IC Inbox for Hadriel

[zen_en_vert]

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[zen_en_vert]

Codenamed 'the Black Widow,' in fact.

[greywaren]

[Ronan shakes his head definitively, putting up a show of Not Buying It.]

Nah. Too badass for you.

[zen_en_vert]

So I would insist.

[He promises.]

But she wasn't the kind of woman you argued with.

[greywaren]

[Bruce's tone makes Ronan roll his eyes with a little gagging sound, but the earlier conversation comes back to him and he refocuses quickly enough.]

She left?

[zen_en_vert]

Or got sent home, or whatever else happens to people who disappear here.

[greywaren]

How many other people are there from your world?

Here, I mean.

[zen_en_vert]

Initially it was me, Steve and Tony. Tony left, and Wanda came, then Steve left, then Wanda left, then Steve and Bucky and Natasha came, Natasha left, and Wanda and the Vision came.

It leaves us with five, including me. Steve and Bucky, Wanda and the Vision, and me.

[What should be evident from this is that Bruce doesn't actually come to Ronan with his problems.]

[greywaren]

[There's a pause, because he'd known that there have been some people, but certainly not that kind of revolving door of friends and- who knew what else. Ronan is quiet for a moment, considering that.]

I wonder about what would happen, if Parrish left. And the others too, but- I don't know.

[He almost certainly wouldn't be able to make it. He's not sure how Bruce does. Ronan pulls a leg up to the chair and wraps his arm around it, resting his chin on his knee.]

That sucks. I hope they stay this time.

[zen_en_vert]

I don't know if I do. I can't help but feel that all of us would be happier if they were somewhere else.

I don't want to wish ill upon them.

[greywaren]

Hm.

[It should be entirely obvious that Ronan (and Adam, and Gansey, and Noah) are all rather obsessively codependent, to the point where even admitting that his friends would be safer somewhere else would be gutting.

So Ronan isn't sure what to think of that.]

...where else? Is this worse than back home for you?

[zen_en_vert]

It is. I have a lot more control back home, and I'll admit- I miss that.

Very badly, in fact.

[greywaren]

But you can die back home.

[He points out, gruffly.]

Here it doesn't matter.

[zen_en_vert]

I- can't, so much, actually.

I can kill people, but dying, I haven't managed.

[greywaren]

[That earns him an eyeroll.]

Well, aren't you special.

[zen_en_vert]

If I could do it differently, I would.

[greywaren]

You mean not pulling a Jekyll-and-Hyde?

[Ronan shrugs.]

You'd be more vulnerable.

[zen_en_vert]

It takes a better man to be vulnerable than it does to be strong.

[greywaren]

I don't think you know much about being vulnerable.

[zen_en_vert]

That's a ridiculous thing to say to someone who you don't know very well.

[greywaren]

Fuck off.

[He sneers.]

I've known you for months. I know who you are.

[zen_en_vert]

You haven't. You've seen me the last few months, as an adult, you don't know where I've come from at all. I developed problems with anger after a long and storied history of abuse.

[greywaren]

[Ronan is quiet for a long moment at that, not necessarily backing down, just taking this new information and deciding how he feels about it.]

Tell me, then. How being vulnerable made you a better person.

[zen_en_vert]

I mean, when I was a kid, my father was dangerous. He-

[There are things here that he can't say out loud, even thirty five years later.]

I grew up very angry, about the things I couldn't do. Or change.

[greywaren]

[He doesn't say anything, but he could. He thinks about Adam, about the black eyes, the bruised arms- he thinks about throwing himself at Robert Parrish and getting forced into a cop car, thinks about twisting around awkwardly in cuffs to watch Adam's small, defeated figure get smaller and smaller through the back windshield.

Of course, he wouldn't say anything. It's not his secret to tell. But he's seen it, closer than what some would expect.]

And now- what? It made you into this thing and now you hate it? What would you do differently?

[zen_en_vert]

Well, no. First I killed him.

[He admits, with the kind of very quiet, very calm voice that actually sounds a little more dissociated than it does healthy.]

I mean, I should say, first he killed my mother, while she was trying to pack us up to leave. I was right there, and eventually he was sentenced and incarcerated, and I grew up with my aunt. After Brian was released, though, when I was a few years older than you would be now, he got out. He came and he found me at her grave, on the anniversary of her death, and the next thing I remember, the police were informing me that he'd had a fall against a tombstone.

It didn't exactly make me cry over him, but I think it changed something in me for the worse, losing control of my anger like that. My accident only amplified something that was already wrong with me. I was a better person before I grew into a powerful man, and I am a better person now that I move away from it. I believe that.