#im sorry that i keep traumaposting but like

[thatsadorbsyo]

Lucas - Part (14)

(cw: mentions of character death (PC and NPC) and graphic depictions of violence. emetophobia warning for depictions of nausea. depictions of dissociation. this post also references the events of Borne Upon Our Hands, one of the five finale quests for the #FFXIVHeartless campaign, and it contains spoilers for the quest log.)

*

The road to recovery has to start with small things, or else I’d never be able to swallow them. I take the Thanalan sun like a pill, and I only look behind me at the Voyage once, just the once, to make sure the docked airship that I’ve just departed is really there and hasn’t evaporated to nothingness in the heartbeats in between then and now. I’ve already said my goodbyes, and continuing to look behind me is only gonna make me start shuffling backward, blind and stupid. I take the Thanalan sun like a pill. The sun is large, but I am small.

I, too, am swallowed; by the throng of people near Hustings strip. Castor leads me by the hand through the crowd, and we pass by the little food stand where we had our first proper date -- Place-by-the-strip-where-I-can-see-the-ships, he’d called it, when I asked what the place was named -- and for the first time in suns, I feel the pang of hunger.

*

You smell the sour tang wafting up from the vats of sparking blue aether in the middle of what once used to be a crystal-powered furnace room in the belly of the White Celsius. You smell burning meat being rendered to component aether for airship fuel like fat is rendered in a pot to make soap. The cages all around the room are empty, but they bear the marks of the Spoken who have lived in them. A crumpled blanket. A jacket with one sleeve turned inside out. A deck of cards, halfway through a hand before being kicked and scattered.

‘The Celsius eats her enemies,’ Percy had warned you on his taped missive, confirming every fear that had lived in a lump in your throat for weeks, but you never thought you’d live to see it in action. Momori fell into her maw right in front of your fucking eyes while you were across the room, and all you can hope for is that she died before she realized what was happening to her. The Celsius turned Momori into meat, and then to fuel. The Celsius’s distended stomach is Momori’s only tomb.

*

Hunger curdles into nausea in the space of a heartbeat, but I don’t remember why. It’s been like that ever since the shuttle brought us back to Ishgard; I struggle to choke down food. It’s easier if it has no smell, no taste, nothing to make me think about the process of what I’m doing. It just feels disgusting. To rip and tear with my teeth, it feels inhuman. There must be a more civilized way to feed yourself than this. A mun-tuy shake, maybe, but even that makes my stomach churn, and I--

But before I can spiral about it, Castor’s hand is on my shoulder. Heavy, warm. I take it like a pill.

“There’s something I need to do -- not illegal -- I only need a moment.” The question isn’t in his words; it sits in his eyes, the way his brows hike up in the middle. It’s a silent question: Will you be okay? I want to be offended, but I can’t be much of anything.

“Sure,” I reply, and even this much is nearly a sisyphean task. “I’ll get some food.”

There’s a bench in the middle of the street down by Sapphire Avenue, backed up against a planter filled with creeping ivy, and when I sit down with some paper-wrapped kebab, I can smell the fresh earth in the pot, rich and mineral. I take it like a pill while I watch the people passing by. The distraction helps me eat, gives me something to focus on instead of the sensation of fatty, charred lamb shredding in my mouth.

I find a pocket of serenity here, where the sun is warm but not oppressive, and the smells of food and floral carts are mostly pleasant but not cloying. How much time passes before Castor comes back to me, with blood on his hands? I’ve eaten maybe half of my kebab. A quarter bell? Half a bell?

Castor comes back to me with blood on his hands and a gash slicing through the front of his tunic, and this is too big for me to swallow. This is too fucking big.

*

You send the shells of dead keys and buttons scattering across the floor with every step you take across the Celsius’s command room, searching in a restless gait for a new console to shatter. They sound to you like so many teeth, broken right out of the ship’s bloody maw by the swing of your wrench. There is a chilling mirror into which you are afraid to look; the only ripple in your deep, placid lake is a memory that mimics you perfectly, blow for blow.

As you lift the wrench over your head, feeling your aching muscles protest at the sudden, relentless exertion, you become the spitting image of Castor Arendt, gun reversed in your hand, clubbing the still-struggling form of Leviticus lux Tyrus over the head until his face is rendered to meat. Your target is not a Spoken man, but the violence that grips you is no less possessive. You are no less disgusted by yourself, but the nausea sits like a lump in your throat, obstructing any scream. You can’t swallow. You can’t swallow a thing, lest everything you try to take in comes clawing its way back up and out of you.

*

The rest of my food splatters on the cobblestones, falling from my hands and my lap as I stand up with numb fingers and numb lips. I want to run toward him, but my feet are numb, too. Useless as the bricks they stand on.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Castor hedges with a gasp, holding a hand over his chest. The wound underneath is freshly healed.

A scream curdles in my throat, blocked by some obstruction. Maybe it’s fear. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t swallow. I can’t move. Helplessness washes through me, a wave of impotence that doesn’t even have the courtesy to bring its good friend rage along for the ride. The sun is large and I am small, so very goddamn small. I want to touch him, to confirm that the gash on his chest is really, truly closed, but I can’t lift a hand. I can’t do a thing.

When does it fucking stop?

I breathe through my nose instead. One breath. Two. I take them like pills. Castor’s eyes are looking straight at mine, bright and alive, not cloudy with cataracts and lifeless. Castor’s eyes are a stormy green, with pupils made into pinpricks by the Thanalan sun. I take my lover’s blinking eyes like pills.

I left the Salemtaza’s Voyage with nothing but my feet to carry me and Castor’s hand in mine to show me the way. So how many fucking pills do I have to take before I'm finally allowed to depart the White Celsius?