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 Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2011 5:17 pm
Kam had always assumed the worst of his return to Destiny City was going to be the time it took him to find Khal. In his head, he had always imagined that as his only obstacle, and once it was done (because he had never lost faith in himself) everything would go back to normal. Except his life since then had been anything but normal.
He had met a girl in a bar and discovered he was a super hero, he found his brother but found out he was suffering from some kind of crazy amnesia, and he had just carried once of his best friends to the emergency room, bleeding from something carved into her chest. On top of his ex-girlfriend deciding it was time to have a talk, the last week of Kam's life had been a roller coaster of mostly downward spirals.
The text message from Khal was the absolute last straw.
He had managed to sit on it for a couple of days, alternating between keeping himself busy so he could ignore it and glaring angrily at the screen of his phone. Khal had been moody with him before, but something about the words inside that 160 character limit seemed so final. The more Kam tried to ignore it though, the angrier it made him every time he broke down and reread the message. At some point, he gave up trying to pretend he didn't care.
The walk between Bo's apartment and Khal's wasn't a long one, but it was even shorter from the anger putting a quick pace to his step. No one usually bothered to stop and talk to Kam when he was out, but today it seemed strangers were actually shying away from him. Maybe it was just his man-on-a-mission attitude, or that sneer on his lips. It didn't take much to make Kam look completely unapproachable and on the scale of 'friendliness', his expression was somewhere between 'a*****e' and 'murderer'.
It only grew worse when he stormed through the gate to Khal's apartment complex and walked the path he had only been down once or twice before. Regardless, he found the door with ease and was standing on the landing before he knew it. Time seemed to fly when he was in the middle of a fit of rage.
He just brought one fist up and knocked on the door in front of him, loud, but not enough to scare anyone inside. He needed Khal to open the damn thing, after all.
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Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2011 11:11 pm
Khal woke up to the sound of knocking and rolled over, groggy. Sunlight was streaming through the blinds in the bedroom. This was stupid. It was the middle of the damn day and the middle of an apartment complex, who could possibly be knocking on this door when they could teleport in just as easily? Neither Kaia's footsteps nor voice stepped up to deal with the door, and the sound persisted. She must have left for a while. Fine. He'd take care of it himself and go back to ******** bed.
After rolling out of bed (completely clothed - he was usually too tired to deal with it whenever he got home) he stalked over to the door of the apartment. One glance through the peephole had him pulling back in annoyance. Kam. The last person he was hoping to see.
Well, he was probably here for the phone, or money, or something else he wanted back before he got out of his life. Khal didn't have money but he could probably get it pretty easily if it would get this guy gone already. What part of 'changed my mind, u cn go bak 2 south amrica u wer 2 l8' was not getting the message across? Maybe Kam had been Khetal's brother, but Khetal didn't exist any more. Khetal chose to erase himself. Khal remembered the whole thing now. He'd texted Kam as soon as he'd come to his senses again, possessed by the emotions that had come with the memories he'd reclaimed. And that was supposed to be how it ended.
Whatever, the sooner Kam was gone, the better.
The deadbolt slowly clanked and Khaldun pulled the door open. He greeted Kam flatly with an extremely distant, unfriendly look, rather close to the one he'd had when Kam had first found him.
"What do you want-"
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Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2011 11:53 pm
"What do you want-"
That was as far as Khal got before Kam pulled back his fist and planted is squarely in the middle of his face. There was no Gehenna power behind the punch but even in his human form, Kam was capable of sending the punk stumbling backwards until he landed roughly on his a**.
He didn't stop long enough to revel in his surprise attack, he just sneered and crossed the threshold until he could stand at Khal's feet, swinging the door shut with a slam behind him so no curious onlookers would interrupt his attempt to bully his brother into submission.
"You're being a selfish little b*****d," he jabbed a finger in the air with every word just to get his point across. The frown on his lips turned into a sneer and he reached down to grab Khal by the collar of his shirt. His fist curled in the fabric and yanked him up, holding him off of the floor so that nothing but his long legs even touched.
"I have no ******** idea what you've been through, I've got no ******** idea what is going on in your head, but this isn't something you just get to ******** throw away, Khal." His jaws clenched as his dark eyes stared down at equally dark ones. There was a vein in his throat bulging in his anger and if this had been anyone but Khal, he probably would have bashed him into the floor just to get his point across. "Quit acting like a damn child."
