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 Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 11:14 pm
Hitch might sound like an idiot, might even think he was one, but that didn't mean he really was. He could see the hopefulness rise and fall on Alex's face, like he was trying to remind himself why he shouldn't get his hopes up, why he shouldn't just embrace the chance and run with it.
It was an achingly familiar expression.
He whistled between his teeth at the last one, because he couldn't imagine - he couldn't begin to imagine what he'd do to himself if he did something like that to Tolliver, and the way Alex tensed when he said it showed that it hadn't meant nothing. "Look. I don't know what the story is with you an' your boyfriend, an' I mean - I'm sure there's a story there, if you wanna tell it, but - lemme ask you somethin' - "
Another pause alloted for the drag of a cigarette. "Is you stayin' here doin' him any good? - if you wanna help him or whatever, wouldn't it be better to do it from the other side? - or if he's beyond it, like - what good's it gonna do to stay here? - ******** up is ******** up. It encompasses all levels of ******** up. If you don't take this chance, honestly, Alex, I'm gonna tell you right now, you'll have ******** up again. You're gonna regret it if you don't."
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Posted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 11:57 pm
Alex really, really wanted to buy into it. To believe that there was a second chance waiting for him. But it was hard to accept the possibility. What was he supposed to do, anyway?
...Maybe go talk to Hvergelmir. Maybe ask her if she would help him. But he wasn't sure he could manage that, even.
"Do you really want to know?" Because really it was a story about how weak and terrible and self-serving he was, and surely it would shatter any illusions Hitch might have about him being anything else. He exhaled.
"It doesn't help him. I can't help him, he doesn't want my help or anyone's. He's taken to the Negaverse alarmingly well." He rested his forehead on his knees. "I know I'm not helping anything, least of all myself, but what does it matter? I mean..." He raised a hand long enough to wave it in the air. "I could always just quit, I guess." But he had a feeling that would end worse for Des or Lila than it did for him.
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 12:17 am
"Lemme ask you a question, " Hitch grunted, flicking his ash and waving the cigarette at him. "Have you ever, in any ********' situation, heard someone ask 'do you really wanna know' in a serious way and the other person says '<******** no ******** off you douchenozzle'? So if you're plannin' to tell me, cut the bullshit an' just say it." He spared him another half-smile, more earnest this time.
As for quitting. Well. "Quittin' is an option. But lemme tell you. I just tried to quit for a few weeks, an' guess what? - a train turned into a youma and I got a molotov cocktail thrown at me." ******** he wished he was exaggerating. "An' I've only been at this, what, like two months top, maybe? I don't ********' know - plus, I mean - " Hitch shifted - he couldn't crouch anymore, so he settled down cross-legged onto the pavement. " - you had a drinkin' problem you said, right? - if you just quit, like - what kinda ********' support system you gonna have then? - couldn't they find you easier if you didn't switch over? That's how that works, right?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 12:41 am
Alex actually laughed, a little, because Hitch's assessment was totally fair, there was never a time that "do you really want to know" was met with refusal. So he uncurled himself a little, stretching one leg out and resting a tattoed arm across the other knee.
"I heard about the train youma thing, but nobody invited me to that party. Probably because I'm professionally useless." It actually came out sounding like a joke. "As for the drinking problem, hold your judgement there, because that's part of the very long, very fun story of how I ******** up completely and utterly." He exhaled.
"So I've always kind of liked drinking? I'm underage as hell but whatever, that's what a good fake ID is for, but late last year I sort of. Spiralled. I'd been being all aggressively terrible evil Negaverse monster fear the hounds of hell blah blah blah, and I just...got confronted with a couple of things that made me realize how ******** up what I was doing was, and I started hitting the bottle to try and feel better. Protip: no." That was delivered with full seriousness. "So there's this General, Schörl, and she's like, Satan's terrifying sadistic sister, I s**t you not, she has a rattan cane for a weapon and she's blonde and dresses all in green and if you see her, run the other way. Just. ******** run." He shuddered, head to toe. "She's one of the Generals in my division, and she decided I was an embarrassment. So she threw me in a dark hole, kept me energy drained and dizzy, and forced me to go through detox. For two weeks. At the end of it, she wouldn't let me go until I gave her a goal. A real, concrete, achievable goal.
