tampered | surviving the only way that you know [ongoing] [closed]

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surviving the only way that you know [ongoing] [closed]

When; Friday December 5th, Evening
Where; Turnabout Café
Rating; A healthy PG
Characters; Teddy Altman [

politehulk] & Armand [

amadeodivenezia]
Summary; A chance encounter on the Network results in plans for coffee and storytelling. Like therapy, except with a vampire instead of a psychiatrist.
Log;
Teddy carefully wiped down the last table and dropped the cloth into the sink before stepping into the back room for a moment. Took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh; he had been nervous all day. His talk the night before with Billy had been... well, not as much of a catastrophe as it could have been, but still pretty bad. How was he supposed to explain to his boyfriend, the guy who had stood beside him through so much, that he just couldn't talk to him about some things? Billy was right to be upset; there was something wrong with Teddy and maybe it had always been wrong. And no matter how much he told himself he was fine, he was okay with who he was and his heritage, there was always that nagging, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and it had been that feeling that had led him to spill his entire life's story on some stranger talking about loss. It wasn't that Armand was pretty although he was, and it wasn't just because it was the internet and anonymity blah blah blah, it was that Armand wanted to listen and Teddy was finding that he wanted to talk.

So here he was. In a safe, neutral, somewhat public spot, waiting for a stranger to arrive. He stepped behind the counter and made himself a cappuccino while he waited, something for his hands to do and his mind to focus on rather than the waiting. The bell above the door would chime if someone came in, after all.

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The bell did chime when Armand entered. He was able to arrive early in the evening thanks to winter's early sundown. He enjoyed the season, despite Marius' admonitions to have empathy for the discomfort humans suffered from the cold. Long, cold nights were made for their kind, letting them spend more time among the humans Marius would have them empathize with.

The Night Island would not be cold even now and Daniel would be able to take advantage of long, warm nights. Armand pushed aside thoughts of Daniel's return to their home without him. Enough of Daniel.

He scanned the cafe to pick out Teddy, giving no indication that he was surprised to see the young man behind the counter. As he approached, a mild smile masking his thoughts, he unwound the scarf from around his neck to drape it over a chair back.

"You must be Teddy. You resemble the pictures the network shows."

The Café was certainly warmer than outside, in colour, lighting, and temperature. The antiques and cozy interior seemed to keep the night at bay. Teddy looked up as the bell chimed and smiled automatically before recognizing his newest patron, mellowing the smile to something more genuine.

"Armand. Nice to meet you in person."

Strange, that he suddenly felt so shy. There were only a few others left here, the kind of regulars who kept to themselves.

"Would you like something to drink? Coffee or tea?"

"Coffee will be fine," Armand answered easily. He wouldn't drink it, but he had centuries of experience in keeping up appearances.

He could sense Teddy's nervousness easily enough, but he didn't think it would take supernatural means to calm him. He would rather not take such steps; it took some of the truth out of such meetings to dull the other's emotions.

"Will you join me at a table?"

"Anything in particular? This shop specializes in gourmet coffees so there are a lot of varieties to choose from."

The words trip off his tongue easily enough after training by Edgeworth and weeks of practice and he gestures towards the list behind him. But he falters a bit when Armand asks a real question.

"Uh, yeah, of course. You can sit down if you want and I'll be right there."

"I will trust your expert choice." And not drink it anyway.

Armand chose a table away from the few other patrons, settling with his back to the door to allow Teddy the more secure seat. With his vampire's senses, he did not need to see the door to know if or when people approached and it gave the appearance that his attention was solely for Teddy.

He set his camera case on the table, but did not remove the camera. As much as he might want to record this story, he did not think that Teddy was calm enough to offer it on camera yet.

Teddy's favourite blend was close at hand, so it didn't take long to grind and seep the brew. His own drink was sitting on a heated mat from earlier, and when Armand's drink was finished he put the two on a tray and brought them over to the table. Serving them both he noticed the camera case but decided not to comment. He really hoped Armand hadn't been planning on taking photos anyways. The tray went back behind the counter and Teddy took off his apron before coming back to the table and sitting down.

Now that they were both here, Teddy didn't know where to start so he wrapped his hands around his mug and took a sip of the warm liquid.

Armand took his own cup with a murmur of thanks and even raised it to his lips as though taking a sip before setting it back on the table to cradle in his hands for the warmth.

