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And just like that, they were almost back up to the present day, the parts that she remembered and on occasion wished she could forget. Corona didn't say anything for a while after that, letting it stew in her mind while her eyes lost their focus. There were other things to listen to and focus on, like the coughing. The rate at which he seemed to persist at whittling away life. She knew they were there. They had seemingly always been there, somewhere in the back of her mind. But they never spoke up.
“How do you think things would have turned out if you had never gone back to Chimera?” she asked finally, genuinely curious of the path that hadn't been taken. There was no way to take it now of course, but to speculate was fine with her. “How do you think I would have come out?” Or the others, even. Sometimes she wondered what it would have been like to stay back with her siblings and her mother. How different would things have really been compared to the way they were now?
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He had played that scenario over and over in his head. What could have been, what might have been. They might have been fully unremarkable. They might have taken Inferni by the horns and turned it into something unstoppable. “I don’t know,” he responded honestly. Scratching under his chin, he toyed with the barbell in his tongue, and then continued. “It probably would have been different.”
Leaning forward and putting his chest on his leg, he flicked ash from the cigarette, adjusted his arms, and sat up again. “I don’t know what your siblings turned out like. You and Gabriel are the only ones I’ve seen since everything happened.” Conway had gone, as his other children, and vanished into the European wilderness. The others were strangers to him now, as they had been then.
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“I don't really know how the others turned out either,” she said, sighing. “They didn't stick around, but that was their choice, I guess.” Like everything else, she had often wondered what had become of them. Maybe they were all dead, maybe they were all out making a name for themselves. Sometimes she regretted not having better ties with them, with all of them, but there wasn't much she could do about it now.
There wasn't much that Corona could do about anything. “Sometimes I wished it was different, even now,” because maybe things would have been better. Maybe they wouldn't stuck in the ruts that they were in, heading towards certain disaster. “But I guess it's pretty pointless to wish for something like that, huh?” Wishing had never done anything for her, so she really didn't know why she kept trying, kept hoping maybe things would work out for once. Things were feeling less and less right the more she thought about it.
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Another shrug, another drink. Ahren had realized long ago that he had no potential to control the world around him—he could not control his children, nor his lovers, and this absence of control gave him some sense of freedom. Letting go was the best thing he had ever done, despite the fact he clung with sick desperation to something, needed some solid footing.
“We can’t change the past,” he said, smiling in a drunken stupor. Sliding from the bar, he stumbled, caught himself, and tuned to Corona. “I want you to take the guitar.” There was no smile. His eyes for just a moment were startlingly sober. Then, as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. He reached behind the bar, fumbled with the bottles. One fell, shattering against the cold floor. Laughing at this, Ahren found the clear liquid he was looking for. “I think people forget they can change the world,” he exclaimed, alcohol thick on his breath. As he spoke, his hands were fumbling with some piece of ragged cloth, forcing it into the bottle. “It doesn’t take a lot,” he coughed, ignoring the blood that reached his hands. Shaking the bottle, he turned, struck a match, and had the cloth burning. It was a miracle that he made it to the door, stumbling the way he did. Two steps put him out in the November snow, and one more sent the bottle flying through the air. It hit a nearby car, crashing through what glass was left in the windshield, and began to burn.
Ahren laughed, standing on unsteady legs, and stared ahead at the fire. It didn’t take a lot to change the world. Matches (love?) and (hate?) gasoline.
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[html] She was silent again, only thinking over what he said for a moment. They couldn't change the past, that was true. Hindsight was always in perfect vision, even when they had eyes that faltered and lost their sharpness. On a side note, the minute she processed that notion, she was thinking of the literal reasons why people lost their sight. Age. Genetics. Injury. His request to take the guitar was met with a grunt, though she turned to eye his form curiously, almost daring to ask why. Her mouth parted, lips pinching and tongue curling to shape the syllable out, but nothing came out. Instead, her expression wrinkled up at the wrong smell of alcohol as the bottle broke, caught up in what he was doing and what he was saying.
“What,” are you doing, was the question that started to tumble out of his mouth when he had lit the rag. She didn't need much more than that to surmise what he was doing, and she slipped off of the stool with more grace and control than he had. He staggered towards the open door and she blindly followed him, meeting the cold and harsh sting of the bright snow and day through a squinting gaze. And she watched the slow arc of the bottle as it sailed through the air, seconds ungodly slow, and listened to the triumphant sound of glass breaking and fire spreading. And the smell of alcohol permeated her senses. Glancing from the car to her father and the ground, she wasn't sure that she followed anything at that point.
