trans_9 | If I Have to Lie, Steal, Cheat or Kill [Semi-Open]

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If I Have to Lie, Steal, Cheat or Kill [Semi-Open]

Howard hasn't gotten a full night of sleep since a little before they landed on Galilee. The events of that particular mission certainly haven't helped. Recently he's taken up to squinting to combat the way his eyes feel as if they're covered in dustbunnies and sand, and his usual skittishness has turned into an unconscious twitch and tremble.

After spending at least a few hours of the night pacing the Warehouse, now otherwise devoid of life except for him and Emergency Rations the Cat, he finally sinks to his anxious instincts and pulls open the hidden closet to reveal the cans and cans of non-perishable food. Then he closes the door again, places back the wall panel. That's for emergencies. That's for starvation.

He checks Albert's room again to see if his business partner has magically appeared back in his bed, but the immaculate, orderly room remains empty. It's not even as if he liked Albert. If pressed, he might even admit to hating him. But Howard doesn't like that someone in his life has vanished without warning. He's had bad experiences with that.

Emergency Rations follows him to the front door. She brushes up against his legs while he puts his shoes on, and for a moment on the floor he pulls her to his chest and breathes into her fur. Then he fills her bowl up with more kibble, taking a handful for himself, and locks her inside the house while he heads to Hydroponics.

He passes the beer tree, passes the carnivorous plants, and finds a quiet little nook with exactly what he's looking for - fruit trees.

The fresh, strange fruits within arm's reach don't last him all that long - partially due to his relatively small stature and their slick, unclimbable bark. But there are some on the ground, if rotten. He's not picky. He gathers them from around the surface roots of the trees and sets them in one sloppy, oozing pile.

He sits with his back against one of the trees, resting his head on a loose knot and swallowing pieces of overripe fruit while barely chewing. It's a temporary comfort. Just because people disappear on Stacy doesn't mean she's about to put them in some death trap. Stacy's always been like this, taking people when it makes sense to her. It's just never been someone close to Howard.

Thinking about how he's the only person from the FAYZ still awake here sends a shiver down his back, but the sweet juice in his mouth does well to remind him that he's not back home, not in the FAYZ, not buying time from death, not going to go hungry again.

[OOC: Due to the tone of this post I'd like to keep this limited to a few threads; hit me up in PM or AIM if you want to tag here. I'll be having a less wangsty open post for Howard up in a few days for those interested in getting CR with him under different circumstances.]

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"Yeah, right." He doesn't seem to have the energy to make his response sound as sarcastic as he wants it to. "What's worth remembering with the guy we kept in our basement, who whipped little kids to death? Or the one who threw kids he didn't like through a wall? What the hell's the point of remembering all that?"

'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger', his mom used to tell him when he complained too much, or when she had to pick him up at school after another scuffle. He always liked to point out 'brain damage' as a counterpoint. Now he has a whole FAYZ full of experiences to back that up.

Right. Not totally crazy. Way to set the bar high, Rory. At least he didn't kill himself in a delusional fit like Mary, or Frances, or Panda.

"I have to throw up." He extracts himself from Rory's hold and stumbles over to a row of bushes. Up comes the overstuffed cat food and the rotten fruit and Med Bay coffee and a penny he accidentally swallowed. He spits and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, thinking through dizziness about what a waste of resources that is.

Then he walks back over to Rory, still crying, picks up another fruit from his sticky pile, and takes a bite out of it. "I can't sleep. I've tried sleeping. Every time I try and sleep I have dreams about it."

He's pleading with Rory to please show him the way out. Rory has to be the light at the end of the tunnel for him right now.

"The fact that you don't want to become them. That's what is worth remembering." He believed that, that everything had something to be learned from it. Had to a lot of the time his life was complicated enough that he had to find some semblance of sanity in the utter madness that surrounded him.

Rory took the chance to resettle, hand on his ribs and took a few shallow breaths, watching Howard with some concern.

