fandomtownies | Demon Marcus, Sunday

Ender had been walking circles around the island for about an hour now; this was the first time he'd bothered to stop in this particular street. He glanced idly at the window for a moment and...

He recognized those spikes.

He shook his head, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then pushed open the door.

"You realize you're setting yourself up for retaliation whenever they get back to normal."

"Nah," Sparkle replied, in the process of comparing cute little aviator hats to see which one went better with Alec's dapper scarf. "He likes me way too much to--"

Hey, wait, he knew that voice.

"Swear to god, I was sober when I stole that camel, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't endangered."

... What? Ender had warned him against stealing endangered animals while drunk, in that last conversation before he left. It seemed like now was a good time to clarify that one.

Considering Sparkle's problems with authority, it was probably more a statement to his respect for Ender that he remembered that much.

Ender's eyebrows moved minutely further up his forehead.

"Noted," he said. "And good afternoon to you too, Sparkle."

Sparkle broke into a grin at that, hopping up onto the counter next to a sad-eyed Alec. If you asked Sparkle, Alec should have been happier. After all, the distraction meant that he probably wasn't going to get around to the trendy legwarmers or anything.

"And good to see you. I thought you were in space? You didn't blow up." Which was good, for the record. "... You back?"

He was trying not to sound too hopeful about that.

"Just for the weekend," Ender said. Sorry, Sparkle. ~~Wait until summer.~~ "We found a portal a few months ago, and we felt it was time to drop by and see whatever friends we had left on the island."

Technically, it was mostly for Ben's sake. But Ender wasn't about to imply a lack of interest in talking to people-like-Sparkle right now.

The 'dammit' wasn't said, but it might have showed there on Sparkle's face for a second. He'd kind of been hoping, maybe, that he'd get a teacher back who spoke on his level...

Couldn't win them all. He shrugged his shoulders, which was almost like just shrugging it off, right? Yeah. Just like.

"You have many of those left? They'd all be like your friends from when you were a student too, right?"

"A couple, but most of them are graduating this year," Ender replied, shrugging his shoulders lightly. "I'll probably have more luck if I decide to hunt down any of my other old students."

He glanced at the panther. "I see Fandom hasn't changed much in my absence."

"Yeah, right. The only thing that ever changes about this place is the faces. It's fucked that the one thing that makes sense about this island is that things are going to go their damnedest to never make any frigging sense."

He reached over and picked up Alec, pulling him into his lap.

"This is my, um... boyfriend, I guess." At least that was something that he could say to Ender without worrying about being judged on it. "We were on a date and I had to smuggle his tiny furry ass out of a zoo in Baltimore in my backpack without looking like I was stealing one of the attractions. The crazy follows you off the island. It's bullshit."

If he was at all dreading going back to Toronto someday, it would be because of the inevitable 'being dissected for fucking science' that would come with turning into a pony or a little kid or something for a weekend, if there were witnesses.

Edited 2013-03-24 12:39 (UTC)

Ender winced sympathetically.

"You have no idea how glad Ben and I are that none of this seems to have followed us," he said, "Some of the situations we've been in the past few years... well, it would've been awkward if we'd turned into women halfway into it."

He took a few steps closer to get a better look at Alec. "But good work getting him out of there."

Alec was the most adorable baby panther in the world and Sparkle would punch the face of anyone who disagreed on that matter.

"Yeah, well... I kinda had to. It's just lucky I always have my bag with me." Sparkle shrugged and scratched Alec behind the ear. "I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do if this shit follows me to Toronto. Run away, join a freak show or something?"

His was not really a reality that was forgiving of weirdness.

"Pretend to be someone else for a day?" Ender offered.

He wasn't about to disagree about the panther. He seemed plenty fuzzy, at least.

"You're resourceful. You'll figure it out."

"Gonna have to," Sparkle agreed, wrinkling his nose. "Not like there's really much of a choice otherwise, is there?"

It was either figure it out, or be screwed for life. That one was kind of a no-brainer.

"Not in the slightest." He wasn't about to ply Sparkle with might-be's that could fall out either way - that wasn't the kind of language Sparkle spoke. "Of course, the moment you set foot on this island it'll probably smack you in the face again either way."

Like finding out you had a nearly-adult grandson wtf.

Sparkle would probably shit himself if he found out something like that. Yep.

"Of course it will. It's really fucking charming like that." He shifted his weight a little where he was sitting on the counter, shaking his head. "I wanna say it'd be easier to just be able to stay, never have to deal with it following me back to Toronto, but this place is just..."

He waved his hands.