"And because I'm a horrible ******** human being, I promised her I'd either bring Caledonia of Cosmos in for corruption, or I'd deliver his starseed, by the fifteenth of June." When he'd started talking, he had been looking at Hitch, but he ended up staring at the ground, feeling something hot and wet p***k at the corners of his eyes. "It took me the whole damn time to do it. Ran right up on the ******** deadline, but I got him to meet me, and I drained him, and I called Laurelite - and I guess I pulled too much because he powered down. And he was Luka - my...my boyfriend, then." He swallowed, and the tears started to fall, and he pressed his face into his hands as if that would cover it up. "I gave him back his energy, and I tried to get him to run, but it was too late."
He swallowed, and called his henshin pen to his hand. "I'm not gonna attack you," he said, like it mattered, before he called his transformation and turned back onto Kerberos. "I just..." He rifled between his sashes, until he came out with three delicate bells - one gold, one silver, and one half and half.
"These were his. They fell off while Laurelite was...corrupting him."
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 12:56 am
Well, good, at least he'd gotten the sad sack to laugh. Although he didn't totally laugh at the train thing. "You're lucky, that went to s**t real fast. Some other corrupt came into my train car an' started ********' spoutin' off apologies - red hair, braids - don't know how he made out after the molotov come to think of it, " and he frowned, tilting his head forward.
Then, at the judgement thing, he made it a point to wave the cigarette again. "Hey, hey, no judgement, but continue." And who was Hitch to judge, honestly? He'd been getting into drinking with Tolliver, Jarias, sometimes alone - and he couldn't help but laugh at the fake ID thing, simply because, "********, really? I've been in this city for how long, no one's ********' carded me yet, " but that was enough about him, this was Alex's story.
As for the rest though - "What is it with the negaverse and ********' evil hellspawn women?" he hissed out, crossing his arms and making a disgusted face. The rest, though... a look of comprehension dawned on Hitch's face, but the disgust was gone, left with the talk of Schörl. He tensed a little by reflex when Alex transformed again, but didn't really expect him to pull anything. Not unless he wanted a punch in the face.
"Corruption is some scary a** s**t, " he murmured as he glanced at the bells, and shuddered at the thought. Like, Thraen had talked about it, but this was the first real account he'd heard of one. "It really changes people that much...?"
Nope. Never letting that one happen. Cinnabar's words rang through his head again, offering him that horrible choice, and he shuddered again.
"That's awful. That's awful an' I'm sorry that happened to you, Alex, but - " Hitch looked at him and frowned, deeply. "You tried to help him. - it's not like you knew it was your boyfriend goin' into it." Hypocrite. He'd be just as miserable if he accidentally warped Tolliver like that, maybe worse. He definitely wouldn't have forgiven himself. "I know how this probably sounds, but like, I think you're bein' a little too hard on yourself Care Bear."
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 1:17 am
Kerberos popped back to Alex as soon as he'd made his point with the bells, mostly as a gesture of goodwill to make sure Gitch didn't think he was suddenly going to turn on him. Which seemed really unlikely anyway, because he was definitely still crying, and that made him look about as threatening as a wet paper bag.
"Corruption - chaos - reaches inside ooh and makes everything bad about you a thousand times worse. When I first started out I was so, so angry, I'd lost my twin sister a few months before and all they had to do was wind me up and let me go." Now, he was pretty sure it was preying on his doubts, on his self-hatred, but knowing it was possible and actually getting out from under its influence were two hugely different things. "And yeah, when you get corrupted in, if you're coming from the other side - either way, actually - you lose memoirs. More, I guess, if you're corrupted by force. Luka lost...just about everything." He reached up to run his hands through his hair.
"Too hard on myse - I betrayed him!" And there was energy in Kerberos's voice, a frantic pained desperation. "He trusted me, showed up no questions asked, asked me if I was okay because he could tell I was freaking out - and that was before he knew who I was! Once he did know, he refused to leave, because he didn't..." Alex's legs and his energy gave out, and he sank to his knees, pressing his face into his hands and sobbing desperately. Until then, his tears had been present but silent - not anymore. "He didn't want me to get hurt."
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 1:31 am
All the more reason to stay the ******** away from corruption - and suddenly he was almost relieved that Cinnabar had even bothered giving him a choice, if that made sense. She could've just taken him - he'd seen her teleport. Yeah she'd been about to kill him, and yeah she was still on his mind almost every day (how could she not be?), but at least he was still here now. He was still him and he was still whole and even after three days in the hospital, he'd gotten to go home with Tolliver and it was almost like things were normal again.
Almost.
"Yeah, but it's not like - it's not like you didn't have a conscience about it, " and Hitch wondered if he was grasping for straws here or something, because Alex was sitting there sobbing and <********> he hated to see people cry. He fidgeted awkwardly for a second before hoisting himself back up into a crouch, slinking over the few feet he needed to before kneeling, hesitating a little before wrapping a tentative arm around the sobbing man's shoulders. His hands were rough from work and his drumming. "Like, I mean - I know this probably doesn't help, but like - he didn't want you getting hurt, right? - so ********' - if that's the last thing he wished for as him, don't you ********' owe it to him to try? An' maybe try an' drag him back from the other side? Somethin' like that?"
So much easier said than done - god he was such s**t at this.
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:20 am
Alex was shaking, and he tensed when Hitch wrapped an arm around his shoulders, like he was instinctively flinching away from any kind of comfort. He wrapped his arms around himself and shrank in as far as he could.
"H-having a conscience doesn't fix it," he said, "I can't fix it, it doesn't matter what I do," because Caledonite wasn't going to come back for him, all he was to Cale was a monster. He hated himself for it, but he didn't see any way to undo it. He certainly couldn't give back the lives he'd taken or the energy he'd stolen, or undo all of the stupid things he'd done.
"Besides, why do you care?" And whatever energy he'd managed, even if it was just to tear into himself, was gone. The tension drained out of him, but not in a good way. "I mean, I guess except that if I keep going I hurt people." And it was so much easier for him to assume that was what this was about - that it really wasn't about saving him, it was about saving all of the people he would inevitably hurt.
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 11:54 am
"No, it doesn't - but it's a start, " Hitch said bluntly, a little harshly, but he wasn't one for sugarcoating s**t for anyone that wasn't Tolliver St. James. In response to him trying to pull away, he just leaned in and hugged harder, because if there was one thing he was it was a damn persistent hugger goddamnit.
"I never said anythin' about fixin'. Redemption ain't about fixin', it's about making rights where you've wronged or ********' whatever - it's about doin' good you ain't been able to before, it's about - I care because I can see you're not a shithead, you ********' moron, " he growled it, but not in a mean-spirited way.
"I can see you're a decent ********' guy an' I'd like to help you be the guy you wanna be, but like, you gotta ********' work with me here Alex, alright? - whatever ********' motivates you to do it, for yourself, for someone else, for the people that give a legit s**t - quit ********' mopin' about what you can't change, an' change what you can already!"
Again. All super hypocritical. To the max. Whatever.
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 1:01 pm
Alex was not exactly a stranger to aggressively persistent comfort - Des did it, too, and so did Aegir and Hver and even Kairatos. It still felt foreign and uncomfortable and undeserved. Once he'd been a touchy person, thoroughly physically affectionate even in nonsexual ways. Somewhere along the line - along with a lot of the rest of the brightness and cheer and confidence that had been Alex - it had died. But he didn't have it in him to try and get out of this, so he just sat there and cried and felt terrible because it wasn't fair or right to ask someone he'd hurt to comfort him. He'd done all of this to himself, and now he was making someone else put out effort to try and make him feel less like s**t.
He started shaking his head, viscerally denying what Hitch was insisting. "I'm not a decent person," he said, but to get into why was far more tangled than he was going to even touch on. He could babble about what he'd done to Luka ir any of the other horrible things he'd done, but what he was doing to Des - taking advantage of his grief over Gabriel to get what he'd been wanting for such a long time - it was too personal, far too private, to explain to a near stranger. And he was doing that without any Chaos help at all. That was just who he was.
"Believe me, I'm really, really not, even discarding the s**t I've done as Kerberos, I was never." And that was why he didn't deserve redemption, even with it being offered over and over in a silver platter. "I'm not the kind of villain that gets a redemption arc. I'm pretty sure the best I can look for is," and he stopped, but it was probably obvious what he was thinking of. "You know, a decent alas poor villain death scene." There was a thought, he supposed. If he could do that much, maybe it would mean something, and it asked for zero effort from anyone else.
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 3:15 pm
"Oh. My. ********'. God, " Hitch groaned, slowly running his hand through his hair - y'know, the one that wasn't in a cast - and he shot Alex an utterly exhausted look. "What is with you people and the goddamn theatrics? What, you take actin' lessons from Lite Brite or somethin'?" He smacked the other boy lightly in the head with his palm and then dropped his chin down onto Alex's shoulder with a weary, weary sigh that was totally played up well sort of.
