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Dangerous Conversationalist
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 Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2013 6:04 pm
The Other set his teeth through the beginnings of a headache, his thumb and forefinger still wet with Cordelia's tears. With deep, even breaths, he struggled for sobriety, even as every light in the room became a blurry sequin. His bruise was burning hot to the touch.
He could still smell the mud. The excrement. The alcohol. The bovine stench.
It wasn't a memory he was eager to revisit, and the stifling heat of the loft didn't help. He shut his eyes, battling nausea when Cordelia's voice came into focus. When he turned to look at her, she was somehow closer than he remembered, making him suddenly alert. She had pulled this stunt once before. Tricking him into thinking time could stand still.
Although her hand did not successfully find his, he had felt the presence of it closeby. A treacherous tingling in his skin that anticipated contact from hers in the only moment he had left himself exposed. When she stood before him, looking up into his eyes, he actually held his breath, her face so earnestly inviting him to accept her kindness. A kindness he noted hastily, that she was able to manage even after slapping him twice.
She spoke, her words out of rhythm with her eyes. She was so close, they were unable to hold both his own, darting between them. He leaned away, or felt that he had while frozen. She was sorry that he had been hurt, and somehow, he knew that she had meant it.
He cut his eyes away, nostrils flared. If she just hadn't fraternized at the party, he rationalized. If she had just known what she did... What she set into motion.
Before he could stop it, his face began to burn. Knowing she could see it, he felt almost violated.
("She's changing everything.")
Her eyes dropped away with her hand, and he felt instantly weaker without her grasp to stable him. More permissive of the truth. She would never apologize for what had been done. She was only sorry that things had happened the way they did, and really, that was enough. Nothing —not even an apology— could change what had happened in the maze. Just like nothing would change that kiss they had shared, or the four days he had lost. He tilted down his head. He was sorry too, because he knew he had to do something. Something drastic.
He made no effort to disguise that he had begun tuning out her advice as quickly as she could dispense it. "You're not helping." He said coldly and hurriedly, beginning the sentence on the heels of her last.
He said it again, more emphatically, "You're not. Helping. Honestly, I don't know why you even bother with this camp-counselor crap."
His heart was jumping beats, his words blurring together as though if he didn't get them out fast enough they would disappear into the air and never be heard. "I mean, the only good you've ever done us, is—is distract us from what a complicated situation this is—But what do you really know about it?" A swallow. Too much. Tone it down. Get ahold of yourself.
He shut his eyes, one hand erasing the air in that let-me-rephrase-that sort of way. He hesitantly reached for her, his fingertips skirting the edge of her palm.
"It's a nice distraction, Cordelia," He began carefully, "But it's dangerous. I know it sounds like a cliche... but saying things like that just anticipates the idea that we could ever resemble something normal." There were two very different "we's" he could have been talking about, and he seemed to acknowledge that a moment too late. Pushing through it, past it, over it. He needed to do this right.
"...I know you'd like to think if me and Basil just played nice and talked it through, everything will just work itself out, but we both know it just isn't that simple. You're talking about our lives."
He shook his head. "Believe me, I know going to the Lab wouldn't help. Not after what happened. They'd have to get rid of me—Or Basil. Or put us both down and count their losses. We're going to spend the rest of our lives trying to cover each other's backs, and sometimes I wonder what it's all even for because it's not like any of this time is really ours. We're just... borrowing it from each other— back and forth, back and forth."
His gestured aggressively around the air, "You ever realize that? How every moment I'm here, is a moment I'm taking away from Basil? And he just got done taking away four days from me! How do you compromise a thing like that? How do you possibly decide who deserves that time more?" There was an edge to his voice. Something clearly biased on that last account with the selfish prerogative of a twin.
"That is my reality. Wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. When that woman might find out, and drag us back to that place, and effectively have us murdered because of some stupid, well-meaning slip-up. Wouldn't you fight for control? Wouldn't you want to keep tabs? Who's going to do it if I don't? Basil? Get real!"
He came closer to her with the same confidential tone, his eyes trailing her face, and down her shoulder. Down her arm. "What I'm trying to say is, Cordelia, is that I'm smart enough to see the bigger picture, but Basil just can't. I designed it that way... And what I learned the hard way, is that I have to start protecting him now, because in the long run, he's the only person I'm going to be able to depend on... You see?"
