Orthoclase-Alpha's snout turned just a few degrees, gaze crawling back to almost meet Vargas's. Fell into the habit. Always a habit. Always a habit. Not speaking, wallowing, letting the days smear into a sickening haze of motion sickness without care for the passage of time because at least it was still alive—all that heralded a wild animal as what it was.

Wild animals were afraid to die, too.

The vertigo such a thought induced was enough to stagger it, make all the quills around its neck fall flat into whatever disarray they'd been in before. Deflate it, really; though the tension never left that stitch in its side or the sore muscles of its upper neck.

A sharp breath whistled through its nostrils as Vargas spoke, little but just... himself, in a way. Just a looming presence without much command, without much reproach. Making idle observations from his place in the world, looking for those that perhaps sat just a little lower than himself. Alpha was abruptly reminded of sitting by the sort-of window, staring into a blizzard; the faint flickering of memory stirring a reflexive shiver down its whole spine, the wind too cold even with the barrier. All the difference was in their surroundings.

Stifling, comfortable heat exchanged for lush, vibrant mildness. The orthoclase still thought it despised this cave, though not as much as Draco; but, perhaps that could be chalked up to it still feeling so unfamiliar, so open and broad in comparison to the claustrophobia of home.

"You fear..." Too much. "... repeating..." So much.

A pause.

"What do you think you did wrong with Zoisite?"
In the span of the past however-odd minutes, it'd not forgotten that stifling sort of feeling that even thinking about that incident came saddled with; much less speaking of it. It did not wish to speak on it any more than it had previously, and that much showed in its hesitation.

The question wasn't so much directed at specific reasoning, at least—no longer about a specific failure but now about the whole disaster at large. And so, it could pick and choose as one would inspect apples for bruises before setting them down. But, the whole lot was rotten, squirming with worms; save for a select few at the bottom that it needed to dig for to even salvage.

But, even then, it hesitated to sink its teeth into their skins, fearing what metaphorical worms might dwell within, unseen to its naked eyes.

Oh, look it's doing that thing again. Losing itself in its head. Enough with the fruit grocery analogy, then.

With a pinch of gums beneath gritting teeth, Orthoclase-Alpha swallowed. A small sigh—and half a gasp of slightly fresher stale cave air—fluttered from between the yellowed incisors. With wavy, unevenly-spaced words, it murmured, "T-hi-inking. Too mu-uch." A claw raised up, gesturing toward itself in a rare, nearly forgotten gesture (along with it discarding all other apparent means of communication) and its voice turned to a crackling grunt. "Like— like this."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Ahh.

Together, they were treading unsteady ground. Unfamiliar. Feeling their way across uncertain dirt, never sure when it might falter underfoot or send them spilling, spinning, falling into another pit.

A pit of silence. A pit of misery and fear.

Or for the Master--a pit of disappointed confusion.

There were lessons that he'd learned, in the short space of time he'd come to know the Zoisite. They were not complete, and they were not even fully understood but he had begun to learn them nonetheless and he grasped for them now as a lifeline. "I did not know that you were lost in thinking," Vargas admitted, quietly. "It is good that you can recognize it. And that you are telling me," he went on. His words were steady. Calm. They were, above all, encouraging, rewarding.

His tone said, 'you've done well.' His voice said, 'I approve.'

Would it understand..?

Would it calm?

"My goal is not to make you uncomfortable. Do you want to tell me what it is that you are thinking too much of..?" There it was again, that tone of perhaps unfamiliar patience; no stalking, blood-rush Overseer hot on his prey's trail but the dedicated, timeless Master.

Would it make any difference?

Would it mean anything at all?

@Orthoclase-Alpha

The encouragement washed over it, and it... soaked in it. Perhaps not quite basking, but—well, as lost as it was in its fluttering memory of the old days, of... not-quite-good times but seemingly better ones, it soaked. Just the faintest inkling of settling slipped into its frame, quills loosening and squint fading. It slowly rocked back onto its haunches.

All in spite of the misgiving still swarming in its chest, the cycles-old habit of self-destructing over even the smallest shred of exposing it's own vulnerability (and was it so bad, Alpha?) kicking in at the fringes of its mind. It all put a stranglehold on its throat, and so it could only nod in response to the first set of words.

"Do you want to tell me what it is that you are thinking too much of... ?"

