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CHARACTERS: Maryle Bone & Dom Flores Romero
WHAT: Dom comes clean to Maryle about his scrambled brains afteryears barely keeping the secret for any amount of time, really
WHEN: Friday, January 30, 20 AI
WHERE: Maryle's room
WARNINGS: idk descriptions of body horror lite™
WHAT: Dom comes clean to Maryle about his scrambled brains after
WHEN: Friday, January 30, 20 AI
WHERE: Maryle's room
WARNINGS: idk descriptions of body horror lite™
Sloane has been kicked out ahead of their meeting, giving Maryle ample time to pace their room and come up with worst case scenarios by the time Dom arrives. She's settled on best worst case (Dom ran into her parents on Earth and seduced one or both of them) and worst worst case (Dom has only a few months to live), with a nice sliding scale in between. The gradient of scenarios ticks through her mind, one right after another, looping back to the start, until she hears a knock on the door and she quickly goes to open it. The thoughts stop looping, but she's looking for signs of illness in Dom's face as she steps back to let him in.
"Do you want a drink?"
Not telling Maryle makes him feel like he'll be ill. Deciding to tell Maryle made him feel like he'll be ill. Stepping in Maryle's room, about to tell Maryle, makes Dom feel like he's going to vomit and then probably also explode, taking the ship and neighbouring solar systems along for the ride.
"No, thank you," he replies, face schooled into placidity, and takes one deep breath. He's put this off for eight years and even eight more seconds will be too long. "How much preamble would you prefer? I prepared for every possibility."
Maryle shuts the door behind him, and the sound seems to echo far more than it actually does. This feels like an execution, though whether it's hers or his remains to be seen. She pulls in her own breath, deciding to forgo alcohol herself even as she's calculating just how much of the shitty mystery bottle is left. No. She'll control herself. Despite the fact that they have the whole (tiny) room, she stays where she is, next to him and the door.
While absolutely not as practiced as her companion, she does manage to keep an almost blasé expression. Almost. Her brows are a little creased.
"...fuck, I don't know Dom. Just." She rubs her forehead, her eyes already stinging even though he hasn't said anything yet. She tells herself that nothing he says will actually cause any lasting damage. That this is all just a big lead up to something mild. It only does so much.
"Just say it, I don't know."
Dom, with no right to a seat on Maryle's bed or maybe even a spot in her present life at all, pulls a chair over to face her bed and perches on its edge. As Dom moves so does Maryle, placing herself on the edge of her bed just barely, feet in tiptoes and body tensed as she focuses on him.
"I lied to you about why I left the field." Because this is the crux of the issue: not that he's unfit for duty, not how networks in his brain have been slowly rewiring themselves over the years, but that he's made her his primary person for nearly a decade and he's never been honest.
He smooths the thighs of his already-smooth jeans. "Bishop removed me for medical reasons." Well. "Well, he removed me for them, and I was demoted–" (in spirit if not on record) "–for... obfuscating a key piece of said history."
The moment he says 'medical reasons' Maryle feels like she's going to faint, her mind conjuring up that worst of the worst scenarios. Dom is dying.
He keeps speaking and she has to try her hardest to listen and not just spiral out of control. He's lied to her. He's in trouble for concealing this information. This history. This is long running, whatever it is. Maybe he isn't dying. Maybe...
"What have you been hiding?" While her mind is chaotic, she's slipped into an outward calm, her words coming smooth and relaxed even as she has to remind herself to breathe.
Bad. rattles through Dom, who was hoping she'd fly off the handle because at least handling Maryle's moods is second nature. How she's already closing down makes him worry that he's already lost — not the argument, but Maryle herself, and that...
He takes off his glasses and rubs them on the hem on his shirt even though they'd been pristine. After too long in the field trying to read others' faces for the tiniest, fleeting hints of what might be going through their minds, he can't bear to watch Maryle's right now. The only thing he can do is give her everything she asks of him and hope that something remains to bind them together.
Still cleaning one of his lenses, he asks: "Are you familiar with neuroplastic aftershocks?"
