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 Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 10:33 am
Jordan couldn't actually avoid duties to attend to keeping an eye on the guys, much as he felt that somebody should be. When he came back from patrol, the room was empty. He sighed and leaned his forehead against the doorframe for a tired few seconds. Then he turned around and headed out to look for them.
The false memories suggested that he shouldn't expect either of them to be indoors. He checked the beach first.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:02 am
Blue had tried sticking to the air conditioning for a while, but people kept moving him along, constantly adverse to him hassling them or pawing at their things. Even his assurances that it was fine, he was queen had only made them even grumpier.
Eventually he'd headed off somewhere on his own, that somewhere ultimately being the beach, where he lay in the shade of a palm tree, he'd tried swimming but the sun was too hot and he could feel himself burning even more than he already had and gave up. He was not in a fantastic mood.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:20 am
"I thought you might be out here." Jordan stepped into Rep's field of vision. He wasn't sure how well he was doing at keeping his physical and emotional exhaustion under wraps. He could keep most people from realizing its extent, but he strongly suspected that his guys could tell; he wasn't the version of himself that either of them expected to see, but both of those other selves bore a resemblance to him, and some of the gestures and habits probably remained the same.
"Did they chase you out of the labs again?" he asked. The best way to keep this Rep from looking too closely at him was to sting his pride a little. Not too much, not enough to start a real fight, but enough to get him to puff up in affront.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:27 am
True to form, Rep rankled at the implication. "They didn't ******** chase me out. I left because they didn't ******** appreciate me is what. I didn't need their stupid ******** labs anyway. It was boring. Everything is ******** boring here, I can't even get a casual shag or anything." He shook his head exasperatedly.
"Doesn't it ever get to you? Being a ******** nobody I mean. Here you, they, we, if you count my fake self. We ******** work for people. No control, none of our own empire and world. It ******** is enough to break the spirit of even the toughest b*****d."
He gestured at the sea. "A whole ******** world and no one even has the balls to go out and seize it. It's ******** ridiculous. I'm stronger in this world than I ever was in Vegas, but can't do a ******** thing."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:33 am
"It's not what I envisioned myself doing as a kid," Jordan said. "But I'm pretty sure you'd have found that boring, too. It's control over myself and what I do with myself." He looked steadily at Rep. "We're ourselves in a way the rest of the world doesn't allow."
He looked out to sea. "Everyone's got a reason to fight. Most of them are probably selfish reasons."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:37 am
Rep shook his head, anger tangled up with revulsion, deep rebellion at the idea that anywhere in the world this could be all there was. "It's not ******** control at all, and if you believe it is you are ******** stupid. You are nothing but a grunt in someone else's army. My Jordan was ******** strong, strong and impossible to ******** chain. If you locked him up, he'd sidle out, if you pinned him down, he'd fight you. He was never ******** complacent."
Crossing his arms he snorted. "Everyone is complacent here. They make up reasons that are ******** excuses. Excuses why they are fine with giving their lives to some ******** cause that doesn't really matter. No longer caring about number one but caring about this shitty place."
He gave Jordan a grim look. "Way I see it, everyone here died when they gave up their hopes and dreams, when they gave up what the ******** they were."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:51 am
"I won't give up what he gave up for it," Jordan said quietly. "I make that choice consciously, as he did. I took the other way." He leaned against the trunk of the tree and rubbed the heel of his palm into one eye, trying to forestall the tension headache he could feel creeping up on him. The reflection of sunlight, real sunlight, off the ocean wasn't helping. He'd never thought that he'd miss the cloud cover or the fog.
"You didn't care about his family either," he said after a moment. "But that's what lay underneath it for him, for me. Once a decision's made, it spawns a whole chain of new decisions. You make them the best way you know how, from the place where you're standing when they come to you."
He met the grim stare with an even look of his own. "This is what I am here, in this time and place."
I want my Rep back, he said to Ferros, forlorn and feeling vaguely childish.
So do I, the weapon replied.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 11:57 am
"You sound like a guy who has given up is what." he said with a humourless grin. "Just like well they were decisions and I made them. You'll go to your grave telling yourself that, that there was no other path you could ever have taken. Vegas is the place where we took the right decisions."
