#violnc

it's more complicated than that. or maybe it isn't, but it feels more complicated when you're the one living with the responsibility.

❝ you know what i'm going to say, ❞ number five says, leaning back on the bed next to her and staring up at the ceiling. really, there's about three different things. but here's what matters: should is the operative word. there is a difference between what should happen and what does happen.

the commission normally gets them two different motel rooms. maybe it's to keep temporal assassins stuck together for long periods from killing each other. you can work for someone with too long, you see, and with the natural danger that temporal assassins are in, the out-of-time nature of it, the displacement, the strangeness, all of it -- it becomes natural for tensions to rise. they do have that impulse. but, in a different and older way, in an a "years and years and years dependent on each other, alone at the end of the world" kind of way, five and vanya defy that.

like this. her sitting on the edge of his bed, the television playing some ancient game show with a layer of grime and grain and tinny noise. the crowd cheers for something. neither of them look like what they really are. vanya looks small and quiet, shoulders hunched, an affectation from their youth that she's never been able to shake. after how reginald treated her, it's not like five expects anything different. sometimes it can even function like some kind of benefit. people underestimate her. they shouldn't. out of the two of them, she's more dangerous than him, at least in scale. the whole world is something she can use against someone -- all that loose sound, everywhere. even someone's breathing, steady, just loud enough in dead silence, could be turned against them by her.

it's an interesting thought exercise. besides a room in the academy that swam up in vanya's memory as if through a dark haze, how many other places in the world are entirely silent? without the hum of an air conditioning unit, or even residual noise from the other side of walls? even solitary confinement in a prison has the intermittent bang of the tray being shoved through the door, something she could replicate back a thousand times as loud, enough to shatter bone with the force of it. enough to break someone apart and make their limbs move in ways that would be incredibly painful in the moments before their brain shuts off.

what they do -- what the commission asks them to do, anyway -- is something that comes with no real responsibility besides getting the job done, and trusting that what they are doing is resolving a knot of equations into neat and orderly truth. or perhaps Truth, capitalized, or that's what they seem to deal in. he's had questions, of course. is there really such a thing as a right timeline, or is there just a timeline that serves certain interests?

this isn't about saving the world. this is about preserving a series of events that favors certain people, or perhaps is just about the integrity of the commission itself. sometimes, privately, five wonders who created the commission specifically, and how they did so. could the entire aim of the commission be towards self-preservation? towards making sure that the apocalypse happens, that certain books are published in particular years, that everything unfolds in a certain way that leads right back to them?

he's been thinking about that lately. about what saving the world and saving their family might actually mean. about what it means for the commission. about whether or not vanya will go with him.

or.

or, the other option. where she doesn't. and something about that guts him when he thinks about it. maybe she can see the twist in his expression, and there's the flash of concern in her face in response. she's going to ask about what's hurting him, and he won't have an answer. so just as quick and clean as he kills, five finds the right words for now, the temporary appeasement that he's been managing to apply ever since he pulled her with him right into the end of the world. ❝ i know, ❞ he says. ❝ i know that we've got our lives now, and that... you know. we got out of the end of the world. escaped the end of everything. i just think about things a little too much, that's all. ❞

he doesn't smile. sometimes it feels like he's forgotten how.  

❝ i'll be alright, ❞ he says. ❝ besides, we've got to get to work in a few hours. our guy, from what i found out earlier, works at a bar five blocks away. trucker. shouldn't be hard to track down, and probably not that much harder to fool. ❞ he can't just let this sit. he won't let this topic sit. no need to let her circle back when it's nothing but theoreticals and some scribbling in a copy of catch-22 stolen from a library that had nearly burned to the ground. ❝ ... how do you want to do this? hitchhiking angle? ❞

it's easy enough to get someone to pull over. a woman, alone and vulnerable. him, quietly teleporting behind the truck once it parks to puncture each of the tires, just as an insurance policy, and then taking care of this guy in one way or another. most times they don't even see five before it's too late. it's how he likes it. he is efficient at his work, and he is good at all of it, from beginning to end.

after a moment, five fumbles for the bottle of cheap whiskey on the side table, pouring it into one of the glasses that's probably meant to be used for tepid lukewarm sink water in the middle of the night. ❝ or something else, ❞ he says. ❝ you could just make his truck careen off the road in an unfortunate accident. that's an easy one. ❞ the same amount of effort as knocking over a child's toy car. barely anything at all, and then it's over.

we:  a word so heavy with a void now.   we’re not still standing,  we’re not still here  ---  that’s what he wants to scream out,  what weighs him down and makes him feel so helpless.  so many years of his life,  he’s believed that they were all so invincible,  that were the ones who saved lives,  not the ones who destroyed them.  but now,  ben is gone,  and this isn’t like coming back from any mission they’ve failed before.  this is new,  it’s scary,  and the future is so fragile.   if he’s number one,  if he’s their leader,  if he’s supposed to be the one protecting them,  where does that leave him now that one of their own is dead?  who is he if not the one who can protect his family,  no matter the circumstances?

he wants to believe in her words,  that it’s no one’s fault.  but reginald’s voice has always been so much louder than vanya’s,  and the weight of them can’t stop eating away luther.   maybe dad was right  ---  luther has always the first to believe in his words. 

