New Plan, Step One: Provide For My Community [open]

[summerdude]

Magnus needs something to change, so when a Mansion calendar helpfully informs him that it's International Falafel Day back on Earth, he goes to the library for some cookbooks, and then to the kitchen.

He lays out ten different falafel recipes. He gathers the ingredients they list, as best as he can understand them. He has canned chickpeas and fresh chickpeas and dried chickpeas and chickpea flour and box mixes of falafel that say 'just add water!'

Cripes.

"I can do this," he says, peering at the assorted recipes intently for a good ten minutes, and then takes the dried chickpeas over to the sink to rinse and soak.

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad plucks a blade a grass and crinkles it between his fingers. "I think... you don't have to figure out what to do to prepare by yourself. We can talk to Claudius and Lan Wangji about it."

[summerdude]

Magnus blinks. "Huh."

[onthewillowsthere]

"They have both been to war. They have lived longer. They will know things."

[summerdude]

Magnus takes a deep breath and lets it go. "Okay."

[onthewillowsthere]

Very seriously, Galahad says, "I love you."

[summerdude]

"I love you too," Magnus says immediately, squeezing Galahad's hand. "That's never, ever going to change, dude, you know that, right?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I wasn't sure," he says, even though he would like to say I know -- he doesn't know how to lie. But he wasn't certain, in that moment when Magnus wasn't being normal, when he wasn't sure whether it was because he was training with Lan Wangji. He's used to stepping off that cliff, even if it hasn't happened often since he's come here. "I didn't understand what was wrong."

[summerdude]

There's another flare of guilt. "I'm sorry."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't understand people very well. I understand you because you always say what you mean. But you didn't," he tries to explain. "Claudius doesn't say what he means either, but he told me so from the beginning, so I knew. He told me to study him."

[summerdude]

"I don't know that I didn't--" Magnus sighs. "Maybe I didn't, but it wasn't, like. Exactly on purpose. Do you ever get, like, really frazzled, and it's hard to think through things clearly, because you're so focused on just trying to, like, get one foot in front of the other? And half the words you hear are just, like, Charlie Brown adult noises? Um, in the tv version, they just make these, like, trombone noises instead of words. And I just feel so freaking guilty all the time, and that makes it... hard. Like it swallows my own trombone noises. Does that, um. Does that make sense?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Was it a very long panic attack?"

[summerdude]

"Something like it, yeah. That's a good way of putting it."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods and begins tearing the grass blade into tiny pieces, and placing each piece on top of Magnus. "I think I understand."

[summerdude]

Magnus glances at Galahad again. "Yeah?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Sometimes, I feel as if my soul stops living within my body. I feel as if I'm watching it from far away and can't get back inside it. It used to happen often. Less now." He plucks another blade of grass to begin sprinkling deliberately on Magnus. "It didn't happen when Shen Yuan died, because I had to take care of Claudius. But after Nina told us there was something that could be done, and Claudius began to feel better, he didn't need me in the same way, and I became... unattached."

[summerdude]

Magnus rolls over, dislodging all of Galahad's hard work with the grass, and flings an arm over his chest, pulling him in for a cuddle. "Yeah," he says; he's not given to disassociation himself, but he's pretty sure it's in the same ballpark. Like two different Valhalla recycling chutes dumping einherji escaping to Boston in two different parts of Fenway, or whatever. Guiltily, he adds, "I'm sorry I wasn't there."

[onthewillowsthere]

He settles against Magnus' chest. "I wasn't there either." It's a joke, but he also means: he was training with Lan Wangji, and taking care of Claudius, and maybe this whole thing got out of hand because of both of them.

[summerdude]

Magnus snorts, because he's reattuned to Galahad's sense of humor, and then sighs. "Do you think I'm gonna stop feeling so, like, guilty all the time? Eventually?" he asks, quiet, vulnerable. He's talked about it with Alex, but he's Magnus's one respite from all of this -- unlike with Galahad, almost none of the guilt is attached to him -- so Galahad's answer feels differently important.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad is quiet, turning that over. "I think it matters why you feel guilty. If it's because you can't fix everything with Shen Yuan, I think it will get better when you have help. If it's because you feel jealous of me and of Lan Wangji, I think telling us matters. Do you feel less guilty now that you've told me?"

[summerdude]

"I don't know," Magnus says. Maybe about that piece, but more guilt has crowded in behind it. "I feel guilty about... so much."

[onthewillowsthere]

"There are a lot of parts," he agrees. "I think you should talk about them."

[summerdude]

"Okay," Magnus says, and takes a deep breath. He sorts through his thoughts, trying to pinpoint the biggest things bothering him, and then says, all in a rush: "I feel guilty that I can't do more for Shen Yuan. That I couldn't fix him and that I can't grow the body faster. I feel guilty that I made you uncertain of how much I love you and that I couldn't, like, get words out. I feel weird and guilty about how jealous I am that you've been doing routines with other people but not me, because normally it's, like, fine? I don't want you to stop doing things with other people. I just feel, like, sad? And guilty about it. I feel guilty about being upset that Claudius and Hanguang-jun asked Shen Yuan for a message for you and not me when they first talked to his spirit. I feel guilty about the fact that I survived my attack, which she did to target me, when Shen Yuan didn't, and he wasn't even her target. I feel guilty that there's a secret I've been keeping from everyone, because I've worried how people will feel when they hear it, and I can't even tell you yet because I need to tell Alex first, since he's my boyfriend. I feel guilty that I'm saying all this without stopping even though I know it's too much at once for you, but if I don't get it all out now I don't know if I'd be able to finish saying it. I feel guilty because I'm worried you'll think I don't trust you or you reactions, even though I do, and all my difficulty talking about all this is about me and how mixed-up inside I am, not you." He pauses, thinks back over the list, and adds, "Also I've been using our room to play dress-up and Godzilla Attack with Sunny. I don't feel as guilty about that one but I do feel like I should have told you I was doing it." Another pause. "Oh, and there's information I haven't given you yet that you'll definitely want to know. I just got... caught up, and forgot, and I feel bad about that too."

[onthewillowsthere]

It's a lot. It would be a lot even if there wasn't already a lot going on, and Galahad is very, very still and very quiet as he listens.

Most of it he understands. A lot of people feel guilty that they can't do more for Shen Yuan, even though everyone is already doing everything that there is to do, and Magnus can do more than most people can. He's already told Magnus that he's envious of the time Claudius and Magnus spend together on Lan Wangji's bamboo grove, when in the fall he was the one helping Claudius bring all the plants into the greenhouse, learning how to take care of them to help them survive the winter; he understands Magnus' envy. He understands why Magnus would be upset about not having his own message from Shen Yuan. He understands why Magnus would feel guilty for surviving when Shen Yuan didn't, although Percival would say that is just the nature of the world, and there's nothing that can be done about it. Claudius would say it's what war does. Most of it Galahad understands. It's just so much.

"Information?" he asks, picking at a thread he doesn't understand.

[summerdude]

"Um, like, for one... I found out that the person who attacked me and Shen Yuan is the same one giving you all those nightmares."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Why?"