fallingbackup | The time of our great undoing

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[fabulae_victoriana]

The time of our great undoing

When Kevin woke up alone for the first time in months, he knew almost immediately that Glen was gone. If he were still human, he'd have looked everywhere for the man until he'd at least tracked down one of his Chains, and gotten confirmation from them that he was no longer in the world with them. But as it was, he could smell that the very spot he was laying on was the spot where Glen's trail had gone cold. The duke had vanished from the bed they shared as the knight slept.

That was well over a week ago now and in his head, Kevin's been lost ever since. He's done the best he can to take over Glen's duties around the house, and the Jabberwock, for whatever reason, has let him do it. But no matter how he tells himself that he's only minding things until Glen returns, and that he will, the atmosphere in the house rankles against him. Young Gilbert doesn't accept him -- not like this. The little Lacie pities him for the depth of his sadness; Lottie scoffs at him for thinking he can even attempt to fill Glen's shoes, even if he knows perfectly well he's only providing a poor substitute. With every day that passes, he feels more and more withdrawn, and so, when he can, Kevin escapes. He can be found wandering the city, now and again, letting the noise of it drown out his own thoughts. Or he can be found patrolling the fences around the farmlands as usual, perhaps in the hopes that the familiar solitude of it will help keep him in his right mind. But the truth is that Kevin hasn't felt this out of place and unsettled in at least a year, since he'd come to live in Glen's house in the first place. He'd thought he was home at last, that he'd found a new family and even a little peace. Now, it seems that all of that peace was in Glen all along, and Kevin has no idea when or if the duke will return.

But the most upsetting part of it all is what he does know. If Glen has really gone home, he's no doubt living through the Tragedy. Right now, somewhere, Kevin's Oswald is staring at the man who's broken his heart, there are swords raised between them, and the duke is maybe just realizing that he's going to die on that blade because Jack Vessalius never did love him enough.

And Kevin can't do anything about it.

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The knight is disinclined to be sociable. To that end, he ignores her for quite a ways, though he's long since learned not to hope that any Lacie whose attention is turned to him will ever grow bored on her own. After a while, however, he meanders into the city park -- the same one in which Glen periodically fell asleep and got coins tossed at him by well-meaning samaritans -- and loses his patience.

"I know you're there, Lacie," he says, without turning around.

Lacie, knowing Kevin's older self, is unsurprised that he'd picked up on her presence without looking back. Her Kevin probably would have found a way to circle back and sneak up on her, by now, after all. She smiles to herself, moving up to walk beside him.

"Well, what's wrong?"

"..you really don't know?" the knight asks, stopping dead in his tracks. Belatedly, he realizes Lacie will turn such a question into a snarky guessing game, and Kevin doesn't have the patience for it. Before she has a chance to answer him, he says, "Your brother isn't here anymore. He went home."

He doesn't want to know what she thinks of this, he decides. Turning away from her, the knight moves on, leaving her to make whatever faces she's going to make in relative privacy.

Indeed, she'd just taken breath to answer his question, when he'd interrupted her. His words steal the breath and any words she might have been about to form. Even as he turns away, her expression settles into one of someone who'd just been punched in the gut.

When she finds breath again, she lets it huff out, as if she wants to say something irritated, as if the entire world has just personally affronted her. Another breath, and another huff. Then quite suddenly, she's taking Kevin by the arm and tugging him off toward the street that leads to her house. Her tone is still irritated.

"Come on."

"Um?" Kevin asks, pointedly. It's the same surly demand for an explanation that the other Kevin still uses so often, and it's delivered in the exact same tone, with the exact same sneering expression behind it. Lacie concluded within seconds of meeting this Kevin that he was only a baby compared to her own, but the truth of the matter is probably obvious now. She met her own Kevin when he was lost and grieving, and this one after he'd already settled in with her brother. It seems that he cares enough for Oswald that his absence has left his knight similarly heartbroken, and that belligerent, seething side they both carry is strong and well in the milder of the two. It just hasn't had a reason to be out in quite some time.

Out of spite, he digs his heels in, refusing to be dragged.

The tone, surly though it is--or perhaps because of it--Lacie can't help but smile. (You know you're doomed with someone, when even someone else's reminiscent grouchiness does that to you.) She pauses looking at him with that smile still playing at her lips.

"You're coming home with me for dinner. And maybe to stay for a while. That house is just going to remind you of him, now, and there's no sense in you staying out here and catching pneumonia. If Oswald comes back, he wouldn't want you sick."

And she knows he probably will keep going out and really just might get sick from it. After all, hadn't her own Kevin been content to roam the back alleys for days, when the boarding house had burned down? That kind of self-destructiveness needs distraction, and, while she hasn't yet decided to be precisely the same distraction she'd been for her own Kevin, the idea isn't hovering far off...

