but feel like - well, yeah, it sounds really bad. Really bad. And sometimes it's hard to look past that.

For things he doesn't want her to know, he's making it very hard for her not to know them. She watches his face, glances away when she starts feeling like she's intruding again but looks back almost immediately, not able to stop watching him. She needs to know. Or wants to know, or needs to be able to help him and therefore wants to know. It's complicated. ]

I could help. [ A wave of something close to exhausted frustration in her voice for a moment before it recedes. The rationalization of all the reasons you don't need help is something she's perfectly familiar with, but that only means that she knows how much they don't work, in the end. ] Tony, please. [ It's what I'm for, but she swallows that down. This isn't about any roles assigned to them by genetics or whatever it is that results in Sentinel and Guide. It's not about comfort because it's ordained by a set of instincts. She wants to help because he matters to her, more than anything, because he deserves to have someone to help him. ]

You don't deserve to have it cycle back again and again. Let me help.

[ Yes, well. People this close. He has a hard time letting anyone get as close to him as she's managed to do, but once they're there, he has an equally hard time letting them go again. He might do a lot of superficial things that push people away, but the majority of his actions will - from his perspective, anyway - be to keep them nearby. There's an area where he likes to keep people for a while, and even when people breach beyond it, get closer than he was expecting, he likes to pretend that they're still in that comfort zone. Most people will go along with it - Rhodey, Max, they both usually let him pretend, because they know when things need to be pushed and when Tony just needs to feel like he's in control, even if everyone involved up to and including himself knows that he isn't.

And it isn't fair that she's being all insistent and offering when he's already exhausted and not all-together. It's much harder to say no to someone who is offering something that you want, but you don't want, but you know you need. Something like that.

And it doesn't help that he actually disagrees with her there. While this whole process is deeply unpleasant, and he'd like to be rid of it, there's a little part of him that can't help but think it's a good thing, to be periodically and forcibly reminded of all of this. It probably helps to keep him on the path he's chosen to follow so late, keeps him trying not to waste his life. He's promised not to do that. ]

I don't - [ He doesn't a lot of things right now, so he stops abruptly, pauses, lets his hands slide back and fall down into his lap, follows their progress with his eyes and holds them there for a few moments.

He doesn't know that that's true: that he doesn't deserve this kind of cyclical nightmare. He doesn't know how she can help. He doesn't know how to accept it even if she figures that part out for herself. He doesn't know what to do, with any of this. It's why he'd started working, because that's the fastest way to shove it out of the way and move on. ] I don't know how that would work.

[ She does generally. Let him pretend, or at least keep her offers of help brief and mostly unspoken, let him decide what he wants and when he wants it. She wants to help, but she dislikes trying to push it on him. Especially now, when he's tired and vulnerable already, because it feels weird and a little bit wrong.

But this has been too consistent and it's been too much already. It doesn't feel like it's getting better, or going to go away, and she meant what she said even if he disagrees. He doesn't deserve this. She doesn't think he needs any reminders of how to be a good person - he's already a good person, the path is fine. It's hard for her to understand why he would ever think he needed a reminder for any of that. ]

I don't know either yet. [ Her eyes tracking his hands, and she leaves hers where it was for the moment, as much as she wants to follow his hand down and take it in hers, curl her fingers around his and hold on. She feels a little like she's dealing with a spooked animal, which maybe is an unfair image but she just knows that when she's already pushing she can't be the one to keep chasing. It won't work like that. ] But I can find a way.

[ Watching him, still, and she's broadcasting just a little bit of her sincerity and want to help him. ] We can find a way.

[ Spooked animal is actually probably not that inaccurate - at any point when he feels threatened, that tends to be his initial reaction, and especially at times like this, when there's not actually anything to react to or get away from but himself. You can't be direct, you can't be too forceful, and if you take too long to come to a resolution, he's just going to run away again. It's pretty damn accurate. (And it's okay, because Sif thinks he's like an adorable little puppy anyway, so out of the two, there's one he'd rather be.)

And he gets the sincerity; he got that before as well, so now he just sort of tilts his head away from her, still looking at his lap, and continues to completely not know what to do. He's quiet for a little while, processing or deciding how he wants to proceed, whichever one and maybe both, before he finally answers her again. When he does, it's a pathetic attempt to deflect her yet again. ] How about you come back when you've figured out a way.

