[ He hears it, and he passes over it, because there's nothing he can say. ]
Where are you?
[ He can find out. In a heartbeat, he can be there. But to steal from him the right to space, to any kind of privacy now would be... wouldn't it? Bad. ]
[ But he says it, and he waits. Still uncertainly toeing the line, giving him the chance to demand his privacy before Stephen can take it from him and break something.
[ Never know if you don't try. And Stephen is about to try, here comes the inevitable hiss of a portal for him to step through wherever Takeshi's holed himself up. The treehouse on the other side as he emerges, brow furrowed, jaw tight, ready to take in the scene of him. ]
[The where is a seemingly random spot in the woods, a small clearing with the sound of the river relatively nearby. There are signs of a campfire, possibly company at some point, but Takeshi's alone, now. Sat against a tree, visibly dishevelled, head lolled back against the trunk as he rolls it to squint at the portal Stephen just opened.]
You know, [His speech isn't slurred, but it is slow. Deliberate.] Something tells me you knew where I was the whole time.
[ A little leap of a muscle at the corner of his mouth, tugged down. ]
I didn't need to know.
[ He breaks his gaze from Takeshi only long enough to cast about his little camp, looking for signs of whatever it is he's taken. If here and now is how Takeshi has to learn that there's nowhere yet that he could go where Stephen couldn't follow, so be it. ]
[That's as much confirmation as he needs, so he doesn't attempt to pursue a more definite answer. Besides, Stephen's following question is far more interesting, mostly because it's really fucking funny.]
You're the doctor, doctor. [He lifts a shot glass full of something clear, a mock toast.] Do I need help?
[The shot's knocked back in one. Glass returned to the ground, refilled from the unmarked bottle resting against his hip.]
[ This time it's his nose, his upper lip that twitches through the withheld motions of a sneer, frustration and worry lighting up as anger. ]
No. No, you're obviously just fine.
[ The sudden sweep of his hand through the air as Takeshi sets that bottle down after the refill. The effect isn't immediately apparent - but the waiting shot is water. ]
[He's familiar enough with Stephen's magic by now to know that kind of motion. There's no immediate changes to his person, so he follows suspicion, lifting the newly filled shot glass to take a sniff. Unsurprised to find it doesn't have eye-watering fumes of something distilled in someone's basement any more.]
Rude.
[Pointed, with raised eyebrows, for both the comment and the replacement of his alcohol. He knocks the shot of water back, emptying the glass to be refilled properly.]
[ The hint is received and rejected, so this time Stephen meets Takeshi's urge to poison himself with the total removal of the option. He doesn't move from his spot. Doesn't need to. One outward reach and the bottle is in Stephen's own hand. ]
I'm taking you back. If you want to drink yourself into whatever oblivion you can find, you can do it where I can monitor you.
[The removal of the bottle in his hand is reacted to with much the same attitude, the low, incredulous resignation of some people have no manners. But his mouth pulls at Stephen's declaration, amusement deadening, dissipating.]
There it is. Hero sorcerer, taking control and saving the day.
[He leans back against the tree again, back of his skull rolling against the bark, finding a now familiar cradle there. His eyes are flat as he meets Stephen's gaze, empty, something about his manner suddenly seeming terrifyingly, coldly sober, as if there was a part of him the drink and drugs could never reach.]
[ For one shocked moment, the memory of Christine's face as he'd warped her care into self-congratulation is so visceral it conjures in him the same cornered animal ferocity he'd hurled at her then. Sneer becomes snarl, teeth bared, breath an inward hiss. But Takeshi is not the same frantic, scrapping thing he'd been then, biting at the only hand who'd cared enough to feed it. And he could never hope to be her.
Seconds spread between them, Takeshi cold and clear and flat, Stephen clenched and closed and burning. You can't save me, Stephen.. Fuck you, Takeshi.
I'm already dead.
