Room 504, Monday Evening

[intraspective]

Ino had made it through the day. Between getting back, going to class, and talking to Tyler-sensei, she’d figured that whatever Hinata-chan said that she’d totally done her quota of being around and putting her schedule back on normal sort of tracks.

Of course, that’s when she made it back to her room, showered and wriggled into her jammies that Ino realized, depressingly, that she wasn’t sleepy. Making a phone call killed all of thirty seconds, and then she pulled out several gardening magazines and tried to start planning for Tyler-sensei’s flowers. Maybe she would go the love note route, just to make him facepalm.

Her door was left open, as a matter of course.

[Door and post are open! ETA: Anything mission related, beyond it happening, is NFB please!]

Comments

[withoutverona]

"I'm not insulted," Romeo said quickly. "And that is what kept me here. It's why I fought the zombies. But in moments ..." He shrugged. "Has anyone you really love ever died?"

[intraspective]

"No," she admitted. "People I've admired have died. People I've cared about have disappeared and never come back. But dying... I've been lucky so far."

[withoutverona]

"You are lucky, or blessed," Romeo said quietly, envy tinting his voice. "Mercutio died in my lap after a fight I should have fought. Juliet killed herself. My mother died half of grief and shock from it all. Then to think I'd lost Reno and Dojima too ... death finds me too often, yet it always stings."

[intraspective]

She went to brush his arm with her fingertips.

"What sort of counselling do they offer people in your world? For when people die?" It wasn't exactly an idle question. "It stings 'cause you care. There's no shame in that, only in what you do in caring after."

[withoutverona]

"I'm not insane, Ino." That was offered sulkily.

No, he hadn't gotten any counseling. Ever. He'd gone to church a lot.

[intraspective]

Ino was afraid of that, really.

"You're not insane," she said soothingly. "I never said you were, how did you get that from what I said? Grief counselling is really important, you know."

[withoutverona]

"Is it?" Romeo asked. "I talked to my priest until I was sent here. He helped a bit." Not much, though. "I never thought to do more."

[Sleeeeeep, but SP please? NIGHT!]

[intraspective]

Ino took a moment to call everyone in his world a bunch of idiots. Honestly, she was fifteen and she knew this.

...of course, her world had a lot of death, starting from when they were really young and expected to learn how to kill people.

"It is," she said firmly, settling herself so she was a bit more comfortable. "It's not something that should be neglected either, though that's no fault of yours. Grief is... hard. Individualized. But there's... patterns, and once you've got the pattern, you can see how it fits different people. Do you know how many stages there are of it?"

[SLEEP WELL! And SP for the win!]

[withoutverona]

Romeo's world thought the church was the answer to everything.

"The part where it burns so much you wish you would die, that would be first," Romeo said. "Then the part where you have to go on and live. That's the rest. Ought there be more?"

[intraspective]

She considered him.

"Those're the two that are the over-arching idea of it, but it's in the... process of those that there's almost... stages. They can be different for everyone--some might skip some of the stages, and some might get stuck in one for years until they don't know that they're still not 'done' grieving."

Ino played with her hair. "Ideally, during these stages, there's going to be someone there to help you learn to deal."

[withoutverona]

This was completely new information to Romeo. "I was never alone, I never truly have been," he said. "But I've never had a counselor. What are your stages?"

[intraspective]

"We've got ten, at home, that we're told about, though I think I read something at the clinic 'bout this world mostly using a slightly different model that combines the stages a bit more, which works too, as there's a lot of overlap," she said, listing them off on her fingers. "1. Shock and denial, 2. Emotional outbreak, 3. Anger, 4. Sickness, 5. Panic, 6. Guilt, 7. Depression and loneliness, 8. Re-connection issues, 9. Hope, and 10. Reaffirmation."

[withoutverona]

Romeo shook his head again. "I think I feel all of the first seven at once."

[intraspective]

She grinned very slightly at him. "I did say there was a lot of overlap. They're not all just what they sound like. Panic is more... when you realize that you've been angry and sick and emotional for so long that you know you're not feeling normal, but you don't know what to do about it, and so you start to freak out that you're not, like, ever going to get better and then that feeds into the anger--the need to hurt people, like you're hurting--the sickness, the headaches, the nausea, and such. Guilt is one of the hardest since it's there from the moment you get through the denial stage. Depression isn't the same as sorrow. It's more when you figure out that what happened is... permanent, and you pull away from everyone else 'cause you don't want to get hurt, or don't think you deserve them, or whatever..."

[withoutverona]

"It still sounds a bit too neat to me, categorizing grief so," Romeo returned, mulling the idea over. "To me it always feels like a raw wound that steals my breath and my thoughts and leaves me hollow and howling. But I suppose it might help to know, at least."

[intraspective]

"It sounds neat," she admitted, "but that's because it's doctors who came up with it, and it does help people when they can use that as a... template... I guess? So they can try to help more."

Ino shrugged a tiny bit. "We're all taught what to expect from grief," she said, "as shinobi we're expected to have to deal with it. Our counselors only intervene in the most extreme cases." She tugged on her hair. "We're not, I guess, very good at it. Most of our social services aren't like this worlds at all."

[withoutverona]

"I have no idea what they're like in this part of the world, beyond what I've seen on television," Romeo said. "At home there's the church, of course, but besides that, it's a lot of being told to be a man."

He made a face. "I was never taught about grief."

[intraspective]

"I think you should've been," she said quietly. "So that you at least can better see how you've reacted in the past matches up to the pattern. It does help, knowing that it's normal."

[withoutverona]

"It might at that," Romeo said, relaxing a little. This was a lot to think about, and ..." I should get back to Yurika," he said. "But I'll look for a book on it. I can do that much."

[intraspective]

"Go on," she said, giving him another quick hug, "go hug her and be happy, and definitely look into it."

"And I'll see you 'round 'cause nothing ever gets me."

[withoutverona]

"You're just cursing yourself by saying that," Romeo pointed out, but there was a hint of a laugh in his tone as he walked to the door. "I'll see you."

[intraspective]

"But you find it comforting anyway!" she called after him. "Don't deny it!"

And now she was going to eat her own chocolate before she gave it all away. Geez.