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Putting this on the 17th, 'cause omg, my timeline's fucked. :| Hope that's okay? PS - this sucks.
At that point, most of the open wounds were probably just in his head (it's where everything had started in the first place, anyway). He still thought the gash across his throat should have killed him, but the honest truth was he didn't actually remember that much. Maybe he had actually been conscious, maybe he had just been a ghost; hell, maybe it had all been a dream and he had tried to kill himself a third (fourth? was it bad that he couldn't remember?) time. Maybe he had really wanted to kill Tsunami, just so he wouldn't have to face him, just so he wouldn't have to hear him ask why like Wannabe Pirate had asked why, just so he wouldn't have to deal with it because he was a thief and a coward, a liar, even if the promise he'd kept was the worst he'd ever made. Not that he could know about that it, really.
Except that he was the monster and the monster was he, and any schism in his mind was just a pretentious cover-up, wasn't it?
The giant yellow star was setting again. There were a thousand symbols that could have been drawn from that; darkness was vanquishing good again because he hadn't been killed at dawn. The fireflies had died in the night because the cold was already there. The snow on the ground tried to hide all of the blood and battlescars when the sunshine wasn't there to reveal the truth. Cowards, all of them. He leaned forward and propped is scarred forehead against his scarred hands, letting all of his tangled mane and hair fall around him. It was cold out and he should really just head in before he froze into a statue there under the old oak tree, but he didn't. That was probably what he wanted anyway.
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indent A long time ago, Ahren had come very close to death. This had occurred twice, even though he did not remember one of these incidents. Noah’s attack had ruined his arms and had he not stabbed him, had they not been pulled apart, he might have died. It didn’t seem like such a serious thing at the time, but he had spent nights awake, listening to strange noises in the dark. Each shadow was an assassin, each gust of wind a conspiracy. Those nights were long gone, but there were still times he found the paranoia running deeper then the scar on his chest that had since been converted to a now-fading tattoo.
indent Had he remembered the other incident, which he did not, he might have lived his life a bit wiser. Still, alcoholic blackouts served some purpose. In these sunspots, these absent white-lights, he was ignorant of all he had done. It did not make him feel better about the possibilities, but it was something. Something to perhaps explain why his head spun and his eyes could never focus on one thing for too long. Ahren’s life was a peculiar one, but he was not alone in those factors.
indent As if to prove this point, he soon found a companion in the ragged figure under the tree. “You look like shit,” Ahren said bluntly, fire-red eyes glowing with the sunset’s blood-colored hue. The light also managed to catch his fur, turning the near-white points to crimson, darkening his coat to auburn, pointing out the scars he no longer tried to hide.
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Tell me something I don't know, he hissed before he even recognize the voice or the scent. His words tumbled out of his slashed open throat and burned in the firelight of the dying sky. He had been unattentive, maybe on purpose, acting the opposite of fearing conspiracy. He welcomed it, wished for it even, endlessly, hopelessly, waiting for that justified death. The anger and frustration was a snake on the tip of his tongue, but it retreated quickly because he didn't know who it belonged to anymore (it's always ever only been you). Maybe he was afraid of that too. But if supressing it was what brought it out in the first place, then he was fucked either way and it didn't matter (you already knew that).
He didn't look up to face the other pair of red eyes. Indeed, he half-didn't even know why Ahren was still there putting up with him and contenting himself with just hanging around an obviously psychotic Omega. If he wanted Chimera back, a pack back, all he had to do was overthrow him (slash that throat again, maybe you'll actually die this time) and drag the rest of them over two spaces and back into the moaning wood. No one would even put up a fight. I deserve it, he said, pulling the anger slowly from his voice, if only because it hurt that much more when it was there, I should have died. Oh, that again. Give it up, y'fuckin' victim.
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indent The thought had occurred to take this miserable place over, but Ahren was not an active competitor yet. He observed the going-ons of the world and waited, patient as death. When and if Chimera returned, it would be on his terms. For now, he was content to watch as things unfolded—and what interesting things he was finding. “If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be here,” the blonde offered, hooking his thumbs onto his belt. It was the only thing he still wore (save his mother's necklace and his marriage ring), and only to carry the pouch and the knife.
indent After a moment of thought, Ahren sat next to the hybrid, hands working with mechanical ease to draw rolling papers and a smaller bag. He didn’t ask any questions as to who or why, because it didn’t really matter. When finished with his work, Ahren struck a match and lit the blunt quickly, taking a drag before offering it to his scarred friend.