"Will your friend be joining us?"

Letting out a sigh, Teddy rubbed the back of his neck and made a slightly rueful smile.

"We talked about it last night, but I realized that if I can't talk to him about this then I probably can't talk about it in front of him either. So short answer is no."

He was still a little bit angry with himself for that, but he had promised that after this he would really talk about it with Billy. He just had to sort himself out first.

"As you prefer," Armand conceded without bothering to fake regret, though he was curious to see who this person was. "It is your story I wish to hear tonight, not your friend's."

He turned the coffee cup between his palms, enjoying the heat that seeped into his skin and bones, before he spoke again.

"Your story. It hurts you."

Teddy was paying a lot of attention to the antique cup in front of him.

"It's not just a story, it's my life. It hurts all the time and I can't make it go away because it's a part of me."

It takes him a long time to get the words out. It's almost impossible to articulate the thoughts and feelings he's had for so long - sure, a lot of it is because of what happened after the Super-Skrull attacked, but most of it had been there for a long time.

Edited 2008-12-06 00:22 (UTC)

"We are our stories." And that would be why Armand was so averse to telling his own. No one knew his story and he preferred it that way - keeping his secrets to himself to nurse them in the dark. Perhaps there would be a day when he would want to share his story, but he could not envision it.

"And yours, your life, it hurts you."

"I've never really been comfortable with who I am. I thought I was, about a year ago, but then something happened that made me doubt myself all over again. I spend most of my time as a kid alone. I find out I have birth parents, a real father, and I'll never be able to meet them because they're both dead. My mom is dead too. And especially here, I'm always afraid I'll lose my friends, the only people I've got left. So yeah, it hurts."

He's more than a little bitter, more than a little angry, but he falls silent, not entirely comfortable doing all the talking. He wouldn't ever talk like this with his friends. He doesn't want them to think of him as this person. Maybe he doesn't trust them enough to really believe that they'd still love him if he wasn't the nice, capable guy he spends so much of his time as.

Whereas Armand has no expectations of Teddy. He is utterly willing to offer the young man a fresh start with no judgment if he is honest. It means nothing to Armand if Teddy lies; all that matters is the story and even lies are part of that whole.

Armand leaned forward, not crass enough to put his elbows on the table, but showing his interest by bringing himself closer nonetheless. "Have you thought that you should be someone or something else? Even when you didn't know?"

Armand's lack of judgement so far put Teddy somewhat at his ease, and he certainly is more relaxed than he was when he first sat down at the table.

"Everyone always tells kids who are like I was, shy kids, that they should be more outgoing. Like anybody, I guess, I was sure that everybody would hate me for being gay so I tried not to be for a while. And I found out I could shapeshift when I was in high school so I figured I must be a mutant and nobody much likes them either. Short answer to your question, yeah, I've been trying to be someone else practically my entire life."

With his head propped up with an elbow on the able, he's finding it easier to talk now that he's started, words coming faster. He's starting to feel like this was a good idea after all.

So much information coming in such a rush, just like their communication on the network before. Armand was as fascinated as he had hoped to be.

"Not everyone is a mutant or can... shapeshift? where you are from?" He could pretend to take it all in stride, but Armand could not resist attempting to dip into Teddy's mind to confirm that he at least believed this remarkable story.

It was easy to forget that not everyone came from the same world, even after being here for over a month. He smiled a bit sheepishly and did his best to slow down for a minute and explain.

"I'm from Earth, 2006. One version of Earth, anyways. Mutants are humans born with a slightly different genetic makeup which makes them develop some sort of random power when they hit puberty, like being able to fly or be telepathic or have control over the weather. There's no way to predict what kind of powers someone will get and even family members don't usually have the same powers. Mutants are definitely a minority, especially after... well, that's an even longer story and I don't know all of it. Something happened and there aren't a lot of them left."

Armand could understand being one of a rare species, only to have an unspoken holocaust reduce those rarefied numbers to the point of endangerment. If he were one to dwell, it might still amaze him that he had survived the razing of the vampires by their progenetrix.

But 2006? That was 18 years beyond the time he called his own. Clearly this was not his version of Earth.

But Teddy had told him more over the network and he could not reconcile that information with what Teddy had just told him. "Are all mutants children of aliens as you are?"

