Demon Marcus, Sunday

[myownface]

"Ah, come on. It's not all that bad. The shades really go with your coat."

Unimpressed silence as Sparkle reached out to adjust the shades in question.

"And the little scarf brings out your eyes!"

More unimpressed silence.

"Oh, come on. Don't look at me like that. You've been going around naked for the last week. Think of this as, I dunno... Finally putting some pants on." A beat. "I wonder if they carry baby panther pants here!"

Poor, poor Alec.

[OOC: Open, with a 'going out shopping and for lunch with Dad around midday' caveat! And OCD-free!]

Comments

[endsthegame]

"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."

[myownface]

"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.

[endsthegame]

"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."

[myownface]

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.

[endsthegame]

"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."

[myownface]

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."

[endsthegame]

"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."

[myownface]

"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.

[endsthegame]

"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."

[myownface]

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.

[endsthegame]

"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.

[myownface]

"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.