[He catches it before he finishes it and has a chance to press 'send'. Deletes it. The way it sounds like an order. Like he's telling her what to do. How to feel.
It takes a few minutes for him to recover from the not-yet-a-mishap. He's sure it'll happen at some point, but he's going to try to make sure it doesn't.]
Why do you think that?
[Another stupid question-- the destruction of the block around the Hargreeves house is the obvious enough answer. But he asks this one for a real reason. To get it in her own words, if she'll talk to him about it at all, at least.]
[There's another long gap, probably closer to an hour, now. She hasn't fallen asleep, can't sleep. She's starting to think she never will again, even though it's all she wants to do.]
[He lets that be all he says for a long moment. A good ten minutes, where she says nothing. Because every single text she sends is like pulling teeth, but at least she responds at all, still. He'll take it for what it is.]
You're... untrained. But it doesn't make you a monster. And it can be fixed tempered. Practiced.
[He hates the use of that first word, because he knows it will just stick as sure as any dagger in any target. That's the point, that's been the problem the whole time. Discovering her powers the way she did. Realizing she had lost the memory of having them at all in the first place. Excluded. Left out. Isolated. Ordinary.
Where Vanya wants nothing more than to be taken by sleep, and probably forget about this conversation completely, Diego can't even think about it at this point. He is too full of jittery nerves to dare to consider it.
But hey. At least he knows those nerves are his own, because his empathy doesn't work over phone signals.
[She reads the texts as they come, trying not to feel too much in between. Maybe she should, this is the time with the power dampener keeping her safe - but it feels a little like the exhaustion that comes after crying yourself out, but magnified by ten. She's tired, and everything about what she did makes her ache: she can't even tell if it's physical or mental.
She tries to think about training, and only pictures Leonard in the forest. It had felt like a revelation at the time, a moment where she could use and control her own power. A moment where she wasn't ordinary, and beyond that - found something inside her that made her strong.
Now, though, all she can see is him parroting her father's words, manipulating her into thinking he was helping.
Derek offered to help her practice. She wonders if he knows what happened - wonders if he'll ever try to contact her again if he does.]
[This, he can do. This is tactical-- Number Two, Lieutenant in the Academy standing in for the leader.
Still. He tries not to be cold about it. Tries to ease the idea toward her rather than dumping it on her like a bucket of ice water.]
Okay... so let us help you. Let someone help you. It doesn't have to be like that, but it'll take time, to really understand all the facets of it and control it. I've had this stupid empathy shit for...months now, and I barely understand it, still.
[The last part is less an attempt at commiseration-- although maybe it's a little bit that, too-- and more a scrap of proof that it isn't really any easier for him, than it is for her with something new that he doesn't understand. He hopes that it would help her, knowing it isn't just her out of her depths with something she doesn't understand.]
[It's always been a little strange to her, when they kick into hero mode. It's a visible change, and she could see it most clearly during those early missions, when she would desperately beg to come long. Dad didn't observe many, though, which meant she had no reason to be there either.
It's not like she's unaware of the training; intellectually, she understands. But she never learned to throw a punch, never learned to follow Luther's lead in a bad situation. They never even invited her to play their games. Maybe if that had been different - but it's not.
Vanya doesn't answer for a while, which is no surprise at this point. She doesn't know how to address the idea of training in a way that doesn't make her stomach want to twist into tighter knots.]
[He is, at least, trained (ha) to wait for responses from her when they talk like this. He hasn't done it much, but... enough that it's an easy thing to assume it isn't necessarily over just because she hasn't said anything in five or fifteen minutes.]
Yeah. I think... what happened is I was taking in what you were feeling, and reflecting it back at you, at the same time. So it was like...everything was doubled.
And it wasn't just me or you in that, either. I think I'd been accidentally kind of... collecting a mess of emotions all night. Everything got so fucked up because of that. Like an emotional ricochet, I guess?
[He also thinks some of it's massive punch was because of her powers, too. There was something when she was yelling at him, like he felt her emotions so much more because of the sound of them mixing with the feeling at the same time... but she has enough guilt on her hands, and making it all her fault wouldn't help. But pointing out his own fuck-ups in the mix? Honestly, that might help more than anything else that he can think of in the moment.]
