tearmeanewone | rendez-vous + APPOINTMENT POST

[She raises an eyebrow at him.] That depends entirely on what kind of collateral damage you're talking about.

What kind do you want?

[Yep, he's being awful with absolutely no shame here. Good thing they're almost at the bar so that he can't make this much worse.]

Well I want to leave the bar on my feet, so anything that's counter to that goal is out. It might be nice if we leave the bar standing as well. And I'd like to be able to come back without people recoiling, too.

Have I ruined your fun yet?

Only part of it. I'll keep us on our feet, but no promises about the rest of the patrons. I will promise no direct injuries... unless any of them decide to pick a fight. Then all bets are off.

[He'll just make sure it isn't too messy if that happens.]

Deal. [She grins.] I don't know, though. You getting into a bar fight seems a little...

[Elizabeth raises an eyebrow and gives Gai the once over. He's pretty lithe...]

[And he raises an eyebrow right back, amused. She's hardly the first person to underestimate his physical capabilities.]

Oh? You don't think I could handle it?

Well, you could handle it better than I could. But I don't think the Vox Populi would be clamoring to recruit you either.

Oh, that's... a resistance group, where I'm from.

[Gai's eyebrows go up the slightest bit more, but not for the reason Elizabeth likely suspects. He'd been planning to raise this subject later, not now, but... it's a logical segue from this conversation, and truthfully, it would be best to get this out in the open sooner rather than later.

If that means she's no longer interested in him, then so be it.]

... I led a resistance group in my own world.

[That's the last thing Elizabeth expected him to say.]

[She stops walking and stares at him, wide-eyed. Before Finkton, Elizabeth would have been entirely swept off her feet. Her own Enjolras, standing right there. But it isn't as romantic as she'd thought, she knows that now. She'd seen people screaming and beating at the bars of a prison, people lined up to be shot, children with guns to their heads--]

What were you fighting for? [She's looking right at Gai, but she's seeing something else.]

Freedom.

[In one sense. The GHQ's hold on Japan had been oppressive, there was no denying that. What they'd done in Roppongi the day after he and Shu had met was proof of that much. Those civilians had been nothing more than pawns to the GHQ, killed to make a point and to get what they wanted.

But he's also spilled more than his share of blood in the conflict and he knows it, even if not all of it was by his own hands.

And he thinks of the face of a child, mortally wounded and yet telling Gai that he was glad Gai had survived.]

And the future of my world.

[Yes... that was the fight of the Vox as well. Freedom, the right to live somewhere that wasn't Finkton. A future and a voice.]

[It scared her, to think that she could be face-to-face with another Daisy Fitzroy. With someone whose goal could outweigh the cost, and twist so drastically as to support murder. Widespread, indiscriminate, thoughtless killing of dozens of people in the streets. Gai was charismatic, Elizabeth had been drawn in almost immediately. And it scared her now.]

The leader of the Vox was named Daisy Fitzroy. She killed a man who was responsible for the oppression of... so many people. And then she found his son--a child--and she almost...

[Elizabeth has to physically shake herself to push what happened next to the back of her mind.] Is that the sort of freedom you want? Something that comes from... finding reasons to kill anyone?

[Her response doesn't even come as a surprise to him. Resistance fighter, terrorist... there's a thin line between the two, as he knows well, mostly boiling down to which side you happen to be on. He's been called both of those things and worse; he won't deny it. To say that he's proud of all of his actions would be a lie.

He's put innocent people at risk, even allowed some of them to die. He won't deny that either. But what he wants more than anything is to be a person who is worthy of all of the sacrifices, all of the lives that have been lost because of him.

So he just looks calmly at Elizabeth, neither confirming nor denying what she says.]

My stepfather adopted me for the sole purpose of creating a suitable mate for Eve, the girl who was to be the progenitor of the new race-- the next generation of humanity. A new race that could only be created by destroying all existing life.

