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Thank you. I'll meet you by the elevator.
[And he will, although he doesn't look as if he's many steps from collapse himself; there's blood gathering at the corners of his eyes and smeared on his lips, and he's deathly pale.]
Hm? Yes, I'm fine. It didn't touch me, whatever it was.
Yes, actually! I have been informed that I 'need practice setting boundaries', so here's one:
Stop talking to me about my cabin.
But if you don't want to work on your cabin, what do you want to work on?
How do boundaries work, if not at least partially by being able to say no?
But boundaries are about limits and rules we set for each other. Just saying 'don't talk to me about this' isn't setting a boundary. It's shutting down communication completely.
"When I feel comfortable discussing my cabin, I will talk to you about it," is still telling me that I shouldn't talk to you about it, but you're setting the rule, not shutting things down completely. If I want to talk about it, I have to do the work to see that you're comfortable enough to talk about it. I can respect the rule. Just like I was respecting what we agreed to before. You can change it and I'll respect that, but you're acting like I didn't. Which is just being shitty.
I'm not just going to not work with you, though. Because if you don't graduate, you end up in the Dark World, dead permanently, and there's no telling if you'll ever get out and I don't want that to happen to you. I don't think you want that to happen to you either. So that would be a stupid fucking decision and if you're just making it to be a contrary asshole, I'm not going to accept that boundary because it's self-destructive.
Mm. No. If I don't graduate, I end up in the Eighth Hell with Mephistopheles, because that's who Cazador sold me to upon the moment of my death. Whether that's better or worse isn't something I feel either of us can know.
There might be a version that ends up in the Eighth Hell with Mephistopheles, but it won't necessarily be the you who came here. All evidence says it isn't.
Then you can be as confident in your guess as I can in mine.
[A rather performative deep breath, then:]
When-I-feel-comfortable-discussing-my-cabin, I-will-talk-to-you-about-it.
Better?
So what do you want to work on that isn't that?
[ He's got boundaries too, Astarion. ]
[yeah but they're lame and he doesn't care about them]
...Sincerely, why do you think I'd be 'comfortable' identifying anything? When you told me your definition of what it would take to graduate, you talked about the things I don't like about myself. The empty parts, the impossible dreams. You're asking me to just...reach inside myself and scoop out something fetid to make it an item on our agenda?
Why do you think that?
[ He's not going to be petty. He's not going to point out that if Astarion just talked to him about this shit, they could have started here but he's going to really really think it super hard and hope that's satisfying enough it doesn't come out of him. ]
We're specifically discussing things I'd like to change. I'm not talking about my entire self.
So why do you think that?
Why are you questioning the idea that I consider, not everything, but everything that I dislike about myself to be unpleasant and therefore difficult to talk about?
But it's still a part of you. It can be something you want to work on without being something... disgusting or rancid or 'fetid'. Wanting to be better doesn't mean that you're starting from shit.
I mean, you can see how this is just a big loop, right?
I pick something, and you put up a boundary because you don't want to deal with it because you don't like it.
Then I ask you to pick something and you say that you can't because it's 'fetid' and you don't like it.
I can't just wait until you're comfortable because I have 200 years of discomfort that I'm working against and there's always a chance you could end up in the Dark World in the meantime. That's shitty of me. But just giving you things and being nice to you will seem a lot like I'm buttering you up and bribing you and trying to lull you into some kind of trick. Ignoring you or treating you like shit sure as hell isn't going to work because that just does nothing.
[ A small huff. ]
There's something that's the least... unpleasant. At least I hope so. But you'll know that better than me, which is why I'm asking you. I tried with... what I tried with since you said you didn't care. I figured it'd be easiest to try and build from, but you lied. You do care. And that's fine. But if you're going to lie, then you need to pick it. Because me picking it and then you coming back and saying 'no, actually, I hate this' is just more loops.
It's not about hating it, whatever it is. Whether I like it or hate it, I have some reservations about the act of - putting it on a slab to be dissected.
Incidentally, you didn't actually ask whether I wanted my cabin to be changed. You just...assumed that on my behalf. Are still assuming that, actually, as best I can tell.
I assumed that you would want it changed since we're working towards making you feel free and being in the spawn dormitory would be a reminder of your captivity, something that you didn't choose and that you were forced into. I also figured that you were forced to have that room again and you should pick your own room. If I was wrong, I'm sorry.
Why don't you want to change it?
[There's a long pause which he spends trying to condense a lot of conflicting and shitty emotion into as few words as possible.
Eventually, he identifies three.]
It was home.
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