"Aright. You can't sleep." He stood up, careful and easing to his feet because he couldn't move fast right now, and slid an arm around Howard's shoulders, not taking the fruit away, and guided him towards the exit. "Then lets see what we can do about that, alright?"

Howard was more comfortable in the medbay, or else he'd just take him back to the TARDIS and see if the change of environment helped. For the moment, he'd just try to make sure that the poor kid got a little bit of sleep.

"I wouldn't have anyway," he protests, but weakly. He knows he's not a good person, that he's fully capable of being sadistic and heartless and self-absorbed, but not sociopathic like that. Right?

Howard shifts his position under Rory's arm so that, should Rory need it, Howard can help support his weight. Howard may be the one in tears, but he's also the one who took cover during most of the combat recently.

"You're a nurse. You know how to fix things," he says, more to reassure himself than to Rory. "Where are we going?"

"Good. You're already doing better than a lot of people would."

He almost smiled at the shifting, proud beyond words of how much Howard had improved even in the short time he's known him. "Thank you."

He nodded. "Yeah, I do. Which is why we're going to med bay." He didn't think Howard would take well to sedatives, but getting him somewhere he could feel safe, somewhere he spent a lot of time and could be wrapped in a warm blanket and bundled into bed would likely help.

"Okay." He hopes to god the new recruits aren't there, but it's usually pretty quiet at night. At this point, if Rory wants to pump him full of Valium and knock him out, Howard wouldn't only go along with it, but would trust Rory would be doing it with the best of intentions.

It's a funny thing, trust. He gets the feeling he won't trust Rory in the morning. But at the moment, he doesn't know what he can do besides follow Rory's directions. Taking care of himself, which served him so well in the FAYZ, now has failed him and left him to panic and sickness.

He can rely on someone else for one night, right?

Med Bay is quiet when they arrive. Howard slips immediately out from under Rory's arm and helps himself to some of the cookies and coffee, although he has enough wherewithal to use the decaf. He gravitates to a row of beds relatively out of sight and earshot of anyone else in the Med Bay.

Rory grabbed a blanket out of the warmer and crossed back over to Howard, flaring out the still warm blanket and draping it around his shoulders. The thing about medical, what he thought might help, was the simple fact that there were always people here.

He didn't think cold was the problem, Stacy was always warm. But it didn't help to offer a little comfort, a tiny thing that could make a big impact on the way that Howard looked at things. "Finish that." He went to his desk, grabbing a few of the meal cubes from his stash and returning to tuck them under Howard's pillow. They were hard as rocks and impossible to eat without water, so it wouldn't give him the temptation to scarf them down all at once, but would give the reassurance of having something stashed. "I can stay until you fall asleep. Sakura's on first shift tomorrow morning." Patterns, people keeping to them, steady routine.

He had a feeling that would help.

He looks confused at Rory putting the blanket around his shoulders, but he follows Rory's direction and finishes chugging the coffee and swallowing the cookies whole. It helps wash the taste of vomit out of his mouth, at least. He sits on the edge of one of the hospital beds, looking Rory up and down. He's certainly a long way away from calm, but a little less desperate than he had been back in Hydroponics.

"I told you I can't sleep. Is that supposed to get better when you're watching me suck at lying still?"

He knows he should be grateful, and a part of him is. But the suspicious part of him says not to go to sleep in front of others, not to leave himself that helpless and vulnerable. The suspicious part he can't shake says that he can't trust the man who just held him while he cried, who shot a man for him, who has shown him nothing but patience and kindness and understanding, is still a threat.

And Howard doesn't know to keep pushing Rory away. He's exhausted skepticism, hostility, touchiness. He takes a breath and tries to use himself, the last weapon in his arsenal. The secret puzzle piece that pushed Zouichi away just days ago.

"Rory, I covered up for a kid's murder." His tone is flat, unemotional, but his hands are shaking again.

