I don't blame myself for latching onto whatever was making me feel okay. I don't blame him for not understanding what that...really was, to me, at that point
I know you don't like to talk about it so I'm not going to ask any questions but just, FYI, the Marc who was here before, Steven wasn't, like, a NEW development but him being out long enough to have his own whole life going on was. I actually thought Steven was...like, the original owner for awhile.
So he had no experience with any of this. It was a shitty situation for everyone
( it's A WHILE before marc's reply comes through, because — that's weird? it's a nugget of information that sits all at once as an 'oh!' but also an 'oh?'.
it sits weirdly — no, uncomfortably — because it's an awkward reminder of what life had been like with marlene in the earlyish days, the ones where none of them had spoken about what was going on with marc-slash-steven-slash-jake; where they had all pretended that each one was a disguise to be shrugged on and off at will as circumstances dictated. that steven was the one with the life worth living — the job, the girlfriend, the house, the riches, the everything. jake had his uses, his friends, his ear to the ground; and marc—
—marc was a ghost. moon knight, occasionally, and nothing more.
steven had had it all, and he'd still been terrible at it — the relationship, that is. listening to marlene, recognising when she needed hearing and support and everything else that's supposed to go into a partnership. marc had been even worse. )
You thought he was the 'original owner' or you wanted him to be?
( perhaps not a fair question given quentin has just acknowledged marc's lack of comfort in talking about any of it. a concession of sorts, then— )
Should I have not said anything? Let you go around not knowing? Would that have been better?
[It's a genuine question. He wonders if it would have been better to just shut up. He has no idea what that would have looked like, he doesn't think he'd have been able to stay away entirely. But it's hard to imagine it going worse.]
[It helps to know that the alternative was worse. That he did the best he could in the situation he was in.]
I was raised never to tell people I was autistic. Not to ever lean on it or let it...control me, I guess? I don't even know, really. But that's not realistic, it's not some other thing I can separate from me
I don't really know where I'm going with this, I guess I'll just say thanks for answering and not acting like I'm weird for needing to ask
( it's a guess, really — marc's never been all that cognizant of his moods beyond a vague acknowledgement here and there that he tends towards being SHITTY. but he's pretty sure, given the way the city is so fond of making sure they all know each other in some form, thanks to the network posts and everything else, that there'd have been a 'why didn't you fucking say' buried somewhere in there if quentin had waited.
for all else, it'd have probably been the same. )
My behavior caused a lot of issues and tension. ( and by 'my' he means 'marc'. it wasn't the DID, it wasn't jake and steven that caused problems, not really — sure, elias had tried to understand, hadn't really known how to cope or what to do, but marc had been the problem. marc had been kicked out, marc had punched his dad, marc had forced the estrangement. ) I'm used to questions that amount to 'what are you doing, Marc?'
And I'd be a hypocrite if I called anyone else weird.
( and sure, he is a hypocrite, but generally not about that. )
[Quentin isn't one hundred percent sure whether to take that as a direct response, but yeah, he can see how something like DID would actually feel like a thing separate from you, a thing you should (or at least would like to) be able to just ignore. Not necessarily the same as a pervasive difference in how the brain fundamentally works.]
You don't have to call me weird out loud to be obviously thinking it. Sometimes you don't even really have to be thinking it to make me feel it
That's bullying. That's not 'being weird'. You can be weird and not experience bullying. You can be a normal kid and be bullied just because some other kid doesn't like your haircut or your name or the street you grow up on. Or because you're from a different ethnic background, or because his dad doesn't like your dad.
Weird's got nothing to do with it. You can either accept you're weird or different or however you want to call it, and turn it into something advantageous for you, or you can believe it's the weakness that some other insecure dick is trying to make it out to be.
[This all still boils down to "no one can make you feel inferior without your consent," which just...isn't true. At least not in Quentin's experience. And yeah, it's true that you can get bullied for anything, but that does kind of ignore the way you get bullied when you're the weird kid. The way people who don't know each other, people in totally different schools, will bully you in the same ways for the same reasons. It really does have this uncanny ability to convince you it's all your fault.]
[No need to get that deep, though. Jesus.]
Well, I'm just not that sanguine about my brain being broken. Sorry.
Not just from autism, to be clear. From depression and anxiety. Like "72 hour hold" depression and anxiety
[The memory doesn't have anything to do with why he's disclosing this now, but he does remember how the old Marc had picked up immediately on what "hospitalized for depression" means, and Steven hadn't. He's curious to see what happens here.]
