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 Posted: Wed May 11, 2016 9:00 am
It always seemed too good to be true when America said she would talk to him. This time it had been a dinner she had permitted to happen on her terms, willing to tolerate him long enough to have some kind of conversation with him.
He'd prepared carefully the way he always did, but this time turning his hand to some of the more traditional recipies he had learned from his elderly clients in Florida, hoping to cook up something at least moderately familiar and inoffensive for the other hunter. They had been good at cooking and happy to share their tried and tested meet-up specialities. He'd even gone to the effort of making a key lime pie for dessert. He didn't expect America to care much what he did, and didn't feel all that entitled to her gratitude, still it was a change from the old gourmet habits and was at least some effort to think of someone else other than what he wanted to eat.
When it was all cooked he gathered it up into containers and packed some cutlery plates and drinks neatly into a bag. They'd decided on a neutral area as always, this time one of the parks redecorated along with the towns itself to eat at, he'd skipped normal dinner to do it.
Leaving the dorms he texted her that he was on his way and headed out, dressed fairly informally bar his coat but still with his fixation on white present. Said coat was white on white with simple white trim and with the life division tree hung with a single apple and a serpent twisted about its trunk. It was difficult to tell it was a hunter coat at all.
He wasn't sure if she'd even be there at all, but if she wasn't he'd decided he would simply eat alone and then go to visit the house again, not hers but his.
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Posted: Wed May 11, 2016 7:36 pm
She didn't trust the change in attitude. For every truth he spoke she found herself looking for the mirror, the thing that said he was only working to show the facade she'd rather see looking back. It was, in the end, horribly ironic. The thing she had worked so hard for, had defended with such heartfelt determination: improving the problems that plagued the island to make it a home. And here it was, in the form of Lawrence Weiman, and she couldn't accept it. Couldn't allow herself to believe he changed for the better, because what was beneath that was still the same. Just reflecting what was needed as he finally, finally adjusted to the fact that he lived here. He worked here. That he had been shitting where he slept all along. And now if felt, unhappily, as if that measure of fake peace (but peace nonetheless) was being held hostage. The price? Her time and attention. It felt like he'd won. She could hear Taym's I told you so's. The ones he never said but couldn't hide. It wasn't more than she could give, and so there was a lunch once a week. Now a dinner, probably another last week as well. There was a steady line of twitter messages she didn't ignore, even if she couldn't always bring herself to answer. She was still in work clothes when she met Lawrence at the little park, the sun only now just starting to threaten the horizon. "Smells good."
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Posted: Wed May 11, 2016 10:52 pm
When he saw her he smiled, polite and seemingly genuine in equal measure, it wasn't the usual smug smirk of Jan, though even now that smirk felt like it was just within reach and that somehow it would be easier. He'd told Rodney at the start of all this that this self, this more or less maskless portrayal of himself was vulnerable and it was true, for everything he tried to do there was some indignity, some rejection and all of them cut deeper than they would when it was just someone else and their artificial story he was wearing.
"Thanks." he said, and was pleased that somehow he'd gotten more than he'd expected simply with that comment.
"It's not my usual fare. Just things I learned over time, I used to have some very critical judges when I cooked. I've seen some very old ladies almost fight to the death over some butter and its necessity or substitution in cooking." he shrugged his shoulders.
"But here's some of the results. Help yourself, I brought plates and the other needfuls." He reached for the soup himself, still a creature of courses and habits.
"I'm glad you came out." he said, and actually meant it, feeling like some of the tension which haunted him all of the time had fallen back.
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Posted: Mon May 16, 2016 8:30 pm
"I keep my word." There's no hesitation but she takes her time, taking a little of everything. There's no return of smiles, no sign of pleasure all the same. Helping herself to a small forkful, she gestured to him, "Tell me the things you want to say, Lawrence."
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Posted: Tue May 17, 2016 11:09 am
There was a moment or two where Lawrence carefully seemed to study her expression while she ate, hunting for some hint of approval of his choices or some inclination it might be a good idea to do something else next time. When he could find nothing of what he sought he looked a little crestfallen, a faint frown flickering across his normally rather blank expression. He assumed he was simply not perceptive enough to tell how she felt, not well versed enough to read the emotions she controlled with such mastery.
"Oh." he said. "Er. Right." And despite everything else he'd rehearsed he hadn't thought to rehearse this. He looked rather tired.
"I suppose I am a loss." he said. "I have come to realise and I suppose, accept that I am trapped on this island for the rest of my life. There is no escape, no hope of a return to whatever life I had. My life as Jan was favourable to me, even now with an awareness of what a horrible person to others I was it seems easier than all of this, but it is gone. There's nothing left of that sort of hope."
