[ So they were close. Ephemera rolls that over in his mind for a moment, nodding slowly. He doesn't make friends easily, or at least not anymore. He can play friendly if he's careful to establish the distance straight off, if he knows the score and has a script at hand. But going deeper than that takes time and trust and for a long time he'd assumed he wasn't capable of that anymore. That he'd killed off that part of himself years ago, when he decided to be Sharkface and swore he'd never touch anyone again except in violence.
Part of that gave. But not all of it. And he knows better than most that trust is hard won. ]
I don't mind. If it helps me sleep.
[ It ought to be spell out, he thinks. So there's no confusion. So the lines are clear. ]
[ He should probably offer a little more, Drake thinks, so he takes a breath and gets up, heading into the kitchen. It'll help to be doing something, he can get the food reheated at least. ]
Two years. We knew each other a little over two years.
[ Drake laughs softly, mostly to himself, as he pulls containers out of the fridge. ]
It was funny, actually. You'd claimed an apartment but didn't leave anything in it, so I thought it was free. When you came back you woke me up with a gun in my face, threatening to shoot me if I didn't get the fuck out. But you were also visibly hurt, so... I took a risk and asked if you needed help.
Once you put the gun down we actually got along really well, and I guess it went from there.
I pointed a gun in your face, and you still stayed.
[ Ephemera huffs just a little, shaking his head. Sounds like him. Goddamn. But his expression is a little softer than before, wondering and close to fond. ]
Yeah... later you said I had nerves of steel, that I could be a Helljumper. You didn't know yet that I was a zombie at the time so unless you actually shot me in the head, I had nothing to be scared of.
But mostly you just really needed help and that's kind of my whole deal.
[ There have been a lot of people who've come into Ephemera's life. Sometimes not for long, and often he only knew them through violence. Some tried to do the right thing. Even at cost. Always at cost.
He doesn't think he's ever meet anyone quite like Drake, though. Someone who would stay through a mess like this and try to ease the hurt. Maybe it's fitting that the other version of him met Drake like that. An telling sort of beginning. He wonders how it ended. If they were still friends at the end. He thinks they were. The empathy bond is intense and hard to sort through sometimes and Ephemera knows he gets so caught up in own stuff that he misses things he shouldn't, but the trust was there. Impossible to miss. And beyond thatβ
Well. They fought together. Drake carried his shield. And when it came down, Drake stayed to see this mess through.
I don't know if I'd put it like that. Not right away, anyway. I want to believe there's good in everyone, so I behave accordingly then go off what they show me. All I did was give you a chance to put the gun down and accept help. You did. And then you had my back, and we--
[ He stops abruptly, not sure exactly where he was going with that, what's safe to get into. The microwave beeps. ]
[ Such a small thing. Lowering a weapon. Letting a moment progress. Staying in the aftermath. And then Drake starts to say more, to β
Ephemera bows his head. Counts to five and then lets it out. There was a psychiatrist who told him to try that after he'd been arrested the first time. He'd thrown a chair at her. Broke the cuffs to do it. Doesn't quite remember what happened next except that she'd gotten him in a headlock and that was the end of his mandated therapy.
Count to five. Hold. Then let it go.
It helps, for a moment. Maybe he should have paid more attention. He feels like he's missing details, that he'd know more if he just paid attention. And more than a small part of him wants to reach out, to stand closer to Drake or hook their arms together, just stand in proximity, but that's a foolish, dangerous thing to want.
Ephemera shivers again. He lets it go. ]
I thought I was done with other people. Before I got here. I was okay with that. But then I got here andβand it felt good, for a moment. Thought maybe I could try again.
[ A mistake, in all likelihood. But he wants it still. That closeness. ]
[ Drake notices, has a pretty good idea what Ephemera is struggling with when he speaks about reaching out to people again, but busies himself making them plates because he doesn't really know what to say in return. Needs the extra time to think about it. ]
You're welcome.
[ He says it softly, wondering if he really did it for this man, or the one he knew. Can it be both? ]
It was a good thing to do, you know. Reach out again. Make connections. That's how you-- you'll be fine if you keep doing that, you're not a loner. You just need more control, have to want to do better.
[ He hands Ephemera a plate and fork, glancing up to meet his gaze as he does. ]
I'm not just talking about the other you, either. I've been there too.
