EverymanHYBRID (ARG): replica (3/4)
Title: replica: what am I, if I can't be yours?
Author: jack_infinitude /Luipaard
Pairing: Habit/Vincent, Jeff/Steph
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Falling in and out of the river has left him unfit to help anyone.
Disclaimer: Not affiliated with the series or any of the crew.
Warnings: None.
Notes: This chapter is very confusing and strange. That's why it took so long to write. Sorry about the wait, guys.
replica (3/4): what am I, if I can't be yours?
So I must let us break free
I can never be what you need
If there was a way through the hurt then I would find it
I'd take the blows, yes, I would fight it
But this is the one impossible dream to live.
What am I, if I can't be yours?
“Thanatos ~If I Can’t Be Yours~” by MASH
--
If there was ever a point in time when you didn’t love him, it’s too far back for you to remember. You tell this to him as he lies next to you in that abandoned shack, his back to you, his face hidden. It seems terribly important that he know, that this be clear, but you’re having a difficult time remembering why.
He doesn’t reply at first. Then he looks over his shoulder and says, “You can’t ever remember anything important Evan,” in that weary voice that cuts straight to your core
except it doesn’t happen that way at all. Your friends are dragging you to the car as you vomit up blood, and you can’t stop babbling as the pain bubbles in your chest, and something slips out as Jeff fights with driver’s side door and Vin folds you into the backseat -- “I don’t want it like this, it’s not fair, you’re my --”
“I know,” he says, his quiet voice almost swallowed up by Jeff’s panicking in the front seat. I know. I know. I know what you want to say. “None of this is fair, but we’re going to make it right.”
His hands have settled against your face. Your breath hitches every time his thumb strokes your cheek, your head is swimming and Vinnie is too close, too close to you, living inside all your walls and defenses as if he’s always been there, and you can’t remember knowing him and not having that feeling, of feeling--
It would be wrong to say that the two of you don't feel happy together. But it’s a hard enough fight just to make ends meet and it’s even worse without the Doctor and his ugly pills. Sometimes you wish you could be like the other children at Fairmount -- the hopeless ones, the ones that the Doctor couldn’t reach. They just turned in on themselves and retreated to the safety of their own heads, escaping into the past or their dreams.
You understand. There’s so much more color there.
But you have to resist. Time may flow differently for you, may deposit you into days gone by or yet to come (though hardly ever the present) but that doesn’t mean that it’s right to leave Vincent in the lurch. He needs you just as much as you need him.
He does have one advantage over you, though.
“Just grow it out,” you say when you see him snarling at his scruffy reflection in the bathroom mirror. “It makes you look older.”
“I don’t want to look older!” But he does turn away and directs his scowl at you instead. He’s cute when he puffs up like this, and you tell him so, not forgetting to pat him insultingly on the cheek as you speak, rough stubble scratching at your palm. Vin just grabs your hand and smiles as the tension leaves his frame.
But you miss that smile when he isn’t with you. It’s lonely at the children’s home. You are seven years old and your arms still ache from being picked up and dragged and hauled this way and that, and your mouth feels cottony from the stuff they made you swallow.
There’s a man standing in front of you. He says his name is Doctor James Corenthal, and that he’s here to help you, to make you better.
You ask for your mother. It’s the only thing you say for weeks, until the Doctor tells you that your mother isn’t coming for you. Then you stop speaking all together and your isolation is complete.
Mother was a brave woman, in her way. She kept you safe the only way she knew how, and if it took four years for her to call the cops on Dad, well, it’s not like you can blame her. (Not like the other kids at school or their parents or the teachers, their whispers grinding at the very edges of your hearing, constant constant constant and you want to take up your scissors and cut out their tongues to make them be quiet, to make them stop whispering, you can’t stand it when people are whispering about you--) The important part is that she did and after they strapped him into the stretcher and carried him away to the ambulance (“She didn’t have drop of blood on her, how did his legs get that cut up?” “Ask the son, he’s about tall enough to reach the old man’s knees--” “He’s just a kid Bruce, don’t say things like that!”) she got on her knees and gave you a hug, and that felt nice. You touched her black eye, and she gave you that sad smile (your mother can always smile for you, always) and said, “Looks like it’s just you and me, pal.”
