#gorrick

For the first moment Gorrick showed up in the EoD story, he seemed a bit different to me. For one, he talked a lot more than usual. Like a lot more than usual. He also talked about different things. Through Seasons 4 and 5, Gorrick is pretty focused on either the thing directly at hand or his special interest. But now he’s talking for minutes at a time, jumping from subject to subject, all over the place. He’s less reserved and far more open with his emotions, even if he struggles to identify and communicate them. It was a bit of a surprise to me actually how much more open he was. Gorrick felt different as a character.

And then it hit me.

He’s stopped masking.

Real quick for anyone who doesn’t know, masking is when an autistic person (and other neurodivergent folks) attempts to pass themselves off as neurotypical, usually as a survival tactic. Some people actively choose not to mask, some people cannot mask and very often people mask differently in different situations. It’s very common for people to mask less in situations where they are more comfortable. For example, speaking from personal experience, I mask as much as possible while at work but don’t mask at all when I’m at home because I feel completely safe and comfortable. At work I speak in full sentences and look at who I’m talking to, while at home I can click my tongue twice and wave my hand in the direct of my boyfriend and wont have to worry about being misunderstood or judged. It all depends on context.

Now it quite clear from the minute we meet Gorrick that he is, in fact, autistic. He does not come off as neurotypical. But that doesn’t mean he’s not masking. And can you blame him? I can’t see the Inquest being too accepting of neurodivergent people beyond maybe studying them and he’s got no idea who anyone in Dragon’s Watch is, aside from Taimi. So yeah he’s gonna hold some stuff back a bit until he figures out if it’s safe or not to unmask. And clearly by the time the beginning of EoD rolls around, he not only feels safe enough but comfortable and relaxed enough around the Commander and Dragon’s Watch to behave more freely.

It’s just really really incredible to see an autistic character go from “I don’t have many friends” to have so many he’s gonna name an entire organization after the concept of friendship.

“Don’t be mad. I lied.”

It was difficult to hear Blish’s voice over the rumbling and the shattering of crystals. Bertie was having a hard enough time keeping his raptor, Kerfuffle, following Syrryl on his jackal. Holding up a conversation at the same time made his brain feel split in two. “What? What are you saying?”

“The power source is dead. I can't fix it.” Bertie gritted his teeth and gathered the reins in his hands, ready to turn around and go back for Blish. They could come up with another plan, they could try again, they just needed a little more time- “But my golem body can power the tracker, indefinitely. I just have to... take my higher functions off-line. Permanently.”

“No!” Syrryl’s head swung around to look at him, eye widening as he realized what was happening. “No! Blish, you can’t!” Bertie squinted through the swirling sand, mind racing as he scrambled to form a blueprint in his head of Blish’s body and how it could be modified. “No, no there’s gotta be another way, just give me a minute. Uh, ok, jettison your body’s limbs so it uses less power! Could you use one of the Branded crystals as an alternate exterior power source? Maybe-“

“Stop. Please,” Blish cut him off. “I'm just one person. We're talking about the end of the world. If I can buy you time to stop Kralkatorrik, then—“

“No!” Bertie yelled, causing Syrryl to slow his jackal until the two mounts were side by side. Bertie looked to his friend, his shadow, for support but saw in his expression the same resignation in Blish’s voice. He shook his head, refusing to give in. “There HAS to be another way. I'm not letting you do this!”

The communicator fizzed and popped for a moment and Bertie wondered if the connection had been broken. Then, “With all due respect, Commander….Bertie….it’s not up to you.” Blish continued in a rush, clearly desperate to get the words out. “Take care of Gorrick. Tell him—tell him his big brother is sorry.”

The words hit Bertie like a physical blow and he clutched at the reins tighter. Old childhood memories he hadn’t thought about in years, discarded after an unsatisfactory reunion and bitter arguments, returned to him. Bronn. His own brother. Bronn, who had protected him and raised him, who had then left him and never once apologized for it, who could be alive or dead or anywhere in between as far as he knew anymore, who had never answered the few short letters he’d tried to send, who he’d once been as close to as Blish and Gorrick were now, Alchemy, how was he going to tell Gorrick… So caught up in his own thoughts, Bertie almost missed the fact that Blish kept talking. With a sharp shake of his head, he forced himself to listen to his friend’s last words.

