[video] Locked in a cage

[ginger_firebird]

 [It's been, what, a week or two? He has a hard time telling without an actual sun and moon to tell him how the passage of time is going. Mantis is curled up on a bed in Liquid's apartment. Sleep never came easily to him and it sure as hell doesn't come easy now. The camera feed off the phone shows him breathing very slowly, deliberately, with a cut of cloth covering his head. Cradled against his chest is a leather gas mask.

Then he sighs. It's a deep heave that makes his whole abdomen move in a fluid motion. He died. That fact has been eating at him since he arrived in the city. It didn't feel like death, and yet a part of him was convinced that this was some kind of punishment.

Fingers on one hand twitch and the phone moves closer to him. He peels back one corner of the cloth from the top of his head, exposing a pale blue-grey eye.]

This place is real. I touch things and feel texture and temperature and yet it all seems far away and removed. [He puts the cloth back into place and curls up more on himself.] It's been too long since I felt like this.

Comments

video;

[ginger_firebird]

[You'll have to forgive him not getting up straight away. This bout of whatever it is knocked out his motivation very thoroughly. He curls up more on the bed and takes what little comfort he can in hearing Liquid's voice.]

I'm sure I can, Liquid. The problem is this...dissociation that I feel. [He rubs his thumb over the little window showing Liquid's face.]

Depends on where you want to go exploring.

[liquid_serpent]

[Liquid frowned at Mantis's lack of will to move or get up. Was he drowning in self-pity? Was he upset at being wrenched away from Shadow Moses or was it something else? Liquid couldn't read his friend's mind unlike Mantis could read his own, so he couldn't guess what the other man was thinking.]

Dissociation? From our real home? [It was a stab in the dark but a meaningful one. Surely, it had to do with back home?]

What about the Park or somewhere peaceful?

[ginger_firebird]

[Depression, most likely, or perhaps it was some kind of PTSD come to tear down his willpower. He's felt it before, but there was always a different cause behind it.]

It's that moment from Shadow Moses. I knew right then that it was the last one I had left to myself and now I'm walking, talking, breathing... I'm alive. This isn't right.

[His fingers trace the shape of his mask lightly as he considers the proposition.] I'll try. The more I wallow around, the longer this is going to last.