#someone else's identity is none of my fucking business unless it's actually causing harm

[gemofanenby]

ah. the discourse is back. fortunately i do not care

[ashintheairlikesnow]

His Name is Nine

For @dr-dendritic-trees who had a rough day and needed a pick-me-up... here is a drabble about Upstairs Guy!

CW: Referenced dehumanization, pet whump, recovery from dehumanization/assault, briefly referenced past implied noncon, referenced past violence/abuse

At first, everyone assumes it’s a trick.

The box arrives one day, addressed to the actual owner of the house, a man who lives four states away and only visits a few times a year. Jenna and Ben argued for an hour over whether or not to simply destroy it - what if it’s a bomb, what if it’s anthrax, what if what if what if going in circles until Nine was ready to scream at them both from his room up in the attic where he could still hear you, assholes - and finally they took the box out to the end of the walkway, where it sits, nearly in the street.

They come inside, sheepish and quiet now, and ask Nine to come outside and look. 

And of course as soon as he does, they ask him to open it, too.

“Why me?” He asks, standing on the porch with his arms crossed, staring at the two of them. Jenna is in a big t-shirt and little gym shorts, so it looks almost like she’s wearing a dress, and Ben still relies on what Nat called -the uniform-: baggy shirts and baggier pants, designed to hide your body from view. Perfect for people who had, whether they had ‘signed up for it’ or not, lost all control for too long over what of themselves was on display. 

“Well… you don’t seem scared of it?” Ben suggests, and Nine sighs heavily, rubbing at the top of his scalp with one hand. “I mean, you don’t.”

“Because it’s just a fucking box. Nobody knows what we are, nobody’s going to blow us up. This is a safehouse. The word safe is literally in the name of what this is.”

“You don’t know that we’re safe,” Jenna snapped. “That fucking Romantic could’ve turned us in already. He still went by his fucking pet name. We wouldn’t know until the fucking cops showed up to haul us all back that he’s still just a sl-”

“One more word and I fucking kick you out on the streets, Jenna.” Nine does not raise his voice. He does not even change his tone at all from its usual slightly aggravated patience. His face stays flat, unimpressed, devoid of emotion.

But inside, he’s a riot of anger on behalf of someone he had never actually seen in person. Of course, it’s not really about that kid, in the end, and he knows it. Jenna and Ben don’t - it’s none of their business, it’s none of anyone’s business - but Nine knows.

“I don’t get why you’re so damn defensive about it,” Jenna says, but her voice has dropped into a mumble, and Nine just rolls his eyes and thumps the rest of the way down the steps in bare feet, letting the warm sun hit him for the first time today. “It’s not like you were a Romantic.”

“How do you know I wasn’t?” He asks tone slightly lighter this time. Ben’s eyebrows raise nearly to his hairline, and the two of them take Nine in in a whole new way. He stared right back, keeping his grey eyes perfectly flat. 

He knew what they saw - average face, maybe a little on the handsome side because pets were usually at least a little nice to look at, it’s in the brochure. Darkish hair, grey eyes, square jaw. What they don’t see - what they aren’t going to see - are the scars in layers across his back and thighs, evidence of the discipline he had taken once upon a time so that Eli did not have to. 

“Because…” Ben clears his throat, a little nervously. “Well, because Romantics are usually pretty.”

“Well, I’ll give you that. You’re right, I wasn’t a Romantic.” Nine shrugs, picking up the box and shaking it just to see Ben and Jenna jump like he was handling dynamite on a kids’ cartoon.

I wasn’t a Romantic… but my bonded was. 

Is.

He’s still an ‘is’, I know it.

I know he is, even if he had to go back home-

Not home, 598999. 

The box isn’t all that big, and it’s light. Something definitely rattles around the inside of it, and there’s an odd metallic clinking sound he can’t quite place. Nine frowns, thinking that over. The sound is familiar, but still strange to him. He can’t name it, but he knows… some part of him knows what that sound is. 

Nine drops into a crouch, right there on the sidewalk, and picks at the edge of the packing tape along the top with his fingernails, until he can pull up a corner and finally, with a loud ripping sound, tear it the rest of the way off to open the box up.

“This didn’t come with a return address?” He asks, without looking up.

“No, just our address, handwritten.” Jenna and Ben back slowly away, peering at him from behind the chainlink fence, as though it could in any way protect them if Nine were blown to smithereens. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, give me two fucking seconds to check, okay?” He turns over the flaps, and doesn’t hesitate - he’s not afraid of whatever could be in this box, even if it’s the worst thing. 

It isn’t. It isn’t the worst thing it could be, or even the second-worst. It’s not a bad thing at all. 

Nine laughs.

Jenna jumps about a foot in the air in the sound, and it occurs to him she’s never actually heard him laugh. Neither has Ben, but he peers with curiosity and more than a little confusion, as though he thinks perhaps Nine has been possessed by the vengeful spirit of someone with a sense of humor.