[ Meaningful conversations with him turn into a long slow climb upwards circling around a mountain, because getting anything out of him that isn't either not the truth or an evasion or some other way of attempting to redirect attention away from anything that might demonstrate he has any weakness is about as easy as squeezing blood out of a stone.

Like that, exactly like that. She probably should have seen that coming, and for a moment she does waver because the more she has to push the more uncertain she feels about whether she's doing the right thing here or just trying to fix him for her own sake. ]

I need your help. [ Quietly, softly. An appeal, almost, to please work with her, let her help him. ] I need you to talk to me.

[ There's really nothing I can say to that to make it any more accurate than the way you've already put it. Well done.

And it's okay though, he wants you to waver, particularly now that he's wavering, because he's still undecided about the whole thing and if you change your mind and decide for him it just makes things so much easier. He can be ridiculously juvenile and selfish, but she sounds like she's actually hurt by this - and she probably is, who knows, he can't tell at any given point how much she's picking up on and what actually is directly effecting her. He has his reasons for acting the way that he has been about it, but the longer she sits there, she doesn't even have to talk while she does it, the more and more they start feeling as though they're paling in her more starkly contrasting light. ]

What do you want to talk about? [ Because yes, she's going to have to drag it out of him, little bit by little bit, and he'll start somewhere else if she doesn't specify well enough. Whatever initial acquiescence she gets will be because he knows intellectually that this problem isn't fixing itself, not because emotionally he feels the need to reach out for help. ]

[ Thank you very much.

She dislikes the unsurety, though, and the way she feels sure that no matter how much she tries to make sure it doesn't it will bleed over into how she looks at him and the way she speaks. That needs to not be happen - she needs to be certain, right now, very certain of herself and what she's doing so that she doesn't hurt her chances to help him. It's important. She tamps down on it harsher, tries to make sure that there's absolutely no chance he can tell she's at all unsure. Gently she pulls her hand back from the table where it had been beside his until he withdrew his, resting both of her hands palms up on her knees, light and open and within easy reach, always. ]

What you were dreaming about tonight. [ Before he'd gotten up to go, before he'd woken up still affected enough that he'd had to force himself to breath, before he'd walked away again and she'd laid in bed trying to determine what was the best course of action. Her voice is still soft, but she does manage to sound sure of herself. She is taking the right course of action. She can help him. ]

[ He's rather awash within his own uncertainty at the moment, it's not that difficult to convince him that she's more sure of herself right now than she actually is. Which is, again, a good thing. One of them needs to be sure, or the spooked animal in the room is going to turn pink and flip out and run away. Sensing surety, even if it's false, is calming. It's grounding, and she is the way he grounds himself instinctively, so it works even better.

But that. He doesn't want to talk about that, and it's obvious from the way he shifts in the seat, slightly angled away from her, still looking down and everything else, after she finishes the sentence. He really doesn't want to talk about that, and he's fidgety, suddenly, slightly, and none of this does anything to prove that it's not in fact something that needs to be talked about. He mumbles a response, half lost before it gets to her because he's still looking anywhere but at her. ] Wasn't any different than normal. We've talked about it before. [ He thinks. Maybe they haven't and he's just assuming, because they've talked about other things he didn't want to talk about. ]

[ She can fake being sure, for him, until she actually is, because she is at least still certain enough that this is the right thing to know that even if she's not entirely positive she needs to act like she is. Doubt is a bad thing to bring when someone has problems and you're trying to help them with it despite them not wanting the help.

She's seen that physicality from him before, a few times, and every time she's been able to give him at least a little bit of help, ease him into being a little more comfortable. That helps, with the certainty. But she doesn't lean forward or do anything that might make it seem like she's trying to make him look at her, however much she wants him to. She can't push too hard. It's important to be careful. ]

We've talked about one specific dream. I'd like to know about this one. [ It's not a tone that indicates she can be swayed at all. They have talked about nightmares before, but it was once and he was as recalcitrant as he is now. She'd gotten some on that dream, but still. It didn't give her something to go on for this, not really. ]

[ It's a pretty sure fire way to ensure that they fight you harder on accepting it, that's for certain. But right now he's just sensing concern, sincerity, that she wants to help, whatever the problem. Right now he continues to not look directly at her, but he's at least occasionally glancing in her general direction, over at her lap, down at her hands, nothing distinct, but it's more than just a little while ago.