“And... Taimi, too. After you beat Kralkatorrik, keep fighting—until you've made a world worthy of them. And...stop keeping secrets from each other. All of you.”

In a turmoil of grief and confusion, Bertie turned to Syrryl, the question of what Blish meant already forming on his tongue, then stopped. The look on Syrryl’s face was almost frightening in its intensity. His usual deadpan resolve was gone, shattered away by something Blish had said, something that Bertie now realized held some meaning he couldn’t parse. In its place was a moment of pure vulnerability, an expression so filled with raw emotion that Bertie had to look away, feeling as though he’d intruded on something private.

The air around him shook with a sudden increase of crystalline ringing. Off to his left, he heard Syrryl cry out in alarm. Head snapping around, he could only watch as Syrryl’s jackal crumpled to sand beneath him as the Brandstorm attempted to corrupt the construct. The small asura rolled as he hit the ground and came up running, dodging the flying crystals as best he could.

“Syrryl!” Bertie yanked Kerfuffle’s reins, pulling the protesting raptor into a skidding turn. Mind blank with terror at the thought of losing not one but two friends in the same moment, he locked the fingers of his prosthetic arm around the horn of the saddle and reached outwards as far as he could with the other. Leaning dangerously off balance, he watched, heart in his throat, as Syrryl leaped towards him. There was an agonizing moment of stillness before the distance between them closed and Bertie felt Syrryl’s hand in his. Throwing his body weight in the opposite direction, he hauled the both of them back up into the saddle and urged Kerfuffle on. “We have to go back for Blish!” He yelled over the raging storm, one last attempt at denial.

He felt Syrryl’s arms lock around his waist, pressed tight against his back. “There’s no way! It’s all been Branded.”

“But-“

“Bertie.” Syrryl’s voice in his ear was quiet and firm. “We have to go. Now.”

Tears finally start to build as the reality sunk in. Another one. He was going to lose another one. “T-the sand’s clogging my glasses,” he choked out. “I c-can’t see to steer.”

He was grateful that Syrryl didn’t point out his lie. The sniper shifted behind him, pulling himself up so he could see over Bertie’s shoulder. “I can see. Have Kerfuffle jump.”

“What? To where?”

“Trust me. Jump. Now.”

——————————————————————————

The sand crunched under his feet as Bertie paced back and forth, back and forth, arms wrapped tight around his chest, mind so full that it felt like if he leaned over too far everything would go spilling over. He reached the cool stone wall of the small chamber in Sun’s Refuge he currently occupied and turned, retracing his steps for the next uncountable time. Eyes half focused, he forced his breathing to remain steady and regimented, five seconds in, five seconds out, repeat. He needed to calm down. He needed to calm down now, so he could go be the Commander again, go be an actual person again and not a mute blank shell that couldn’t even comfort his own daughter when she told him she was dying—

He hadn’t realized he’d gotten so close to the rock face until he collided with it. It jolted him out of his head a little even as it knocked the air out of his lungs. Slumping against the wall was uncomfortable, the skin on his palms scrapping against the round surface, but grounding in its own way. The solid pressure against his back made focusing a little easier so he stayed there, eyes closed, head tilted back, counting his breathes. Five minutes. He would allow himself five minutes, no longer. Braham and Syrryl were with Taimi now, they could look after her for the time being. At least she wasn’t alone.

As he counted down the time in his head, Bertie gradually became aware of a sound of to his right. Opening his eyes, he realized the noise was coming from a small narrow passage in the rock that he hadn’t noticed in his distracted state. Pushing away from the wall, he crept down the passage. Falling into the rhythm of patrolling for enemies and perimeter weaknesses was so second nature it took him several minutes to realize that he was moving.