He leaned back against the palm tree and stretched. "And sure I didn't care about his family. But your Rep, this fake ******** Rep, he doesn't care about your family either. He hates the very idea of families and think people who ******** dwell on them are stupid. It's one area we agree on. He just lets his mother follow him, I don't. I'm an adult, I don't need my ******** mum any longer." He couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of how much his other self's life was twisted by things he wouldn't let go of.
"This kingdom is pathetic. It isn't worth saving."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 12:18 pm
He doesn't - Jordan flinched visibly, unable to keep the reaction hidden. Was that true? Would he ever know? His throat closed up, and he gripped the trunk of the tree tightly, bark cracking under his fingers as something cracked in his defenses, and panic fought resignation in a tangled, feathery struggle as he realized that he couldn't keep it up any longer, wasn't going to be able to wait until whatever distant time that his guys came back, if they ever did.
He slid slowly to the sand, hating himself for showing weakness and completely unable to keep it hidden.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 12:28 pm
Rep glanced over as Jordan slid to the sand, raising a brow. He wasn't sure how to react to the show of frailty, almost embarrassed by its presence.
"It's probably a hard thing to realise for a guy who lives for the family he walked away from. But maybe you are better off realising you are a big boy, you are your own ******** man, you could be something great if you stopped being hung up on your ******** aunt and your dead brother. Call it free advice." He shrugged. "Besides, you can't be that hung up on it. If you were, you'd tear the world down and go back, you'd try. You wouldn't focus on controlling yourself instead."
It just didn't make sense to him. "It'd be like someone hurting the Boss and instead of destroying them, I went out and bought a really ******** good straitjacket."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 12:44 pm
This was the worst possible time for this. Jordan had snarled Rep into some vague semblance of respect, or at least willingness to listen, and now that was going to be wiped out. If he left, Rep would think he was running away; with a spasm of disgust at himself, he realized that that would be accurate. He couldn't leave, he couldn't stay, he didn't have any kind of logical or reasonable or compelling defense for himself, and even if he had, he didn't think he could speak clearly.
He curled in on himself, bowing his head so that his hair hung over his face, and stayed where he was, still and silent, trying to protect himself the way he always had.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 12:55 pm
There wasn't even a word of defiance or dissent from the other man, and somehow that was worse than any other response he could have provided. He had an unshakable faith that his guys were as invincible as he was, they had to be after all, an entire kingdom relied on them to sustain it. To see a Jordan so tired and cowed distressed him, and he was not easy to distress.
"Oh come on." he snapped angrily. "Stop being so ******** wussy about all of this, sure you are at rock bottom on this shitehole, but you are equipped to turn it around. When life gives you lemons you don't ******** cry about them and carry them around regretfully and give people wistful looks. You squirt lemon juice in people's eyes."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 12:59 pm
He couldn't, he couldn't - he took a single, deep, sobbing breath, no, no, and clamped down on his control again, not in front of anyone, not in front of someone who would never respect him again for breaking.
Ferros was saying something, alarmed and frantic, but he couldn't hear it right. He focused instead on the way the ring flashed erratically on his finger. Maybe that would calm him enough.
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 1:07 pm
Blue didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. There was something deeply and terribly wrong here. Back home he'd seen Jordan angry, he'd seen him subject to a great number of emotions, but he'd never seen him so dragged out, drawn out and hurting.
What had this world done to him? What the ******** had it done to all of them? Even Harrison was fractured and almost crazy.
He wanted to go home, with a deep and resonant ache he had never felt before, the distant kiss of the desert air, the neon lights and the crowds of people. Their people. This place didn't need a Queen, it had no place for him, it wanted only people bent backed and cowed by misery, people without hope or ambition.
But he couldn't leave, so all there was to do was to try and make this place as close an approximation to home as he could.
"What is your ******** problem?" he snapped. "I know you are a bit ******** younger than my Jordan but I didn't think you'd be a big ******** baby."
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Posted: Sun Sep 08, 2013 1:15 pm
"I came home," Jordan said, not looking up, voice choked, "and you were both gone."
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