“Look at this.” Nine picks it up slowly, carefully, and the clinking noise changes once he has it held up in the air, the breeze catching the little metal bits and causing them to create high-pitched, beautiful notes in the air.

It’s a windchime.

Nine smiles at it - genuinely smiles, he hasn’t seen one of these in years, not since he ran away in the first place, not since they got separated, he and his bonded, the one who got a name. “Who the fuck would send this?” He asks out loud. “Who sends windchimes to a halfway house for braindead pets?”

“I’m not braindead,” Jenna rolls her eyes, but she can’t quite keep the interest off her face, and she’s moving closer and closer to get a better look. When Nine flicks the chimes and sets them to ringing even louder, even Jenna’s perpetually scowling face picks up a slight, barely-there smile.

“Yeah, me neither,” Ben says, but he’s fascinated, too. “I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen those before.”

“I don’t know if I have, either,” Jenna says softly.

“I have,” Nine replies. His own voice has gone low and thoughtful. “Eli used to hang them all over his room. When I was allowed to be with him, he would set them all to ringing for me. All different shapes and sizes.”

He leans in, digging further into the box, ignoring the look Ben and Jenna give each other, a mix of confusion and a growing suspicion that neither is yet willing to voice, to ask him about. 

Both of them have lived here in this safehouse for months now - Nine was here before they arrived and he’ll be here long after they’re gone, unless he shifts to a new attic somewhere else. Maybe they’ll get fake identification and try to integrate back into lives that don’t quite fit their new skin.

Nine will still be here, looking.

But maybe Eli is still out there looking for him.

He looks again at the handwriting on the box. Just an address, with no name even. Sharp angular letters, written in a hurry. 

Handwriting he knows. 

They used to pass notes under the dinner table when Master wasn’t looking, he and Eli. Hurried little notes written with the pens they could hide in the padded dining room chairs, on scraps of paper Nine was always keeping in his pockets. 

598999. Eli needs more water, don’t you think?

Yes, Master. Of course.

That’s a good boy. Refill my wine, while you’re at it.

The way it felt to walk with a folded paper in his pocket with Eli’s quickly-written little scrawl, burning like a curse, like the perfect secret it was... opening it in the kitchen while refilling the pitcher with fresh water to read whatever little message had been left for him.

Eli is out there.

And Eli knows where he is.

He traces a fingertip over the street number, the name, the city, the zipcode, his smile growing and growing, centimeter by centimeter. When he digs back in, he pulls out a small paint-your-own suncatcher kit, another windchime that sings a slightly different set of notes, lower-pitched. When they both get going, they harmonize. Eli always had a good ear for harmonies… that wasn’t what Master wanted him for, and he and Nine had used the windchimes to give him music, in their own way.

“Eli,” Nine breathes out, softly. “Eli, where are you?”

How did you find out where I am?

Why did you send a box and not come here yourself?

There’s a folded paper still in the box and he digs it out, unfolding, knowing already the handwriting he’ll see there, a perfect match to the address on the top. 

Someone helped me send this, the note reads. I had to go home. Don’t stop looking.

“I never stopped before,” Nine whispers, as though Eli can hear him through space, as though his voice could travel maybe dozens, maybe hundreds of miles to find his bonded, the boy they had thrown him into a cell with and trained them together. The boy he’d been tied to inside the box for delivery, whispering reassurances even as the drugs took hold. “Why would I stop now?”

He had been a number and not a name, but Eli had been the first to call him Nine for short, to give him something like an identity again. 

Eli, the boy he’d woken up with, sweat-soaked and curled around each other, their wrists tied together and blindfolded but the first thing they’d seen when Master woke them was each other.

“... Do you know who sent it?” Jenna asks, moving slightly closer, tilting her head, neck stretched to try and see the words on the paper. Nine quickly folded it and pushed it into his pocket, dropping everything back into the box and picking it up.

“Nope,” He answered, quick and easy.

He didn’t have to lie to them - it did him no good to lie, although no harm either - but he lied anyway. Honestly, Jenna just got on his fucking nerves.

Maybe because… because he hoped that if Eli got free, no one would turn him away just because he didn’t recover the “right” way, fast enough.

They trail behind him as he heads back to the house, and it’s only when he carries the box inside and starts heading up the stairs that Ben speaks up. “Hey… wait.”

Nine stops on the third stair, glances over his shoulder. “What?”

“... what are you doing? Don’t windchimes hang on, like, the porch?”

“... not these windchimes.”

They don’t say anything else, just stare at him as he goes upstairs, turns a corner. They stay on the first floor and Nine pulls down the little stepladder to the attic in blissful silence. He sets the box on his bed - just a mattress with sheets and blankets and pillows on the floor in the corner of the huge attic room, mostly full of his computers all hooked together to let him do different things on each one, saved to a couple of larger CPUs - and looks around.

The attic has just one window, but it’s a pretty huge one, and he makes quick work of hanging the windchimes up there. Finally, grinding his teeth against the effort required to move the ancient frame, wincing at the nearly-shrieking wood-against-wood sound it makes, he forces it open a few inches.