More confidently this time, but every bit as carefully, he ran his hand down the length of her forearm before threading his fingers into hers. The moment was still and silent enough to hear a pin drop, and what he said next betrayed everything in his expression.
"You're not helping. This isn't helping. Not these little visits and games? Not me, or him." He winced, squeezing her hand even tighter, crushing the delicate fingers together. If he was hurting her, he didn't care. She would understand. She would let him. She had to. "You can't be here anymore. You have to stop..."
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Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 5:39 pm
Apparently Cordelia couldn't win when it came to this other. Anything she said he had some come back or argument at the ready against her. She couldn't win because he didn't want her to, couldn't allow her to. She was the "distraction" after all and although he was confused still on whether she truly was welcomed for that or not at times, it was clear she was getting in the way of whatever master plans he had to keep him and Basil safe on a day to day basis. Maybe it was much bigger than she could see or imagined and no matter how much she tried to understand, she just wouldn't be able to. Maybe he was right, perhaps Delia just needed to stop for all their sakes. Hell she wasn't even sure about her actual feelings towards the two of them anymore. How could she possibly help them out in this unusual situation? He was right, he could only really rely on Basil at the end of the day and it was hard enough to keep him in check as it was.
She took a couple moments to allow what the cobra had said to her to sink in, to fully grasp what it was he wanted. Clearly he didn't want her around. Clearly she was a liability he couldn't afford. Clearly she should not feel hurt by any of this, but she couldn't help it that she was. But this time she wouldn't cry. This time Cordelia would be brave and hold it in, she would take a page from her guardian's book and leave with her chin held up high. She would not allow him the luxury of knowing how much it hurt her to be utterly rejected.
Her dark lips pressed firm into a thin line as she quietly ripped her hand out of his bone breaking grasp. "Goodbye then...Basil..." It was the only name she had so it would have to do, but it also hurt her more since it reminded her that she really was saying goodbye to him as well. Before any tears could try and make their escape, Delia quickly bolted from the loft and down the stairs. At any other time she would have at least said goodbye to Genie as well, but right then she really needed to be out of that apartment before anything else happened.
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Dangerous Conversationalist
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Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 8:36 am
Although The Other had an idea of what to expect by grasping her hand, he was still somehow unprepared when she ripped it so quickly and decisively from his. He startled, knowing that his nails had scratched her, the fingers frozen and still-conformed to the shape of hers. She didn't care. It was an act of preservation, like an animal that chews off its paw to be free of a steel trap. She knew that if she hadn't let him go at just that moment, it might have ruined her, totally and catastrophically. She refused to let that happen, and he was quietly impressed by her resolve.
She faced him, her body strong and reinforced, as though her muscles had all been replaced by steel cables. Despite this, he could hear her heartbeat underneath the solid layers. Rapid and desperately hurting. Perhaps too loud to hear his own syncing up. Growing faster with the tender panic that comes with gaging a woman's likeliness to cry. Something that would normally have appealed to his meaner nature, but now filled him with something prickly and awful. He looked at the place where his feet would someday be, willing himself to turn to stone. He was starting to think the best reaction was no reaction. His arm lowered slowly to his side, bent at the elbow like a gunman reaching for his holster.
Taking her hand had just been a last token of good will. An effort to acknowledge their unspoken investments and prove his conviction. But she was sick of being lured in by him. Sick of that last sentimental and meaningless gesture as he looked her square in the face and told her to hit the road. She couldn't help someone that didn't want to be helped, and his stubbornness was about to cost him dearly.
The fact that he had raised some authentically good points only made it that much more despicable on his part.
Basil meanwhile had become a sleeping causality, wrenched out of Cordelia's protection and dropped soundly into The Other's by a conversation he had no way of maneuvering. Admittedly he was a little stunned by how easy she made it to take him away, and also a little scared of what that meant.
From the very beginning, she had refused to mesh with his most careful designs. The one thing that loudly, openly challenged his decisions out of some potent mixture of spite for him, and concern for Basil, and if there was anything that pissed him off half as much, it was something that just wouldn't lay flat— as though Cordelia had been relegated in his mind to a cowlick or a hang-nail that had nothing to gain from being disobedient.
