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 Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:21 pm
The text came through as expected — not too late, not too early. 4PM was when the shrill default of his iPhone pierced a fitful darkness, and the captain woke to his dim bedroom. Its overbright screen read the time out to bleary eyes and he hissed at its stabbing intrusion into his skull. He slipped from the bed, and sparing another thought,
found himself in the doubly overbright and overworked clutches of Destiny City. Beneath the cafe's yawning rooftop, he heard the bustle of city life wafting boisterously to and fro — snippet conversatins about the latest fashion blog to sweep the city, about the need to move from such a dangerous place, about how cheap living rendered the city profitable as the next up-and-coming area of the country. Cars honked their dirty language to each other in the midst of gridlock. Endless clinks and clacks from used and reused coffee cups confirmed the café's friday successes. All proved a touch grating for the captain who hadn't fully collected himself from the Rift.
Faustite clothed himself in a second skin nonetheless. Gonewere the pipes, the heavy uniform, the blackened eyes and hands. The boy formerly known as Elex Yorke looked as unintrusive as ever, wearing a black plastic jacket with a checkerboard scarf, a sleeveless declarative tee, and leggings that announced his youthfulness. Lacquered ankle boots in a rustic red elicited grunts from the rusted fire escape on his way to the surface level. And once he rejoined the back alley, garnering little more than a glance from the gather around the dumpster, he headed inside via the back entrance.
Greeting him was the bustle of innovation, where many an intrepid student sat with laptops out and coffees at the ready. They pounded keys mercilessly with every Twitter update imaginable. They hunted blogging sites, hot trends, Etsy DIYs, lifehacks, music, craftmaking, and content of every delirious kind while trying that much harder to supply their own. To make their own brands. To make themselves indispensible to a world that looked on with benign indifference. He passed each by, sparing them nary a second glance.
He paused only when he found the proper bistro seat. Sitting under the tireless spin of ceiling fans, as close to the cafe's quiet corner as he could manage, was the man he proposed to meet. All around them, industry boomed with orders taken, orders given, blueberry pies consumed at the fork, soymilks tossed into the recycling, and green-certified bamboo floors pounded by restless, overcaffeinated feet.
"Xi-Wang," he greeted with an ill-concealed smile. The youth slipped into the nearest seat unbidden, still not yet awake enough to don his withdrawn neutrality. "Do you have the documents?"sleet tempest snape lmk if anything needs changing!
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Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 8:25 pm
Getting the copies of the papers had been easy, since he had the papers and the printer he'd gotten for his laptop did copies as well. Even if he hadn't bought himself a printer he was sure he'd seen one elsewhere in the house, there were still places he didn't go. It still didn't feel like a home, but that was mostly because he wasn't letting it. He knew why...he was scared it would fall apart somehow - at some point. Maybe in time, he hoped. He wanted to find a place to call home.
Sitting hunched down, as if trying to shrink into himself or perhaps the seat he sat on, the teen was never one for straight posture. He might have grown up with it pounded into his head, via his mother, but given the choice he sat hunched over trying to make himself seem much smaller. He had, unfortunately, been granted height which he he would easily give to someone else in return for their lack of it if possible. To go through life with less notice was something the dark eyed teen wished for yet was, like many other things in life, denied.
Today however he was lucky as Eion turned up, just as he was lifting his eyes to glance about. Some female squeak had been heard, from what direction he didn't know, but it was while trying to find it's source that he spotted the other. Watching the other approach and sit down he nodded his head. "I do." Ignoring his drink, for now, an iced green tea latte, for the moment as he went to the messenger bag he had with him. From inside it's depths he pulled out the papers he needed. They were in a folder, to keep them from ripping, but the copies were all there. His own birth certificate, his parents divorce papers, and their marriage certificate.
"I hope this is good." With the folder slid across the table he went to sip at his drink slowly. Swallowing he tilted his head a bit. "Do you want a drink? On me...since you're helping me so much." He offered softly.
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Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 2:57 pm
He accepted the folder and opened it enough to page through the papers. Each one looked in order and copied well enough that he could read the text. No sordid cell phone photos that muddied out the papers into a series of greys. And included in it was some of Xi-Wang's own information, which was its own surprise.
