bc i watched The Trailer and know who i am as a person, vague speculation spoilers!
The first thing Callum realizes is that everything hurts, his lungs taking in a laboured breath. The second is that Rayla is sitting close to him, very close to him, her hands on said injured chest.
“Ow—” he grunts when he goes to move.
“Careful,” she says, too concerned to be chiding, but it still hurts to blink at her as Rayla helps him sit up in a way that doesn’t pull at whatever the hell he’s hurt ujust as much, which is probably everything.
The third thing is that they’re alone, fresh panic rising in his throat.
“Where are—”
“Ez and Soren are speaking with Domina.” She gives a little shrug, fidgeting, and Callum takes in the strange glowing barnacles above their heads, the whole flat, turquoise plateau seemingly encased in a giant air bubble, water flowing naturally outside. They’re somewhere new, deep below the sea. He thinks he’d be more fascinated by it if he had time to be. “Dragons and diplomacy, y’know? More their speed than mine. They’ll be glad you’re awake though. You scared all of us.”
Did he always ramble like this when he was worried or nervous, Callum wonders. Or at least, did he used to?
Rayla seems to catch herself, though, and clears her throat. “Anyway—how are you feeling?”
“I’ve been better,” he admits, and they share a grim but genuine smile.
“I have some ointment that can help,” she offers, Stella skittering off her shoulder as she reaches back between her blades. “If you’d like. It’ll sting a bit, though.”
“That’s fine.”
His eyes adjust to the new lighting as she gets the small blue phial out and pours some onto a spare square of glass she likely uses to clean her blades. She dabs at the blood on the side of his face first, the skin scraped underneath, and Callum winces.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he assures her. Her face has been this close to his more often more recently, but it still throws him a bit—her attention, her proximity, her gentleness. She’s always been one of the kindest people he knows, next to his brother. This is no different, her features a bit pinched in concentration as she tends to him, and—
He blushes when she looks up suddenly, and he’s caught staring. A pretty pink dusts her cheeks, too, as she swallows and looks away, getting up to sit by his other side by his sore, swollen eye.
“This’ll hurt more, unfortunately,” she warns, but he braces himself, letting his gaze rest on her this time without overthinking it.
Maybe healing always does, but maybe that’s how you get better.
“Thank you,” he says once she’s done, for a lot of things—for patching him up, for saving his life, for being his friend, for holding his heart the best way she’s known how, even if it hurt, too.
“Callum, I—” she starts, reaching up, and her fingers skim over his black eye, a gentle enough graze that it doesn’t sting. Her eyes flicker toward his lips. He leans in, and—
“Callum!” They break apart as Ezran enters the cave, but Callum can’t be too bothered, as his little brother hugs him eagerly, and Soren claps him gingerly on the back. It’s good to see them and even better to know they’re safe as they take seats on the floor across from him.
Rayla takes his hand, and Callum squeezes it. There’ll be more time to talk later. He’ll make sure of it.
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some advice i see a lot regarding how to tell if someone is a fictive or just a character that the person is imagining is to try to imagine them doing something they wouldn't and see if it feels wrong or if they flat out refuse but i was wondering is there any way to tell if you've just imagined them refusing? like, if it's more in character for them to do so is that not simply where your mind would go? how can you tell whether there's a person behind it or whether it's just that your mind itself doesn't want to cooperate??
Honestly, I'm not sure how to answer that. BUT, it does remind me of when our old host met Jaiden (not a fictive) and they read that a way to check if someone is really sentient, you do this specific exercise about balancing a feather on their noise or something. Honestly none of us remember the point of it or how it would have worked, but what happened was, Jaiden was already Real. He split real, Jamie just wasn't sure (thank you denial). Because Jaiden cared about Jamie, he indulged him and did the exercises. But it would go on for DAYS to the point where Jaiden literally told Jamie to just "stop". "I'm real!" and even if Jamie told him to do these exercises, it was annoying him.
So yes, having them do something they'd like is an option. But have you considered annoying them to the point where they snap at you?? SKDFJS
OF COURSE DONT like. put yourselves on bad terms. but its something to think about. A lot of the time when we're in denial, the person we/the current front is in denial about, starts getting annoyed, and then we feel bad about hurting their feelings.
So I'm not your therapist and I can't tell you what's what- but I guess you could also think.. "If I annoyed them, and they react badly to me annoying them, and that feeling of them scolding me makes me feel bad.. why would I ever make that up?"
Also give it some time. Sometimes if a split is new (or you think someone just split) it'll be hard to tell. Denial is a BITCH. If you already are used to having alters or system members in general, The fictive who just split WILL eventually be comfortable enough to be "concrete enough" with you, if they already even know who they are. maybe your brain itself is still figuring things out. We talk about splitting as a community a lot--where spliting is usually depicted as like this FAST thing. but sometimes its slow! which DOESNT help if youre trying to figure out if you have someone or not!
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