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]

Verity was deeply asleep, but no Price would sleep through someone crawling into bed with them. "Liam?" she mumbled, muzzy from sleep. "Did you have a bad dream?"

Look, she was aware that someone was here with her, she hadn't quite realized he was a full grown adult yet.

[firstofitskind]

The answer she got wasn’t really coherent; something halfway through a grumble and a whine. So... yes, pretty much.

[arboreal_priestess]

"Liam?" Verity asked, sounding a lot less muzzy now. Because that didn't sound like a little kid. She turned and saw her real, adult boyfriend snuggled up against her.

[firstofitskind]

"Uh huh," Liam managed. A deep breath, as he tried to banish the dreams back to the corner of his mind that they'd sprung from. "S'me." And he wasn't a child or burning alive in the depths of the volcano or a formless consciousness.

[arboreal_priestess]

Verity wrapped her arms around him, pulling him even closer, so he was sprawled half on top of her. "Glad you're back," she murmured. "Missed you."

Her bed was colder now when he wasn't in it.

[firstofitskind]

And with Liam currently doing his very best octopus impression, 'cold' wasn't a concern when it came to the bed right now.

He was silent for a few more beats, and then, finally:

"Glad to be back."

Feeling unsettled after spending a few days as a kid was nothing new, but this was even worse, because that kid had been real, somewhere. In some reality.

[arboreal_priestess]

"You okay?" she asked, even though she knew the answer. Really, she was more prompting him to talk, if he wished.

[firstofitskind]

And if it had been literally anyone else, he might've brushed off the question by insisting he was fine, really. (Whether or not anyone would have believed him, on an island full of people who liked to insist they were 'fine, really', was not the point.) But this was Verity, who knew him better than anyone else, who had literally seen into his soul, the essence of who he was, those times they'd Joined with each other.

"Not really."

[arboreal_priestess]

"Wanna talk about it?" Verity asked quietly, voice carrying not further than his ear. Here, in the darkness, it was like they were the only two people in the world.

[firstofitskind]

No.

Yeah.

Neither. Both.

"I used to wonder, you know. What it's like, to grow up over years instead of minutes." A sigh. "I guess... now I know." Sort of. The other-Liam's memories beyond that of the weekend were hazy, just out of reach.

[arboreal_priestess]

She'd kinda figured he'd be conflicted about the answer, which was why she hadn't tried to push either way.

"You did," Verity agreed. "But that also wasn't you. Even as a little kid, you had more of a sense of humor. More human. I feel bad for that little boy, stuck on the Mothership somewhere. But the man he's going to grow up into isn't the man who I'm sharing a bed with. Not even close."

[firstofitskind]

"If he gets to grow up."

He'd already lived far longer than this Liam had, the first time around. But even in a world where Zo'or never being given charge of the Synod gained them a few more years, the Taelons- and the Jaridians- had to be living on borrowed time. Which meant so was that other-Liam.

[arboreal_priestess]

Great. Now Verity was trying to figure out how to discover what version of the universe he was from so they could kick down the door and take him home with them. They could call him Jr and everyone would exclaim what a little lookalike he was.

"What do you think will happen?"

[firstofitskind]

"There's no way to know for sure, I suppose," Liam admitted. "But I imagine eventually he'll find his way to the regeneration chamber, same as I did. And he'll give up his life to give the last of the Taelons and Jaridians a chance."

Would he get there in time to actually be successful? Or would he fail in that respect as well? Those were questions that continued to nag at him.

[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?"