almost_knightly | Photo album spread out on my bedroom floor...

Entry tags:

[phdr]

Photo album spread out on my bedroom floor...

There was nothing remarkable about the day when Break got up this morning. There was nothing remarkable lying in wait in his bathroom, and nothing remarkable between himself and the kitchen, and nothing remarkable between the kitchen and the library.

The library, however, held something new today. It was lurking on the bottom shelf, easily missed but for Break's habit of crawling around on the floor -- a large binder, sedate red leather and several inches wide.

Break knows that binder.

Fingers shaking, he snatches it up out of the shelf. He fumbles it, and it falls open, and the first thing he sees is Faneuil Hall at Christmas, covered in snow. Below that is a photograph of Shelly, his own Shelly, dressed in winter clothes and laughing with Sharon when she was still small, and there's his ponytail in the photograph next to it because no one could ever get him to look at the camera that first year and he's seen these pictures a thousand times --

He slams the book shut, suddenly unable to look. A cruel gift, in a way; there are days that he wonders if he'll ever see this place and these people again. But on the other hand, now -- now he can show people, he can let them see things he's only described. It's as precious as it is mean.

Gathering the photo album up close to his chest and clutching it as though he's afraid it'll vanish, Break leaves the library, in search of some of the people he trusts most.

[ooc: Locked to

hadengineered,

retraced,

of_murder,

standstilltime,

smallkindnesses,

info_barma]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Break grins a bit; he's fond of Alice, since getting to know her a bit better. "Well, she's an aflete, you know. Her metabolism's even crazier than mine. Nobody will take us out to dinner in the same group anymore, 'cause between the two of us we can just about eat an entire restaurant."

Okay, more or less nothing that he just said made sense, and that's obvious from Gilbert's confused expression. Sorry, Break.

"Metabolism...?" he repeats, stumbling over the word a bit. ~~Anime logic doesn't account for things like this, okay.~~

"Hmm? Oh."

Right. Modern sciencey whatnot. Break sits back a bit to explain this.

"The way your body works is that it converts the food you eat into energy and that's how it runs, right?" Right. "Well, your metabolism is sort of -- it's the rate at which your body does that. The more active a person you are, the more energy you need to burn just to keep yourself going.

"So someone like -- I dunno, like Miss Ada, who isn't particularly physically strong -- she only has to eat a fairly normal amount to have enough energy. But someone like me or Alice, who bofe have a lot of muscle and spend a great deal of time running around -- we burn energy a lot faster, even just sitting, so we need to eat a whole lot more to keep going."

"That makes sense," he mumbles, turning back to look at the photograph. Even though he's seen some of Liam's photos already, it's still shocking to see these memories so clearly. It almost feels wrong - like he's intruding on something. But he still looks, one hand drifting up to rub at the back of his neck.

"What else is there?"

"Mm -- you remember I was telling you about the Christmas lights in the trees?"

Break flips ahead in the book a bit and points out a photograph of a bench on Commonwealth Avenue, surrounded by lights. It's one in a series of photos; the next shows Break and Liam from behind as they walk down that path, Liam holding Break's elbow to keep him from slipping on the ice. In the third, someone apparently called out to get their attention -- they're both glancing over their shoulders at whoever's holding the camera. Liam wears an expression of gentle curiosity; Break looks inquisitive over the giant green and gray striped scarf covering the lower half of his face, but pale and tired, his face a bit too thin and his hair too short under his hat. At that angle, his bad eye isn't visible, which is the only reason Break had allowed that photo to exist. There had still been a patch over it, then.

"That's..." he whispers, leaning in to get a better look at the lights. Lamps like this were common back home, of course, but these tiny lights that managed to shine so brightly...it's unreal to see it so vividly.

"This is from when you were sick?" he inquires, gently. It's obvious from the expression that Break has allowed himself to wear here that he's not feeling completely well.

"A good six months after the surgery, actually," Break says. "I was really a lot better by then, but it -- that was my first time going out in the winter and the cold made me hurt a lot, and breaving the air was hard."

On the next page, the photographs show the road in the other direction. Sharon laughs merrily while further back, Alice and Gilbert fling snow at each other in the midst of some argument or other. In one photo, Alice has climbed onto a bench and planted her foot on the back of it, apparently having claimed it as a mountain to be king of. There's a look of wild, confident glee on her face.

"I don't really go out in the winter anymore, unless I have to," Break adds quietly. The lights are something he doesn't get to see too often either, living in Boston.

