[ Deduced, guessed, what's it fucking matter? Someone saw him, right past the person's pretending to be in this place. Someone knows. Maybe not all of it — he really hopes Godric hasn't guessed all of it — but enough to make it harder. Enough to get in the way.
Sharkface grits his teeth. His hands are starting to ache with how hard he's digging them into his arms. It bites at him, how calm Godric is. Utterly unflappable, like nothing and no one could shake him. That feels abjectly unfair. Sharkface thinks he feels too much, sometimes. Most of the time. Rage and sorrow and whatever else dragged itself up from the undertow. Rage is useful but only in the right circumstances, around the right people. Here it only paints a target on his back. ]
It makes me look like a liability.
[ A threat to be dealt with. He can't have that. He needs these people to see him see him as useful, even if they never trust him. ]
( desperate to be useful. to be normal. the scars on his face have become an identity. godric draws a breath required only to speak, and continues his slow surveillance of the city. it does not see to trouble him to have his back to ephemera. )
[ Anyone else would balk at having someone like him at their back, especially out of armor. Not Godric, though. It feels like arrogance, like an insult, but Sharkface takes a breath and lets it go. Godric's too strong, too goddamn fast, for anything Sharkface might throw at him right now. It wouldn't matter. Maybe if he had a plasma rifle, a needler, maybe if he had some tricks, but he doesn't. And so he's not a threat.
Sharkface breathes. Tips his head back and counts to ten. There was a shrink who told him to do that once, back after he'd gotten arrested the first time. He'd thrown a chair at her for that. He regrets it now, a little. Maybe there was something to it. ]
I'm good at what I do. Everything else is just noise.
( he is silent for an almost uncannily long time. most humans begin to awkwardly fidget after a few seconds of silence, a conversational lull. godric has no such compulsion.
[ The quiet is almost oppressive, made worse because of the anticipation. The understanding that something's coming at the end and it likely won't be a blow, which could be predicted and absorbed. He's taken a thousand hits, a hundred thousand, and maybe he ended up on the ground, maybe he even stayed there a few times, but he always, always gets back to his feet. No matter what anyone throws at him, he's always the last man standing.
This is different. Something new, and unpredictable.
Sharkface holds. He waits. And then the question comes, and what the fuck is he supposed to do with that? How is a person supposed to answer that? He wants to laugh but doesn't. ]
I have a mission to complete.
[ He takes too long to answer and what he says isn't a denial. But what does it matter what he wanted when he was drunk, anyway? He was stupid, acting recklessly and remembering his brothers, his sisters. It doesn't matter what he wanted because he has a mission and he cannot possibly die until he sees it through.
He'll see them at the end. When he's done what he promised. And that has to be enough. ]
( this boy answers more questions with what he chooses not to say than what he does. what trauma he has experienced has given him cause to expect and accept death. but, like a vampire clawing its way out of bloody ground, he will not die until he fulfills his purpose.
only two things can push a human to those limits — vengeance, or love. worst of all is both entwined. he knows, both have lived in him. there were days he stood above appius with a stake.
godric turns back to face him. studies him a moment. the scar, the stance, the way he all but seems to be drowning in his own demons. is it that he is resentful for all that godric is, or can do? humans are often so with vampires. they are envious of the youth, the beauty, the power, the strength, but never do they think of what it means to be unchanging. to know that your own survival comes at the cost of others. to be a vampire is to accept selfishness and hedonism are the only traits you will ever have, and take them to be virtues.
he does not think like a vampire any more. a vampire would laugh at this sad husk of a man. would perhaps give him the death he seeks, regardless of his mission. godric knows better, and decides to offer him something else. a vulnerability. )
Just before arriving here, I had stood on a rooftop much like this one, and chose to meet the sun. It is death, to a vampire of my years. I welcomed it.
( he remembers the burn. closing his eyes to accept it. his last thoughts were not for eric or nora but for his very human parents, two thousand years dead, whose names he could not recall but whose faces were forever in his memory. and then he was here. )
[ Sharkface drops his hands, shifting uneasily. The cold is beginning to work its way into his joints again, slowing him down. Settling in alongside all the pins and metal plates that are holding him together. Medics always said he was lucky, one of maybe five survivors who'd walked out of that building. A direct missile strike, and one hundred and ten stories of metal and glass cashing down on his head. Maybe five survivors. Barrows had been one of the others. Lost his arm, cleaved off at the shoulder, but he'd survived and armored back up in time to die with the others. That had been a kindness, Sharkface knows now. To die fighting. Barrows never had to see the aftermath. Never saw what it did to Hunter, or to him.
