web of words - edel au fic
It's really not as stream of consciousness as everyone thinks it is. There's a definitive pattern, a method to it that no one else understands because he made it that way on purpose. It's like putting a lock on your door to protect your valuables, at least, that's always how he thinks of it. If no one else can understand, all the better, they can't steal his research, can't understand the things he sees when he looks at the walls, the way his eyes travel through the bits and scraps of things he knows. Facts change, they morph and mutate like plastic bags in fire pits and he keeps track of it with strings and things to keep them stuck to the wall, to trace it out in patterns. It's a visual representation of his mind, the way it works, the way he thinks things through, and it's safe that way, it's his own, because no one's ever understood how his mind works anyhow.
He hasn't left the room for a while now, he can tell because his hair is heavier than it should be and he can tell by the state of his body that he needs a shower. A shower, and some good food, and a bloody cup of coffee, and to be held, to be held and...
It might be nice to have a visitor, he thinks, as he tacks a piece of paper to one of the strings, folding it over so it can slide. The newest fact, a bit of information that that person let slip on the intercom, a gem of information picked out of the increasingly chaotic rumble that he's gotten used to in spite of himself, even though it drives him mental still. Chaotic and dissonant, a cacophonous mess that's quieter than it should be, less voices, more content, nothing of meaning. Obtuseness, riddles. Matt hates riddles, but he's good at them, and this fact he adds to the ever-changing web of facts on his walls is testament to it. He presses the edges of the paper together, and they're damp, and the bandage on his right hand is dirty, filthy, really, and he should take it off. He would take it off, maybe, because it's covered in dried blood even though the wound healed a long, long time ago, but she was the one who put it on with slim fingers and a worried expression on her face - so pretty, always so pretty, and so sharp, intelligent, his partner in crime, his co-conspirator - and maybe that bandage is covering up a different wound than the missing half of his right hand.
It would be very nice to have a visitor.
He doesn't sleep on the bed, or sit on the bed, because the bed isn't his. Link owns the bed, it's his property, and Matt doesn't touch it, so he sits on the chair with his back straight and his hands folded in his lap and his eyes staring straight ahead and waits. Someone will come eventually. Mello hasn't come in a while, and Matt doesn't mind so much, because Mello is whole and fine, and he smiles and his eyes are sharp and accusing and he comments that Matt's going crazy, and Matt can tell him to take a Midol, but it falls flat. Awkward. He should be used to that now.
Matt can't remember if Mello was right handed or left handed. There's a theory that people who are left handed have a different brain structure than that of people who are right handed. That they were exposed to more testosterone in the womb, a situation that also raises the chance of stuttering, or dyslexia, or increased spatial ability. That their genetic structure makes their chances of having schizophrenia a lot higher. Matt doesn't remember having anything like schizophrenia before, no voices or hallucinations, though he has them here. Maybe it's because he's left handed, maybe that's why Mello looks at him with those sharp eyes and calls him mental. There's a theory that people who are left handed had a mirror twin in utero, a twin who was identical but flipped, mirror image, and he wonders if that's why he feels so alone. Missing Twin Syndrome, or something to that effect.
Missing Twin Syndrome makes him feel a lot better than her being gone.
It's been a while. Why hasn't anyone come? Maybe everyone forgot, and maybe it's better that way, because here he can sit and think, trace patterns on the walls that make sense to him, then maybe the voices will go away. But a moment or two later Yuffie is there with her clothing white and her hair too long, and Matt gets the same urge he always gets when he sees her, to cut it, to make it presentable again like she used to keep it before the burning. He doesn't say much, but he doesn't need to, and he doesn't talk much anyhow. The words are important, and he likes to keep them to himself, to hoard them, because he has no partner in crime anymore and he has to do it himself. Yuffie's always understood when he didn't speak, though, and she still does. Maybe that's a sign of how off he is, because she's off, and even if he doesn't like to think it, the fact is still there.
He doesn't put that fact on the wall with the others because it's not important. He knows he's lying to himself when he explains it away like that, remembers talking to Edgeworth once about making biased judgments based on how much he personally liked someone, how that affected a rational analysis of their actions, whether good or bad, whether sane or insane, whether wrong or right. Matt knew he had that conversation before, knew this fact was important, but it was Yuffie, and sometimes she broke the rules in a way that wasn't murdering people who hurt her.
Matt feels safe. He hasn't hurt her. He has no need or desire to, because she's Yuffie, and it seems wrong to use the fighting skills she taught him to do her any harm. Not that he's very good at fighting, anymore. Still. He never really was. She always let him win, dancing away like a butterfly with her laugh echoing, and he wishes he could hear it again. Swallowing, he lifts his chin and gives her an expression that passes for a smile between them - it's not a smile, but at least it's genuine and it means something that they understand.
She talks a little bit, and it doesn't make much sense, but Matt has always been good at picking out the gems of meaning in chaotic babble, he's been doing it on the intercoms since the moment he arrived, and that seems like forever. It's something he's good at, so he listens patiently and strings it together in his mind, and he understands it once it's run the gamut of filtering systems and leaps of logic and followed the threads on his web of words and thoughts. He nods a bit, and she sits on the bed, and he stands up. She's torn down his words before, and he finds himself pacing, like a protective man whose child is being born with complications, neurotic energy moving through his body, looking at Yuffie, looking at the walls, thinking, and Yuffie goes to look at the wall. There's one piece of paper that always catches her attention, a sampling of her writing from home. Wutaian. Symbols that mean very little to him but look like Japanese. She's always looking at it, pulling at it, wanting it, and just like every other time, he's torn between taking it down and giving it to her, even if it would be the most difficult thing he'd ever done aside from letting her go, and keeping it here so it's safe, where Yuffie can't lose it.
And maybe part of him thinks Yuffie wouldn't come anymore if that scrap of symbols wasn't there for her to look at. So, like always, he gently disentangles her hand from it and bullies her over to the bed, sits down with her, encroaching on his territory with a sharp angling of breath, upwards and faster. It makes him nervous. Sitting on the bed is like leaving the room, all vulnerability and danger.
Yuffie seems to be alright with touching today, so he pulls her hair back and tries to straighten it, tugs at the cloth on her arms to make sure it's just makeshift sleeves and not self-harm again. He hasn't spoken yet, and she stopped, at some point, maybe because he wasn't replying, or because she ran out of things to tell him. Not a lot happens anymore, nothing that anyone wants to think about or talk about. Sharing loss has never helped him feel better, why should it help anyone else?
He looks at Yuffie, and she looks so tired. Matt is tired too, lost and dazed and tired, and he can't remember when the last time he slept was. They're partners in insomnia, even now, Matt and Yuffie. He's never admitted it out loud, so she could hear, but Yuffie is his friend. No matter what she does or how far she falls, she is his friend. He's pretty sure she understands that, and he's pretty sure he understands that she feels the same way, somewhere. Somewhere.
His throat feels tight, but his face is expressionless, and when he speaks his voice is low and cracked, and he murmurs, very softly.
"I want to go home."
Yuffie has tears on her face, and he understands her, though he's not sure if she spoke, and all he can think about is bullets in the dark, the taste of smoke and blood and metal, the searing pain and blackness, and how strange it is that those memories seem pleasant now.
He thinks Yuffie understands that too.