thegalley_tlv | [002.b. - spam/network]

Entry tags:

cho gonou

[002.b. - spam/network]

cw: eye & hand injury, likely some self-destructive thought processes in tags

[open/spam, the infirmary]

Gonou does not fight back when his punishment is given, nor when it is carried out. The Infirmary is busy, the cries of pain from the beds around him disorienting; he gets up, after a few minutes of rest have cleared his head enough that he doesn't think he'll fall, and tries to find his way to a seat away from the beds. He's slow and clumsy, his one good hand held out in front of him to avoid running into anything important. Eventually, he finds a wall, and turns to plant his back against it and sit down there.

He hopes he's out of the way. He'll just -- take a little time to rest, here, and hope that at some point someone will arrive who's able and willing to take him back to his room.

[open/spam, afterwards]

He's been assigned to hard labor at the oars, but even though he heals a little faster in this body than he had in a human one, the stump of a hand takes more than a few days to heal over enough for a prosthetic to be fitted on it. He's spending a fair amount of time in his room, practicing mapping the space, practicing listening. He's trying to keep his fresher socket cleaned and bandaged; he knows the routine, even if it's harder one-handed, and harder still blind.

He goes to meals. His ears flick with paranoid speed when he's in a crowded room, trying to track the multiplicity of sounds around him, trying to feel out the echoes of the space; sometimes he walks into something, and sometimes this means he drops the tray he has to balance in one hand. When he does, grimly determined, he'll drop to his knees and do his best to clean it up.

Once or twice, he's allowed into the yard, but he finds that space even more overwhelming than the mess hall, and lingers very close to the door, keeping his head down.

After the first week, he adds rotations on the oars. Wherever he's seated, quietly, he'll ask the name of the person beside him.

Network, audio, a few days after the mutiny

[Gonou's voice is soft, a little hoarse. He just has one thing to ask:]

Who's still alive?

... Please don't reply in text.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As he sings, Gonou relaxes by inches against his shoulder, mapping the edge of Jedao's hand with his thumb without quite letting go of it.

"You're better than I am," he says, when the song winds to its conclusion. "-- I'd like to learn your language, someday...."

"It's not really mine," Jedao murmurs, without thinking about it, and then realizes he doesn't know what language should be his. Jedao One was from Espatan, but - Jedao can't think of a single word.

"...fuck, maybe it is."

Gonou lifts his head a handsbreadth, ear twitching in curiosity.

"--should there be another...?"

He knows the barest outlines of Jedao's past: cloned from a dangerous madman, given parts of that man's memories, living in space since his earliest awareness. Perhaps ironically, Gonou has learned far more about the things that have hurt him than the things that shaped him before that.

He swallows.

"He - he was from a Low Planet. It would have had its own language, more than one, maybe. I can't remember what it was called."

It's insane, he thinks distantly. It's actually insane to be upset about this, right now, and if any of his therapists were here they'd point out that it's obviously transference, all his grief and stress and guilt about the revolt and its aftermath that he's been trying to keep in a tight functional box finding a different crack to slide through. But he feels his heart break, just a little bit; it feels like the final irrefutable proof that it was never his life, never his name. That he hasn't forgotten, because he was made not knowing, and never knew.

He takes a deep, careful breath. "Can you hold my hand really tight," he asks, in a soft rush before his voice breaks on him.

Gonou closes his hand on Jedao's, tight, as he'd asked; he's sitting up just a little, turning blindly towards him.

Gently, more of an offer than a real pull, he gives Jedao's hand a slight tug towards himself. He might not have two hands to hold him with anymore, but he does still have a shoulder Jedao can curl against, and one good hand.

(And he hates, he hates to be useless. It would be so easy to be useless, maimed like this.)

Jedao turns into him, shuddering slightly, just taking long, slow breaths. After what feels like an age - but is really only a minute or two - he whispers, "Thank you."

"It's been a long few weeks," Gonou murmurs, turning his face against the top of Jedao's head. His tone is dry with understatement. It's been a long few weeks, and the hardest part is that there's no space to relax. Not while the Galley is still running, not while the Judge is still in power....

His grip tightens just a little more around Jedao's fingers, and he has to take a long breath of his own, pushing away rage and terror.

"Warren is my Advocate, now. He'll be - reasonable."

Jedao doesn't particularly want to get him into trouble by saying he'd let them get away with anything, but.

"If yours wants - a break, supervising you. I think he'd be okay taking responsibility, letting us - visit."

Jedao doesn't have to say it: Gonou knows Warren well enough to know that he's much more likely to try to protect prisoners from the Barge than he is to keep them on a short leash. Knowing that he's Jedao's warden -- Advocate -- is an unexpected relief, and it washes away some of the brittle tension that seems to have rooted itself in his bones.