Well, now Teddy felt like hitting himself in the head. He was going about all this ass-backwards, it seemed, but at least Armand was being patient in his questioning.

"Ah, no, it turns out I'm not a mutant although I have friends who are. My mother's race, the Skrulls, are shapeshifters from birth. My father's race, the Kree, look more like humans except with blue skin, and I think they come from a world with heavier gravity or something, so that's why I have super-strength. I really don't know where mutants came from, but some people say that they're a whole new evolution of the human race."

But Teddy was not a mutant, he was an alien.

Armand leaned back in his seat and allowed a measure of his delight to show on his face. This was an utterly new story to enrapture him for a time.

"You are rare among the rare, then. How is it that the child of two races found a life on Earth?"

Armand's reaction was definitely an interesting one. Most people freaked out when they found out Teddy was part Skrull, and when they found out that his other part was Kree it was inevitable that people start thinking of the Kree-Skrull War. "Rare" was definitely a nice way to put it.

"I've only been told the story once, but what I'm told happened is that my father, Captain Marvel, who was exiled from the Kree and become a superhero on Earth, was kidnapped by the Skrulls and imprisoned on their Home Planet. My mother, the Princess Anelle, fell in love with him and helped him escape and get back to Earth. And I guess they must have slept together at some point, because Anelle had me, but her father the King was kind of crazy and wanted to kill me so she sent me with my mom, who must have been a nursemaid or a handmaiden or something, to Earth hoping that my father would find me. But by the time I got to Earth Captain Marvel had died of cancer, so my mom raised me by herself and never told me about my real parents."

It was a really romantic story, but that didn't really outweigh the challenges that came with it.

It was a pity that Armand was the utterly wrong person to get any comic book references from Teddy's tale. On the other hand, it left him unjaded in his reception of the story. Teddy clearly believed what he was saying, and for the moment, that was enough for Armand. He could pick at the truth of it later, after he had simply enjoyed what he was hearing.

"And there you were, an infant on a world that didn't know you for what you were?"

The fact was, Teddy took most of this story on blind faith, and sceptics would likely have told him he was an idiot for relying on one source who had a lot to gain by Teddy believing him, but Teddy was a trusting individual. After all, he was telling his entire life's story to a stranger he had met the day before. For all he knew, Armand was a psychopath. That part of him wasn't fake - the optimism and the kindness.

"Basically. I grew up like any average kid with a single mom in New York City."

His cappuccino was getting cold, so, feeling guilty at the waste, he starts drinking it again. It's only now that he realizes that all the other patrons have left the shop by now.

Psychopath? Well, yes, now that you mention it, sometimes.

"When did you start to know you were different?"

Such an amusing question, but Teddy was not the humans Armand had spent five hundred years not understanding. Though he seemed so much like them it was difficult to countenance the idea that the boy was the child of two different alien races.

"You aren't so very old now, after all." This from the vampire who barely looked the seventeen years he had lived as a mortal.

"I always knew I was different from most of the other kids - not many friends, pretty nerdy, no dad - but that's the kind of different a lot of kids go through. Shapeshifting, I started experimenting with that in... the summer before my last year in junior high. But I didn't really figure out what it meant until a couple years ago. I realized I liked other guys in my first year of high school, and then I realized I didn't like girls a year after that."

He has to count them off on his fingers, which is a little bit crazy, looking at himself. He hasn't ever really gone through it like this before, though, and it's pretty interesting to him too. He finishes his list off with a "Oh, and I'm seventeen" before falling silent.

Armand had been called to his share of teenagers who couldn't live with that story. He rather doubted that Teddy wanted to know that suicide by vampire was an option for them. It wasn't that unusual a story if you omitted the parts about aliens and shapeshifting.

"What does shapeshifting really mean? Can you turn into anything from a dog to a dinner table? Or is it something different? You can grow taller or shorter or change your face?"

Suicide by vampire really isn't that much of an option, and it's true that Teddy probably wouldn't really want to know that it was a possibility. Knowing that which makes you different isn't all that uncommon doesn't always help, though.

"Um, well, I haven't really tried inanimate objects because I'm not sure if I'd be able to change back, but I'm pretty sure I could. If I have to, I've figured out how to shapeshift clothing, although it still kind of feels like being naked. I'm not sure how the science works, but it's like flexing a muscle, I don't really have to think about it."

