[OA picks up her pace obediently, by habit unruffled at being led. It strikes her that if anything it bothers her even less here and now than it ever did when she was blind, when people were prone to mistaking the exertion of control over her for an act of kindness. Her blindness had been an excuse to guide her, to infantilise, to patronise, to touch her without her solicitation.
This is different. It's undertaken willingly, for one. OA also doesn't get the impression that Clarke is ushering her along out of the assumption that it's something she needs. Strange, really, how accepting help hurts less the less necessary it might be. She has to wonder if that isn't some small part of why Clarke is holding back on sharing her memories of this place: some things that are difficult enough to bear alone are all the harder to show to others. Vulnerability can be excruciating.]
Mm. Lotus eaters.
[There's a strange lurch of pain, of loss -- she'd said it without thinking. She remembers when the books had come, remembers Abel bringing them up to her room. Sounding the words out. It was a small mercy that he'd already left by the time she reached The Iliad, that name on the cover. Homer. This is an even older recollection: she'd read The Odyssey in high school, when she'd been an unwilling lotus eater in her own way, trying to exist in the world through the haze of antipsychotics.
She can still recall the shapes of those words, flowing under her hands. Homer's wine-dark sea. Her own fingertips brushing against those of rosy-fingered dawn. It feels like it happened to someone else.]
I don't know, maybe it is turning away.
[She doesn't sound -- or feel -- certain of that, but she's not entirely sure how to put to words what she does think. For a time, then, a thoughtful silence. OA keeps easy pace with Clarke, gaze raking the façades of the buildings as they pass. Hollow, false, like a film set.]
Common ground sounds more like the other answer. Reaching out. Asking for help. I don't mean that you need it--
[The last sounds like an afterthought, a concession. OA doesn't think there's any shame in asking for help, but she knows how absolutely unfathomable that is to some people, through no fault of their own. She doesn't imagine Clarke is one of them, but in the interest of avoiding insult, she specifies.]
--I mean that the fact we can endure something on our own doesn't mean we have to. Maybe that is why we're here.
[A beat, and then, less to clarify the thought than to add to it:]
I can take it, if it would help you for someone to know.
no subject
This is different. It's undertaken willingly, for one. OA also doesn't get the impression that Clarke is ushering her along out of the assumption that it's something she needs. Strange, really, how accepting help hurts less the less necessary it might be. She has to wonder if that isn't some small part of why Clarke is holding back on sharing her memories of this place: some things that are difficult enough to bear alone are all the harder to show to others. Vulnerability can be excruciating.]
Mm. Lotus eaters.
[There's a strange lurch of pain, of loss -- she'd said it without thinking. She remembers when the books had come, remembers Abel bringing them up to her room. Sounding the words out. It was a small mercy that he'd already left by the time she reached The Iliad, that name on the cover. Homer. This is an even older recollection: she'd read The Odyssey in high school, when she'd been an unwilling lotus eater in her own way, trying to exist in the world through the haze of antipsychotics.
She can still recall the shapes of those words, flowing under her hands. Homer's wine-dark sea. Her own fingertips brushing against those of rosy-fingered dawn. It feels like it happened to someone else.]
I don't know, maybe it is turning away.
[She doesn't sound -- or feel -- certain of that, but she's not entirely sure how to put to words what she does think. For a time, then, a thoughtful silence. OA keeps easy pace with Clarke, gaze raking the façades of the buildings as they pass. Hollow, false, like a film set.]
Common ground sounds more like the other answer. Reaching out. Asking for help. I don't mean that you need it--
[The last sounds like an afterthought, a concession. OA doesn't think there's any shame in asking for help, but she knows how absolutely unfathomable that is to some people, through no fault of their own. She doesn't imagine Clarke is one of them, but in the interest of avoiding insult, she specifies.]
--I mean that the fact we can endure something on our own doesn't mean we have to. Maybe that is why we're here.
[A beat, and then, less to clarify the thought than to add to it:]
I can take it, if it would help you for someone to know.