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.