"God, it's like poison isn't it? Like some insidious poison that creeps in under the fucking skin and people think it's actually the best thing that could happen to them, but what happens when they have to leave and it's right back to the way things were before here, back into their wars or their gutters or whatever they crawled out of to get to this place and they're just so used to how comfortable it is here. How do you go back to that after this? Roof over your head and three square meals and you have to resort to stealing fucking livestock in Turkey before anyone cares. Nobody cares."

That bothered him more than he imagined it probably should. Still.

"That's what it might feel like," Ender said, "But I can assure you that it's not actually the case; if it were, we wouldn't have survived as a species nearly as long as we have had. It's certainly not unfeasible that someone out there would love to have your best interests at heart."

He looked back at the window. "It's just not as deceptively easy as it seems out here," he said. "Though even Fandom has its cracks."

Sparkle was now giving Ender a look. A 'not entirely buying that' sort of look.

"Well yeah, this place has its cracks. What place doesn't have cracks? Here I'm working two jobs taking classes that won't do me a hell of a lot of good back home- Archery is only going to get me so far in fucking Toronto but it was either that or a class about making friends,, and sometimes we have to watch our asses when things get weird around here. I almost got myself killed in Baltimore, you know. Forgot that it wasn't here. That was fun."

Mmm, concussions.

"Sorry," Ender said. "You look largely undented now, though. I'm glad."

That needed to be said first.

"I once told someone - I think it was my sister - that Fandom was like purgatory," he continued a moment later. "We struggle to get better, the worst things stripped away from our lives. But sometimes it just needs a tiny shake and the lacquer crumbles off, and we remember that it is still fundamentally purgatory: worse than a nightmare."

"And it's too easy," he said. "You start to feel tempted to sneak off into someone else's world to make your own reality better."

Sparkle nodded a little.

"Not like it'd be better no matter where I go. I'd be so out of my depth in one of those magic places, and like the ones where people throw on tights and fight with powers or whatever, what would I even do there? My best bet is still in Toronto, like MY Toronto where I can't even get a job because I have a criminal fucking record and all I'm going to accomplish by being here is that I'll stay out of that kind of trouble for a few more years than I might have, anyhow. Nothing changes. It's just... delayed a little."

He swung his feet a little, rearranging Alec in his lap so that he could tickle his little panther belly.

"So it's there and in way too much shit to have anything to look forward to, or somewhere else and, I dunno, probably dead. I'm not a fighter. Everyone here is a fighter, it feels like."

"I was one of the few people in my personal social circle who didn't have powers," Ender said wryly. "You have to find other ways to compensate. A lot of these powered boneheads rely too much on what they can do, and too little on what they should."

He shook his head. "But that's not really important," he said. "You just want to know what the point is when you already stepped in it long before now, and there doesn't seem to be any way but stuck, and this whole place feels like an idealist's fever dream."

"Is there even a point? If I even survive to graduation and I go back to Canada, is there anything I can say I took out of this place?"

Aside from the knowledge that camels weren't for stealing?

"A couple of years of free food, a roof over your head, and halfway decent memories," Ender said. "Maybe a few new tricks. Maybe some new views born out of having some time to think."

He shrugged. "Survival is not a poor thing to take out of a place," he said. "And if anything, just the fact that you are here should tell you life has a habit of throwing curveballs. Sometimes they might even work out."

"They work out very often for you?"

Sparkle wasn't exactly a firm believer in 'things working out.' He was funny like that.

"I had planned to move to this planet to be a governor for two years because that's what they told me to do," Ender said. "And I did. I just didn't expect the boyfriend to leave the religious order he'd been raised in to come live with me while I did."

Sparkle nodded a tiny bit, considering that one as he looked down at Alec.

... Yeah, like Alec was going to follow Sparkle home for his big calling as a group home brat. But then, it wasn't like they really had anything super-serious going on between them, either. He was a great guy to go to dances with?

"Sounds like it didn't turn out half bad for you, then."

"It could have been a lot worse," Ender said frankly. "I expected it to."

He threw another look in the direction of the panther as well. "I'm not saying it'll be the same," he said, "And I'm certainly not going to act as if it might be like this forever. But you have to find a way to hold on to realism without falling headfirst into determinism."

Sparkle gave a little snort at that.

"I'm not expecting everything to bend over to drop whatever I want in my lap," he replied. "But I'm not, like, going to start running around thinking that there's nothing I can do, either. This place gives people these like sneak-peeks of these perfect fucking tomorrows and I don't think half of them will ever even be real, nothing better than a damn tease. I just... It'd be nice, but I know what the odds really are that everyone here is going to get their fairytale ending, with their picket fence and like three kids and a dog."

"I'm not getting a dog or a picket fence," Ender said. "Do you have any idea how hard those are to maintain on a space ship?"

