Work Text:
One:
Dex can't fall asleep. He's not sure if it possible with how many knots and turns his stomach is doing right now.
Tomorrow he will be showing Sophie around the school. Hopefully as his new friend since he currently doesn't have alot.( Or really none if he's being honest.) His stomach squeezes as he closes his eyes overwhelmed with the giddiness he feels. Dex just know that he'll probably lose his cool but he can't find himself to care because against all notion Sophie seemed to like him. Obviously not like /like/ him that would be impossible as they just met, yet the flogworms (a funny name for a creature who reassemble a butterfly but spews acid that makes you giggle)in his veins won't stop squirming.
Dex takes a deep breath and releases it, slowly calming his jitters. Something he picked up in the book 'How to wrangle younger siblings and keep your mind intact: a 101' which needs no explanation considering the title. ( When Bex had found him reading it, well let's just say that the triplets had named that day national younger sibling mutiny day and I'll leave it up to you to imagine what happened.) Trying to sort through his thoughts Dex chooses a simple recipe on healing salves and starts to list it.
Two thirds and a fourth a cup of oil from a sea salt toad( normal species is the size of an average oak tree)mixed with the effervescent extract of a baby mandrake and than left to cool in a secluded spot for 30 minutes and up to an hour. And final whisked until it's milky white to get the most optimal solution.
He repeats the ingredients and the easy steps to create it in his mind adding his own commentary that you could probably just throw some crushed mandrake leaves, saving some time if your in a rush. Even though doing so would make the mixture less concentrated but nevertheless smelly. Most of the time in his dads shop he's tasked with mixing in some mint leaves that makes the scent of the sea salt toad oil more bearable for the customers.
And with thoughts of toads and salves on his mind, sleep wraps right around him, it's tendrils gripping his mind and he falls.
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Two:
Dex can't fall asleep. His lungs feels too tight and the air to heavy to breathe.
He feels nauseous like someone wrapped him up it fish skin and flung him around. Dex can sense the way bile rises up his throat canal, like it's about to spill with his guilt. He can't get the picture out of his head, of how her brown eyes became so wide, how his device was used to hurt someone, hurt someone he cared about.
Disgust seems to roll through him in waves just like the acid in his stomach. Dex rolls in his covers with jitters and hate for his creation pulsing deep in his gut. God, he feels like heaving.
There is no reassurance or hope that always come with thoughts of his friend -best friend- Sophie tonight, not that he would deserve it. Because he doesn't deserve reassurance and that doesn't even sum up half of what he doesn't deserve.
(Like how the triplets had tried to comfort him. How Rex had hugged his waist and proclaimed he needed help with his homework being his usual bratty self. Lex jumping on his back for a suprise attack that usually would evolve into a tickle fight. Or when Bex demanded some help with her makeup that ends up with him being used as a test subject no matter how he protests. Usually he would have smiled and teased and grumbled, he knew that was they're goal but he just couldn't, Dex couldn't act like nothing happened and his blood raged with the idea of ignoring it. So instead of screaming that he didn't need comfort, that they could not, should not try to alleviate his 'mood'. Rather each time he smiled blandly and said he was tired and another night they could do it because they're attempts of comfort just made him aware of how unworthy he was of they're affection.)
Next thing he know he's out of bed and to his cluttered desk. He pushes away the finished blueprint and prototypes of that abomination that sat on his friends head.(Can he even call her his friend with what he's done.). He wants to claw the skin of these hands that created something which was meant to prove himself but instead only proved how naive and stupid he was for trusting the council, for trusting and believing he could be more.
His hands shake, his whole body shakes with what he feels. So he ignores it, resolves himself to shaky fingers and he builds.
Dex drops the screwdriver multiple times and crouching down on his knees to retrieve it again and again. His knees ache and eyes water with frustration. Yet somehow he gets some pleasure out of this. Not because creating and building tech is something he enjoys, this time it's from the fact that it is hard. It should be, it should be hard to build after what he had done. The ache and pain in his stomach is only right for what he did and broke.
So he works, without his usual passion but with all his dedication.
He's not sure what it is yet, which he know his mentor would scold him for not having a proper plan but right now he just needs to move and fix what he did. (This isn't something that can be fixed, some part of his brain whispers, Dex pretends to not hear it.)
He needs to fix it, needs to fix it with every fiber and molecule of his being- -
And when the morning birds sing and the sun rises a freshly made talent restrictor rests in his hands, perfectly made and perfectly grotesque. A culmination of his faults and imperfections in a perfectly built machine used to harm his friend.
Dex puts it on his head.