IC INBOX for The Last Voyages

[magician_king]

You know what to do.

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[magician_king]

"Probably for you too."

Points out Quentin, because Fives seems like he's needed this. A hug. A little touch.

"I'll ask him about it."

[callmefives]

Fives shivers a little at the observation, and nods his head against Quentin's shoulder. He knows he could have been going to Tris, but... he hasn't been able to make himself take that much time away from watching after Jedao, and he hasn't felt like he'd be fit company for her anyway. Which hasn't stopped her from hunting him down regularly during his maintenance shift. For which he's infinitely grateful. But it still doesn't fill the gaping hole left by Jedao's physical absence from his life.

"And... you can come when I'm not there, too, you know," he points out quietly. If he'd rather just have time alone with Jedao.

[magician_king]

"Yeah. You too. If you want to come here I mean, when you need some down time."

He's here. And he wants him to know;

"My door's always open."

[callmefives]

He presses his face into Quentin's neck and breathes heavily for a moment. "I don't... I don't like leaving him for too long right now. He seems to get lost in his head, and... there's nothing good going on in there," he murmurs. "I know he probably doesn't want me there all the time, but... it's hard to leave if I don't have to. Sometimes just talking to him seems to help, even if he doesn't answer or even look at me. Or reading to him.

"But I mostly haven't even been able to get close, until yesterday." And it hurts, even though he knows it's not about him and it shouldn't. He's slept on the floor, when he's slept at all, most nights since it all started. "And... Jedao told Tris it was okay for me to talk to her about it-" And he has, some, because he'd needed it so desperately. "But... it's better, talking to you." Because he loves Jedao as much as he does, and probably knows him as well in his way too... none of which really has much to do with the offer Quentin made, but it's a different way of coming to him, in Fives' mind.

[magician_king]

"I definitely wouldn't say I completely understand him, but I do appreciate him, and I do want to know it all."

Is the compromise he can offer.

"And any time you want to talk, I'm here. For either of you."

[callmefives]

Fives huffs quietly. "I sure don't understand him a lot of the time... but I love him more than anything." And he thinks he understands enough, most of the time. "He says it's just going to take time. To sort through everything. And Jean said... she said he's still him." That nothing fundamental about him was different.

"Maybe-" He stops and chews his bottom lip for a moment, not sure if he wants to make the suggestion at all, but... what might be best for Jedao is more important than his own insecurity and hurt. "Maybe he'd sleep better... if you could come be a fox with him at night?" hue suggests quietly. Because no matter how willing he is to have Jedao tie him up every kriffing night, however he needs to, so he can have that contact again, that doesn't mean it wouldn't possibly be better for Jedao to have something less threatening and fraught.

[magician_king]

"We can ask," he says, smiling, clearly glad at the thought of the idea, "let's see if he's into it."

He can never really predict the shape of Jedao's needs, but is giving up being shy about just checking outright.

[callmefives]

It helps, how happy the suggestion obviously makes Quentin. "Anything that might help him sleep more and better would be good." Though he's not sure if Jedao will want Quentin there for the possibility of his silent tears in the night.

"I, uh, I can ask." Just in case something about it upsets Jedao, he doesn't want to make Quentin have to deal with that, or Jedao either.

[magician_king]

"Remind him I can be a goose, too."

He points out, quietly. Jedao and his geese.

"It's less- fuzzy, but I don't think he has the same brain as normal people where those birds are concerned."

[callmefives]

"His heart was a goose, back there." He's not sure if that will make it more or less appealing to Jedao right now. "It was... so small and strange and lost. And gentle."

[magician_king]

"Sounds like the wonder-plant."

He says, and closes his eyes.

"There's a garden on the underside of the world where a plant blooms for every feeling a person can have. Rage trees, love blossoms, the ferns of exhaustion."

[callmefives]

"Do... do the plants feel like that, or look like it or-" He's trying to figure out plants for feelings, trying to envision a world with an underside and magic and- It's just all so alien, but he wants to understand.

[magician_king]

"You respond to them. Like a tuning fork."

He says, and pulls back, because;

"Come on, I've never showed you. It's back this way."

[callmefives]

Fives lets him go reluctantly.

"What's a tuning fork?" he asks as he follows him, curious if it's one of those plants Quentin's going to show him. He hasn't actually seen anything but the hall and kitchen of his new quarters, he'd never been in them until yesterday, when he'd nearly screwed everything up.