He covered for a little boy's murder and he ran across an angry battlefield to pull a pipe out of Kon's leg. He doesn't know how to reconcile the two. Back on Earth it was enough to just be a survivor; no other descriptors were necessary. But now what is he? A coward who takes risks for the team? A survivor with a death wish?

He doesn't take his eyes off Rory, waiting to see disappointment and repulsion.

"Yeah, it is. Because part of the reason you can't sleep is because you're afraid that when you wake up, everyone will be gone again. The fact that you can hear someone else breathing will actually help."

He tilted his head, watching Howard for a long moment, considering what he'd been told. Howard wanted to be rejected.

He knew that, understood that. "And?"

There was no judgment, not even a hint of disappointment. Survival. Sometimes you did what you had to. "He wouldn't have been any less dead, had you not covered it."

"That's not just it. My dreams aren't exactly a playground either." He'd say he'd like to see someone try and interpret them, but the theme is fairly obvious: you're going to die, painfully.

But Rory's right. He doesn't know how Rory managed to piece it together so accurately, but that's part of it. It's not like he can stop it if he's awake when everyone vanishes, but somehow leaving them unchecked, even for a few hours, is the hardest part. And for someone who dislikes other people as much as he does, he also cares a lot them not all just disappearing away.

He's almost shocked at Rory's answer, but it's just his luck Rory would be the one to roll with it. He doesn't know what to do with this relationship. He can handle adversaries, he can handle coworkers, he's even learning to handle friendship, but this?

He doesn't know what this is, so he may as well surrender and let it take him where it does.

"And I wish I hadn't," he says, averting his eyes. "And I think I saved Conner on the battlefield and I don't know...I don't know if that makes it even or not. I don't know what it means for me anymore."

"Dreams never are." He smiled ruefully. "Now that would have been a useful thing to find on Galilee, wouldn't it? Something that would let you change your dream channel."

He nodded, pulling the chair a bit closer. "There are many things we do to survive that we regret later. Regret makes us human, Howard, and disguising a death is hardly something that makes you evil." His face softened, warming completely, and he reached to touch Howard's wrist, impressed and grateful. The teenager he had met only a few weeks before would never had taken such a personal risk to save someone else.

So, it had been Howard, huh? Howard that he had to thank for looking after his son. "Howard, thank you for that. For helping Conner. That was very brave of you, and it probably saved his life. It makes you more than even, I owe you so much for that." The words were sincere, warm and friendly. "People change. All the time. Everything we live through changes us just a little, and you've lived through a lot. It's a good thing."

He pulls his wrist away and tucks it over his lap. Contact is still a touch-and-go thing with him, and in a way he's already regretting leaning into Rory when he was crying.

"I didn't do it to survive." If he wants to be precise, he did it to save a friend, since if Orc were exiled he probably would have died hopeless and alone in the wilderness. But deeper than that, it was a last-ditch effort to revive a friendship that had never even lived in the first place.

What would Rory know about being that pathetic?

It's that train of thought that guards Howard against really hearing the compliment Rory attempts to pay him. He hunches over and draws his legs in, making himself as small as possible, burying his face in his knees. "Okay. Yeah. You owe me."

He feels guilty, holding Rory at arm's distance, because he knows, somehow, that Rory's sincere, that he's trying hard, that it must be frustrating to come two steps forward only to have Howard retreat another step, but he can't stop fear. Rory can help alleviate fear, but he also causes it.

He takes a few deep breaths, wishing he brought his cat in a backpack.

"How're your ribs?"

Rory tried to keep from sighing, even as he let Howard pull away. They needed more help for the kids on the ship. Some of these kids hadn't come from normal backgrounds, and others had come from incredibly bad situations.

It was difficult.

"If not to survive, then why?"

He should have expected Howard to ignore the compliment, but it still made him want to shake his head. He kept himself still, eyes directed on the kid.