“Good,” you replied, and she hugged you even tighter. You don’t feel bad about stabbing your Dad, not when he was hitting Mother like that. Besides, you’re almost seven and you have to take care of her.
You don’t lose any sleep that night, happy that he’s gone, and in the morning Vinnie shakes you awake with Evan, Evan, wake up, we have to go to Pennsylvania.
“Whu?” You cover your eyes with your arm, trying to blot out the bright light of the lamps. The soft edges of a dream are still clinging to your vision of a woman smiling at you like she was about to cry, and it makes your heart ache. What is Vinnie doing in your bedroom?
Pennsylvania. Centralia. Jeff wants to go there. You need to wake up.
Centralia. The town of ash, the doctor calls it, with a sad voice. The fires have been burning for as long as you can remember. You don’t miss it.
But you do miss Jeff, when he goes with the doctor for a few days. You know, you all know, that the doctor is trying to help (lie lie lie lie lie) and that can take a long time, but Steph. Steph is worried.
“I don’t like it,” she whispers to you on the second night. “I don’t like it, Evan!”
“Why not?” you ask, trying to be patient. You’re fourteen right now (who knows how young or old you will be tomorrow) and everything has been changing. You never mind having Stephie in your room, but there’s been something different about that lately, that you can’t figure out. Whatever it is has been upsetting Vinnie, inciting loud, angry fights between you and him, and that’s enough to make you distrust this strangeness that pulls your eyes to the emerging curve of Steph’s waist.
You’re doing it right now, you realize. Steph doesn’t seem to notice how angry you are with yourself for accidently ignoring her. Good.
“Because...I don’t like it...when Jeff is away from me...” She’s knotting her fingers together. You reach out and grasp her hands before her nails can tear her skin apart. “I worry. I just. I need to take care of him, I need to --” Her teeth bite down on her bottom lip. You think of the room next to yours, who sleeps there, and you understand.
“Do you want to ask the doctor about it?”
“I don’t...I don’t know if that would be a good idea.” With a shake of her head, she gets off the bed, and kisses you goodnight before slipping out into the hall.
The doctor hasn’t returned by the next day, and you’re glad. Fairmount’s ceiling is much more interesting without him pestering you, and you get to sleep more. You drum your heels against the frame of your bed, solemnly examining the ridges on the ceiling. It takes the shape of a rabbit, which you like, and it never changes, which you like even better. You go so many places without ever leaving this little room that it’s nice to have something constant.
It’s sad that people can’t be that constant, though. You won’t have anyone to wish you a happy birthday. You wish you could spend it with your mother. But the doctor said she’s not coming for you, and you believe him.
You want to see Vinnie. The last time you saw him, he was trying to climb through your window, and you had to pull him over the sill as the soft night chirped and whistled with nocturnal creatures. It was the easiest thing in the world to stroke his head while he sobbed quietly against your chest. It would be easy to say that it was because you felt responsible for him, because you were almost seven and he had only just turned six, but the truth is that--
“You can’t ever remember anything important Evan,” he says, and he sounds so tired. You swallow hard, because it’s true -- time slips this way and that, giving you memories you shouldn’t have or couldn’t have, defying laws and logic, and Vince is the only touchstone you have.
“I remember that much,” you croak wearily. “Vinnie--”
“Sorry,” he whispers back, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” and turns around and reaches out to pull you close. His hands fit against your back and you can hear his heart beating inside his chest as your head fits under his. Outside the wind howls, and all you want is to stay in this moment, and not be swept away again.
He’s gone when you wake up.
And that’s when you know.
That was summer. It’s February now, and you don’t know what to do. You’re sitting in an empty room, with a familiar name threatening to leave your lips.
“Evan? Is that you?”
It’s a long time before you can say, “Officer Matten?”
He picks you up carefully, and that threatens to tip you back into the river, but you steel yourself and hold on. That’s all you’ve been doing for these past few months: holding on. Praying you’ll find Vinnie. There’s so much you never said.
“Evan, what are you doing here?”