[magician_king]

"Don't worry about it, it's only useful as a metaphor."

So, into a back living room, one full of a little more debris, stripped down wallpaper, and in a patch of watery sunlight a single clay pot with a wilted, dead brown plant in it.

"So this is wonderment."

It looks bad, looks like dust, but he sits down cross legged by it, looking reverent.

[callmefives]

He'll look it up later, he supposes, now that his curiosity is piqued; it's not worth pushing at now, when it's obviously unimportant. So he follows Quentin through the detritus of the old house, confused by how ramshackle it is, and he has to resist the urge to try and tidy up. It all reminds him uncomfortably of the ruin left behind in the wake of planetary combat, peoples' homes full of dust and rubble, their possessions destroyed or looted. At least none of the walls are open to the world.

He stops behind Quentin when they finally reach their apparently destination, and he's no less confused by the plant Quentin directs him to. After a moment he folds himself down cross-legged next to Quentin with an absent, powerful kind of grace. He's silent for a few seconds, looking from Quentin to the strange, wilted little thing and back.

"It, uh... it looks like it's dead, Quent'ika," he finally observes quietly. "Is it supposed to be dead?"

[magician_king]

"No one's feeling it right now."

He says, and then thinks of something he can tell him that'll have the effect he wants;

"Fillory floats on the back of a turtle, crawling through space. I've seen it. Stroked its' gentle head, shooed it back on track when it started wobbling. It's a gentle creature."

[callmefives]

Fives turns to look at him in surprise at the description. "A whole world on... a turtle?" He's seen them before, he remembers that. Not just from breaches, but from a pond in the bargeyard. They'd been small and a bit ridiculous looking and almost ridiculously slow, and he'd crouched down to watch them drifting around and sunning themselves on rock for almost twenty minutes.

He grins at the idea of one of them with an entire (very tine) world balanced on its back, making its way slowly through space, with Quentin shooing it gently back on track. "It must be the tiniest world anywhere in the universe, to fit on a turtle." At least, a turtle small enough to even notice something the size of a human.

[magician_king]

"No, it was couple of hundred thousand square miles. It was a big turtle."

He says, and focuses on the memory of the tender giant.

A tender tendril unfurls from the brown stalk of the plant, glimmering and tentative and green. The room thrums with the feeling.

[callmefives]

Fives' attention shifts to the little plant, and he leans forward in fascination at the sudden little tendril of green. He can feel the sense of wonder coming from it, and he magnifies it back. It's a distraction, for the moment, from asking Quentin just how someone the size of a human could even get the attention of a turtle that large.

"It... it needs the emotions first? To... be alive?" He reaches a tentative finger out for it.

[magician_king]

"It blooms for the feeling. This one is just attuned the barge- sometimes it comes on its' own-"

And he's so good, so proud of it, that it lifts up into a stem, leaves unfurling.

"It breaks all the rules of what plants should be, evolutionarily. The leaves coming out from the stem in the wrong kind of helix."

[callmefives]

"It's amazing," Fives murmurs, watching as it grows and puts out leaves right in front of his eyes.

"There's a right and wrong way for leaves to grow?" he asks, not looking away from the plant, not wanting to miss anything.

[magician_king]

He settles in to a biology lecture, about the ratios and angles of stems emerging from plant stalks, and patterns of plant life on earth. It's deeply esoteric and not very interesting, but he's too tired to muffle the part of his brain that feels like now is the moment to go over it in deep and soothing detail.

[callmefives]

The thing is, Fives isn't bored by it at all. He's had so little opportunity in his life to learn anything that's not directly in service to war and death, and he finds it all fairly fascinating. He definitely doesn't have any trouble following it, other than occasional words or concepts he doesn't have the frame of reference for, which means he asks... and gives Quentin an excuse to keep going.

For all that he's never been anything but a soldier, he was designed and trained to be incredibly intelligent and learn incredibly fast, and he leans comfortably into Quentin's shoulder and listens and prompts and files the information away as... possibly never useful, but interesting anyway. It's much the same way he learns magic--with startling ease once he gets past whatever basic concepts he doesn't have the experience to understand.

the day after their boggart encounter

[ninefox]

you said we needed to negotiate things