"I do owe you, I couldn't be there, Howard. I'm glad I can trust you to be there when I can't. You saved my son's life. That means a lot to me. In a battle, it would have been easy to hide and pretend that you didn't see, but you took a risk and you saved someone very important to me. That's a rare sort of courage."

He smiled a bit ruefully. "Broken. Sakura will likely yell at me if Amy doesn't manage it first. They'll heal, though. I'll end up with a few new scars, aside from the one on my forehead. But I'll be fine, just need enough time to recover. I think that mission left us all needing a little bit of time."

He shrugs. It's not something he really wants to go into, not now and not with Rory. Everyone who's known the details of his friendship with Orc has used it, at some point or other, to shame and bludgeon him. Why would Rory, even nonjudgmental as he is, be any different?

He doesn't know what friendship means anymore. He thought it was doing everything for someone, being willing to put their needs first, managing their life, but if that's the case, why did Orc walk away and why does Howard still feel so ashamed of what happened? He did right, didn't he?

But if he can't speak that language, he can still understand the language of owing and of debt, of payment. So even though Rory is using those terms to sugarcoat a compliment, it makes it easier to swallow. He nods, just enough to let Rory know he's listening to the thanks, even if he can't believe it yet.

"I know they're broken. I saw your chart." Looked it up pretty quickly after they'd triaged everyone, actually. Rory's made it into that small group of people Howard keeps tabs on, even without their knowledge.

"Knowing our luck, Stacy's going to just, I don't know, send us to some other place where they know fucking everything about us and drag us around and don't tell us anything. And then we'll almost die. And it'll all be before your ribs heal."

Howard didn't believe him. Which he should have expected, but it still...

There were times, as a nurse, that he wanted very badly to take the person who had put his patient in a hospital bed outside and show them exactly how the injuries felt. But Howard had been damaged in a way that made it hard to replicate, even if he could lay hands on whoever it was.

He reached out, very gently and incredibly slowly, allowing Howard to pull back if he wanted, and rested his hand on his shoulder. "Howard, for whatever reason you did it, it doesn't matter to me. I think your actions on the ship far out weigh anything you might have done on your world. And even then, the fact that no one has been in your shoes makes it so incredibly hard to judge you for anything you may have done. So many things are driven by the situation and the people invovled."

He nodded, still smiling faintly. "Yeah. To be honest, the burn hurts more than the ribs, if I hold still enough they don't bother. Breathing hurts a bit, but it's survivable. The burn is constant. They weren't playing around with those guns of theirs, now my back will match my front."

He snorted, swallowing the gasp of pain that wanted to materialize. "Yeah well, in that case, it's not my fault. Amy can't be cross with me if Stacy sent me off on another failed diplomatic mission, yeah?"

Edited 2011-08-06 17:36 (UTC)

He doesn't move when Rory puts his hand on his shoulder, not even an instinctive recoil. He just watches Rory's hand for a moment, silently gauging how he feels about it. Finally he sighs and scrunches up his face a bit, saying quietly "please don't touch me, Rory. Please."

His personal bubble is one of the last things he has. Even if he can't protect himself from getting close to other people, from letting them into his head and heart, he can keep that last wall up there.

He knows Rory is used to comforting people physically, that he probably doles out hugs and pats on the shoulder to Amy and Molly and that dumb jock Conner and whatever other damaged kid winds up in the med bay, and for once it's not that Howard's trying to push Rory's consolation away. He just wants that one last way to protect himself.

"Doesn't stop other people judging," he says with a snort. "I mean, I get it. I'm not really the nicest person. I don't even want to be. I think that crap's stupid. But..."

But he's smart, loyal to his friends, and has a cockroach-like ability to survive. He's not sure any of those are good traits these days.

He lays back on the bed, resting his head against the pillow, turning onto his side so he can keep facing Rory.

"You couldn't get Kaya or someone to use their magic healy powers? I figure you've probably got enough of a hurt to qualify for it." Howard didn't go because his injuries were largely superficial. Things like missing hands were much more important. "Did you use burn gel?"

