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 Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:04 pm
Kerberos had never expected to feel quite this angry at someone on his own side, at least after he'd purified. But here he was, feeling the first surge of genuine, powerful emotion he'd felt in months, and it was the desire to slam someone against the wall. And it was someone he considered a friend, so that was super.
Rumors of Negaverse agents kidnapped and held were bad enough. Rumors that Eurydike, who should absolutely and in every way know better, was involved?
Kerberos wanted a) answers, and b) assuming the rumors were true, to put his fist in Eurydike's face.
So when he spotted the Sensih of Salt, from his position on a rooftop, Kerberos bounced down storming up to him. "Hey! Eurydike! We need to talk!"
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:11 pm
Eurydike didn't look at him. If he sensed him coming, he gave no sign - just the same as if he didn't, he gave no sign of being surprised. He just swayed somewhat unsteadily on his feet, staring not at Kerberos, but through him.
The scent of bourbon clung to him like a second skin, his hair hanging messily around his face, obscuring bloodshot eyes rimmed in dark circles beneath. He hadn't been home in days, now - he hadn't slept well in about that long. He had barely eaten, and even then barely kept any of it down.
"'Bout what, Care Bear?" he grunted around the cigarette dangling from his mouth, his hands running down and smoothing out the sides of his toga.
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:23 pm
The scent of alcohol hit him like a bus, and it briefly made Kerberos unsteady on his feet as a wave of nausea crawled through him. He missed being able to drink, being able to casually enjoy a glass, but -- well, the Negaverse took that too, along with his memories and the only two people who had ever loved him back.
Not that he probably looked much better, because self care was for people who gave a s**t about themselves.
He grit his teeth. Concern later. Anger now, because he needed to hold onto this flickering feeling for as long as it would stay.
"About kidnapped Negaverse officers." He crossed his arms, stared Eurydike down hard. "And you being involved in it. A ringleader, even. How about we start there and then get into why you drowned yourself in bourbon and thought it was a good idea to be powered up like that?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:29 pm
Kidnapped negaverse officers.
His eyes went glassy and hollow, thinking back to it - to his confrontation with Cerussite in his cell, the way he'd grabbed him by the collar and yelled at him, the fear he'd seen in his lover's eyes -- he'd kept him like that with his leg, without his medicine, without --
"Yeah. I did that." He said it matter-a-factly, almost coldly. "I took people an' I tied 'em up an' I ********' grilled them for information - an' what about it, Kerberos, huh?" He looked up at him, finally, gritting his own teeth - trying to will himself to anger, to something - maybe to punishment.
"I'd do it again. Right now if I ********' could."
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 1:44 pm
Kerberos strode forward a few steps, brought up his hand, and slapped Eurydike across the face.
"I have the mother of all 'you're better than that' speeches prepared, but y'know what, it's obviously not gonna ******** take with you like this." Part of him itched to use his magic, to give Eurydike what would hopefully be a moment of actual regret for what he's done, but that seemed cruel. So instead he curled his hand into the front of Eurydike's uniform, dragging him forward and holding him eye to eye. They were the same height, it wasn't exactly hard.
"Any one of them could have been me, a couple months ago. So tell me something, so I know if I actually have to break your ******** face - Lellouch, Azurite, Caledonite, Fangite, Titanlåventite. Were any of those officers among the people you bastards took?" There were others he worried for, but those names topped the list.
It felt good, to have rage bleeding into him again, to feel the burning need to do violence. He had been so empty for so long that it was like the first breath of air for a drowning man.
"The Negaverse is a ******** up organization. Nobody knows that better than me. But this? You're no ******** better than they are."
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 2:06 pm
His head whipped with the force of it, hair falling limply across his face - his cheek was red in the wake of Kerberos' hand. It felt good. It felt good, getting a little bit of what he knew he deserved. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't remotely close to satisfying. It had nothing on the ache of watching Tolliver look at him with fear in his eyes, much less the sight of Cerussite's back as he walked away.