Dom isn't looking at her. Maryle wants to grab his chin and make him, wants to force him to look in her eyes as he explains what he's been lying about to her, of all people, for god knows how long. Instead she places her hands on her lap and tightens them into fists, digging her nails into her palms to give herself something else to focus on.
She tries to conjure up a definition for what he's asked her about, but comes up blank. 'Neuro' and 'shock' are not really reassuring things to have together in the term, though.
"No. But they don't sound good, Dom."
Nine out of ten dentists don't recommend them pops into Dom's head unbidden but he can't bring himself to lighten the mood with a joke from a dead world.
"My implant began to..." With his eyes still watching the fabric shift under his glasses, he wiggles a hand toward Maryle to mimic interference, "malfunction only a few months after it was gifted to me. But this was before Dislinked was founded and, more importantly, before we knew how to deactivate chips properly, or safely. I'd heard rumours of someone in Volketswil who–"
It's dissociating to share this story twice in one month, like he's watching someone else live his life and doing everything wrong.
"You don't need the entire saga: what matters is that I sought a back-alley-grade professional to deactivate my implant. It wasn't entirely successful and I've lived with the consequences ever since — which are called neuroplastic aftershocks." He slides his glasses back on and finally glances back at Maryle, his gaze drifting briefly to her balled-up fists before returning to her eyes, his own tight. "It wasn't one of my better plans."
Before Dislinked existed. Which means he'd been like this when she was Veiled and they'd met, when he owed her nothing. But then, also, like this when she was unVeiled, when they had been together, when they had become as they are now, inextricable. He had lied since meeting her and had kept lying to her until now, until presumably it was no longer an option to lie. Her fists ball tighter and there's a ringing in her ears, but Maryle is still composed. Clinical, almost.
"What are the consequences exactly?"
This part's easy because he'd made Med hand over his file for bedtime reading. "Attention deficits, issues regulating my emotions. Headaches, difficulty sleeping, hand tremors — about what you'd expect." The longer that Maryle went without responding emotionally, the more Dom wished he'd never had to come aboard at all. "I was able to keep it from affecting my life in a significant way for a long time but the symptoms have progressed over the years, and..." he shrugs the least effective shrug in the history of mankind. "Bishop is a spymaster."
There is a hot spike of guilt in Maryle's stomach, and she searches her memory for signs that she'd clearly missed. How was he suffering and she hadn't noticed? There are things she can pick out, she's sure, to better punish herself for this lack of awareness, but she has a final, critical question to ask him before she completely loses control of her emotions. She thinks maybe her breathing is getting uneven (it is), so she needs to hurry it up.
"Is it going to kill you?"
"Only if you stab me enough times in a fit of entirely justified rage," Dom suggests, immediately struck with his own guilt over how Maryle must have been taking... well, everything. Of how he dropped it all on her without considering where her mind would go with what little he'd offered, and he wants to reach out and hold her hands and ground her (and him) but if he does that he's probably getting the aforementioned stabbing, so instead he rests his elbows on his thighs and laces his fingers together, inches closer to her but not close enough.
"I should have led with that. No, and between Med and Aldana naming me his new pet project, it's..." It's what? Nothing's guaranteed. "The resistance has resources and, now that I'm here, so do I."
"Good."
Maryle means this, despite the fact that she does, really and truly, want to stab Dom right now. This reassurance from him releases her from that specific worry, but like a broken dam everything else comes tumbling back out. He was at higher risk every time he was on the ground suffering from these symptoms, meaning he easily could have died. He could have died and he wouldn't have told her any of this, because for some reason... what? Does he not trust her? Has she entirely misinterpreted who they are to each other? And how could he do this to her? Why is she always stuck with him ruining her life with emotions?
His closer proximity, however small, causes her to retract the same amount. Her breath is uneven, hitching, and her eyes are stinging enough that her vision is starting to blur. She's not even sure she can characterize this as anger — it's like every terrible emotion all at once.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" It comes out strangled.
