(no subject)
What is one thing you have learned from your past?
It's hard to narrow an entire life's experiences down to one thing I've learned. I suppose I'm meant to narrow it down to the most important thing I've learned. I'm not sure that makes it any easier. I've learned a lot of things in my life, and a lot of them have been less than happy things to learn.
I've learned a couple of things. One is that appearances can be deceiving. A friend can be your mortal enemy, a spoiled rich man can be a crime fighter in disguise, and your parents can be real people who can die.
The second lesson has been a lot harder. There was a time in my life I had friends and family and no idea that something like that can be taken away from you in the few seconds it takes someone to fire a gun. My second thing learned from my past and it was shoved bodily down my throat by Alfred I assure you, is that I am not alone.
I tried to be. I ran off to Tibet and China and spent years among criminals and in prison learning everything I could about the criminal element. I tried to hold myself aloof from people I'd met in school no matter how badly I wanted to be around them. I acted the drunken fool in public and made sure that everyone who gathered around me was as shallow as a rain puddle.
But despite it all I had friends. Lucius, who saw through it all to the real me underneath and kept quiet about what he saw. Alfred who wouldn't let me forget who I was and where I came from and that there was value in my past and family. And Rachel. Even though she ran away from him she made me understand that people will understand.
I've tried being alone, and someday maybe I'll be ready to not be. But at least I have learned the difference.
Describe a dream that you've had. How did the dream make you feel?
It's the same dream every night, or morning since it's rare that he manages to crawl upstairs out of the cave and into bed before the sun's rays are staining the curtains pink and gold. He's asked Alfred to put up darker drapes but all he received was a sarcastic remark about bad enough he had a cave downstairs Alfred wasn't going to recreate it for him upstairs.
So every night when the work is done he makes his way up the elevator to the library and up the stairs to his bedroom and collapses into bed with the entire room turning gold with sunshine.
It is dark in the dream and there is a shadow of pain in his arm where nerve endings remember an old injury. The smell is all around him; it's a dry-hot smell of dust and mold and the heat of thousands of bodies climbing over each other in the dark. The rushing sound of their wings fills the entire world and they brush his cheek like a lover promising to return soon.
There's another sound under the wings, small objects falling like rain against the pavement of an alley as his mother's pearls are ripped from her neck and the uncaring explosion of a gun.
Every night he goes back out to make it right. He'll always hear the scream, the gun. He'll always remember hearing his father telling him to not be afraid as he dies in his own blood on the street. Every night he relives it.
But no one else will.
Never again.
It's hard to narrow an entire life's experiences down to one thing I've learned. I suppose I'm meant to narrow it down to the most important thing I've learned. I'm not sure that makes it any easier. I've learned a lot of things in my life, and a lot of them have been less than happy things to learn.
I've learned a couple of things. One is that appearances can be deceiving. A friend can be your mortal enemy, a spoiled rich man can be a crime fighter in disguise, and your parents can be real people who can die.
The second lesson has been a lot harder. There was a time in my life I had friends and family and no idea that something like that can be taken away from you in the few seconds it takes someone to fire a gun. My second thing learned from my past and it was shoved bodily down my throat by Alfred I assure you, is that I am not alone.
I tried to be. I ran off to Tibet and China and spent years among criminals and in prison learning everything I could about the criminal element. I tried to hold myself aloof from people I'd met in school no matter how badly I wanted to be around them. I acted the drunken fool in public and made sure that everyone who gathered around me was as shallow as a rain puddle.
But despite it all I had friends. Lucius, who saw through it all to the real me underneath and kept quiet about what he saw. Alfred who wouldn't let me forget who I was and where I came from and that there was value in my past and family. And Rachel. Even though she ran away from him she made me understand that people will understand.
I've tried being alone, and someday maybe I'll be ready to not be. But at least I have learned the difference.
Describe a dream that you've had. How did the dream make you feel?
It's the same dream every night, or morning since it's rare that he manages to crawl upstairs out of the cave and into bed before the sun's rays are staining the curtains pink and gold. He's asked Alfred to put up darker drapes but all he received was a sarcastic remark about bad enough he had a cave downstairs Alfred wasn't going to recreate it for him upstairs.
So every night when the work is done he makes his way up the elevator to the library and up the stairs to his bedroom and collapses into bed with the entire room turning gold with sunshine.
It is dark in the dream and there is a shadow of pain in his arm where nerve endings remember an old injury. The smell is all around him; it's a dry-hot smell of dust and mold and the heat of thousands of bodies climbing over each other in the dark. The rushing sound of their wings fills the entire world and they brush his cheek like a lover promising to return soon.
There's another sound under the wings, small objects falling like rain against the pavement of an alley as his mother's pearls are ripped from her neck and the uncaring explosion of a gun.
Every night he goes back out to make it right. He'll always hear the scream, the gun. He'll always remember hearing his father telling him to not be afraid as he dies in his own blood on the street. Every night he relives it.
But no one else will.
Never again.