firstofitskind | MHA #6, Thursday Evening

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verity price

MHA #6, Thursday Evening

Apparently, there was only so long Liam could actually avoid the apartment, before things like 'needing a change of clothes' became an issue.

So here he was, letting himself in, maybe moving a little more stiffly and gingerly than usual, thanks to the morning's sparring session with Beau. He hoped that Verity ~~was~~ wasn't home, so he could avoid that bit of awkwardness and heartache that was sure to come from seeing her. He missed her, god, so much, but at the same time... he'd just be in the way. She deserved that time alone to heal.

[ooc: for that girl!]

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"Because," Liam took a deep breath. "I thought- I thought- if I was around, with those memories, I'd just be a reminder about what happened to you."

It... kind of sounded stupid, when he said it out loud like that.

"But...but how would I know what you were thinking?" Verity asked, confused.

"I don't know," Liam admitted. They'd just always seemed so in sync, he'd assumed...

Verity just looked around a little wildly, at Liam's face, down to the wide-eyed mice that were staring back at them, horrified and heartbroken over this rift between their gods. "Can't we just, like, talk about this?" she asked.

Pleaded, really.

Liam took a deep breath. Forced his eyes to meet hers.

"Yeah," he said finally. "Okay."

Verity nodded, closing the bedroom door firmly behind her and making her way down the hall to the loving room. The bedroom was too...fraught a place right now. The couch was fairly neutral ground. She sat, hand straying to her knives - a gesture of self-comfort, not a threat - and waited for him to sit.

Two weeks ago, this place had been home.

Now? That air of comfortable familiarity had vanished, and Liam felt like he was moving through molasses as he made his way to the couch. Muscle memory almost had him sit nestled up to Verity, but he edged away at the last second, leaving a good foot of space between them.

Verity looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since he'd come in.

"What happened to your face?" she asked.

Safe to say that was not the question he'd been expecting.

"... Beau happened," he admitted, sounding a little sheepish.

It wasn't the question she'd been intending to ask, but...his face.

"You just pissing off every woman you know this week?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Robert really that in your head?"

"Please," Liam scoffed. "Like you'd have to go so far as to piss Beau off to get her to hit you." Which had kind of been the appeal for Liam, honestly, that she'd do it without asking too many questions.

"...I've never met her," Verity admitted.

She ~~didn't get out much because I am failsauce~~ spent a lot of time in Baltimore, chasing cryptids and nursing her failing dance career.

"She's fun. You two'd get along great," Liam said, a fleeting, though genuine, smile appearing on his face briefly. For a moment, things almost felt normal again.

And then reality settled back in.

"So...okay. What the hell's been going on in your head lately?" Verity asked, since that seemed to sum up, well...everything.

The problem was Liam didn't know exactly how to put it all into words.

"Well. Robert's memories, for starters. Mostly of what he did to you." Which made a twisted sort of sense, because those would be the memories that Liam would have the strongest connection to, and thus the easiest time 'remembering'. "But it's more than that. I have my parents' memories. They're part of what makes me who I am. What if- what if he becomes a part of me too?"

Verity frowned. "You have Sandoval's memories," she pointed out. "But that doesn't make you like him. If anything, they're more like an elaborate 'what not to do' in any given situation. Right?"

"He still influences how I think," Liam replied. "Even things I like or dislike."

Verity shuddered. "Still. Those memories were with you when you formed. These weren't. By definition, these can't be as...as foundational."

Dammit, Sarah, why did you have to be so far away?

"No," Liam agreed. "But I don't know what they will do. And that's what scares me. Because he hurt you, and that's the last thing I'd want to do." His gaze dropped down to his hands, twisting in his lap as he pressed a thumb into the palm of one hand, and then repeated the action with the other. "What I ended up doing anyway," he acknowledged.

Verity had thought that, but wasn't going to say it aloud. Perversely, though, she was glad he had said it. Because he had hurt her and she wanted him to know it.

"Do you think he ever could?" she asked quietly. "Make you hurt me? Make you go for the blood pressure cuff and the needles, or the drumsticks and the soles of my feet or the--"

There were a lot of options. Robert had been thorough.

Liam flinched with each mention of the various methods he'd used to cause Verity pain.

"If I can't find some way to stop those memories from surfacing when I don't want them to?" Because unhappy as he was at having those memories at all, there was a coldly logical part of him- ironically, Sandoval's influence- that had to admit that having access to the kind of knowledge that Robert Bullard had regarding the Covenant's operation could, potentially, be useful.

Robert had used. Not Liam. Robert.

"So, like...sleepwalking?" Verity asked. "He's in control and suddenly you're looking for the dental floss and ground glass?"

"I have no idea," Liam said, sounding lost. "There's no handbook." Or rather, there was, but it was buried in millions of years of racial memory that had a harder time swimming to the surface than any of the human memories Liam had access to.

"And what if I do this?" Verity asked, and blurred into movement, reaching out to lay a hand on his face, summoning up all the fear and horror she had at the very idea of going through that again.

She didn't have to dig very far. It was right there, after all.

Liam let out a choked out cry at the touch, sounding for all the world like a wounded animal.

The connection wasn't nearly as strong as if she'd taken his hand, but they'd shared (and Shared) so much that that fear and horror slammed right in to him anyway.

But beyond that? It didn't pull Robert up from Liam's unconscious, and it didn't make his other fear manifest, either: his body didn't change to mirror Verity's.

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