[ It's strange to talk with someone who knows him so well, or at a strange, alternative version of himself. Because sometimes it's a struggle to explain why he does things or catches certain patterns but not others, and somehow Drake seems to know without having to be told anything at all. In some ways that's a comfort, since Drake already knows how to move around him, not to come up on his blindspot and shit like that, but it makes Ephemera feel off balance in others. Unsure of where he ought to stand. He wonders how he measures up to the friend Drake talks about.
Two years. They met at gunpoint. Not for the first time, he wonders how it ended.
Ephemera shivers again. But he takes the plate, and the fork, and he holds his ground. ]
You have?
[ He doesn't mean it to sound so nakedly hopeful. ]
[ The containers get closed back up, and Drake takes his own plate and considers the bottle of liquor he found earlier. Maybe not. They're talking now, just the two of them, and it's nice. Familiar, but also new because these circumstances are, this situation is. He says this here, though, not heading back to the couch and coffee table yet. ]
Yeah. I used to be really angry... and I hurt people. I had to get a handle on that before going back into the world.
[ Anger isn't the firs thing Ephemera would associate with Drake. There's a steadiness about him, a deep center that's easy to focus. Ephemera had assumed that was how Drake had always been, wired into him since the start. But maybe it took time. Maybe it was hard won. ]
But you did.
[ It's not a question. Drake seems solid in a way very few people are. And, perhaps strangely, that helps. Knowing that someone else could manage it. ]
Anger management, mostly. But for me it wasn't grief, just...
[ He hesitates, considers it, and decides they might as well go sit down while he tells this story. He inclines his head for Ephemera to follow him and heads back to the couch. ]
My dad was a monster. And then my ma had a string of loser boyfriends, most of them abusive. Some at me, all of them at her. The last was this really mean drunk, Frank. I was nineteen, didn't know what the hell I was doing with my life, into some sketchy shit that wasn't helping, for sure. Came home one night and ma's crying in the kitchen, bleeding, one eye swollen shut. Frank's just calling out for me to grab him another beer and something in me snapped. We fought like I'd never fought anybody before and well. It's how I got this-- [ he indicates the scar beside his eye, from Frank's switchblade ] --but the judge said I went a little overboard. Because Frank still can't walk. Or feed himself.
[ Drake shrugs, wondering how this Ephemera will take the story. ]
I did about two years for it. Lots of therapy in there but I learned how to control what I was feeling. Anger, fear, guilt. Learned how to let things roll off, and go with the flow. Better methods for when shit gets heated. It's why I am how I am, but I wasn't always.
You never forget that shit, but. It gets easier to handle. Especially with the right people.
[ Drake indicates he should follow and Ephemera does, plate in hand. And he sits next to Drake, and he listens.
It's an awful story, though one he knows the shape of. Not from his own life, no, but it became distressingly clear to Ephemera when he was young that human beings were capable of doing monstrous things to each other. The lesson stung even deeper because his own life had been relatively painless until he enlisted. His foster mother hadn't been cruel. He'd come up with clothes on his back, food to eat, a place to sleep at night. There had just been a distance between him and the adults in his orbit, something he'd assumed would change once he figured out who he was going to be. And even though he'd known the world was hard and violent, he'd assumed everyone else was ultimately like him. That they meant well, even if they didn't always succeed, and that no one would seek to hurt another person just for the sake of doing it. And maybe that was why he hadn't seen it coming.
A hard lesson, at the time. Afterward the sergeant had sat him down and they'd talked about a whole lot of things. She told him how her parents used to beat her. How they'd justified it, saying it would make her strong when all it did was make her cruel, and how it took her years to even begin unlearning it. And she told him how even though some people were monsters and deserved monstrous deaths, the rest of the universe was worth protecting. And she ended it by saying he was worth protecting too, and she would always do so.
Ephemera touches his own face briefly, unconsciously returning to a mark that never scarred. It hadn't mattered, on balance. He'd been young, and trusted the wrong person, and it had changed him in ways he doesn't like to remember. It would have been different to grow up with that like the sergeant did. Like Drake did. ]
[ Drake picks up his fork, shrugging again. It's not something that actively bothers him anymore, that he has nightmares about or that haunts him when he sees other families. It's just a thing that happened now, that he survived and grew from. ]
People shouldn't do a lot of the things that they do to each other. But you can't control anyone except yourself. I had to step back and say it's not okay, but it's not going to define me. What does define me is how I deal with it now, how I move forward.