❝  vanya----  ❞   his voice is quieter,  less assured than it normally is.  he’s breaking and it’s evident in all of his features;  the way he normally stands so tall,  always trying too hard to show his family that he can handle anything thrown at him,  has faltered now.  and maybe that’s why it felt easier to come check on her   --- -  because maybe,  just maybe,  vanya doesn’t need to see him as the overly confident leader that reginald has molded him to be.  maybe to vanya,  he can just be a brother.  there’s comfort in that,  like the pressure is off his shoulders,  even if only temporarily.  it doesn’t rid him of his guilt or his despair,  but when he looks up at her,  he does feel some sense of security.

“When I talk to you about these things-” The more she speaks, the more confused she sounds. “-I don’t know what you’re going to do. Or what you’re going to say.” The confusion isn’t this, not exactly. It’s the uneasiness for Spirit, who hears people so fucking clearly, not understanding the energy around Vanya and always wanting to know more. 

There’s a serial killer in California, on the east coast, in Chesapeake Bay, in Illinois. There was a serial killer in the southeast United States and she helped kill him. 

“Is it always murder, for you.” Spirit is chewing her fingernails in a combination of uneasiness and contemplation. “Do you hear things like I do?” No. “Then what comes to you and makes you think you have to do something.”

Spirit knows there’s a radio in her brain with a station built in specifically for ghosts. She’s convinced herself that radio made it impossible for a moral compass to take up any space of its own; she’s confused when she is impossibly compelled into a calling higher than what she perceives. 

❝   uh -  HUH.   ❞     wrist - deep in suds,   right hand scrubbing vigorously around the inside of a bowl of oatmeal that sat too long,   crusted over.      ❝   you know what the funny thing is about habits,    though ?      you can break them.   ❞  

“It’s not like that, Van, I’m not—I don’t get world-weary and exhausted and insomniaciacal.” 

Making up words is definitely a good indicator of how Spirit’s brain is doing: simultaneously working at 100 miles an hour and pushing Spirit into the ground. 

Every few weeks, shit like this happens. Spirit fixates on some voice or another and thinks she’s found the next serial killer who needs to be stopped. Spirit wanders late at night trying to find new clues, new voices, new company—like some sort of ghost herself. 

As much as Spirit would like to pretend she’s immune from the symptoms of severe exhaustion that set on for normal people, she’s got human bones and a mostly human brain. Starting to droop and drool and lag a little is, unfortunately, inevitable. 

“You’re more than a context for me.”

Is she? Spirit doesn’t quite know what she’s saying, but she knows how to sound sincere. She knows how to emulate the high energy and the compassion that resonates with Vanya. 

“Context is—yesterday, and history, and all the things that get said to me right now from forever ago. I don’t like context? I don’t know what you mean, Van. I want to. I just.” 

Spirit bites down, hard, on her lower lip to quiet herself. It looks sporadic, but this is a matter of urgency. 

          to be fair, everything was a little chilly nowadays  —  symptoms of an early and brutal winter before it had even arrived.  normally, it wouldn’t have been much of a concern or point of interest for ben, who had only ever enjoyed the season for its staying in weather.  as he absentmindedly stared out the main room’s tall windows, though, stuck in his own head, he just happened to catch that first flurry.  there was no reason to be as jolted as he was, nor was there much excuse for how quickly he made his way to the courtyard, but it was borderline instinctual.  impulsive, more likely.

          it was the perfect snowfall to build, if he had to guess.  even as his hands rapidly grew more numb by the second and his cheeks felt like they were burning, ben couldn’t help the sudden wave of child - like glee;  it was just a spark, a flare of nostalgia and longing, and if not to soothe the itch in the back of his head, then he moved to at least satiate curiosity.  and so, in the early hours of mourning, filled with this energy that he knew exactly what to do with, he got to work on making a snowman.

          the only time he would pause for a moment would be when he noticed vanya, standing in the doorway to the courtyard and still in the comfortable warmth of the academy.  barely finished with the first snowball, still figuring it out.  maybe, at some other point, he would have felt the barest shred of embarrassment at being caught making snowmen, or playing in the snow at all, but he couldn’t find it in him to think twice about it.

          with an enthusiasm that had been lost on him the past few days, he waved, and shouted above the echoing quiet of the yard,     “   vanya!  do you wanna help?   ”