He looked up toward the other youth, then, and closed the folder. Its fold tapped against his lips as he willed his sluggish mind out of rest. "It's enough to start." The beginning of a project, he knew. And with all the myriad paper trails and digital traces and cyberspace footprints that people left behind, his main time sink was the sheer volume of information to filter. All the other men by the same name, in the same age bracket, with the same travel patterns, the same preferences, the same jobs, the same internet habits. That he could find Xi-Wang's father was certain. He could find fifty, a hundred, a thousand fathers — each one with the same name. But to whittle it down so far that only one stood among them was a count of weeks, if not months.
The offer of a drink had the youth cocking his head to the side, his gaze cast toward the patterned grain in the table. A shoulder rose with the gesture. "If you're offering." Folder met table and he cast his attention back toward the menu, all declaratives in chalk, and searched what he could from their distance. Waiter types oft flitted this way and that, obscuring his line of sight on occasion. Red rooibos sounded promising, yet woefully uncaffeinated. "Paris fog," he decided aloud, before returning his attention to his companion.
"It's a strange way to get to know someone, isn't it? Poking around in their past. Looking through their parents' misgivings. It's insulting to you to just leave it at that." Hands folded over the closed folder and his gaze flickered up to find the hunched disappearing act of a teen. "Do you have time to talk?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 08, 2018 10:00 pm
Watching the other leaf through the papers he kept his lips wrapped about the end of his straw. Occupied with slowly sipping at his drink, as there wasn't much for him to do at the moment, he didn't want to interrupt the other incase he was reading or thinking.
Letting out a breath, when the other declared it enough information, he was glad to hear that. He was sure it was enough, hadn't doubted it, and yet hearing it felt good. The other could work with it, but would he need more at some point? What more could he find and lay his hands on? In that hidden bag there had been no birth certificate for his mother. It had to be somewhere else...and would that even help if he could find it? What else might be needed, if anything else was, and could he even find it? He doubted it. This would have to be good, he would keep his fingers crossed.
"I am. For your help." Xi-Wang confirmed, giving a reason for the offering of a drink, as he let the other take all the time he needed to decide on a drink. "Mmm, I'll go order." Getting up to do so he paused at the edge of the table, finger tips just touching the wooden surface. "I have time, we can talk. Let me order your drink and I'll be right back." Hurrying off he did place the order, the line thankfully moved fast here. No doubt the workers were well trained in taking orders and, provided things weren't complicated, making their brews on autopilot. When he came back, drink in hand, he set it down before seating himself.
"I'm sorry, it is a strange way to get to know someone - you are right. I guess a name would be good to start with and other basic information. I'm Xi-Wang Zhào and I'm 18. I did attend Romano's but I'm in DCU right now. I live with two of my friends since I cant' live at home, my mother is unbearable." And she hated him...she also didn't trust him, the second thing hurt more than the first honestly.
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 10:38 am
Watching his companion depart was its own interest. The way people held themselves told a lot of tales — tales that seldom found their way out by mouth. Tales of social bullying pulled into shyness, into skirting singles and couples with a wide berth, and apologizing at every instance of being bumped into or bumping someone. Mumbled apologies shelled out for one's existence. Stammering at smiling faces. Downcast eyes studying the floor for some enigmatic map to sociial success. But the youth was there and back in a moment, drink fetched and handed off without another word.
He felt too groggy with sleep to have caught much. The opportunity came and passed while he still fumbled around with waking up at four in the afternoon — a time that, a year ago, he would never have considered.
At least other teens acted more honest than most. The overbearing mother bit seldom stood in conversation with adults. Rather, their entire conversation earlier could only transpire because they were teens — more honest with each other, more honest with themselves. And as he slowly drowned his grogginess in hot tea, he wondered how best to respond to such notions. Could he rely on Xi-Wang only being interested in himself? Was he desperate enough to be heard that he didn't care who listened? Or would he want the sordid history of the body that sat before him?
Thought coiled tiredly around social convention — information exchange performed politely yet with censorship in mind. 'I was once Elex Yorke. I turn 17 soon, except I don't. My body looks exactly the same as it did when I was fifteen. I attended Azure Valley until youmafication forced me to drop out. I live by myself in the basement of a fallen castle. My mother killed herself because I'm unbearable.' This parallel sounds wanting. It strays from the person I am. It catches on the unimportant.
As he shifted in his seat, he hoped to pass the question of name and social circumstance under the table. "DCU," he echoed. "And living with friends. Sounds like a dream life." He wanted that life once.