"If Zhang Rishan will let me," he whispers, chin tucking down in a tiny nod against Jedao's hair. "I'd - like that. Very much. He might - he's asked for lenience."

Twice, in fact. Gonou doesn't understand why. There was nothing in his actions during the mutiny that would deserve lenience, and the Judge had denied it. But Zhang had still asked.

"You should finish your food," Jedao says, with a gentle nudge. "Then we'll ask?"

"...yes," Gonou says, and reluctantly pulls away. The meal shifts aren't that long. He does need to eat. His fingertips linger for a moment on Jedao's hand, regardless, before he can bear to let go and fumble for his spoon.

Jedao stays mostly where he is, leaning warm and solid against Gonou's shoulder. And if he needs the solidity just as badly, still unused to having only his eyes for sight - well, there's nothing wrong with that.

[Handwave/timeskip or bring in either of the Advocates?]

[I lean handwave & close the thread there unless there's something that you'd prefer be threaded out when they're alone together! Gonou would definitely tell Jedao about what he saw of the mutiny, at least, and tell him about his plans to enable Xie Lian getting his hands on the Gavel before that happens if he gets an opportunity.]

[I do have a thing or 2 I think would be very cute! And Jedao would have some Thoughts about the Gavel plan. Skip to after maybe some raging/screaming in the semi-private room?]

"Here. They came with me. Can you smell it?"

He puts Gonou's hand around the smooth surface of a small clay flowerpot, and rubs one of the leaves enough for a faint scent of wild garlic to trickle into the air.

[sounds good!!]

Gonou's still for a moment, fingertips mapping the pot. He bows his head in a brief struggle against emotion.

"They -- I'm glad," he whispers, and raises his head, turning it in Jedao's approximate direction and trying for a smile. "It's lucky I gave this to you. My plants didn't." Not that he'd been particularly attached to them, except in the way that caring for a little living thing every day breeds attachment.

Jedao drops a very quick, very light kiss on that ghost of a smile. "I'm glad you gave it to me too," he agrees. "It's so stupid. But I'd be worrying about it if we left it behind." And it's nice to have one thing that he doesn't have to worry about.

"It's not stupid," Gonou says firmly, and turns his head, lifting his hand to find Jedao's cheek so he can aim his attempt at returning the kiss. "It's -- it makes me feel better, too. That something's okay."

Maybe that's too much weight to put on a sprouted garlic clove, but it's just a plant. It won't care.

(He's desperately glad that Jedao's not left behind, too, but-- he knows better than to assume that any one of them on this ship is okay.)

It is, at this point, that the gravity in the room drops to zero.

"What - fuck, what -" Jedao exclaims, startled into something almost like a laugh.

Gravity vanishes, and the proprioception Gonou's been relying on to keep him oriented while freshly blind vanishes in a swoop of awful vertigo.

He lets out a strangled noise of sheer panic and grabs for Jedao's shoulder, not even considering his claws.

Jedao catches the pot in one hand and Gonou's waist in the other, making a sharp squeak of a noise that is definitely not all bad as Gonou's claws pierce sweater and skin, the inky oleic smell of his black blood glinting suddenly in the air.

"I got you," Jedao promises, brain catching up to his reflexes a second later. He feels as adrift as ever but he at least knows how moving in microgravity works. "You're okay, I got you."

Gonou, meanwhile, is trembling like a leaf. Jedao's just become his only reference point for the entire room around them, and even though he can feel that his claws are digging into skin (he can smell the blood, oily and a little chemical rather than the meaty metallic of human or youkai) - even then, it takes several seconds for him to force his hand to loosen its grip and pull his claws away from the cuts he'd left.

"Do you," he manages in a voice half an octave higher than usual, "know what just happened--?"

"The room's still here, everything is here," he promises. "It's just the gravity that's gone off. We're floating," he explains. "Drifting a little. It'll probably be another twenty seconds before we bump into the ceiling, and then I can push off and get us back somewhere we can hold onto."

Gonou hadn't known that the ship's gravity could turn off. In fact, he hadn't known it wasn't real. He nods tightly and occupies himself for several long and dragging seconds considering ways to create false gravity (simulate vast mass? Well, the ships don't have a layout that fits normal space...)

... he has heard about other functions on these ships falling, though.

"If the gravity isn't working," he says, finding a new and unfortunate cause for alarm, "can we trust the air?"

Jedao swallows. "I don't know." It's different to think about, now that he probably actually needs to breathe. "If the air goes, don't panic. Don't try to hold your breath - it won't work, and it'll rip your lungs up, trying. Maybe an Advocate's shield could hold air in?"

"Maybe. When it went on the Barge it was only gone for a few seconds, I heard," Gonou says, trying to even out his voice. He's holding Jedao's shoulder more carefully now, but he's holding just as tightly.

"So. Don't hold my breath if it goes, and don't panic for at least the first few seconds...."

And after that, maybe panicking would be in order.

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