Seconds. Seconds more. And he's angry, scared, but not stupid. He knows there's no walking away. Just like he knows why she could and he can't. A few steps carry him past the remains of a fire, into Takeshi's space. He finds a spot as close as limbs will allow to plant his feet and lower into a crouch, eye to eye. Expression smoothed from its instinctive reaction, leaving behind only tension. The trappings of frustration, fear. ]
[Stephen moves closer, crouches down in front of him like a man seeking understanding with a wounded animal. Takeshi's expression doesn't change. Voice dry and hard and steady. His turn to tell a story.]
They had me on ice for two hundred and fifty years. Spun me back up to solve a murder. This meth, Bancroft, with an Envoy obsession. [As powerful as to consider himself a god, when all he'd been was another pawn.] It was all my sister, pulling strings. She'd destroyed everything, everyone I'd ever loved. Become everything we'd fought against.
[The sickness of the revelation is there again. Time hadn't diminished it. The betrayal, the despair, the guilt of not having seen it sooner. Of how far she'd gone. Of not being able to save her.]
I cornered her in her snuff palace for the rich and powerful. I had her, but I knew, I could see it. She wouldn't stop. She'd never stop.
[She'd tear apart the universe to get to him again. To bring him to her side. It would never matter to her how many people she hurt, how many lives she destroyed. His gaze on Stephen's doesn't waver, but there's a long span of seconds, time and weight and memory grinding against his resolve. But there was no eroding this.]
So I blew out her stack. [Simple, blunt, final.] Stayed with her, held her while the whole place fell out of the sky.
[ He listens as closely as Takeshi had once listened to him. Eyes met, tongue held. An audience to a tale that's short and awful. An audience to the draw of seconds as Takeshi holds himself back from the precipice of it... then steps over.
Oh, fuck.
He can't hold the tension in his face. It gives way to startled horror. He gives way to it too.
Hand pushing between bark and body until he can be the cradle for Takeshi's head, forehead tipping in to press against forehead, brow furrowed with grief for him. He thinks of his own sister, disappearing beneath the ice. Thinks of the crack and the splash, the panic and the silence. He thinks of her in the days, months, years before. His little sister. He thinks of how he'd loved her.
His fingertips dig in against Takeshi's scalp, the skin at the back of his neck. Knee finds earth to better bear his own weight as he turns his neck so nose brushes cheek. As here as he can get. As close as he can keep him in this awful moment between moments, a counterpoint to there and then.
To have to kill a sister. To have to kill a sister and then live, live this life, in this cruel fucking purgatory. He can deal with the rest later. He can process the impending death later. For now there's this. This thing he can't imagine, this gulf that's been inside this man for as long as he's known him. ]
I'm sorry. [ Not a platitude, not his sterile sympathies. His empathy. He knows he can never have any idea. But if this is how bad even thinking about it feels... ] I'm so sorry.
[Stephen folds into him, enfolds him, and Takeshi can barely feel it. All the contact and warmth that Stephen is giving him feels removed, distant, his body more numb than the drink or drugs had managed over the past day.
His arms raise, slow, automatic, hands resting on Stephen's sides. The heat of his body, the rise and fall of his ribcage under Takeshi's palms, all of it dull and detached.]
She told me she had Quell. [As if he'd broken a dam, the rest pouring forth without thought into the small space between him and Stephen.] She'd saved her. Hidden her somewhere.
[The true extent of what he'd done, pulling that trigger.]
[ Ice. More ice wedged into a wound that isn't his own. He's heard the name only once before, but he has all the context he needs to understand. That in itself is— something for later. For all it has to be is terrible.
Comprehension yawning open, he holds on. Shakes his head where it's pressed to Takeshi's, doesn't move away even an inch. ]
People say all kinds of things. To survive.
[ It's a poor excuse for a balm and Stephen knows it. Lie or not, how could he know? Takeshi, though. Takeshi could know. Takeshi who looks and can't help but see. He could know. And even if grief and the weight of his decision could cloud his judgement, even if his sister could blind him to truth, what good is a maybe-lie? What help is not knowing? ]
[Simple. No further argument needed. It hadn't been another of Rei's ploys. It had been the truth, the unanswered question, scratching around at the bottom of his brain since he'd first walked out into Bay City's streets. Quell was out there, somewhere, and he'd destroyed his only real chance of ever finding her.