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:20 am
There were a lot of things Khal expected to happen, but this wasn't one of them. Khal hadn't been attacked as a civilian in a long time, he'd lost his edge. He hit the carpet hard and it jarred him worse than it ought to have. Too many head injuries - he was probably going to get a concussion at this rate. While Kam went to slam the door, Khal decided to quickly take an inventory of his injuries. With a growl he reached up and gingerly touched his face, coming away with blood. Kaia was going to kill him, if Kam didn't first. At this point, Khal didn't know what to expect now. "Ah, ******** Kam started pulling him up, Khal had a moment of deja-vu that gave way to a familiar panic. But he was angry, too. How dare Kam just waltz back into Destiny City after three years and demand everything go back to normal? He ******** normal over the moment he left. Kam needed to move on like Khetal had; and Khal would do whatever he could to help speed that process up, violently.
"Hah. You're one to talk, Kamboja," he leered, grasping at Kam's wrist. He continued to speak as if he was talking to a stranger. Khal was an expert at writing people off, at this point. "Didn't you throw your brother away first?"
And while he was distracted, Khal kicked one of his legs up into Kam's knee.
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 2:37 am
Kam's grip on Khal faltered the instant he pulled back his leg and slammed his foot into his knee. He fell forward into a kneeling position and Khal landed back on the ground with a thud. A long, pained hiss came from between Kam's clenched teeth and he let one hand fall down to hold the knee cap that was throbbing in pain. That was playing dirty.
When the flash of pain began to subside enough for him to think, Kam's eyes flashed open and narrowed on Khal again.
"I didn't abandon you." He put emphasis on the word, even for someone as dull as he was sometimes, he heard the shitty implication. "You were being taken care of, you were supposed to stay here and finish high school like a normal ******** kid. Enough of our lives was already ********." His words still held an undertone of pain, like he was strained for breath. He grimaced a little as he tried to put weight on his knee but abandoned that in favor of reaching out and grabbing Khal by the ankle as he tried to scramble up onto his feet.
"Not my ******** fault you're too stubborn to be normal, too good to actually learn a damn thing." He gave one hard yank and pulled Khal back down to the floor with him. He scrambled for all of two seconds and found an old sneaker (probably Khal's) by the doorway, which he immediately chunked right at his brother's chest, hoping to wind him long enough to get back on his own two feet.
"If you really didn't care, you wouldn't be so damn mad. You're acting like a spoiled ******** princess, Khaldun." Every ounce of his anger went into making that word sound like an insult, but his attention was on trying to stand again. He winced, but finally managed to get himself back onto his feet. He was going to hit him twice as hard for the bruise he already knew was forming - there went dead lifts for the week.
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Posted: Sun Jul 24, 2011 2:54 am
Just as Khal thought he was going to get away, Kam dragged him back down to earth. The subsequent boot to the stomach had him curling up and rolling onto his side while Kam took advantage of the moment and rose slowly, tossing out insults all the while. Mocking him. Taunting him. As if it was all his own fault the situation he was in. Denying him the control he wanted over his own life. Well, the bait worked; apprehension was giving way completely to anger. His cheek pressed into the carpet and eyes half-focused on Kam's sneakers, Khal started to talk.
"So it was someone else's problem to you. Wasn't your responsibility."
Blood was still flowing freely from his nose. He coughed once, a heavy mixture of the blood and winding. But his legs worked just fine. What Kam had to buy time for, Khal did almost instantly, rising to his feet moments after. He hunched forward and balled his hands into fists. Being reckless did mean that strategy was going completely out the window now, and his body language was making him transparent as hell. His voice was growing louder the longer he spoke, and it felt like it was out of his control.
"Well nothing's changed, Kam. You didn't want to help and now you don't have to. So don't come barging into my life pretending you can just decide this s**t for me. Who is and isn't family. I've been on my own for three long years and a lot of s**t has gone down and you weren't there for any of it! It's too late, Kam! It's too ******** late!"
It didn't take more than a few steps to launch himself at Kam. One fist swung up for Kam's face, the other pulled back for his stomach. Petty vengeance at this point, but being a lieutenant for two years had taught him to appreciate whatever vengeance he could get.
