ataraxionlogs | [open] where is my mind?

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[open] where is my mind?

CHARACTERS: Eridan Ampora & YOU!!
LOCATION: In the library, as well as up and down the halls near said library.
WARNINGS: Mentions of brainwashing, general post-assimilation woes, etc etc.
SUMMARY: Eridan doesn't know what to do with himself now that the assimilation has (somewhat) worn off. So, he wanders.
NOTES: Feel free to assume that by "halls near the library," I mean anywhere you can imagine your character running into Eridan. Seriously, just mention a different location and that's where he's wandered to. :) Dated to the day before jump, just to be safe.

Eridan's major regret in regards to the Strela Outpost Incident is that he allowed himself to be caught. He can't remember exactly what he'd been thinking, cornered in that tiny ~~warm, lovely~~ white room, but he's pretty sure he spent most of the hours in there berating himself for being so fucking obvious. He knows better now, though; he knows firsthand how to keep out of the way, become part of the school and not stand out or be too obvious. It'll be a good defense mechanism, if he remembers to use it.

Leaving the outpost had been the hardest thing to do in what felt like his entire life, though now he can't remember why, exactly. It had been fucking terrible, being a nameless number within some kind of fucked up groupthink type situation. Eridan prides himself in his individuality, after all, and getting stripped of that - of everything that was him - has left him with a sour feeling in his gut, like he swallowed some living, wriggling sea creature. It'll take a long while to digest, but he's got all the time in the world.

He'll get over it.

In the meantime, though, sitting in his room and watching people on the network has become some kind of chore. His room has become his during his stay aboard the Tranquility, and usually that's a good thing. He has a safe spot here, somewhere that's nearly entirely his and no one can take it from him. Lately, though, it feels too much like him - when he'd first gotten back into it after breaking through the haze of assimilation, it'd been kind of heartbreaking. It felt lonely and alone and very different from what he thinks he felt in Strela. That unease had faded over the last few days, but it still felt better to be walking, moving, ~~left-right-left~~, getting his head to focus on things other than tiny white rooms and a quickly disappating feeling of belonging. So that's what he does - he wanders, pacing through halls and spending time in the library, downloading things about astrology and odysseys onto his communicator to read while he walks. A few articles on military history, shit like that. Things he likes, as an individual with good taste and a mind perfectly healthy and ready to learn. Things to get his mind off of everything.

He's going to get over it and move on and stop thinking about it. Really. The sooner, the better.

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Jack hasn't seen Eridan all that much for the past month or so. Maybe the troll was busy, maybe he was a little too invested in his work. He doesn't know why. He spent a little while on the outpost, and he'd hoped to run into him there. Before everything had gone to hell, that was. And then, when he realized what was going on, he'd tried to find him. Tried to get him out. He didn't know whether it was the young troll avoiding him or whether it was just his own horrible luck that left him unsuccessful. Made him leave, with the people he'd managed to convince to go, without him. It had been the worst feeling - it always was. Knowing that he had to give up, that he had to make choices.

He looks for him again when people start trickling back on board. Guilt keeps him from sending a direct message - what would he say? It's ironic that, completely by chance, he would run into him in the hallway as he does right now, after so long putting so much effort into searching with no results at all.

"Eridan?"

Eridan hears his name called, but for a brief second it doesn't quite register, like hearing someone call out to another person with a similar, but not identical name. He mentally shakes that feeling off nearly as fast as it comes on, looking up from his communicator to see Jack in front of him.

He raises an eyebrow, self-assured and cocky, and doesn't think about how he'd wondered where the fuck Jack Harkness had been when he'd been actually needed for once.

"Uh, yeah?" he replies, "Are you expectin' me to be someone else or somethin' here? Pretty sure I'm kinda hard to fuckin' miss around these parts, Harkness." Because everything is just fine and he can snark without menace just like before. Everything is perfectly fine.

It's been long enough since he's ran into the other that for a moment he's not quite sure how to handle himself. Eridan's sarcasm is familiar, but Jack's never been good with subtle emotions even at the best of times. He can't quite tell whether everything is really as fine as Eridan's trying to make it seem or not.

He's quiet for a moment, and still, and it's awkward for him, considering how he's normally smiling and vibrant and moving, but he needs to get it out, if only for his own conscience. "...I looked for you," he said, without really supplying any more context to the comment than that.

There's no context required. Eridan immediately knows what Jack's talking about, and he immediately opens his mouth to blurt out the obvious, you didn't fuckin' find me, did you?, but he snaps it shut before he can actually say something that stupid.

Instead, he checks his communicator, marks his spot in his reading, and then tucks it away, crossing his arms and frowning at Jack with what he hopes is a mildly exasperated expression. "Yeah, okay, so? A lot'a people wwere lookin' for me." It's a blatant lie and it makes that wriggling creature in his gut leap because nobody had been looking for him, because here he's nonessential and unwanted. No, fuck that, he's completely wanted. That's just the white room talking.

Jack really isn't good with guilt, and he can feel it curling in his gut as Eridan stands there and crosses his arms at him. His initial instinct is to just run away. He's said what's on his mind, he could leave if he just turned and walked away. But he's done that too many times before, left too many chasms that could never be filled in again by not facing down his demons as it is, and Eridan is really one of the only friends he has on board, other than Ianto, and he really can't lose anyone else.

"...I'm sorry." That he couldn't find him, that he failed him, if he's angry at him because of it, for what happened, if he suffered at all because of it. He wants to know if any of this is the case, and yet he doesn't dare ask.