So, dinner and someplace warm, to start.

"I won't get sick," the knight says scornfully. "Puny human diseases don't affect me anymore."

...he thinks. He hopes. Probably he's just cursed himself to another nasty bout of influenza, but at least that's not rabies. If nothing else, though, he does radiate heat like a furnace, something Lacie will likely notice in short order. Probably he kills a lot of harmful pathogens just by existing.

In any case, cutting in on his roaming of back alleys like this is rude.

"Are you thinking I'm going to eat a unicorn? I don't know that I want to eat a unicorn."

"How do you know puny human diseases are all there are here?" Lacie replies, "If they can have werewolves and robot zombieism, they can have something that could take you down."

Lacie blinks as that heat starts to seep in through her skin. She doens't, however let go. Even if the weather won't get him, determined to be as rude as it takes to get his mind on something else (even if it's only on her being rude).

"I was going to bake a chicken. We don't keep enough unicorns to eat them all the time! Just for special occasions."

Edited (HTML fail) 2014-02-11 07:10 (UTC)

"Bah." Kevin could, of course, point out that he can survive grievous injuries now as well, but he does not feel like letting Lacie know that he was shot in the head at one point. So instead, he says, "I can eat entire chickens on my own."

He means this to dissuade her from making him come to dinner, an implication that he could eat her out of house and home. Most likely, though, it will backfire, and convince her that there is no possible way he is feeding himself enough if he's got an appetite like that, and therefore he needs to be cared for. Can't win with Lacie.

"So, I'll bake two chickens," Lacie says with a shrug and without missing a beat. It's not as if their larder isn't well-stocked, considering their fortune in unicorn shit. Anyway, what kind of a sister would she be, if she let her brother's boyfriend-shaped-thing-no-matter-how-they-swore-they-weren't-cozy wander around lonely, without him?

Kevin is family, after all, in so far as any Baskerville is really family. For once, he's family that she actually cares to look after.

The knight grunts. The truth of the matter, of course, is that when a Kevin runs off on his own, it's because he doesn't want to be around people. But it won't do any good at all to say this, because Lacie lives with Asshole, and so Lacie knows that perfectly well and already doesn't give a crap. He's strong enough to pull away from her, but if she's feeling stubborn, he's not sure he could pull away from her Chain.

Most importantly, he just doesn't have the heart right now to fight her over it.

Obviously the best solution here is to just go home with her, and slip out while Asshole distracts her doing Asshole things. So he follows her at last, though he makes it clear that he's going to go at his own pace, and he tries to tug back his arm.

Lacie walks in silence, brooding over her brother's disappearance. How could she not have known? She feels bad about it, and she hates when she's made to feel bad about something.... She barely notices when they arrive at the skull-adorned wrought iron fence, opening the gate to lead him to the door without a second thought.

Even before they've made it up the front walk, there's an excited barking, Beastie knowing his beloved girl-human is home. With its fresh repairs, the house is the best-looking one on the otherwise-dilapidated street. The porch even has stairs, now.

Edited 2014-02-16 09:31 (UTC)

If Kevin notices or cares about the changes to the house, he gives no indication of it, but he does walk a little slower once they're past the skulls. It's occurring to him now that using his surlier counterpart as an escape route means interacting with said counterpart. And their dog. In their house.

This is undesirable, and the knight loses heart with efficient speed. He doesn't want anybody. He just wants Glen.

But there's no backing out now; he can't think of any excuses quickly enough, though he wracks his brain for something feasible. He'll just have to hope that Asshole isn't in the mood for anybody but Lacie, and shoos him out quickly. He'd been reasonable enough on Kevin's territory, but now Kevin is on his, and he doesn't even think to question the wolf part of him that fully expects the other man to be on his guard.

Lacie pushes open the door and stands aside to let Kevin in. Beastie, on the other hand, promptly romps out, barking a greeting and jumping up at the both of them for pets... Until he realizes it's another boy-human. He peers up at Kevin, tilting his head and goes to sniff his feet. Then he promptly remembers this is the Growly One and scampers back inside.

Lacie snorts, and leans to call into the house for her Kevin to hear.

"I've brought home another live one! This one stays, at least for dinner."

"Is it housebroken?" Kevin calls back. Emerging from the hallway to see what horror Lacie is about to turn his evening into, the swordsman pauses in the doorway, staring at his other self with an eyebrow raised dubiously. But the other Kevin, the one who is still a knight, only meets his gaze for a moment or two before he looks away, clearly disinclined to tolerate the scrutiny.