That said, he smiles a bit and turns into an exact replica of Armand. The only difference would be in his smell and mannerisms.

"Mostly I just do people, or change parts of my body to make it easier to fight."

Without thinking, Armand reached out to Teddy's face, too enthralled by the sight of himself mirrored to think to control the speed of his movement. One moment he was cradling his cup, the next his hand was by his/Teddy's cheek, hovering above the skin without touching.

It was enough to know that the skin he did not touch was alive, with blood rushing under it propelled by a beating heart, and not animated as his was.

Ah, to be alive. He wanted to watch this simulacrum of himself drink coffee and breathe and smile and live.

"Remarkable," he breathed as he drew his hand back more slowly this time, rubbing his thumb over his fingertips as though he could feel the warmth from Teddy's skin on them.

Teddy found himself blushing at Armand's reaction to his little trick; he hadn't even had time to flinch when the hand rose to his face. The way Armand was looking at him... but it wasn't Teddy he was looking at, it was himself. Teddy had to remind himself, sometimes. The moment passed when the hand fell away and the shapeshifter stirred as if a spell had been broken.

"Thanks."

Sliding back to what he was coming to think of as default-Teddy, he fretted for a moment wondering if he should ask about the sudden show of preternatural speed.

Armand followed the change with rapt attention and wanted to record Teddy more than ever. What would it be like to rewind and fast forward again and again while this transformation took place? Would there be a moment where he could see both faces?

He was not so rapt that he forgot Teddy's earlier words about changing parts of his body to make it easier to fight.

"Why do you fight?"

Nice to know Armand wasn't going to let up on the deep and meaningful life questions, but when he asked something like that all the answers Teddy could come up with don't seem nearly profound enough.

"To protect people, mostly. The world I come from, not everyone who has powers is a good person, obviously, and not all humans are good people either. One day this guy approached me and said that he had found my name on a kind of list of people who were somehow connected to the Avengers, a big superhero team who had just disbanded, and that he wanted to get a group of these other kids teenagers together to help replace the Avengers. So I agreed to give it a try."

"You are a superhero?" In recent years, Armand had acquainted himself with popular culture, and it amused him to consider Teddy running about in those painted-on costumes that superheroes seemed to find obligatory. Or perhaps it was just the superheroes' creators who found those costumes obligatory.

"Does it help you?"

"I like to think so."

Yeah, he could tell Armand thought that was funny. It had definitely been embarrassing the first few times, but once you got used to it it wasn't so bad. It helped that Teddy didn't do the spandex thing so much.

"It definitely helped me. I met some great friends that way, I met my boyfriend, and it taught me that the things that made me different could actually be useful and save people's lives."

It had been nice, back when he was just a gay superhero shapeshifting mutant fanboy. It would be even nicer to find that equilibrium again, that nice comforting feeling that he knew who he was and where he stood in the world.

"I hear a 'but' in your words. Something is not as you would have it be?"

Armand was being polite, by his standards, and avoiding Teddy's thoughts, but he didn't need to read his thoughts to tell that Teddy wasn't content.

"It is your place as a 'bargaining chip' as you put it?"

Teddy certainly hasn't ever been known for being subtle, although he can manage "crafty" on occasion.

"It's partly that. I wouldn't even choose to leave Earth to go be Emperor of an entire race of people I barely thought about a week before, but the Super-Skrull really made it sound like they needed me there. And if I wanted to, I really could make a difference and maybe stop the war. That curse with the talking shadows just reminded me that maybe I'm being selfish, staying on earth and trying to live my life the same as it was before. On the other hand, my mom died trying to protect me from having to go and I'd be disrespecting her memory to throw that away."

He paused then, as always unable to find a safe compromise between the two, and somewhat angry at himself for dwelling on the problem for what seemed like the millionth time. Letting out a sigh, he shrugged his shoulders and watched his reflection in the glass window.

"Sometimes it just feels like every time I get a hold on my life it all comes crashing down around me. Like there's no way to win."

"What do you think to win, Teddy?" Armand asked quietly. If Teddy thought Armand had been asking deep questions before, to Armand's mind, this was the most important of them. What a person fights for so often defines who they are.

"I don't know."

But that's the easy answer. Teddy frowned, fingers sliding into his hair as he hunched over the table, hiding his face.

