Walk away from it.
Wednesday, 3 October 2012 13:52![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flint_garouIf you were coping fine, you wouldn't be in this mess.
3 October, 2012
The moon is in the waning Full (Ahroun) Moon phase (80% full).
The weather is nice, but not nice enough that Flint doesn't have a sweatshirt on. The cliath is up on the roof, in a slightly cleaner area of it near the small garden. He's sitting, knees to chest and a cigarette dangling from his lips, hunched into himself. However long he's been up here, Flint doesn't seem inclined to move anytime soon, and isn't paying too much attention to the world around him, either. One earbud is in, the other loosely dangling, and he taps at the screen of his iPhone.
Slug steps out of the stairwell doorway with a pair of binoculars in one hand. He takes two steps away from the door, then pauses when he sees Flint. The Gnawer taps his foot for a few seconds, then wanders over and waves to the younger Garou. "Hey." He greets, with some degree of tenseness in his tone.
Flint is nearly as tense, himself, and he tilts his head, looking upwards and over at Slug, then with a wince, adjusts the position that he's sitting in, sitting more upright. His sweatshirt, even in glabro, is actually a bit oversized. "Afternoon," Flint returns, with no hint of minding if the solitude he'd been enjoying on the roof is disrupted. "How're you?"
"Bored, mostly. I always end up penned up in here when the moon is full. Not a lot of visitors either. Just a bunch of television, books, and junk food to keep me company. So… You're out of the basement." Slug remarks, glancing away from Flint to peer off the edge of the rooftop.
The cliath nods, shortly. "For whatever good that does me. Shitty, getting in trouble for not handling it right, not being able to deal with being shitty produces more stress and it's still not dead so I still can't go anywhere," Flint says, grumbling but not really, not quite.
"What's not dead? Oh, right. Well." Slug shrugs and stuffs his binoculars into his back pocket. "Well… The thing about being a Garou is, when you're young, you screw up all the time. But… You heal pretty easily, and it's really hard to kill you. So you tend to live long enough to learn from your mistakes."
Flint purses his lips, and leans his head against his knees, blowing smoke into air in front of him. "Unless dealing with mistakes just leads to more mistakes," he says, dour and grumpy.
Slug takes a few steps closer to Flint and carefully sits down near him, stretching his legs out in front of him. "Well, if I survived… You'd really have to actively try to get yourself killed. There have been young Garou that've made a lot more mistakes than you."
Flint pinches out the end of the cigarette, and pulls another one from a nearby pack, before offering the pack and lighter in the fostern's direction. The Glass Walker is careful to maintain his personal space right now, and it seems to be the weight of the moon more than anything else, as the nod is almost short. "Yeah?" the boy asks, fingers digging into one wrist. "I just… the moon isn't helping me figure things out and straighten things out."
"The moon never helps with anything. The only thing the moon does is that it stirs up the beast inside your head, making you stupid and angry. It lights the dark in the Umbra, and the night… But I'd prefer a flashlight to bein' pissed off all the time." Slug snaps his fingers, then taps the side of his head. "It'd help if you put your energy in a less destructive outlet. Find a way to blow off your steam."
Flint takes a puff on the new cigarette. "I try and keep busy, only helps so much," Flint says. "Doesn't help that I can't go anywhere, or I could, but. Packmates are busy, and neither can drive, so. Lex can't get out here from. Edgewood and the woods, often." He shrugs, rolling his shoulders (and wincing from the movement). "I'm making a new table. But I kind of have to. And I can't focus enough right now, or I'd be down in the workshop, doing that." The usual stutter and hesitation of the galliard's is different, now, replaced by slow and careful wording.
Slug takes his binocs out of his pocket and lays them on the gravel. He lays back with his arms pulled behind his head, staring up at the sunny sky above. "Make more friends outside the pack, if you can. I've been a lone wolf. Isn't very fun. Find some things you can enjoy even when you can't focus too well. Maybe video games or TV, or books on tape. Take long showers or baths, think. Whatever gets your head in the right place, or a holds it close enough that you can ride out the moon."
Flint rolls his shoulders more, stretching now rather than any actual gesture with meaning in it. "Yeah. Probably video games. Or just turning the music up a bit, until I… until I can just not think for a bit." The cliath considers, grimacing. "I should apologise to Salem-rhya. Over email and then in person when the moon is smaller." It seems Flint's mostly thinking aloud, rather than directly addressing Slug.