For that reason, he knew that this was where he was supposed to be feeling relief that she was seeing things his way for once. Reassuring her that it was all really for the best, when he had done such a good job of convincing himself. After all, it was this crazy preoccupation with her that kept getting them into trouble. Their lives were complicated enough without her forcing them to take risks, and go to parties, and do battle with sphinxes and minotaurs. Carry her into empty parking garages and bleed out the nose and assault police officers. Always with her scale-jeweled eyes and dark touchable hair and spicy skin the smell of burning deadfall.
Boy had he spent a lot of time resenting her for it. Resenting her outspokenness and normality and coddling nature. But when he woke up to find her there, when for just a moment, he actually believed she had missed him... It wasn't until then that he understood how deep under their skin she had really become, her presence warming and throbbing inside them with all the realness of an organ.
When she found her voice, he knew she couldn't have been happy with the way it sounded in her effort to be strong. He could relate. Though you wouldn't have known it to look at his cold, sober face, he was being slowly disemboweled.
She called him Basil, as though for once he was not going to have the last word. She flew past him and down the stairs, the ghost of her lingering. A warmth and energy that hung behind and slowly cooled, until he knew he was very much alone, without even Basil's fetal and slumbering presence to consult.
After the initial numbness, every tilt of his body felt like falling, as though it had forgotten what it felt like to move. He didn't say goodbye to the air the way people in movies would have done after a woman storms out. He only mouthed in a soft stupor, I have a name, his tongue feeling thick and useless in his mouth, I do, I know that I do.
From a thousand miles away, he heard the front door being flung open. Genie coming out of the bathroom with a cry of confusion. The door slamming. Some indecisive movement in the kitchen. She was pacing, maybe touching something on the counter. The woman would be checking on him soon. Asking questions. He felt like escaping or vanishing, or both. Anything not to face Genie. The very idea of it offended him on some deep mortal level. He didn't know if he could stand it. To be wheedled by her rough-soft voice, or having to stare at her big dopey face inches away from his own. ******** it, he might just have to kill her. Something that ignorant and unintuitive didn't deserve to live. Like a cow that wanders out into a moonlit farm-road and turned to hamburger by some teenager's pickup.
His brain felt like a bee-hive, something both efficient and completely chaotic. Working on overdrive. Thoughts in rapid-fire. How to get Basil back. How to handle Genie. How to heal their body. Get out of this nasty shirt. Where was his name? Why couldn't he give it to her? Why was she gone now? Why did he make her...?
He first suspected that something was irregular when he turned, and his vision tunneled. Oh, he did not like that. He turned again, and everything started to bleed into ribbons of color, as though his head were zooming light-years a second through a liquid world. He was not light-years away of course, but fractionally closer to the bed, unable to remember going towards it or why. Losing time in short, jerky interruptions. Drawn to it while moving in stop-motion.
He reached for the mattress. Pressing his hand against it. Sliding down. Trying to find something stable in the strobelight. He went "to his knees", his head dropping onto the mattress while the world kept spinning. A sparkling ruby gleamed in his nostril, sliding slowly and precariously to his upper lip. This happened to him a lot. And then like a sweet relief, he felt something pushing him down into the cottony darkness. Something smoking the beehive and putting it all to rest. And for once The Other went with no resistance at all.
Maybe he was ready to finally have that nap.
...
It was only Cordelia's miserable luck that her exit would be blocked by something as mundane as a slow elevator. The wait would seem long and torturous, but at least when the elevator arrived it would be blessedly empty. Closing the metal gate behind her with a sound of shrieking rollers and collapsing metal, it would only barely mask the sound of the commotion that was headed her way. A speeding messenger of unfinished business.
The peaceful silence of the hallway shattered as Genie's apartment door flung open for the second time. A male was the cause, or at least the blur of one. A crackling creature of energy and purpose. The door ricocheted off a rubber stopper and just narrowly avoided hitting him in the face. Whoever it was, he was headed her way. Light glinted brightly from the remains of two glass wings, a flannel shirt fluttering in the air around his midsection. It was the cobra. One of them, anyway.
