reverie overflow.

[vecna]

i still haven't put something less stupid here

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[velluminous]

Because I hate to be alone! [ hands over her face ] Oh, my god!

[vecna]

So it's one or the other? Feast or famine?

[Honestly, he's ill-equipped to give her any advice -- if this even qualifies. How's he any better, navigating social complexities with actual sincerity?

Even so:] That's irrational, Sprezzatura.

[velluminous]

Oh, shut up. You and your black threads.

[vecna]

[A scoff. Turning this around on him?]

What does that have to do with anything?

[velluminous]

Oh! Now you are on your back foot! See? Not so fun to talk about, is it?

1/2

[vecna]

They're probably people from the lab. Or those who tried to stop me from getting home. I told you about being stuck; I never felt very happy about that.

[Honestly, this woman- turning it back on him because she's so allergic to talking about herself.]

[vecna]

[He did say he was going to be less difficult. Tells himself that he hold her he was half of the equation of them butting heads.

Tries- Tries a more helpful route. She makes it so hard.]

That doesn't matter. My point is, you wouldn't be alone, even if you changed every single one of your strings back to green. You remember what I told you?

[velluminous]

You seem very reluctant to let me forget.

[vecna]

Isn't it some comfort?

[velluminous]

It was so much simpler when people came, went, none of it mattered to me.

[vecna]

[That's the issue with this place, he thinks. Even some of his threads are changing color, beyond the one connected with Sprezzatura's.]

You're not unfeeling enough for that ever to have been a possibility. The passage of time is the real culprit, and even you can't stop that.

[velluminous]

It was possibility! It used to happen all times, so often!

[vecna]

You mean back home? You weren't trapped with the same faces each and every day there, though, were you?

[velluminous]

I was collegiate. My parents, social climbers. Of course I was.

[vecna]

That isn't the same. Did you like any of those people?

[velluminous]

What question is this? Yes! Of course!

[ but she wasn't friends with them. ]

[vecna]

[Well, then they just pinpoint that threshold.]

Friends?

[That yellow skein of thread he isn't privileged with, apparently.]

[velluminous]

Of course!

[ he can't disprove it. and more importantly, she can't disprove it. ]

[vecna]

Even if that's true, you can't compare home to here. Forced to play the Warden's games, forced to watch people come and go. It isn't the same. Of course you'd be more affected by it.

[velluminous]

[ what you've just described is trauma bonding, Henry. you did it! you've broken Reverie down to its bare essentials! ]



It was so much simpler at beginning.

[vecna]

[You could always be sociopathic like him and just not care what happens to most people. That’s always a solution! (But even he has colored strings, now.)]

When everyone was a stranger? Of course.

The day when we all go home — which would be more of a comfort? That these strings will fade and corrode over time? Or that they’d persist?

[velluminous]

I can't think that far ahead. It's too painful. You know I don't want that.

[ to lose everything she's gained ]

[vecna]

[To Henry, it just sounds like she doesn’t know what she wants.]

I think these— [Plucks at his black strings; strong, dark, reflecting light.] —are proof that stronger connections will persist, whether they’re good or bad.

So if you don’t want to lose them, really lose them, then you need to foster them while you’re here. And just accept you’ll lose the weaker ones, someday.

[velluminous]

[ he'd be right. she takes a sudden, sharp breath and brushes her fingers beneath each eye. just a tiny sniffle, you know.

wry, ] No book ever made me feel so dumb.

[vecna]

[Long, string-laden fingers dip into his pocket. Henry still manages to pull out a rather familiar handkerchief, clean and folded, and offers it to her.]

People are more complicated than books.