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13th metal . spam & text . cw: self-harm
[ He winds long bandages around his arms before he goes to take a shower, covering himself from elbow to palm. He makes it look more like gauntlets than anything else, to minimize any questions asked, moves furtively and quickly, dodges out as soon as possible. And he longs for the days when the servants had to bring him a bath, and he didn't care what they saw - let them gossip, let them spread the word that he hurts himself. Let it add to the terror they see in him.
Here, it only adds to his shame and frustration. The voice is gone, and he shouldn't need to control himself this way, but the longer he resists, the greater the need becomes, and he always gives in eventually.
It seems wrong to him, anyway, that his arms are mostly bare of scars. That his chest, too, is unmarked. That the other evidence of his violent life is erased, leaving his skin as ordinary as a child's. Sometimes he remembers the scars and he feels the temptation to bring them back.
He has also often been stepping into the gardens and the greenhouse lately, mostly just sitting still and watching the plants. He recognizes their progress. Tries, though it makes him feel a little ridiculous, to murmur things to them sometimes. To talk to them. ]
[ text ]
If you have scars, are they important to you? Do you think they matter?
[ video ; private to Charles ]
I told Megamind you wouldn't object to me attending school. I knew it was the kind of thing that you like.
Here, it only adds to his shame and frustration. The voice is gone, and he shouldn't need to control himself this way, but the longer he resists, the greater the need becomes, and he always gives in eventually.
It seems wrong to him, anyway, that his arms are mostly bare of scars. That his chest, too, is unmarked. That the other evidence of his violent life is erased, leaving his skin as ordinary as a child's. Sometimes he remembers the scars and he feels the temptation to bring them back.
He has also often been stepping into the gardens and the greenhouse lately, mostly just sitting still and watching the plants. He recognizes their progress. Tries, though it makes him feel a little ridiculous, to murmur things to them sometimes. To talk to them. ]
[ text ]
If you have scars, are they important to you? Do you think they matter?
[ video ; private to Charles ]
I told Megamind you wouldn't object to me attending school. I knew it was the kind of thing that you like.
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Doesn't that mean they do matter?
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Only in a small way. It's irrational, and I know it's irrational.
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Rationality is better for looking at other people.
[ Figuring them out. Analyzing their irrationality. ]
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If someone gave me a chance to get rid of them, I wouldn't take it. They're - they've been part of me for a long time. It's weird to think about the breaches where I didn't have them.
But I wouldn't keep them at the cost of...anything else, really. They're just traces. I don't need them to know who I am or what happened to me.
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Permanently. Not just for a flood.
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If someone did it just because they thought they had the right to change me or decide what would make me better somehow without asking, then I'd be furious, but that wouldn't really be about what my skin looked like.
If there was some other reason...a little weirded out, a tiny bit bereft. Then I'd get over it and inhabit the body I had.
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It bothers me. More than I thought it would.
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It could mean being more, instead of less.
[There's nothing flippant in it. She knows it isn't eacy to just choose to thing of things in an opposite way. But she offers the framework of it anyway.]
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Secrets, maybe.
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The spike's gone. I should be better now. But I'm not.
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Zane, you're a person, not a motorcycle. You can't just...toss out a bad rotary piston and expect everything to suddenly run smooth.
People need a lot more healing than bodies do, sometimes. And that's not a lie, just...a distinction.
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It made me insane.
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But that still sounds like something that would take awhile to recover from.
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Do anything, like what?
I won't tell anyone if you don't want me to. I certainly wasn't planning to. But I'm not, like...ignoring you and just preaching. I'm not trying to be like that, anyway.
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I guess I'm not. But these two things are true: I like and want to help you, and I really hate people who try to do things 'for your own good' whether you want them to or not.
Anything you tell me, I won't use against you unless you've flipped out and started threatening people I care about.
[And she's trying really hard to be 100% honest right now.]
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