... Let him have his moment, Sparkle.

Sparkle was going to let Ender have it, but it came with a kind of weird look.

"Chain link? Pet rock?"

Way easier maintenance. Conveniently, it was also slightly less heavy conversation.

"Probably downsize that to a pet screw," Ender said, straight-faced. "Anyway, I'm not talking about fairy tales. But you're right to ignore the tomorrows: even if they're true, they'll come to you at a time when you need them least."

The first time, he'd had a massive freak out and given poor Valentine Junior a complex.

"Just another way this place picks to screw with people, huh?"

Colour Sparkle totally unsurprised.

"Essentially, yes," Ender said. He leaned against the counter. "But if you had a choice, considering where you are now - where would you like to be at the end of the road? If everything happened to work in your favor along the way?"

"If I had a choice - and let's be clear, I don't exactly get one - I'd take... something normal. Something that's not completely way the hell out of my depth, something like what I already know. I know how to get by back in Toronto. It's not really home but I can live there." Sparkle shrugged. "A clean start would be great. No criminal record keeping me from getting a job and... I don't know, doing it fucking right for a change. But it's not like I can just wave my hands and suddenly have like the proper... I don't know, government records or whatever so I can live in a world like that. Places like the ones I know are too damn obsessed with like... paperwork."

Stupid paperwork.

"I'd probably fuck it up anyway. Old habits and not enough reasons to really want to change them."

"If there's anything that can change on a moment's notice, it's that last one," Ender said. He paused for a moment as Jane whispered in his ear, his head giving the tiniest of shakes. "I'm not familiar enough with 21st century Earth laws to comment on the rest of it," he said, "Does a juvenile record follow you forever? I'd think that would get sealed."

"If you took me to his world and got me plugged in, it really wouldn't be that hard," Jane sighed in his ear.

Edited 2013-03-25 09:24 (UTC)

Sparkle shrugged his shoulders a little.

"Unless I manage to fuck it up spectacularly between now and then, my prints and photos and all that good stuff gets destroyed when I turn eighteen," he sighed. "And... I mean, it's not like they're allowed to release my name to the public or anything like that either. But you get around enough- I've been kicked out of every shithole in Toronto, it feels like- and they know, anyhow. You get this... this, like shadow over you and people look at you and it screams delinquent and they know."

He gave his feet another swing, and kept right on tickling Alec's belly.

"You fuck up enough, they start re-thinking stuff like how criminally accountable you really are. But then maybe I don't want to be rehabilitated. They make up their mind when they see you, young and homeless and trouble and you're branded with it, like this invisible brand right there on your face and the first people they look at when something goes wrong, when a shed burns down or they find drugs on the street or there's a break-in somewhere, are the group home kids, all the people who fell through the cracks because we're not clean and polite and we don't run around wearing Prada backpacks to fancy private schools we're right there with our dirty nails and our hand-me-down clothes smoking behind the gas station and bringing down property values just by breathing the same air. They clean my record but it's right there on my fucking face. Nobody's gonna hire me back home, nobody's going to let me have a future when they don't even want to let me have a place to fucking live. They don't want trouble in their neighbourhoods and who can blame them? We're something different."

"There was this nun once. Her name was Carlotta," Ender said. "She tended to the kids living on the streets of Rotterdam. Every day those kids would arrive at the local soup kitchens, trying to be fed, but there was always strife. Trouble. Eventually my good friend Bean realized that they had to band together, so he found a group of kids and a bigger kid to help defend them."

Ender's mouth curved briefly at the memory. "They called him Bean because people would tell him he 'ain't worth a bean'," he said. "But he was the smartest kid on those streets. His plan worked. The nuns took more pity on them and fed them more, and they had to steal less to get by. The nuns noticed that cleverness, but most of them thought it was the bigger boy's idea. Only Carlotta noticed the tiny skinny kid doing most of the thinking."

He rubbed at his arm.

"Carlotta arranged for him to be tested," he said. "After the scores he got, no one could deny he was something special underneath all that grime. She got someone to send him to a special school - my school. He grew up to become one of the most respected military leaders of our time. He would tell you, though, that part of him always stayed out on those streets. That his only priority was always his survival, and that that made him bad. That he was sure everyone was able to tell."

"Yeah... well..." Sparkle listened to Ender's story, and then shrugged his shoulders. "Not everyone is a Bean. There were probably plenty of Sparkles left going to the soup kitchen after he got his second chance."

That wasn't self-pity, either. It was just... more realism. Sparkle survived well. He didn't test well. There was no mysterious nun wandering the streets of Toronto looking for the brightest, most promising, and if there was, there were plenty brighter kids than him to pick from.

