Welcome to Gaia! ::

Today would have been a good day to say inside. Between the weird ice branches and the fog that followed the next morning, Diryas was quite done with being outside. He would just call in tomorrow, he decided, from his nest of blankets on the sofa facing a blank television in a dark living room.

Dark, because he was the only one home and had neglected to turn on a light. He hadn’t needed the light when he’d gotten home and posted himself up on the couch. But the sun did not last long this time of year, and so it had long set on him. He could still see some of the fog wisping around outside. Thick fog wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t that unusual, and so Diryas hadn’t really batted an eye at it. What did cause him to bat an eye was how icy cold the fog had been. Chilly, sure, but as if it had come off of an ice floe somewhere?

He didn’t devote much thought to it than that. It didn’t actually matter. It was just a weird fog. Even if this was Destiny City, it hadn’t caused anyone to turn into a monster or grow any extra appendages, so he was counting it as a nonissue. He would know. He’d been out in it for several hours earlier, tending to the winter-tolerant plants in his garden. He still had one head and, to his knowledge, hadn’t turned into a monster.

Though, how would he necessarily know if he’d turned into a monster? Was that something he’d be cognizant enough to recognize?

Diryas thought he heard the door lock turn and glanced that direction, but turned his gaze to the nothingness in front of him when nothing further came of the sound. It would be Teegan. Teegan was forbidden from the house. It wouldn’t be Tobias. Tobias had moved out with the ultimatum that he wasn’t coming back until Teegan could. It wouldn’t be Zebulon. Zebulon was sitting an evening open-office hours for the grad students, or so he’d said.

Diryas squinted at the time on the cable box clock, realised he’d forgotten to put his glasses back on, rubbed at his face, put his glasses back on, and squinted at the cable box clock again.

Oh, no, the office hours would’ve been up by then.

Maybe Zeb was out wandering. He did that sometimes. That was something Diryas could still count on; Zebulon hadn’t made any abrupt catastrophic changes to their dynamic. He hadn’t tried to attack anyone. He hadn’t moved out because forgiveness for the attack was taking longer than he wanted it to.

The scene of Teegan’s purification was still fresh in Diryas’ mind, and he was glad at least that Zebulon seemed to understand why Diryas was having such a hard time with it. Even if Tobias was angry with them both and especially Diryas. That stung. Tobias had been Diryas’ best friend-and-more since they were teenagers. Why didn’t Tobias understand why Diryas was struggling with letting Teegan just walk back into their lives?

‘He put himself in danger to minimize the risk to Zeb.’ But why was Zeb even at risk in the first place? And, thing was, what if it hadn’t have been Zeb or someone Teegan cared about? He’d been draining plenty of civilians! It shouldn’t’ve mattered all the sudden that it was Zebulon!

‘s**t happens. He never hurt anyone.’ He lied to them! He drained non-consenting civilians under the guise of sleeping with them! How wasn’t that harm?

‘He was doing the best he thought he could.’ And he had ******** it up! There still had to be repercussions for that. Impact mattered more than intent!

‘He’s upended his whole life. What more can he do to prove it to you that he’s sorry?’ Nothing. Everything.

‘He can’t earn your forgiveness if you won’t even give him a chance.’ He just needed time!

He just needed time. But he’d had a lot of time. But he hadn’t had enough time. Diryas scraped the back of his hand across his face and pulled the blanket closer around his shoulders. And he couldn’t back down now. He’d drawn his line in the sand. Teegan had to go away until Diryas was ready to forgive him. There hadn’t been a time limit, and Diryas didn’t think it was fair to impose one on him.

But, hell, even Zeb was talking to Teegan over text and phone. That was more than Diryas was doing. Was he taking too long? Had he reacted too strongly? He’d been ready to kill Ransomite where he stood, especially with Tobias right there and vulnerable. What if Ransomite had moved to attack Tobias? It’d been on Zebulon’s mind, too. He knew it had.