He had nothing left. Was nothing. A broken ghost with the corpse of his sister in his arms, two hundred and fifty years of death and horror she'd spread across the settled worlds, only the facsimile of Quell that his mind conjured to whisper comfort as they plummeted out of the atmosphere.]
I can't do it again.
[Quiet. So quiet he isn't even sure he said it. His grip tightens on Stephen for a second. A pulse of need threading through the empty static of his body. He'd known it, waking up here. Had tried to keep his distance. Drown himself in alcohol and sex. But he was weak, like Rei said. Soft-hearted. And now he was in love with another person intent on a path that would leave him with nothing, again.]
[ An admission that's almost a plea, so quiet it's barely there, so loud it cuts right into him, casts around, buries deep. He wants to fix it. He wants to fix this, undo it, make it better, make it right. But he can't spare him from it, can he? Can't even save him from again. Won't. Will not change while there's imminent need of him, doesn't know how to compromise, never learned how to shift weight to better share it. Has never had to grapple with the possibility of burying someone else under it all when he falls.
So he'll hurt him. He will hurt him. He already has.
Silence greets him for a while. Silence and clutching, the hand not cradling his head moving to grip Takeshi by the elbow, hold them locked together even as Stephen grapples with himself, with what is owed now, what is kind.
He doesn't know what's kind. And he doesn't want to leave him alone out here, with thoughts of two women he will never see again, one dead by his hand and one out of his reach. Thoughts of a man who has before and will again throw himself into fire in a bid to save eight billion strangers worlds and worlds away. ]
( I'm sorry. ) [ His mind offers, unbidden. He opens his mouth almost just to drown it out. ] Let me take you home.
[The silence stretches so long that Takeshi could almost fool himself into believing he hadn't said it. Could almost fool himself into believing that Stephen will meet it, this, the only need Takeshi has ever shown to him direct, laid bare under his hands.
But he has said it. And Stephen can't meet it. Wouldn't be himself, have Takeshi this gone, this fucked up about it, if he could.
The irony of it is so tragic that it spins full circle, has him near laughing again. Hands dropping away from Stephen's sides, all of him falling back into the slouch against the tree that Stephen had almost gathered him out of.]
I don't have a home.
[But he is tired, is starting to sober up, so it doesn't succeed in holding the strength of an objection. Just another statement of another sorry fact of his existence.]
[ Takeshi goes slack, slumps back against the trunk of the tree, utters one last nail into the coffin of the day's tragedies, and Stephen does everything he can to keep the sting of it off his face. Another truth he's unable to do anything about. He lingers for a moment more, holding onto the sense memory of seconds ago when his hand between bark and skull had marked a chance to prize him up and away.
No longer. Takeshi won't fight him, it seems, but he's not going to help him either. So after a moment Stephen hangs his head, prizes his hand carefully free (gentle, gentle with the head he rests back against the tree, not so much with the hand he scrapes over bark to do it), leans back to adjust his balance and shifts, twists so he too can slump somewhat gracelessly against the trunk. Enough space left for Takeshi that he can pretend Stephen isn't there if he wants to badly enough, if he doesn't turn his head too far to the side. Close enough that he'll know he's there regardless, emitting all the subtle traces of another beating heart.
No more words. There isn't anything he can say. He decides he'll wait it out until the time comes that one or other of them have had enough of sitting in the hush left behind. By then, he hopes, he'll have decided whether to take Takeshi home or leave him alone. Or have already given in to the urge to reach across the forest floor to find his hand, take it, squeeze. ]
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[It isn't relieved. It's the dry repeat of dismissal. It isn't over, because there will be a next time, and Stephen will do the same again.
He doesn't ask why, or what happened instead. Just answers the question, simply:]
No.
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Where are you?
[ He can find out. In a heartbeat, he can be there. But to steal from him the right to space, to any kind of privacy now would be... wouldn't it? Bad. ]
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Getting as fucked up as I can on this town's limited menu of dangerous substances.
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At least he's honest. ]
I'm coming to find you.