Edited 2013-07-11 04:59 (UTC)

[So it went beyond murder, into genocide. To Elizabeth, that goal makes no sense. The world would collapse before a new race could replace the life lost. But Comstock using her to wage war on cities below Columbia didn't make sense to her either. It was an ideal, taken too far. To a dark place where killing people was an acceptable means to an end. Damn how twisted and hypocritical the road was--the end would justify it...]

And that's what you stood up against?

[Gai nods once, silently. His own love for humanity has been worn thin over the years of constant exposure to its worst sides, but even despite that, he has no desire to erase it for good. "Evolution" or not, he doesn't believe that this new race should come about as a result of the extinction of the old. People had a right to struggle, to at least attempt to determine their own fate, just as he had done.

"You survived with your own strength."

Everyone deserved that chance, even if ultimately their struggle amounted to naught.]

[This is an incredible amount of conflict for Elizabeth. On the one hand, that image of Daisy Fitzroy with a bloody handprint smeared across her face is one that Elizabeth is almost certain she'll never forget. That realization that something that started for the good of all had warped into a chaotic bloodbath. It wasn't all poetics and idealism, and young men dying for what they believed in. It was more real than anything Elizabeth had seen, and so it would never leave her.]

[But could someone who was heartless and twisted write such sad music? Throw her onto the ground to protect her? Walk her home and leave her at her door, when the books she'd read featured men who would suggest heavily that they wanted to be invited in? And how could she begin to doubt someone who had seen her tears and still held onto her?]

I shouldn't be afraid. You aren't afraid of me...

[Maybe she wasn't afraid that Gai was Fitzroy. Maybe she was afraid he would become like her...]

No, you should be afraid of me. You should be afraid of what I've done and what I can do.

[Because it's the truth. Because he's been killing since the gun he held weighed nearly half as much as he did. Because that's all he's ever done and all he knows how to do. He's been trained, refined into a ruthless killing machine, because those who couldn't be that didn't survive.

The life he has here is one he doesn't really know how to live. He doesn't know how to live in a situation without conflict, without combat, and the more time he spends with Elizabeth, the more acutely aware of that he becomes.

It would be for the best if she was afraid of him.]

No, I shouldn't! [Elizabeth's hand on Gai's elbow turns into a grip, trying to force him to look at her and see what she's trying to say.]

If I was afraid, I would be a hypocrite. And that is one thing... I do not want to be. I can live with myself if I'm anything else. But I stood behind someone who killed dozens, maybe hundreds, of people so I could escape and never look over my shoulder again.

How ungrateful would I be if I said I was afraid of him for doing that for me? How backwards would it be if I said I understood what he did, but couldn't understand whatever you did? For something bigger than just me?

[That actually brings Gai up short. When she squeezes his elbow, he turns to look at her, and in a rare moment of vulnerability and emotion the surprise is visible on his face at her response. Even though he's learned to expect the unexpected out of her, that was most definitely NOT how he'd thought she would react.]

So you'd rather risk being dead than being a hypocrite?

[An exaggeration, perhaps, but he's not sure how else to make his point. She SHOULDN'T be interested in him, and he was a fool to ever think that she could or should be.]

Yes!

[This is going downhill. This is going downhill fast. But Elizabeth has never been able to stop herself once she's started reacting in an emotional way. Her reactions were always knee-jerk, she usually did the first thing that popped into her head--]

I'd rather be dead than... Do you know what I made him promise to do? I said, if it looks like I'm going to be taken back to my tower, and be trapped again, and forced to be Comstock's flame that lights the world on fire--

[She takes Gai's hand in both of hers, and holds it around her neck. It had been the first thing she'd thought of then, it's the first thing she's thought of now.]

...that's what I told him to do. Exactly like this. I would rather be dead than be many things.

[That... that is a feeling Gai can understand. It was why he chose to die the way he did, because it was a CHOICE rather than something forced upon him, the one last bit of control he had over his own life before the virus robbed even that from him.

He understands now. At their hearts, the two of them really aren't so different after all.

The hand she moved to her neck lingers there for a moment before sliding upwards to cup her chin, and then before he's even thinking about it, he's leaning in to kiss her again, only this time it's not quite as chaste as their first kiss on the beach had been...]