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It was impossible for him to gauge how much he actually wanted to die. Was it really just because he wasn't trying hard enough? Was it really because deep down, he was afraid of it? Or was it really just some other worldly force hating on him ridiculously? There was no way to tell or to be sure, just like everything else, so why did it matter at all why? Why was always a loaded question anyway. Did he really believe it? Maybe. Maybe not. Reallys and maybes didn't change the facts though. He was alive. And at the present moment, he wished he wasn't. There was truth in that, if only for a little while.
He didn't lift his head up when Ahren sat down next to him, but the smell drew him out. The hybrid had never been much of a smoker (yes, you have), but he didn't care. If he had been offered alcohol, he would have taken that too, nevermind all of the bad experiences he had had. He had so many of those just piled up in his wake that a few more didn't matter. If he had been offered poison, he would have taken it. And so he took it and inhaled and didn't care and didn't hope and didn't think. Your son offered to kill me, he said dully, spontaneously, without reason (because nothing you ever do has a reason), If I ever went back to Infer.ni. It was better for the kids, probably, though he wondered what they would think if their dear big brother ended up being the one to kill him.
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indent Of course it should have been Gabriel, who had regarded him as a stranger and saw him as an enemy. They had smoothed things out as well as could be done after speaking only twice (it had been twice, since Gabriel returned from the dead like Lazarus) to his estranged offspring. Ahren shrugged at the thought, taking back the devil grass and inhaling deeply. He had danced with addiction many times in his life, and this drug was nothing new. It did not hold him, as the opiates had, and it allowed him to step back from himself. “What were you doing there?”
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So Ahren didn't know because no one had told him. Maybe it wasn't much of a surprise after all since no one else seemed to have noticed anyway. What was there to see? Another litter of Lykois wasn't any real reason to turn heads unless people were afraid it was another generation of prejudice hatred, but Kaena seemed to have calmed a little in the last several months she had been around. And the wonderfully mysterious leader in the land of fog and curses kept in contact with so little people anyway that there was really no one around to give a shit about that. So of course no one knew. Who cared? Drama and chaos was nothing new around here. No one bothered snuffing this shit out anymore.
The smoke calmed and agitated him at the same time. His throat burned even more and he felt like he was swallowing fire with every gulp of air. His head felt simultaneously heavier and lighter. Feeding my bastard children, he answered heavily, bitterly almost. Guess Gabriel doesn't want me around his last litter of brothers and sisters.
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indent The coast was the last place Ahren wanted to go. It held only bad memories and living reminders of why he had gone. So that was why, when Hamlet explained himself, his reaction was not violent. Rather, Ahren snorted, took another drag and held his breath. It was like a hurricane was starting to form in his skull, and the earth was pushing and pulling all at once. “She’s gone, you know.” Ahren said, shutting his eyes. “He’s probably keeping you away for a good reason,” Like the fact you’re dangerous to everyone around you.
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I know, he said, and he might have shrugged if he had cared enough to or had the energy to. And he knew very well that Gabriel's reasons were good, even if he couldn't stand him. It was better for everyone that he stayed away from his own children and that they never learned what a fucked up mess their father was. So maybe I should just go back and see if he keeps his word. He leaned back against the tree and looked up, exposing and stretching the half-scabbed mess across his throat. You can have this pack and this curse. You've always done better. Or Lisichka can have it. I don't fucking care.
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indent “I don’t want your pack,” Ahren said sharply, opening his eyes. Even though they were bloodshot, they were clear enough. He knew his limits, and he knew how far he could push himself. “You’re just looking for an excuse,” he added, tilting his head slightly and toying with the mass of dreadlocks that fell from the motion. “Life is only meaningless for you ‘cause you aren’t making it worth living.”