It’s not enough to ring the chimes, but it lets some fresh air in. 

He’ll let the suncatchers wait until later. 

Nine heads over to his chair and flops into it, the wheels rolling across the floor a little, until he has to dig his heels into the floor to stop. He picks a monitor at random and pulls up the communications program - encrypted, deletes everything you send at a specified time, usually thirty seconds or so after being viewed. He’d written the program himself, five or six years ago, when he first lived with Nat.

He’s not supposed to be able to write computer programs, but he can.

Eli wasn’t supposed to remember music, but he did.

His bonded is still out there somewhere, with Master, in some new place. But he’s alive, and that means… that means Nine can maybe find him.

Don’t you worry, Eli, Nine thinks, chewing on his lower lip as he starts to type the message, set to send out to all the local safehouses and request they send throughout their own networks, too. I won’t stop looking. I’m going to find you. 

They made us care about each other, but they can’t make me stop.

In the window, on the other side of the room, just enough breeze makes it through to set the chimes to ringing.

[bachikins-tiddies]

TW: SYSCOURSE, ABLEISM, ABLEIST SLURS

I'd never thought I'd be jumping straight into syscourse but after seeing the nth endo call ppl w/ DID/OSDD "sysmeds" I'm logging on and posting just to say that unless if you're using it in a critical manner AND are affected by the word (aka you're a DID/OSDD system and can reclaim it, though why you'd all want to is beyond my understanding), you should shut the fuck up. /in the most unfriendly tone possible

My personal thoughts about the word (and words like it), and I am adding a TW for abuse, gaslighting, and transphobia (since thts where that shitty term REALLY comes from for some weird fucking reason) in the contents below: (and endos, just read below anyways bc u need to stfu and actually fucking listen)

(/nh for this entire section unless if you actually fucking do this for some reason) Y'all endos love to call trauma survivors "traumeds/traumascum/sysmeds"/whatever the fuck else and associate the word with gaslighters and abusers for some reason, painting us as abusers and horrible ppl and "playing victim" when you were obviously EXPECTING us to bite your ass back. You're the one gaslighting by just yeeting that word around to attack and manipulate people.

Now this section is just my thoughts on the word, but regardless, you should take this seriously: "Sysmed" and words like it are slurs used to actively demedicalize our disorder(s), stigmatize/demonize us, and oppress us. Being a system is not LGBTQ+, thought it can confuse gender/sexual identity. Our disorder is not "alters syndrome," it is constantly living in a dissociated state with little peace from flashbacks, nightmares, emotion loss, physical pain, and so on. Life's a fucking nightmare, and like with ASD, we don't need society making our lives even more hellish. This disorder, in my case, was the result of childhood traumas that I do not want to explain or talk about until the day I get to enter the courtroom and defend myself for the first god damn time in my life, ever. Still, to this day, we're all beating ourselves up for not being able to do anything back then, and we still can't do anything about it until the body reaches legal age. Alters are just a side effect.

When I hear someone who aren't affected by the word say "sysmed," I hear "DID/OSDD and other trauma disorders sound like a cute little identity to put on my profile and I won't take a survivor's words seriously." When I hear "sysmed," I don't hear "this person is as bad as a transmed" (and being trans is not a disorder or medical issue, before you try to hop to shit), I hear "I want to actively go against the medical system and make people not take a real disorder/disability seriously to the point that I actively harm DID/OSDD systems that need treatment." When I hear "sysmed," I hear "I think harassment and physical violence is okay against trauma survivors!" When I hear "sysmed," I hear "I'm going to incorrectly throw around the term 'gaslight' like what was done with 'trigger' because it's funny!" Sysmed is a fucking slur against people like us. I don't fucking care what it means to endos, they coined the term solely to cause harm. Endos are using it to oppress, point blank. Seeing this word angers me and I'm 100% entitled to my anger. I don't get why I have to EXPLAIN my anger and why this is a slur, but apparently I do!

If I'm not "qualified enough" to speak on this issue in your eyes for some reason, I'm letting you know that this is costing me the 8 spoons I really needed today because I got an @ everyone ping about how trauma survivors are "sysmeds" and "scum." Besides having PTSD and DID, this body is physically disabled and neurodivergent. What conditions? None of your fucking business. (Though, if you are a DID/OSDD system or other trauma survivor who's reading my thoughts, I'll happily chat about my life with disability with you! /pos gen)

Dear endos: painting trauma survivors as abusive and oppressive just because you shouldn't talk over/for them makes you the oppressor, idgit. Your constant use of the word "sysmed" for harassment really shows your ableism. You aren't winning any arguments calling survivors that; you're just only losing your argument even harder than before.

Endos/mixed origins may reblog, but shut the hell your fucking mouths. If you clown, I'll be letting the entire trauma survivor community know. Trauma survivors are free to comment about their thoughts of the word.