( it's not, strictly speaking, that marc's lacking in empathy. it's more that his experiences with being bullied had the response of him pushing back, quite explicitly, with violence. that was how he'd chosen to deal with it all, much to his father's disappointment. teenage years full of fights, detentions, suspensions. and then it'd been that he'd never stopped, that had been his response to anything, everything, long before the marines, long before becoming a mercenary, long before vigilantism.
and though, now, it's not a response he's necessarily proud of, it's still the one that gets the better of him. it's still part of the reason why he talks about "turning weaknesses into strengths", about deciding what to do with what's been done to him, about understanding how he's been broken and using that to "destroy his enemies". it's not that he's unsympathetic, it's that he has no other frame of reference.
(and he wouldn't want it, because without everything he's chosen to believe, he'd have nothing—.)
he gets what quentin's referring to, of course he does. he's spent enough time in and out of psychiatric care that he'd have to be deliberately ignoring the point to not get.
the question is though, how does he reply to that? it's the sort of thing that's a bit beyond an 'I'm sorry' or a 'that sucks'. )
[Like objectively that is a fine and excellent response to someone telling you they've been suicidal and Quentin feels a vague obligation to be like, good job, you passed the test, you get an A+ in Neurodivergent Socializing, a thing that is both normal to want-]
[Kinda hits different when there's, like, a strong argument that you did in fact commit suicide though.]
That time, anyway.
Sorry, I don't mean to be...well, weird about it
Yeah, getting through it is the important thing
[be normal be normal be normal be normal be normaYOU KNOW WHAT FUCK IT]
The thing is I don't have the memories of dying, exactly? I know I did, at home, and I saw sort of how it happens in a dream I had here but I wasn't inside myself in the dream, basically, I was a spectator sitting at the edge of the scene and watching
So I can't really say for sure whether I had, like, suicidal intent, right?
And I know that I was in extremely bad shape mentally, because of the monster, and I was willing to do anything including die, if necessary, to get rid of it
And since I'm missing some bits in between what I remember and the dream I don't know if it actually was necessary or if I could have done something to avoid having to
[A beat, where he becomes aware of what he's saying. Shit. Marc doesn't want to hear this. No one wants to hear this. No one fucking cares.]
Sorry.
cw: second verse same as the first, talk of death + dying, passive suicidalism
( unfortunately, it's not a topic that marc is even remotely skilled at navigating, almost entirely because he's never dealt with his own thoughts and feelings on death and dying — not the dying that he's done (or thinks he's done), but in a general sense. an overall sense. the self-loathing and self-hatred that had led him to the life he'd chosen. )
I've died. Three or four times that I know of.
You can want death up until the moment that you're there, in the middle of it. I thought I didn't care until I was on my hands and knees, crawling through the desert. Until I was given the option. A choice. To choose one god over another.
You might have had it, ( suicidal intent, he means, ) up until the point you didn't. Doesn't matter. You're still here.
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I don't blame myself for latching onto whatever was making me feel okay. I don't blame him for not understanding what that...really was, to me, at that point
I know you don't like to talk about it so I'm not going to ask any questions but just, FYI, the Marc who was here before, Steven wasn't, like, a NEW development but him being out long enough to have his own whole life going on was. I actually thought Steven was...like, the original owner for awhile.
So he had no experience with any of this. It was a shitty situation for everyone
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it sits weirdly — no, uncomfortably — because it's an awkward reminder of what life had been like with marlene in the earlyish days, the ones where none of them had spoken about what was going on with marc-slash-steven-slash-jake; where they had all pretended that each one was a disguise to be shrugged on and off at will as circumstances dictated. that steven was the one with the life worth living — the job, the girlfriend, the house, the riches, the everything. jake had his uses, his friends, his ear to the ground; and marc—
—marc was a ghost. moon knight, occasionally, and nothing more.
steven had had it all, and he'd still been terrible at it — the relationship, that is. listening to marlene, recognising when she needed hearing and support and everything else that's supposed to go into a partnership. marc had been even worse. )
You thought he was the 'original owner' or you wanted him to be?
( perhaps not a fair question given quentin has just acknowledged marc's lack of comfort in talking about any of it. a concession of sorts, then— )
Or did Marc?
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Marc wanted to protect him.
1/2
let him just ignore that last part of the reply. )
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( marc: reading what he wants to read into that response. )
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The other one was basically an awkward nerd like me. Also he was British
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Don't undersell yourself.
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I'm sorry I handled telling you poorly. I'm sorry I made it weird
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Don't.