“I’m. I want to.” Your legs buckle, almost giving out entirely. Matten is stronger than you’d thought he would be, for a man in his fifties. “I need to find Vinnie!”
“What happened?”
There’s a chair. Not comfortable, but you don’t need comfort right now. You grip the edges of the seat. If only the room would stop spinning. “Did you. Hear about when we ran away?”
“Yes.” You can taste Matten’s hesitation, smell the sound of his voice when he says, “Evan, if this is about --”
“You don’t understand. We ran away because the doctor, the doctor was doing something --”
“To Jeff.”
“To Jeff. It, it was some kind of surgery, he would take him away for days and they’d come back in the middle of the night while we were asleep, but then we wouldn’t be allowed to see him, and Stephie was worried so she picked the lock --” You force yourself to stop, breathe, slow down. Babbling won’t help anyone. “His legs were all wrong. The doctor, he did something, crippled him almost. And we knew we had to get away or else he’d turn on us next. So we ran.”
“And you’ve been living on your own all this time?”
“Yeah. We split up -- we didn’t want to attract attention, roaming around together. But now Vin is gone -- we went to bed, or, or I thought we did and when I woke up it was December already and he was gone.”
“Have you been looking all this time?”
“Yeah.” It’s the easiest answer you can give. You’ve been searching when you can, when you’re in the right time and place.
The gray walls are starting to right themselves. Stability is setting in, though it won’t last long. You’re starting to remember now -- the police station in Memory Town. Officer Matten, the one who helped when you were all very small.
“Was it Doctor Corenthal?”
At last, you look up at his face. It’s older, worn with more cares. But it’s a familiar face. Constant.
“Who else would it be, Officer Matten?”
He believes you. Just like that last time.
And then, you’re six years old again, laying in a field with Vinnie’s head tucked under your chin while he sobs against your chest: don’t let him get me, don’t let him touch me, don’t let him hurt me, Habit.
“I won’t let him,” you promise, stroking his soft hair, the same color as a raven’s breast. You look up at The Man, who stands over both of you, his blank face looking at you as his branch-like arms sway in the wind. “You’ll help, won’t you, Mister?”
He nods. You’re glad.
Author: jack_infinitude /Luipaard
Pairing: Habit/Vincent, Jeff/Steph
Rating: pg-13
Summary: Falling in and out of the river has left him unfit to help anyone.
Disclaimer: Not affiliated with the series or any of the crew.
Warnings: None.
Notes: This chapter is very confusing and strange. That's why it took so long to write. Sorry about the wait, guys.
replica (3/4): what am I, if I can't be yours?
So I must let us break free
I can never be what you need
If there was a way through the hurt then I would find it
I'd take the blows, yes, I would fight it
But this is the one impossible dream to live.
What am I, if I can't be yours?
“Thanatos ~If I Can’t Be Yours~” by MASH
--
If there was ever a point in time when you didn’t love him, it’s too far back for you to remember. You tell this to him as he lies next to you in that abandoned shack, his back to you, his face hidden. It seems terribly important that he know, that this be clear, but you’re having a difficult time remembering why.
He doesn’t reply at first. Then he looks over his shoulder and says, “You can’t ever remember anything important Evan,” in that weary voice that cuts straight to your core
except it doesn’t happen that way at all. Your friends are dragging you to the car as you vomit up blood, and you can’t stop babbling as the pain bubbles in your chest, and something slips out as Jeff fights with driver’s side door and Vin folds you into the backseat -- “I don’t want it like this, it’s not fair, you’re my --”
“I know,” he says, his quiet voice almost swallowed up by Jeff’s panicking in the front seat. I know. I know. I know what you want to say. “None of this is fair, but we’re going to make it right.”
His hands have settled against your face. Your breath hitches every time his thumb strokes your cheek, your head is swimming and Vinnie is too close, too close to you, living inside all your walls and defenses as if he’s always been there, and you can’t remember knowing him and not having that feeling, of feeling--
It would be wrong to say that the two of you don't feel happy together. But it’s a hard enough fight just to make ends meet and it’s even worse without the Doctor and his ugly pills. Sometimes you wish you could be like the other children at Fairmount -- the hopeless ones, the ones that the Doctor couldn’t reach. They just turned in on themselves and retreated to the safety of their own heads, escaping into the past or their dreams.
