And when we fall

[chaseandoldlace]

Who: Chase and Uther
What: Mother's Day
When: Afternoon 
Where: The castle
Rating: Low?
Status: Private/Incomplete

Comments

[chaseandoldlace]

"Yeah, sure." There was something to the nuances of horse care that Chase still didn't understand: times Uther would send him away or offer to do something in his stead. It was why, even after so long, he still preferred dinosaurs. Old Lace for her part seemed more than a little concerned as her master strode across the yard to assemble what had become Uther's personal training arena--it was little more than a grassy circle in the courtyard next to which a weapon and armor rack had been placed. The weapon collection was modest, all blunted practice versions that were lighter and easier to weild than real blades, though there were a few of those too.

Chase made a b-line for the most battered of the practice blades; one as near the real thing as they could find only without a honed edge. He fished out from beneath the rack a long chain shirt and thick, padded leather gloves. Maybe because he'd never bothered to look but it shocked Chase hoe easy all of the equipment had been to acquire, even in Canada where laws were significantly less lax than the United States. After donning the chain shirt and gloves, he pulled a roll of carptener's chalk line from his toolkit by the rack (just as Chase trained against Uther's weapons, Uther trained against his) and using marks set into the ground, re-drew the boundary lines from when it had last rained.

"All set, your majesty!" He called, making a few powerful flourishes of the blade to make sure the young king knew this wasn't something that could wait.

[pendraeg]

Uther latched the stall door, made his way over, and kitted himself up. It was to be blades today; he was glad of it, for, given his expertise, he would have greater control over the session, which seemed a good idea.

He faced Chase and raised his sword to mark his readiness. In the beginning, Chase had exhibited a number of surprising and unusual preconceptions about the use of swords which had had to be discouraged before he could learn correct form. But his technique had been coming along well. He was strong, so accustoming himself to the weight of a weapon that was heavier and required more movement than modern weapons had not been a problem. Now that Chase had mastered the basics, they had begun to work on refinements. However, Uther suspected that today there would be no fine work, no technical exercises. Only pure force and release.

[chaseandoldlace]

Uther was an excellent teacher, Chase would admit that to anyone who asked--once he'd shown some ability, Uther hadn't held back nearly as much and the lack of restraint was actually something he apresciated. After all, most of Chase's life had been lessoned learned by having the crap kicked out of him.

'I'd never be smart enough.'

A predictable overhead strike.

'I'd never be a true Stein.'

--Followed by a controlled, but too-powerful slash across Uther's stomach, which was easily avoided.

'Mom didn't care what dad did to me because she regretted having me.'

A fumbling forward thrust, with no thought put to footwork--no, it was safe to safe today was not his finest work, but he didn't want it to be.

'And why the hell can't you stay still for two seconds?!' Another too-forceful cut upwards that nearly nicked Uther's shoulder, but in the next moment, Chase was sprawled in the grass, the weight of the blade over-balancing him.

"Slow down, dammit, I'm not in the mood to just dance around." He growled, hoisting himself back to his feet, ignoring the anxious lowing of a genetically engineered velociraptor that hovered around the ring, shadowing Chase's every movement.

[pendraeg]

Yes, Chase was certainly trying to work through something by the use of force. Uther knew that particular satisfaction, although by the time he had truly needed it, the one who would spar with him was gone.

Warmed up, he finally allowed blade to meet blade with a metallic clang. He used his momentum to augment his strength, moving forward against Chase, pushing him back, pommel to pommel now.

Uther was good at brute force, at muscle and determination. It was Aurelius who had taught him tactics, art. Strange to turn around and be the teacher.

He released and stepped easily out of the way of the follow-up, which he knew would come too soon. Then around with the dodge and the edge of his sword met the chains across Chase's shoulder, behind the sword arm that could not find a way out of the awkward angle to reach Uther.

It was useful to be left-handed; that was one of the things Aurelius had taught him.

[chaseandoldlace]

It was with a grateful sort of violence that Chase responded--straining against Uther's weight that for a time was focused on nothing but bringing him down as their blades scraped together. He wasn't expecting the exact moment Uther pulled back but recovered with a sloppily timed cut.

It wasn't helping, though. The more Chase slashed and flourished in Uther's general direction the more frustrated he became until he was screaming and kicking out wildly every time he missed. It wasn't until Old Lace darted in, interposing herself between the two blonds that Chase saw something other than red.

He blinked, bewilderingly between the dinosaur and his friend--the blade dropped from his hand and he leaned against Old Lace, hiding his face in the slope of a strong, reptilian shoulder.

"Sorry...sorry this was a bad idea," When he raised his head again, his cheeks were wet, but Chase didn't give a damn--this was just Uther, and after so many times of seeing the young king at his worst, it only seemed fair that he bare some weakness as well. "Wrong day, man, just the wrong fucking day for anything."

