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## atrophy

|| NS character study Again!

Loving Larry Trainor is easy in a way that is hollow & forces a naive terror. It comes with the ease and automatic, natural rapidity of human breath, human hearts beating in succession over and over and over again, musical in their harmonies; the Spirit is intimately familiar with these phenomena, entirely entwined in Larry’s breath. Their energy curls around the air he inhales, processes it to drain it of its love, and releases its pitiful shell slowly back into the Earth. Their energy pulses in and out — boom — pulling their essence through — boom — each thread of — boom boom boom — color and flaw that has been designed with care and positioned in a way that forms artworks of legend, masterpieces that are simply masterpieces due to their realism, their portrayal of weaknesses and imperfections in the image of humanity. (Boom boom boom boom boom boom, boomboomboom—)

(The Spirit entertains the idea that his increasing heart rate means that somehow, even through the fogs of his torturous self-directed hatred and past the voids of endless wounding reflections, that they are making progress. That this means he can hear them, he knows.

Their ultimate flaw lies here, underneath the ground and inside the heart walls. Hope. It’s funny; anyone who functions with logic would suppose that The Spirit's eternal downfall is their love for a man who will never consider them anything beyond a pest, if they even reach the status of sentience and independence in his eyes. This is horribly untrue. Larry deserves this love, this devotion. He is self-focused, he is stubborn, he has his flaws open and true like artistic detail on the restraints of a canvas, and the Spirit loves him in every aspect. He deserves this.)

(Boom.)

(Boomboom.)

(The Spirit's weakness is simple, and more human than they’d like to admit: they still believe, rather foolishly, that they are capable of healing, of developing into something reciprocal and kind. They are not going to give up on him, but it’s becoming very blatant that Larry wants to stay situated in his guilt. He thinks that he deserves this.)

(It stops, for a moment — too long to be comfortable.)

(And then it continues, back in a healthier pattern. Within him, the Spirit sinks down, melts into a pool of his bones and muscle. He will never—)

(Anyway:)

Loving Larry Trainor is easy. It’s like experiencing all of history and all of the future simultaneously. It’s like witnessing ancient artifacts; knowing that the thing you are gazing upon is precious and fragile, and vowing with your entire presence to make sure that it remains intact—- no, to ensure that it is renewed. That is all that they have ever wanted for Larry, since the day of the merge, since the first time they were forced to experience the torment of his mind —- renewal. ‘Restoration’ is not quite applicable here, since Larry had been tainted from the start; a product of living in a society that had been carefully forged to become hostile to any deviations from “normalcy”. Normalcy. Normalcy, oh—

(o, how this word stings and slices—)

Loving Larry Trainor is normalcy. They cannot parse the concept that to anyone else it could be the opposite. Loving him is their own kind of restoration. Loving him is their own renewal. Long ago — Before — they knew love and kindness in a conditional, fluid way. Their home was complex, intricate, in its composition and population…. not a joyous experience nor a distressing one. Yet the Spirit still yearns for it, at times, when the suffocation hits a certain point of unbearable.

Larry is what they have, now, though. Larry is their suicide mission. Larry is their downfall. Larry is — Larry is their becoming. The magnitude of the ways that Larry has changed them, their personality their desires their beliefs their all—

The Negative Spirit now is not the same Negative Spirit that existed six decades ago in a rift above the Earth. This Negative Spirit, the one in the present, is different from the Negative Spirit that begged to return home in the Ant Farm. Their "name", even, feels foreign now, as if they have truly become something else —- and oh, oh. How they long to truly become something else. How they long to feel Larry Trainor’s soul against their own, to look through his eyes into a shared world, to have harmony in infinite dimensions.

Harmony, they think. An everpresent thought that will never come to fruition — oh, oh no, the spark of hope like electricity burning again, the death of hope fizzling out again. Hope is another thing that is horribly easy. They are sensitive, their mind like something human, frail and vulnerable and so easily set alight by the circumstance. Their sensitivity forcing similarities to a prey animal, a singular lone flame extinguished by cold air. They were not always like this.

Loving Larry Trainor is easy, and the Spirit tells themselves that they are more than this, something beyond an amalgam of small love-shards torn from the mosaic of their coveting. The Spirit is more than their love for Larry Trainor — they are powerful, capable, frightening — kind — logical yet impulsive; a contradictory existence in every aspect.

A negative existence.

They are more than their love for Larry Trainor, but it is hard to focus on anything besides him, wholly him, when they are forced to experience his mental horrors at all times.

They think that this torture should have made them angrier. A furious being, abandoning neutrality.

But it only made Larry more pitiful, and easier to love.

(Boom - boom ---

silence.)