Welcome to Gaia! ::

There was a pot of coffee brewing on the counter, a kettle on the hotplate, and a packet of the good hot cocoa sitting next to it. Jordan sat on the couch, his attention focused on a new page in his notebook; he had outlined the maze he was drawing, and now he was constructing the interior contours. This one was more complicated than most, the lines thin and precise and the shapes convoluted.

"Mhm. I haven't a clue who it is that solves them when I leave it on the table," Jordan answered without looking up, the smile audible in his voice. "Grab me a cup of coffee?" He drew a long, steady line that ended in a curve, connected it with a structure he'd already drawn, and then set his pen down.

"Maybe some escaped minipets. You never know, they might get bored." Jordan picked up the mug with a nod of thanks.

"Yeah, probably." He gave Rep a rueful sidewise glance. "Not exactly a controlled situation or anything."

"What do you mean?" Jordan looked confused.

Jordan listened attentively, wrapping his hands around his cup. When Rep had finished talking, he was quiet for another minute, mulling it over and thinking about what to say. "Making someone afraid or forcing them to be dependent on you isn't a good way to gain their trust," he said finally. "If someone likes and trusts you, they'll go a long way to help you and support you. In a place where you have to assume you can't trust anyone, finding the strongest person to protect you is a good plan. But if there are people who will offer help freely - and Harrison and I aren't the only ones by any means - you're going to run into trouble with that approach as soon as the new guy realizes that he's not required to owe you or be dependent on you. You can't just tell him to avoid everyone." He paused. "Well - that might've worked for longer with Al. He's really kind of naive. But sooner or later he was going to realize that he could do things for himself or ask people for help."

He gave Rep a thoughtful look. "You've got friends, people who like you, who aren't dependent or submissive, and you didn't have to put on any kind of act to find them. Us. You're reliable. You're about the most loyal person I know, you'll keep at a problem till it's either solved or broken, you have valuable skills that you can use or teach. That's not nothing; you don't have to force anyone into liking you. You could've shown him an awesome new room of his own, told him he could come to you for help or advice anytime, and gotten him started relying on you because you gave him good things. If you're the source of good things, people will come to you because they want good things, rather than trying to scare people into not leaving because they're afraid of what you'll do if they consider it."

He frowned and sipped his coffee. "I offered to help with a room transfer because the room he's in is busted up, and there are plenty of rooms that aren't. It's not about undermining you. Having no privacy and sleeping on the floor will keep him from being in top condition for training. If you hadn't had privacy or a decent bed in the first weeks you were here, how would you have coped?"

Jordan sat back against the couch, propping one heel on the edge of the cushions and listening with a neutral, thoughtful expression. "I'd be willing to bet that your other friends care about you for more than your usefulness," he said, but didn't chase that thread of conversation any further; he was pretty sure that Rep wasn't going to believe him, and trying to press the point would hurt the rest of his argument. "Someone who is totally dependent on you isn't going to be useful if for some reason they can't get in touch with you," he pointed out. "If, say, you weren't in the same location. And in a closed community like this, everyone's got to be useful in more than one way - or they get podded or worse. Even if you're not concerned with their happiness, you don't want them to get taken away, right?"

He studied Rep, looking a little troubled and debating with himself. There was more than a little moral grey zone here, and advising Rep on manipulation was stepping pretty deep into the ambiguous realm of behavior. On the other hand, bringing the results closer to the range of socially acceptable or even kind behavior was an outcome that would definitely be positive. He wasn't always comfortable with what that said about him, and essentially admitting to it by giving instructions made him even more uncomfortable - but the alternative was to let this go on, and that wasn't acceptable.

I don't see anything wrong with it, Ferros said. If I were broken, you would repair me.

He's not broken.

Isn't he?

What business do I have trying to fix him anyway?

He sensed the equivalent of a mental shrug. As much as anyone else. Better someone who knows and cares for him than someone else, Ferros said.

That doesn't make me feel much better. Aloud, he said, "Rock bottom doesn't have to mean nothing. It's a relative thing. You could've shown him the room and said there's places like this, but here, I've got somewhere much better, and still created an implied sense of obligation. Even if you're not considering what he feels, you've got to consider his overall measurable worth, and make sure that someone doesn't come along and outdo you without even trying. Sasha almost managed it." His mouth twisted a little at the thought; Al would have been caught up in this game between Rep and Sasha, and not had any idea until he was being ripped apart by opposing forces.

"You haven't lost Rin," Jordan said. "The only way in which you could really say you've lost her is as a sex partner, and I sure as hell hope that's stopped mattering." His lips pressed into a thin line. "Most people need people. Plural. If you try to make yourself the only person in their life, you're going to lose them. It's only a matter of when."

"I'm not living a lie. This is the most open I've been in my life, Rep. Is that how you feel about us too?" He kept his tone level and his expression blank, falling back on the automatic defense of iron self-control without thinking about it. "If we can't keep up, we can go die?"

Jordan put his cup down on the table, put his foot back on the floor, and rested his elbows on his knees, letting his head hang down, breathing through the tight feeling in his chest, his mind racing, thinking in a cascade of thoughts and feelings too fast to follow consciously. It all came down, in the end, to that one last thing. Eat or be eaten, survive or die, fear or be feared.

He looked up at Rep, let the old tired sorrow show through. Why was it always this, deep down at the bottom of things? For Rep, for everyone? "You don't have to be afraid," he said. "Not of me."