"Wwhy?" Eridan shrugs his shoulders, looking skeptically at Jack while fighting the urge to fidget or about-face and run. He really doesn't like Jack when he's not being a self-confident leadertype; it makes him more uncomfortable than he'd like to admit. And damn it, if Eridan is going to pretend to be self-assured and confident, Jack could at least act as if it were actually working. "There's nothin' to be sorry for. For all you knoww, I got outta there at the first sign'a trouble. Unless there's some kinda official record'a wwho got caught up in the school mentality, you shouldn't apologize for somethin' you don't knoww happened."

And then, because he can't help it, "Anywway, it wwasn't evven that fuckin' big a deal."

Sure it wasn't. Jack's got enough experience to know that assimilation is never good. Daleks and Cybermen, they were all about assimilating, becoming one of the mass. The Master, with his Toclofane. The last of humanity, converted into cyborgs and forced to act together and do his bidding. Aliens that use that sort of tactic are probably close to number one on the list of things that actually do terrify Jack. Which is why, at the first sign of trouble, he'd tried to get as many people as he could out. That he hadn't managed with Eridan, that he doesn't know what it was that did happen with him, it rubs him the complete wrong way.

"Wasn't it?" he asks, directly.

Eridan drops his arms to his sides, thinks better of it, thinks better of trying to cross his arms again and finally settles for shoving his hands into his pockets. He knows that Jack is fishing, and that pretending that it hadn't happened won't work with him. But he also knows that - well.

The things he sometimes thinks were horrible about the situation aren't the things that anyone else would probably think.

"Nah," he says, finally, taking too long to answer.

Jack knows that Eridan's answer came far too late for it to be a straight one. He notices the fidgeting, notices that something's on the other's mind, something that he doesn't want to talk about. So. He doesn't.

He shoves his hands in his pockets, rocking on his feet slightly. "Okay," he says, because what else is there to say. And promptly moves on.

"Haven't seen you around in a while," he says.

Jack drops the topic without much of a fight, and it leaves Eridan blindly casting out for an appropriate response to the more mundane line of questioning coming his way. The tact and forethought he'd actually mustered up evaporates as he says, "I wwas sorta part'a this giant hivvemind thing for a lil' bit there, so yeah, I havven't been around too much until today."

...And he promptly shuts his eyes, scrunching up his face in the traditional expression of "wow-way-to-blurt-that-shit-out-bro".

The only thing going for him right now is the fact that he managed to keep his blunt remark flippant sounding. He tries to keep that going by adding, "Also been in my room readin' a lot. Fef mentioned some interestin' shit about horoscopes, so I'm readin' up on that." He bites the inside of his cheek to keep from rambling on about every last thing he's been using to (unsuccessfully) take his mind off of things.

So Eridan was assimilated. Well, that answers that question, at least. He doesn't push, not because he doesn't want to know more about what happened with Eridan, but more because he doesn't really feel comfortable even trying himself.

"Reading up on horoscopes because Fef mentioned it," he repeats. "So Fef's still around?" And associating with Eridan, despite the shouting match he'd witnessed when she'd initially come aboard.

"A'course she is, she's not gonna go anywwhere." If Jack can ignore that stupid outburst, so can Eridan, so instead he just plunders blindly on. "She wwas talkin' about howw each'a our signs became astrological symbols for the humans in our univverse, an' for some reason that's important or wwhatevver. There's not a lot about it here, though. Not really important." He shrugs his shoulders.

"Your signs?" Jack has to ask, because as far as he knows, he's never heard about signs before. He idly wonders if Eridan will ever get tired of the questions, and casually notes that for all he's asked about Eridan's life, Eridan seems not to pry all that much into his. Which is refreshing, considering how many secrets he'd prefer to keep buried.

"It's good, though. That she's still here," Jack says, as casually as he can, knowing that Eridan has issues concerning people leaving him.

"Yeah, it is," Eridan replies, trying to sound flippant despite the fact that he knows he's been obvious about his fears around Jack. He doesn't want to even think about the possibility of her leaving at this point. He's already fucked up with Feferi once - he wouldn't know how to handle it if something happened again.

"An' yeah, signs. Uh, that's right, none'a us havve our usual wwardrobes, so wwe havven't been runnin' around wwith them plastered all ovver us." Which, now that he thinks about it, that'd been kind of weird. ...Oh well. "Evvery troll has some kind'a sign associated to 'em dependin' on vvarious annoyin' factors that I don't really wwanna get into. Fef's is called Pisces - mine's Aquarius. I guess wwhen wwe set up our humans' univverse, it kinda got carried ovver."

Jack pauses a beat, before what Eridan says really kicks in. "Wait a minute. You're telling me that...you created the horoscope, by creating the other universe, and that you guys are all, what. Embodiments of the different signs? And you're." He stops talking for a moment, looking Eridan over, sizing him up, before finally speaking up again. "I can see it. I mean, it's not obvious, but I can see it."

Eridan shrugs, frowning curiously. "Yeah? I dunno, sounds mostly like a bunch'a crap to me, but Fef's all about it, so..." He rolls his eyes a little. "Might as wwell learn wwhat she's carpin' on about so I can actually contribute to convversations on the subject. But yeah, basically. Wwhen wwe beat SGRUB, wwe created a univverse, an' in that univverse, us twwelvve got passed ovver as... uh, constellations, I guess. Humans just built some wweird fake mythological characterizations around 'em."

Jack wouldn't say that they were fake. Someone had to know something about the trolls to create them - there's no way that there would be that much of a coincidence. The trolls built the universe, after all, they probably had some hand in shaping it as well, without even realizing it. "Hey, I dunno. Some people really believe in astrology things. I mean, according to your astrology, as an Aquarius you should work well with Gemini, learn from a Pisces, and not work well with a Scorpio. Does any of that sound right to you?"

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[open] where is my mind?

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