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 Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 6:17 pm
Lawrence came out of the book with a start, back into his golem body and life, vivid rich life. It didn't matter that it was a golem, that it was all dust, it was living, breathing dust. He was here, he could think. There was genuine elation at being alive, a feeling that he'd somehow been given another chance, that there was something after.
For the first time he realised why Scrooge reacted so theatrically at the end of A Christmas Carol, there was a vividness to life he'd never noticed.
"What in the hell was THAT?" he said, looking wide eyed and harrowed, something rather glazed about his expression as he addressed no one. Rodney had to be here somewhere, he'd been close by before, hadn't he?
Suddenly it seemed like the most important thing ever to find that cat and to see if he had experienced the same horrifying thing he just had. It was absolutely awful, he'd never have allowed anything of that sort to happen to him in a hundred years, he was predator, certainly not prey, that version of him had been a broken animal. He wasn't broken.
"Rodney?" he said firmly, as if calling a dog in need of a scold, as if it was his fault.
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Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 6:22 pm
Rodney had been in a grocery store. He could smell the hot dogs that had been rolling in the heater all day, slushies and plastic and cigarettes. Could see the bruises, as vivid as any street sign. Could feel Butch's friendly, panting weight at his leg...
And then he was himself.
Not on Earth, not in heaven.
But in a place with many gates, where the final battles between good and evil had yet to be waged, and when he looked at his hands, which were impossibly large claws, and then clutched his head.
"Oh God, Oh God," he yowled.
I can't believe I was a statue the WHOLE TIME, Seven said.
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Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 12:35 pm
Hearing the yowl from where he was, Lawrence made his way to where Rodney was holding his head, very firmly taking hold of his shoulders. Both shoulders. Which felt oddly good to do as he adjusted himself to having two hands, shaking him a little.
"Rodney." he said. "Rodney." And from the other man's reaction he had to assume he'd experienced the same thing or similar. "Did you see it? The..the murder?"
He took a deep breath. "I just want to know that's not something you are ever planning to do to me, or we will have a problem."
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Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 12:42 pm
Rodney seemed shocked at the grabbing, quaking automatically, but calming as he recognized the other golem. He put his big paws tenderly on Lawrence's chest.
"My name," he corrected, very gently, "is Midnight." Because it sounded like a cattish name and in spite of everything that had happened, the whirl of memories and blood and loss, they were at a job. This was real.
"But..." His too-big cat eyes filled with emotions, "I haven't hurt anyone. I'd never hurt you. That...that wasn't me. My...my brothers died in a car accident. His...his tattoos, meant something else. He had hell in his right hand. He thought...God wanted him to kill all those people. It's not me, I wouldn't...oh, but you're alive, and you're here, and I felt all of it and I thought you were lost forever."
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Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 12:52 pm
He seemed to relax at the confirmation that Rodney wasn't going to kill him any time soon. It was a relief but one that took a little bit to sink in, reorienting himself into a world where he wasn't completely lost and at the end of his rope. Here he was alive, alive and whole with strength behind him and a home.
<> Butch said in his thoughts. <>
Lawrence wasn't really coping well still, even with his numbed emotions pushed to the ragged edge of what he could cope with and finding himself in a body that wasn't his own, without even the certainty of his own rightful body to cling to. He was off-balance in a way that didn't normally happen.
"So did I." he said. "I am not okay with dying. He was. I am not. I don't want to die. I don't want to leave." And yet the gleaned perspective lingered, that was a life he'd been so sure he'd wanted, that if he could murder everyone he'd be in control again, but that desire, that want to harm and destroy he realised now represented nothing so much as an /absolute/ loss of control.
He wrapped his arms around the other man, in a world where he could, where he was entitled to, where he'd already made a decision that was impossible in that horrible, horrible book. "R..Midnight. I. It wasn't me. But I still want to stop. I want to help. Helping is control. Everything else was a trap."
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Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 1:04 pm
Rodney smelled like dust, fur, and strangely, leftover candy.
He hugged Lawrence back with soft paws.
"I...I remember all of it, all of them, I- he k-killed...so many....c-creeple. And it...feels like a second chance."
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Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 2:28 pm
"I remember it too, and none of it, not one bit of it, filled the hollow in me." He shook his head. "I had hoped in some way that it would, that being able to be myself, be wild and essentially feral, nature unrestrained, that it would somehow tell me who I am and give me deeper control over that core self."
He stroked the dark fur on Rodney's side gently, wishing that he could feel his real skin under his fingertips.
"It didn't. And I suppose I understand a little more now that who I am isn't the temptations I feel. It's something else."
He respected Rodney's faithfulness to character at the word creeple, but he avoided it himself, trying not to fall down the rabbit hole of locking himself into a prepubescent vampire persona on top of everything else.
"It does feel like a second chance. In a lot of ways. Even.. even seeing how close you came, to being...that way. It just.. it makes everything feel more like a choice. I can choose. How I want to be. That's got to mean something."
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Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 3:56 am
Rodney's expression lit up, in spite of everything.
"Yes!" He said, "Yes, it's all...choices," he looked reflexively at his arms, but the only thing there was fur.
"We're responsible. But it's also...a wonderful gift, to be able to choose. People say that...angels are different from people in that they don't have free will, but they chose too. And I don't think...just once, I think, they also choose every day..."
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Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 4:21 am
"I'd never really believed you that it was a choice, I suppose I thought it was simply indelibly written into my nature. But I guess the thing that that other me realised most was that it was just challenges, that everything I thought were genuine urges and emotions are just the stirrings of something outside of nature. True nature is good and kind, true nature is challenge." And even saying it he knew it would be impossible for him to just become someone different overnight, but that now he wanted to genuinely try and that was something very different indeed.
"I want to learn to navigate those challenges. I feel fulfilled when I do things in medicine, mending people helping people. I want to master that, not taking them apart. Taking them apart is too easy."
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Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 1:35 pm
These were all things that Rodney had never thought Lawrence would say, but with everything that had happened... Rodney's eyes got watery.
"I'll be your partner, in everything, and...making mistakes, or wrong choices, doesn't mean...you're down that path forever. It...it's set for those actions, for those consequences, but, the next time, the choices will be in front of you again."
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Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 1:47 pm
He nodded. "Good. That's all I can ask. I am very good at doing things once I decide to do them and I have decided to do them." Smirking fondly at the other man he stroked him again. "But yes, I won't let mistakes put me off of my track. I'll keep at it no matter what."
Leaning against the other man he exhaled. "I want to stay. To stay here, as who I am. A tattoo. I'd like one of those. Perhaps on my back. I may not be that version of me but I will be an angel and my light will never go out."
He kissed Rodney's furry cheek. "Not that it will be easy. I'm a bit of a horrible person by habit."
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Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 1:54 pm
"You've always been kind to me," Rodney said softly, "Nothing but kind. Even in that place...and, I believe you can extend that to others, too. Everyone is...horrible, by habit, me too. It's...a difficult thing, to choose something else."
The tattoo, also, meant a lot, for someone who was always escaping who he was.
Rodney touched his ring finger, but it was just a large, clumsy paw.
"Oh-okay," Rodney said, "I think...I think all of that, would be good. When we finish working...I want to go home."
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