The was still a slight reluctance in the way he ate, a flightiness which made the whole thing seem a furtive skulking act, something undignified which he was ashamed about but did out of necessity. "I wanted... I want to settle here, to try again at what I failed with Maja. I want to get married and I want to do my best to act the way I'm supposed to act as a normal person. I want to find the rules, feel them out and live by them." Except he knew even as he said it, part of him was already sizing up the hollows and spaces left by the rules and how they fit together in the world, thinking of ways to ease himself through the cracks. "I want a home and I want to help create homes. I can be good, you know that I can be good. Or I could."
He took a slow deep breath as he sat down his fork. "There is just the issue of whatever is wrong with me right now. I can't think of anything else but you and..this." And at least here with her half of the weight was lifted, some of the tension set aside and replaced by something more primal. It was a strange tranquil feeling and in it he understood how a dog must feel when it stared dotingly at its master, off in a world of its own, capable of ferocity and anger but for the moment tied up in nothing more than a desire to be near and to look.
"And I think that with both of these things I might do something horrible again. To someone. Melvin, Rodney, I don't know. It's like sleepwalking sometimes." he took a sip of his drink and added flatly. "You know I had Rodney out at the cave, I met him there, when I left to avoid..dealing with control over eating. It was like snapping out of a dream realising that I might have simply lapsed into what was entertaining. It is a constant, pent up something in me and it eases only when I get what I want or when I am permitted to be around you."
He propped his chin on his hand. "Your clone was there in the mine." he said. "And mine. And you know, I was almost jealous laying there bleeding to death, thinking that there was somewhere in the world some facet of us is able to co-exist."
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Posted: Tue May 17, 2016 6:21 pm
It is a constant, pent up something in me and it eases only when I get what I want or when I am permitted to be around you.Closing her eyes, America made herself chew, and chew, and then swallow, no longer tasting the work he'd but so much effort into. Still, she took another bite, because it was there. It was time to eat food, wasn't it? Carefully mindless, she listened to him and it's a return to form, to the time just after-before Russia. You eat because it is time. You wake because that is what people do. You move through your work, your day, your human necessities because there's nothing else to stray toward. You can't afford those things. You don't deserve them. Opening her eyes, she looks at the man across from her and hears the same words she'd hissed at Horace, all vindicated fury and hurt that she is still, still the villain of the piece no matter what truths stand before them in the light of day. This is what you get."Then there must be a part of me that tolerates you, then." Another bite. "Too bad there's all the rest of me." But wouldn't it be nice? If something that didn't mind him, that couldn't be hurt by him? Wouldn't it be nice to have something take her place in this unhappy standoff?
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 9:40 am
To his ears, the statement that some part of her - however small - could tolerate him was hope. It was as grand a compliment as he could hope for, to have someone look into what he was, see him and yet be capable of putting up with it. It didn't matter if they hated it at the same time, the very state of staying to him was all that mattered. He didn't expect to be loved or cared for, both were ultimately a waste and set the other person up for an imbalance. He didn't actually enjoy imbalances all that much if he was honest.
"I like the rest of you too." he said. "You know, it reminds me of the fact that when I was in Wonderland I ended up with - of all the potential tarot cards - Justice as a weapon." He shrugged. "I had almost expected the devil, but then I realise that I would not frankly enjoy a life of only doing evil, nor do I particularly enjoy a life of only winning."
He enjoyed push and shove, back and forth and of late she had not felt like she wanted to push any longer, as if with Taym's death and the grief afterwards something had changed in her. When she didn't push back against his baiting it left him wanting to make up the difference in another way.
"There's no point being smug." he said. "When you don't bite. It makes me want to do the opposite, to try and help, to try and see if you will bite at me for this, to take offence at my attempts to gain your attention. It is about balance. I am happiest when I am in balance with you, and that sounds ridiculous but it is true. Some of the best times I have had in combat were defending you, some of the best times I have had in combat were both of us trying to kill one another." It was difficult to describe how he felt, finding language not quite up to the task of wrapping itself around his motivations and drives.
"I wouldn't ask for anything less than as you put it "the rest of you". I only wanted that world where you were my indentured servant because I felt..I suppose in some small way that at some point in that place, you would have gotten free and very likely beaten five shades of hell out of me and deservedly so." he smirked, always so careful not to speak with his mouth full and still eating carefully and infrequently.
"Rodney is always talking about the bible and it seems to focus so sternly on punishment all coming afterwards. Laws were easy to sidestep, but you never were."
It felt so empowering to be able to feel his libido's ever-present interference but to be able to disregard it in the face of something more important.
"But now I don't know so much. It feels like I can do whatever I want and you wouldn't care, not about me but about them."
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