There's relief, and then guilt that her obvious anger makes him feel better, but it's there — now that he can read her better and know she's feeling anything, a resolution starts to seem like a real possibility.
Eventually. Like, maybe in another eight years, eventually.
"Far more things than I was willing to see," he admits. "I'm sorry I lied to you for so long, Maryle. And I'm sorry that my apology won't automatically fix this, either, even if I wish it could."
Dom's calm response is expected, but only serves to further upset Maryle. Later she'll have a clearer mind and know that her knee jerk assessment can't be correct, but right now all she can think is that he doesn't feel bad. He's doing what needs to be done (explain the situation) and what is expected of him (apologize), but that's it. She desperately wishes her nails were long enough to break skin so she could worry about that. Instead, she's left to desperately search for words while she feels like she's suffocating.
"You just— You lied to me through everything Dom. Every fucking moment and you— Something could have happened—"
Why hadn't he trusted her? Why hadn't she been able to see it? Over and over again, these two thoughts vie for attention in her head. She is enraged. She is crushed. God, she's crying now, and she loosens one clenched hand only so she can swipe it across her face.
"Get out. Get the fuck out of my room. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you."
The only thing keeping Dom's demeanour still is that his training has long since superseded second nature by wriggling its way into first, ensuring his face stays neutral. Insipid — even insidiously so, when all that he wants to do is shake Maryle until she'll scream all of her worries back at him and he can fix them. But he's the problem. She's breaking because he went and told her that her anchor had never, actually, been honest a day in their life, and there's nothing he can do about it now.
He does as he's told: he stands. He gently places the chair back where it's supposed to be. He turns to the door. "You'll be able to find me when you're ready to talk," he offers when he's working its handle, which is pretty much the equivalent to throwing a bandaid at a raging housefire, and then he pauses. He amends: "If you are."
The 'if' is more offensive than it should be, another piece of him not trusting her. Honestly, she doesn't know what to do anymore, her mind no longer following any sort of proper train of thought, just reiterating that she is stupid and oblivious and meaningless and all of these other terrible things that, were she in a better state, she could fight off. But not right now, as she watches her person stand to leave, even though she had explicitly told him to. As she watches him, cool and calm and collected, abandon her. He's so even-keeled. So ready and willing to acquiesce to her rage and pain. It feels like being let loose to float in space, alone and untethered. Cold.
Maryle can't look at Dom anymore. She throws herself onto her bed and screams into her pillow, a wounded animal. She doesn't care if he leaves, now. He can do whatever he wants.
"Do you want a drink?"
Not telling Maryle makes him feel like he'll be ill. Deciding to tell Maryle made him feel like he'll be ill. Stepping in Maryle's room, about to tell Maryle, makes Dom feel like he's going to vomit and then probably also explode, taking the ship and neighbouring solar systems along for the ride.
"No, thank you," he replies, face schooled into placidity, and takes one deep breath. He's put this off for eight years and even eight more seconds will be too long. "How much preamble would you prefer? I prepared for every possibility."
Maryle shuts the door behind him, and the sound seems to echo far more than it actually does. This feels like an execution, though whether it's hers or his remains to be seen. She pulls in her own breath, deciding to forgo alcohol herself even as she's calculating just how much of the shitty mystery bottle is left. No. She'll control herself. Despite the fact that they have the whole (tiny) room, she stays where she is, next to him and the door.
While absolutely not as practiced as her companion, she does manage to keep an almost blasé expression. Almost. Her brows are a little creased.
"...fuck, I don't know Dom. Just." She rubs her forehead, her eyes already stinging even though he hasn't said anything yet. She tells herself that nothing he says will actually cause any lasting damage. That this is all just a big lead up to something mild. It only does so much.
"Just say it, I don't know."
Dom, with no right to a seat on Maryle's bed or maybe even a spot in her present life at all, pulls a chair over to face her bed and perches on its edge. As Dom moves so does Maryle, placing herself on the edge of her bed just barely, feet in tiptoes and body tensed as she focuses on him.