No, came its first thought, already practiced and too easily translating to a stiff shake of its head. And yet, with shifting weight on four legs, it gulped down a draught of too-thick air. "Ev-ery— every— everything."

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Everything.

Vargas clung to that same quiet caution, laced through with patience and humor, as he responded. "Everything. That sounds like a great many things," he mused. "Things that worry you-? It sounds as though it must be a burden."

He hesitated--he was about to push on. To ask Alpha if there were any of the 'everythings' that it might wish to discuss, to unload off its shivering-quilled back. But perhaps it was best to stop here: to offer, first, empathy and see how it responded.

To see if it viewed its thoughts as a burden, or as something else.

He didn't want to get this wrong.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

A burden. One way to describe it.

Alpha found no humor in the statement, though it wouldn't have laughed at "sounds like a great many things" anyway. It did not confirm nor deny, but merely just… stared—though that may have been an answer in and of itself. To admit or not to admit? It was clear what burden weighed on its conscience in every waking moment it allowed itself in lieu of several days' consecutive, restless sleep.

But, untangling that dense mass nestling in its skull? Another story.

It waited for… more, like Vargas had simply trailed off in his own thought.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

It did not reply.

An opening, then; an invitation, a next tentative step.

"Is there any of it you would like to tell me of? -It may unburden you," he suggested. He was not the best at... articulating these things. At explaining that talking about a worry served to ease its weight. With luck, it would instinctively understand, but more likely--not; if it had known such things itself, surely it would have spoken to someone else, already? Does it have anyone else..?

Perhaps all Orthoclase-Alpha needed was a friend. If, indeed, it were capable of making any.

Even if it didn't understand his offer, maybe it would risk his advice.

Or, again: maybe not.

All Vargas could do was offer.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

Content Warning
This post contains potentially sensitive material:

alpha cries in this one. sorry folks :'(
Now this was a well-traveled road: being gestured up to the soapbox stage and tin can microphone with an offer to just speak. To talk about one's inner monologue as if it belonged anywhere but within. "Talking helps," Zoisite's friend Oliver had said once. Perhaps a white stag had said a similar thing to it too, in the few times that they'd ever spoken. Maybe the little monochromatic bird, too—the list went on for far too long, and was irrelevant anyways; Orthoclase-Alpha couldn't find anything in that statement to honestly believe. And yet...

Everything, as it'd labelled it, surged in at once: Broken Broken not worthwhile Zoisite missed me Why I don't know it I'm trying not to care Broken why does he care undeserving undeserving survival doesn't pity the weak wild animals survive I'm not even that rankless I don't want to go away again just want to go back be okay my throat hurts I miss not caring so much I don't remember the past year but I know I haven't felt fine in so long I barely remember it but I miss home—

Its throat sank back into its aching, half-empty stomach, and the vise around its jaw tightened to keep at bay the maelstrom of overlapping questions it was now keenly hyperaware of. Still yet, still yet, its teeth dared to chatter with a tell-tale sort of wobble. Salt burned at its eyes, and despite it screwing its eyes shut, tears still blistered downward to coat its tongue as it tried to lap up the sudden bout of nausea swirling in its gut.

I miss home. What is home? I miss it.

"No," it barely managed through the mucus clogging its throat, sounding too faint to be the truth.

Alpha tried to push itself up onto its wobbling limbs, tipping its snout upward as if that'd curb its horrible emotional display. The hot tears spilled relentlessly and it collapsed back onto its haunches before it even made it to fully standing. It turned its head away instead, inhaling and trying desperately to make itself just stop. "I'm s-sorry, I'm so-sorry, I'm—"

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Its chaotic body language did not go unnoticed--here and then there, standing and collapsing. The choked word, followed by more choked words, told him nothing and just about everything.

He had no idea what thoughts plagued his spawn, and he couldn't read its mind, but nor could he force it to speak.

"Sorry--what, for being unable to speak? Unwilling? That is not your fault, I think; you've nothing to be sorry for," and his tone was still that patient, steady calm.

He waited for a beat, watching Alpha.

It would calm, perhaps, and he could try to speak to it further--he had yet to grant it an assignment but there were few things he could do, as it stood. It was that delicate edge, a tightrope's tangle: to one side, leaving it alone would be a deadly fall and to the other, pressuring it too far would be the same. He balanced with a careful tone, with a still body, cautious to provide those few words at a time, to try and gauge each potentially deadly step before it became a fatal fall.