"Much smaller." Slug affirms. "Apologies are always best when both parties are coooool." Slug turns his head just enough that he can look at Flint in the corner of his eye, looking as lazy as a former Ahroun can look on a full moon.
The galliard nods. "Yeah. And a bit more time between," Flint adds. "Salem-rhya and I were talking," he explains. "And he was right… but I frenzied instead of really listening because I was angry and being stupid. And then he frenzied. And Kavi-rhya and Mouse-rhya were nearby and everyone still nearly died."
"Yeeeeah, that sounds like a typical day in Walker land. You people love to frenzy and shit, that's why I never open my door on the big moons." Slug stretches out, scattering a few small stones around him. "But you're all alive, and no one lost any important parts. Heal, forgive and forget."
Flint nods again, yawning and then adjusting to move and sit crosslegged, stretching his hands out in front of him. "Starting to think that, t-that I should just stick to… to workshop and my room on big moons. At least, until I get shit together," Flint admits.
"I've been a Garou for a lot longer than you, and I don't really leave my room on the big moons… Unless it's important, or I'm being stupid. When I do, bad things seem to happen." Slug sits back up again and rolls his shoulders to shake some stones off his back. "But I get visitors. Old friends, new friends, people that drop off take out for me… "
The cliath steadies his breathing and then takes a long drag from the cigarette. "Yeah. I mean, I need to go to the breakroom, and get food but there's nothing that says I can't eat in my room or down in the workshop. No one else really uses the workshop now that Ishmael-rhya has his stuff at Terminus. 'Cause, yeah." Flint grimaces. "Bad things seem to happen. Either I end up frenzying, or other people do, or it's bad anyway, except for… a few friends. Norman-rhya comes by and that's fine and works out well, and all, or being out at Edgewood and just keeping to myself there, is okay. But then I get stressed, and deal with shit in bad ways, or lose my shit because I'm angry. Except I'm cliath. should be able to deal with it." The Glass Walker takes a deep breath. "Like yesterday. Looking back, I probably could have held it off and gotten out of there and left. I know I could have."
"So why didn't you? Were you just lookin' to throw everything out there, 'cause fuck it, or… Were you looking for some kinda attention, or, I dunno. Maybe you should hang a boxing bag in your apartment to try and vent some of your anger before you step outside, and so you have somethin' to hit when you get back after you have an argument with dudes." Slug suggests. "You're going to have to start searchin' as hard as you can for different copin' mechanisms for your stuff, man."
"Mostly, 'cause fuck it," Flint says, wincing and nodding. "I cope fine," he mutters, almost obstinately. "Works just fine and shouldn't have ever been anyone's business. I think we've got a spare punching bag somewhere, I'll see about hanging it, though. Got the space."
"If you were coping fine, you wouldn't be in this mess." Slug points out as politely as he can, half-mumbling out the last few words. "Try new things. Less destructive things maybe. Preferably things you can, like, do wherever you wanna."
One thing glabro is good for, is being able to dig fingernails into one's palm, and that is what the young Galliard does, though there's no actual protest and he seems to be considering what the Ragabash has said. "Yeah," Flint admits, grumpy at the realisation.
Slug walks over to the edge of the roof and kicks the ledge, just hard enough that there's a sound when his foot bounces back. "I did some pretty stupid things in my time, and… I didn't have the best ways to cope with the results. Mostly I just sat on my anger and thought about it, all the time. I thought about all the people that I wanted to kill, mostly. Kind of moot, 'cause most of them were Garou and I didn't have a hope in hell of winning in a fight against them."
"I want to go out and hunt the fucking leech until it's dead," Flint says, dead serious. But his tone of voice also suggests that that's not necessarily the only thing he wants to do when he finds the leech, and also that he well and knows it. "And I can't. Because it'd be wrong, because Gaia didn't mean— for that. And I want to hit everything and anything in my way. Not as bad as it was," Flint clarifies, "but it's there, a little. And then anything else that I can do, that makes… wanting that, go away, I can't do. And mostly I want to cope by making the rest of the world go away. But all of those things are… destructive."