"I lied to you about why I left the field." Because this is the crux of the issue: not that he's unfit for duty, not how networks in his brain have been slowly rewiring themselves over the years, but that he's made her his primary person for nearly a decade and he's never been honest.
He smooths the thighs of his already-smooth jeans. "Bishop removed me for medical reasons." Well. "Well, he removed me for them, and I was demoted–" (in spirit if not on record) "–for... obfuscating a key piece of said history."
The moment he says 'medical reasons' Maryle feels like she's going to faint, her mind conjuring up that worst of the worst scenarios. Dom is dying.
He keeps speaking and she has to try her hardest to listen and not just spiral out of control. He's lied to her. He's in trouble for concealing this information. This history. This is long running, whatever it is. Maybe he isn't dying. Maybe...
"What have you been hiding?" While her mind is chaotic, she's slipped into an outward calm, her words coming smooth and relaxed even as she has to remind herself to breathe.
Bad. rattles through Dom, who was hoping she'd fly off the handle because at least handling Maryle's moods is second nature. How she's already closing down makes him worry that he's already lost — not the argument, but Maryle herself, and that...
He takes off his glasses and rubs them on the hem on his shirt even though they'd been pristine. After too long in the field trying to read others' faces for the tiniest, fleeting hints of what might be going through their minds, he can't bear to watch Maryle's right now. The only thing he can do is give her everything she asks of him and hope that something remains to bind them together.
Still cleaning one of his lenses, he asks: "Are you familiar with neuroplastic aftershocks?"
Dom isn't looking at her. Maryle wants to grab his chin and make him, wants to force him to look in her eyes as he explains what he's been lying about to her, of all people, for god knows how long. Instead she places her hands on her lap and tightens them into fists, digging her nails into her palms to give herself something else to focus on.
She tries to conjure up a definition for what he's asked her about, but comes up blank. 'Neuro' and 'shock' are not really reassuring things to have together in the term, though.
"No. But they don't sound good, Dom."
Nine out of ten dentists don't recommend them pops into Dom's head unbidden but he can't bring himself to lighten the mood with a joke from a dead world.
"My implant began to..." With his eyes still watching the fabric shift under his glasses, he wiggles a hand toward Maryle to mimic interference, "malfunction only a few months after it was gifted to me. But this was before Dislinked was founded and, more importantly, before we knew how to deactivate chips properly, or safely. I'd heard rumours of someone in Volketswil who–"
It's dissociating to share this story twice in one month, like he's watching someone else live his life and doing everything wrong.
"You don't need the entire saga: what matters is that I sought a back-alley-grade professional to deactivate my implant. It wasn't entirely successful and I've lived with the consequences ever since — which are called neuroplastic aftershocks." He slides his glasses back on and finally glances back at Maryle, his gaze drifting briefly to her balled-up fists before returning to her eyes, his own tight. "It wasn't one of my better plans."
Before Dislinked existed. Which means he'd been like this when she was Veiled and they'd met, when he owed her nothing. But then, also, like this when she was unVeiled, when they had been together, when they had become as they are now, inextricable. He had lied since meeting her and had kept lying to her until now, until presumably it was no longer an option to lie. Her fists ball tighter and there's a ringing in her ears, but Maryle is still composed. Clinical, almost.
"What are the consequences exactly?"
This part's easy because he'd made Med hand over his file for bedtime reading. "Attention deficits, issues regulating my emotions. Headaches, difficulty sleeping, hand tremors — about what you'd expect." The longer that Maryle went without responding emotionally, the more Dom wished he'd never had to come aboard at all. "I was able to keep it from affecting my life in a significant way for a long time but the symptoms have progressed over the years, and..." he shrugs the least effective shrug in the history of mankind. "Bishop is a spymaster."
There is a hot spike of guilt in Maryle's stomach, and she searches her memory for signs that she'd clearly missed. How was he suffering and she hadn't noticed? There are things she can pick out, she's sure, to better punish herself for this lack of awareness, but she has a final, critical question to ask him before she completely loses control of her emotions. She thinks maybe her breathing is getting uneven (it is), so she needs to hurry it up.