[pendraeg]

Uther stood down, relaxing muscles and weapon as one. He watched Chase for a moment, not certain whether it was to give him time or to grasp for the right words. Uther was not a man of consoling words or articulated emotions--any revelations he himself had made had been under a sort of combined coaxing and duress.

Finally, he shook his head a bit. "I do not understand. I do not know the significance." It was not a question, not one that required an answer, but it allowed for one.

[chaseandoldlace]

"Mother's Day." He said it like the curse it was, yet there was an uncertainty in green eyes. "Wasn't even thinking about it until I drove out to the bakery this morning and realized the Bus's voice command was modeled on my mom's. Hadn't heard anything like her voice since we blew all the 'rents to hell and I..."

Chase wasn't guilty, he'd never felt a fraction of guilt for doing what they did, not when it was obvious what would have happened if they hadn't, but there was always that paradox at the heart of it that would have fried Vic's circuits permanently if he tried to unravel it.

"I never understood how a woman who was willing to watch the world burn could bring a child into it?" There was an edge of desperately innocent confusion in the question, and for the first time it occurred to him that here Uther could have some wisdom to impart. He was young but he was a father, he'd been born into conflict the same way Chase had, only unlike him, Uther had always been aware of it. And before he knew it the words were spilling out. "If it weren't for her, for me, none of the the rest of us would have to go through any of it. How could she?"

'Why didn't she just let Dr. Hayes give her an abortion? How can someone love so much and be so evil?'

[pendraeg]

Suddenly uncomfortable in his protective mail, Uther shifted as though to shift the burden of its weight.

"It isn't like that," he mumbled. "The scales...do not balance, no matter how much weight you add to the other side. The fear, and the hopes. You find you will do anything."

[chaseandoldlace]

The response meant nothing to Chase--there had never been any unraveling his mother's motivation--especially considering that after he was born, she would pointedly ignore every time his father hurt him: vacuum or turn the radio up to block out the noise coming from his basement bedroom.

"It was just so selfish," Chase let out a deep, shuddering breath, scrubbing at his eyes as they focused anywhere but at Uther. The way his sword cut into the ground was fascinating: an earthworm inched it way up out of a clod of dirt one of his angry kicks had dislodged. "She just wanted the best of both worlds and dad didn't want to say no. Or if he did, he waited until after I'd proven myself a failure of a son and by then maybe she didn't care. Maybe she was just going through with it because they couldn't get out of their contract with the Gibborhim. I don't know, I wasn't there for the last fight."

And maybe that was the real issue, that in one last ditch attempt to understand why, eveyone else had gotten their chance to ask and he hadn't, he'd been recovering from almost drowning and figuring out how to work The Frog so they could get the hell out of there. He'd lost his chance and for the first time he was admitting how much it hurt to not know.

Hearing everything second hand just wasn't good enough.

"If she hated the world so much, why bother leaving anything behind? Why bother leaving me when dad could have probably built her a son like Ultron did for Vic's mom? At least then I never would have disappointed them." He laughed darkly. "Nah, I probably would have found a way."

[pendraeg]

Now he understood. Uther wanted to help Chase, he wanted to be able to explain the heart of a woman he had never met. All he could do was to speak from what he knew, and this was something, he thought, just, that he could really remember with complete clarity.

"Having a child changes everything," he said. "Nothing else matters as much, nothing."

Arthur might think that he was but a footnote in Uther's heart, but--and he was not proud to have discovered this in his memories--any fear, any tendency to strike out in self-defence had intensified many-fold with the arrival of his helpless infant.

"It is...almost unbearable, the way it changes who you are, like...like a stream forced through a mill wheel, or into a narrow channel."

He was never anything but as truthful as he could be with Chase.

"But you bear it because nothing in the world that existed before was like this. Because it's you, and it's this other person you, you love, if you're lucky, but it's also someone entirely new..."

Someone who is the future, and a mystery, and impossible and trying and rebellious and wonderful.

"And suddenly the future takes on a different meaning."

[chaseandoldlace]

"But it didn't change anything, Uther! She still wanted to destroy the world, only she wasn't doing it for herself she was doing it for me. As if that justified it! The only reason I... or any of The Pride kids exist is so our parents could feel less guilty about restarting the universe as we know it."

Chase breathed hard, fists clenched at his side as he tried to make his point as stark and clear as possible.