"If you are sorry that you are upset, I think that is to be expected," he offered, and made what might have been a terrible mistake--a pitching fall--or a long, slow step forward: he reached out one long limb, palm-up, in an unhurried movement to gently tip thumbs beneath the Orthoclase's jaw for the briefest moment. "Give yourself time," and it was another suggestion, another that might be heeded or might not--assuming the creature did not bite the hand that extended toward it now, the hand that did not feed it but had once struck it, and had since been simply absent.

@Orthoclase-Alpha

"You've nothing to be sorry for." Slot it in next to "talking helps" for advice Alpha has ignored since it was first offered, no matter how many times it gets repeated.

Even now—it felt... it didn't have any word to describe it but bad. The g-force swing of this violent seesaw of feeling left it reeling, greying out in the aftermath. One part of its body going one way, inertia pulled it in the other until it was stretched too thin and cracked, shattered, disintegrated. Left itself bare all for the one person it never wanted to witness.

Just this one, if all else failed.

It vaguely acknowledged the closeness of Vargas drawing nearer, shadow crawling along the ground; even more vaguely it did the hand reaching, reaching, reaching—from underneath this time. Palm up. Just with knuckles.

One of its own sets of talons immediately swept up when the faintest pressure tipped its snout upward and to the side. They swept up and missed their first attempt at grabbing his forearm. The second attempt found claws hooked into musculed, violet hide; not enough to pierce and bleed, but... certainly uncomfortable. Its grip, shaky as it was with emotion, was far stronger than before, and it moved to wrench the hand away altogether with the ghost of a snarled "don't" on its tongue—but...

Warm skin compared to the uncomfortable chill in the air, the feeling of freezing to death and being smothered having become one and rhe same. Warm. Warm. Not like blood or viscera or its own life bleeding away into the sand, but... warm.

Alpha moved the hand away, but it did not let go. Its grip loosened, calloused pads shifting against rough skin. Shifting and wavering, shivering with each airless breath played in staccato. Shiny, glassy eyes barely left the arm it now held, just shy of the wrist.

It croaked something unintelligble at the limb, slow and shaking, still so overwhelmed but unable to look anywhere else. Whatever words had managed to form in its mind died in its throat.

@Vargas

- THE LEVIATHAN -

Vargas winced, a flinch and a grunt, jaw spasming into a hard clench as claws snagged the hide of his forelimb. He was tugged, ever so slightly, with the weight of it--Orthoclase-Alpha was not small, by any means.

And Vargas was tensed. He did not know what it planned to do and it was exceptionally clear that his spawn--his child--was unstable. Worse still, he had no idea what state it was actually in. Just upset? Was this catharsis? Was it the beginnings of a breakdown, or of a quiet moment of reflection, sad confession?

Would it simply hold his limb, or would it let him go--or would it dig in and shred down, and tear his flesh to ribbons? It was capable, certainly. Only he could stop it doing so, and half his instincts roared that he should do just that.

But... any damage that it did, he knew, he could heal. And more importantly, perhaps, was reciprocation. He could hardly offer it a limb and expect it to accept his touch--a touch that had torn through its flesh, before--and then jerk from its own claws as if burned.

Though the grip was beginning to feel like burning.

He could not tell what it tried to say--not before, not after--and for a moment he simply waited there, watching it, tensed in anticipation of the pain that might shortly follow.

What came was a slightly loosening of its claws, and Vargas felt immense relief. He hadn't had time to consider, just then, what he might do if Alpha genuinely attacked him--fight back? Fight it off? Flee? None of the options would have left it in a decent state. Some might have ended up with it dead, either by necessity or by its own returning to a stone again and again from sheer panic.

But now, that moment had ticked past--they were safe. He hoped. As safe as they could be.

He studied it, unsure if he should speak. This is too far beyond me, he thought, grimly. Should he tell it, again, to take its time-? Ask if it was all right? Would words startle it from its settling calm, send it into another spiral?

Had they fallen from the tightrope so soon, or was Orthoclase-Alpha balancing with him, holding him for guidance?

Vargas could not tell.

He chose, for once, to stay silent; but rather than simply stare at Alpha, he glanced around, away, and back. At the very least he could avoid staring it down by accident, driving further fear into it; for now he simply... waited.

@Orthoclase-Alpha