[ Back home, when he was a kid with nothing better to do, Sharkface used to climb things. Went out into the tunnels and just wandered, climbed up anything that looked like it might support his weight. Maintenance stairs, mostly. A power station or two. Got electrocuted sometimes, but never enough to deter him from trying again. Later he signed up, had nothing waiting for him back on that shithole he'd been born on, and they'd given him armor. Taught him how to jump out of spaceships. Taught him a lot of other things too, but it was the jumping he'd loved. The thrill of free-fall. Even now, he misses it. The rush of air. The sensation of the drop.
He likes being up high. The wind, the silence. And usually the solitude.
Not this time. This time he's got company.
He woke up hungover. Spent a good amount of time puking his guts out and trying to remember why he'd thought drinking that much had been a good idea, only to remember just about everything when he saw Godric eyeballing him from across the room. So now it's time to do damage control and hope that it's enough to keep the goddamn vampire from telling everyone about the previous night.
Sharkface scowls out at the city, arms crossed so he won't clench his fists. He feels like shit, but that's his own goddamn fault. ]
I'm not crazy.
[ He snaps it out before he can think better of it. Ought to be said. Because usually you'd have to be crazy to try and provoke a vampire into a fight, and he's not. Or at least he can't have anyone going around thinking that. ]
( humans care much more about sanity than vampires ever do. some level of insanity is to be expected when one dies and is reborn as a creature veiled in darkness and blood. who is unageing, undying, who lives without breath and subsists only on blood. there is insanity in that. )
[ Sharkface snorts at that, twitching. He doesn't want to be here. He wants to go back to the fight pits and beat some stranger until the world makes sense again, but there's a larger plan in play. So now that just has to be fucking dealt with. He's got a job to do and Godric could throw a wrench into that. Doesn't matter what the vampire says now, or even if he believes it. Matters what the vampire could say to all these nice people they know.
Matters wha the could say to Angela, maybe. Or Gene. They'd look at him different if they knew what he was. And the thought sticks with him, a sick feeling that makes his throat go tight. The mission could survive that — he could adapt, he's done that before — but they would know. And there would be no undoing that. ]
I got stupid drunk. That's it. Won't happen again.
[ He really hopes it'll be that simple. That Godric will just accept that and let it go. He doubts it, though. Nothing in this place has been easy. ]
Liquor has that effect on humans. You did not act shamefully. Even inebriated, you troubled yourself about the safety and wellbeing of others.
( he shrugs, and turns away to glance out over the city. his recent track records with rooftop conversations has... not been pleasant, and his mind is on eric. )
You have endured something that would have broken lesser men. How that manifests in you is not weakness.
[ That makes him twitch again, getting angry. He swallows it down. Digs his nails into his arms, hard. Forcing himself to hold still, like he's getting dressed down by a superior officer, and wait it out. He won't pace like he wants to, he'll hold still like a goddamn soldier and take what comes. ]
You don't know anything about me.
[ He would have remembered telling someone. He would have remembered that, no matter how waste he was. Sharkface is sure of that until, quite suddenly, he isn't. No, no, no. What did he fucking say? He remembers fighting, remembers Godric catching his wrist and flipping him onto his back like it was nothing. Remembers thinking about what might happen if he took the knife out of his sleeve and dragged it across his hand, drawing blood; remembers thinking that might finally get under Godric's skin, but there'd been part of him that had stopped. That had known better.
Don't act crazy. Don't act like a psychopath. Breathe, asshole.
He breathes. ]
You don't know a goddamn thing.
[ But he sounds less sure the second time, and that cannot possibly end well. ]
I am over two thousand of your years old. I do not presume to understand your exact experience, but I know when one has been touched by war and loss. It is a brand.
( scalding upon the psyche and skin. you carry it. )
[ A brand. Like his fucked up face. A permeant mark. Hah, hah. He twitches again. Already losing the fight to hold still. He wants to move, pace. Punch something. Be anywhere but right here, enduring this moment. ]
You guessed.
[ Not a question. Sharkface shakes his head, incredulous. He's always telegraphed. Hunter warned him about that. Always on his back to guard his reactions, to protect himself in the field. No poker face at all, he'd said, and fuck if that didn't bare out. A vampire had one conversation with him and somehow just fucking guessed at the damage.
That's pathetic. He was a soldier, once. He cannot make mistakes like this. ]
Fine. Congratulations. I fought in the Great War. Everybody I know fought in the war.
