*“I am not sure if I care or not.”*

My mouth pulled to the side, a smirk but not really I guess—but I let him speak, needing the words he was speaking, a reason, an explanation for a madness I didn’t understand.

It was still madness that poured from his tongue, though. Just a different type of madness; a controlled madness, a madness that had had a method in its history, a madness that had started its life so innocently, just like any other infant, before it was taken and made deranged and senile but the forces of –

--what? The forces of what? I stood listening to Ulrik, my pacing paused for the time being even though my body itself hadn’t stopped moving. Like, yeah, I was stationary but everything about me said “agitated”, from the way I jutted my hip out, to the ultra-tense way my shoulders sat hunched as I chewed on his words, on a history lesson I had never asked for but craved all the same. Building-blocks and brushstrokes I had never cared to look for—even though I had spat at the finished painting and called it evil.

“So--wait,” I said, my ear cocked and my eyes screwed up in thought as his words finally dried from his mouth. “Wait—what was Midas paranoid of? What was scaring him? And like—“ I shook my head slightly, “They had rejected your offers to be allies, so you stomp ‘em in the nuts for it?” I was trying to make my own sense out of it—but I didn’t understand how a desire for friendship could morph so easily into a total invasion of your home. Didn’t really feel that “friendly” to me. It’s like…it’s like choking a starving man with a home-cooked meal.

He was talking about other stuff though—someone named “Mirage”, and a time when his home had been taken, too. And other stuff about a “racist threat”, which really confused me, cuz I’d never heard of a shit like that before. “What’s racist?” I kinda muttered to myself, and maybe I would’ve asked him properly, but we were in a middle of conversation and I didn’t wanna derail it quite yet. So I shook the word out of my mouth and the unasked questions regarding his past: Where did you live before? Why haven’t you tried gaining it back yet? If you know the pain of losing everything, why would you wish it on someone else?

His comment about how lazy the Basin was caught me off guard—so completely that I let out a bark of laughter that made no sense, cuz I was wasn’t feeling anything light in me at that moment, anything bubbly or sweet or capable of laughter. But I dunno, man. He pulled it out of me. “Good to know,” I said dryly, pondering what he said about “wanting to apologize to someone” and not knowing why.

Was he doing it on purpose? Being this thick, I mean? Cuz there was shit he was spitting that a calculating kind of sense to me when he explained it, but it felt off that he wouldn’t understand the other shit he was blurting to me like that, these tiny confessions that almost seemed to confuse him as he pondered on them. “You probably feel shitty, I dunno,” I shrugged—I mean, that’d be the response I’d have. I’m not sure if I was being helpful or not with trying to figure out this turmoil of his—and let’s be honest, I’m not even sure if I really wanted to, yet.

I opened my mouth—closed it—opened it again, cuz there had been a thing I was about to say but it felt cruel as it passed the threshold of my throat. So I swallowed it and asked a different thing, a question to his question. “Did you fight, when your home was taken?” It came out quietly—honestly, wondering if this shaggy black bastard was the kind of guy to care about something like that so hard.

I snorted softly, chewing my tongue. “I mean…” I trailed, kinda wondering out loud at that moment, “I'm bein' real, here. I’d hate myself if I hadn’t even tried to fight back. Like I wouldn’t even deserve to call that place my home if I didn’t try to earn my keep.” But that didn’t even really sound that logical though, did it? Cuz he was right in pointing out the futility of it and the stupidity in it, in shedding blood and sweat and tears over a cause that was lost from the get go—


(we all have to learn how to drop the fight one day)

--but even with all that nestled in the back of my head, I knew that deep, deep down in my marrow I’d be fighting to my last breath. If it were me.

“…you know you do care, right?” I asked him suddenly—something sly lying on my tongue. “That ain’t no question. Cuz if you didn’t we wouldn’t be talking about this. It wouldn’t have been brought up. Your ass wouldn’t be freezing up in the far north, just standing around in the cold. You don’t do that sort of thing for nothing. You put shit in cold when you’re trying to numb it.”




"talk"
@[Ulrik]

Quit Hollerin' "Why God?", he ain't got shit to do with it.