[He's taking on some of the guilt. Part of her wants to blame it all on him, shriek that she would have stayed in control if not for him. God, it would be so much easier to do that.
The guilt won't let her. It feels like a parasite chewing her up from the inside. She was fraying to begin with, and if she had just stayed home - if she had just blown off the party, maybe the anxiety would have dissipated without taking anyone with her. People must have died, though she hasn't heard any of the details yet. She's been too afraid to ask, because then she won't be able to tell herself I don't know, at least I don't know.]
[She almost asks why, but then that clarification comes through. The dots indicating she's typing show up almost immediately, but she doesn't actually manage a response for a good ten minutes.]
Nothing, really. I mean, he asked where you were, if you were okay... I told him where you were, and that at least physically you're okay.
[The dots bounce on the screen nearly incessantly for almost 10 minutes. He keeps re-thinking and re-phrasing what he's saying.
It's only after he explains it all to her, that he realizes that, even though he didn't expressly give Derek permission to go visit here he didn't exactly give him any indication that he couldn't. Even later, after sparring and during drinks... he'd never exactly told him to leave her alone-- only suggested that she might not take it well.]
I shouldn't have done that. Fuck. Vee, I wasn't thinking, I just answered his questions.
[Acting and speaking on her behalf-- out of his way intentional or not-- is not going to help anything right now and he feels like an ass, now that the realization has dawned on him. Not that being an ass has ever stopped him before but...
He groans and tosses the phone onto the bed next to him, pressing the heel of his hands against his eyes.
[She's angry at him. Immediately. It's a quiet anger, distant, because anything more right now would take energy she just doesn't have. But she frowns, frowns hard at the device, and rolls onto her back to glare up at those words. It's not fair that she's angry. He answered a question. Fine. She answers questions whens he's asked - she's answered questions here about her family. She wrote her book, told the world about his stutter, about failing out of the Academy. He had every right to hate her for it.
That doesn't stop the instinct toward anger. She's so exhausted of wondering if she has the right to her emotions - if they're right or wrong, if she is right or wrong. The fact that she's here should make that pretty clear. But.
It takes a long time for her to respond, and he's certainly got every right to think that she'd never speak to him again. Part of her wants to make that promise to herself.
Life was easier when they all just ignored her. But it would memory work better than Allison is - was - capable of to forget how much she hated being excluded.]
[The time between his last set of texts and her next one...honestly doesn't surprise him at all. If she responded quicker, he'd only know the extent of her anger more immediately. But Vanya had never been volatile like that, in any of Diego's memories. He was plenty explosive, Allison certainly had her moments with it too-- and lord help anyone who hit the right set of buttons to make Luther get that mad (Diego tried his hardest, most days).
But Vanya? Would never hurt a fly, Vanya? Cried at the boys burning ants with magnifying glasses, Vanya? Her anger was not explosive, it was quiet and simmering, and by all arguable counts, maybe that was so much more dangerous than instantaneous, in-your-face anger.
But still. The lack of response doesn't surprise him, and after the fifth or sixth time checking his phone to make sure he hadn't missed it, has him thinking maybe she just stopped altogether.
Which, of course, means that's the exact moment she does respond. Phone still in his hand, her messages still open, even, he watches it filter in and feels everything sink at that question. Reasonable enough, all things considered, but still... it just makes him feel worse.]
He said he's going to try to come by tomorrow.
I'm I'm sor I'm sorry
[He tries, and fails, to send anything shaped even a little like an apology. The way his half-attempts at it feel like the text-based version of a stutter twists in his gut with a gnawing sense of familiarity he doesn't like.
But picturing the words in his mind doesn't make them any easier to type, or send, or say, this time.]
[That response comes immediately, and since it's just a text there's no telling what her tone might be. Maybe she's serious. Maybe she's spitting vitriol at him as best she knows how.
Maybe she is just being as petty as she has the strength to be right now, knowing that she must have hurt people, hurt her family, herself, that she deserves the world's vitriol rather than spewing any of her own.
She feels like she should be punished, and she feels justified, and she hates the way the two eat her stomach up inside. Vanya sets the phone down on the floor, and curls up in her bed, back to the device, facing the wall because at least that feels safe. Can someone be claustrophobic and long for a silent enclosed place where no one can see her at the same time?