"But doing all that and looking for your father is a lot at once. You must have good friends to support you. Or a lot of inner strength." He paused to sip his tea, wincing slightly as he burnt his tongue. "Or both. What do you plan to do when you find him?"
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 9:02 pm
Tugging at one of hiss sleeves he stared down at his cup for a moment, before shaking his head. "Not really. A dream for me because the alternate is something I had to get away from." He wished he had a proper family, one he could tolerate, so he hadn't needed to escape it as he had. He was, at times, wistful and even down right sad and depressed seeing other people happy with their families. It had been worse when he'd been younger, when he'd been jealous and didn't understand why his mother disliked him so. It had been back when he thought, as a child often was naive, that he might be able to gain her affections again somehow.
"My friends are easy to live with. I do what I normally would if I had lived at home." And maybe a bit more, but it wasn't a mandatory thing. Cleaning was taken care of by some cleaning lady that Nischal had come in, it made things easier really.
"It is a lot...but looking for my father is something I've wanted to do for a long time, it feels like a need." A need to find a missing piece of himself, of a puzzle, a part of who he was and where he'd come from. There was a whole family, both sides even, that he'd never met. Stories of family members he'd never grown up hearing, helpful hands to help with school projects, praise over good grades he'd never gotten. So much lost out on and maybe even now he wanted that...at least some of it. But it was, as it always had been, more than that.
"I have support..." Because he was sure he lacked the inner strength most people had. Most people wouldn't have wound up where he was now - right? Not those with inner strength.
"I want to contact him...even if he doesn't want to talk to me or know me. I want to know he's alive and to at least try and communicate with him. I don't want to get my hopes up." He didn't want to assume anything, to assume someone who had never met him would want to meet him, ever, or talk to him. But he could try - he had to. "Don't most people do that when they find their real parents, or a missing parent?"
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Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 1:16 am
Brows lofted temporarily. The absolution behind Xi-Wang's words went carefully catalogued, yet unremarked. Tips of fingers instead scissored about, with their tips carving texture and sound from the recyclable sleeve around the cup. His phrasals spoke of a budding complex, if not one bloomed and manicured to fit beneath a placid exterior.
"That sounds too easy. No wonder you're looking for a challenge." Negaverse life proved in short order that people lived in vastly different manners, with different expectations and habits and routines and cleanliness states and decorating preferences and sleeping hours and interpersonal needs. The list of differences in life structures spiraled endlessly, with far more separations between any two individuals than similarities — even between siblings. Even between Erol and himself, when they were still boys with rooms adjacent to one another, he often heard the boom of stereo early in the morning when Elex had a preference for the romance of late nights. He and his brother, while close in many ways, could not live together well for several reasons. That Xi-Wang stumbled on the lottery for roommatees was both an easy conclusion and a staggering one; how could one boy have such luck?
Unless his friends maintained a level of tolerance for him out of pity. With college forcing its own life changes and his mother's professed insufferability, the space was needed. In six months' time, in a year's time, in two years' time, they might snap at one another like bored youma. Or like any of the several officers rooming in the Negaverse barracks.
"You have support," he conceded, "but you say it like you're underwriting yourself." He spoke the observation without judgment's garish color. He took another sip of the naturally sweet rooibos to break up his commentary.
"I don't know what most people do around missing parents. Hindsight…" He paused, conceding a sardonic smile as he looked to his drink. Swallowing, he continued and looked on at Xi-Wang. "It's easy to regret distance in experiences like that. Words unsaid, experiences unshared, sentiments unmentioned. But that's for relationships had and lost and had again. With yours, who can say where expectation will lead? And who knows where you'll be when you hear those first words?" A nail left the cup to trace its way down the front of the folder, finding every spidering crack etched into its surface.
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Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:16 pm
"You are right. But it's worth trying to find out - to see if they'll want to be around in some manner. Maybe see what I'll become, since they've missed me becoming who I am now." And what was he now? A teen who had been handed a job, not out of pity but because the person cared enough to help, and a teen who bumbled about from home to home with no real home to settle in. He was a senshi who fount in some war - something he could never tell the father he would one day contact. What else was he? He was smart...but so where a lot of people.