"I don't want to be alone. And I know it's stupid because I have friends and Billy, but I keep waiting for them to realize that I'm an idiot or more trouble than I'm worth and leaving me. I don't want to be afraid all the time. And I want everything to just stop changing long enough for me to figure out who I am."

He's quiet in his sadness, and he's not crying but the kind of despair he's showing seems deep enough to be. The problem is, he's can't remember not feeling this way. He's gotten by just burying it and getting on with his life, but it's always there in the background. And now it's out in the light.

It was just as well that Teddy was hiding his face because it meant that he likely did not see the expression that flitted across Armand's face before it was replaced by quiet equanimity.

What did this child know of being alone? As he said, he had friends, he had a "boyfriend," he even had purpose, but he feared something that Armand found inevitable. Nothing lasted. Nothing.

"Everything changes," he finally said softly. "Would you fight to stop that?"

And they were back to where their conversation had started. Mutual loss. Teddy let out a long sigh before sitting up again, more resolved and certain than before. Now that he'd said his fears out loud they were a lot easier to face.

"No, I wouldn't. Thank you for listening to me, Armand. If you have any more questions, I wouldn't mind answering them for you."

Marius' earliest lessons about loving humans came back to Armand, even if Teddy was not, by his own admission, human at all. He behaved as one, regardless of where his parents originated. Love them, for they will all die.

"Even after I ask questions that clearly trouble you?"

It was a sad or happy truth, depending on how you looked at it. Even the people you think are immortal like your parents die eventually, even if they weren't of the human species.

"Definitely. I think it's cool that you're interested."

Armand looked at Teddy with unfeigned incredulity. "How could I not be interested? You are a shapeshifting, gay, alien superhero from a world unlike my own trying to live a life just as anyone else would. I would have to be insensible and insensitive not to be interested in your story."

Well, when you put it that way.... Teddy can't help but laugh, honest laughter being so hard to come by lately with Wanda's freakout and curses.

"Everyone just tries to live their lives, don't they? I'm sure your story is interesting too."

"Most people try to live their lives. Not everyone does." And those people were ones who saw Armand through his own existence, calling him to end their lives for them.

"How do teenage superheroes manage educations?"

Let's move away from Armand's story. It wasn't one he wanted to tell and Lestat had surely printed enough.

One of these days Teddy was going to find out why the name Armand seemed vaguely familiar, but for now he let it slide.

"Not very well, really. We ended up skipping a lot of school; it's hard to go out all night and fight crime and then grab a couple hours before rushing to hit first period."

Not something he's particularly proud of, but it's hard to get motivated by Calculus when it seems like there's so many other important things you could be doing with much more fun people.

Damn Lestat and Louis and their books. A bit of notoriety had only been amusing for a brief time. Seeing himself portrayed by Antonio Banderas was not amusing at all.

"What of here? Do your fights find you here as well or can you live a closer to normal life?"

Teddy would promise to read the books before seeing the movie, I'm sure. After all, he will have to eventually find out about the comic books surrounding his life.

"We don't do as much crimefighting, since it's hard to know where we stand. I mean, apparently there's a police force, but I don't know if they'd like to have a bunch of teenagers around. All the other people from my world here seem to be laying low. It's definitely not normal, though. I work here some days, some days I'm stuck at home because of curses, I go to a few classes at the school."

The general teenager all-encompassing shrug.

Reading the books would only tell a fraction of Armand's story, and certainly not the story as he would prefer it told. Louis and Lestat did not lie, but they could not know the whole truth.

"And you have many people from your home who are here. Are they all people you would consider allies or friends?"

That question certainly takes more thought than it probably should. What does Wanda count as, after all?

"Not all friends, really, some of them are a lot older than us and one of them lost her memories recently, but I haven't met any bad guys since we got here at least."

[ooc: sorry about the incredibly belated tag, time does this disappeary thing on me lately...]

"Bad guys." The ingenuous way that Teddy uttered that phrase left Armand concealing a smile. Fortunately, he had centuries of practice in keeping his emotions to himself, and he didn't want Teddy thinking that Armand was mocking him at this beginning phase of their acquaintance.

"Perhaps we should be grateful that we are not ones the City has chosen to bring here without anyone or anything familiar."

[ooc: I'll forgive you if you forgive my far more extreme fail. >.< My semi-hiatus turned into a pretty much full one for a bit.]

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surviving the only way that you know [ongoing] [closed]

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