He squints a bit. "What do you mean, 'match your front'?"

"Alright, Howard. If that's what you want." He gave the hand a tiny squeeze and leaned back, arranging himself carefully in the chair and watching the teen.

"No, it doesn't, does it? There are a lot of people who can't put themselves into another position, or they can't judge a situation vastly different from their own. They judge things based on their own experiences and preconceived notions of how the world works. and sometimes, in these cases, that just isn't how it works." He crossed his hands on his lap. "Not being the nicest person in the world, being able to make hard choices that may be morally gray, doesn't in any way make you a bad person either, Howard. Just not a perfect one."

He shrugged, a faint motion to avoid aggravating his ribs. "There were others that will hurt worse, I'll heal well enough. The burn is in that awkward place where it's starting to heal and hurts more." He nodded. "Yeah, I did. It's bandaged up pretty well." He watched Howard lay down, not moving to cover him, like he would Conner.

He snorted. "I died once." He raised a hand, gently tapping the spot where Rastac had shot him. "Came back wrong, but I came back. She left a good mark on me, though. Another energy weapon, only I didn't have to heal from that burn."

He pulls a blanket up over himself, arms curled up close to his chest as if clutching something invisible there. He doesn't take his eyes off Rory, although he seems to have moved from trying to predict a threat to just checking to make sure Rory hasn't moved any. Or vanished.

"I should probably brush my teeth, but I'd probably eat the toothpaste," he says, a half-hearted attempt to lighten the mood with a joke undercut by fear.

He shakes his head, wanting to agree with Rory, looking for a way he can convince himself that Rory's being reasonable and not just nice. Rory's right, isn't he? Even when he told Kaya about all the adults disappearing, she just assumed he meant he spent a lot of time babysitting.

"People tell me I can talk to them about it but then they get this...judgment thing going on. I don't know, Rory. People say things just like you're saying, about going easy on me because the situation sucked, but then when I actually say something it's like I crossed this invisible line I didn't even know existed, and it's not fair."

Only once that's out of his mouth does he realize how childish that sounds.

"I have extra painkillers if you need them. I've been kind of pocketing them." It's not food, so offering parts of his stash to Rory doesn't seem like such a stupid, risky thing to do.

He raises his eyebrows, chewing on the edge of the blanket. He had no idea. Really, he knows very little of Rory's past. As he's piecing together more and more, he's finding Rory - not necessarily more wise, but more worldly. Rory's seen things, lived things, that give him that latitude of experiences he's been talking about. That give him motives and agendas that run deeper than Howard can understand.

"What's it like?"

"Yesh, use that thing she provides. I have never been less inclined to chew something in my entire life. Weird worm thing." He smiled faintly, letting Howard joke. "End up looking rabid with foam hanging off your mouth, you do that too often."

He titled his head, cursing internally and swearing that he was going to force mandatory sensitivity training on the rest of the ship.

They had enough abused and horribly neglected people on the ship, triggering them was worse than not listening to them at all. "It's not fair, no. But Howard, I killed a man, you saw that happen. It's not the first time, sometimes there's a need. It's not something you're ever proud of. I can think of maybe one or two who had no redeeming qualities, but their deaths...there was something more important, to me, that needed to be protected. If there's someone on this ship that can pass judgment on you, it's not me." He kept his tone frank, honest. Two thousand years, things happened that you might not like so much afterwords, but they had happened. If nothing else, Rory knew moral grey areas. Knew about reasons, knew about people doing bad things for good reason.

He couldn't judge them for their desperation. He wouldn't try. Judging Howard seemed like a good way to undo everything he'd managed to accomplish.

"Thanks, but I'll let you keep them. Hurting reminds me I can." It wasn't machoistic, it was simple grounding. He had been plastic for so long he'd forgotten how this felt, something muddling his senses wouldn't be a good idea when he was still caught somewhere between the blitz and Amy's birth.

