[IC CONTACT]

[photophobic]

You should know where to find me.
But if you leave a message here, I will see it.

Comments

[made_up_names]

........
those are weirdly specific
im concerned now
do you need someone to talk to

[photophobic]

Why would you be concerned for me? I've already survived these things.

You, on the other hand, should be prepared for the future. This place is inherently unstable. Existing here will come with the price of accepting the inevitability of chaos.

[made_up_names]

because surviving something doesnt mean youre okay afterwards
it just means you lived

but i appreciate the warning, seriously

[photophobic]

[There's a significant delay. Kylo doesn't really know what to do with how Peter's message makes him feel, or indeed know how to identify what it is he's feeling.

Usually, of course, confusing things just make him angry. But he can't find anything in Peter's words to summon up that particular protective monster. So he stares, and after a while types back:]

What is "being okay".

[No. Too vulnerable. He adds:]

To you.

[made_up_names]

[ Oof. That was a loaded question even before Kylo turned it back on Peter. He's not sure how to answer either. ]

i dunno
feeling normal?
not worrying about things that i can't help?
feeling safe?

[photophobic]

[But you aren't, he wants to hurl back immediately, you aren't safe— and maybe he would have, without the buffer of his fingers stabbing letters onto the screen.]

Maybe you don't know what it is because it doesn't really exist.

[made_up_names]

maybe
but i felt different before

[ Or at least he feels different in retrospect, knowing how everything ends. ]

[photophobic]

So "being okay" would be going back. To being what you were before you were rescued from a killer robot or aliens squished your house and left you homeless.

[Sounds pretty much impossible, to Kylo.]

[made_up_names]

not that far i guess
but like a couple years maybe?

[photophobic]

[There's a rather glaring hole in Peter's timeline, now, an Event made clearer and clearer by all the ways he bends around it, the half-truths, evasions, diversions... and yet, this. The hidden truth exposed by its gravitational pull.

Kylo could reach for it. And he would, if he didn't already know what he'd find there. The specifics are unimportant— whatever its shape, the hole is a wound that Peter isn't ready to let close up and form a scar, yet.

And Kylo knows wounds.]

You know that isn't possible. You know it.

We can't go back.

[made_up_names]

[ He's not the best liar to begin with. Even less so in a situation like this, where he has to explain things like the Blip and the Battle of New York. At home he can imply and not trip himself up in his own lies. ]

i know
trust me, i know
so its nice when i get to feel like that for a minute

[photophobic]

[Ironically, this is what it looks like when Kylo is trying to be gentle— not that he'd recognise the urge by that word. This is his attempt to push out a warning, when he only barely understands the mechanism of the trap himself.]

If "being okay" is when you can make it feel like it isn't a part of you. What happened. It won't last.

[made_up_names]

is it bad to pretend anyway?

[photophobic]

[The bitter retort of I was never good enough at it is right there, right at his fingertips.
But he shouldn't let it stand, really, that question Peter only asks because he already knows the answer.]

Does it feel easier.

[made_up_names]

no. not really.

[ Yeah. He already knows the answer. ]

[photophobic]

[Not for the first time, Kylo finds himself intensely, heatedly frustrated at his inability to take the truths he's discovered and crush them, somehow, into words. They're inadequate containers— all of them— from his telepathic perspective. And yet they're the only way he can communicate his ideas.]

How could it ever be easier, to hold together an alternate reality for yourself.

You read it. My book.

[made_up_names]

[ If he responds to that directly he'll give too much away. So instead, he sticks with something safer. ]

yeah i did, all of it

[photophobic]

[Then... Peter knows, really. Doesn't he. Or at least he knows as much as he probably ever will— Kylo's already used the best words he could find. Anything else would require him to give up more of his own collection of secrets than he's willing to part with.]

Good. There's something I want to show you. When you come to the Meadows for your demonstration.

[made_up_names]

[ Kylo is assuming a lot about Peter's poetry interpreting skills. But. Yeah, he gets the idea. ]

all right
ill see you then