"If it'd been you - I would've done the same ********' thing." There was a tone of resignation there - if he could do that to Tolliver without knowing, then he was capable of anything. He was...
Eurydike simply let Kerberos drag him; all the bourbon in him left him limp and swaying still.
"A Titanlåventite was there." He'd seen him at a distance. But never encountered him, never gone in and interrogated him. Still, the super senshi laughed - he laughed in Kerberos' face, and he lied. "I don't even ********' know how many times I hit him - I wasn't ********' satisfied till I saw him bleed."
He sneered. "You, though - you hit like a b***h, Kerberos."
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 7:21 pm
Kerberos snarled, like a feral animal, and brought his knee up to drive it into Eurydike's gut. It fed his anger like gasoline on a wildfire, to imagine Titan bent and beaten.
"I should pay you back for every single punch, you stupid ******** shithead. I could do it. When I killed people, as a Corrupt, I didn't pull starseeds. That was too easy. I ******** beat people to death with my bare hands." And he could, if he kept being angry. But the more time he spent this close to Eurydike, the more he had to inhale the smell of bourbon, the sicker he felt. Which made for a good distraction from violence.
(And if he let his anger boil over, if he really did do what he knew he was capable of -- he'd be regressing to the violent brutal monster he'd been before the drinking. To the worst creature the Negaverse had made him.)
Kerberos took two very long, very slow breaths, and then let go of Eurydike, stepping back.
"But you're not worth becoming that monster again." Nothing was. No one was. "So why don't you try explaining why you obviously want me to?" He could recognize a challenge, could recognize someone pushing to incite another person to violence; he'd done it, once, at his lowest, had done it to Eurydike.
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Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 3:17 am
It hurt; it made him double over in the eternal's grasp, gasping, arms wrapped around his middle - Kerberos was stronger than he looked. That was not a bad thing. He hadn't had a lot of luck finding negaverse officers... but a pissed off eternal, a friend, someone like Kerberos, it felt like poetic justice somehow, didn't it? - not that he knew a whole lot about that s**t because he'd never really ******** paid attention in English class. (He couldn't keep up, so he didn't bother.)
"Did you? - hard to believe it, " he spat, although it really wasn't if Kerberos was capable of keeping hits like that coming. "You lose your edge or somethin', huh?"
Not worth becoming that monster again. The super senshi's eyes widened a fraction, and then darkened, his gaze falling to the ground beneath his feet. It really didn't matter, did it? - his impact, even the bad s**t, wasn't even enough for this.
He didn't say anything. His voice had failed him and he was just staring intently at his own sandals, because no words would come.
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Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 12:15 pm
Kerberos grit his teeth against the challenge. It didn't matter if he'd lost his edge, he told himself, it was better if he had, because he didn't want to be good at that anymore.
He had to be better than that, because now that he was past his anger - and he had a lot of righteous anger still stored up, but he would unleash it elsewhere, it later, when it didn't feel like kicking Eury when he was down in an almost literal sense - it was obvious that something was really, really wrong with the Senshi of Salt. And wasn't this what Hitch had done for him? Didn't Kerberos owe him this?
(Wasn't Eurydike one more line of red in his ledger he had to try to balance out, with Caledonia and all those dead Pages and Hvergelmir?)
"Eurydike. Hitch," he dropped his voice, softened his tone, shoved away the anger and tried not to care that numbness would likely take its place again, "what the hell happened to you?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 7:23 pm
Eurydike flinched at the use of his civilian name, his eyes still downcast and distant. He didn't say much of anything at all at first, and the silence dragged on long enough that it almost seemed like he wouldn't say anything at all. When his voice finally did seep out, clearing his throat first, it sounded off, raggedy, and when he spoke it was raspier than it should have been.
"My fiance's negaverse."
He shut his eyes, flinching again.
"I mean. He was my - "
He couldn't say it.
"We took him, too. With the others. I ... I didn't know. Now we know. So. Yeah."