"Is it still that painful?" he asks, eyes still on the pictures. After all, if the summer is this hot, the winter might turn just as cold to run opposite. In the two that he'd been here for, the snow had never gotten horribly out of hand, but there's always a first time for everything, especially when the Will was involved.

He does smile gently at the photo of his counterpart and Alice, though. It's familiar of a time that they shared here at the mansion once, even though that had ended with both of them equally covered in snow and freezing before they'd finally called a truce.

"It still aches when it's cold and wet outside, but no worse than any ovver old wound. Oh, oh, I know --"

Break reaches out to flip back to almost the beginning of the book -- vacation photos. They're from his first spring at Rainsworth, when the kids had been on break and Shelly had badgered them all into flying down to Florida. The picture Break points out is of he and young Liam and Sharon from behind, the latter two pressed up against a huge window. An airplane is visible just outside of it, making the three of them look tiny in comparison.

"That's one of our flying machines," Break says. "And that's -- that's me when I was your age." He'd hid from the camera as much as possible those days, but in another photo, Shelly had managed to catch him leaning up against the wall in his torn jeans and favorite leather jacket. He's far too skinny, and he's reaching up to brush his bangs self-consciously over his newly unbandaged eye, looking hilariously sullen. The old ponytail is flopped over his left shoulder, as always.

"Piece of work, weren't I?"

"Huh-?!" he nearly chokes at the sight of the airplane. Well, that isn't anything like what he'd imagined when Break had mentioned them before. Somehow, even after the description, he didn't think that it would be quite that large and...strange looking. But as he stares at it, he does realize that it looks a bit like a bird, even though the metal wings clearly don't flap. Finally, he turns to look at the photo of Break, and looks even more shocked if it's possible.

"You're...strange."

"Always have been, really, even in my world." Break is amused. "I fought I was tough shit. This was -- I hadn't been at Rainsworth a full year yet when that one was taken. I hated everyfing, back then."

Indeed, in all the other pictures he appears in over the next few pages, he's either hiding or moving to leave the frame entirely. There's one where the three of them are sitting on the floor in a different airport; Liam is sneering at him and Sharon is behind him, playing happily with his ponytail. Break is holding a book called "The Three Musketeers" up between his face and the camera, one finger inside of it to mark his place.

"...Kevin was the same way."

He didn't know Break when he was Kevin, but he's met Kevin here. He knows how skittish and wild he once was, before Shelly taught him how to smile again. At least, that's what he'd been told. The real curse of this place was just how many secrets were revealed against everyone's will.

"Well, yes. I was Kevin myself then, you know, name change or not."

Break is looking at these pictures almost fondly. He doesn't hold the hate for his younger self that his counterparts in the mansion do -- perhaps because he never had the chance to damn himself the way they did, or perhaps because he survived the time of life that seems to be killing them. One finger moves to rest against that only clear photo of him underneath the protective film of the photo album, tracing along the bottom of the jacket.

"He's still around, some days." The jacket now lives in the Rainsworth attic.

"I never noticed it, back home. The moments where 'Break' and 'Kevin' would overlap." Or at least, he hasn't noticed it because he hasn't seen it yet. Here, however, is another story. He's seen Break snap to the point that he and Kevin would have looked the same if they'd stood side by side in this place.

"Even when we change...we still stay the same."

And there's a little boy in an upstairs bedroom right now that proves just what Gilbert has always been capable of, and shows just how deeply his weakness really extends.

"I fink in his case creating 'Break' might have been more an attempt to kill 'Kevin' outright. Maybe that's why I --"

He had never really tried to deny who he was or what he had done. The name had been for more of a fresh start -- a way to help himself move on, and maybe even grow up a bit. But there had always been bits of Kevin that had stayed around, and parts of Break that he could trace back to his younger self. Maybe that was why he'd turned out to be so different from the other Breaks, even as they were so alike.

"...I wonder, Gilbert; does your world have a custom of middle names?"

He'd never really thought of it that way. 'Killing' Kevin. Definitely coming out of the Abyss and being forced to live in a world that you'd changed for the worse would have been traumatic enough to force that sort of change in a person's life (especially a person like Break) but...to kill off that part of yourself completely? Gilbert had covered his up, definitely, but he knew that underneath everything he was still that wibbling, nervous servant who had the courage to stand up to Zai Vessalius but fled at the sight of a newborn kitten.

"Middle names?" he repeats, considering it.

"No, not usually."