Beyond that, he's tense. He's been tense, but where previously it had been more of a defensive tenseness, now it's borne of simple unease. Talking about it means to go back through it, and he's actually pretty sure he doesn't want to do that right now. ] It's basically the same. [ Sort of. He doesn't actually remember all of what he told her last time, or whether she was told the information or showed it. ]

[ And all that concern and sincerity is stronger because that's what's the most important of what she's feeling, to her. He's looking now, at least a little, and she's pretty sure that's a good sign but he's still so tense and she doesn't think that's going to be any help to them going forward. She reaches out with one hand to touch his knee, just for a moment before she pulls it back. ]

Then tell me what makes it a nightmare. [ Because that's the important part. Dreams are dreams, and sometimes they're unpleasant, but it's fear that turns them into nightmares and she needs to know what it is he's afraid of to have any chance of helping him not be afraid of it. ] What makes it important enough to keep coming back?

[ She's really making it difficult to be evasive like he wants to be. Too specific, narrowing down her questions until she gets what she wants. And by this point, he just feels exposed even sitting here, with nothing happening, and sure he's aware that a large portion of that is probably because he's gearing up to actually share something that terrified him when it happened, and terrifies him every time he relives it.

He shifts again, still not seeking out comfort from her but less convinced he doesn't want it. He doesn't want it, but maybe not for much longer. It takes him a while to work himself up to actually speaking, and there's a handful things that look like he's about to start, and then he doesn't, again. Smooth, deep breathing, which was half the problem in the first place, so being able to keep doing it, even simple as it is, can help. ]

When I was... in Afghanistan, the t- [ Mmm, nope. Pause again. ] They wanted me to build them a missile. I said no. A lot. [ He said no for a long time before he said anything else. He was there for three months - nobody ever seems to think about the timelines. ]

[ If he's going to demand that she get specific to get any answers out of him, she's going to rise to that challenge. It makes sense, needing very specific questions to answer, because otherwise how do you even know where to start? So she's just going to keep on until she gets what he needs from this. If she can, at least.

He starts, he stops, and she waits, quiet and solid and steady as she can make herself, close by. There's a space after he finishes talking, her waiting to see if he's going to add anything else, and then she nods a little. ] And what happened when you said no? [ She knows, of course.

Not everything, entirely, but despite how drunk she'd been she still remembers him telling her about the waterboarding, a story for a story, a piece of the past for a piece of the past. But that might not be what this is, or if it is she wants to hear it from him, needs to hear how he's going to phrase this so that she can know what it is specifically that's causing the trouble. ]

[ Precisely. You need specificity as a series of stepping stones, otherwise all you're looking at is a vast expanse with no direction and lots and lots of natural disasters pending.

Right now, it's stepping stones so close together that it might as well be a paved walkway, but that's how he needs it in order to reach even a moderately uncomfortable status, anything low enough to actually talk. It's sort of like coaxing a story out of a small child, in terms of mechanics. Of course, there's very little about this that is like that in context. He pauses again, for a fair while, after that question, clearly not wanting to actually get to the specifics he's forced her into asking him for, and so it should be little surprise that when he does answer, it doesn't start off as much of one. ] They stopped hitting me after one of the wires to the magnet accidentally disconnected. Which - it sounds bad, but it was a good thing. Yinsen learned how to use it to stabilize bouts of v-fib, which was useful later. [ And suddenly he feels like he needs something to do with his hands. He's been fidgeting with them anyway, but he needs something to actually handle now, and he glances over the desk before leaning forward for some random part to roll over and over in his hands. ] I mean. Who has that much disposable water in the middle of the desert? You'd think they'd want to save it or something.