“And what exactly does burning a car accomplish? It changes the scenery, but not the world,” she asked him, wondering if there was enough clarity between them to figure that out. Maybe it didn't take much to change the world, but the world changed regardless of what they did. They didn't have to apply much influence to it to have it change rapidly. But not all of them dealt with change in the way that they should have and Corona was one of those people. She abhorred change, but went through it anyway. Apathetically at times, at that. And just like the skeleton fingers of frost that creeped up her spine, she thought maybe she felt it creeping up on her again.
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I am so awesome. I managed to quote The Dark Knight in both this and the Jasper thread. Don't judge me. :|
Something in his head was pulsing, and he had a vague idea that it might be his heart. The cold was still all around him, and he was aware of this, but the fire and the whiskey spoke to him. Another voice, one just as familiar, came from behind him. She questioned, as was expected. He had no answers. Nothing meant anything, the blind man had told him. If that held true, then such an act truly was pointless. Ahren didn’t care; it made him feel something. Nothing had done that for months. He barely felt the snow.
It was her latter question, the one that registered, that drew laughter from deep in his chest. He laughed and stared ahead, transfixed. When he finally did break his gaze, good eye following the motion of his head to focus on her, he was smiling. Mad, perhaps as he had always been; but an honest smile none the less.
“Do I really look like the kind of guy with a plan?”
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So I finally watched The Dark Knight and Bale's "Batman" voice just about ruined the movie for me and made me cringe throughout the movie. :| (But omg Ledger-Joker is fucking ftw. Best Joker ever.)
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“Yes,” she answered, barely hesitating long enough to think about the question. “You just don't know it.” He was two different sides of a coin, she could see that. He had been that way a long time, maybe. It was enough to make her set her jaw uneasily, enough to stir the bile and the wine settling in her stomach. Something in the car popped loudly, leaving the contents yet unaffected within it to shift just as uneasily as the gears and cogs in her mind did. A hundred questions could have very well been dancing in circles on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't find anything to say for several moments.
The chill of the air enveloped her finally and she fought the urge to shiver. It had always been this way, it always boiled down to this. She pressed on. “How long have things been like this?” And what difference did it honestly make? What difference would it make? “Is this because of her and what she did that you do these things? Or was it me, or any of the others?” Maybe absolution was a stupid thing to look for, but it was incredibly easy for her to want to place blame somewhere else; to fuel a useless fight over and on multiple fronts.
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He kept looking at her through that one eye. The snow fell around them, spiraling away from the flames and the twisting metal, down to cold concrete and asphalt. Ahren supposed that she could be right; perhaps he did have a plan, and he had always had a plan. Perhaps he operated on a separate level, on a different playing field.
Then again, perhaps he was simply mad.
“I was doing this long before any of you were here,” he confessed. Another pop and whine of metal made his ears turn wildly, searching for the source, but his gaze never left her face. “The fire is a disease in our blood.” Your brother has it, he nearly said, but held his tongue. That much he owed Gabriel. For several long moments he was completely silent. Another sharp burst of sparks erupted from the car, and this time, he did turn his head. “I don’t want you to worry about me,” he added, voice low.
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‘Too late,’ she wanted to voice. Everything was always too late. A decision, a plan, a goal, some misplaced effort left and lost along the way. “Maybe I should have known,” she said, not catching just how hopeless that actually sounded. Or maybe not so hopeless as it was wistful. “But if it's a disease, what stops all of us from having it?” Good breeding? That seemed laughable. The only good breeding there seemed to be was the breeding that didn't happen. Of course, who was to say that they weren't mad already—wasn't that a good possibility? Corona didn't know if it was something she should have been expecting or fearing. As if things could or would get any worse at that point, as if clarity would make a difference anywhere.
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A crooked grin broke his face, suggesting that she was right. It was a peculiar thing, what had been happening to him. “Who said you didn’t? Our family is destined to destroy itself,” he rambled, took a step to the back. The whiskey in his blood betrayed him and he stumbled, hit the wall behind him hard, and began to laugh. The blonde sank to the ground, shut his eyes, and began shaking his head. When the laughter stopped, his left eye opened, crimson against the darkness, holding the flame. “My kids killed my brothers and sister. My cousin killed my father. I…” he hesitated for a minute, and his eye shut. One deep breath grounded him and he focused his gaze back on her face. “If you ever find Matinee, I want you to kill her.” He was smiling as he said this, as if he had planned such a thing all along.
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When he stumbled, there was some part of her that considered stepping out to steady him, but she didn't move. She felt rooted to the spot, doomed to listen to a burning car and a madman ramble. The way he laid out things made her realise that perhaps they were doomed to destroy themselves. Although she rationalised every word internally, an uneasy frown settled on her face as her eyes turned downcast from him. She hadn't expect to feel guilt sting up over what had happened to Meth (and subsequently the others), but it was there. It was almost absent and like an ache of hunger, but it was there.