Breathe, little brother.
He twitches. Lays his hands flat at his side and holds perfectly still. Standing at attention, just like he'd been taught. He didn't want to know that about Godric. He doesn't want to understand these people here, or know what's hurt them. All he needs to do is endure this place, wait it out and drag himself back home to finish what he started.
It's simple, or at least it ought to be. But he keeps getting caught on things. On these people. And now Godric's staring at him, unblinking and eerily still, and Sharkface wants to hit him or maybe just bolt, get out of this situation.
[ Balancing the scales. Right. Sharkface tips his head back and counts to ten. Exhales.
Okay. ]
What're you planning to do here, in this city?
[ This is potentially a very stupid idea. But if he means to get home, he needs resources. Allies. Godric can't be one of those. He's too powerful. There'd be no balance. But people like that always have plans, and plans need people to execute them.
( he thinks he is possibly too old to care to turn his hand to some new scheme in some new place. and yet. this is the most invigorated he's felt in centuries. he cannot say what tomorrow will bring. )
[ He stiffens at that. Probably takes too long before speaking, mulling over whether he should like to the goddamn vampire or not. ]
Ephemera.
[ It's only a half-lie. An acceptable one. There have to be lines. And who knows what Godric would make of the thing he calls himself in his head? Because only a crazy person would do that, or someone who doesn't want to be a person anymore, and that can't get out. That has to be stay buried. ]
( he makes a soft sound, sort of a hm, and then turns back to the horizon. the sun is just now beginning to come up above the distant mountains. he knows it holds very little danger to him anymore, though it does burn, it does not seem to kill. )
Would you like to watch the sunrise with me, Mr. Ephemera? It does not have the same effect, here as home for me.
[ Sharkface watches Godric for a long moment, wondering. Not too long ago, Godric told him about standing on a rooftop like the sone and waiting to die. Sharkface has seen the movies, knows the myth about sunlight. And yet here they are. They know things about each other, now, and there's no going back from that. ]
Some would find it to be physically uncomfortable.
( but then, pain means nothing to him. it was the way of his world. enduring it costs him nothing. )
What damage I take mends well enough.
( and even then, were it tenfold what it is, it is a price he would pay after two thousand years in darkness. his people held the sun in high regard. his mother was dedicated to brigantia. he has missed it, and for all that he mislikes being here he does appreciate that this place has... given him back the sun, more than he had ever thought possible. )
[ Pain's one of those things that can be ignored, if you've got enough motivation. Sharkface hums to himself, nodding just once. ]
Yeah. All right.
[ Must be nice to be able to heal the damage. And there's a bit of resentment there, the fact that another person can face pain knowing it couldn't possibly matter, but he swallows that down. He missed the sunrise when he was on the Tartarus and hadn't really had a chance to sit and watch it come when he'd been fighting on Chorus. Too many other things to do.
It might be nice, just to take a minute. Remember the color for later. He could paint it, if he wanted. ]
( he says nothing further. just stands, still and silent like a stone monument as the first rays of dawnlight extend their clever, silvered fingers out like grasping hands. the sky is vivid, chiaroscuro, bold reds and blushing pinks that extend into violet the closer it gets to the black of what darkness remains. the sun is warm and cold all at once, prickling his skin where it hits. but for all that there is pain, he does not burn.
it is still a wondrous thing, to see. he watches for a rather long time, until he is satisfied, and turns away.
he does look to be somewhat sunburnt, skin reddened and blistered in places, but he seems unbothered by what discomfort this ought cause. )
[ Sharkface keeps his distance and doesn't particularly care what Godric makes of that. Let him see it as respect, deference, whatever. Just so long as it doesn't look like fear. Everything else is noise. And he watches Godric carefully as the sun comes up, trying to mark any signs of pain, but the vampire is as stoic as ever. A complete nothing on his face even his skin starts to redden and blister.
If there's pain, it's the kind that's easily hidden.
Sharkface says nothing. Just watches.
It's a beautiful sunrise, as things things go. ]
Remember what I said.