You understand. There’s so much more color there.
But you have to resist. Time may flow differently for you, may deposit you into days gone by or yet to come (though hardly ever the present) but that doesn’t mean that it’s right to leave Vincent in the lurch. He needs you just as much as you need him.
He does have one advantage over you, though.
“Just grow it out,” you say when you see him snarling at his scruffy reflection in the bathroom mirror. “It makes you look older.”
“I don’t want to look older!” But he does turn away and directs his scowl at you instead. He’s cute when he puffs up like this, and you tell him so, not forgetting to pat him insultingly on the cheek as you speak, rough stubble scratching at your palm. Vin just grabs your hand and smiles as the tension leaves his frame.
But you miss that smile when he isn’t with you. It’s lonely at the children’s home. You are seven years old and your arms still ache from being picked up and dragged and hauled this way and that, and your mouth feels cottony from the stuff they made you swallow.
There’s a man standing in front of you. He says his name is Doctor James Corenthal, and that he’s here to help you, to make you better.
You ask for your mother. It’s the only thing you say for weeks, until the Doctor tells you that your mother isn’t coming for you. Then you stop speaking all together and your isolation is complete.
Mother was a brave woman, in her way. She kept you safe the only way she knew how, and if it took four years for her to call the cops on Dad, well, it’s not like you can blame her. (Not like the other kids at school or their parents or the teachers, their whispers grinding at the very edges of your hearing, constant constant constant and you want to take up your scissors and cut out their tongues to make them be quiet, to make them stop whispering, you can’t stand it when people are whispering about you--) The important part is that she did and after they strapped him into the stretcher and carried him away to the ambulance (“She didn’t have drop of blood on her, how did his legs get that cut up?” “Ask the son, he’s about tall enough to reach the old man’s knees--” “He’s just a kid Bruce, don’t say things like that!”) she got on her knees and gave you a hug, and that felt nice. You touched her black eye, and she gave you that sad smile (your mother can always smile for you, always) and said, “Looks like it’s just you and me, pal.”
“Good,” you replied, and she hugged you even tighter. You don’t feel bad about stabbing your Dad, not when he was hitting Mother like that. Besides, you’re almost seven and you have to take care of her.
You don’t lose any sleep that night, happy that he’s gone, and in the morning Vinnie shakes you awake with Evan, Evan, wake up, we have to go to Pennsylvania.
“Whu?” You cover your eyes with your arm, trying to blot out the bright light of the lamps. The soft edges of a dream are still clinging to your vision of a woman smiling at you like she was about to cry, and it makes your heart ache. What is Vinnie doing in your bedroom?
Pennsylvania. Centralia. Jeff wants to go there. You need to wake up.
Centralia. The town of ash, the doctor calls it, with a sad voice. The fires have been burning for as long as you can remember. You don’t miss it.
But you do miss Jeff, when he goes with the doctor for a few days. You know, you all know, that the doctor is trying to help (lie lie lie lie lie) and that can take a long time, but Steph. Steph is worried.
“I don’t like it,” she whispers to you on the second night. “I don’t like it, Evan!”
“Why not?” you ask, trying to be patient. You’re fourteen right now (who knows how young or old you will be tomorrow) and everything has been changing. You never mind having Stephie in your room, but there’s been something different about that lately, that you can’t figure out. Whatever it is has been upsetting Vinnie, inciting loud, angry fights between you and him, and that’s enough to make you distrust this strangeness that pulls your eyes to the emerging curve of Steph’s waist.
You’re doing it right now, you realize. Steph doesn’t seem to notice how angry you are with yourself for accidently ignoring her. Good.
“Because...I don’t like it...when Jeff is away from me...” She’s knotting her fingers together. You reach out and grasp her hands before her nails can tear her skin apart. “I worry. I just. I need to take care of him, I need to --” Her teeth bite down on her bottom lip. You think of the room next to yours, who sleeps there, and you understand.
“Do you want to ask the doctor about it?”
“I don’t...I don’t know if that would be a good idea.” With a shake of her head, she gets off the bed, and kisses you goodnight before slipping out into the hall.