Except Ransomite never moved to attack Tobias. He never even gave any indication that he would. He’d been abundantly clear that he regretted everything he’d done. He regretted being part of the Negaverse. He regretted attacking Zebulon. He regretted making it all the way to the point where he’d earned a ******** promotion. Had it really gotten away from him that badly? Elliot had had a good head on his shoulders. Surely he would have realised the effect it would have on all of them. Surely he’d known they’d missed him.

Hell. Diryas still missed him. Missed the banter between Zebulon and Teegan. Missed the way Teegan needled Tobias. Missed waking up sandwiched among their bodies. He knew that Tobias and Teegan were still seeing each other, and a pang went through his chest and stomach at the thought of it. His anger at Tobias had faded more quickly than he’d anticipated. It was a betrayal. It was, wasn’t it? That Tobias had taken Teegan’s side so easily? Found it so understandable?

Teegan had attacked innocent people, had attacked Zebulon. What was so understandable about that?

Diryas’s face was going to end up raw with the way he scrubbed at it with the back of his hand.

He had never asked. Was he actually interested in the answer? No. He wasn’t interested in understanding the ‘why’, and he knew he never would be. So why was he hinging accepting Teegan back on that? If it was never going to happen, then why was he dragging it out? Diryas took a deep breath. He couldn’t be cruel to Teegan just because he found Elliot’s actions to be cruelty in their own right.

God damn it, but he missed him terribly. Them terribly. Both of them.

’I’m moving out until you get over yourself.’

Get over himself? How was that any ******** fair? How was any of it any ******** fair? What if Ransomite’s superior hadn’t been content with draining? What if something had happened when Zebulon was unconscious?

But they had, and it hadn’t, and how long was Diryas going to go back to that, the could-haves, to justify his anger?

…Was he even still angry? Zebulon was, wasn’t he? He was only texting and calling Teegan. He hadn’t been to see him, either. So Zebulon was still angry, too, right?

Diryas had no idea. Was Zebulon angry, or was Zebulon holding out in solidarity with Diryas? Was it just Diryas making everyone else miserable at this point? Including himself? If that was the case, what was he going to do about it? He couldn’t just sit around feeling sorry for himself, could he? He was a grown-a** adult.

He hadn’t had this problem until he’d gone out to garden. Maybe he was having an allergic reaction out of nowhere to his plants.

That was stupid and he knew it.

Diryas reached for his phone and, almost automatically, scrolled through his contacts to the one for Teegan. Tobias had insisted on putting it in his phone as soon as Teegan had a new phone number. Diryas had almost deleted it at the time, but something had stopped him. Now, he stared down at it, feeling almost a fresh sense of betrayal at the picture Tobias had chosen for Teegan’s contact image.

Teegan was smiling at someone off-camera. It was Christmastime judging on the tree in the background, but Diryas recognized the matzo balls on the plate Teegan held. Teegan had made them and the soup for Zebulon and Tobias one year for Hanukkah. But then this would be Elliot, not Teegan. He frowned and almost put his phone down, but he found himself drawn back to the picture.

Elliot and Teegan were the same person. That was something he was aware of. But it wasn’t something that had to be a condemnation of Teegan. Diryas had welcomed Elliot into their dynamic for a reason, long before chaos and the Negaverse had become anything any of them even remotely knew or cared about. And, when it came down to it, Elliot had cast Ransomite aside so much that he’d abandoned nearly everything he knew to become Teegan. He had risked forgetting them entirely and leaving himself alone.

He had taken a leap of faith and was being punished for it. Maybe it was his just desserts for what he’d done, but who was Diryas to decide that?

Maybe, a small part of Diryas posited, it would have happened even sooner if they’d shared their own identities with Teegan. Maybe their own hesitance had been part of dragging it out. Teegan had pressure to purify from his friend Nectaris. But knowing that they would take everything and still welcome him on the other side… wouldn’t that have helped?

But Teegan wasn’t being welcomed on the other side. Instead, he was being met with the very reason he’d probably been so hesitant to cut and run as soon as he’d realised he was on the wrong side.

Diryas stared down at the picture long enough that he wasn’t sure if the melancholy or lack of blinking were what caused his eyes to water again.