[ They understand something about each other now. That's probably a mistake, but there's no changing it. The least Sharkface can do is try and get something out of the experience. His mission stands. This could get him one step closer to seeing it through, if he's careful. ]
[ Once Godric figures out whatever the fuck it is he wants to do. It's a dangerous gamble, but Sharkface has made worse and has very little left to lose. There was a time the thought of allying with someone just for the power would have gotten him angry and righteous, but the old version of him was idealistic. Naive. He'd trusted too easy and look where that had gotten him. Redemption printed in black across his chest and memories of dead kids. And then, later, the aftermath.
The mission stands. That's the only thing that matters now. Godric's got power. Could take more if he's inclined. Someone like that could be worth signing up with. Doesn't matter what it does to him, so long as it gets him one step closer to finding Washington, to taking Carolina's head off. ]
( that one. godric looks down at his hand, scorched by the dawn but already healing. )
What use do you expect me to have of you?
( humans have their own ideas about vampires. godric may take some form of action in this city, to an end of his choosing, but he is very old, and very tired of leadership in that way. doing something because one is good at it is not the same as doing it because it sings in your blood. ephemera is quick, brutal, violent, good at his job, he says, which seems to have been soldiering in one form or another. the job, undoubtedly, is killing. fighting. intimidation. perhaps some small skill with subterfuge or spycraft but there is nothing he offers that godric cannot himself do better and more efficiently.
yet he craves so desperately to be useful to someone possessed of power. it says much of the psyche he is so staunch in defending. )
[ It's probably the wrong tone to take. Too flat, not respectful enough. Sharkface knows what he is. He used to have ideals and now he doesn't. Trained as a soldier but took a wide turn before retiring in the usual way. And now he clears resistance out of the same outer colony planets he used to protect. He did that in exchange for armor and a shot at the people he hates. It's simple, in the end.
There's always a use for people like him. Fact of the universe. ]
I can shoot, I can fight anyone you throw at me. Fly a dropship in combat conditions. Modify armor. Survive in zero gravity.
[ It's matter of fact. Running down a checklist. Not the first time he's made the pitch. ]
Fought the Covenant, too. [ He inclines his head slightly. ] You said you're old. I believe it. But I doubt you've ever seen anything like them.
( godric begins to walk towards the door down into the confines of the building. the sun is warm across his shoulders. he does not respond right away — it isn't a point of cruelty with him, he simply does not have a very human understanding of time and the beats of conversation. once they're both inside, and his eyes adjust to the dark, )
I will be honest with you, Mr. Ephemera, I have very little interest in any of that.
( it hardly matters who he's fought. that he survived them, this 'covenant' means nothing. a vampire would not have left him standing, even scarred. )
What is it you want of me, that you would offer yourself so?
[ For a moment, he's fairly certain that's a dismissal. Only instead of getting chewed out, Godric's just turning away. Going back inside, like that's it. And maybe Godric has seen things like the Covenant, or even worse then them. Two thousand years is long time to sit with life, and all the ways people find to kill each other. Maybe the idea of planet killers isn't even a strange one.
Sharkface thins his mouth. The question is telling in a way he doesn't like. The phrasing. Offering yourself. ]
People like you have a way of getting power.
[ He stands perfectly straight, eyes ahead. Standing at attention. Remembering a drill instructor who shot him in the chest once. Point blank into his armor. Bullet didn't kill him but it hurt like nothing else. He'd been a teenager then. Hadn't known what it was to really hurt. But that had been the lesson. That he could survive it. That he could take the blow and stand right back up.
Get the mission done. That's the only thing that matters. ]
I need to get back home. You get power, you'd be the first to know how that works.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Sharkface grits his teeth. His hands are starting to ache with how hard he's digging them into his arms. It bites at him, how calm Godric is. Utterly unflappable, like nothing and no one could shake him. That feels abjectly unfair. Sharkface thinks he feels too much, sometimes. Most of the time. Rage and sorrow and whatever else dragged itself up from the undertow. Rage is useful but only in the right circumstances, around the right people. Here it only paints a target on his back. ]
It makes me look like a liability.
[ A threat to be dealt with. He can't have that. He needs these people to see him see him as useful, even if they never trust him. ]
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Are you?