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He laughed and it hurt when he laughed. I know, he said again, feeling the anger dance again in the back of his voice, the back of his head where it had learned to fester and grow, where it had learned to manifest itself as a monster. Any excuse to make myself feel better. I'm tired of trying or pretending to try or pretending to pretend. I don't care. I had a life worth living once, for maybe a day, maybe two, or maybe just a few hours in the night when he couldn't remember, And now I'm done. The hybrid looked down again, trying to relax the muscles on his neck and throat, tired from so much talking. He found his hand reaching up to touch the scabs and he could feel the temptation to strangle himself. What do you have that's worth it?
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indent Ahren smiled oddly, a thin sort of smile he had carried with him since he was a boy. It had become real the moment he realized his mother was dead. “I’m still alive,” he said, as if that answered everything. “History isn’t everything, Hamlet.” Letting go of his hair, Ahren lifted his hand, plucked the paper and smoking grass and took another breath. It went down smooth, but he coughed as he exhaled, shifting his weight.
indent “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” Then, without reason, Ahren laughed darkly. “I don’t even really know what that means, but we all make our own meanings, right?”
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Being alive had never been good enough and meaning was too unstable a thing to be dependable, but then life had never promised to be workable and dependable. Or as far as he knew. If there was a contract he had signed at birth that detailed what he should have come to expect, then he certainly wasn't aware of it. And he already damned his father for bringing about his existence, so what more was there to it? Nothing is everything, he responded, almost sarcastically. He had made his past everything because he had let it consume him. He had let it. Maybe he was a masochist that way, but he still wasn't happy.
I'm not looking for anything, he added, And I'm not finding anything either. Making his own meaning had failed somewhere along the way. He wasn't the existentialist. Could you derive purpose from nothing? If all there was was a gaping void, could he shape something out of nothing? He sighed and returned to his original position, though he didn't bury his face this time, just rested his weary chin on his tattered forearms and stared straight on ahead into the empty fog. He didn't even know what to say to that.
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indent Hamlet lived in a place full of darkness and terrible shadows. Not that long ago, Ahren himself had walked in that place—until he had opened himself to the gentle indifference of the world. Nothing mattered, but everything mattered. Enlightenment came in small pieces, even if all he realized was that they had to be caught up in the essential drama of life. Escape was only temporary; in drugs, orgasm, a sunny day, the laughter of a woman. “Then you’re halfway there,” Ahren said, eyes going foggy as he stumbled into a drug-driven calm. He barely understood what he was saying anymore, rambling on.
indent “You need to break yourself down to evolve,” he continued, shrugging lightly. “Forget the preconceptions you have of yourself until you’ve got nothing left. And sure, you might not like what’s down there—I sure as hell didn’t—but fuck it. We’re all flawed, we’re all fucked up, we all blame our parents or society or whatever, but we end up blaming ourselves. Sure, most of the shit that happens is our fault, but you know what? If you don’t accept that you aren’t anything.”
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Halfway where? He had accepted things before, but accepting did not directly translate into anything else. He accepted that nothing was ever going to change. He accepted that nothing mattered and that trying to make them matter didn't mean anything at all. He accepted that everything was over and some things remained unforgivable no matter how many times you said sorry because maybe, deep down, you don't mean it. He accepted that maybe. He even half-way accepted that the demon in his head was probably never going to die and that he was doomed to live a half-life hurting everyone he came to touch. Really? Had he accepted that? That he was going to hurt everyone? Even the blissfully clueless little daughter he had sleeping in his den nowadays? What if he went on to eat her someday?
I'm not going to argue with you, he said, half because he couldn't pay attention to the words anymore. It sounded almost like a lecture, but he didn't care either way. People found their own peace. Maybe Ahren had found his. But his reasons and his methods would not necessarily bring him out of the prison in his head, so it didn't really matter. I've never been anything. I accept everything, but that doesn't change or make better, anything. And I never learn.