[ She can be a pathway right now, if that's what he needs. She'd be whatever he needed her to be right now, so long as it was still also her because ceasing to be herself wouldn't actually help. But she can be what he needs, right now. Even if he's not entirely aware that that's what she is. One foot in front of the other, each scrap of information he gives her another piece of understanding to fit into the puzzle of what's the problem.

There's a tiny hiss in of air at the first sentence, because she knows he was hurt, of course she knows that. She's not stupid, and they needed him to do something for them so they hurt him. It's a simple equation, and she hates it with every fiber of her being. She's always been able to rationalize what happened to her as a direct result of the actions she took, of the fact that she knew what they did to prisoners and she went against them anyways. Made herself a target in place of the people she cared about. It doesn't actually make it easier to live with, but it makes more sense.

For him there's none of that. There's only the anger that floods her when she thinks of anyone hurting him, the attendant anger when she considers that specific situation. But other than that slight indraw of breath there's no reaction until he's finished speaking, until he's given her the way to put down the next step on the path, and even then she keeps her anger under check and behind shields. ] You'd think. Is it that, specifically, that you dream about?

[ He notes the hiss, and really, if she hadn't reacted at all, it would have been a little strange. The predominant lack of reaction is nice, it's kind of calming, because he's not sure what he would have done had she suddenly flared up in righteous indignation, or anger on his behalf, but neither does he know how he would have felt about her having no reaction whatsoever. He doesn't want anger anymore; he's so far beyond the anger stage of this that when it comes up again all it seems to do is make him feel tired. If anything, he's angry with himself for allowing it to effect him to such great degrees, because why should it? There are so many reasons it shouldn't.

And no, his experience was nothing of the sort. Nothing intentional, nothing purposeful or with any level of mental preparation. No debrief afterward, because he was raw and exhausted and powerful enough to look the US government in the eye and say no and actually get away with it. He had been starting to look around the room, a little higher, things actually at eye level, but having shared just that little bit with her now he's just staring at his hands, turning over the small piece of metal, and his voice is totally not a little thicker when he replies again. ] Basically.

[ She's trying not to add anything else into the equation going on right now, and her anger - she thinks that would be an addition that would complicate everything else in ways she doesn't want. Her anger is still fresh and raw, for him at least, but she can guess that he's past that particular stage of things. It hadn't taken her very long to step past that and land squarely on tired sadness. That stage seemed to last longer. At least, she hadn't found there was a way past it yet.

So she's going to keep that held back as much as possible, just watch him and look at how he's interacting with the room around him because he's a physical person, the way he moves things and what he's looking at tends to be very telling of how he's feeling. ] Why? [ Deconstruction, down to the most essential nuts and bolts of the problem. ] We dream about things because at the heart of them - they frighten us. [ A heavy swallow before she keeps going. ] Why that, specifically?

[ That's good, because he really doesn't want to feel anger right now, not from anyone. Not on his behalf, not towards him - he just doesn't want to handle it. Any sort of strong negative emotion he gets from her, and he's just going to start closing off again, because he already has plenty of those and what little amounts of ground he's giving her as it is, what tiny little footholds and handlebars he's allowing her to have as she pries him open bit by bit, are given because she seems calm, and together, and that's a kind of peace that right now - even if it's just peace by virtue of relativity - he really wants.

So far he's continued to toy with the bit of metal in his hands, glancing a little bit around the room - familiarity, being uneasy means looking in more than one place, and everything down here is nice and comfortable and ineffably his own. He hasn't moved very much beyond that though, and it's older things, oddly, that he seems to be lingering on more than anything else, if one were to even call his flitting glances 'lingering'. At her question, it's straight back down to his lap again. More quiet, for a while. When he starts to reply, it's... Fragmented. ]

I couldn't... With the water, it's a shock, being so cold, even though the, the cave is cold, and it's so hot outside, which -- it matches, since after a while, in and out, your chest burns, so it's all cold and hot at the same time again. Just. The wrong way around. [ He knows this isn't what she asked, and it's just a short pause before he continues. ] I don't like not breathing. You know, when your face is submerged in cold water, it's enough to trigger a whole survival instinct in all mammals? Your heart beats slower, and blood floods into your chest. It's supposed to help keep your lungs from collapsing under pressure from the rest of the water you should be in, but if you're not in the water and you've just had chest surgery it just - [ Well. ] It's worse than the v-fib. At least I wasn't conscious for some of that. But I don't like not breathing.