[ He admits it too quickly, nearly snarling it. It wasn't the war that killed his people, or fucked up his face, but he can pretend. It's a good lie. A believable lie. He'll stick with that if it keeps people from looking deeper. ]
( it is more course-correction than chastisement. he was not of an age to fight against caesar's legions, but he would walk the battlefields afterwards and slit the throats of roman wounded beneath his father's banner. he does not recall if it troubled him or not. likely not. he would have slaughtered every enemy that dared set foot in gaulish territory, once. )
Why is it important to you that I do not think you insane?
[ 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. ]
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 03:39 am (UTC)He likes being up high. The wind, the silence. And usually the solitude.
Not this time. This time he's got company.
He woke up hungover. Spent a good amount of time puking his guts out and trying to remember why he'd thought drinking that much had been a good idea, only to remember just about everything when he saw Godric eyeballing him from across the room. So now it's time to do damage control and hope that it's enough to keep the goddamn vampire from telling everyone about the previous night.
Sharkface scowls out at the city, arms crossed so he won't clench his fists. He feels like shit, but that's his own goddamn fault. ]
I'm not crazy.
[ He snaps it out before he can think better of it. Ought to be said. Because usually you'd have to be crazy to try and provoke a vampire into a fight, and he's not. Or at least he can't have anyone going around thinking that. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 03:44 am (UTC)I did not take you to be.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 03:53 am (UTC)Matters wha the could say to Angela, maybe. Or Gene. They'd look at him different if they knew what he was. And the thought sticks with him, a sick feeling that makes his throat go tight. The mission could survive that — he could adapt, he's done that before — but they would know. And there would be no undoing that. ]
I got stupid drunk. That's it. Won't happen again.
[ He really hopes it'll be that simple. That Godric will just accept that and let it go. He doubts it, though. Nothing in this place has been easy. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 03:58 am (UTC)( he shrugs, and turns away to glance out over the city. his recent track records with rooftop conversations has... not been pleasant, and his mind is on eric. )
You have endured something that would have broken lesser men. How that manifests in you is not weakness.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 04:08 am (UTC)You don't know anything about me.
[ He would have remembered telling someone. He would have remembered that, no matter how waste he was. Sharkface is sure of that until, quite suddenly, he isn't. No, no, no. What did he fucking say? He remembers fighting, remembers Godric catching his wrist and flipping him onto his back like it was nothing. Remembers thinking about what might happen if he took the knife out of his sleeve and dragged it across his hand, drawing blood; remembers thinking that might finally get under Godric's skin, but there'd been part of him that had stopped. That had known better.
Don't act crazy. Don't act like a psychopath. Breathe, asshole.
He breathes. ]
You don't know a goddamn thing.
[ But he sounds less sure the second time, and that cannot possibly end well. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 04:15 am (UTC)( scalding upon the psyche and skin. you carry it. )
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 04:29 am (UTC)You guessed.
[ Not a question. Sharkface shakes his head, incredulous. He's always telegraphed. Hunter warned him about that. Always on his back to guard his reactions, to protect himself in the field. No poker face at all, he'd said, and fuck if that didn't bare out. A vampire had one conversation with him and somehow just fucking guessed at the damage.
That's pathetic. He was a soldier, once. He cannot make mistakes like this. ]
Fine. Congratulations. I fought in the Great War. Everybody I know fought in the war.
[ He admits it too quickly, nearly snarling it. It wasn't the war that killed his people, or fucked up his face, but he can pretend. It's a good lie. A believable lie. He'll stick with that if it keeps people from looking deeper. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 04:36 am (UTC)( it is more course-correction than chastisement. he was not of an age to fight against caesar's legions, but he would walk the battlefields afterwards and slit the throats of roman wounded beneath his father's banner. he does not recall if it troubled him or not. likely not. he would have slaughtered every enemy that dared set foot in gaulish territory, once. )
Why is it important to you that I do not think you insane?
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 04:50 am (UTC)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. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 04:57 am (UTC)Are you?
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:09 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:24 am (UTC)at length, )
Do you wish I had killed you?
cw for suicidal ideation
Date: 2020-01-14 03:26 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2020-01-14 04:49 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:13 pm (UTC)[ 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?
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:16 pm (UTC)( 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.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:31 pm (UTC)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? ]
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:40 pm (UTC)( 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.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:46 pm (UTC)[ 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.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:48 pm (UTC)It may be difficult to reach you, seeing as how you have not given me your name.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 05:56 pm (UTC)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. ]
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 06:51 pm (UTC)Would you like to watch the sunrise with me, Mr. Ephemera? It does not have the same effect, here as home for me.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 07:10 pm (UTC)Doesn't that hurt?
[ He doesn't say no, though.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 11:11 pm (UTC)( 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. )
no subject
Date: 2020-01-14 11:46 pm (UTC)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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