I'd never have taken it well.
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[It's a genuine question. He wonders if it would have been better to just shut up. He has no idea what that would have looked like, he doesn't think he'd have been able to stay away entirely. But it's hard to imagine it going worse.]
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( sent first. an easy, quick response because it's the truth. marc appreciated knowing, but that doesn't mean he liked it. )
I have a temper.
I'm unreasonable.
That's who I am.
Like I said: I'd never have taken it well.
But I'd have taken it less well if I'd found out later.
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[It helps to know that the alternative was worse. That he did the best he could in the situation he was in.]
I was raised never to tell people I was autistic. Not to ever lean on it or let it...control me, I guess? I don't even know, really. But that's not realistic, it's not some other thing I can separate from me
I don't really know where I'm going with this, I guess I'll just say thanks for answering and not acting like I'm weird for needing to ask
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for all else, it'd have probably been the same. )
My behavior caused a lot of issues and tension. ( and by 'my' he means 'marc'. it wasn't the DID, it wasn't jake and steven that caused problems, not really — sure, elias had tried to understand, hadn't really known how to cope or what to do, but marc had been the problem. marc had been kicked out, marc had punched his dad, marc had forced the estrangement. ) I'm used to questions that amount to 'what are you doing, Marc?'
And I'd be a hypocrite if I called anyone else weird.
( and sure, he is a hypocrite, but generally not about that. )
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You don't have to call me weird out loud to be obviously thinking it. Sometimes you don't even really have to be thinking it to make me feel it
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Weird's got nothing to do with it.
You can either accept you're weird or different or however you want to call it, and turn it into something advantageous for you, or you can believe it's the weakness that some other insecure dick is trying to make it out to be.
cw: oblique references to suicide
[No need to get that deep, though. Jesus.]
Well, I'm just not that sanguine about my brain being broken. Sorry.
Not just from autism, to be clear. From depression and anxiety. Like "72 hour hold" depression and anxiety
[The memory doesn't have anything to do with why he's disclosing this now, but he does remember how the old Marc had picked up immediately on what "hospitalized for depression" means, and Steven hadn't. He's curious to see what happens here.]
1/2 ( cw: mostly vague references to DID, anti-semitism, institutionalisation )
and though, now, it's not a response he's necessarily proud of, it's still the one that gets the better of him. it's still part of the reason why he talks about "turning weaknesses into strengths", about deciding what to do with what's been done to him, about understanding how he's been broken and using that to "destroy his enemies". it's not that he's unsympathetic, it's that he has no other frame of reference.
(and he wouldn't want it, because without everything he's chosen to believe, he'd have nothing—.)
he gets what quentin's referring to, of course he does. he's spent enough time in and out of psychiatric care that he'd have to be deliberately ignoring the point to not get.
the question is though, how does he reply to that? it's the sort of thing that's a bit beyond an 'I'm sorry' or a 'that sucks'. )
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cw: less oblique references/discussion of suicide, low self-esteem/negative self-talk
[Like objectively that is a fine and excellent response to someone telling you they've been suicidal and Quentin feels a vague obligation to be like, good job, you passed the test, you get an A+ in Neurodivergent Socializing, a thing that is both normal to want-]
[Kinda hits different when there's, like, a strong argument that you did in fact commit suicide though.]
That time, anyway.
Sorry, I don't mean to be...well, weird about it
Yeah, getting through it is the important thing
[be normal be normal be normal be normal be normaYOU KNOW WHAT FUCK IT]
The thing is I don't have the memories of dying, exactly? I know I did, at home, and I saw sort of how it happens in a dream I had here but I wasn't inside myself in the dream, basically, I was a spectator sitting at the edge of the scene and watching
So I can't really say for sure whether I had, like, suicidal intent, right?
And I know that I was in extremely bad shape mentally, because of the monster, and I was willing to do anything including die, if necessary, to get rid of it
And since I'm missing some bits in between what I remember and the dream I don't know if it actually was necessary or if I could have done something to avoid having to
[A beat, where he becomes aware of what he's saying. Shit. Marc doesn't want to hear this. No one wants to hear this. No one fucking cares.]
Sorry.
cw: second verse same as the first, talk of death + dying, passive suicidalism
I've died. Three or four times that I know of.
You can want death up until the moment that you're there, in the middle of it. I thought I didn't care until I was on my hands and knees, crawling through the desert. Until I was given the option. A choice. To choose one god over another.
You might have had it, ( suicidal intent, he means, ) up until the point you didn't. Doesn't matter. You're still here.
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