[ But he says it, and he waits. Still uncertainly toeing the line, giving him the chance to demand his privacy before Stephen can take it from him and break something.
... Break something more. ]
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[Dry, amused. Does Stephen think finding him is going to make a difference?]
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You know, [His speech isn't slurred, but it is slow. Deliberate.] Something tells me you knew where I was the whole time.
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I didn't need to know.
[ He breaks his gaze from Takeshi only long enough to cast about his little camp, looking for signs of whatever it is he's taken. If here and now is how Takeshi has to learn that there's nowhere yet that he could go where Stephen couldn't follow, so be it. ]
Is this helping you?
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You're the doctor, doctor. [He lifts a shot glass full of something clear, a mock toast.] Do I need help?
[The shot's knocked back in one. Glass returned to the ground, refilled from the unmarked bottle resting against his hip.]
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No. No, you're obviously just fine.
[ The sudden sweep of his hand through the air as Takeshi sets that bottle down after the refill. The effect isn't immediately apparent - but the waiting shot is water. ]
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Rude.
[Pointed, with raised eyebrows, for both the comment and the replacement of his alcohol. He knocks the shot of water back, emptying the glass to be refilled properly.]
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I'm taking you back. If you want to drink yourself into whatever oblivion you can find, you can do it where I can monitor you.
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There it is. Hero sorcerer, taking control and saving the day.
[He leans back against the tree again, back of his skull rolling against the bark, finding a now familiar cradle there. His eyes are flat as he meets Stephen's gaze, empty, something about his manner suddenly seeming terrifyingly, coldly sober, as if there was a part of him the drink and drugs could never reach.]
You can't save me, Stephen. I'm already dead.
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Seconds spread between them, Takeshi cold and clear and flat, Stephen clenched and closed and burning. You can't save me, Stephen.. Fuck you, Takeshi.
I'm already dead.
Seconds. Seconds more. And he's angry, scared, but not stupid. He knows there's no walking away. Just like he knows why she could and he can't. A few steps carry him past the remains of a fire, into Takeshi's space. He finds a spot as close as limbs will allow to plant his feet and lower into a crouch, eye to eye. Expression smoothed from its instinctive reaction, leaving behind only tension. The trappings of frustration, fear. ]
What do you mean?
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They had me on ice for two hundred and fifty years. Spun me back up to solve a murder. This meth, Bancroft, with an Envoy obsession. [As powerful as to consider himself a god, when all he'd been was another pawn.] It was all my sister, pulling strings. She'd destroyed everything, everyone I'd ever loved. Become everything we'd fought against.
[The sickness of the revelation is there again. Time hadn't diminished it. The betrayal, the despair, the guilt of not having seen it sooner. Of how far she'd gone. Of not being able to save her.]
I cornered her in her snuff palace for the rich and powerful. I had her, but I knew, I could see it. She wouldn't stop. She'd never stop.
[She'd tear apart the universe to get to him again. To bring him to her side. It would never matter to her how many people she hurt, how many lives she destroyed. His gaze on Stephen's doesn't waver, but there's a long span of seconds, time and weight and memory grinding against his resolve. But there was no eroding this.]
So I blew out her stack. [Simple, blunt, final.] Stayed with her, held her while the whole place fell out of the sky.
[Waited to die.]
And then I woke up here.
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Oh, fuck.
He can't hold the tension in his face. It gives way to startled horror. He gives way to it too.
Hand pushing between bark and body until he can be the cradle for Takeshi's head, forehead tipping in to press against forehead, brow furrowed with grief for him. He thinks of his own sister, disappearing beneath the ice. Thinks of the crack and the splash, the panic and the silence. He thinks of her in the days, months, years before. His little sister. He thinks of how he'd loved her.
His fingertips dig in against Takeshi's scalp, the skin at the back of his neck. Knee finds earth to better bear his own weight as he turns his neck so nose brushes cheek. As here as he can get. As close as he can keep him in this awful moment between moments, a counterpoint to there and then.