However, her gaze returned to him sharply at the mention of Matinee and she tensed at what he was saying. Though her expression did not change, there was a mixture of emotions that flitted briefly behind her eyes. Corona was inclined to laugh and she considered it for a moment. She had hated that gypsy from nearly the moment she had wandered in. She hated her for driving them all apart and she hated her for hurting him, but now with everything that hovered overhead, she found herself questioning his request. “Why?” None of it really mattered, she supposed, knowing full and well that she would put an end to Matinee either way, but she wanted to know.
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Ahren knew that anyone was capable of murder. He knew this because once, a long time ago, he had not expected himself to be this way. There was something much stronger in their blood and it drove them to this. As long as they lived, the de le Poer house would survive through tooth and claw. They would do this because it was how it was meant to be done. Above the demons, the curses, and whatever excuses they gave themselves, they had this one terrible prologue.
He smiled at her still, as certain as he had ever been. “Because I know you’ll do it,” he asserted. Both hands hit the ground and pushed him up. Ahren swayed on his feet and his back hit the wall, but he managed to regain his footing (for the time being at least). “I used to be able to see the future,” the blonde man babbled, leaning his head back against the cold brick. “I want you to promise me,” Ahren urged, his eyes focused on her—and for one brief moment, terrible sober. “Promise me,” he repeated, stronger, more urgent.
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She struggled to keep a grip on apathy. There were many emotions that dared to toil beneath her skin and she felt anger pressing against the brim. But it was undirected and even if it bubbled to the surface, she didn't know for who it was for, or why. His words were crystal clear through the cold air, his movements moving in time with the rest of the world as it made its lazy turn around the sun. But she felt sluggish. The wind whistled in her ears and she turned her eyes away from him, downcast at his voice as her jaw set. There was something binding in the way he spoke, because he knew that she would do it.
He spoke of the seeing the future and she vaguely remembered Kerberos. She doubted she would have recognised him if he came around now. She doubted she would have recognised a lot of them if they came around now. Her expression waned slightly, dimming and halfway contorting to a frown as he babbled, ignoring the first urge with some sort of feign boredom. Corona felt his eyes on her, but she also felt the urge to get away. Not to listen to any more nonsense. Not to believe in what he was saying like she had so many times before. But the second time around, her attention snapped back to him, blue meeting crimson. There was a dire part of her inclined to obey, but she couldn't get the words to come.
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She offered him no words and no excuses. She said nothing, but her eyes said a thousand and more things. Ahren kept his eyes on her, though only one would do well to see, and tried to read her soul. The whiskey tightened its hold and he smiled, honestly, madly, and one hand (scarred by his own blade) reached out and gingerly cradled her cheek. “I’m so sorry,” he nearly whispered.
Then he pulled back and wavered on his feet, coughed heavily and had enough sense to hide the traces of blood from her (as best he could) and looked down at his feet. “Tell your brother I’m sorry.”
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[html] She had read somewhere that touch was supposed to help within the healing process. But in that moment she wasn't sure if it helped or hurt more. A shaky breath left her under his touch, her gaze wavering; she felt anchored to the reality. This moment was real, it just wasn't some fabricated moment, it wasn't just something that she would throw away later and forget about. Everything was far too real. The smell of smoke and of blood and of liquor and the cold grasp of winter wrapped around almost made her shiver. But instead Corona found the urge to cry instead. “I will,” she said, but her voice threatened to falter. “Everything's gonna be okay though, right?” Maybe it was a stupid question to ask, but it seemed like the right thing to do. [/html]
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There was no going back. He had left his circus tent, left his hooch and his mask behind. The sensation of cold, the weight of what he aimed to do, it was all numbed and far off. He felt disconnected from his body, and for one brief moment, could see his blood coursing through his body. The blonde turned at her voice, and saw something in her eyes he recognized but did not fully comprehend. Ahren smiled and grabbed her in a sloppy, drunken embrace. “I told you that a long time ago,” he breathed out, smiling like a man who had nothing to fear and nothing to lose.
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[html] She smiled weakly, but returned the embrace. She did know the answer to that from a long time ago, but it was the reassurance that she had been after. It was the reassurance that he gave her. Everything would pan out for the best. It always did, in the end. Withdrawing from the sloppy embrace with her resolve somewhat restored, Corona resigned to the inevitable departure that had to occur. “I should be getting back,” came her voice with the hints of disappoint towards obligations. But standing there any longer would make going away even harder to do, which was something she had learned a long time ago. “I guess I'll see you later,” she said, unknowing then that she would not. Turning away from him just as readily as she had towards him, she gathered up the guitar he had left to her and went her own way, left to ponder over the things he had said and just what they meant. Maybe Jasper had held a little truth in what he had said after all, but she wasn't ready to commit to that decision herself. [/html]
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