Day 42: Tasty Burger [Evening]

[guyslikegames]

Okay, so it looked like there was no point in trying to get through a TV. It figured. It was either because their abilities were sealed off or the world inside the TV simply didn't exist here. It wouldn't have made much sense for the Head Doctor to bring them there when they had such an easy method of escaping/hiding out anyway. Yousuke told

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[for_marian]

[continued again from here]

"I'm not Rutee," Leon pointed out again. Why Stahn insisted on comparing him to his sister all the time, now that he knew they were siblings, was beyond Leon. They hadn't grown up together. Rutee hadn't even found out they were related until the very end. There was no reason they should behave in similar ways.

Patting a little grease off the "meat" patty with a napkin, Leon tried again to eat the burger. It was a little more palatable this time, and would probably stay down. "... Hn." As long as Stahn didn't go into details about his sex life with Leon's sister.

[from_lienea]

"I never said you were, she was just... one of the harshest ones." It had come to kind of a tie between the siblings how very often they called Stahn a backward country boy, or a hick, or simple... although Leon beat her for sure in calling Stahn just plain stupid.

Figuring this would be a shock, he waited until he was sure Leon wouldn't choke on his food before he said, "Anyway, Rutee and I got married a couple of years ago. We had a son not too long after; he's three. His name's Kyle." He smiled as he spoke; he missed the little guy already. "And he knows he had an Uncle Leon."

[for_marian]

That Stahn had convinced Rutee to settle down in some semblance of a respectable life... yes, that came as something of a shock. That they had a son already--how much older was this version of Stahn than the one Leon has known, anyway? But none of Leon's shock was permitted to show on his face, so his only reaction was a slight tightening of his shoulders for a moment. "Hm."

[from_lienea]

"We're living in Cresta," Stahn said after a pause, not liking the awkward silence. "Right by the orphanage where she grew up, so we all spend a lot of time there--even Kyle, it's got a great play area for the kids now. Sometimes we have to remind him he doesn't actually live there and drag him home." He smiled again.

Geez, this was hard when he couldn't really ask Leon what he'd been up to... "I'm teaching a lot of the kids to fight--go figure that I'm an instructor, huh? But it's something useful for them to do, and it actually doesn't make them more violent with each other. Besides, living where we do, they should know these things." He grimaced, remembering the close call that had prompted those lessons. "One time a new kid, Jax, ran away, and..."

[for_marian]

Leon wasn't really interested in the minutiae of Stahn's life, and he snorted in disdain at the other man's scramble to explain why he was teaching children to fight. How ridiculous, to think that instruction in martial arts would "make them more violent." Where did he ever get such a dumb idea in the first place, to feel like he had to disprove it?

Well, at least Stahn was doing something useful.

[from_lienea]

Stahn said defensively, "Some of the kids are more violent than you might expect--if they've been on their own for a while, or got taken in because they were being mistreated, they think they still need to fight for what they need, or prove they're tough, or sometimes just because they're... mad at the world, I guess. So a lot of the nuns weren't sure if we should be teaching them fighting techniques. But it's actually teaching them discipline, instead of... making us need to discipline them more." He smiled slightly and shrugged; it was hard to get mad at some of them, considering where they'd come from.

Sometimes it was hard to remember he only had one kid instead of upwards of a dozen. It was hard to love them and still encourage them to go for it if someone wanted to adopt them, but all he wanted was the best for them, no matter what that meant.

[for_marian]

Leon just gave Stahn a flat, unsympathetic look. Who did Stahn think he was talking to, about bad childhoods? As if fighting techniques had anything to do with how one turned out, in the end. "Hmph."

In any case, Leon was more than a little tired of listening to talk about children who had nothing to do with him and never would. "So you all survived, then."

[from_lienea]

"Well... not quite," Stahn murmured. "All our Swordians ended up sacrificing themselves." It was still painful to talk about; he really missed Dymlos, even though they hadn't been together long. Rutee had it even worse, having grown up with Atwight; she still got teary-eyed sometimes when she talked about her, even if she refused to admit it.

He paused. "Well... except for Chaltier. We never did find out what happened to him." They'd tried--certain people did know he might still be out there--but in five years, they hadn't heard a thing.

[for_marian]

Somehow, that didn't surprise Leon. It was fitting, in a way--all the remnants of the old war that no longer belonged in the world, taking each other out, so to speak. Except for Chal. Poor Chal. If he was alive, he was entirely alone. All his comrades gone. There was Karyl, yes, but... one person, one who didn't really understand the weight of centuries resting on Chaltier... no, that wasn't enough. "I hope his core was destroyed so that he could die." Chaltier deserved to be free at last. He'd lived too long along to face it again.