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[howtheyshine]

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[greatoldjohn]

Whatever the reasons you have are, mine are probably very similar.

And just as hard to define.

[howtheyshine]

Everything inside is a fucking mess.

I hurt. All the time. The places that burned when I used them for Larson.

I hate--

I hate everything. I hate everything.

[greatoldjohn]

[ There's no answer, just a change in the connection, a slow feed of warmth and light and affection that starts to fill the connection between them. With it comes a strange tonal music that might make something inside of him ease, just a little.]

I love you.

[howtheyshine]

[He almost resists. Fights the comfort, pushes back. There is, for a half a second, the sense that he might.

But he doesn't. He doesn't relax, but he doesn't resist.]

I love you too. I love you.

I love Jedao. I love Arthur. I love Hunter and Flapjack. I... I...

[greatoldjohn]

[ John doesn't say anything else. He's just going to keep loving him. Let him talk. ]

[howtheyshine]

[There's a few more half-formed syllables, then:]

I don't know what's happening to me.

I don't know how to stop it.

[greatoldjohn]

Do you want me to come to you?
Do you want me to call Hunter? Or Jedao?

[howtheyshine]

P... Please. Come?

[He's at least in his own cabin now, time out blobby and all.]

[greatoldjohn]

[ There's a knock on the door within five minutes. ]

[howtheyshine]

It's a little harder to open it when he can't just pop out of the blobby to reach, but Hunter already helped with a stopgap there--a stool, just to one side of the door. So that is where the little fox-that-is-Edwin is sitting when he pushes the door open enough to invite John in.

[greatoldjohn]

John thought he was ready for this.

John thought they'd talked and he'd spent time with Arthur and he was ready. He could differentiate. He wouldn't feel anything unexpected as the door opened and the sensation of Edwin, of his other half, flooded in.

He's as surprised as Edwin might be how his image flickers to another, to the blood and the tears and the bruises. How the memory rises so intensely that he's glad he doesn't have to breathe because he can't for a moment.

He has to force it back to normal. Focus on something.

"Why are you red?"

That's something.

[howtheyshine]

He backs up fast enough that he almost falls off the stool when John's image changes. He certainly slips, back paws briefly sliding off of it and onto the topmost rung.

"H... Hunter gave me a new body. I-- it's... I can't use any... any abilities in it, or... leave it unless he lets me. Unless I ask."

[greatoldjohn]

John watches for a long moment before he nods, considering if maybe he shouldn't step in.

He steps in.

"But I can still touch you?"

[howtheyshine]

"Y... Yes." He doesn't know what to make of what just happened, not yet, but it makes him feel sick to imagine his brother like that.

Which makes him feel a little sick, remembering Richter like that.

[greatoldjohn]

"Good," he says as he looks around for a place to sit, a place to go. He doesn't know what he should do or say, so he looks to Edwin.

"So. I'm here. You... still want me here?"

[howtheyshine]

The cushioned pit in the middle of his greenhouse is still there. Edwin looks at it, then up at John, feeling strange and small and a half-dozen other anxious things he doesn't have names for.

"Yes. If you-- want to be. You don't have to want to be."

[greatoldjohn]

John just blinks at him, then he'll head for the conversation pit, and he'll slip into it.

Then he'll offer his arm.

"I came, didn't I? And I offered."

[howtheyshine]

Edwin climbs down with him, curling up and tucking himself in against John. He shivers, and impulsively bites a careful mouthful of John's shirt to grip onto.

[greatoldjohn]

John twitches, just the once, before he reaches down, and reaches over and puts his hand against Edwin's head and his ears, and he'll start scritching gently.

I don't know what to say but I didn't want you to be alone.

[howtheyshine]

The twitch makes something inside Edwin go strange and cold and distant. Not in an angry way. In a way that would have a human vomiting.

Are... Are you scared of me?

[greatoldjohn]

No.

That word is immediate. Definite. Unquestionable.

I know you love me. I know you don't want to hurt me. I know that.

[howtheyshine]

But-- You don't know that I wouldn't hurt you?

[greatoldjohn]

I know you will.

That's steady too.

Not because you want to. Not because there's anything wrong with you that means you're destined to hurt people. Fuck that.

Just because you have a lot of pain inside and the journey you're on is hard.

[howtheyshine]

But I wouldn't-- I wouldn't hurt you. I wouldn't... try to.

[greatoldjohn]

He scritches him before switching to long, soft pets.

I know you wouldn't try to. I do know that.