[It seems, to her, like a strange moment to be kissed. She'd just put his hand around her neck, confessed that if it came down to it, she wanted to die instead of be Comstock's heir. It was morbid, it was an unbalanced thing to do. Kissing shouldn't have followed, logically.]

[Her emotions were running high though, and she felt scared and sensitive and sad. She felt like she had torn something open that hadn't finished healing yet. And Gai's kiss was... a comfort. A silent way of saying he understood, however distorted her wish was he understood. Had he gone through life with people being afraid of him too? Was Gai just more insistent that he should be feared, while Elizabeth allowed herself to hope that there were people who weren't afraid? Was she the only one who refused to let her own fear push them apart?]

[Maybe she was. Gai was kissing her so fiercely, he was trying to tell her something. Elizabeth felt relief, and some strange sense of urgency, that made her match Gai's movements measure-for-measure.]

Wait-- [Elizabeth put her fingers to Gai's lips when she broke away to breathe. The word was breathy, almost desperate.] Gai, you have to tell me why I'm risking being killed by being around you. I've shown you tears, so you would know what you were up against. You have to tell me, what I'm up against.

[If Elizabeth's emotions are running high, Gai's are off the charts, and it terrifies him. The fact that he's feeling what he's pretty sure he is, much less this intensely, is brand new and terrifying and it makes him feel exposed and vulnerable, two things he's always hated. He's spent so many years perfecting the art of being able to switch off his emotions when needed that the fact that he can't do so right now is making him feel... cornered, almost.

He's not sure whether he's scared of himself, scared of her, or scared of this, whatever this is. Respect, fear, hatred, admiration... those are all responses he understands. Those are the things people usually feel towards him, and he's learned to expect those. But this is something completely new, something he's never experienced before, and thus his logical mind is working overtime trying to figure out just how to process what he's feeling right now.

The break in the kiss is both a relief and a fresh source of uncertainty. Oh god, he'd kissed her, hadn't he? But she hadn't pushed him away, had kissed BACK, so at least he hadn't done something horribly wrong... yet. He allows himself a moment to collect his thoughts before he responds to her.]

I've been fighting on battlefields since I was seven years old. I grew up as a soldier-- I'd killed more people than I could even count by the time I was ten. I can kill a grown man with my bare hands, I know how to use dozens of different firearms, and I can sneak up behind you and knife you in the back before you even know I'm there.

[Now he pulls away just enough to look down at her.]

Someone I know back in my world had the ability to reach into a person and draw out their heart as a physical object. That object represents that person's personality, for better or for worse, and there was no way to fake it or influence it to be what you want.

[He pauses.]

Mine was a rifle.

[She listens, intently, wanting to understand what could make him demand that she be afraid. All she hears though is a tragic story. Nothing for her to be afraid of, just something that makes her ache. Of course that object was a rifle... he didn't know anything else.]

'Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.'

[Elizabeth looks up at Gai, looks at his chest as though she might see a gun there. Then she steps forward and lays her ear against his heart, and listens.]

Are you going to knife me in back, Gai?

[Though he's trying his best to keep his face neutral, his heartbeat will give him away with how hard it's beating right now. But he doesn't pull away, even though he could, even though every instinct is screaming at him to do so.]

No. I would never do that to you.

[But there's still a part of him that fears that he might. If she were ever to awaken him when he wasn't expecting it, what would he do? How would he react? With instinct, or with logic?]

That's the only thing you said that I was afraid of. [She pulls back so she can look at him.] Everything else... no one should fault you for. Or I've already seen it.

[She looks back down at his chest, almost reaches out again to feel it but decides at the last minute not to.] And your heart doesn't sound like a rifle. And I've heard one, believe me. Your heart sounds like mine.

[Elizabeth tries a smile, and though it comes out weak the sentiment is there.] I used to think everyone was simple to understand. That everyone had one driving force, and they were either good or evil. And I nearly fell into that trap before I realized that people are so... complex. A whole library sits inside of everyone, and if I was asked to pick one book that was supposed to encompass all of me... I couldn't do it. No one is ever that simple or singular. No offense meant towards your friend.

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