Chapter Text
Jaiden knows from the moment she wakes up that today won’t be a good day.
She wakes up feeling dizzy, sore, exhausted. She’s shoved herself as far into the back corner of her closet as she can get, and her wings ache, both from awful positioning and— is there blood on her fingers?
She glances at the floor around her, and sees clumps of bloody feathers — oh. She must’ve been ripping feathers out again.
All she can do is sigh, using the wall to support her as she gets up and out of her closet.
It’s tempting to just lay down in bed, try to get some actually restful sleep this time, but memories of last night’s nightmare come back in flashes — and her stomach gurgles.
Okay, well, that’s that. No extra sleep for her.
She exits her room, and starts to head down the stairs — this is where she questions if she really should have just gone back to bed, a dizzy spell hitting her. She has to stop in the middle of the stairwell, leaning against the wall, willing it to go away.
And when it finally does, her vision is blurry, and her head is full of fog. And not the good kind of fog— she frowns, and continues trying to make her way down the stairs, considerably slower now.
It’s harder to really grasp what’s going on around her, now— She feels like— She—
She doesn’t know what she feels.
It’s hard to walk. She feels like everything around her has slowed down — or maybe it’s just her slowing down? She can’t— She can’t really tell.
It’s like she’s walking through the sludge again. No, it’s— It’s like she’s drowning in it.
Jaiden blinks. She’s in the kitchen. She doesn’t remember getting here.
There’s a knife on the counter.
It’s been used, recently— for what, she can’t tell. It lays there, unmoving.
Her throat is dry. She swallows.
She’s not hungry anymore.
(She is. It hurts — everything hurts, and she’s so tired, and she knows she needs to eat. She knows the consequences of if she doesn’t.)
Jaiden turns around, and leaves the kitchen empty-handed.
She didn’t notice before, but there are— people in the living room. It doesn’t really register within her who’s in there as she walks past, but she can tell they’re saying something. Their lips are moving, but she just can’t make sense of the sounds— they’re just— Everything’s just so—
She’s back in her room when she distantly realizes it’s a bit rude to just walk out on people when they’re trying to talk to you, but — were they talking to her? She couldn’t really tell. Everything feels so far away. She doesn’t feel like herself.
She slumps on the edge of her bed. Her hands are buried in her feathers, tugging, the sharp pain enough to bring her back a little bit — but it only really results in her yanking more feathers out.
The sting is grounding. But it’s also— it hurts. And there’s only more blood, and she just feels sicker, working herself up the more she tries to bring herself down.
Jaiden stares down at her hands. There isn’t a lot of blood, but it’s enough to stain her fingertips, stain her fingernails — she feels a rush of guilt, Jacob had just painted those the other day — and that’s more than usual.
…Well, there’s not supposed to be any blood when she’s preening at all, but when she’s alone— there’s always a little bit. She always forgets to be gentle with herself.
She’s crying, she thinks. The wetness on her cheeks feels foreign, far away — her breaths are not fast, not panicked, but they are short, shallow.
There’s a rush of cool air, light from the hallway flooding into the room. She hadn’t even realized her room was so dark. It still doesn’t completely register — there’s hardly a room around her. She can’t look away from her hands.
Jaiden?
Someone’s here. Someone— two people, she corrects herself. She doesn’t look up from her hands, but they’re speaking, their voices are overlapping— she couldn’t make any of it out if she wanted to.
But they keep repeating her name— Jaiden? Jaiden, can you hear me? Can you hear us, Jaiden?
She closes her eyes, shaking her head — not in attempts to respond to them, but just trying to shake herself out of the fog, trying to pull herself back.
It doesn’t work. She feels so trapped, so lost.
Something gets placed in her hand. It’s freezing— she flinches back, but it stays there, soaking into her palm.
When she opens her eyes again, she sees that it’s a chunk of ice. It’s not quite an ice cube, but it’s not just a shard — it has melted in her hand, a little, stained a little pink with blood.