The passage twisted and turned, far too small for anyone other than an asura to use. Eventually, it opened up into a wider space filled with equipment that Bertie recognized as Gorrick’s lab space. The source of the noise was Gorrick himself, moving back and forth from table to monitor to scanning device with the same barely contained frenetic energy Bertie felt in his own body.

A stab of guilt lanced through Bertie. He had been so distracted by Taimi’s revelation that he hadn’t thought to send someone to go check on Gorrick. The losses had stack up so suddenly it was difficult to keep them all in line. As urgent as he was to go and check on Taimi, he couldn’t in good conscious leave Gorrick alone. He at least needed to apologize for getting his brother killed, he thought dully as he stepped forward into the cave a little more.

“Gorrick?” His raspy voice, roughed by sand and yelling and his own faltering control of his emotions, startled the both of them. Gorrick spun around to stare in his direction, eyes almost immediately sliding off Bertie’s face to focus on a point nearby on the floor. Bertie couldn’t blame him. He didn’t think he’d be able to manage eye contact at this point either.

“Oh. Hello. Commander.” Gorrick’s voice was stilted and distracted in a way that most people would read as rude. “I’m….busy right now.”

“You…you don’t have to be,” Bertie said cautiously. He still didn’t know Gorrick all that well, if he were honest with himself. He knew they thought in similar ways but that didn’t mean they had the same reactions to loss. “You should…could take a break?”

Gorrick shook his head, ears flapping. “No! No I think…I think I’ve found to way to track down Blish!”

Bertie’s heart sank. It wasn’t that he didn’t hope desperately for it to be true. It was just that even he could hear the note of denial in Gorrick’s tone as he tripped over himself to point at a monitor. “If, no, when Kralkatorrick is dead then maybe we can use the remaining signal to track my brother down and rescue him!”

Bertie nodded slowly as he turned Gorrick’s words over in his mind. “Ok….” Speaking was still difficult but he forced himself to do it. “You’d- we’d need at least another point to even try and triangulate that…”

Gorrick spun and pointed at a half assembled contraption on a nearby table. Even from a distance, Bertie could tell that is was…rather hastily put together. And that was putting it politely. “I-I’m working on a p-probe that would do that, it could work…

Bertie slowly approached the table, not wanting to upset Gorrick even more. But there was no way that the construct would be able to survive the harshness of the desert outside of Sun’s Refuge, let alone the chaos of the Mists. He bit his lip, sharp teeth pricking the skin as he struggled to find something to say, some comfort to give. “What….what are the base line calculations of-“

“I don’t know!” Gorrick wailed suddenly, making Bertie jump. “B-Blish did all of the math and the golemancy and the talking to people, I just do bugs, a-and bugs can’t help him, bugs can’t help anyone, I can’t help him or anyone and now he’s gone and I can’t do anything about it…..”

It hurt. Oh it hurt. Losing Blish was awful but if anything seeing Gorrick like this was worse. Because it was familiar. That overwhelming need for it to not be true, to be some kind of trick. Desperate denial slowly giving way to the shattering realization that this was the way the world was now. That your brother was gone. Experiencing it personally had been staggering for Bertie. Watching it happen to someone else was…

He moved entirely on autopilot, driven by instinct and the need to provide the comfort he hadn’t gotten. Wrapping his arms around Gorrick, Bertie pulled the younger asura into an awkward hug. “I’m sorry, Gorrick,” he said, barely able to get the words out. “I’m so sorry.

For a moment, Gorrick stood tense and silent, arms rigid at his side. Alchemy, he’d overstepped. Bertie cleared his throat awkwardly and was on the verge of pulling away when Gorrick let out a muffled sob.

It was like seeing cracked glass finally shatter. Gorrick slumped against him, tears coming stronger and faster as his shoulders began to shake. His hands clutched at Bertie’s heavy coat and Bertie tightened his grip in return, wondering if Gorrick found the pressure as soothing as he did. The other asura’s glasses were digging uncomfortably into his shoulder but he refused to pull away, taking the additional weight easily even as he struggled with his own emotions.