#who was really at fault? who knows!! yancey believes what happened to him is what he deserves but he's an unreliable narrator

[ruvviks]

having yancey and stevie from my original story the diner thoughts 💭💭💭

from all the characters of the diner i feel like these two are the most like two puzzle pieces instantly clicking together. just in general the story is very focused on starting over far away from the life you used to know and carrying knowledge with you that you'll never speak about for a variety of reasons (and will remain unspoken of throughout the whole story because you'll never know everything there is to know about a person even if you do end up growing very close to them; this is one of the main themes of the story) but especially yancey and stevie understand this like no one else and that's why they work together so well

from the moment they meet and through the first handful of interactions between them it becomes very clear that they're already very comfortable with each other; they skip the small talk, share cigarettes together in their break behind the diner, know that the other went through some heavy shit and they just kind of immediately offer the other their friendship; a judgment-free zone where they can both be their unfiltered and unmasked selves, no need to keep up appearances because they KNOW they both feel like fucking shit and they allow the other to feel like shit with them

but at the same time they know they can't help each other. which is why all their issues remain untalked about until the end of the story; they can't offer the other the comfort they need and deserve because if they'd try, they know they'd start making mistakes. i've thought briefly about letting them have a romantic relationship instead of yancey ending up with rafiq and teddy, but quickly realized it wouldn't add anything else to the story other than the same cycle of mistakes yancey went through with his ex girlfriend which is specifically the situation he's moving away from. so having a redo of all that with stevie wouldn't tell anything new. they'd make each other worse and end up having to get out of there AGAIN, when the whole point of the story is supposed to be that blightwood crossing ends up as their new home because they MADE it into a home

so instead their friendship is both profoundly strong because of the mutual understanding about each other's issues without even having explained anything about it to the other, as well as kind of stuck on becoming closer than they are on account of how they'll never be able to talk about any of it. they won't ever know about each other's past, they'll never learn what the other was like when they were younger, and when either of them needs to talk about something they know they can't go to the other for it because that's just not possible. but what they CAN do is sit with the other and for a while just be miserable in peace, and they know that no matter how bad it gets they WILL always have each other

something something their misery remains forever their own but no matter how ugly it gets the other will still be there at the end of the day

[blooblooded]

Lee gets in the the head with a lego

I hate this Lee Harlan so much and he is literally the worst person in this story, but I like writing about him. Hm.

$$$$$$$

Lee rushed up the claustrophobic concrete stairwell that led up from the guts of the School District because he knew that the elevators would already be over-crowded. He climbed without stopping even though his heart felt like it was about to burst and his knees were shaking. Whatever he did next, he could not afford to stop or rest. In the distance he could already hear explosions as the 78 strategically placed bombs started to go off across Eden.

Failure. He was a failure. He had failed. He was so stupid! Some high school kids and a foreign preteen had outsmarted him and now he was going to pay. He knew that he had to get to a safe place, but there was no longer any safe places. The people’s revolution would fail because of him, because of him they had failed to kill the Mayor. It had all been for nothing without that win. Nothing would change. He was probably going to get arrested, thrown into jail as a political prisoner like his mother had been. 

Or something worse would happen to him. There was no precedent set in Eden for people who had...had committed acts of terrorism

As he climbed and trembled and wheezed, he tried to call Yancey once again. He had called him 3 times in the last 10 minutes. 

Yancey finally picked up. For the first time ever, his face appeared...anxious. “What?” he snapped. His hair was disheveled and his face glistened with sweat. The building that he was in must have been near one of the blasts; he froze as the walls shuddered around him. It was as if he had not truly imagined the physical consequences of his grand plan. “What, what is it? I told you not to call me! If you’re compromised they can track you to me!”

“I need help,” Lee babbled. He had to stop running up the stairs because he was unable to get any words out through the panting. Nearby, something exploded and he could smell smoke-- the bombs that were set near gas lines and electrical grids were doing exponentially more damage than the initial blasts did. “I need you. I need you now! I need you to help me. I fucked up, I fucked it all up, they’re evacuating the School District. There’s secret police out there, there’s cops everywhere! I don’t know what to do!”

