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[midnightroads]

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Please see Opt-In, as contacting Bash may interact with his Scion abilities.

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[midnightroads]

"An' what if I don't deserve to be helped?" Some of the fear peels back, replaced by other dark, tarry, bitter emotions. Bash's voice is the kind of thick that comes from crying, and he doesn't even glance over his shoulder at Giles.

[ring_for_giles]

"Everyone deserves to be helped, especially those who don't believe they do."

CW: death imagery bordering on suicide ideation

[midnightroads]

He lets out a huff. It's not a laugh, not even the most self-mocking of laughs, but it's quiet and pained and bitter and heavy. Everything is heavy. There's been times since he took to bed that he's imagined his body just rotting away to nothing at all.

"I'm not a good person and I shouldn't be out there around other people."

[ring_for_giles]

"By my measure, you are a good person. You show immense care for the people around you, you have passions you share gladly, and I could go on extolling your virtues as I see them, but I have the suspicion it wouldn't do anything more than solidify the things you're already telling yourself."

He breaths a heavy breath that isn't quite a sigh, and changes tack.

"Can I ask you what it is you're afraid of? If you tell me that, and afterwards you still feel the same, then if you'd prefer I'll leave you be."

[midnightroads]

"I'm scared Jeff's only with me because he feels like he needs to be attached to someone with a dominant personality after everything in Duplicity and indulging in that relationship can only ever be abusive because over there it certainly was and he's not really in love with me and I don't deserve love anyway because I hurt people. And I'm only ever going to hurt more people here."

And are those even irrational fears, honestly? He finally moves, enough to rub at his eyes with the back of his wrist.

[ring_for_giles]

The threads of the Wyrd attach themselves to the words as Bash speaks, and Giles follows them with the look of a cat that's staring at something that isn't there. He waits until there's enough to form a sizeable ball, drawing out the emotion as they twist unseen.

Then, he pulls it into himself and swallows. Taking Bash's fear with it in a breath of Autumn wind.

"That is an understandable fear, Bash, and in moderation a good one to have after an experience like yours. Thank you for telling me, I am sorry that it's hurting you." He pauses for a moment, to allow some space for Bash to think before he asks, "How are you feeling now?"

[midnightroads]

“Grey? I know that’s not an emotion. But I feel grey. Like…like even if I ever feel happy again, I shouldn't’. So I should just stay here and not try to feel better.”

He glances over his shoulder at Giles. Eyes red and puffy, hair mussed. “I got a headache from how much I been crying. But I don’t want to drink water or do anything to make it go away, because I don’t want to take care of my me, I just want to…not. Not anything.”

[ring_for_giles]

"I can understand that. And you don't have to feel better any time soon, it takes time to work through these things. Neither do you have to be the one to take care of yourself all the time, but you have to let someone else pick up that care if you're not going to."

It's not quite a capital L Look that Giles is giving Bash, but he watching with a very pointed concern.

[midnightroads]

"No. No one should, I don't want to make anyone else do anything for me. I've already done enough, taken enough from people. No one should ever have to serve me." Under the force of Giles' gaze, Bash curls further.

[ring_for_giles]

That rankles something in Giles, the implication that he might serve anyone other than Oswald, but he doesn't let it show, carefully maintaining the same calm and quiet demeanor.

"It is not service if it something a friend would do for another. I don't know you well enough to know what works for you, nor do I have access to the resources I would in the world I came from, and for that I'm sorry. But I do know the shape of this pain, and I know it intimately from the other side of the equation, so perhaps I can provide some perspective at least."

[midnightroads]

"Perspective?" He grimaces. "Someone pointed out that. Like. Jeff's with me because he feels safe with me, and that his devotion is more about security, after what we've been through, that he can't really love me. And I'm projecting my own insecurities about my own past onto other people, trying to get away from what I've done, so my kindness is suspect. Do you got a perspective on that?"

cw: discussion of Arcadia and enforced servitude

[ring_for_giles]

"I don't know what he feels or what's going through his head, and I won't put words in his mouth, I can only speak to my own experience and hope that it resonates."

He pauses for a long moment, taking the time to put his thoughts in order before he speaks, because there is a lot that he wants to cover and it's still difficult to reflect on while remaining calm and measured.