"When our parents decided to make the pact with the Gibbohrim, none of them wanted children, it was part of what they all decided. I was an accident. But once the Hayes' confirmed my mom was pregnant, the plan changed, they changed the pact. Each of them would have one child-- it took the Hayes' longer to conceive then the rest, Molly was born seven years after the rest of us.... we were all there in the hospital to see her born. There was this insane party afterward. Everybody thought it was great we'd have a little sister to look after. God they were so fucking normal... proud parents. It's why they called themselves The Pride. We were their crowning achievements. And they thought... they honestly thought that when Molly turned eighteen we'd join them willingly! That was their biggest fucking problem. They loved us so goddamn much we turned out to be good people. "

An edge of derisive hysterics crept into his voice because now that the admission was out, the absurdity of it was painful again.

"My parents were assholes but everyone elses-- I guess they were all kinda strict but the last thing anyone would accuse them of was not caring. Molly's parents especially they were so good at pretending to be kind people the way Molly turned out... she's the best of us and I just don't understand..."

[pendraeg]

It chilled Uther to see the parallels between him and Chase's parents. As much as talking about his dream-memories had helped him to integrate them, as much as he strove not to become that man again, as he had been advised to do, he could never deny that he had been that man, that those had been his actions, that in him still lay the same foundations that had built him once.

It made him deeply uncomfortable to be shown the consequences of being that sort of man, of making those sort of choices, both on a larger scale and in the very personal example of his friend Chase.

But remembering, that was the right thing to do. That, and putting aside his discomfort for that friend, who needed to talk about it, and to hear about it.

So Uther talked.

"When Arthur was born, when his mother died" --he could not help himself, unfair as it was, the two were inextricably linked; distantly, too, with Gorlois...so much loss in one event that should have been the happiest of his life-- "it only inflamed the paranoia and the hurt that had been boiling inside me for so long. It turned everything outward, it became rage and hatred, and fear: I told myself on all our behalf. I thought I was creating a place in which what had happened to me could never happen to my son."

And, too, it was a way to delay or deflect self-loathing, however temporarily.

"Your parents thought they were making something better. They thought their world irreparable, and the way they tried to improve it was wrong, and twisted, but they thought they would leave something better in its place. In the same way, they thought in making you and your...cohorts...they would be leaving something better."

His voice hardened. "And if they were cruel to you, if hope was distorted and jagged, then it was because they were flawed, it was because they were not good enough."

"But...that did not stop you being good. It did not stop you being better."

[chaseandoldlace]

"I wish they were still around to hear you say that." The words were out before Chase had thought to keep them in. Embarrassment washed over him, flushing his cheeks to a slightly different hue than from when they'd been fighting.

"Fuck, forget I said that, it's not like it would have done anything...but, thanks, for what it's worth. Karolina said something a while ago... about how we've all been falling apart since this mess started but at least when we had each other we could fall apart together. I guess she was right--"

There was a momentous crash from the castle and a sense of alarm exploded in the back of Chase's mind. Old Lace's nanny senses.

"Oh crap." Sometimes Chase forgot how much trouble little kids could get into when unattended for more than five minutes.

[pendraeg]

It was Chase's reaction as much as it was the ominous noise that alarmed Uther.

He was looking in the direction of the kitchen in an instant, practice sword dropped into the grass in favour of the real thing, always close at hand.

Even here.

Some habits, you never change. Some, you form for good reason. And keep.

"What?"

But before Chase could answer, both were already halfway to the castle door, Uther more than ready to fight for that better thing.

He needn't, as it turned out, have worried. This became evident as soon as he stepped into the kitchen.

[chaseandoldlace]

If Uther hadn't rushed off so quickly, Chase would have told him it wasn't that sort of 'Oh crap' but the kind that often ensued when Molly was bored and left to her own devices. As it was he bounded behind Uther, trying to stay his concern with tentative calls of:

"Dude. Hold on a-- will you just-- dammit Uther calm do--"

And then the young-old king skid to a halt at the entryway to the kitchen, where two two year olds and a rather distraught velociraptor had frozen, all three of them, gaping at a floor covered in uncooked elbow macaroni.

The shock of the box already being open had stunned every single one of them into horrified silence broken moments later by the beginning of a bubbly giggle from Elionwy.

Old Lace moved heavily taloned arms in a useless sort of gesture, communication in thought-feelings what had happened though Chase had a rather good idea.

"I'm sorry father," Gwydion was sniffling in that way small children did when no one was hurt or really any wrong done other than something haven't not gone at all to plan. "We wanted to make a picture for you..."

[pendraeg]

Very carefully, and very deliberately, Uther sheathed his sword. There was macaroni everywhere.

Everywhere.

Slipping and falling with his sword out would not bring a good end to this.

Uther ventured gingerly into the kitchen, dry pasta crunching underfoot.

He plucked a noodle out of Eilonwy's hair, a curl in a curl.

He was down on his haunches, the tip of his sword trailing like a tail in the pasta swirl.

"A picture?" he asked Gwydion, "A picture of what?"

He hadn't known dinosaurs could make such comic expressions.