There was only Yancey; so smart and practical. Yancey would help him. Yancey was the only one who could.

Did he love him? There was nobody else. At once he loved and feared and respected this man who had taught him everything, this man who had given him a reason to be alive.

When his mentor did not answer him, Lee continued to beg. “Help me! What-- what am I supposed to do now? Tell me what I’m supposed to do! Please!”

He saw Yancey’s black eyes grow as empty and as cold as the recesses of space. 

“Take care of yourself, Harlan,” said Yancey, with no emotion or cadence to his voice. Only...harsh disappointment. And he hung up.

Lee heard himself make a terrible noise that came from the pit of despair in his stomach; something between a moan and a wail. Against all logic, he felt himself sink down to sit on the concrete floor of the stairwell, partially because his legs weren’t strong enough to keep running up stairs, partially because he was alone. Nobody was going to help him. He was in over his head and nobody was going to help him. The smokey electrical smell of something on fire in the walls was very strong.

He was only 23 years old. How had this happened to him? Where had he gone wrong?

Something crashed into something else far below him-- maybe in one of the residential districts. Lee thought about how some of the bombs had been set within Eden’s skeleton and the panic he felt at the thought of the floors crumbling beneath him was enough to make him stop breathing. Still, he could not move, he could not get up. The lights in the stairwell flickered and went out for a second and he heard screams.

It had been only 20 minutes since the first bombs started going off, and now the crashing and rumbling were not stopping. Lee was on the 16th floor of the Education District. Even if he made it up to the 25th, he could not guarantee that he would be able to get out safely.

Unbidden, his mother’s face-- so much like his own, clever and smug-- sprang up in his mind. She had died nobly, sacrificing herself for her ideals. Well, Lee was going to die for his ideals, but it wasn’t going to be nobly. He was going to be squashed by debris or suffocated from smoke inhalation, or horror of horrors, burned alive.

Was this it? Was this what Yancey wanted? This...destruction? This chaos?

Was it all really this pointless?

Maybe it would be better if he just sat there and waited it out. Waited for the building to collapse on him, waited for the cops to grab him. It wasn’t giving up, it was just..waiting. Just spiraling toward entropy without doing a single thing.

He’d hit his head pretty hard while scrambling up the service shaft that he’d hidden the bomb in. Only now was Lee realizing that it hurt. When he gingerly put his hand to his forehead, his fingers came away sticky with blood. It was so red. He couldn’t tear his gaze away from that redness, even with the terror and chaos he knew was around him.

The thing that did jolt him from this stupor was a familiar voice above him, as somebody he knew hurried down the stairs. 

“Will you-- will you move? Move! I can’t carry you, you have to actually move your feet. We don’t have time for this, you have to move, Rome! We’ll be safer the lower we go.”

“I can’t breathe, I can’t-- I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I’m going to die! I’m going to die!”

“You aren’t going to die! Will you— you gotta keep moving!”

And that was enough to make Lee perk up. His hands shook even harder, but one of them drifted toward Commissioner Nguyen’s stolen handgun, which was still stuffed into the back of his trousers. This movement was unconscious and natural. The gun felt heavy in his grip and was...grounding. Amidst all the rumbling and the screaming and the smell of smoke, Lee saw a purpose that was primordially simple: hurt somebody who had hurt him. Even if he was crushed to death later, he could make sure that AJ suffered just like he had.

He hadn’t known how to use a gun. But the blood curdling way that Kip had started to scream when Lee shot him in the leg had taught him that it was as easy as pointing, then pulling the trigger. It hadn’t made him feel good to see Kip in pain, but his desire to see AJ’s face twist up and become afraid made his blood grow hot.

Lee raised himself from his slump, still flinching at the sounds of crumbling buildings Districts away. A laugh was rising up in his throat, hysterical and finite, and he had to swallow it. He could hear his pulse so strongly that it seemed as if his head would explode. The pressure in his mouth was incredible from how hard he was clenching his teeth. This was it. This was it. He couldn’t even think of something clever to say.