It’s melting slower than regular ice, though. And it’s a little colder — not that it’s easy to tell, it’s just ice — and, finally, she looks up.
His eyes are the first thing she notices. They’re such a bold, piercing blue— a color she’s not sure she’s ever seen in anyone else.
She feels herself starting to drift again, his eyes reminding her of… of bad things — Did he look at Not-Jaiden the same way? Did he have the same care in his eyes? Would he have the same care if he were killing her again? — but then, his hand wraps around hers, closing her fingers around the ice. His nails are the same color as hers, she notices. She remembers that night. They’re matching with Dash.
“Are you with us, Jaiden?” Jacob’s voice is soft, but it cuts through her thoughts like a knife — the knife cuts cleanly, completely slicing it in half — bringing her back to the present.
The question doesn’t process for a moment. Is she with them? Who is— who is us? All she can see is Jacob — she traces his features with her eyes, going down his nose, his lips, his beard, and then looking back down at her hands again. One has fallen to her side, but the other one— it’s still being held up by Jacob’s. Their fingers aren’t laced together, but he’s keeping hers wrapped around the stinging, freezing ice.
“…Jaiden?”
Oh, right— he asked her a question.
Are you with us, Jaiden?
She rolls the question around in her head — and, despite how distant everything feels, she feels a little more… connected to the world around her now. She nods.
A sigh, from Jacob. It sounds relieved, she thinks, and he speaks again, “Okay, good. Can you…” he pauses, going quiet for a second. She squeezes the ice in her hand, trying not to let herself drift again. “Can you tell us what happened? Are you okay?”
She opens her mouth to respond, but— it’s like there’s honey in her mouth, something thick, something viscous. She can’t get the words she wants to say to form in her mouth — she isn’t even sure what those words are — and all that she can muster up is a weak, shaky warble.
She hadn’t even meant to let that slip out, but it’s not like she can communicate in any other way — not that this is any kind of communication to him. He doesn’t understand birdsong, not like she does — he doesn’t understand the low, content cooing, the excited chirrups, the drawn-out, wary whistles, all the sounds she finds herself making — all she can hope for is that he’ll pick up on the quiet help, help me, i don’t know who i am right now, i don’t know anything.
“…Well I sure understood that,” another voice pipes up sarcastically. Jacob whips his head around to glare at them — Jaiden turns, as well, having forgotten someone else was here. Her vision is still hazy, blocks of color she just can’t fully place as… well, anything. “Don’t look at me like that!” they say, presumably in response to Jacob’s glare. She thinks this is Dash — it has to be.
Jacob just huffs, and turns back to her. “Ignore him. Just focus on me for a sec, okay?” he says, and she nods numbly. That’s what she was doing, it’s all she can do. “Can you feel the ice? It’s cold, right?”
She nods again, focusing her attention on the sensation again. Her hand is starting to feel a little numb with how long she’s been holding on to it, but it’s cold, and it’s grounding.
“Dash and I are here, with you, in your room. It’s only about noon, and you were just downstairs a minute ago,” he says, rattling off facts, reminders that this is real. “Dash and I tried to get you to come hang out with us in the living room, but you didn’t respond. So now we’re here. And you’re here. You’re here, Jaiden.”
Here.
She’s here. Wherever here is.
It’s such a foreign concept to her, right now, but she knows it’s true. It has to be. Jacob’s the one saying it, and he’s always right, so she… she is. She’s here.
In her bedroom, he said. And Dash is here. Dash is sitting next to her on the bed, she notes, the dip in the mattress finally registering in her mind. And Jacob is here, and he’s down on one knee in front of her, holding her hand in his. Not only is the ice cold, but he’s cold. And she’s grown used to that, recently, but she realizes now that it’s helpful, for this. Because even as the ice finally melts to nothing in her hand, she still has him to keep her here.