[ She listens, carefully. That's all she can do for the moment, because he's telling her and she asked him to, he's telling her what she wanted and needed to know and so she's going to listen. It's not pleasant to hear, for multiple reasons - because she's protective of him, because her own memories can run along very similar lines and she's a lot further along in her acceptance of things than he is but they can still cause... problems, because the cadence of his voice is off and it's weird, she doesn't like it.

But mostly just because she cares and it's so very clear that he's not anywhere near over this and it's been years now, he's been carrying this for years and all the time she's known him and she hasn't helped yet and she doesn't know how to. She doesn't know what to do to help him be able to face it a little easier, make his sleep a little lighter. How does she answer him, now that he's told her? ] Have you ever talked to anyone about what happened? Have you been carrying it by yourself this whole time?

[ It's okay Max, he doesn't know how to help either. He doesn't know how to get help, or even show enough weakness or damage half the time to alert other people to the fact that he even needs it. Nothing beyond the obvious, anyway.

The avoidance in his posture and fidgeting doesn't really lessen at all. He doesn't seem as though he feels any better for sharing that - which makes sense, because now there's a vulnerability that didn't seem as present before, but this is half the reason he hasn't shared any of this before. He expects immediate results, or something along those lines. The moment there's anything worse, and this feels worse, sort of, he hasn't completely decided yet, he cuts and runs again. ] Reneg'd on the debriefs, passed on the psych evals - those have always come back funny anyway. Lots of people said 'if you ever need to', but no one actually wants to hear about it, and I don't want to talk about it. [ Didn't then when it was fresh; doesn't now that it's had time to fester. And besides, bringing it up now, apparently at random, well that just indicates how much it bothers you, doesn't it? ]

[ Well at least they're united in this not sure how to handle this ness. Not that she's ever going to admit that she's not sure what to do now, because as mentioned before, if the person who's trying to help you starts seeming unsure, well, that's about the exact opposite of helpful or reassuring or anything of the things she wants to be right now. Thankfully she is very very good at putting on a front, because right now she needs that ability.

She's doing what she can in terms of broadcasting feelings of safety and warmth - not anything explicit because she doesn't want to manipulate him, but enough to indicate that she's there and trying to help, that he hasn't scared her off or said something that's going to make her change any of how she feels about him. That he can be vulnerable, it's okay, which is a massive double standard because she would be 100% not okay with being vulnerable herself. Still. ]

I want to hear about it. [ Firm but still calm, and this time she does reach out again, brushes her hand along the back of his for a moment before pulling it back. ] And I want to help. I know it's not easy to talk about - believe me, I do - but. [ Silence for a long moment as she tries to determine which of the many things she's thinking to say, and how to say it. ] Take it from someone who knows how this road goes. Letting it fester makes it so much worse.

[ It's likely that he'd shy away from anything too overtly positive as well - it would, indeed, feel like manipulation, potentially like pity, or something, and he doesn't want any of those things on top of what's happening. He's not fond of them on their own, either. ]

I just told you about it. [ He didn't mind the contact that time, looking over at her hand for a moment and then back at his own, but he doesn't seek hers out yet. And yeah, he's learning that leaving it isn't helping, but that hasn't stopped him leaving it anyway.

He shifts a little, suddenly, sitting up a little more and glancing around. They've been sitting for a while and he's shared now and he's still antsy, maybe even more antsy now because he has shared and he's waiting to see what happens now. ] Yeah. I noticed.

aww you're mine too

<3

his reasons?

her own past reasons for saying no to help i swear one day i'll stop shorthanding stuff

honestly it makes sense with your edit or mine which is kind of hilarious

tony and max have bad reasons for their bad life choices the book the movie

a series of unfortunate decisions, the perks of being inane

the life of ridiculous people

how to make friends with unhealthy people

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that last comment of mine there was the 1000th comment to this post jesus

i just looked at your total comments posted and made a noise

oh god yeah don't do that or i just look insane

it's okay i love you for it

well thank you

ps i have just over 3000 notifications from you in my inbox

holy wow. idk what to say to that