"In the end, killin' someone doesn't tend to make you feel that much better. Killing someone that pissed you off feels good, don't get me wrong— But it's like… When you break something when you're angry." Slug taps his foot on the gravel and shakes his head. "You feel a great release, a whole lotta energy bleedin' out. But nothing rushes into the space that's left over. You just end up with an empty pocket that's slow to fill." Slug snatches his binocs off the ground and peers through them, studying the landscape below them. "I messed around with a few drugs for a while… Nothing that hard. Didn't help too much. Sex is a great distraction, but that has it's own problems. Same with fighting. I think… Trying to be productive, trying to be good, asking questions and picking up an instrument. That helped a lot."
Flint bares his teeth at the ground, frustration for a brief moment before he brings knees to chest again and loops his arms around it. There's nothing that could be construed as a challenge to the fostern's words, really. "Learning more things," Flint says, quiet and voice rough. "Fighting doesn't… I can't go out, and sparring on the bigger moons is just kind of stupid. It helps during the smaller moons. Getting to be as good of a fighter as I can be, and all." The mention of sex is perhaps just ignored, or not heard. "I really want to kill it. I know other people will, and that it'll get dead, and that it's too personal for me. But I still want to."
"People go through their whole lives wanting things they do not need. Want is a road that leads to nowhere." Slug waves his off hand through the air around them, then drops the binocs away from his face. "If you kill that leech, it won't make you any stronger. It would only make you weaker. You'll have to go against Mouse an' such just to get a crack at it. If you want to really make yourself strong?" Slug sticks the binocs into the front of his waistband and claps his hands together. "Walk away from it. Do everything you can to put the past in the past. Move beyond, but don't forget."
Flint glances over at the Ragabash and nods. He's silent for a long moment, thought that doesn't get shared aloud, until all he comes up with is a very simple statement. "I control me." This is accompanied by a slight nod, as if a few things are clicking into place.
Slug reaches down to pick a piece of gravel up off the roof. He tosses it up in the air and catches it with languid grace, never letting it go very far. "I can pick up this stone, and it can't do much about it. I can throw it, I can kick it, I can toss it off the roof if I wanted to. It'll change over time, pieces break off, edges are smoothed, colors fade… But what it is will never change, not even long after we're all gone." Slug tosses the stone a few feet away, then turns and starts to walk towards the door.
Flint nods again, lifting one hand to wave farewell, cigarette gripped a little too tightly still between his fingers. The galliard turns, looking out over the city, leaning forward against his knees as Slug leaves, back to the contemplation the roof affords him.
3 October, 2012
The moon is in the waning Full (Ahroun) Moon phase (80% full).
The weather is nice, but not nice enough that Flint doesn't have a sweatshirt on. The cliath is up on the roof, in a slightly cleaner area of it near the small garden. He's sitting, knees to chest and a cigarette dangling from his lips, hunched into himself. However long he's been up here, Flint doesn't seem inclined to move anytime soon, and isn't paying too much attention to the world around him, either. One earbud is in, the other loosely dangling, and he taps at the screen of his iPhone.
Slug steps out of the stairwell doorway with a pair of binoculars in one hand. He takes two steps away from the door, then pauses when he sees Flint. The Gnawer taps his foot for a few seconds, then wanders over and waves to the younger Garou. "Hey." He greets, with some degree of tenseness in his tone.
Flint is nearly as tense, himself, and he tilts his head, looking upwards and over at Slug, then with a wince, adjusts the position that he's sitting in, sitting more upright. His sweatshirt, even in glabro, is actually a bit oversized. "Afternoon," Flint returns, with no hint of minding if the solitude he'd been enjoying on the roof is disrupted. "How're you?"
"Bored, mostly. I always end up penned up in here when the moon is full. Not a lot of visitors either. Just a bunch of television, books, and junk food to keep me company. So… You're out of the basement." Slug remarks, glancing away from Flint to peer off the edge of the rooftop.
The cliath nods, shortly. "For whatever good that does me. Shitty, getting in trouble for not handling it right, not being able to deal with being shitty produces more stress and it's still not dead so I still can't go anywhere," Flint says, grumbling but not really, not quite.
"What's not dead? Oh, right. Well." Slug shrugs and stuffs his binoculars into his back pocket. "Well… The thing about being a Garou is, when you're young, you screw up all the time. But… You heal pretty easily, and it's really hard to kill you. So you tend to live long enough to learn from your mistakes."
Flint purses his lips, and leans his head against his knees, blowing smoke into air in front of him. "Unless dealing with mistakes just leads to more mistakes," he says, dour and grumpy.