“…I-I fucked up my nails,” she manages to say, after a minute. Her voice is shaking, and quiet, and her throat hurts with how tight it feels. It’s not even that much of a problem, aside from the guilt it gives her, in comparison to… everything else. But it’s all she can get herself to think about, much less say out loud. “Sorry,”
“Don’t even worry about that,” Jacob says, “Seriously. It’s just a bit of blood. You can wash it off, and if it’s seriously stained, I’ll just paint over it again.”
“Yeah, it’s just a little bit! It’ll come off, easy.” (If Jaiden were maybe a little more aware right now, if she were a little more herself, she might be able to notice Dash’s discomfort. She might be able to notice the way he’s avoiding looking at her hands. She might be able to notice just how quick he is to change the topic.) “Why are they all bloody like that, anyway?”
Jaiden misses the second Look Jacob shoots Dash, instead staring down at her hands again. She’s pulled them away from Jacob, finally, and holds them together.
“I… my wings,” she murmurs, “I was trying to preen.”
“You— You’re not supposed to bleed when you’re preening. How— Are you yanking your feathers out?” Jacob says, giving her a concerned look. She just shrugs — she can’t get herself look him in the eyes again. “…Didn’t I tell you to come get me whenever you needed help with this kind of thing?”
She hums. Words are… escaping her again. Her hands fall to her lap, fingers digging into the feathers of her thighs.
A hand lands on her forearm. It’s cold — Jacob, again. And just in time, too— she’d felt herself start to drift a little again.
“Stay with me,” he says. Jaiden nods.
Another hand lands on her shoulder — it isn’t cold, though. It must be Dash.
She takes in a breath, reminding herself where she is, and exhales. Everything’s okay.
“…will you?” Jaiden says, after a moment, “Help, I mean?”
“Of course,” he sounds out of breath, almost, with how fast he speaks, “Go ahead and get comfortable, okay?”
She does just that — Dash pulls his arm back from where it was resting on her. She forces herself not to whine at the loss of contact, a small chirp making its way out instead. Significantly less embarrassing. She lays down on her stomach, head resting on her arms as she spreads her wings out.
“…Should I go?” asks Dash, getting up from where he was sat on the edge of her bed. “You two need some alone time, or something?”
“No, stay,” she gets out, “Help.”
“…Okay, yeah,” he nods, “I can do that. Jacob— what should I do?”
“One second,” Jacob has busied himself with… something. He rubs his hands together for a second— then once he pulls away, he’s holding another piece of ice. This one is a little larger than the one he’d given Jaiden earlier. He turns to her again. “Jaiden— hold out your hands for me?”
She obliges, and he places the piece of ice in her hands. It’s just as cold as the last one, but soothing all the same.
“Hold on to that. Don’t let yourself get lost in your head again,” he tells her, and she nods. He turns back to Dash again, now that he’s done with that. “Okay, uh… Get behind her, yeah? Go ahead and get started. I’m gonna get a washcloth, and some water. I don’t think her wings are that dirty, but… if there’s any blood, still, we need to be able to clean that up.”
Dash hums in agreement, and after a moment’s hesitation, starts working through her feathers. He starts at her primary flight feathers, like she’d taught him to with Jacob, slowly working back towards her secondaries.
Jacob leaves, and Jaiden focuses on the ice in her hands, trying to keep herself from drifting like he’d told her not to do. Dash doesn’t speak, and neither does she, and she’s almost glad, since she doesn’t think she could hold a very good conversation right now — but at the same time, she hates it. The silence only makes her thoughts louder, and she just— she—
“Got it,” says Jacob, announcing his return. “Dash, scoot over.”
It takes a moment of maneuvering, but soon, two pairs of hands are in her wings, gently, slowly working through her feathers. A washcloth — warm, damp, a contrast to the ice in her hands — dabs at them every so often, wiping away dried blood.
It’s still quiet, but soon, conversation sparks between Jacob and Dash. Jaiden stays quiet throughout it, focusing too much on keeping herself here, in the moment, to really say much.
But it’s nice.
She’s tired. Hungry, still. And she still feels a little disconnected, a little far away from her body — but she rests.