"Is it going to kill you?"
"Only if you stab me enough times in a fit of entirely justified rage," Dom suggests, immediately struck with his own guilt over how Maryle must have been taking... well, everything. Of how he dropped it all on her without considering where her mind would go with what little he'd offered, and he wants to reach out and hold her hands and ground her (and him) but if he does that he's probably getting the aforementioned stabbing, so instead he rests his elbows on his thighs and laces his fingers together, inches closer to her but not close enough.
"I should have led with that. No, and between Med and Aldana naming me his new pet project, it's..." It's what? Nothing's guaranteed. "The resistance has resources and, now that I'm here, so do I."
"Good."
Maryle means this, despite the fact that she does, really and truly, want to stab Dom right now. This reassurance from him releases her from that specific worry, but like a broken dam everything else comes tumbling back out. He was at higher risk every time he was on the ground suffering from these symptoms, meaning he easily could have died. He could have died and he wouldn't have told her any of this, because for some reason... what? Does he not trust her? Has she entirely misinterpreted who they are to each other? And how could he do this to her? Why is she always stuck with him ruining her life with emotions?
His closer proximity, however small, causes her to retract the same amount. Her breath is uneven, hitching, and her eyes are stinging enough that her vision is starting to blur. She's not even sure she can characterize this as anger — it's like every terrible emotion all at once.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" It comes out strangled.
There's relief, and then guilt that her obvious anger makes him feel better, but it's there — now that he can read her better and know she's feeling anything, a resolution starts to seem like a real possibility.
Eventually. Like, maybe in another eight years, eventually.
"Far more things than I was willing to see," he admits. "I'm sorry I lied to you for so long, Maryle. And I'm sorry that my apology won't automatically fix this, either, even if I wish it could."
Dom's calm response is expected, but only serves to further upset Maryle. Later she'll have a clearer mind and know that her knee jerk assessment can't be correct, but right now all she can think is that he doesn't feel bad. He's doing what needs to be done (explain the situation) and what is expected of him (apologize), but that's it. She desperately wishes her nails were long enough to break skin so she could worry about that. Instead, she's left to desperately search for words while she feels like she's suffocating.
"You just— You lied to me through everything Dom. Every fucking moment and you— Something could have happened—"
Why hadn't he trusted her? Why hadn't she been able to see it? Over and over again, these two thoughts vie for attention in her head. She is enraged. She is crushed. God, she's crying now, and she loosens one clenched hand only so she can swipe it across her face.
"Get out. Get the fuck out of my room. I don't want to see you. I don't want to talk to you."
The only thing keeping Dom's demeanour still is that his training has long since superseded second nature by wriggling its way into first, ensuring his face stays neutral. Insipid — even insidiously so, when all that he wants to do is shake Maryle until she'll scream all of her worries back at him and he can fix them. But he's the problem. She's breaking because he went and told her that her anchor had never, actually, been honest a day in their life, and there's nothing he can do about it now.
He does as he's told: he stands. He gently places the chair back where it's supposed to be. He turns to the door. "You'll be able to find me when you're ready to talk," he offers when he's working its handle, which is pretty much the equivalent to throwing a bandaid at a raging housefire, and then he pauses. He amends: "If you are."
The 'if' is more offensive than it should be, another piece of him not trusting her. Honestly, she doesn't know what to do anymore, her mind no longer following any sort of proper train of thought, just reiterating that she is stupid and oblivious and meaningless and all of these other terrible things that, were she in a better state, she could fight off. But not right now, as she watches her person stand to leave, even though she had explicitly told him to. As she watches him, cool and calm and collected, abandon her. He's so even-keeled. So ready and willing to acquiesce to her rage and pain. It feels like being let loose to float in space, alone and untethered. Cold.
Maryle can't look at Dom anymore. She throws herself onto her bed and screams into her pillow, a wounded animal. She doesn't care if he leaves, now. He can do whatever he wants.
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