And then there were upon him. It happened so fast, running downstairs is so much easier than running upstairs, even taking into account that AJ had two children with him. AJ’s short ponytail had come undone in the chaos; his hair was in his eyes and his shirt was torn and untucked. His broad face shone with sweat but despite the circumstances, he did not exhibit any fear. One of his hands held onto Romeo Prospas’s wrist; he was practically dragging him along behind him because the teenager was panicking. The younger child held AJ’s other hand and was following compliantly.

They nearly ran into Lee. AJ didn’t process who he was for a good second, but then his skin went white. His gaze locked with the gun.

“Hey, Ajax,” said Lee in a voice that did not seem to belong to him. It sounded like a crazy person’s voice. Maybe he was crazy. “Good to see you again.”

God, that was so uncool. That was so corny.

AJ didn’t say anything, he had frozen completely. Lee concentrated so that he could assert his psychic influence over him. I want you to be afraid, he thought. I want you to be afraid of me. This was the guy who had ruined everything. No, no. This was AJ’s fault. AJ’s and Marty’s.

Behind AJ, Rome was shaking and breathing like he was about to hyperventilate, his free hand clutching his chest. He had his eyes closed. Panic attack. In a second, he would really have a reason to panic. After Lee blew the kid’s brains out, he was going to snap a photo and send it to Marty so that he could have some lasting memories of his little buddy. Even if Lee was going to die, he was going to make sure that he made Marty suffer some more before he went. He deserved to face the consequences of ruining everything. 

When he looked at AJ’s face, he could see that he believed he was about to die.

The younger brother, Valentine, said, “That guy has a gun.” For some reason he did not appear to be afraid, his unnatural golden eyes more curious than fearful. He kept holding onto AJ’s hand.

The laugh that had been curling in Lee’s throat escaped from his mouth. It did not sound like his laugh, it was cruel and hysterical. The last laugh of a man who had failed everything. He wished that he could see his own face and recognize the changes in it.

He tauntingly aimed the gun at AJ and closed one eye as if he was winking. “It didn’t take me long to figure out how Marty was able to access files I had on my laptop. It was you. Our date, the one where you were acting so weird. You must have done something he instructed you to while I was in the bathroom. Sneaky, sneaky.”

Slowly, carefully, AJ let go of the Prospas children so that he could raise his hands, palms outward, in a placating manner. Sweat was pouring off of him. A level below, it sounded like another building was collapsing, and it made him flinch. Still, he did not look away from the man with the gun. AJ was very brave and very stupid. “Don’t hurt them,” he said. “Don’t hurt them, just-- it was me, it was me and Marty. You don’t want to hurt them, they’re only children.”

“I just tried to bomb a school, you think I care about hurting kids??” Lee gesticulated with the gun, it made him feel powerful. “This is all your fault, AJ.”

“Put--put the gun down, you don’t want to do this.”

“This is all your fault, AJ!” His voice became shrill. “Do you even know what you’ve ruined?! /// I’ve disappointed him and now I’m going to die!! ///”

Rome opened his eyes, still shivering and wheezing piteously. When he saw Lee, he began to shake his head like he didn’t believe what was happening. This ignited a new predatory instinct in Lee’s heart.

What it came down to was simple. He wanted to hurt people. In particular, he wanted to hurt Marty. He wanted to hurt AJ, who had acted as a tool, but most of all he wanted to hurt Marty, who had orchestrated his failure. Lee reached into his pocket for his communicator with the hand that was not holding the gun and felt its cold, familiar touch. As he pulled it out he switched effortlessly to its camera function.

Somewhere nearby, people were screaming.

“What we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna record something for your little boyfriend.” Lee directed the camera to focus on Rome’s face and upper body and began to record. “Something he can have to remember all this by, something to really make him think about his role in what he’s done to me. Actions have consequences, you know, I really don’t think Marty ever learned that actions have consequences. Give me a smile, Rome, I want to see your teeth!”