"Sure," Ender said easily. "But not every nun was Carlotta, either. They still tried. They made chances happen where they could. And even that isn't the point. Bean believed every day of his life that people would see him for the selfish urchin he was. That when they didn't, they must be suckers-- fools, even, or that they might only be ignoring it because of his abilities. But his wife didn't marry him because he was brilliant or he tested well. He had a whole string of people willing to give him chances because they cared about him. They didn't see the thieving street kid when they looked at him."

Sparkle was quiet for a minute at that, torn somewhere between trying to come up with an argument for that, and trying to stare Ender down until that logic wore itself down to something that made a little more sense to him.

Neither of those things seemed about to readily happen. It frustrated him, at least a little.

"Yeah... well... back there, the people who are giving me chances number to one, and it's his job to," though he sounded a little less bitter about that than the words suggested he might. "And here... I dunno. I'm still going to have to graduate and leave 'em behind. I don't belong in all those other places. I don't get how people can just... I mean... I've been uprooted dozens of times but at least it's always something I know that I get uprooted to. I can't hold my own in some universe filled with space-monks or demons. Didn't do half-bad in that alternate timeline with the crazy bitch with the wand but I wasn't exactly expecting a decent life expectancy there, either. What am I gonna do, be all, 'your world will kill me, come back to Toronto and we can probably make a life for ourselves in a tent city somewhere until they tear it down?'"

He was looking at you, Alec.

... Please don't remember this when you're people-shaped again.

"I'm not saying it'll necessarily be anyone out here," Ender said. "I'm not saying you'll bring something with you. I'm not saying that this is going to be magical, either, but the reason you're saying people will see it on your face is because it's easier. You don't have to invest important energy in hope, and you don't have to set yourself up for the crushing pain of disappointment when life invariably backfires on you. Trust me, I understand that better than anyone."

Even if he'd rather stay tight-lipped about the reasons why unless he absolutely had to talk about it.

"But it's bullshit. Just as much as me telling you you'll get whisked off to a magical fairytale land the moment your file gets wiped. You're human, you're smart, and you've got heart. You'll find someone who'll stay with you, even if it's not forever, and you'll live somewhere that's your own but probably not after you've spent your fair share of nights in the gutter, and you'll find somewhere to work, maybe not what you secretly hoped you'd be working on, but it will be work, and that'll matter. All the while, there'll be people who spit on you, and there'll be people who care about you, who don't mind stepping in to look after you no matter how much the street is printed on your face."

Ender pushed away from the counter. "Sometimes it's also a good idea to hurl yourself into the unknown," he added, "But that part's less of an absolute."

Sparkle listened. He respected Ender too damn much not to, even if the things he was saying were things that were difficult to swallow. It wasn't that it didn't make sense. Of course it made sense. Sparkle ran away from hope just as much as he ran away from 'easy' and 'hard' and most things in between.

It was terrifying. And that's why he listened.

"The unknown has a funny way of reaching right into your chest and stealing away your breath," he replied, finally. "I don't like drowning."

Who did?

"I'll keep all that in mind. I mean... I know you know what you're talking about. You're one of the only people I've met around here who does, so you get that much. But the unknown and I... I'm not the kind of person who'll jump into that and hope. Hope'll get a person killed."

"No one's asking you to leap," Ender said. "I'm not asking you to do anything. Someone like you isn't going to turn around and decide life will be great from here on out just because I make a little speech."

He wasn't a Speaker for the Dead just yet-- and Sparkle wasn't exactly dead either.

"But the unknown will come for you some day, whether you like it or not," he said. "You might be surprised at how well you do at paddling through."

"I guess we'll see," Sparkle replied, frowning down at Alec, who had wrapped his big floppy paws around his hand and who was now doing some affectionate gnawing on one of his fingers. "Maybe I will be."

He didn't suspect he would be. But then, Sparkle... generally had fairly low expectations for himself on a good day. That, too, was easier.

"We'll see," Ender agreed, stepping away from the counter.

He offered Sparkle a friendly smile.

"Anyway, we'll be leaving again soon, but we should be back for graduation."

Sparkle managed a twitch of a smile of his own in answer to that.

"Well... maybe I'll see you again then, then. We can talk about, like, birds and bugs and the sky or something."

It seemed like slightly less heavy conversation. Sparkle could go for some of that, sometime.

"I'll buy you some coffee next time," Ender promised.

He meant that part.

"And we'll talk about boys."

That part... could be a joke.

"I'm into older men," Sparkle deadpanned. And then broke into a little grin. "Yeah, we'll see. I might insist we talk about cougars instead, though."

Panthers, Sparkle. Alec was a panther.

Demon Marcus, Sunday

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