"But you know what they are, then?" Break pauses for a moment, then says, "Me dad's name was Allen, and he gave that to me for my middle name. Kevin Allen Regnard. And when I had my name legally changed, I kept that. My full name is Xerxes Allen Break."

He flips a few pages, to pictures of the people in his own world on a beach. He's no longer hiding his face, but he's still pouting sullenly at it whenever it's pointed at him -- except in the photo where Barma, looking resplendent in khaki shorts and flip-flop sandals and a black Hawaiian shirt Sheryl had forced on him, accidentally lets himself get hosed by a wave while kneeling down to show something to Liam. Then, Break laughs. It's the first picture of him laughing in the entire book, and there aren't any others for a while. But in this photo, he really starts to look like Break, despite the long hair and too-slender frame.

He hums under his breath at the middle name - a name he's heard before at some point, but really, it's rare that anyone takes a middle name in his world. But there has to be someone somewhere that has...

The picture of Barma gives him pause. If only because. Wow. Duke Barma....

He can't help but giggle at the sight, one hand moving up to press against his mouth. Seeing Break in the photo laughing as well only makes him laugh harder. Excuse him while his shoulders start to shake from how badly he's trying to hold it all in right now.

No, no, no, don't hold it in, it gets better. Break flips a page and there, in all its glory, is a photo of Barma reclining on a lounge chair in that same ridiculous outfit, legs crossed at the ankles. Only this time, he's got his hair piled up on top of his head, giant sunglasses perched on his nose, and some sort of cold drink with a dinky little umbrella in it in one hand.

He also looks completely unsorry about it, despite the shirt.

Oh god make it stop. A loud FFFFT and he lets himself laugh outright. Honestly, how could a person like the duke ever allow himself to lounge around in this manner? Even if it's not the duke he knows, it's not hard to insert the man into this image. It's the sunglasses that really top off the whole thing.

"Is that - is that really Barma?!" LOLOLOLOLOL.

"This right here is the reason I will never be able to take this man seriously," Break says with a nasty little beam. "He's smarter than everybody else and he's excellent at what he does, but he's also one of the most ridiculous people I have ever met, and coming from me..."

Definitely a side of him that Gilbert hadn't expected. When he's finally done giggling (which does sound strange coming from him, but at the same time weirdly natural) he wipes the tears from the side of one eye and shakes his head.

"I can see why."

"Half the time he doesn't even do it on purpose, but you gotta figger he could do somefing about that silly hair antenna if he really wanted to."

He thinks a little bit -- what other incriminating Barma pictures would this album have? -- and then flips ahead to the spring just after this one. He'd come over for Easter dinner, and afterward, Shelly had managed to snatch a photo of her daughter climbing onto the arm of the recliner he was sitting in to place a headband with tall white bunny ears on it on Barma's head, said antenna sticking up ludicrously in between them.

He's side-eyeing her pretty terribly and in the next photo of him the ears are in his lap, but at least in that photo, he's letting her do it.

Bunny ears. BUNNY EARS. Break, this entire album is gold, and Gilbert is laughing his fucking ass off again. Wow.

But then it occurs to him...that these photographs are all memories of Break's; memories that the Break that he knows doesn't have at all. To just say that a person was from another world or experienced something different was one thing, but this is something that he can see and hear about in Break's own words - a voice so much different than his own. His laughter dies out quickly, and his thoughts are replaced with only one:

I really have been cruel to him all this time, allowing myself to compare the two of them. What sort of idiot am I...

If Break had the slightest idea what Gilbert was thinking just then, he'd have been immensely pleased with his revelation -- and relieved, for his own self. He's never been able to properly express the loneliness he's felt since arriving at the mansion, partially because he's done his best to stamp it out from the very start, and he has a whole horde of friends and even a lover or two to show for his efforts.

But that's never changed the fact that he was the first from a modern world to show up, or the fact that all the other alternates here at least had Chains and the Abyss in common to help them find their footing with the other residents once they arrived. Somehow, everyone has always been content to see him as the odd Break out just because of the way he looks and speaks and the fact that he has no contract; but that feeling of separation has always been much, much deeper for Break himself. Even the other moderns don't know exactly who he is or what he's been through.

As it is, however, he is unaware of the conclusion Gilbert has just come to and is busy turning back a page to reveal photographs of coloring eggs at Rainsworth, and when he hears the laughter cut off, he turns to the younger man with a curious, "Hmm?"

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

...it's useful to hit 'post comment' when finished with a tag.

I have noticed this strange phenomenon

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject