Mercymorn the First (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
acidjail) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-10-06 03:30 pm
acidjail) wrote in deercountry2022-10-06 03:30 pm
acidjail) wrote in deercountry2022-10-06 03:30 pm
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But he understands that smile Paul gives — humourless, ironic, out of place in the here and now. What else could they do but smile and laugh, as the realisation blossoms: yeah, there's something fucking wrong with them, all right.
Hearing the word aloud is a stun; it's rare that it's been voiced like that to him, so easily, so simple. Possessed. That's exactly what it is, but Peter struggles to say it so plainly. He's only referred to himself that way maybe once, maybe twice.
"Yeah," he says, and it comes out a lot softer and smaller than he means it to. Sometimes he still feels like a little boy, small and stupid and lost. But he clears his throat and tries again. Even now, there's some breath of relief that a person he confesses it to... just believes him.
"It's some shit that came with me from home. For a long time I didn't really know about it. Or... at least, what it was." That first year he knew he was haunted by something, but it was hard to tell if the ghosts were just metaphorical, and Deerington played its own tricks.
"I should've told you. Told.... everybody. They should know." Not like he plans to just, meet someone new and launch into Hey I'm Peter, and I have a raging demon from Hell living inside me, nice to meet you, but... the thought is there: people should know. So they can be safe, or keep away from him if they want to, or whatever the fuck. It's not fair to hide something like that.
"It sounds pathetic, but I guess I've just been... afraid for people to be scared of me."
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Or maybe, with ripples of electromagnetic radiation shivering through his blood, he has a better sense of perspective on being inhabited.
"You know," Paul says, after a beat, "Isn't everyone here like that? Not the same, I know, but...we all know anyone could turn into something that could hurt us. Yours came with you, but- I don't know."
He doesn't know. It's not his place. He shouldn't have said anything about it, but when Peter said he was afraid of people being scared of him something in Paul's heart throbbed low and painful in answer. He strokes his thumb across his Omen's silky smoke fur, feels her little huff of imitated breath.
"I don't blame you for not telling me." That's better. Within acceptable confines of what he can speak to. He bites his lip very slightly, almost an invisible movement in the obscuring light all around him. "It's hard. Being someone people might be afraid of."
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But there's some insistent thing in Peter that whispers he deserves it. That it happened to him because of a reason, and not by the misfortune of existing here. His features tense a little, throat feeling tight just to think it at all. Uncomfortable, but not unwilling. He keeps talking, because it's the first time anybody's actually said that to him out loud, and maybe it gives Peter permission to follow through with the thoughts he usually keeps bottled up.
"No, it's— you're right. It's a lot like what happens to people here, actually. And most people I tell, don't even freak out about it. Or they come from some world where stuff like that's not the hugest deal." A demon, is that all? Peter smiles again a little, but it doesn't reach his eyes.
"It sounds stupid, but I guess on some level, I'm kind of... scared. To like.... accept it at all. You know? Accept that it's normal, even if it's just... whatever 'normal' is in this place." He could. He could.. fit into this place, a lot better than he currently does. What he is, what's wrong with him... He could exist so much easier in a place like this than anything back home. Back in what he used to think was normal.
But he's pausing through the rambling (or what he'd consider "rambling" anyway; Peter's not one to.... share with the class much, and it always feels weird). He doesn't miss what Paul says, and how he says it, like he's speaking from experience, maybe. Is it this place? Or something else.
"Do they have... stuff like that, where you're from? Demons and shit." Peter starts there, manages another little smile before he adds— "You don't seem scared of me."
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He doesn't know why he can't let it go. He thinks, with something that's too ugly and small to be hope, that Peter doesn't seem to know why either.
"We don't have anything like that I've ever seen," Paul says, with a subdued shrug, "But just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean they don't exist. That's not why I'm not afraid of you. I try not to be afraid of anything I want to understand. It makes it easier to see them clearly."
"And none of that sounded stupid." Paul's sincerity hews close to being too intense, or may have already crossed that line. He doesn't know, can't tell, and there's a dizzy exhilaration to that which doesn't feel precisely good. It's electric, though, catching in his fingertips and beneath his sternum.
"Where I come from...I never knew of anyone who can do the things I do." He could be talking about the things he's learned to do here; he could be talking about the fire he wears like a mantle. He could be talking about anything. "Accepting it feels like - accepting that I'm different from anyone I ever met before this place, even if there are people here like me. Accepting that I'm not who I thought I was going to be."
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That said, there's something to confessing it and not being looked at like he's scary or disgusting or even that strange at all. Peter swallows again when the other says none of it sounds stupid, with an earnesty that does take him by surprise. It makes him lean into Paul's words with something that's almost desperate, nodding softly; that's it, part of it, exactly. He gets it.
"Yeah— yeah, that's—" How it feels. "I don't want to accept it. Because what comes after that is.... I don't know. Embracing it? Letting it in, too much. Becoming it."
He's never ever said that to anyone, and he's finding the right words for it now, and it keeps surprising him. Talking to someone who can relate, even if the details to just how he might be able to remain vague, does wonders. Peter keeps going, softly, and a little hesitantly, like the next words are a concept he's trying out. He hopes it doesn't register like he's having to convince himself of them. Not so far deep down, he is.
