Breathe In
Sandra Lee eyed her son carefully through the screen door, momentarily frozen. There were several things she took in nearly instantaneously; he was frightened, he was apologetic, and he was crushing hard on someoneShe knew these things in the space of moments between the flood of desperate relief and the blinding flash of anger. She gave voice to
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"You have been missing for three months." Myon's voice had an edge on it. "You have been missing for three months, to parts unknown, and return to... this. I would like to know why."
And there went Harold's... something. Resolve. Facade. Something. He balled both hands into fists, remaining silent for a moment. When he flicked his fingers out, he answered in a rush. "I told you why. Because I couldn't handle my shit with Kumar, and Maria, and my stupid job and my stupid personality and everything was going wrong again and it was easy to say yes and I did it without thinking I'd mess up everything and I'm sorry. I'm sorry, and I can't say that enough, but that-- is all I'm sorry for."
Harold breathed, glancing at his mother, half expecting just to be struck down by fucking lightning right there. He had been so happy to-- get out from under these damn expectations. Been so proud of finding a place he'd fit. So much better. He couldn't stand this feeling of folding under that look. That damn voice. It made him feel small, young, like the entire thing was a fucking dream and that he'd never changed or learned anything at all, and at once he felt achingly guilty for feeling that way. As if he hadn't put his parents through enough, now he was going to be an insolent bastard with it. Fantastic.
Sandra was silent, her face mostly unreadable. She returned the look, giving Harold a brief, almost emotionless nod, but said nothing.
Harold forced himself not to look at Scotty. Eyes on Dad. Right. Yes. No fucking trembling.
The question was too direct to dodge, as was the demeanor. Harold locked again, opening his mouth to answer and finding no air with which to make words.
He was so fucking tired of having no answer.
"Far away," he finally said, though it was more of a sigh. "Really, really frickin' far away. You wouldn't believe anything more than that in a million years." Or a couple hundred or so. "And there'd be no way to prove it, and you'd just never believe me, so... trust me. Far away." His was something of a weary, defeated tone.
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Scotty, who had been little more than silent stoicism, actually dropped his head to smile slightly at that particular line.
"You're asking me to accept your being missing for three months, making or realizing a very large lifestyle change and returning with..." Myon was obviously struggling with this, but said it anyway, "...another male to whom you're romantically inclined, all as a matter of trust." He pursed his lips and looked at the window, then back at Harold again. His voice didn't soften, but it lost quite a bit of its edge. "Harold, I will trust you to tell me what I need to know to understand this, if you will trust that I will at least try to understand it, no matter how outlandish you think it sounds, so long as you're giving me the truth."
The man was a scholar, and self-taught for the most part. It shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise, though admittedly, they had not communicated very often as adults.
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He raged against that statement. His father couldn't understand what he was saying. There was no way to live up to that, under the truth. He would make a liar out of his father, so far as Harold could believe.
Harold's eyes were on his mother. Sandra's nod was slow, careful, but emphatic. It looked like all Harold would be getting out of his mother for this were sage nods. He wasn't shocked. Once she'd said her piece and acted as go between to get things moving, things between Harold and Myon tended to fall where they may.
He swallowed. Staring at his mother. Breathe. He looked back to his father, and simply started talking.
"What you need to understand this. Okay. Okay. I can do that." No he couldn't. Keep talking until something fucking useful comes out. He gestured wildly with each word, as if - as someone he once met might say - pointing would solve the problem. "God's honest truth is that nothing in my life-- has ever been-- freaking normal, weird things just-- happen to me, they do, I can't escape it, and this one time instead of fighting it the whole way I just said, 'okay.' This man-- he looked just like me, and he was-- I dunno, he was-- I thought he was-- amazing and everything I really freaking wanted to be right then and I followed him because he let me. Because he seemed to want me to. But it didn't stay that way, and suddenly I was all fucking lost again--" Dammit, he'd lost control of his language. He cringed but maintained his tumble of words, his discomfort with swearing around his parents outweighed by the need to actually fill the space with words to try and fix this shit. "--and this place, it was-- not here. Not this planet. I wasn't tripping out, it was real, it was messed up and I was pretty alone but then--" Argh. Fucking fuck. This was no way to tell the story. There was no way to tell the story.
Harold stuttered and fell silent, cheeks burning as he tried to find his momentum again.
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"I could give ye what I ken about what was goin' on at that time, if ye've any understandin' o' temporal theory, that allowed this t' happen. Somehow, it got me, too. But the year was 2258, an' that's the reason yer son couldna call or come home." Scotty shook his head slightly, though he didn't break his stance otherwise. "I do have one piece o' tech from that time; it's my PADD an' it's in the car, an' it has quite a few things on it that havena even been dreamed of in 2009. If the tech itself doesna convince ye."
He fell silent there. No eye contact still, but he could feel the gazes of Harold's parents and that was more than an uncomfortable sensation. Still, he figured that would get one hard part out of the way, out of doubtless several hard parts.
Harold's eyes were slammed shut. "...thanks," he muttered at Scotty. It wasn't sarcasm.
His mother's eyebrow was up. Very up. He could hear it, he didn't need to see.
Nodding once, he tried to keep talking. "...I was pretty alone, but then I wasn't anymore. It started with Scotty. There were-- others-- but he was first. First, and middle, and last and he's important to me and I don't even know how we got back-- this is all really crazy and there's no way either of you are going to believe this, I know what you said, Dad, and thank you, seriously, thank you but-- you can't be buying this." His laugh was weary, mirthless. He never opened his eyes.
Myon was, indeed, staring. A flabbergasted sort of stare that wasn't sure if it was disbelieving or not, though at the moment, it was neutral. "2258. Following a man who... was your clone? Of some sort?" Another long silence, and he held up his hand. "I think that we should have tea, and perhaps order out for dinner, and you can tell me this story. I don't know if I believe it, yet, but I would like to hear it in its entirety before I try to figure that out." This looked to be one of those situations where the answers would have to come after the facts were all established.
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