cacophonish | APOCALYPSE HOW: IC INBOX

"How do you go about... not succumbing to it? You said you knew how," Malcolm points out.

He blinks. "I dunno, there's no strategy, man, I just don't-- I don't... go as far as... it wants me to."

Though it's getting harder, for sure, to hold back from really doing damage to people. But at least for now, Jeff's inherent soft-hearted nature is holding the worst at bay.

"You don't think it can... nickel and dime you to death, as it were?" Malcolm asks.

He rubs the side of his neck and looks up at Malcolm, clearly a little confused. "What do you mean?"

Edited 2022-02-05 01:30 (UTC)

"I mean... are you sure that every time you feed it a little bit you're not just giving yourself to it... more slowly but just as completely?" he clarifies.

"Oh."

He hadn't given that much thought yet. Maybe he's considered it at some point, the whole possibility of death by a thousand cuts, but as with anything that gets too real for comfort, he promptly pushed it aside.

"I guess... maybe. It might. I don't know."

Though it still loops back to the problem at the root of this: Jeff doesn't really know if he'd rather die than give up this part of himself.

"If you feel yourself... slipping away... will you come to someone? It doesn't have to be me, but... will you look for a hand to hold on to?" Malcolm asks softly.

"I can... try," he says, without much certainty. Jeff swallows, then nods, like that'll give him more resolve, when he doesn't feel like he's got much to speak of. "I'll try."

He wants to believe that he will, anyway. But he's used to letting people down.

Jeff taps his fingers on his mug, seeming contemplative, before he lets out a sudden, unhappy laugh.

"It's not fair, you know? It's such a stupid, fucking joke. I live my whole life fucking... cherishing this part of myself. Like, maybe I'm stupid, and I can't pass a fucking test, or work an office job or whatever, but at least I have this." He waves a hand. "Then I come here, and suddenly it's wrong, and evil, and I'm supposed to just give it up like it's nothing. And do what?" He rubs his eyes. "Like, you guys don't have this hanging over your head and-- and I'm glad you don't." His voice gets softer. "But it's not fucking fair..."

"It's not fair," Malcolm agrees. "It's not even a little bit fair. But please don't think that it's all you have to offer. I understand that it's an important part of you, but it's not all that you are. It's not the only value you have."

He doesn't really know how to properly put any of this into words. After everything with Ziggy, he's already had so much stripped away. His confidence, charisma, that natural... it factor that made people want to follow him off a cliff. His friendships were hanging on by a thread back home. He knows he's already some hollow, pathetic shell of who he was, has been, even before he was brought here.

He gives up this last piece of himself, and then what?

"Malcolm," he starts, softly, uncertain, because he doesn't know if what he's about to say is going to sting. He doesn't want it to, but it might. "It's the only thing that makes me happy."

Besides drugs and sex and attention, anyway.

Malcolm considers that, his eyes searching Jeff’s face.

“Which part?”

"Um... feeling it. That connection with something..." Something greater than him? Something vast and undefinable, almost unreal.

Casting spells is about as close as Jeff comes to religious ecstasy.

"I don't know what to tell you."

"I think you're doing pretty well at digging down, honestly. Figuring ourselves out... it's not a day's work, Jeff. It takes time. And change, if we want it, that takes even more time." He takes a sip of his drink. "Do you feel the magic in you even when you're not using it?"

He nods. "Yeah, but it... If I don't cast, it starts to feel... weaker or-- or less... alive." Jeff hugs himself, hunching his shoulders as he seems to want to draw into himself. "Like it's gonna die if I don't take care of it."

And to take care of it, he has to feed. There's no getting around it.

“I wonder why they brought you here,” Malcolm muses, taking a sip of coffee. “Someone who can’t survive without magic, to a place where it mustn’t be used.”

He can survive without magic, in a sense. It's not a life he wants for himself. It's nothing worth living. A spiritual, metaphorical death.

"I dunno, because my life's a fucking joke?"

Except... He does have a theory. It's on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't say it.

"Do you think," Malcolm muses, tilting his cup towards Jeff, "that in actuality, ADI is interested in knowing more about the Entities and/or getting an in to reach the Entities so it brings people here who won't be able to help but fall and then they have what they want and can blame it on you?"

"Oh." He blinks. Okay, now there's a new theory floating around as a possibility. "I never... I mean... Maybe?"

He's quiet for a moment, before admitting, "Or maybe... maybe it chose me." It. Not the ADI, but something else: that thing twisting the magic inside him.

"You think the Entities can bring people to ADI? Where did you wake up when you arrived here?" he asks curiously.

"Does anyone know what brings us here? All they say is... they don't know why we're here, just that we're probably, um... you know... we've got something to do with an apocalypse?" His voice goes quieter, like he's almost afraid to give voice to the thought. "What if I... I'm the cause? Or-- or a cause, not the... you know."

Malcolm raises an eyebrow.

"How does that explain the rest of us?" he asks.

He shakes his head. "I don't know, maybe everyone's here for different reasons. Some good..." Like Malcolm. If anyone could help stop the end of the world, it's Malcolm. "Some, um... not so good..."

Jeff shrugs and looks down at his hands, as his fingers tap on the table. "It doesn't matter, anyway, I guess. Why any of us are here doesn't change anything."

"It changes our understanding," Malcolm points out. "Our perception. My perception will be entirely less kind if they brought you here expressly to fall. We don't know what that entails. We know it's a danger to you."

APOCALYPSE HOW: IC INBOX

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