[Thanks for the heads up. There are a hundred different ways to read that. He's hears it, in his head, every time he re-reads it in a different tone. Neutral. Genuine. Sniping. He doesn't know her intention behind those words. He wonders, briefly, if she knows herself.]
Can I come see you Friday?
[At least giving her the option to refuse. It's the least he could do, he thinks.]
[She doesn't see it for a long time, falls asleep for an hour or two and wakes up still agitated. It's like a colony of ants has made its home in her gut and her chest, and they march back and forth all the time, even while she sleeps. It does a number on her sensation of peace.
She she reads his text, she responds automatically, giving him the most noncommittal, far from enthused but not rude response she can think of.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Don't say tha[He catches it before he finishes it and has a chance to press 'send'. Deletes it. The way it sounds like an order. Like he's telling her what to do. How to feel.
It takes a few minutes for him to recover from the not-yet-a-mishap. He's sure it'll happen at some point, but he's going to try to make sure it doesn't.]
Why do you think that?
[Another stupid question-- the destruction of the block around the Hargreeves house is the obvious enough answer. But he asks this one for a real reason. To get it in her own words, if she'll talk to him about it at all, at least.]
no subject
Im a monster
no subject
[He lets that be all he says for a long moment. A good ten minutes, where she says nothing. Because every single text she sends is like pulling teeth, but at least she responds at all, still. He'll take it for what it is.]
You're... untrained.
But it doesn't make you a monster.
And it can be
fixedtempered. Practiced.[He hates the use of that first word, because he knows it will just stick as sure as any dagger in any target. That's the point, that's been the problem the whole time. Discovering her powers the way she did. Realizing she had lost the memory of having them at all in the first place. Excluded. Left out. Isolated. Ordinary.
Where Vanya wants nothing more than to be taken by sleep, and probably forget about this conversation completely, Diego can't even think about it at this point. He is too full of jittery nerves to dare to consider it.
But hey. At least he knows those nerves are his own, because his empathy doesn't work over phone signals.
It's an afterthought, so far delayed, to add: ]
If that's what you want.
no subject
She tries to think about training, and only pictures Leonard in the forest. It had felt like a revelation at the time, a moment where she could use and control her own power. A moment where she wasn't ordinary, and beyond that - found something inside her that made her strong.
Now, though, all she can see is him parroting her father's words, manipulating her into thinking he was helping.
Derek offered to help her practice. She wonders if he knows what happened - wonders if he'll ever try to contact her again if he does.]
I dont want that to happen again
no subject
Still. He tries not to be cold about it. Tries to ease the idea toward her rather than dumping it on her like a bucket of ice water.]
Okay... so let us help you.
Let someone help you.
It doesn't have to be like that, but it'll take time, to really understand all the facets of it and control it.
I've had this stupid empathy shit for...months now, and I barely understand it, still.
[The last part is less an attempt at commiseration-- although maybe it's a little bit that, too-- and more a scrap of proof that it isn't really any easier for him, than it is for her with something new that he doesn't understand. He hopes that it would help her, knowing it isn't just her out of her depths with something she doesn't understand.]
no subject
It's not like she's unaware of the training; intellectually, she understands. But she never learned to throw a punch, never learned to follow Luther's lead in a bad situation. They never even invited her to play their games. Maybe if that had been different - but it's not.
Vanya doesn't answer for a while, which is no surprise at this point. She doesn't know how to address the idea of training in a way that doesn't make her stomach want to twist into tighter knots.]
is that what happened last night
the empathy thing
no subject
Yeah.
I think... what happened is I was taking in what you were feeling, and reflecting it back at you, at the same time. So it was like...everything was doubled.
And it wasn't just me or you in that, either. I think I'd been accidentally kind of... collecting a mess of emotions all night. Everything got so fucked up because of that. Like an emotional ricochet, I guess?
[He also thinks some of it's massive punch was because of her powers, too. There was something when she was yelling at him, like he felt her emotions so much more because of the sound of them mixing with the feeling at the same time... but she has enough guilt on her hands, and making it all her fault wouldn't help. But pointing out his own fuck-ups in the mix? Honestly, that might help more than anything else that he can think of in the moment.]
no subject
The guilt won't let her. It feels like a parasite chewing her up from the inside. She was fraying to begin with, and if she had just stayed home - if she had just blown off the party, maybe the anxiety would have dissipated without taking anyone with her. People must have died, though she hasn't heard any of the details yet. She's been too afraid to ask, because then she won't be able to tell herself I don't know, at least I don't know.]
