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 Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:35 am
Harrison had been on duty when Rep sent the tweet. At first he thought it was a trick, somebody dicking around on Rep's account somehow, and he was angry at the flash of the familiar picture-
But reading, he knew who it was from.
It seemed impossible. How? When had he been moved? And that meant, the pink-haired kid...?
He looked at the screen. Public announcement. Not to his phone. He thought long and hard before he responded, with gravity.
glad u r ok
But it was Taym Rep responded to first. And Harrison shouldn't have been surprised (you knew already) that Rep's enemies were more important. They took priority. It was just one more confirmation, like the last line of cement in a wall.
Harrison didn't rush back. He took the whole patrol, and after he clocked out, he walked.
He told himself it didn't change things, but the hardening and the feeling of darkness and isolation maybe effected him more than he would have liked.
When he reached the infirmary, Rep looked even worse than he had in the pod. He was pale, strapped to a bed. But his chest moved faintly. He was watching his phone, even though nobody had posted since a few hours ago.
Harrison slid silently into the chair beside the bed.
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:52 am
Rep looked away from his phone as he heard someone sit down, he'd been staring at the phone for most of the day, not sure what he hoped for, people hadn't actually given much of a ******** that he was dead other than the people he held nearest. It was baffling to him, he felt like people should have known how hard he tried and how important he was. But they ******** hadn't.
His heart leapt at the sight of Harrison and his initial reflex was - as always - a huge ridiculous grin. It didn't last long though as he quickly tempered the instinct with the weight of worries and upset he'd been gathering the entire time since the fight.
His smile faded. "Nice to see you took the time to visit." he said, carefully and quietly.
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 10:59 am
Harrison just glowered at the greeting.
"The pink-haired kid pulled through," he said finally.
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:00 am
"Apparently." he replied, eyeing Harrison with what he hoped was indifference but which ended up coming across as bafflement. "Were you hoping he wouldn't?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:11 am
"Why, does that suddenly ******** matter?" Harrison wasn't in the mood for pretending.
Rep looked weak, and bloody, and tired. Now wasn't a good time to get into it. Harrison hadn't planned on getting into it at all.
"You oughta rest."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:14 am
"Well I ******** can't when you are acting so bizzare. You ******** sided with the enemy during a fight and then you left me to die. What the ******** is the difference between that and talking to me now when Tracey has s**t in hand? It's hardly more dangerous." He made sure to keep a very tight grip on his breathing and the pace of his speech. "I'm amazed you even came to visit if you are clearly so ******** irritated by me being here, what the ******** is wrong with you?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:35 am
"He was a ******** preschooler, Rep. His weapon was a paddleball. And the moment Tracey dug in, it was you being sliced in half." Harrison enunciated this patiently, voice low.
You. Me. Us.
"Not that that matters to you either."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 11:40 am
"Except it ******** wasn't. I was still alive, my heart was still beating, I was still breathing, there was still a ******** fight that could be won. One goal down and you call the match a wash. You weren't there when H told me to get in the pod, you weren't there when he stuck his fist through my chest. You weren't there when I needed you most when I'd had absolute ******** faith you always would be."
He gave Harrison a haunted look. "So don't ******** presume to know what ******** matters to me, because you didn't know then."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 12:35 pm
"I don't presume s**t. I asked."
The fight had been over, as far as Harrison had been concerned. Decisions had been made. Rep was alive because Shiloh had, beyond all odds, survived. That was all.
"If I stayed, I couldn't have hunted down the rest of them." Harrison took B0nez out of his pocket, looking at the flashdrive in his hand. "Shiloh's close by. Should I pay him a visit? Him being dead was more important to you than I ever was."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:08 pm
The baffled look Rep had been giving Harrison only got more and more confused as he spoke.
"Him being dead was more important than YOU? Do you even ******** listen to yourself? What the <********> man. I have put my life on the line for you ******** knows how many times, I've chased you across ******** dreamscapes and distortion worlds. And you are pissed about the fact you ASKED me something and I didn't hear it?"
Again anger and outrage moved to the fore, but he still had to keep himself in check.
"People asked a lot of ******** s**t of me in the midst of that fight, including Tracey. It was ******** chaos. I did what I could with the information overload, with the fact you weren't acting right - last time you weren't acting right you were ******** affected by an artifact, or you were a ******** crazy cat." He clenched his hands. "You defended Shiloh and then you asked me to give up a fight you'd been ******** HELPING ME with moments before. Did you get cold feet? Couldn't side with me the way you said you would?"
