and our hearts are lit with darkness falling down, down, down

[chasinghumanity]

Fuck all of it. That had been Mitchell's motto for the last two weeks and still the song remained the same. That was a long time to be pissed off at the entirety of the human race, but Mitchell had lived a great deal longer than most. He knew how to keep a fire burning low and long

Comments

[frakkup]

Sometimes Kara wonders if she likes the Hub so much because she knows fewer people there. For reasons that probably all add up to Neil, most of the islanders she's close to frequent the Winchester, and sometimes. Sometimes it's just too hard to be next to all those bottles where the people that matter can see.

The Hub is easier. It's not anonymous - for all the island's mysteries, it's a cramped space, too small for any new face to go unnamed longer than a week. Kara's not safe here, but it'll do.

She heads up to the bar tonight, some pointless daring in her belly, the same reckless urge that precedes all her best and worst decisions, and takes a stool. It's not long before the sheer misery radiating from her bar mate has her turning her head.

"You," she observes, gesturing for the bartender, "are in a bad way."

[chasinghumanity]

"I," he responded, staring at his now empty glass, "am a bad man."

Even that felt disingenuous. Man. Human being. He was now though, wasn't he? And bad at it. Bad at being human. Bad at feeling what he should feel. Bad at doing what he should do. Bad at keeping relationships together and being good and all that bullshit humans told themselves. No, he was honest, and that made him a very bad man.

Mitchell lifted his head, gaze tearing away to refocus, after a few telling blinks, on the woman. Blonde hair, that mouth, that voice. Oh buggering fuck. Because he needed someone from his AA group watching him drown in his misery.

But, hey, no judgment, right? Wasn't that the point of the anonymous bit? It must have been.

"Join me?" he offered.

[frakkup]

There's a moment when Kara thinks, jesus frak, you are a bad man, but it doesn't take her long to find her way to the truth. She's a shitty human, and she wants what he's offering. The only uncertainty left is whether she takes it.

"I - " she says, sounding sure for all of one syllable. "Maybe." It's always maybe. To think otherwise would be to buy into the shit she's selling, and Kara's rarely ever that foolish. "The frak happened to you?"

[chasinghumanity]

He took a moment to consider "maybe," turning it over in his head as his fingers clung to the neck of his tequila bottle. Mitchell thought about it and then poured another shot, letting the silence fill in around him and make a point. Fuck only knew what that was. Silence sounded good though. Glass full, he carefully pushed it along the polished wood of the bar until it sat right beside her. He pulled the bottle closer to him, as though he might lean on it for support or hug it.

"The inevitable," he said finally. And almost immediately scowled, brows furrowing as though the words tasted bitter in his mouth. He always hated it when vampires took up talking like twats.

"I got dumped because I'm an ass and a liar," he said.

[frakkup]

Kara could almost laugh, turns almost into does, stares at the shot like the timebomb that it is and closes her mouth around another. "It's better," she says, touching the glass carefully, rolling it between her palms.

"Getting dumped for a reason. It's so much frakking easier."

[chasinghumanity]

"Not for this reason," Mitchell mumbled. He was at that stage in his misery, combined with alcohol, where he refused to see any silver lining: tarnished, gleaming or otherwise. Nothing could help except more wallowing, in misery or alcohol or anger. In anything that would wipe his mind of memories, recent and old.

"It's what I am," he continued, shaking his head. "They don't see that, you know? I was an ass and a liar for-- No, I lied for them. For all of them, not just her. For myself. And that's makes me an ass, when they didn't want to know the truth in the first place."

[frakkup]

It takes her a while to parse that, half because it's all drunken ramble, and half because the shot has claimed most of Kara's attention. She has no idea what to do with it. Shecan't drink it, can't offer it back to another addict. She can't pour it out because it's good, she can tell by the smell of it, can't pour it out because it'd be a waste, and in the face of it, her own sobriety feels less precious a loss.

"Gods," she mutters, dragging her fingertips through the furrows in her brow, and thinks, perhaps about the both of them, "You're so fucked." And it's the worst advice she can think of, but it's also the only kind she'd follow, so Kara says it anyway. "So be bad, then. If it's already fucked, just be bad."

[chasinghumanity]

Her answer caught him by surprise only because it was almost exactly the answer he had come to himself. Mitchell couldn't be as bad as all that on the island, if only because blood wouldn't do anything for him anymore. He couldn't kill coldly and then forget his remorse in a blood-drunk blur. But he could be miserable and bitter and closed off, hate openly what upset him and embrace what others shunned.

He chuckled darkly, but there was a gleam of genuine amusement in his eyes. "My thoughts exactly," he admitted. "You going to join me, or are you holding onto good?"

[frakkup]

"If the ship's going down," Kara murmurs, "might as well be the one behind the wheel." She looks down at the shot in her hand and thinks she's just answered his question, but she's not sure she can do it. She's not sure it matters anymore, if getting this close isn't bad enough already, if she shouldn't just frakking jump.

"I don't know," she says finally, and then, like she's somehow forgotten, asks, "Is it helping?"

[chasinghumanity]

He did his best to give her question serious thought. Things certainly felt less dire, or they felt the same level of dire and Mitchell felt stronger. It was easier not to worry about what Sookie thought, what George thought, what Nina thought. All of that felt lifted from his shoulders, but Mitchell had never felt a true lightness, not since he had been human, ages ago. No amount of tequila would help all the memories he had accumulated over the years.

"It's helping," he said finally. The smile still clung to his lips as if he had forgotten it was there. "But it's not fixing. But some things are too broken to fix."

[frakkup]

Kara turns the sob of something helpless and desperate stuck in her throat into a laugh, watching the ripples of it echo through the little shot of tequila.

"Yeah," she says, and it's suddenly evident that she has to leave, and now. "Can't argue that," she adds as she slides off the stool. "I gotta get the frak out of here."

[chasinghumanity]

Watching her move, Mitchell thought distantly that maybe he should feel guilty. Push a shot of alcohol in front of her, talk about things broken. God, he was becoming miserable, terrible company. But he couldn't bring himself quite to care.

"I'm scaring a lot of people away these days," he said, tone free of self-pity but far from proud as well. "Suppose I should say sorry."

[frakkup]

Kara throws him a grin she tries like hell to mean. "Look sorry enough to me," she says, and pushes the shot back in front of him. When it settles, she finally does laugh, feeling lost and found all at once.

"See you in group."

[chasinghumanity]

She may have delivered the line with something approaching aplomb, but it stuck in Mitchell's chest like a shot. He tried to match her smile, putting half the effort into it and delivering half the grin.

"See you 'round," he replied. Group was the last thing he would be attending for a long while.