"Dying? Hurts. Got shot through the chest, it felt like every single nerve ending was on fire, like my head was exploding and taking me with it. Imagine the worst pain you've ever experience, times it by ten, and throw some acid reflux on top of it. There was a bright flash of light and that burned too, like I was a moth caught in a torch. And then I woke up and I didn't sleep for a very long time. It's not my idea of a vacation spot, really. Like to avoid it, dying." He reached up, rubbing his face thoughtfully. "Wouldn't suggest trying it."

"I don't know. I'll chew just about anything. I'm secretly a woodchuck." He's actually never seen a woodchuck. He hadn't seen a lot of things before winding up on Stacy, and the fact that he'll never really see New York or the Grand Canyon or Europe on his Earth strikes him as kind of sad. "We used to chew things back home, shoe leather and paper and stuff. Tricks your stomach from feeling so hungry."

He takes a deep breath. "You killed a man to protect me." The distinction is important. That Rory doesn't like killing, but thinks Howard is worth making that effort for. It matters. In a twisted way, that idea feels more like an embrace than an actual hug.

"Plenty of people on here have killed. It's just...I mean, I haven't, not technically, but it's different when they do things like that and I don't know why. I guess it's because you guys do it to protect other people." And technically, that's why he hid a little boy's body. But somehow that's not moral. Somehow.

He winces on Rory's behalf and bites his lip. He reaches out, this time, and just gently touches Rory's arm, even if Rory doesn't look like he's especially in need of comfort. "I always figured it had to be something really awful to be worth being that afraid of it. Sometimes it's like, what's the point of sticking with life when you spend the whole time just avoiding death? When you're that scared and hungry and it would be easy to just...but I had to stick around for Orc. I had to."

He thinks it'd surprise most people who know him, to think of how close he was to just giving up back in the FAYZ. People think of him as such a survivor, so selfishly devoted to saving his own skin, that it might seem unnatural.

But Rory seems to know him a bit better than that. Rory, out of the people he's met so far, seems to put together the puzzle pieces about what happened back home quickest. Rory seems to be a lot older than his frame would suggest, a lot more traveled.

"I keep telling you gum and toothpicks, it's safer and better for your teeth." He smiled faintly at the comparison. "Woodchuck, so is that your codename?" There was a faint nod, understanding. He'd seem similar reactions to starvation during famine, anything could become food. Or at the very least, anything could become a mental trick until food could be received or they were added to the piles of the dead.

"Yeah, I did." No point in denying it, really. Howard had been there. "I'd do it again." With about as much hesitation.

"Didn't you hide the death to protect someone, Howard?" He kept his voice gentle, understanding. "Like I said, loads of folk here, they can't really see it. How life could be different. I've got a leg up on some, but at the same time, I've never been in your situation. I can only try to tie it to my own experiences and try to understand."

He had a bit more experience than most, a bit more life stretched behind him.

The look of warm approval he gave Howard was completely unconscious, the fact that Howard was reaching out, trying to comfort other people, further reinforced that he was capable of changing, of growing. Of becoming a better person than he'd started at. There was nothing not worth saving here. "Thank you."

Death as a bedtime story, probably the most morbid story he'd managed to tell. This was not going on Molly's list. "Yeah." He understood surviving for other people. "I had to. For Amy. Even when it seemed like the universe would kill me anyway." Two thousand years. How had that even turned out? The Doctor implied that they had lived through it already, but Rory had no idea. Just a lot of time spent waiting. "I don't remember being dead, just dying. I think my mind blocked that bit out, and then when I woke up it was with something shoving an entirely new set of memories in my head. I remember growing up twice. Once with Amy, once somewhere completely different."

His childhood in Rome hadn't been bad, his father had been supportive, good at educating him, proud of his accomplishments. Having brothers had been novel, though he rather though they thought him a little off. It hadn't been a bad childhood, if it had been all he knew, he would have been happy. A proper Roman, a good citizen of Rome, a respected Centurion. Wasn't to be though. Wasn't for him at least, no matter how simple it had seemed.

