MHA #6, The Wee Hours of Tuesday Morning

[firstofitskind]

Liam- the smaller one- had gone to sleep on the couch on Monday night, same as he'd done the last two nights. At some point during the night, Fandom magic struck again, and the correct Liam took his place. His dreams were the smaller Liam's memories, his own, Ha'gel's, all blending in to each other in a confusing jumble.

It was the one about the volcano that finally startled him awake; his eyes flew open with a shout on his lips and the smell, the memory of burning flesh clinging to his nostrils.

Stumbling in to the bedroom, he crawled underneath the covers and wrapped his arms around Verity, burying his head in her shoulder and just... waiting for his heartbeat to return to normal.

[ooc: for she who is mentioned, if she'd like.]

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[arboreal_priestess]

"I really, really hate that," Verity said, clinging to him more tightly. "I hate that it was something you chose to do, but you were at least a grown man. This is a little boy they've been raising to have a Messiah complex. You both deserve better, but..."

He was still a little boy.

[firstofitskind]

And a part of Liam wanted to point out how this was a bit of the pot calling the kettle black situation, here, given how Verity had been raised.

But that was also a can of worms he very much didn't want to open right now. "Yeah," he said. He knew what she meant, she didn't have to finish that sentence.

"He told you," he continued. "About the Kaluuet." Even saying the name hurt, and what had happened to them hadn't been Liam's doing. The problem was he remembered it as if it had.

[arboreal_priestess]

Sure, but they'd still had a chance to have fun. Be loved. And part of the problem was that they were up against people who would harm a child or use it for leverage if said child didn't know how to survive.

"He did," Verity agreed, not that it had really been a question. "The race before the schism turned them into two."

[firstofitskind]

"Before Ha'gel's- before my father's- choices led them to becoming two," Liam added.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Yes," Verity said, softly. "Your father's actions. No more yours than Robert's, for all that they're both rattling around in your head."

[firstofitskind]

"I know," he sighed. And he did, on an intellectual level. But knowing and believing didn't always go hand-in-hand. "I just," he broke off, making a frustrated noise.

[arboreal_priestess]

"You just?" Verity asked. "You can tell me. I might not get it, but that doesn't mean I don't want hear it."

[firstofitskind]

“I don’t understand,” Liam said slowly. “Why I deserved to come back, when I failed.”

[arboreal_priestess]

Jesus Christ, Liam, break Verity's heart why don't you.

"What's not fair isn't that you came back," she said quietly, holding him tightly to her. "It's that they put all that on you at all. They put a single man in front of the ocean and told him to stop it. That's...just cruel. To put so much onto you. To make you feel like who you are as a person is predicated on stopping something so momentous."

[firstofitskind]

A shudder ran through him as he listened to Verity's words. It wasn't the first time she'd expressed a sentiment like this, and like before, there was no switch in his brain to be flipped that would make him really, truly, believe what she was saying.

But neither were her words falling on deaf ears; they got just a little easier to hear, every time.

[arboreal_priestess]

That's pretty much how this worked. You kept throwing down truths until they finally worked their way in and started to grow on their own. Verity couldn't convince him. But she could keep supporting him until he managed to convince himself.

"Let's say you and I do have kids," she said quietly. "And I decide that their whole existence is for the sole purpose of defeating the Covenant. That's the whole reason I give birth to them: they have to take down the Covenant brick by brick. Even ignoring how unhealthy and unfair it is for me to put that all on them...could you really look at the child in your arms and believe that they have no value beyond that purpose? That if they die in the attempt, they don't deserve to be brought back because they failed?"

[firstofitskind]

Liam thought about the kids that had visited for a weekend last year. Hayley's boundless exuberance, and Tyrus' equally unending well of calm (and quiet exasperation).

"No," he said with a sigh. He got what she was driving at, really, but she was working against a lifetime (if a relatively short one) of conditioning and expectations here. "But you would never," he pointed out.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Probably a really bad practice for someone else to do, then," Verity noted.

[firstofitskind]

"Maybe," Liam was willing to admit.

[arboreal_priestess]

And Verity was willing to leave it there, rather than keep pushing. Instead, she drew him closer, lips finding his forehead. "I missed you like crazy when you were gone," she said. "Even only for those few days."

[firstofitskind]

The tension that had been thrumming under his skin since waking up from that nightmare began to melt away with that kiss, and Liam let himself relax.

"I- he- could tell, you know," he shared.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Could tell?"

[firstofitskind]

"That you seemed... kind of sad about something," Liam clarified. Beyond the things the other-him had been telling her about what his life was like, he meant. There were small things; the way her gaze lingered on his jacket where it hung on the hook over the door, how she'd talked about it being 'her' apartment...

[arboreal_priestess]

"You're...a fixture in my life now," Verity said. "I turn to you to laugh, to joke, to talk, to cry. And suddenly you weren't there. I felt..." She paused, trying to figure out how to put it. "Off-balance. Like I was dancing, but I didn't have a partner."

[firstofitskind]

At least this time, it hadn't been Liam's poor life choices that had taken him away for a few days?

"I've gotta stop doing that to you," he murmured. "Sorry." Yes, he was aware that apologizing for Fandom's whims was kind of pointless; he was doing it anyway.

[arboreal_priestess]

"We'll put it on things to work on," Verity said, since she didn't think she'd get him to stop feeling back about that right now, either. "Along with me not getting kidnapped."

[firstofitskind]

"At least you had the decency to wait a good six months between kidnappings," again, as if that was anything she'd had control over. "I didn't even make it a month."

Making it into a joke made him feel... slightly less terrible about it, at least.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Okay, but the thing you should actually be feeling bad about?" Verity said. "That I had to make muffins wrong. With my own to hands. And pretend like it was okay."

[firstofitskind]

"Poor Verity," Liam agreed. "What a hardship. That must have been awful."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Thank you," Verity said, "for understanding my pain and trauma."