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Sharkface breathes. Tips his head back and counts to ten. There was a shrink who told him to do that once, back after he'd gotten arrested the first time. He'd thrown a chair at her for that. He regrets it now, a little. Maybe there was something to it. ]
I'm good at what I do. Everything else is just noise.
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at length, )
Do you wish I had killed you?
cw for suicidal ideation
This is different. Something new, and unpredictable.
Sharkface holds. He waits. And then the question comes, and what the fuck is he supposed to do with that? How is a person supposed to answer that? He wants to laugh but doesn't. ]
I have a mission to complete.
[ He takes too long to answer and what he says isn't a denial. But what does it matter what he wanted when he was drunk, anyway? He was stupid, acting recklessly and remembering his brothers, his sisters. It doesn't matter what he wanted because he has a mission and he cannot possibly die until he sees it through.
He'll see them at the end. When he's done what he promised. And that has to be enough. ]
cw for suicidal ideation
only two things can push a human to those limits — vengeance, or love. worst of all is both entwined. he knows, both have lived in him. there were days he stood above appius with a stake.
godric turns back to face him. studies him a moment. the scar, the stance, the way he all but seems to be drowning in his own demons. is it that he is resentful for all that godric is, or can do? humans are often so with vampires. they are envious of the youth, the beauty, the power, the strength, but never do they think of what it means to be unchanging. to know that your own survival comes at the cost of others. to be a vampire is to accept selfishness and hedonism are the only traits you will ever have, and take them to be virtues.
he does not think like a vampire any more. a vampire would laugh at this sad husk of a man. would perhaps give him the death he seeks, regardless of his mission. godric knows better, and decides to offer him something else. a vulnerability. )
Just before arriving here, I had stood on a rooftop much like this one, and chose to meet the sun. It is death, to a vampire of my years. I welcomed it.
( he remembers the burn. closing his eyes to accept it. his last thoughts were not for eric or nora but for his very human parents, two thousand years dead, whose names he could not recall but whose faces were forever in his memory. and then he was here. )
I am not your enemy.
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[ Sharkface drops his hands, shifting uneasily. The cold is beginning to work its way into his joints again, slowing him down. Settling in alongside all the pins and metal plates that are holding him together. Medics always said he was lucky, one of maybe five survivors who'd walked out of that building. A direct missile strike, and one hundred and ten stories of metal and glass cashing down on his head. Maybe five survivors. Barrows had been one of the others. Lost his arm, cleaved off at the shoulder, but he'd survived and armored back up in time to die with the others. That had been a kindness, Sharkface knows now. To die fighting. Barrows never had to see the aftermath. Never saw what it did to Hunter, or to him.
Breathe, little brother.
He twitches. Lays his hands flat at his side and holds perfectly still. Standing at attention, just like he'd been taught. He didn't want to know that about Godric. He doesn't want to understand these people here, or know what's hurt them. All he needs to do is endure this place, wait it out and drag himself back home to finish what he started.
It's simple, or at least it ought to be. But he keeps getting caught on things. On these people. And now Godric's staring at him, unblinking and eerily still, and Sharkface wants to hit him or maybe just bolt, get out of this situation.
He doesn't. He holds. ]
The fuck am I supposed to do what that?
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( he shrugs. it's one of the very rare, very human gestures he performs that makes him look all of his sixteen years. )
Do what you will with it.
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Okay. ]
What're you planning to do here, in this city?
[ This is potentially a very stupid idea. But if he means to get home, he needs resources. Allies. Godric can't be one of those. He's too powerful. There'd be no balance. But people like that always have plans, and plans need people to execute them.
So. Why the fuck not? ]
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( he thinks he is possibly too old to care to turn his hand to some new scheme in some new place. and yet. this is the most invigorated he's felt in centuries. he cannot say what tomorrow will bring. )
There is much to learn before I act.
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[ He keeps his voice as even as possible. Tries to show nothing on his face. Maybe it's too late for that. ]
I could be useful to you.
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It may be difficult to reach you, seeing as how you have not given me your name.
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Ephemera.
[ It's only a half-lie. An acceptable one. There have to be lines. And who knows what Godric would make of the thing he calls himself in his head? Because only a crazy person would do that, or someone who doesn't want to be a person anymore, and that can't get out. That has to be stay buried. ]
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Would you like to watch the sunrise with me, Mr. Ephemera? It does not have the same effect, here as home for me.
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Doesn't that hurt?
[ He doesn't say no, though.