Slug takes a few steps closer to Flint and carefully sits down near him, stretching his legs out in front of him. "Well, if I survived… You'd really have to actively try to get yourself killed. There have been young Garou that've made a lot more mistakes than you."
Flint pinches out the end of the cigarette, and pulls another one from a nearby pack, before offering the pack and lighter in the fostern's direction. The Glass Walker is careful to maintain his personal space right now, and it seems to be the weight of the moon more than anything else, as the nod is almost short. "Yeah?" the boy asks, fingers digging into one wrist. "I just… the moon isn't helping me figure things out and straighten things out."
"The moon never helps with anything. The only thing the moon does is that it stirs up the beast inside your head, making you stupid and angry. It lights the dark in the Umbra, and the night… But I'd prefer a flashlight to bein' pissed off all the time." Slug snaps his fingers, then taps the side of his head. "It'd help if you put your energy in a less destructive outlet. Find a way to blow off your steam."
Flint takes a puff on the new cigarette. "I try and keep busy, only helps so much," Flint says. "Doesn't help that I can't go anywhere, or I could, but. Packmates are busy, and neither can drive, so. Lex can't get out here from. Edgewood and the woods, often." He shrugs, rolling his shoulders (and wincing from the movement). "I'm making a new table. But I kind of have to. And I can't focus enough right now, or I'd be down in the workshop, doing that." The usual stutter and hesitation of the galliard's is different, now, replaced by slow and careful wording.
Slug takes his binocs out of his pocket and lays them on the gravel. He lays back with his arms pulled behind his head, staring up at the sunny sky above. "Make more friends outside the pack, if you can. I've been a lone wolf. Isn't very fun. Find some things you can enjoy even when you can't focus too well. Maybe video games or TV, or books on tape. Take long showers or baths, think. Whatever gets your head in the right place, or a holds it close enough that you can ride out the moon."
Flint rolls his shoulders more, stretching now rather than any actual gesture with meaning in it. "Yeah. Probably video games. Or just turning the music up a bit, until I… until I can just not think for a bit." The cliath considers, grimacing. "I should apologise to Salem-rhya. Over email and then in person when the moon is smaller." It seems Flint's mostly thinking aloud, rather than directly addressing Slug.
"Much smaller." Slug affirms. "Apologies are always best when both parties are coooool." Slug turns his head just enough that he can look at Flint in the corner of his eye, looking as lazy as a former Ahroun can look on a full moon.
The galliard nods. "Yeah. And a bit more time between," Flint adds. "Salem-rhya and I were talking," he explains. "And he was right… but I frenzied instead of really listening because I was angry and being stupid. And then he frenzied. And Kavi-rhya and Mouse-rhya were nearby and everyone still nearly died."
"Yeeeeah, that sounds like a typical day in Walker land. You people love to frenzy and shit, that's why I never open my door on the big moons." Slug stretches out, scattering a few small stones around him. "But you're all alive, and no one lost any important parts. Heal, forgive and forget."
Flint nods again, yawning and then adjusting to move and sit crosslegged, stretching his hands out in front of him. "Starting to think that, t-that I should just stick to… to workshop and my room on big moons. At least, until I get shit together," Flint admits.
"I've been a Garou for a lot longer than you, and I don't really leave my room on the big moons… Unless it's important, or I'm being stupid. When I do, bad things seem to happen." Slug sits back up again and rolls his shoulders to shake some stones off his back. "But I get visitors. Old friends, new friends, people that drop off take out for me… "
The cliath steadies his breathing and then takes a long drag from the cigarette. "Yeah. I mean, I need to go to the breakroom, and get food but there's nothing that says I can't eat in my room or down in the workshop. No one else really uses the workshop now that Ishmael-rhya has his stuff at Terminus. 'Cause, yeah." Flint grimaces. "Bad things seem to happen. Either I end up frenzying, or other people do, or it's bad anyway, except for… a few friends. Norman-rhya comes by and that's fine and works out well, and all, or being out at Edgewood and just keeping to myself there, is okay. But then I get stressed, and deal with shit in bad ways, or lose my shit because I'm angry. Except I'm cliath. should be able to deal with it." The Glass Walker takes a deep breath. "Like yesterday. Looking back, I probably could have held it off and gotten out of there and left. I know I could have."