"I wonder what he'll regret if anything....maybe just that he didn't raise me without my mother." That he hadn't been able to gain custody. Maybe he' regret other things, other losses, but the biggest would maybe be not having raised him in a healthier environment. But had that happened would he be who he was now? All the what if's and not a single one would find a solid answer - ever.
"I do have support...and I think that's another reason I can do this - why I want to. Even if my father doesn't want me, if other family I find don't want me, I have friends who do. It made it easier to do what I've been wanting to do once I found those papers." Something he hadn't told Nischal or Jason. But it was true, they made this an easier choice for him...safer. "I don't think I underwrite myself...but I've never had the best view of myself I suppose...so maybe you're right."
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Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:56 pm
As he looked on, his visage firmed into its usual emotive dearth. His gaze stared harder than it did before, unheeding of Xi-Wang's words. Still affixed it was to sights turned over only a month ago. He felt detached, then — different and irrevocably abstracted — as he let the other youth's words wash over him.
Father. Mother. Becoming. A distant churn in his chest reminded him of an ache. Of a time where he was much closer to the world. Why would someone like Xi-Wang know what it means to be so distant? Half a world potentially separates him from his father, and several worlds of emotional rift separate he and his mother, yet these two relatives subsumed all talk that transpired between them. Ever the overbearing mother, ever the distant father, ever who he is to either of them. Who he is to anyone. Always becoming renewing, changing for how little it matters in the scope of it all. All his inanities immortalized into a Facebook sarcophagus and all his becomings rotted into nothings. As the musings stretched, so did his gaze.
Support. Family. Friends. A hand spread over the nameless youth's chest, flat and encouraging-oppressive. The dam to stymy the river. What did it mean to have any of these things? To be known past a distant connection to someone else? Xi-Wang had friends. Had a mother and father who never defined his life so thoroughly. Meaning. Definition. How ontological. Metallia has no room for such armchair fancies.
He licked his lips before he spoke. "My mother tells me, 'don't buy back the sale'." Head cocked, lashes lowered as he again looked to the drink clasped between hands. The way they fitted so perfectly about it reminded him of holding hands. "That's exactly what you're doing. You don't have to love yourself for someone else to love you. But you can't pick scabs into yourself and expect them to like what they just saw."
His gaze lifted to Xi-Wang. "You slink down hallways. Hide in corners. Duck your head when you're apologetic." On the cusp of a laugh, he added, "you apologize for existing. Stop wearing your insecurities on your sleeves, Xi-Wang. As much as I want to, you're making it hard to like you."
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Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 11:09 pm
That was not a phrase he'd ever heard, from anyone, don't buy back the sale. Pondering what it meant he didn't have to wait to figure it out, as the other kindly told him the meaning. The last part made sense, where as the first he sort of ignored for the moment. He had a feeling he knew what the other meant, he wasn't a stupid child, but when the other confirmed it he felt a small smile tug at his lips.
"Consider me in something of a recovery program then. Living away from the influence of my mother has been helping. But training, programming, is a bit harder to break than most would think....I'm working on it though." Wrapping his lips about the straw of his drink he took a sip, slowly, savoring the taste. When he next spoke there was a bit more...happiness in his voice.
"I don't want to make it hard for you to like me...so I do apologize. I'm working on things...I'm a work in progress." Though wasn't everyone? With no end in sight for any other them...aside from death.
"You know...I don't think I ever got your name - yet you know mine. And you mentioned your mother...do you still live with her?" He didn't ask about a father, just incase there wasn't one, but he figured mother was safe. It was his turn to try and get to know the other better.
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Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 1:11 pm
"That apology should be for yourself," he stated matter-of-factly. That Xi-Wang apologized for his own self-deprecation begat a new, more subversive irony to their conversation. "Don't apologize to me." Fingers rapped against the cup.
That Xi was a work in progress gave him a reason to speak once more, but before he collected thoughts enough to voice his opinion, Xi-Wang asked a very different sort of question. The sort of question he'd been avoiding, really, for all the tangled footwork involved. The sort of question that demanded a measure of improvisation that he hadn't yet corrected.
So he paused, mouth opened to speak, and instead shifted to give a sardonic smile. Xi called him on his manners. "You're right. I haven't given a name." The thought left him at a crossroads — give the truth to ease his memory, and risk the inevitability of starseeding this boy. Of terminating the task before he truly started on it. Or he could pull another name from memory, another history associated with such a name, and bank on Xi-Wang never knowing the individual. Or make something up and commit wholeheartedly to the craft of trickery and derisiveness, of disrespect, of foolishness.