"....But when you have something like that inside you... things you can do now... they can be used to help people. Protect them." For all that the demon within him can be dangerous, it can be helpful too. It's power, but mostly it's how it's utilised. He knows that. He's still afraid to embrace it (coward, his mind whispers.)
"If I think about it like that, the choice should be easy, right? Shouldn't be a choice at all." His smile is small and miserable because it still isn't easy and he's still resisting it in some capacity, and he hates himself for that.
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He wants to understand Peter, but in all understanding of the universe there is the mirrored understanding of the self. If he can understand this, will he be closer to unravelling his own mystery? Are his feelings able to reflect back off of Peter's like light on the volcanic glass he's splattered across this sand?
"But what if it changes who you are?" He asks, all of seventeen and exhausted on his bared, ashen feet. "What if you accept it, and you become someone who doesn't want to help people, or protect them? How would you go back? How would you know before it was too late to turn around on the path?"
Paul wonders if it already is, for him. He wonders if being able to wonder if it's true means that it isn't, or if there is a point on the threshold between himself and the tyrant star where he might hang suspended forever, knowing himself a monster and unable to change any of it, the future opening wide to swallow him into its toothed eye.
"I wanted this to let me protect people." Paul holds up his hands, cupped full of flame. "How am I supposed to know the difference between this, and - everything else?"
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It's not easy; people keep making it seem like it should be. Learn to work with this thing inside you. Use it. Get stronger. How...? How can he? It's— stealing who he is away. He won't ever, ever be the same. And if he gets stronger... if this thing is allowed to grow, and something goes wrong....? If he ends up some monster, some villain? There won't be any help. No stopping it.
His eyes are wide and his mouth is dry and he has to swallow again, feels it ache in his throat. He watches the other hold up his hands, palms bathed in that flickering, dangerous blue. He can still smell them, the scorches outside the cave.
"I don't know how," he says in a hush, failing to find much of his voice for the moment. It could be in response to the last thing Paul said, or what came just before it; it's all the same. He doesn't know. More of it wells up in him, and he's speaking for himself and also for Paul, and now Peter finds his voice again but it trembles, like dirt crumbling.
"I don't know what to do."
Another confession and the weight of it ripples through him unpleasantly, makes his eyes freshly hot.
"Maybe we're screwed either way. You know, man?" There's a smile, and he reaches his hand up to brush his sleeve against his eyes, wishing he could be anyone else. "I keep thinking there's a good end and a bad one, but maybe that's stupid. Because I feel like no matter what, even if I make the decision that's the best one, I'm going to lose who I am someday. And then it won't even be me protecting the people I love anymore, so... I'll have lost. No matter what."
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He should have something profound to say back to Peter. The words of a thousand philosophers and their musings on the condition of selfhood are at his fingertips. His own long turned over thoughts, polished to a fine sheen by repetition, to dredge up over his lips and share with him in further pursuit of an answer, the answer, that would clarify everything.
Those aren't the words that come to him.
"It's fucking awful," Paul says, his voice shot with bitter misery, "I hate it. I hate thinking about it. I hate knowing - I hate knowing that everything I do might not even matter, and everything I do is wrong, and it isn't even because of anything I chose. It was chosen for me, and I can't -"
He drops his blazing gaze down to his hands and shut them into fists. He wants to jam them against his eyes to block the world out. He hates knowing. He hates seeing.
"I can't get out."
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Still, he can't help thinking it again and again as he stares at the other, so different now from the charming, smiling boy he'd met that first time. Whatever's happened to Paul, or is happening, or will happen, this is what's beneath anything else. The same as in himself. It hurts so bad that Peter almost can't stand it, all those words that could come straight from his own soul. He hates it. He hates— all of it. He hates being what and who he is, hates that this is the thing he has to carry for the rest of his life. Hates that no matter what, none of it was ever his choice.
(There's so much hate in him that he wonders sometimes if it'll make him mean and twisted, but it's really only ever made him sad. A sadness, a heaviness — weighty and useless; nothing can be done with it. He's useless. He's nothing.)
I can't get out
"You're trapped."
He says barely above a whisper, and yeah it's the obvious — reframing exactly what Paul's saying, into another way. 'can't get out' is 'trapped'; it's nothing ground-breaking. It's not even helpful.
But what it is, is Peter seeing him. He sees it; he sees him. Exactly how Paul is. Damned, cursed, tethered to some fate. To some thing; whatever it is, Paul's trapped too.
Peter's so afraid of flame, but he steps closer — cautious, mindful of the flickering heat, but it's closer. He barely knows Paul. Their last interaction was a little dose of a nightmare. None of that matters.
His eyes are moving over Paul again, taking in all the flame, brow pinching softly. Paul reached out for help. Or maybe it was giving into something, resigning himself to it. And Peter's been there before.
When he was, someone stayed beside him no matter how much he was burning — and it was never so literal as this, but he was melting away. He could feel less and less of himself.
"Can I smoke with you?" Stay, for awhile. His voice cracks just a little and he's not even going to attempt to smile to make it seem light-hearted; there's nothing light to this. It sucks. He hates it. They hate it. "Two doomed guys."