[ He glances back up at Ephemera. ]
Anybody can manage it. Promise. You just have to want it enough.
[ It sounds simple when Drake puts it like that. Control. Not defining yourself by the pain. It probably wasn't. ]
I don't know what I want.
[ He admits it quietly. The person he was before is gone, and he can't go back to being Sharkface, to wearing that name like a mask. But what that leaves him with is uncertain. He's been angry for such a long time. He doesn't know what would be left of him if he stopped. ]
I thought I did, for a long time. But it doesn't work. I can't be that person anymore.
[ Deep down, he thinks he wants to be around other people. To sit and talk with Godric, to spar with Trevor or go out drinking with Gene. He's lost that with Angela but he had that connection for a little while, and it had felt good in a way very little has recently. And maybe it's selfish to want that after everything he's done, but he does.
He exhales. And then he eats, because this is what they're doing now. They're sitting on the couch and they're talking, and they're eating, and maybe one day he'll look back at this as a starting point or just a moment when someone took a chance on him, but either way it matters. ]
I want to be different. I just. Don't know what that means.
[ Drake is quiet for a long moment, finishing the bite he just took while listening, and formulating what to say that won't give away just how much he knows, or implying that this Ephemera can change like the one he knew. Because that's not what this is about. ]
You can't be that person, no. So you need to think about the kind of person you want to be. The kind of relationships you want to have, if you want to improve and repair existing ones, make new ones... think about the people around you and who you want to be to them. For them. It's just a start -- soon you'll start living for yourself.
[ Living for yourself. A tall order, maybe. But an important one. Ephemera nods just once. He's tired, worn down by everything that's come to pass. His own actions, the weight of the past. All that love and rage and memory. It feels impossible that he could let it go, that there would be anything left of him if he tried. But he doesn't want to be Sharkface anymore. That's a start.
Drake did it once. The reasons were different, but he managed it. Came out steady on the other side. ]
Pretty much everything, but I was thinking of something lighter. Comedy, dramedy, just something entertaining we don't have to think about all that much.
[ It's gotten pretty late, but he doesn't mind heading back to the Safehouse in the middle of the night if it means they get to chill a little more. He pops his interface up like a screen and scrolls through the list of stuff he made earlier that looked good. Finds one that fits the bill. ]
How about this one?
[ It's the ML answer to 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' ]
I'd like that, [ Ephemera says softly. In a different moment he might have suggested Dino Assassins, the series Angela found, but that belongs to her. It was something they did together, before he did what he did, and that feels too fraught.
This is something new. Something light, unconnected to their lives.
He eats slowly, and he sits next to Drake, and the proximity helps a little. Keeps him in the moment. ]
[ By the end of the movie, Drake's starting to feel pretty tired himself. Their empty plates sit on the coffee table in front of them and he thinks he should get up and wash the dishes and head out... watching something together and commenting on this or that scene had felt so familiar that a few times he was almost able to forget what a mess things were, or that he wasn't where he was meant to be. Almost. Not quite.
He stands and stretches, then reaches down to grab the plates. ]
You ready to pass out again? You should probably catch up.
[ The movie plays. Ephemera tries to pay attention, just for something to take his mind off the moment, but it only halfway works and he finds himself drifting off in places. But he makes himself eat, and he manages to stay awake until the credits roll, shaking himself a little when Drake speaks. ]
...yeah.
[ Strangely enough, Ephemera thinks he'll probably crash just fine. Go out cold. He's been running too long without any sleep. It's not sustainable like this, without a fight. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Part of that gave. But not all of it. And he knows better than most that trust is hard won. ]
I don't mind. If it helps me sleep.
[ It ought to be spell out, he thinks. So there's no confusion. So the lines are clear. ]
For the rest....ask.
no subject
[ He should probably offer a little more, Drake thinks, so he takes a breath and gets up, heading into the kitchen. It'll help to be doing something, he can get the food reheated at least. ]
Two years. We knew each other a little over two years.
no subject
How did we meet?