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Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 9:39 pm
"Does he...I mean, have you talked to him, since you found out? If he wants out, I can help, sort of, I mean, I think I know how to get Cosmos to show up," he realized he was babbling, a little, but this hit far, far too close to home for him to not want to say something.
No wonder he looked like s**t. He probably felt like s**t.
"Did you hurt him? Without knowing who he was?" He asked, and his voice was still gentle. The opposite could be true, as well, but he doubted that since Eurydike looked so goddamn wrecked.
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2016 2:00 am
"What's the point?"
He didn't want sympathy, pity. He would've preferred the anger from before.
"Even if he did, then he might not be my Tolli anymore."
Because he remembered too well what it'd cost Kerberos to switch over to the Order. And Eurydike knew full well, even if he didn't come out and say it - he'd been lucky enough to have someone like Tolliver St. James fall in love with him once against all odds. The odds of it happening a second time... they weren't really odds at all.
He gave a short, bitter laugh as he crossed his arms. "Not like it matters. Cinnabar ********' made him what he is, 'cause of course she did - an' he's takin' her word over mine." The super senshi shut his eyes, and sorely wished for more bourbon. Instead, he settled for fumbling for a cigarette. It was something to tide him over. "He was scared of me. I saw it in his ********' eyes - Tolli's not supposed to be scared of me."
He wasn't really talking to Kerberos by then; the look in his eyes was distant.
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2016 6:51 pm
"The point," Kerberos said, and his voice was still gentle, "is that no one deserves to be left in the Negaverse."
It wasn't just about Hitch. It was about this Tolli, too, who definitely and absolutely did not deserve to belong to the Negaverse. No one deserved that.
"He won't be if the Negaverse keeps him, either, I can promise you that." Kerberos said, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek. "The person the Negaverse made me...was anything but the person I was before then. He'll get harder, colder, more violent. Especially if he's Cinnabar's."
He took a few steps forward and reached out to rest a gentle hand on Eurydike's shoulder.
"They're not supposed to hate you, either." He said, and he thought of Caledonite's eyes burning into him. "Hitch. Eury. I get it. I promise, if anyone gets it, it's me."
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Posted: Fri Feb 12, 2016 7:16 am
Harder, colder, more violent.
He tried to imagine Tolliver like that. His sweet, soft fiance with with expression green eyes, so often rimmed with tears. The same man who'd apologized to him a thousand times over in the sweetest ways for failing to say 'I love you' when Hitch had confessed. The same man who'd clung to him as they pulled each other out of the dark, struggling to break the surface -- Tolliver, trying to cook in the kitchen, Tolliver, singing to him and stroking his hair, Tolliver, reading sweetly to him about his far off fantasy lands, Tolliver laughing, Tolliver holding his hand, leaning into him --
Eurydike thought of Cinnabar. The look in her eyes.
He could not imagine Tolliver like that. He couldn't. He --
They're not supposed to hate you, either.
Did Tolliver hate him? Did he hate him for what he was? - was that why he'd taken Cinnabar's words over his? That kiss to his hand, soft, warm lips over the ring -
He recoiled violently from Kerberos' touch, a surge of emotion rising so suddenly up in him, he gagged - or was it the alcohol? Who knew. What did it even matter. "I don't want your goddamn understandin' - I don't want your goddamn sympathy - I don't want your ********' pity, Kerberos - !" When had his breathing gotten so ragged? When had his voice gotten so taunt, so frantic?
"I just wanna go back - I don't wanna ********' know, I don't want this goddamn - " He tugged at the fabric of his toga with a pained snarl that almost sounded like a whimper. "I don't want this! I never ********' wanted any of this s**t! I just ********' want him back, and I can't!! An' all your ********' pity ain't gonna fix that!!"
Eurydike didn't wait for an answer, already turning around. He didn't want to wait and see any pain that might flash across the eternal's face in response to his words, his attack, that even then he knew his friend didn't deserve - or someone that'd been a friend - who really wanted to be a friend to someone like him - Tolliver, Tolliver did, and now -
The super senshi stumbled as he dashed back into the night; he did not look back.
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