"My mother is dead," he deliberately answered out of order. "She killed herself. It's… Part of why I chose to help you. I can't know what it means to gain a parent, but I know what it means to lose one. To have that rockiness in your life." His gaze cast to his drink, idle and benign and still steaming out the carefully-latched top. "Mothers do a lot of damage when they want to. More than anyone else." Yet not as much as generals who pose as mothers — generals who seize every whim to remind their subordinates that they are objects, not men — that they are rank and worthless and impotent but for the groups in which they coalesce.
"And my name…" He gave a light shrug of shoulders as his attention found his companion. "I don't have one. Not yet."
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Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 5:17 pm
Oh, well that made sense. The others mother being dead and the reason the other had for helping him. It made sense, he had wondered since they'd met over why a stranger would help him so readily. Now he knew why, and he didn't have any reason to doubt the others answer. He was sure the other was telling him the truth about his reason for helping.
"Mmm, mothers do. Most don't but some...whether intentionally or not." Like his mother had intentionally damaged him, in so many ways, even though if asked she wouldn't have thought of it all as damaging. She would think of it as improving him, somehow, and him just being a failure no matter what. Couldn't make a male better because they were still male. This wasn't the time, or place, however to think about such thoughts. His mother and the hurt she'd brought him, the things which still clung to him, were not worth thinking about right now. She'd done more than enough to him already and he knew it, now in his life more than ever.
"I'm sorry for your loss. I hope she was better than mine...while you had her." Because no one deserved a mother like his, or any sort of bad or poor mother. Because, if for no other reason, than mothers were supposed to be close to their children and could do as much damage as his had done and as bad as even worse mothers had done to their children.
"You...don't have a name?" He questioned curious as could be, something he couldn't hide even if he wanted to. "Something happened?" He assumed. Was the other changing his name for some reason? That was the only thing he could think of...but for what reason?
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Posted: Sun Apr 29, 2018 9:20 pm
Whether intentionally or not. His jaw tensed, but he set the matter aside. Better to leave the road to suicide unbroached. Let it glaze over with underbrush. Let it fall to forgetfulness as more paths sprung elsewhere.
Sniffing, he left Xi-Wang's condolences to the side. Bittersweet they were but better meant for someone who shared a less tumultuous relationship with their family. Ex-family. Mention of the word alone ushered in the cold pall of unfinished mourning. He flushed it out with a swig of warm tea and kept himself strictly tethered to their present — to the boy before him, to the imminent search for a father, to questions asked of his still-living person and the inherent dangers behind that.
A slight smile returned at burgeoning irony. "I can't tell you," he answered with a coy c**k of his neck. "It would put you at risk. Sounds like something out of Boy's Own, doesn't it? Like a call to adventure." Like spy novels with their allure for privileged information. Like they sat together in a smoking lounge, huddled behind a hookah, exchanging words that would end a life in the coming week. And maybe they lived that tale, though not precisely, with their coffee shop in lieu of a smoking lounge and a metaphorical death in lieu of a literal death. Pressing further was its own adventure, certainly rife with potentials for danger and romance and companionship.
"But I'm serious. Knowing could change who you are irreversibly. Not because the secret is phenomenal, but because you might be." Xi-Wang's fall to the same poor circumstances as Rowan could only be made better by their acquaintance; he doubted, however, that they ran in the same circles.
"I think that's enough for now. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you more."
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Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2018 10:58 pm
It would put him at risk? Just knowing someones name...how? That made him wonder, a lot, the other wasn't that far off from his own age, right? So what could someone his age be involved in that would make knowing their name an issue?
"So what should I call you?" Since he didn't have the others name; there had to be some option. If there wasn't what did he do? Just keep referring to the other as he and them and other such words? It made for an odd, and somewhat akward, conversation in Xi-Wang's opinion. But hopefully the other could provide him some name to use.
"Is there anything you can tell me about yourself that you haven't yet? We should, since we're working together, know each other better. But if anything is a risk to know....I'd rather not ask." But since he didn't know what was safe, as apparently some things weren't, it might be best for the other to tell him what he could ask about and what he couldn't.
Strickenized We can try and wrap it up soon if you'd like. Up to you.
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