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 Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 1:42 pm
Silence.
It was a state that he'd never gotten along with, a creature of noise and rage and irritation - silence meant thinking, and for Rep, introversion was self destruction. But lately, he couldn't avoid it, Tracey had listened to his orders to shut the ******** up and he supposed he should have been glad of the obedience. He wasn't, it simply felt too little too late. He'd trusted the fallen angel with his innermost and that trust had been destroyed, it would be difficult for him to ever get back.
When he found himself mentally pacing the same thoughts over and over, he decided to take a walk.
Rep visited the graveyard more than he would ever strictly admit, or had in the beginning - time was more limited these days. He had come back a lot when Barney and Sandy died, their deaths hit him hard and he'd never addressed it. He hadn't known them really, and he never would, just the first of many hunters who'd never come back - it was a thought he toyed with for a long time but could never reconcile and had resulted in him exaggerating existing fears out of recognition. Snakes became harbingers. Death had always been tough for him to deal with if indeed he dealt with it at all. There was part of him that still stubbornly believed that one day, if he was monumentally bad or monumentally good, his mother would come home to him.
Killzone didn't feel dead to him either, and as he made his way to the solemn rows of graves, he found himself toying with the friendship bracelet he wore. The man had had so much more he could have taught him, had there been time. All that remained were the unrealised possibilities. Sometimes he had to come see the grave to remind himself there would be no one left to fight his corner if he ******** up again, he'd used up all his angels.
There was the sound of guitar from the graves, and Rep found himself walking instinctually just a bit quieter, he didn't even think straight away of the obvious, that there weren't many people around who could even play the damn instrument, that it was very likely Jerry. Instead he just found himself momentarily jealous of the player's skill, and in some quiet way, kind of pleased that other people came up here too, that he wasn't some morbid oddity.
He kept his eyes on the graves as he walked along, wary of wandering in on the awkwardness that might be someone bemoaning a loved one, and paused to read one of the inscriptions, someone he didn't know, not much older than him. He was oddly muted for Rep, graveyards were a place that wether he liked it or not hauled him back to a place long before the nastiness.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 1:57 pm
Jerry ripped at the strings, not even recognizing the song. Just the sound and feel of the instrument was enough. A riff from this, a chord exchange from that, plowing through his mental collection manically, grasping at just the right one that expressed his feelings better than he could articulate it. Somehow it came together, if only from a semblance of choppy, angry rhythm. The string Robert had fixed was glowing brightly, threatening to burst, but his enraged strumming cut short when he heard a boot on a misplaced twig, whirling around as though ready for a fight.
When he caught sight of red hair, he sagged a bit, expression hardening before his eyes returned to the instrument in his hands, picking away softer this time.
"What do you want."
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 2:07 pm
The tune was very far from what he'd ever expected from Jerry, skilled but at the same time feral, like a painter attacking a canvas with a brush. It was a bizarre glimpse of emotion from the guy he sometimes doubted was capable of anger until he snapped.
Rep gave Jerry a rather nonplussed sort of stare, tinged with just an edge of defiance, freezing dead in his tracks at the aggressive response. "You say that like I came here just to ******** annoy you." His tone was level and careful, he wasn't out to start a fight with Jerry, not after being trapped in Roar's line of sight last time, not after watching him fight that ******** fog dragon.
"I actually like. Came here to like, visit. You know, graves. Graveyard and that." He crossed his arms, defensive rather than on the usual offensive.
He looked past the other man at the grave. Everyone had to look out for everyone else, all they had was their divisions. "You sound angry." It wasn't meant to be an insult but navigating concerned verbal terrain was tough.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 2:21 pm
His answer seemed to be enough for Jerry, his eyes drifting up to the headstone he sat across from before down again. "I don't know if I'm angry yet." He answered curtly. "Frustrated, I guess." He sounded more than just frustrated.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 2:27 pm
Rep kept his arms crossed, it felt like a decent alternative for now to the less physical wall of aggression he normally hid behind. There was a lot of things he could have said, punted the conversation off into the realm of the usual insults. For whatever reason, he didn't feel like it.
He cleared his throat gruffly. "Anything like, in particular?" Even asking felt like setting himself up to be knocked back. Realistically - he asked himself - who would tell him anything?
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 2:42 pm
Jerry's mind on the subject wasn't that far from Rep's own. "What do you care?" What did anyone care, really. Just crazy, pathetic, stupid Jerry Collins doing that silly thing he did. Take advantage of him while you've got him, boys and girls, cause he'll probably get himself killed next mission.
"Everything," He grunted, and stopped his playing.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 2:50 pm
He fell quiet at the question, what the hell could he say without sticking his neck out? Nothing. But saying nothing was ******** cowardly.
"You are a sun." He said, somehow hoping that fact would say what arrogance and pride meant he couldn't. Without Tracey there to counter it, that usual inner voice ran amok, making him acutely paranoid that his concern was likely simply insulting to the other man, salt rubbed into whatever wounds he had.
