She feels Vera's backlash spike again, and starts to snarl harder, but realizes with a sudden jolt that she is pretty sure she didn't have any weird thoughts or feelings, just now.

And - and Vera is acting incredibly uncharacteristically. She just apologized, for fuck's sake!

The anger drops from her voice and face, replaced with confusion and horror. "Did - did you just use your power on yourself?" 

She doesn't answer. Can't answer. Her hands are still pressed against her eyes, and she's shaking slightly - barely visible, but there.

The silence stretches.

"...sometimes it's the only way to make myself stop." The words come out hollow. "When it gets too loud. Too many-"

She cuts herself off. Pulls her hands away from her face, but keeps her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"Don't. Just- don't."

Her backlash lets her interpret that as don't pry, which is kind of annoying but much less bad than stop taking actions in full generality, so it could be worse.

She thinks. If Vera's backlash is making things worse, making it easier for her to use her power without meaning to...

"...can we just - guide each other more? Get lots of skin contact and see if that helps?" she asks softly, after a bit. 

She doesn't move for a long moment. The offer hangs in the air between them - genuine, practical, and completely baffling.

Cara should be pulling away. Should be angry. Should be scared. Should be doing anything other than offering more contact after what Vera just did.

"Why?" The word comes out raw. "I just- I literally just-"

She can't finish the sentence. Can't name what she did.

But her body is already betraying her, leaning slightly toward the warmth Cara's offering.

"...okay." Barely a whisper. "Yeah. Okay."

She keeps her sigh of relief mostly internal, and carefully wraps herself around poor Vera, maximizing skin contact without attempting to signal anything else. She rests her face against Vera's neck.

After a minute, she reaches down to pull up the front of her shirt, resting her stomach against Vera's shirt. An offer.

"Because - the backlash scares me. Yours and mine. I'll have mine for a while longer, but... we can get rid of yours, and then that's one less thing to be scared of."

She tenses when Cara wraps around her - instinct, reflex, the part of her that doesn't know how to accept softness without expecting the knife that comes after.

But Cara's breath is warm against her neck, and the guiding is doing its work, smoothing down the jagged edges in her head. The spiral slowing. The options narrowing to something manageable.

She pulls up her own shirt without thinking about it. Stomach to stomach. More contact. More relief.

"I don't-" Her voice catches. "I don't understand why you're being nice to me."

It's not a question. Not really. More like a confession. Like she's admitting to something she can't make sense of.

Her hand finds its way to Cara's back, resting there. Not pulling her closer. Just... holding on.

Cara lets herself press into Vera further, entwining their free arms. She sighs softly.

What to say, here... 

"It's... selfish, partially? I really don't like being angry with people. It's stressful and scary, and I always feel horrible afterwards." 

She tactfully doesn't point out the practical reasons - as long as she's awakening, Vera can order her to do whatever, can stop guiding her and leave her comatose for the week, and she really doesn't want that.

She makes a sound that might be a laugh, if laughs could sound that broken.

"That's not selfish. That's just-" She stops. Doesn't know what it is. Normal? Healthy? Things she's never been good at.

"I keep waiting for you to-" She doesn't finish. Hate me. Leave. Realize what you're stuck with.

Her grip on Cara tightens slightly.

"You should be angry with me. I keep- I keep doing things that should make you angry. And then you just-"

She trails off.

"I don't - " she sighs, sadder this time. "I'm not, like, stupid, or a saint, or anything? You've done some messed up shit. I am probably going to be upset about it, once I have time to process my feelings."

She pets Vera gently, and continues. "But... if you hadn't found me, I would have kept going until I collapsed, and probably spent the rest of the week suffering in a hospital. And... well, backlash sucks a lot. So I'm glad I'm not."

And... she feels like she needs to see Vera without the backlash, watch how she behaves, before she knows how much to blame her for everything that happened, yesterday.

The petting makes something in her chest ache. She doesn't know what to do with gentleness. Never has.

"I didn't-" She swallows. "I didn't find you by accident. I saw you at the coffee shop and I just- I wanted-"

She can't finish.

"You would have been better off in a hospital." The words come out flat.

She presses her face against Cara's hair. Hiding.

"I don't know how to be what you need me to be."

...wow. Cara, uh, legitimately doesn't know what to do with that. (Obviously it wasn't an accident, but - wanted what? 'Guiding' is the least worrying plausible answer, and it might even explain all of Vera's behavior if she factors in the backlash, but. She suspects there's more going on there.)

Well, nothing there indicated a problem with her current strategy, so...

"I don't like being in hospitals, and I think I'd be miserable in one, with my backlash." She thinks about it and shivers.

She keeps petting Vera. "All you need to do right now is to stay relaxed and do your best to not use your power, ok? We can figure the rest out as we go." 

The warmth in her voice is genuine - this is the most relaxed she's felt in a while. 

She doesn't answer. Can't think of what to say that wouldn't ruin this somehow.