"Nah, no codename. That'd just make Stacy send me on more stupid missions. Besides, 'Woodchuck' isn't really going to strike fear into the hearts of my enemies. Unless, I don't know, I want them to underestimate me." He'd rather not go on any missions again. All they do is wear him down. The human body isn't built for so much panic and fear.

"Why me, Rory? Because we're coworkers? I mean, not that I mind being protected, but..." He understood, with Zouichi, that is was about duty to those who needed protecting. Rory's more of a puzzle in that way. He doesn't know if he's somehow special to Rory because of his age or because he works in Medical or if Rory's just this way with every fifteen year-old who happens to get shot at.

He takes a deep breath and looks away from Rory, covering the lower half of his face with a clump of blankets, although he keeps his hand at Rory's elbow. "I didn't know what else to do." Who else was going to protect Orc, if not him? Who else would take care of the big guy? It was Howard's responsibility, because no one else would or could.

He feels like crying again, but he's shed too many tears in front of other people lately, so he just grits his teeth and blinks rapidly.

"So how do you know which you you are? I mean, if you've got two sets of memories..." If people are just the sum of their experiences, how does Rory decide who he is and what he was? How can he stay so level-headed and calm when there are two end results he might be?

It sounds awful, having two sets of memories. Dying. Coming back from the dead. All of it. "Where was the second place you grew up?"

"Why?" That was a loaded question, and not one he was sure Howard wanted to know the answer to, to put no fine point on it. He covered Howard's hand loosely with his own, shielding the tiny bit of tangible connection between them.

It was difficult to explain, difficult to make anyone understand how angry it made him to see someone that mattered to him in danger. Difficult to explain an instinct that had been two thousand years in the making that said simply "Shoot first, ask their squad mates after, maybe pray if it was a mistake".

"That's some of it, a little, that we're coworkers. That we belong to the same department. But that's not all of it. It's a bit complicated." More than a bit, but Howard was young, fifteen according to his file. Barely an infant compared to all of the years he'd lived, even if he knew rationally, that most crises didn't care to check your I.D. before tossing you about. "You needed me to. You needed me there, at that moment. Anyone would have done, but I was the person who ended up being there. I don't entirely believe in the power of coincidence anymore. Gone a bit too far past the of suspension of disbelief by now." He paused. "It's all about weight, really. In the end. To me, your life outweighed his. Maybe he's got some people who would take issue with me about that, but I don't care. They weren't there and I was." Which wasn't really answering the question, but he didn't think Howard would buy 'because you're a little boy and I can't stand to see children hurt and you've been hurt more than enough already.' "You came from a bad place, Howard, bad in the way that most people on this ship would have died within a week. Surviving that only to get killed by someone too daft to do his job proper is a waste. I think there is something worth preserving in you, something worth shielding while it takes advantage of the new light to grow."

He laughed, a soft bark that somehow wasn't entirely humorous. "Rome, circa 76 B.C and onward. They didn't call it that, but a bit of math gives me that as a rough date. That's what the history books tell me, anyhow." He gave Howard's hand a squeeze. "I don't, sometimes. Sometimes I think that must be the real set, sometimes I'm sure Leadworth and Amy are the real set. It gets a bit complicated. The other set goes on quiet a bit longer, as well, which makes it cross over rather badly. At one point I woke up, or whatever you call it, and remembered both and that was that. Deal with it or go mad, those are your only real choices."

Howard listens, silent. Something tells him Rory's holding back, but people believe what they want to be true, so Howard tells himself that Rory's giving him the full truth.

Something worth shielding. Because if he's going to fight so hard to survive, there must be something in there worth protecting. He can understand that logic.