Though his goal was clearly defined, something about his movement seemed drunk and unsteady. To him there were shapes and colors, but blurrier than before, and a fadedness around the edges that threatened to plunge him back into darkness. At first he tried to will the blindness away. Keep it at bay by sheer determinedness. So desperately determined in fact, that at some point he did a strange pirouette to bang his head against the wall, still plugging ahead. Still going. Like a loop in a roller coaster. He hit it once, but hard, perhaps with the same logic as kicking a television to make the picture clear up. It seemed to work, but by the time he arrived at the gate a few white flakes of plaster still clung to the sticky sweat on his forehead. Basil. His eyes were bright and intent. "Delia!"
A moment too late, he grasped the bars while the elevator started its descent. The gate had a safety lock that kept it from opening while the elevator was in motion. He was devastated. Not enough time. He had so much to tell her. Something amazing. Something she had to know before she left. He twisted his face into a helpless grimace. "Nnngh..."
An idea came to him, a spur of the moment. Something so crazy it had to work. "—Delia!"
All at once he thrust his arm through the bars. All the way to the shoulder, trying to grab at her like a zombie in a movie. What the hell was he doing? Did he want her hand? Her face? A shoulder? The elevator was sinking into the ground, already a third of the way through. There was an element of danger. If he took too long or got careless, he might get hurt, or worst-case-scenario, lose the arm. He had to lower his body with the cage, sweat beading on his brow with the effort. Finally he grabbed a handful of her hair, making a loose fist around the ponytail. Once he had ahold of her, he started to pull, but with plenty of give. Like bouncing tugs like a yo-yo. He wasn't trying to hurt her, although it was unavoidable. It just happened so quickly, in a matter of frenzied seconds. There was some fumbling and apologizing and confusion, until finally he made a sound of success and the arm quickly withdrew, whole and intact. He pulled something out with him, holding it up for her to see. To make it all seem worth it.
It was the hair-tie, pinched between his index and thumb. He tilted it back and forth like inspecting a gold doubloon. She was halfway down now. What did he possibly want with that? And couldn't he have just asked for it?
No.
It was important that he get it himself. He needed to show her. His expression pleading, begging her to realize.
In the last few hours, The Other had made two attempts at that elastic, both unsuccessful. It was an elusive symbol of something personal and private and incredible, and there it was in Basil's trembling fingers, if not without a few shining strands of hair pulled out with it. How could Basil have even known about the hair-tie unless...
Unless he was there.
But how?
Was he watching it all? Watching only a little? Was he there for the kiss? Was he there for the slapping? Why didn't The Other sense him? Was he hiding? Was he playing a trick? Did Cordelia's good-bye summon him? Or did he drag The Other down on his own? Force a switch? Tire him out? There were so many questions of the mental and meta-physical. Questions Basil may not have had the proper vocabulary to answer, or Cordelia the means to understand. But whatever it was, something had changed. The rules were different. The playing field had leveled.
Looking down at Cordelia from the third floor as the elevator lowered, he got down on his "hands and knees", like peering into a storm-drain. Trying to look at her. Trying to tell her. Reassure her the only way he could. "Delia— Delia go home, okay? I know what to do now! I'll be okay! Okay?" He chanted the word, his voice cracking, but insistent, "It'll be okay! It'll be okay! It'll be okay..." Breathing it even as she began to pass out of sight. "Okay? It'll be okay..."
Nothing about his appearance in those final moments inspired confidence. To the red smear under his nose, to the choke bruise on his neck, to the black stitches in his palm, and to the plaster glued to his forehead. But maybe that was what it took. Nothing left. Rock-bottom. Nothing but willpower, a dead toad, a convenient lack of blindness, and a poor girl's hair elastic.
When she was gone, he lingered there. He pressed himself into the ground. Into that stained and ugly carpet. Feeling the grinding vibration of the metal elevator. Genie's quick, trotting footsteps down the hall. Cordelia's heartbeat dropping away. He slowly wound the elastic around his fingers, and something intense, like grief or love, bloomed inside his chest. Like ink into water. Letting it spread. He would be okay. It was a promise. He had to be okay. He had to make himself okay. Get his life back. Get it under control. Make it so that she could come back—be proud of him. See more in him. Be worth all the trouble.
And no matter what, one thing was very clear. This was where it started, without distraction.
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