He wanted to shake his head but he couldn't even do that. "And don't even ******** talk to me about hunting people down. I don't ******** care. If I'm dead I don't care if the people who did it suffer, I'm ******** dead, it doesn't matter. ******** listen to yourself sometime, you b***h at me about how revenge or whatever is more important to me and then you just re-state that your revenge was more important than being with me as I pretty much bled to death."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 4:07 pm
Offline logs - from Gaia sucking.
------
"I wasn't crazy. It was just me. I didn't want you to die over nothing, and I asked you not to do it."
Harrison turned his fist over, and put B0nez back into his pocket.
"You know how much s**t I've refused you? Zero. Zero s**t. I'd give you anything you asked for. But when it came down to it, I asked, and you were like, ******** off."
Even quieter he added, "I asked twice. I made a ******** speech. So you can say you were confused, or thought maybe I was possessed, on account of us having differing opinions. You knew. It is what it ******** is. And next time I ask..."
Harrison opened his empty hand bitterly, revealing a spanse of nothing.
"I got a better idea of what to expect."
Harrison folded his hands on his chest, leaning back in the chair.
"Sorry I left. It didn't sit right with me either. I'd have ******** happier in the next pod over." He didn't want to talk about it anymore. Rep didn't need it, and it wouldn't change anything.
-------
"I didn't ******** know. You can get away with a lot of s**t but don't ******** go telling me what I do and don't know. Tracey wanted to make the hit, he was ******** adamant it would be fine, I did it. You asked, but I figured it was the kind without a ******** capital letter. Advice rather than a ******** command. I didn't know it had small print, I didn't know it was do this s**t or I will never trust you again. I didn't know there was anything that could make you feel this s**t was one sided."
He was glad he had his hands clenched, unclenched they'd have been shaking.
"If I'd known there was small print like that maybe I'd never have tried so hard or given you so much of me. I knew you cut me off when I ******** dinged you in the desert, but I never once ******** thought you'd get ******** cold on me the same way after all this time. This is just that all over again, something happened that Harrison didn't like so it's tantrum time. Every ******** moment of my every ******** day is around you, I do everything I can for you, I run scared from even HINTING at things that might upset you and yet you ******** think I'd ever deliberately do something like that to you."
It was heartbreaking to think of it, to think that Harrison would expect nothing from him when he would readily give everything he had. One mistake and he was back to the sahara, back to being afraid and re-climbing the ladder of trust all over again.
"Maybe I should have asked you to stay. Since that's all that ever mattered to you, the things that were asked instead of the things that were done time and time again without ever being asked for."
---
"You know I take my life serious," Harrison said. "I wasn't asking you for small s**t. Don't act like I'm chewing you up one side and down the other for refusing to give me a sip off your soda. And if you asked, yeah. I would have stayed."
What Rep had done this time was serve both their heads up on a platter. He looked skeptical.
"Tracey? He made the call? What the ******** did he do that for."
------
"To me it's like you are flipping out about a ******** sip of my soda, it makes as much sense. I was ******** overwhelmed at the time, I wasn't thinking right and Tracey ******** wanted me to do it because he has a fear problem. You knew it before, he's a ******** addict, and up until I got ******** podded, apparently he didn't care if I was dead or not because he could re-bond to someone else. Only the pod made him realise he can't any longer, they'd get ******** rid of him."
He uncurled his hands and set them on the bed where they shook until he let the tension fade. "Ace I'm just..I didn't do it intentionally, if I knew you were asking the way the ******** Boss asked I'd have stopped in a heartbeat. But I can't make you believe me. And if I can't I don't ******** know what I'll do. If you think I'll ******** you over on one thing then you'll think it with everything. I can't deal with that."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 5:12 pm
"Yeah," Harrison said, "That's about right. It's on account of the fact that anybody can say, I won't ******** you over. Or, I'm gonna ******** you over. But either they do or they don't. Like, okay. Let's talk about Jerry. Jerry's a well-meaning guy, right. And he saved Candace's life. Jumped in and took a fireball that wasn't meant for her, and that's where all his scars come from. But he drinks. And she asked him to cut that s**t out, and he still drank. He'd die for his division, for any of us. But he wouldn't give that up, not for anybody. Not for the division leads, not for his friends, not for somebody he loved. Because it was more important than them. And I thought that wasn't the case with you. But you've got a long list. Shiloh's the tip of the iceburg, you didn't even know the guy and you ******** me over for him. It's anybody that wants a piece of you. You know how this story goes, because your mom was a ******** junkie. So you're like, that s**t didn't mean anything. And I can stop any time I want to. And when it comes down to it again, yeah. You'll ******** me over. I can't even be like, it was small time. If it was important, if it was my life on the line, then it would have mattered. It's just not ******** true."