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It was funny, actually. You'd claimed an apartment but didn't leave anything in it, so I thought it was free. When you came back you woke me up with a gun in my face, threatening to shoot me if I didn't get the fuck out. But you were also visibly hurt, so... I took a risk and asked if you needed help.
Once you put the gun down we actually got along really well, and I guess it went from there.
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[ Ephemera huffs just a little, shaking his head. Sounds like him. Goddamn. But his expression is a little softer than before, wondering and close to fond. ]
You're something else.
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But mostly you just really needed help and that's kind of my whole deal.
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He doesn't think he's ever meet anyone quite like Drake, though. Someone who would stay through a mess like this and try to ease the hurt. Maybe it's fitting that the other version of him met Drake like that. An telling sort of beginning. He wonders how it ended. If they were still friends at the end. He thinks they were. The empathy bond is intense and hard to sort through sometimes and Ephemera knows he gets so caught up in own stuff that he misses things he shouldn't, but the trust was there. Impossible to miss. And beyond thatβ
Well. They fought together. Drake carried his shield. And when it came down, Drake stayed to see this mess through.
Ephemera shivers a little. Refocuses. ]
You've got a lot of faith in people.
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[ He stops abruptly, not sure exactly where he was going with that, what's safe to get into. The microwave beeps. ]
You earned the faith I have, I guess I'm saying.
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Ephemera bows his head. Counts to five and then lets it out. There was a psychiatrist who told him to try that after he'd been arrested the first time. He'd thrown a chair at her. Broke the cuffs to do it. Doesn't quite remember what happened next except that she'd gotten him in a headlock and that was the end of his mandated therapy.
Count to five. Hold. Then let it go.
It helps, for a moment. Maybe he should have paid more attention. He feels like he's missing details, that he'd know more if he just paid attention. And more than a small part of him wants to reach out, to stand closer to Drake or hook their arms together, just stand in proximity, but that's a foolish, dangerous thing to want.
Ephemera shivers again. He lets it go. ]
I thought I was done with other people. Before I got here. I was okay with that. But then I got here andβand it felt good, for a moment. Thought maybe I could try again.
[ A mistake, in all likelihood. But he wants it still. That closeness. ]
Thank you. For staying.
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You're welcome.
[ He says it softly, wondering if he really did it for this man, or the one he knew. Can it be both? ]
It was a good thing to do, you know. Reach out again. Make connections. That's how you-- you'll be fine if you keep doing that, you're not a loner. You just need more control, have to want to do better.
[ He hands Ephemera a plate and fork, glancing up to meet his gaze as he does. ]
I'm not just talking about the other you, either. I've been there too.
no subject
Two years. They met at gunpoint. Not for the first time, he wonders how it ended.
Ephemera shivers again. But he takes the plate, and the fork, and he holds his ground. ]
You have?
[ He doesn't mean it to sound so nakedly hopeful. ]
no subject
Yeah. I used to be really angry... and I hurt people. I had to get a handle on that before going back into the world.
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But you did.
[ It's not a question. Drake seems solid in a way very few people are. And, perhaps strangely, that helps. Knowing that someone else could manage it. ]
...how?
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[ He hesitates, considers it, and decides they might as well go sit down while he tells this story. He inclines his head for Ephemera to follow him and heads back to the couch. ]
My dad was a monster. And then my ma had a string of loser boyfriends, most of them abusive. Some at me, all of them at her. The last was this really mean drunk, Frank. I was nineteen, didn't know what the hell I was doing with my life, into some sketchy shit that wasn't helping, for sure. Came home one night and ma's crying in the kitchen, bleeding, one eye swollen shut. Frank's just calling out for me to grab him another beer and something in me snapped. We fought like I'd never fought anybody before and well. It's how I got this-- [ he indicates the scar beside his eye, from Frank's switchblade ] --but the judge said I went a little overboard. Because Frank still can't walk. Or feed himself.
[ Drake shrugs, wondering how this Ephemera will take the story. ]
I did about two years for it. Lots of therapy in there but I learned how to control what I was feeling. Anger, fear, guilt. Learned how to let things roll off, and go with the flow. Better methods for when shit gets heated. It's why I am how I am, but I wasn't always.