"So why didn't you? Were you just lookin' to throw everything out there, 'cause fuck it, or… Were you looking for some kinda attention, or, I dunno. Maybe you should hang a boxing bag in your apartment to try and vent some of your anger before you step outside, and so you have somethin' to hit when you get back after you have an argument with dudes." Slug suggests. "You're going to have to start searchin' as hard as you can for different copin' mechanisms for your stuff, man."
"Mostly, 'cause fuck it," Flint says, wincing and nodding. "I cope fine," he mutters, almost obstinately. "Works just fine and shouldn't have ever been anyone's business. I think we've got a spare punching bag somewhere, I'll see about hanging it, though. Got the space."
"If you were coping fine, you wouldn't be in this mess." Slug points out as politely as he can, half-mumbling out the last few words. "Try new things. Less destructive things maybe. Preferably things you can, like, do wherever you wanna."
One thing glabro is good for, is being able to dig fingernails into one's palm, and that is what the young Galliard does, though there's no actual protest and he seems to be considering what the Ragabash has said. "Yeah," Flint admits, grumpy at the realisation.
Slug walks over to the edge of the roof and kicks the ledge, just hard enough that there's a sound when his foot bounces back. "I did some pretty stupid things in my time, and… I didn't have the best ways to cope with the results. Mostly I just sat on my anger and thought about it, all the time. I thought about all the people that I wanted to kill, mostly. Kind of moot, 'cause most of them were Garou and I didn't have a hope in hell of winning in a fight against them."
"I want to go out and hunt the fucking leech until it's dead," Flint says, dead serious. But his tone of voice also suggests that that's not necessarily the only thing he wants to do when he finds the leech, and also that he well and knows it. "And I can't. Because it'd be wrong, because Gaia didn't mean— for that. And I want to hit everything and anything in my way. Not as bad as it was," Flint clarifies, "but it's there, a little. And then anything else that I can do, that makes… wanting that, go away, I can't do. And mostly I want to cope by making the rest of the world go away. But all of those things are… destructive."
"In the end, killin' someone doesn't tend to make you feel that much better. Killing someone that pissed you off feels good, don't get me wrong— But it's like… When you break something when you're angry." Slug taps his foot on the gravel and shakes his head. "You feel a great release, a whole lotta energy bleedin' out. But nothing rushes into the space that's left over. You just end up with an empty pocket that's slow to fill." Slug snatches his binocs off the ground and peers through them, studying the landscape below them. "I messed around with a few drugs for a while… Nothing that hard. Didn't help too much. Sex is a great distraction, but that has it's own problems. Same with fighting. I think… Trying to be productive, trying to be good, asking questions and picking up an instrument. That helped a lot."
Flint bares his teeth at the ground, frustration for a brief moment before he brings knees to chest again and loops his arms around it. There's nothing that could be construed as a challenge to the fostern's words, really. "Learning more things," Flint says, quiet and voice rough. "Fighting doesn't… I can't go out, and sparring on the bigger moons is just kind of stupid. It helps during the smaller moons. Getting to be as good of a fighter as I can be, and all." The mention of sex is perhaps just ignored, or not heard. "I really want to kill it. I know other people will, and that it'll get dead, and that it's too personal for me. But I still want to."
"People go through their whole lives wanting things they do not need. Want is a road that leads to nowhere." Slug waves his off hand through the air around them, then drops the binocs away from his face. "If you kill that leech, it won't make you any stronger. It would only make you weaker. You'll have to go against Mouse an' such just to get a crack at it. If you want to really make yourself strong?" Slug sticks the binocs into the front of his waistband and claps his hands together. "Walk away from it. Do everything you can to put the past in the past. Move beyond, but don't forget."
Flint glances over at the Ragabash and nods. He's silent for a long moment, thought that doesn't get shared aloud, until all he comes up with is a very simple statement. "I control me." This is accompanied by a slight nod, as if a few things are clicking into place.
Slug reaches down to pick a piece of gravel up off the roof. He tosses it up in the air and catches it with languid grace, never letting it go very far. "I can pick up this stone, and it can't do much about it. I can throw it, I can kick it, I can toss it off the roof if I wanted to. It'll change over time, pieces break off, edges are smoothed, colors fade… But what it is will never change, not even long after we're all gone." Slug tosses the stone a few feet away, then turns and starts to walk towards the door.
Flint nods again, lifting one hand to wave farewell, cigarette gripped a little too tightly still between his fingers. The galliard turns, looking out over the city, leaning forward against his knees as Slug leaves, back to the contemplation the roof affords him.