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Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2011 8:13 pm
Khal's words washed over Kam and his entire body tightened visibly with every syllable. His muscles tensed, his hands balled into fists, and his jaw was clenched so tight that a vein in his neck was straining against the skin. It made him sneer involuntarily which simply made him look even more pissed off, a feet considering how he had looked walking into it. By the time Khal started to come towards him, he was completely incapable of speech. The silence was probably more ominous than his words ever could be.
Kam shifted to dodge the blow to his face but it meant he walked right into the follow up punch to his stomach. His abs tightened and he let out one long, low hiss of pain. Kam was a brawler though and one little punch from his skinny, good for nothing little brother wasn't about to put him down - he wouldn't allow it.
Despite the fact that he hunched over a little to protect the spot Khal had just landed a blow on, his eyes remained focused on the taller kid. With one low growl he launched forward, still hunched, and tackled Khaldun with all of the force he could find. It would have been simple if they'd just hit the floor, but he propelled the pair of them into a side table that cracked instantly beneath the pressure and weight of both of their bodies. They fell to the floor on top of splintered wood with Khal's body pinned beneath it and Kam's weight.
"It's not always about you, you know." He snarled through gritted teeth as he looked down at Khal, fighting to find words in the middle of all his rage. "I had to leave and you couldn't ******** come. You were supposed to be safe here." His chest was heaving as he spoke, a mix of his physical effort and all of the anger he was feeling. It wasn't just Khal's shitty attitude now, it was everything. His guilt, his panic, his hurt. He cared, he just had a funny way of showing it.
He loomed back over the skinnier figure, punching one hand down into a section of the splintered table top. It cracked around the punch and his hand would kill him for it later, but he could barely feel it for the moment. "You don't even remember the s**t I've done for you, or half of what we've been through, so don't pretend to know what I think." He grimaced at his own words and leaned back and away from the brother he had just essentially body slammed into a table. He started to push himself up.
"You're the only ******** reason I'm even home now, do you know that?"
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Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2011 6:12 pm
"Son of a -" Khal hit the table hard before they both hit the floor, dazed. He didn't have the strength to push someone as heavy as Kam off of him, no matter how hard he tried. It didn't last long - Khal flinched when the fist came down inches from his face. After the first punch Kam had thrown, he had to assume the worst about every sudden movement. At this rate, Kam was going to kill him. He weathered the angry accusations from above, only responding when Kam started to move away and give him room.
"Why are you wasting your time then?" he scoffed. His right arm slithered down to his pocket and pulled out a wallet. Gingerly his other hand joined in to search for something, though some movements caused him to seize up from the residual pain of his shoulders and back slamming into a table. It appeared as though he was going to somehow dig up a few moth-eaten bills and throw bus fare in Kam's face, but they could both see from their angles that he didn't have even a single dollar to his name right now. "I told you, it's too late for coming back and trying to fix s**t. It's not working."
"There's a lot I don't remember, Kam. My entire life. Everything I know is only because you told me. Only ever because you told me what happened. It's not enough." Kam's family photo was pried from the wallet, carefully folded along the crease lines. Khal could have done a lot of things with it right then, but in the end all he did was hold it up between them. Whatever it took to get Kam to get the message. "I'm done lying to myself. Whatever I might have been before, whoever I might have been, I'm not your brother any more."
"Just leave again. Go back to South America - go back to your life and I'll go back to mine."
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Posted: Sun Aug 07, 2011 6:54 pm
Kam pushed himself to his feet with a wince, slowly rolling one shoulder to relive a sudden tension that he'd probably caused on his own. It was a good distraction from actually looking down at Khal, who was laying on a bed of broken wood and splinters. Now that his anger was slowly starting to ebb, he was feeling a brand new swarm of guilt. At least until Khal started to talk again.
"Why?" he laughed, though it was a short, annoyed sound. His dark eyes rolled back down to the kid as he shifted through his wallet and if he'd been just a little more childish, he would have rolled his eyes at the sight of it. "Because you're all I ******** have left and I'm not going to let you take that away just because you're PMSing this week."
For a single moment he looked unsure of what Khal planned to do with the picture, afraid that he might actually rip it up. Relief swept through him when all that he did was hold it out, but even then he couldn't bring himself to take it. It was the only thing he had to force Khal to accept who he was. He reached out and simply pushed Khal's hand back towards him with enough force to show that he wasn't going to argue about it.
"No." It was a short, crisp word followed by him hunching down and squatting next to Khal's bed of splinters. "It's not enough because you've been fighting it since I got home. You haven't wanted to know, you've been hiding from it the whole time." He frowned at him, dark eyes staring at dark eyes for a stretched silence. "I know I ******** up, punk, I get it. I knew it the moment I got that letter from our Aunt. I'm not going anywhere though, not this time."
He smirked and raised one brow, suddenly cocky about something he hadn't said yet. "We can keep fighting about it, if you want." He spread his hands out again as he spoke the offer, encompassing his handiwork with the table - or what had been the table.
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Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 2:50 am
After slowly re-pocketing the picture, Khal pulled himself somewhat upright and held his face in his hands. Splinters were clinging to his dreadlocks. Sometimes everything felt poisonous. This previous identity of his had him awkwardly trapped, for as long as Kam refused to take his photo and go. Khal's happiness seemed to occur only in brief pockets surrounded by long stretches of turmoil. Like now. His private life was always tangled up in Negaverse affairs. Outside of a given moment, he had nothing. Even Alkaid had other priorities. It was all he could do to reach out and assert himself just to prove he had any control over the way things went. The more Khal learned what passed for normal, the more sensitive he was to those moments he trampled in his fits of rage.
So what was more important? This illusion of control he cultivated for hinself? Or hiding from that increasing pressure by putting his grudges aside for once and accepting what little family he had?
As usual, he didn't really have a choice in the matter. Kam wasn't going to let himself be pushed away. Khal wanted to laugh at how stupid and convoluted it all was sometimes.
"No, I ******** up too..." He lowered his hands, finally looked Kam in the eye. But he couldn't explain any of it. Not without revealing himself as a General. It was all tied to his other life. The predominant one. This facade, the brief time he spent as Khaldun and not Hematite, was hardly a life at all. More the undercover identity than his powered one. He was just glad Kam had never gone looking for explanations or excuses for his behavior and the state of his memory. Or anything else about his life now. Kam just accepted Khal for what he was, even if that clearly wasn't what he'd hoped for. Unconditional. "I wasn't thinking. I was mad and I just... I don't know."
Kam's offer to keep fighting was met with a fist slammed into Kam's shoulder, aiming to knock him off balance. Khal's eyes fell on the scattered pieces of the table. Gingerly he picked up part of a table leg and the present situation began to seep back into his mind. He reached up to wipe away more of the blood oozing from his probably-broken nose. "s**t. Kaia's going to kill me. And you, if she sees you here."
He really wasn't exaggerating about what she'd do to Kam.
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Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 3:58 pm
Kam laughed very lightly in an attempt to ease the tension as the younger Vaiphei hit him squarely in the shoulder, sending him rocking on his feet slightly. He'd accepted the friendly punch without an attempt to block it because, honestly, that was about as close as the pair were going to get to any kind of physical compassion.
"Don't stress over it too much, the anger thing." When he'd regained his balance again he shrugged, then nodded his head at the table he'd used as a platform for tackling his brother onto. "I'm pretty sure it's some shitty family curse or something, I've done much worse than try to alienate someone. If that's the worse you ever manage then I have to say, I'll probably be a little disappointed that you haven't lived up to the family name." He smirked again, as if he were joking, but he couldn't really reveal the truth behind those words any more than Khaldun could let him in on his own secrets.
The smirk faded as his brother mentioned that girlfriend of his, yet again, and for the first time since Khal had opened the door, Kam actually seemed to take in his surroundings. He glanced from the dirt his shoes had tracked in, to the splintered table, then up to his brother's bleeding nose. He grimaced at the idea of being chastised over what, in his opinion, was a necessary evil.
"Yea, I think I'm going to bail on dealing with that." He grinned, dark and amused, as he took a few steps back towards the door. "I'll see you after she lets you back out of the house, yeah?" His hand closed around the doorknob and yanked it back open, letting sunlight fill the room and illuminate the entire scene. It looked even worse in the spotlight.
He stepped over the threshold and had the door halfway closed before his amusement faltered and, at the last second, he poked his dreadhead through the crack. "I mean it, punk, don't make me come find you again." Then he disappeared, pulling the door shut with unnecessary strength and heaving a sigh as he stared out at the road.
Man, he really needed an aspirin.
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