You didn't do this
I always feel like an emotional ricochet anyway
no subject
I think it might be a family trait.
[Another one of those awfully timed jokes that are too true to truly be funny. He should probably stop doing that.]
How long did they say you have to stay?
[Did he ask that already? He doesn't remember. It's been hard to think today.]
no subject
idk. i haven't asked
Allison might know
[She is, frankly, too raw to deal with any of this.]
no subject
[It's only the briefest of pauses before the next text comes in, a short clarification of why that first question was asked at all.]
Derek said he wanted to see you.
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what did you tell him
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I mean, he asked where you were, if you were okay...
I told him where you were, and that at least physically you're okay.
[The dots bounce on the screen nearly incessantly for almost 10 minutes. He keeps re-thinking and re-phrasing what he's saying.
It's only after he explains it all to her, that he realizes that, even though he didn't expressly give Derek permission to go visit here he didn't exactly give him any indication that he couldn't. Even later, after sparring and during drinks... he'd never exactly told him to leave her alone-- only suggested that she might not take it well.]
I shouldn't have done that.
Fuck. Vee, I wasn't thinking, I just answered his questions.
[Acting and speaking on her behalf-- out of his way intentional or not-- is not going to help anything right now and he feels like an ass, now that the realization has dawned on him. Not that being an ass has ever stopped him before but...
He groans and tosses the phone onto the bed next to him, pressing the heel of his hands against his eyes.
"Fuuuuck," he says in a long, drawn out mutter.]
no subject
That doesn't stop the instinct toward anger. She's so exhausted of wondering if she has the right to her emotions - if they're right or wrong, if she is right or wrong. The fact that she's here should make that pretty clear. But.
It takes a long time for her to respond, and he's certainly got every right to think that she'd never speak to him again. Part of her wants to make that promise to herself.
Life was easier when they all just ignored her. But it would memory work better than Allison is - was - capable of to forget how much she hated being excluded.]
is he coming here?
no subject
But Vanya?
Would never hurt a fly, Vanya? Cried at the boys burning ants with magnifying glasses, Vanya?
Her anger was not explosive, it was quiet and simmering, and by all arguable counts, maybe that was so much more dangerous than instantaneous, in-your-face anger.
But still.
The lack of response doesn't surprise him, and after the fifth or sixth time checking his phone to make sure he hadn't missed it, has him thinking maybe she just stopped altogether.
Which, of course, means that's the exact moment she does respond. Phone still in his hand, her messages still open, even, he watches it filter in and feels everything sink at that question. Reasonable enough, all things considered, but still... it just makes him feel worse.]
He said he's going to try to come by tomorrow.
I'mI'm sor
I'm sorry
[He tries, and fails, to send anything shaped even a little like an apology. The way his half-attempts at it feel like the text-based version of a stutter twists in his gut with a gnawing sense of familiarity he doesn't like.
But picturing the words in his mind doesn't make them any easier to type, or send, or say, this time.]
no subject
[That response comes immediately, and since it's just a text there's no telling what her tone might be. Maybe she's serious. Maybe she's spitting vitriol at him as best she knows how.
Maybe she is just being as petty as she has the strength to be right now, knowing that she must have hurt people, hurt her family, herself, that she deserves the world's vitriol rather than spewing any of her own.
She feels like she should be punished, and she feels justified, and she hates the way the two eat her stomach up inside. Vanya sets the phone down on the floor, and curls up in her bed, back to the device, facing the wall because at least that feels safe. Can someone be claustrophobic and long for a silent enclosed place where no one can see her at the same time?
who cares; when has she ever made sense?
no subject
There are a hundred different ways to read that. He's hears it, in his head, every time he re-reads it in a different tone. Neutral. Genuine. Sniping. He doesn't know her intention behind those words. He wonders, briefly, if she knows herself.]
Can I come see you Friday?
[At least giving her the option to refuse. It's the least he could do, he thinks.]
no subject
She she reads his text, she responds automatically, giving him the most noncommittal, far from enthused but not rude response she can think of.]
fine