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indent “You sound like one of my kids,” Ahren said with the same peculiar smile on his face. He extended an arm and patted the hybrid on his shoulder, aware he smelled like tobacco, aware he looked like a Bohemian and sounded like some would-have-been philosopher. It didn’t matter how the world saw him or how he saw himself. This was not, and never had been, about him. “Listen, you’re a good guy. You’ll get this sorted out. Nothing is everything, right,” he cited, chuckling again. “Besides, you’ve got children to take care of. A fucked up father is better then no father at all,” he said, aware how this itself tasted like a lie on his tongue.
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Which one? he wondered half-heartedly. He really only knew Gabriel and Corona; the former because he hated him (or perhaps, what he had become) and the latter because she didn't. The tawny male wasn't really even aware of the other's second litter considering he had never met Jasper on the borders and was so out of touch with everything that he wasn't sure who was running the pack half the time. Maybe it was the demon, after all, and he was the ghost, the alternate personality that no one knew about. It was ironic though, that just as he was starting to think that there was no one left who really knew who he had been, figures from the past start popping up once more, as if to ground him. He couldn't tell yet if there was any real success in those efforts.
He flinched at the other's touch, but only a little. The only people that had really touched him in the last year or so (again) had been trying to kill him and so it had become a reflex, but as death was much more welcomed than not these days, the response was not so violent. But he snorted softly at the words. Good is subjective, remember, he said, convinced that Ahren's definition of "good" had to be amazingly lenient to include him. And he could have laughed at the assertion of the role of the father as he still had Gabriel's own version of those words in the back of his head. He had never known anything of the father-son relationship there, but he could guess right then that they weren't good. No, he replied firmly, They're better off without me. Gabriel can and will take care of them a fucking helluva lot better than I could anyway. Besides, didn't they already go over that death sentence promise?
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indent It didn’t matter, any of this. They were all going to die one day. The first question remained unanswered and hung in the air, leaving it up and open. Whoever it was didn’t mater—they were all like each other, even if they would never admit it. Of course he might be mad, and perhaps his judgment was impaired. It seemed to make sense, in some strange way. If it didn’t he would have come here and he wouldn’t remain within Clouded Tears today.
indent “Shit, don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself?” The red eyed man laughed, pushing against the shoulder playfully. “You’d think you never saw the sunrise.” Or fallen in love, or heard the way that the wind spoke through the trees. Their stupid little lives didn’t mean anything. They had to accept and appreciate every moment, because if they didn’t then the world would just come crashing down around them without concern. They didn’t matter. The world was indifferent.
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I do, he answered, and he could have very easily continued down the very same path. The circular path and repetition of his own thoughts and words did not begin to detail all of the things he hated about himself. He was sick of the past and the present and the tragic future; he was sick of having to pretend that everything was still okay when it had been years since anything had been right; he was sick of trying to convince himself that it was because of duty that he stayed alive and he was sick of the half-assed excuses he kept coming up with. He was sick of being sick of himself too. Ahren had changed since the day they had met on the dark stage and it was clear already that the constant cloud of despair hanging over the hybrid's head had already gotten old for him.
And yet the other male was still putting up with him. That was probably how he had changed. Laruku felt guilty for being stuck where he was, but he saw no point or reason to change himself either. The sunrise was reminded him of people he had betrayed and things he had done and of how vampires and demons were always skilled in the light. The sun isn't much to look at, he snorted softly, trying to force the humor into his voice. Maybe it worked, maybe not. It had been so long that he couldn't tell anymore. But for Ahren's sake today, he would try. It was the least he could do. And one day, it will destroy us all. Yeah, 'cause that was real funny.
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indent There was no reason to live in the past. It didn’t matter, it wasn’t worth anything. History was not something Ahren thought much about anymore—it was true, of course, he was a creature who would not have been what he was now were it not for those things, but so it goes. “That’s one theory,” he responded, leaning back against the tree and sensing the tug of gravity below him. Sure, he should feel it now, stoned and talking to an emotional train wreck. The idea made him smile. “It won’t matter for us. We’ll be dead by the time the sun burns out.”
indent Whether or not he realized the morbidity of their conversation, Ahren continued. “There’s a hole in the sky too. Someday, when we’ve become like men and live in cities and drive cars and believe ourselves to be Gods, it’s going to tear open.” Letting out a cold laugh at the ridiculous thought, he rubbed the faint scar above his left eye and shrugged.
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