This was of course impossible because Rome was crying and hyperventilating at this point. Lee contemplated his ability to shoot a child in the face at close range and keep a firm grip on his camera at the same time. Keeping this perfectly centered and in frame was very important to him, as a film connoisseur.

“Lee, please put the gun down,” pleaded AJ, who did not dare to move. He was cute when he was scared and helpless; the way his hair was all tangled and tumbling about was so attractive, as was the way that sweat had soaked through his shirt at his chest and armpits. Too bad he was about to die. “Please put the gun down. We can all get out of this.”

There was no getting out of this for Lee.

It was all over for Lee.

“Marty,” Lee said to his recording. “Have you ever lost someone you cared about? Kip did some fast thinking down there with his bubble trick, so I bet you think you don’t have to worry about your friends any more. Kip and Ayda and the rest are safe, isn’t that what you think? I bet you think you saved the day. I bet you think everyone is going to live.” He gesticulated once again with the gun and everyone flinched.

“Put it down,” said AJ. “Put it down.” 

“Please don’t hurt me,” Rome hiccupped. Artificials were ticks, fat with the blood of the proletariat and Lee felt no empathy for them. How could he? After everything that the ruling class had done? This boy was no different to him than a rat that needed to be exterminated.

“Please don’t hurt me,” Lee mocked in a lisping, nasally voice. Now he aimed the gun, wishing that he had his glasses. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see, he just couldn’t see as well as he’d like. “I bet you say that a lot. ‘Please don’t hurt me, daddy. Please stop hitting me, daddy, I promise I’ll be good.’ Is that what you say at home?” He laughed hysterically again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Valentine’s expression turn concerned and disturbed. “You can’t say that to my brother, what’s wrong with you?” he said, and AJ clutched hard at his shoulder to shut him up. The child shoved his hands in his pockets.

The walls around them were rumbling. So much structural damage had already been done. Lee could only pray that somehow, his mission had been completed. Mayor Malena had to be dead. He had to be. That’s what Yancey had told him to do, and that’s what he had failed.

Was it all really so meaningless??

“This is your fault, Marty,” Lee said to his recording. “I wouldn’t have to do this if you hadn’t been so determined to-- to fuck with me! If you had just left me alone, I wouldn’t have to send this to you. I wouldn’t have to make you watch this. This is your fault. This is your fault. Do you wanna say goodbye now, Rome? Say goodbye to Marty.” He put his finger on the gun’s trigger and adrenaline flooded his body.

AJ made a noise like all the air was getting pushed out of his lungs. Lee prepared himself to take a life.

Then he felt a stinging pain as something whizzed through the air at an indeterminable velocity to crack him in the skull, right above his left eyebrow. The pain and surprise of it were enough to make Lee shriek and in his surprise he dropped both the gun and his communicator so that he could clutch his hands to his head. Blood immediately poured from the wound, dripping into his left eye and obscuring his vision. It was enough to almost make him fall.

On the floor by his feet, was the knuckle sized Lego (FIND NEW NAME FOR LEGO) block that had nailed him in the head. Valentine, whose pocket it had come from, snickered.

Lacking the time to consider the amount of luck a 9 year old would need to hurt him that badly with only a Lego, Lee lunged for the gun on the floor. He was not fast enough. AJ crashed into him, knocking him down onto his back and knocking the wind out of him, then straddling him so that he could not get back up. The fear in AJ’s kind, brown eyes had turned to black rage. He began to hit Lee in the face, hard enough to split his own knuckles. Lee felt the cartilage in his nose shatter and tasted the clots of blood draining into the back of his throat. He shrieked again, uselessly scrabbling his legs and trying to push AJ off of him with his arms.

“You fucking freak!” AJ screamed at him, spittle flying from his mouth. Behind him, Valentine was allowing Rome to grab on to him for comfort. AJ slammed Lee’s skull against the concrete floor until he saw stars. “Pervert! What the fuck is wrong with you?? I should kill you! I should kill you! What is wrong with you?” After one more slam, he got off of Lee and snatched both the gun and his communicator off the ground.

“Wait,” said Lee, blood and snot bubbling from his broken nose. “Don’t.”