The info about Tracey was also intrinsically disturbing. Tracey had always come through. Time and time again, he'd protected Rep, healed him, everything they got through was down to their weapons. Harrison owed Tracey more than he could ever think about repaying, and Tracey...hadn't cared? Had been okay with driving Rep to his death? Just figured he'd start over?
He wasn't sure how to process that too. The betrayal felt exacerbated. It was trust that put them there. Stupidity on all ******** sides. Edith had said trust wasn't a mistake, but she didn't know everything.
"Because I trusted you, I couldn't protect you. Trusting you was one big ******** up. And it's not one I usually make."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 5:36 pm
Rep listened in silence because for the time being talking hurt, even breathing hurt and he had to choose his words carefully. He was glad he didn't try and talk, because once Harrison got going, he'd have far too easily betrayed how deeply his words cut and how utterly helpless it left him. The idea that in the other hunter's eyes he was just like Jerry - callous to a fault - was, after all the things he'd said to Harrison and done on his behalf, almost unbearable. Everything discarded in a single ******** instant, all the battles by his side, all the times he'd given up everything to find him and all the times he'd said he'd always be there and confided in him. None of that seemed to ******** matter, because of one mistake. One. That was all it took.
And he was like his mother. Compared to her as a case in ******** point of addiction and how everything he said was a lie because he was an addict. It was hopeless. ******** hopeless. People could discard everything he did, all the hard work and obedience at the whim of a single comment on twitter or a single fight gone awry, and that had been ok, it had been tolerable because he had been labouring under the delusion that he had Harrison's complete and unshakable trust. He'd been so ******** stupid, stupid and naive to think that there was anything that was absolute in the world, that there was anything that simply gave without demanding. And he couldn't prove it, he knew he couldn't. He'd spent his entire ******** childhood trying to find a way to show his mother how much he cared about her, because if he did she would stop, she would understand and would have loved him back. But he'd never found a way, and he was convinced he never would. If Harrison thought he was fake and that his promises rang hollow, then that was what he would think.
He closed his eyes as if closing them would block out what he'd just heard, as if it would shield him from the helplessness and despair, tangled up as it was with embarrassment and shame. It took him a few long and laboured breaths, shivery because of more than simply injury before he could reply.
"I'm sorry you feel like trusting me was a mistake. I don't regret trusting you." Even now, even when everything was out of his control, when honesty had no traction and bearing any longer. There had been a time when believed there was an absolute trust and love in the world and it had been perfect. "And nothing ever changed with me. Not before that fight, not after, I trusted you then, I trusted you after. I thought you knew I was capable of mistakes, that I could slip up and that it didn't mean I loved you less, that you weren't important. I'm sorry I gave you any impression otherwise." Another long slow breath and he exhaled.
"I love you. I meant it every time I said it. I meant it when I said you were the other half of me, I meant everything. On the beach, at the door. I meant it." and his voice fractured. "But if you won't believe me, like everyone else on this ******** island, there's nothing I can do."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:14 pm
"If you trusted me, we'd be at home," Harrison grumbled, checking his phone.
"I still love you. This isn't a ******** break-up talk. Battle's the place where I have to trust you most, and I buy that you got disoriented with me defending on the other side. But you didn't ******** trust me. And I guess I didn't trust you either, not to cut that kid in two, because I've mopped up after you enough. But I did trust you to hold off if I asked, and that was ******** misplaced. And it was a big deal. ...What's Dwight talking about."
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Posted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:38 pm
Rep couldn't shake the despair, even at the reassurance it wasn't a break-up talk. Love without trust was pity and to be pitied was worse than death. He didn't even try to argue about who had mistrusted who and how, he just didn't have the energy in him, already facing a hopeless task that could be setback whenever something went wrong or he made any kind of mistake. He was simply grim as he said. "All I can say is I'm sorry, and I know how little that means to you. Words."
He eyed his phone and dread settled in next to the hopelessness at the idea H could be looking for him. He replied a few times before even that seemed pointless. "I don't know what H wants me for. Maybe to finish the job with a captive audience."
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