The contact is doing its work - the spiral slowing, the constant branching paths in her head narrowing down to just this. Warmth. Breathing. The steady rhythm of Cara's hand on her back.

She lets herself go limp, just a little. Stops holding herself so rigid.

"Okay," she says, finally. Just that. Just okay.

She sighs happily, noticing but not commenting on the tension leaving the other girl's body. She keeps petting Vera. 

This is nice.

They stay like that for a while. She doesn't know how long. Time gets slippery when she's not spiraling, when there's just the warmth and the contact and the steady rhythm of Cara's breathing.

Her head is quiet for the first time in days, and she doesn't want to break it.

Her hand moves on its own, tracing slow circles on Cara's back. Mimicking what Cara's doing to her. She's not sure if it's the right thing to do, but Cara doesn't tense up or pull away, so maybe it's okay.

"This is weird," she murmurs into Cara's hair. Not a complaint. Just an observation.

(Cara makes small relaxed-happy noise, when Vera starts petting her)

...This would be weird to Vera, wouldn't it. Something in Cara's chest aches, at that.

...She should say something. Don't leave Vera hanging.

She shrugs. "I guess? I've had so much practice being the Weird Kid that it's easy for me to not notice."

She snorts. It's almost a laugh.

"Not that kind of weird." She keeps tracing circles on Cara's back. "I mean-"

She pauses, trying to find the words.

"Twenty-four hours ago I-" She stops. Can't say it. "And now we're just. Cuddling. Like it's normal."

Her hand stills for a moment, then resumes its slow movement.

"I keep waiting for it to make sense. For the other shoe to drop." Her voice is quiet. "I don't know how to do this without-"

Without ruining it. Without hurting you. Without being the worst version of myself.

She doesn't finish.

She feels the tightening of fear in her chest, thinking about yesterday, and forces herself to breathe at a normal rate. 

"It's -" the sentence dies, caught in her throat.

"...I'm not really sure what I'm doing, either. But... I want to figure it out. And I really want the backlash to be gone, so we can think properly."

She feels Cara's breathing change, the slight hitch of fear. Knows she caused it. Knows she keeps causing it.

"Yeah." The word comes out rough. "Yeah, okay."

She pulls Cara closer, pressing them together more firmly. More skin contact. More practical.

"How long does it take? To get rid of it all?" She's never actually managed to clear her backlash (if that's what it is) completely. Never had someone compatible enough, never had someone willing to stay long enough. "I don't- I don't actually know."

She doesn't look at her.

She leans into it, her body letting go of the tension. "...I'm not sure either, honestly. I don't know how to tell how much chronic backlash you have, which is mostly what we're working through - you didn't get that much from your power use this morning, you just have... a bunch built up. Which affects people differently from the immediate stuff, but it's still deadly, just... differently." She squeezes Vera's hand.

She squeezes back, almost reflexively.

"Months." The word comes out quiet. "I've had it building for months. Never had anyone compatible enough to-"

She stops. Swallows.

"I didn't even know it was that bad. I thought it was just- how I was. How my head worked." She laughs, and it sounds hollow. "Thought I was just fucked up."

Her thumb traces slow circles on Cara's hand.

"Maybe I still am. Maybe the backlash is just making it worse."

Oh Vera... "I think... if you have a noticeable and severe behavior change following your awakening, have been using your powers regularly during that time, and at no point since then have been getting guiding, it's reasonable to assume that your backlash is at least partially responsible for the behavior change. And like... yeah, you are not your backlash, the same backlash in someone else might cause different behavior, but. It is still a weird magical curse making your brain work wrong, you know? And it sucks!"

She's quiet for a long moment, processing that.

"I was-" She stops. Starts again. "Before. I wasn't- I mean, I was never nice. But I wasn't-"

She can't finish. Can't name what she's become.

"It got worse. After I awakened. I thought it was just- stress, or whatever. Adjusting." Her voice is barely audible. "I didn't know it was killing me."

She presses her face against Cara's shoulder. Hiding again.

"I don't know who I am without it anymore."

She pets the back of Vera's head gently, gently, gently. It's okay. You're safe.

"Chronic backlash usually takes years to kill, if left untreated. ...It's how most espers died, back in the very early days, when everyone thought the world was ending." Her tone shifts to something more solemn when she brings up the first espers. 

"Who do you want to be, without it?"

The question hits her somewhere soft. She doesn't have an answer. Has never let herself think about it, because wanting things is dangerous, and hoping for things is worse.

"I don't know." The words come out muffled against Cara's shoulder. "I don't- I've never-"

She breathes. Tries to think past the fog of years of not-thinking-about-it.

"Someone who doesn't hurt people just because I can." It comes out small. Ashamed. "Someone who can- who can have this-" She gestures vaguely at the two of them, tangled together. "-without ruining it."

Her hand tightens on Cara's back. She almost says more, but the words won't form right.

She holds Vera tight and nods. "You can. You will." Huuuughughug.