"Jesus. Rome. I kind of...didn't show up for history classes on Rome, gotta say." He has a feeling that trying to understand how, exactly, Rory came to be both contemporaneous and an Ancient Roman will leave him with more questions than answers, and probably with a headache. He'll probably ask for more of the logistics later, maybe. After he's gotten some sleep. "Do you just...say you're both? You're that Rory and this Rory?"

And then, after a second. "Rory's a really weird name for a Roman. No Rorius Caesar or anything?"

Deal or lose it. That's the way it is with everything, right? How do you tell the difference between going mad or dealing? Is gorging until he's sick and staying up at night checking the locks over and over going crazy or just some symptom of coping, like side effects from a medicine?

"How do you do it?"

He finds he doesn't mind the gentle squeeze Rory gives his hand.

"What I learned in history class did nothing to prepare me for the real thing." He smiled faintly. Gone from an only child to three older brothers and two sisters. A nurse to a Centurion. A nurse to the last Centurion, a guard and warrior and a protector.

"Not many people that knew me as a child in Rome made it past the first twenty years. It's easier, I think. Rather than having people who knew me as both, the only reminders I have are people who knew me as Rory, a nurse. They met me briefly as the other, but that was barely enough time for them to establish I was myself."

He snorted. "Roraincus, Amy called me. It's easier to just call me Rory. And I wasn't even close to Caesar."

That, going mad or dealing, was a very thin, very fragile line that often felt like both and neither and rarely felt good at all.

"You get up in the morning, you tell yourself you need to keep going. It's not easy, I wish I could tell you it was. That all you need is there and once you figure it out it'll just be what it is and you won't have to think about it. There'll be dreams, nightmares, little terrors that will grip you in the middle of the room and there will be nothing to do but wait for them to pass." He took a breathe, giving Howard's hand another squeeze. "I found something to protect, Howard. A lot of somethings. Helps keep me grounded, helps me push past that terror and do what needs done. That helps, having something that needs you to keep going. That needs a man, not a conflicted mess of memories that can barely function after so long alone."

"Yeah, reading Lord of the Flies in middle school didn't exactly prep us for the real thing either," he says bitterly. "History class probably what, gave you this picture of a lot of happy people chilling at the bathhouse in pearly white robes?"

Funny, he didn't ever imagine Rory going to school, although he knows he must have. It's something he doesn't think about with adults.

He shifts position on the bed, getting comfortable. He hates binges. He always feels so disgusting afterward; his stomach and throat burn and ache, and he feels tired to the bone. Sick, body and mind. His eyelids flutter for a moment - he needs sleep more than he thought. He's been up, what, at least thirty-six hours?

"Roraincus," Howard repeats, rolling that word around on his tongue. "Nah, I'm gonna call you Rorius Caesar. In secret, though."

He has a feeling Rory hasn't advertised the dual memories aspect of himself to everyone he meets. Which means Howard's in some inner circle, closer than just a stranger or a coworker, being trusted with information. It's a risky thing to do with Howard, not something most people would try given Howard's penchant for self-serving double-crossing and weaseling. But Howard takes the gesture as a show of faith; he takes it seriously. He won't tell anyone unless Rory gives him permission.

He nods. It makes sense. Rory's falling a bit more into place the more he explains, and that comforts Howard. And he appreciates the honesty, that Rory doesn't endorse that delusion of some magic fountain of will that will cure everything and put all the fear away. He wishes that fountain existed, but looking for one that doesn't exist is worse than just accepting it's not there.

Howard has a cat to protect, he guesses. And Zouichi, even though Zou neither needs nor cooperates with any forms of protection, rendering all efforts futile. So he has a cat.

And he's one of those 'somethings' Rory's protecting.

He squeezes Rory's hand back. "Thanks, Rory. I don't...I didn't know how I was going to handle tonight. I thought I was fine, but then Albert was gone, and...thanks. You're going to wake me up if I'm having a nightmare, right? Because those are so not fun."

If I Have to Lie, Steal, Cheat or Kill [Semi-Open]

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