You never forget that shit, but. It gets easier to handle. Especially with the right people.
no subject
It's an awful story, though one he knows the shape of. Not from his own life, no, but it became distressingly clear to Ephemera when he was young that human beings were capable of doing monstrous things to each other. The lesson stung even deeper because his own life had been relatively painless until he enlisted. His foster mother hadn't been cruel. He'd come up with clothes on his back, food to eat, a place to sleep at night. There had just been a distance between him and the adults in his orbit, something he'd assumed would change once he figured out who he was going to be. And even though he'd known the world was hard and violent, he'd assumed everyone else was ultimately like him. That they meant well, even if they didn't always succeed, and that no one would seek to hurt another person just for the sake of doing it. And maybe that was why he hadn't seen it coming.
A hard lesson, at the time. Afterward the sergeant had sat him down and they'd talked about a whole lot of things. She told him how her parents used to beat her. How they'd justified it, saying it would make her strong when all it did was make her cruel, and how it took her years to even begin unlearning it. And she told him how even though some people were monsters and deserved monstrous deaths, the rest of the universe was worth protecting. And she ended it by saying he was worth protecting too, and she would always do so.
Ephemera touches his own face briefly, unconsciously returning to a mark that never scarred. It hadn't mattered, on balance. He'd been young, and trusted the wrong person, and it had changed him in ways he doesn't like to remember. It would have been different to grow up with that like the sergeant did. Like Drake did. ]
I'm sorry that happened to you. People....
[ He drops his hand. ]
People shouldn't do that to each other.
no subject
People shouldn't do a lot of the things that they do to each other. But you can't control anyone except yourself. I had to step back and say it's not okay, but it's not going to define me. What does define me is how I deal with it now, how I move forward.
[ He glances back up at Ephemera. ]
Anybody can manage it. Promise. You just have to want it enough.
no subject
I don't know what I want.
[ He admits it quietly. The person he was before is gone, and he can't go back to being Sharkface, to wearing that name like a mask. But what that leaves him with is uncertain. He's been angry for such a long time. He doesn't know what would be left of him if he stopped. ]
I thought I did, for a long time. But it doesn't work. I can't be that person anymore.
[ Deep down, he thinks he wants to be around other people. To sit and talk with Godric, to spar with Trevor or go out drinking with Gene. He's lost that with Angela but he had that connection for a little while, and it had felt good in a way very little has recently. And maybe it's selfish to want that after everything he's done, but he does.
He exhales. And then he eats, because this is what they're doing now. They're sitting on the couch and they're talking, and they're eating, and maybe one day he'll look back at this as a starting point or just a moment when someone took a chance on him, but either way it matters. ]
I want to be different. I just. Don't know what that means.
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You can't be that person, no. So you need to think about the kind of person you want to be. The kind of relationships you want to have, if you want to improve and repair existing ones, make new ones... think about the people around you and who you want to be to them. For them. It's just a start -- soon you'll start living for yourself.
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Drake did it once. The reasons were different, but he managed it. Came out steady on the other side. ]
Okay.
[ It's a place to start, at least. ]
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You can do this. And if you need help I'll be around.
[ Then he smiles, leaning over a little and bumping their shoulders. ]
Let's take a break from all this serious shit, huh? We can watch something, I signed up for a streaming service on the network.
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Unexpected. Not precisely unwelcome.
He twitches again. And then he takes a deep breath and lets his shoulders drop. Some of the tension bleeds away. ]
Okay. What do you like?
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[ It's gotten pretty late, but he doesn't mind heading back to the Safehouse in the middle of the night if it means they get to chill a little more. He pops his interface up like a screen and scrolls through the list of stuff he made earlier that looked good. Finds one that fits the bill. ]
How about this one?
[ It's the ML answer to 'O Brother Where Art Thou?' ]
no subject
This is something new. Something light, unconnected to their lives.
He eats slowly, and he sits next to Drake, and the proximity helps a little. Keeps him in the moment. ]
no subject
He stands and stretches, then reaches down to grab the plates. ]
You ready to pass out again? You should probably catch up.
no subject
...yeah.
[ Strangely enough, Ephemera thinks he'll probably crash just fine. Go out cold. He's been running too long without any sleep. It's not sustainable like this, without a fight. ]
Thank - ah. Thank you. For....all this.
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