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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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[not_the_last]

"And it felt terrible." Very low. "I could see it did. I can see it now."

[midnightroads]

"Yes, well. I gotta get over it, don't I? Fuck me and my choice to be kind first, always. I don't get that choice!" He's yelling now, he can't help it. He can almost feel the cracks in his everything.

Bash has been losing bits and pieces of himself slowly, over the course of the past decade. From discovering he's a demigod and being Tasked with Divine Duties to being sent to Boston to help with the titanspawn invasion there, to seek out the mysteries of the Tuatha there. And then Duplicity, where he was expected to wear the face of a model Dominant, and he did, to the point where they assigned him as a mentor to those who rebelled, who dared buck the system. And now, here. It was Lord Vile that was the last straw--he put up as much of a fight as he could but the pacifist had not learned to be a force of violence.

He needs to learn to be a force of violence.

He needs to not be so weak.

[not_the_last]

"I don't --"

Speaking in the face of his misery feels like standing under a heavy waterfall, like it's trying to batter her down.

"I don't understand. Why don't you get that choice now?"

[midnightroads]

"Because I'm a fucking demigod! I'm strong enough that I might be able to do something someone else can't. If I'd been more ready, I mighta been able to stop Lord Vile--I was one of the ones who sensed him, knew it was bad juju, went to go find him. And my Sundries gifts, I keep getting things to make me stronger, so clearly, clearly this is what I'm supposed to be doing."

It's been battering him down for all this time, Cass.

[not_the_last]

"Supposed to?" It's not quite a sputter, but it comes close. "According to whom? Who gets to make that decision if you don't?"

[midnightroads]

"The Fates? My father? Whoever keeps dragging me into these worlds? My life has never been my own, not since I learned what I am." And even before then...well, he knew all too well what a burden he was to his mother.

He turns away from her. Finds a nearby chair and drops himself into it with an audible plop.

"Are you happy? Is this what you were looking for me about?"

[not_the_last]

"No," she says, her voice lower again, "and yes. I don't like seeing good people hurt themselves."

[midnightroads]

"What's the alternative? Sit still and watch everyone else around me get hurt, when I can be doing something about it?" He's looking down at the floor instead of at her now, looking for all the world like a puppet with the strings cut.

[not_the_last]

She sits down, next to him rather than across.

"But doing something about it doesn't have to mean becoming a weapon, does it?"

[midnightroads]

"What else can it mean?" He glances sidelong at her.

But she's not wrong, he's got this big fallacy wrapped up around him where it comes to anger and violence. He doesn't believe in fighting, and that's where this whole know is tied up in the pit of his stomach.

[not_the_last]

Cassandra breathes out unsteadily. "A lot of things. Getting away, for starters. Getting other people away. Being -- being a wall instead of a weapon, maybe. I don't know."

[midnightroads]

"You don't know. I don't know either. I don't have a fucking clue." He lets the frustration leach into his voice like watercolor paint on a wet page, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry."

[not_the_last]

"I'm sorry too," she says softly. "I came looking for you because I wanted to help, and I'm only now realizing that I don't have any clear idea how to. I just ... don't want to leave you alone with it."

Because he's kind. Because he's in pain. Because he offered to walk her back to her cabin, after they brought Crichton's body to the morgue, back in October.

[midnightroads]

"How are you on touch? I could use a hug, but I get it if you're not the touchy type."

He could use more than a hug, but he's not about to ask anyone to just spoon him until he feels like a teddy bear instead of a person.

[not_the_last]

Without a word she scoots closer to him, and reaches up to wind both arms around his shoulders.

(Without a word, because answering the question how are you on touch would have to cover so many different things, none of which seem important right now.)

[midnightroads]

He just sort of crumples into her, burying his face in her shoulder. And starts to cry.

[not_the_last]

Oh. Oh, no.

What she feels, as he weeps in her arms, is an odd species of panic: I can't, I don't know how, I'll do it wrong. But she's here, and she wanted to help, and if this is what he needs --

So she holds him close, and out of some dim instinct rests a hand on the back of his head, and rocks back and forth with the smallest faint motion.

[midnightroads]

"Sorry cher, I'm prolly fuckin' up yer nice clothes." His accent's slipping--she's getting more Cajun out of him than he normally allows to show.

[not_the_last]

"It's all right," she murmurs, "it's all right."

And feels another pang of something oddly like despair for him: how can anyone reconcile a sense of duty that calls him to violence with a sensitivity so deep that he frets about staining someone's clothes?

[midnightroads]

Words stop happening for a bit as he just lets himself cry. Bash, he stomps down so hard on anger so often, he gets this calcified buildup of misery instead that eats him from the inside. Every so often, he must open the valve and let this out.

It's going to take some time. Sorry, Cass, you're stuck here.

[not_the_last]

This should be someone who's closer to him, she thinks -- but maybe with someone closer to him it would have been that much harder for him to get to this point. And he needs this.

So she sits there, holding him, occasionally murmuring it's all right again, at one point digging out a clean handkerchief and tucking it into his hand.