But he kept going because of the grave. "s**t tends to suck around here quite a lot."
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 4:53 pm
"s**t generally sucks for me always," He said quietly, staring down at his silent instrument with the trembling look of a man deep in thought. "Is... I mean... is it really so awful? To care I mean? To want to be happy?"
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:04 pm
Rep eyed Jerry with a slight frown - it was one thing to make other people angry, to have the power to make them snap, but that was a very different thing to this. There was no joy in watching someone in a place that felt somehow familiar.
"Naw man, honestly. It's not." Again he shifted his gaze to the stone, the odd sensation that he was being watched by the deceased hunter pushing him away from the tendency to insult when he felt nervous. "It takes a ******** strong person to care and show it. Really ******** strong. Cause you just ******** have to put yourself out there no matter what and its easy ******** prey for the assholes, for everything to just abuse it." There was a twinge of guilt that he tended relentlessly to go for the throat on those sort of people, testing what they could tolerate.
He sighed and rolled his eyes, entirely at himself. "Whatever, I'm being ******** preachy now, what the ******** do I know about caring? Of all people. That's your area." He sat down on the grass next to one of the nearby graves with a heavy sigh. He did care in his own way, but often his idea of helping people was to try and inevitably make them like him. "But everyone wants to be happy, whether they deserve it or not."
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:22 pm
"I'm tired, Rep. I'm tired of being so... so ******** lonely." He hardly flinched as the profanity slipped from his mouth.
His grandmother would be rolling in her grave.
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:30 pm
Rep had never for a moment considered it even a possibility that someone like Jerry could be lonely. Every time Rep had ever seen him he seemed to have people around him who were his friends, it was only now he thought about it more closely, so many of those people had that same impression of tolerance rather than acceptance. He was used to being tolerated at best, he knew how to spot it, he'd just never considered for a moment a guy who wore his heart so openly on his sleeve could be shunned in any way. Plus he had Sasha too. Sasha had seemed like him, that same passive sort of optimism, made for each other, at least he'd thought so until -
He found himself running a thumb over the scars on the side of his neck and remembered twitter.
"Did something happen?"
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:44 pm
Jerry gave a sudden snort, throwing the guitar down into the dirt to wobble up to his feet, "I don't know. I don't know. I just... I can't win. I thought... I thought she and I were... it's NOT this place, it's just... it's everything. It's life. It's anything I just... <********> I want a drink."
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 5:57 pm
Rep looked up at the other man with a start as he threw down the guitar. He remained seated. It was bizarre to hear Jerry swearing, it was like he'd wandered into some alternate world instead of just a graveyard. "I don't know what happened between you two, I really ******** don't. But if its any consolation you did seem like you should like.." he waved a hand "..work I guess."
There was that horrible guilt again - he hardly ever felt guilty before, why was he feeling it so much now? "And then on the ******** training fields man. Something just went ******** haywire in her. I know you don't like me, I'm cool with that. But she would have ******** murdered me. Over a flute. And I guess I earned it too. I just like -" he sighed, realising bad-mouthing the other sun's girlfriend or whatever it was they were wasn't the way to make his point. "If any of this s**t is anything to do with me I didn't ******** mean it to happen."
He shook his head with a sigh, only to give Jerry a puzzled look "Why can't you have a drink?"
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:11 pm
Jerry snorted, approaching the headstone, "What, this flute?" He swung a hand, knocking it down to the dirt from where it's box had been sitting, the lid popping open as silver glittered across the grass. "I don't know, Rep. I just don't know. You probably... don't ******** care and it's sad you seem to be all I have right now to talk about this with. I just... she's... I can't help her. I want to, I always wanted to, but I can't. She was right, I can't help her. She's... she's gone in a direction I just.. I can't follow. I don't know how to fix this. I don't know... I don't know what I can do for her." His voice was shaking, his fists clenched before he glanced over to Rep with a look like a starving man that had just had a sandwich waved in front of him, "Do you have anything? Liquor I mean- beer, vodka, whiskey, I don't care-"
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Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2012 6:25 pm
Rep furrowed his brows slightly as the flute fell. It rankled him to see it now so disposable when he'd taken a tremendous amount of flak for its theft. His look of mild irritation only deepened as once again he felt almost demoted to the level of animal. People automatically assumed he didn't care about anything because he liked to wind people up. Sad he was all there was. He should have been insulted, ultimately he wasn't even surprised. "Yeah well, maybe I do. Sun, remember?"
"And some people.. Some people you can't fix. You can try. You can offer them all the ******** help you want, you can fight everyone for them, you can ******** open the door for them. But you can't make them go through it." He was talking about someone else entirely, but as far as women were concerned, he was convinced ultimately they were all cut from the same cloth. "Sometimes the best you can do for them is just let them go down whatever ******** crazy path they've picked and try and keep walking."
"And aye. I have a stash. I've not been in a drinking mood since last shore leave. I bought a lot when I was off island.. in case." In case something terrible happened, in case someone didn't come back, in case he needed to forget everything for a while.
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