AJ eyed the communicator, filled with countless videos and pictures of people being humiliated. On it was the video of AJ, red with shame, trying to cover up the bruises on his body. The pictures where Lee had forced Rome to roll up his sleeves to reveal the marks on his arms and wrists. The video of Kip having one of his psychotic breaks, jabbering away to himself in a way that was not normal to him. AJ’s mouth twisted up and he hurled the device on the floor to smash it.

“I should kill you!” AJ yelled again, dust from the shaking building raining down around him. He kicked Lee in the ribs as hard as he could to make him scream. When Lee twisted onto his side to protect himself, AJ stomped down on his groin and the pain made tears well up in his eyes and he dry heaved. “Do you even know what you’ve done to us?? You’re insane! How did I let you get away with this for so long?! I should kill you!” He kicked him in the crotch once more and Lee curled up to try and avoid another assault.

Well, he was going to die, just not in the way he had assumed.

The School District was rumbling.

“I don’t wanna be here anymore,” said Valentine, as his older brother held onto him, paralyzed by fear. “I’m scared and Rome needs to go home. Stop hurting that guy. I wanna go home.” His little voice made AJ pause in his violent attack and his eyes once again became soft.

Lee tried to pull himself up off the floor, but the pain was too severe and left him gasping. Instead he lay there half curled up, trying not to vomit. He couldn’t even breathe out of his nose, when he tried the air would simply squeeze through his crushed nostrils and become obstructed by blood. He had been beaten before but never like that. What would Yancey say if he could see him now? Yancey would laugh at him. Yancey had always liked it when he got hurt. 

Was that what this all came down to? There was no way that his mentor had set him up to fail; his objectives were of too much importance to him. But had Yancey’s faith in him been less than he had assumed?

It didn’t matter now.

“I wanna go home,” Valentine complained again, as something far below their feet collapsed. Rome made a low, frightened whining noise at the sound of it. All over Eden, people were dying.

AJ looked back down at Lee and their eyes met. He had never seen someone so full of anger and visceral disgust, it was like AJ was looking down at an insect rather than a man. “If you survive this, if I see you again, I will skin you alive,” he said savagely, taking Valentine’s hand and grabbing Romeo. In his fury he was so intoxicated by forceful adrenaline that when he did so, both children yelped. “Dead! Don’t let me ever see you again! I will kill you!”

With that, they left, hurrying down into the depths of the School District to try to find somewhere safe. There was nowhere safe. While Eden was not being destroyed, the damage from the bombs was...inescapable. 

Lee wished that he was dead. He tried to rise to his feet, but even the slightest movement made pain radiate from his ribs, which were probably broken, and from his testicles, which AJ had probably crushed. All he could do was lay there, curled up and gasping. He wanted to cry. He wanted a wall to collapse on him. He was so incompetant.

Beside him on the floor lay his shattered communicator. Lee reached for it and tears sprung to his eyes from the effort. It’s screen was covered in a spiders web of cracks but it still sprung back to life when he swiped his thumb across it. After half a second’s hesitation, he tried to call Yancey again. He was under no illusion, he knew that Yancey would never pick up. But there was nobody else. There was nobody else he wanted to talk to.

It rang and went unanswered. Whatever Yancey was doing, he found it more important than helping the man who had given up everything for him. Of course he did. 

Time passed, it seemed like forever. More people passed Lee, either running up or down the stairs, but none of them stopped to help him. Even on a good day, the people of Eden did not stop to help strangers. All he could do was stare at the concrete and listen to the sounds of destruction all around him. 

It had all been for nothing.

After an hour, the pain began to subside and Lee was able to sit up. He didn’t get to his feet. What was the point? Where would he even go? He was purposeless, directionless. This was where he would start to face consequences for his actions. If Kip ratted him out to the cops, it was all over for him. He’d be in the Prison District for the rest of his life. 

Going to prison was the worst thing Lee could imagine. It was the prospect of prison that had led to his mother taking her own life. There was nothing worse.

He did not know that for him, things were going to become unimaginably worse.