To have to kill a sister. To have to kill a sister and then live, live this life, in this cruel fucking purgatory. He can deal with the rest later. He can process the impending death later. For now there's this. This thing he can't imagine, this gulf that's been inside this man for as long as he's known him. ]
I'm sorry. [ Not a platitude, not his sterile sympathies. His empathy. He knows he can never have any idea. But if this is how bad even thinking about it feels... ] I'm so sorry.
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His arms raise, slow, automatic, hands resting on Stephen's sides. The heat of his body, the rise and fall of his ribcage under Takeshi's palms, all of it dull and detached.]
She told me she had Quell. [As if he'd broken a dam, the rest pouring forth without thought into the small space between him and Stephen.] She'd saved her. Hidden her somewhere.
[The true extent of what he'd done, pulling that trigger.]
She'd take me to her, if I let her go.
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Comprehension yawning open, he holds on. Shakes his head where it's pressed to Takeshi's, doesn't move away even an inch. ]
People say all kinds of things. To survive.
[ It's a poor excuse for a balm and Stephen knows it. Lie or not, how could he know? Takeshi, though. Takeshi could know. Takeshi who looks and can't help but see. He could know. And even if grief and the weight of his decision could cloud his judgement, even if his sister could blind him to truth, what good is a maybe-lie? What help is not knowing? ]
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[Simple. No further argument needed. It hadn't been another of Rei's ploys. It had been the truth, the unanswered question, scratching around at the bottom of his brain since he'd first walked out into Bay City's streets. Quell was out there, somewhere, and he'd destroyed his only real chance of ever finding her.
He had nothing left. Was nothing. A broken ghost with the corpse of his sister in his arms, two hundred and fifty years of death and horror she'd spread across the settled worlds, only the facsimile of Quell that his mind conjured to whisper comfort as they plummeted out of the atmosphere.]
I can't do it again.
[Quiet. So quiet he isn't even sure he said it. His grip tightens on Stephen for a second. A pulse of need threading through the empty static of his body. He'd known it, waking up here. Had tried to keep his distance. Drown himself in alcohol and sex. But he was weak, like Rei said. Soft-hearted. And now he was in love with another person intent on a path that would leave him with nothing, again.]
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So he'll hurt him. He will hurt him. He already has.
Silence greets him for a while. Silence and clutching, the hand not cradling his head moving to grip Takeshi by the elbow, hold them locked together even as Stephen grapples with himself, with what is owed now, what is kind.
He doesn't know what's kind. And he doesn't want to leave him alone out here, with thoughts of two women he will never see again, one dead by his hand and one out of his reach. Thoughts of a man who has before and will again throw himself into fire in a bid to save eight billion strangers worlds and worlds away. ]
( I'm sorry. ) [ His mind offers, unbidden. He opens his mouth almost just to drown it out. ] Let me take you home.
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But he has said it. And Stephen can't meet it. Wouldn't be himself, have Takeshi this gone, this fucked up about it, if he could.
The irony of it is so tragic that it spins full circle, has him near laughing again. Hands dropping away from Stephen's sides, all of him falling back into the slouch against the tree that Stephen had almost gathered him out of.]
I don't have a home.
[But he is tired, is starting to sober up, so it doesn't succeed in holding the strength of an objection. Just another statement of another sorry fact of his existence.]
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No longer. Takeshi won't fight him, it seems, but he's not going to help him either. So after a moment Stephen hangs his head, prizes his hand carefully free (gentle, gentle with the head he rests back against the tree, not so much with the hand he scrapes over bark to do it), leans back to adjust his balance and shifts, twists so he too can slump somewhat gracelessly against the trunk. Enough space left for Takeshi that he can pretend Stephen isn't there if he wants to badly enough, if he doesn't turn his head too far to the side. Close enough that he'll know he's there regardless, emitting all the subtle traces of another beating heart.
No more words. There isn't anything he can say. He decides he'll wait it out until the time comes that one or other of them have had enough of sitting in the hush left behind. By then, he hopes, he'll have decided whether to take Takeshi home or leave him alone. Or have already given in to the urge to reach across the forest floor to find his hand, take it, squeeze. ]