"Listen. There's answers, an' dyin' ain't one of 'em, " he grumbled. "That's game over. You get nothin' after that. You're taken as you are, an' that's your legacy. You're Care Bear the terrible, end of story. I gotta tell you though, if you go and off yourself after I sat here an' tried to talk you back, an' other people tried to do the same, I'm personally gonna find your a** in the goddamn afterlife and kick it so hard it becomes your ********' face." Hey, Tolliver might think Hitch was charming, but Hitch sure as ******** didn't get why. "Here, here - if I can give you five reasons to give bein' white moon a shot, will you talk to your lovely lady friend an' get a move on already? Can we do that?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 7:52 pm
"I'm not being theatrical," Alex argued, but how did he explain all of it to a near-complete stranger, who had only caught the tail end? His past was easy enough, but that wasn't all of it. It just felt like there were so many other things that outweighed the horror of Ascended General Kerberos...and even that wasn't guaranteed.
Purification, perhaps, could free him from that terrible future. Or it could put him back on the path towards it. It was uncomfortably frightening to imagine being forcibly recorrupted, mindwiped, and so desperate to prove his loyalty that he did the one thing he had tried so hard to escape because he no longer remembered he was afraid of it. As he was now, he knew Des would never let him go down that road.
But... "Care Bear the terrible?" He'd let the nickname pass without comment the first time, but he couldn't let it go a second. "No, you know what, I don't want to know." He waved a hand. Hitch was wrong - he'd seen how legacy worked. Once somebody was dead, all you remembered was the good things. He'd seen it with his sister - suddenly their mother, so distant for most of their lives, adored her just so very much and thought she was so wonderful and so clever even though when Cait was alive she was lazy and frivolous and stupid and wasting her potential.
People were kinder to the dead.
"It's not that I don't know it's better, I just..." Didn't deserve it. "Fine, go ahead."
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Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 3:34 pm
Hitch shot him a completely skeptical look that said without saying that he believed him about as much as he believed Skittles really tasted like rainbows.
"What? Kerberos. Care Bear. Same thing, " he said without so much as batting an eye, shrugging his shoulders and flashing him a playful smirk - the most playful one he'd given him up until now, hair flopping hopelessly into his eyes because the man really should've gotten a damn haircut awhile ago.
If he'd known what Alex was thinking - he would've argued, and he would've argued hard, furiously, angrily. Because even if they'd tried to be respectful, he'd heard the whispers that lingered after his mother's death, and he'd seen and heard so many ******** callous things as they all just tried to get back their damn money and - none of them really gave a s**t about her or preserving her memory. Not a damn one. If anyone said anything nice, it was only to make themselves ******** look better, or feel better for not doing more when they should have.
He cracked his knuckles then, holding a hand up in the air. "Okay, I'm gonna totally level with you here Alex. Reason one is selfish as hell. - You know who I am. I've got at least one ******** up youma general on my a** that wants me an' every ********' person I love dead." He was still smirking as he said it, trying not to look bothered. Trying. "If she figures out you know who I am, uh, our lives are both about to get a hell of a lot worse. Especially since, uh, I guess we're friends now, so - yeah."
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Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2015 6:10 pm
Alex just shook his head slightly. Obviously he wasn't going to shake the nickname, so he could deal with it, because it was cute and absurd and if he'd been in a better place, he probably would have liked it.
Hitch's first reason was carefully considered - it was the reason he hadn't wanted to know Warhol's identity, for all the good it had ultimately done her. Poor thing was long gone, memories totally wiped. That hadn't happened to Hitch yet, obviously, but Kerberos knowing his identity was probably dangerous for that reason, especially given that he'd already admitted to dragging one person in to be corrupted.
"I am going to give you that one as a completely reasonable objection to me continuing to stay Negaverse." He said. Half-youma General, female- there could be only one. "Cinnabar, right?" Erythrite had worked with her for a time, had witnessed her promotion (had waxed rhapsodic about her, a little bit, which made him question his sister's tastes because really? The half-monster chick? Really?) "Those are from her, I'm guessing." He gestured to the scars on Hitch's face. "She's vicious as hell. Dedicated, too. Sorry you got her on your a**, man."
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Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:04 am
Hitch didn't realize the way he cringed at the mention of her name. "Yeah, the horned b***h. You guessed right." He laughed as if it was a joke now, although it wasn't, it was nowhere near a joke, and his cheeks still burned from shame about those ******** scars."You think these are fun, you should see my back. ********' real piece of work she was."
Although, ********, Kerberos had said " - Dedicated huh? - so - really no chance she's just gonna forget the whole thing an' lay off me then I'm guessin'?" Again, he laughed. It wasn't a very convincing one.
Anyway, this wasn't about him and the very, very lethal enemy he'd made. Hitch made a face and then cleared his throat. "Reason 2. You said chaos ******** with your head. - why would you wanna keep exposin' yourself to it then? Like, what if it ********' twists you into somethin' awful, like Cinna-b***h-crunch or somethin'? What if you hurt more people that way?"
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