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( but then, pain means nothing to him. it was the way of his world. enduring it costs him nothing. )
What damage I take mends well enough.
( and even then, were it tenfold what it is, it is a price he would pay after two thousand years in darkness. his people held the sun in high regard. his mother was dedicated to brigantia. he has missed it, and for all that he mislikes being here he does appreciate that this place has... given him back the sun, more than he had ever thought possible. )
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Yeah. All right.
[ Must be nice to be able to heal the damage. And there's a bit of resentment there, the fact that another person can face pain knowing it couldn't possibly matter, but he swallows that down. He missed the sunrise when he was on the Tartarus and hadn't really had a chance to sit and watch it come when he'd been fighting on Chorus. Too many other things to do.
It might be nice, just to take a minute. Remember the color for later. He could paint it, if he wanted. ]
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it is still a wondrous thing, to see. he watches for a rather long time, until he is satisfied, and turns away.
he does look to be somewhat sunburnt, skin reddened and blistered in places, but he seems unbothered by what discomfort this ought cause. )
Thank you for the company.
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If there's pain, it's the kind that's easily hidden.
Sharkface says nothing. Just watches.
It's a beautiful sunrise, as things things go. ]
Remember what I said.
[ They understand something about each other now. That's probably a mistake, but there's no changing it. The least Sharkface can do is try and get something out of the experience. His mission stands. This could get him one step closer to seeing it through, if he's careful. ]
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Which part?
( they've discussed much. it's difficult to imagine what the human might have wished to focus on. )
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[ Once Godric figures out whatever the fuck it is he wants to do. It's a dangerous gamble, but Sharkface has made worse and has very little left to lose. There was a time the thought of allying with someone just for the power would have gotten him angry and righteous, but the old version of him was idealistic. Naive. He'd trusted too easy and look where that had gotten him. Redemption printed in black across his chest and memories of dead kids. And then, later, the aftermath.
The mission stands. That's the only thing that matters now. Godric's got power. Could take more if he's inclined. Someone like that could be worth signing up with. Doesn't matter what it does to him, so long as it gets him one step closer to finding Washington, to taking Carolina's head off. ]
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What use do you expect me to have of you?
( humans have their own ideas about vampires. godric may take some form of action in this city, to an end of his choosing, but he is very old, and very tired of leadership in that way. doing something because one is good at it is not the same as doing it because it sings in your blood. ephemera is quick, brutal, violent, good at his job, he says, which seems to have been soldiering in one form or another. the job, undoubtedly, is killing. fighting. intimidation. perhaps some small skill with subterfuge or spycraft but there is nothing he offers that godric cannot himself do better and more efficiently.
yet he craves so desperately to be useful to someone possessed of power. it says much of the psyche he is so staunch in defending. )
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[ It's probably the wrong tone to take. Too flat, not respectful enough. Sharkface knows what he is. He used to have ideals and now he doesn't. Trained as a soldier but took a wide turn before retiring in the usual way. And now he clears resistance out of the same outer colony planets he used to protect. He did that in exchange for armor and a shot at the people he hates. It's simple, in the end.
There's always a use for people like him. Fact of the universe. ]
I can shoot, I can fight anyone you throw at me. Fly a dropship in combat conditions. Modify armor. Survive in zero gravity.
[ It's matter of fact. Running down a checklist. Not the first time he's made the pitch. ]
Fought the Covenant, too. [ He inclines his head slightly. ] You said you're old. I believe it. But I doubt you've ever seen anything like them.
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I will be honest with you, Mr. Ephemera, I have very little interest in any of that.
( it hardly matters who he's fought. that he survived them, this 'covenant' means nothing. a vampire would not have left him standing, even scarred. )
What is it you want of me, that you would offer yourself so?
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Sharkface thins his mouth. The question is telling in a way he doesn't like. The phrasing. Offering yourself. ]
People like you have a way of getting power.
[ He stands perfectly straight, eyes ahead. Standing at attention. Remembering a drill instructor who shot him in the chest once. Point blank into his armor. Bullet didn't kill him but it hurt like nothing else. He'd been a teenager then. Hadn't known what it was to really hurt. But that had been the lesson. That he could survive it. That he could take the blow and stand right back up.
Get the mission done. That's the only thing that matters. ]
I need to get back home. You get power, you'd be the first to know how that works.
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