The doctor hasn’t returned by the next day, and you’re glad. Fairmount’s ceiling is much more interesting without him pestering you, and you get to sleep more. You drum your heels against the frame of your bed, solemnly examining the ridges on the ceiling. It takes the shape of a rabbit, which you like, and it never changes, which you like even better. You go so many places without ever leaving this little room that it’s nice to have something constant.
It’s sad that people can’t be that constant, though. You won’t have anyone to wish you a happy birthday. You wish you could spend it with your mother. But the doctor said she’s not coming for you, and you believe him.
You want to see Vinnie. The last time you saw him, he was trying to climb through your window, and you had to pull him over the sill as the soft night chirped and whistled with nocturnal creatures. It was the easiest thing in the world to stroke his head while he sobbed quietly against your chest. It would be easy to say that it was because you felt responsible for him, because you were almost seven and he had only just turned six, but the truth is that--
“You can’t ever remember anything important Evan,” he says, and he sounds so tired. You swallow hard, because it’s true -- time slips this way and that, giving you memories you shouldn’t have or couldn’t have, defying laws and logic, and Vince is the only touchstone you have.
“I remember that much,” you croak wearily. “Vinnie--”
“Sorry,” he whispers back, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” and turns around and reaches out to pull you close. His hands fit against your back and you can hear his heart beating inside his chest as your head fits under his. Outside the wind howls, and all you want is to stay in this moment, and not be swept away again.
He’s gone when you wake up.
And that’s when you know.
That was summer. It’s February now, and you don’t know what to do. You’re sitting in an empty room, with a familiar name threatening to leave your lips.
“Evan? Is that you?”
It’s a long time before you can say, “Officer Matten?”
He picks you up carefully, and that threatens to tip you back into the river, but you steel yourself and hold on. That’s all you’ve been doing for these past few months: holding on. Praying you’ll find Vinnie. There’s so much you never said.
“Evan, what are you doing here?”
“I’m. I want to.” Your legs buckle, almost giving out entirely. Matten is stronger than you’d thought he would be, for a man in his fifties. “I need to find Vinnie!”
“What happened?”
There’s a chair. Not comfortable, but you don’t need comfort right now. You grip the edges of the seat. If only the room would stop spinning. “Did you. Hear about when we ran away?”
“Yes.” You can taste Matten’s hesitation, smell the sound of his voice when he says, “Evan, if this is about --”
“You don’t understand. We ran away because the doctor, the doctor was doing something --”
“To Jeff.”
“To Jeff. It, it was some kind of surgery, he would take him away for days and they’d come back in the middle of the night while we were asleep, but then we wouldn’t be allowed to see him, and Stephie was worried so she picked the lock --” You force yourself to stop, breathe, slow down. Babbling won’t help anyone. “His legs were all wrong. The doctor, he did something, crippled him almost. And we knew we had to get away or else he’d turn on us next. So we ran.”
“And you’ve been living on your own all this time?”
“Yeah. We split up -- we didn’t want to attract attention, roaming around together. But now Vin is gone -- we went to bed, or, or I thought we did and when I woke up it was December already and he was gone.”
“Have you been looking all this time?”
“Yeah.” It’s the easiest answer you can give. You’ve been searching when you can, when you’re in the right time and place.
The gray walls are starting to right themselves. Stability is setting in, though it won’t last long. You’re starting to remember now -- the police station in Memory Town. Officer Matten, the one who helped when you were all very small.
“Was it Doctor Corenthal?”
At last, you look up at his face. It’s older, worn with more cares. But it’s a familiar face. Constant.
“Who else would it be, Officer Matten?”
He believes you. Just like that last time.
And then, you’re six years old again, laying in a field with Vinnie’s head tucked under your chin while he sobs against your chest: don’t let him get me, don’t let him touch me, don’t let him hurt me, Habit.
“I won’t let him,” you promise, stroking his soft hair, the same color as a raven’s breast. You look up at The Man, who stands over both of you, his blank face looking at you as his branch-like arms sway in the wind. “You’ll help, won’t you, Mister?”
He nods. You’re glad.