|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 12:31 pm
After the so called 'spar', Jerry had walked back to the dormitories. No one looked twice at the blood soaked through his jacket, covering his hands. Just another day at Deus.
Roar said something in the back of his head, but the words felt foreign, distant. He was numb. He shed his jacket, fumbling into the bathroom. Hot steam and a shower and a scrub that felt muted and distant.
His hands were clean again, even under the nails as he drifted back out into his sitting room, and ghosted into the chair he had set up by his keyboard.
Sasha's words ached in the back of his mind. Music doesn't work anymore. It had always worked. Always made him feel better. He couldn't articulate why he felt the way he did, why he had done what he did, it had all happened so fast.
He didn't quite know what he wanted. He just knew he didn't want to feel like he did. He wanted it to stop.
His hands went to the keys, a standard piano setting, a soft familiar sound. He closed his eyes, remembered the metronome that sat on his grandmother's piano.
Tick-tock-tick, he swayed, gently, imagining the smell of the old house, his grandmother's heavy perfume, a safe flowery scent.
Tick-tock-tick.
He tried to remember some of the music he would practice. He needed more sheet music. He could only remember a few progressions.
He imagined the metronome, controlling his breathing to match the rhythm of his heartbeat, swaying still as the quiet music bubbled up.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 12:37 am
There was a quiet knock on the door. Another, when there was no response. After a few beats, the door opened.
Jordan stood in the door, hands handing open and empty at his sides, and looked at Jerry. Watched him swaying to the music. He cared about Jerry. For a while, he'd thought he loved him. He was family, in that weird way that his team was, in that way that he didn't have family, and Jordan wondered how well he knew Jerry at all, and how much of that was his own fault.
Most of it, he thought, and hushed Ferros before the dragon could say anything comforting.
He waited for a natural break in the music, and said, simply, "What happened?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 12:41 am
It took several moments for Jerry to even process that someone was at the door, pulled out of his mental escape and into reality and a ringing silence. He glanced to Jordan over his shoulder a moment, opened his mouth, closed it again, and went back to staring at the keyboard as though awaiting a beating.
"I don't know," He finally offered quietly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 12:56 am
The first thought that sprang to mind was Unreliable. Jordan clamped his teeth shut on that. The only reason to say that aloud would be to hurt Jerry.
He thought of Rep lying too still in an infirmary bed, about what he'd overheard about broken bones and damaged eyes and about the layers on layers of gauze bandages, and kept his mouth shut anyway. Like prodding a sore tooth to summon that lance of sharp, sticky pain, right down into the bone and resonating all the way through the jaw. He wanted to hurt Jerry. He wasn't going to.
When he snapped, and he knew it was a possibility, someone would cover for him. Maybe. He hoped. It wasn't going to be today, it wasn't going to be now or any time soon, but there was no ruling it out, because this was their life and sometimes something became too much, and when that happened, it was a balancing game between the value of his training and experience and connections, and, on the other side, how dangerous he could be to his own colleagues. And part of the weighing of that balance was loyalties.
Everything was a balance. He looked at his mental image of Rep lying bandaged and pale and still again, and felt the dull ache of wanting to hurt something. "Oh," he said, and shut his mouth again before he could give in to that urge.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:03 am
He should say he was sorry. He should. He knew it, but it wouldn't have helped anything... even if he was sorry. Rep had become a close friend. It hadn't been about REP. It had just... He wasn't sure. "It just..." He tried, but stopped when the words failed.
Jerry closed his eyes, imagining the inner metronome again. Tick-tock-tick. "I just..." That wasn't right either.
He hovered over the keyboard, turning the volume down until it was barely audible as he resumed his nervous chords.
He couldn't say, 'I didn't mean to hurt him-' he had definitely meant to hurt him. He had done that sort of thing before, everything just... exploding outward. Usually it felt like he wasn't even there, he was someone else. He had just... filled up and overflowed.
"He wanted to spar." He settled for that.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:18 am
"I saw. He texted you." Dissociation, again, and he couldn't lecture, because it would make him a hypocrite. Why had he thought he knew what was good for his friends? He didn't even have a handle on his own damage.
He didn't want to go back to the infirmary yet, sit in the sterile white room and the smell of hospital and wait for Rep to wake up, because Fear-accelerated healing was a hell of a lot faster than normal human recovery but it was still time, seconds ticking past one by one while you couldn't do a single God-damned thing but sit and wait and try not to stop hoping. Standing here and prodding at the pain and halfway blaming Jerry and halfway blaming Rep and maybe blaming himself into the bargain was better.
There was no religion in the world that covered Hunters. Jordan wondered if Wash still prayed. He remembered it sometimes, the voice picking up the prayer for the dead in the sick chaos a full year ago now. Maybe that year had broken the Moon hunter's faith. Maybe it hadn't. Jordan didn't really know which he would prefer.
This wasn't about him, again. A little, maybe, but only tangentially. He wished briefly it was him lying in the infirmary, then wanted to unwish it, because then maybe he wouldn't have to deal with all the rest of it but Harrison and Rep would, and at least he knew how. Maybe he'd go pick a fight with someone - someone safe - just a spar, perhaps, and it wouldn't solve anything or satisfy anything.
"I don't," he started, and then stopped, because he didn't have an end for the sentence.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:23 am
"I... I d-don't know what happened. Entirely." Jerry pursed his lips, thinking a little better if his hands kept busy. "I just... I talked to... to Sasha. After the um. Arrest. She said some things... things she's said before but they... they stuck this time. I don't know. I don't know. I've always just..." He shook his head, sliding his hands from the keyboard to his lap.
"Is... he okay?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:32 am
"They're hoping he won't lose the eye." It was delivered in a neutral tone, and Jordan didn't give either of them time to think too hard about it. "What did she say?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:34 am
Jerry didn't answer, staring down at the keyboard, trembling slightly. "She was right, though."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:39 am
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:45 am
"About the music." He murmured, "It's not enough anymore. I try... I do... same as I always have. But I just... " His hands curled into fists on his knees. "I was... was creaming him. Just... I mean. He shouldn't have had Tracy out. If it had been a fist fight, I would have just gotten my a** kicked and that would have been the end of it."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:51 am
Jordan's eyebrows shot up. Tracey had been out? That was news, though not very surprising news, and it made him feel even more exhausted. Who had seen? Just them? Once upon a time, he reflected briefly, tiredly, he'd cared more about rules. He hadn't had a personal stake in anyone else's well-being then, other than one. It had been easier.
There were always exceptions.
"Or you might have beaten him up, and that would have been the end of it," he said, feeling the snarl of irritation rise in him like a sudden, hot bubble.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 1:55 am
Jerry fell silent again, staring down at his keyboard for a short time before his shoulders began to shake and he covered his face with his hands.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 2:00 am
The irritation welled higher, warring with an urge to comfort Jerry; that urge fueled the irritation even more. Why should he? Because he was a decent person - but the thought of offering comfort over a fight that had left Rep close to death and potentially blinded made his stomach clench in involuntary disgust.
Jordan waited.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 2:01 am
"It was just.. so easy.. and it felt so good..." Jerry finally choked out.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