If it were anyone else, he'd be belligerent. If the other Kevin were in any other mood, this one wouldn't want him around. But he clearly isn't up to fighting, and Kevin knows that Lacie is well aware that the Kevins don't tend to mix when left to their own devices. She wouldn't have brought him home if she didn't feel strongly that he needs to be taken care of tonight.

"...close enough," he relents, retreating to the kitchen. Beastie follows along at his heels, giving an obvious preference to the proper boy human, whose growls are weenie and meaningless.

Lacie gives a satisfied nod and closes the door behind herself and their unwilling guest.

"Come on," she says to him, nodding toward the kitchen and following her Kevin and the puppy. Once she catches up, she murmurs two words into her Kevin's ear, knowing they'll explain as much as needs explained.

"Oswald's gone."

She turns back toward their guest.

"What do you want with the chicken?"

He hears, sensitive ears picking up on the words easily, but he cooly ignores them. Even if he didn't want to keep the extent of his wolf senses to himself for the most part, he is a Kevin. He is an expert at pretending that things he does not wish to confront are not there.

"I'll eat anything," he answers absently, lurking by the wall instead of moving to sit at the table. "...except rabbits."

The answer, peculiar as it is, brings a soft snort from Lacie.

"Well, no rabbits, it is."

She turns to her Kevin, looping an arm through his. Between the two of them Beasty worms his way in to plop himself down so that he's effectively sitting on Lacie's feet and leaning against Kevin's leg's. The werewolf's presence has unnerved him a bit.

"What do you want, then?"

"The still-beating hearts of the people I hate," Kevin says flatly. Behind him, the other Kevin snorts, very softly. Wiggling his besocked toes, just to irritate the dog, he adds, "Barring that, I suppose that spicy rice stuff you make will do."

Edited 2014-02-20 05:05 (UTC)

This gets a laugh out of her and she leans up to nip at his ear. "Later." she whispers sultrily.

Slipping away while Beastie tries to twist around and nip not-so-sultrily at Kevin's toes, Lacie proceeds to get to work. A pair of chickens are transported from the ice box to thaw, and she starts to pull out the necessary pots and pans.

"Rice it is!"

Kevin commences amusing himself by antagonizing Beastie, something he often does while Lacie is cooking. Sometimes he works with the dog, training the puppy to behave himself, but other days he just roughhouses with him, and that's what he chooses to do now. But even as he sits himself down on the floor and foils the dog's attempts to get up off of his back when Kevin pushes him, the swordsman is extremely conscious of the other Kevin, lurking silently by the wall.

It doesn't escape him that they have essentially switched places. When Kevin was recovering from his death at the Baskerville farm, it was the two-eyed one who was at ease and comfortable, carrying about his business while this one remained quietly off to the side. Now, the other Kevin is on his territory, and is reacting much the same way. It's a little annoying to understand so well, but precisely because he understands, he knows that the other one is being respectful, in his own way. And he must be thinking much the same things, and wishing he could escape.

Well. The resident Kevin doesn't particularly favor the idea of the other one casting his gloom about the place. In a rare stroke of kindness, he says abruptly, "We've books in the sitting room. Down the hall." Sure enough, after a moment's hesitation, the knight takes the opportunity to escape and slips down the corridor.

Clyde the dead stuffed peacock is in the sitting room, too, as it happens, since it's one of the only rooms that's been completely fixed up as of yet. So there is that.

Meawhile, Lacie busies herself about cooking, though she is unusually quiet, lost in thought. In another life, in another world, Lacie wouldn't have been able to empathize with Kevin, or at least not as well. But here, having found a love of her own and that love being with a Kevin, she understands more of what he's going through than she otherwise would. (More than she's entirely comfortable with, to tell the truth. It's a messy business, letting people in.)

So, she cooks quietly, and plots. What can they do, to distract him? Food--even if she is a good cook--will only do so much. This calls for something drastic. Something...

An idea dawned.

"... Do you remember what we talked about, last All Hallows?"

"Ghosts coming through doors?" asks the swordsman.

Yes, he remembers. The dubious but thoughtful look on his face gives him away.

Lacie shoots him a Look of her own, but his expression is enough to keep her from making a snide remark. Instead, she continues putting together the rice dish and continues as if he's given her a proper answer.

"Well, what do you think? He could probably use it."

"Sure, but he won't go for it," Kevin answers. "You know what -- I'm like. When I'm like that. You'll have to seduce him, and my being here will complicate it. He won't want anything to do with me and he won't want to touch you because you're with me."

He falls silent for a moment, considering. Beastie tries to get a hold of his hand, and the swordsman sweeps the wriggling little dog up into a hold that totally isn't a cuddle.

"...better feed him first," he concludes.

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