"I grew up in service, I worked my way from page, to footman, to eventually being Oswald's valet. Then we were kidnapped by the Gentry, and I was forced into the perfect picture of a servant, twisted as that picture was. I worked every hour of every day with breaks only for the punishments that were consequence to my failure, or for tortures meant to bring my physical image more in line with what my Keeper expected of me. To survive meant out performing my fellow captives, and allowing my mind to warp as my body did.

When we escaped, I didn't have a solid sense of self. I believed my only worth lay solely in service, and that I was beneath everyone around me. The class structure I had grown up with didn't exist anymore, but in my mind it lived on, and because there were no other servants that clearly meant I was at the very bottom. It's something I still struggle with at times, even five years on, and perhaps I always will. I cannot bear when people call me 'Mr' because it registers as a pointed barb, either that I was unable to reach the highest ranks among the Master's servants, or that I am not their equal and never will be. But, with time, and with Oswald's help and that of other people – both those who understood what I had been through and those who didn't – I found the edges of myself again, relearnt how to have boundaries and my own opinions on what I enjoyed and what I didn't.

I know Oswald has fears and insecurities similar to yours. He is concerned at times that I serve him because I feel I have to, in dark moments he worries that my love is only given because I believe he expects it, and he worries about the influence he may hold over others. It is in part because of this that I can serve him as I wish to, it doesn't make his kindness and his love suspect, to my mind it makes it more certain. He can see what he could all too easily become, and equally he can see what I could become, and because we both know the darkness that lurks in our hearts we can do our best to move away from it. It doesn't always work, but with care and effort we draw ever closer to being the people we want to be rather than what we were made to be."

cw: non-con, depersonalization, we're really talking about the sex shit now

[midnightroads]

That's...a lot to take in, a lot to absorb, and it doesn't all sink down through the surface of Bash at the same rate. Some of the words that hit, that drop down to the pit of his stomach are 'five years on'. There's this quiet irrational belief he's held onto that someday soon, he and Jeff would just be better. That it wouldn't linger in them, this hell they've been through and carried with them out of Duplicity.

Five years on, and Giles is still coping. Jesus.

(Nevermind that Arcadian torture isn't a thing that's measured in months, like Duplicity absolutely was. That's not the point, the point is that Bash is making the mistake of holding someone else's healing process up to his own and if he could feel fear right now, he absolutely would worry about never getting better.)

"For us. It wasn't just rank and service, it was also sex. Being reduced to your body, being a fucktoy. Watching every public event eventually become a mass of writhing bodies and sweat and panting and...Jeff and I left the wedding early, you know. Because...like, that's not what this ship is about, but it's still a little bit what we're waiting for. On the island with the lizards, I got fucked by a guy, didn't even ask his name. Felt good to bottom, and not just bottom, but to let someone else really take charge for once, because I wasn't never supposed to ever do that in Dupe. Not saying I ever did, but if we'd been caught, it'd have been The Bad Shit, in terms of punishment. Realignment. I don't...there's a part of me that feels like talking about this at all to anyone is. Like. No one wants to hear. No one will ever want to hear, because it's so fucking...fucked."

[ring_for_giles]

Giles listens, and nods solemnly, he doesn't have the words to provide comfort here. He'd been witness to, but almost never a part of, the events of that nature that took place in Arcadia, and there is some part of him grateful for that small mercy, which seems not the right thing to share here. So the weight of his sympathy must be conveyed through his expression alone as Bash speaks, and for a good moment after as well.

"It can be hard to talk about experiences like these, you don't want to burden people with knowledge of the depths the universe can sink to, but talking is one of the surest ways to heal. If and when you feel up to it, I think it would be of benefit for you to talk to Oswald. I can't speak to his experiences, they're not mine to tell, but he'll understand what you've been through far better than I."

cw: discussion of non-con.

[midnightroads]

"Ossie knows...just a very little of it. There wasn't a right time to get into it. I'm still not sure there is." Bash had offered an ear in the aftermath of Ginger's deception, but hadn't detailed why he had personal familiarity with what it's like to have consent wrested away without warning.

"And you're damned right about not burdening people. The only people Jeff and I can talk to is one another, and we...usually don't. Not about that."

[ring_for_giles]

"The right time is the time you make. Oswald will want to help, or at least listen, whenever you feel ready.

You should talk to Jeff about it too, if you can. It would not surprise me if he's struggling to reckon with everything for similar reasons, and it's not a bad thing to lean on eachother for support."