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[ukan]

This is Lark Tennant, leave a message.

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[ukan]

"Not even your victories? That's criminal." Especially when Trevor has to pry his wins from the jaws of literal monsters.

[atowncalledtreffy]

"Honestly the celebration is getting to live another day." Trevor exhales, smiling a little. "Anything else could be considered excessive. Fuck, now I'm talking like Alucard."

[ukan]

"Celebrations break up the monotony here. I suspect that's why they existed in your time, too." He gives him a sage look. "There's more to life than just surviving through the night."

[atowncalledtreffy]

He squints back at Lark over his shoulder.

"There hasn't been much celebrating in the last year or so." He counters. "Been a shit time for everyone. I don't think anyone feels much like celebrating - there's monotony and then there's outright tragedy. Feels different."

[ukan]

"Well, here your survival is guaranteed." Or very nearly guaranteed, anyway. "So you get to examine what you want besides 'just to wake up breathing'."

[atowncalledtreffy]

"Lucky me." He grunts with the effort of hauling the boar up into the elevator. At least here he can take a short rest.

[ukan]

"You're being facetious but there is some luck in being here."

[atowncalledtreffy]

"Yeah? I don't want it." He says, leaning up against the elevator wall. God, this conversation again? He's so tired of it all.

[ukan]

"Yes, I know." What it's like. Someday he'll meet someone who is actually willing to use and abuse the Barge and its opportunities, but alas.

"But if I had to be stuck sharing a ship with someone who hunts my kind, I don't hate that it's you."

[atowncalledtreffy]

"Can't hunt you anymore, can I? Cursed into uselessness." Trevor picks up the boar after the elevator opens and starts lugging it down the hall.

"What a final moment for the ancestral clan."

[ukan]

"I would hope that you wouldn't hunt me," he drawls. "Besides, not having your whole arsenal on hand hasn't stopped you from fighting."

[atowncalledtreffy]

Trevor feels like shit. He had hoped that Lark might have volunteered to lift the curse himself but that doesn't seem to be happening and he's too proud (and tired) to beg.

"It's not that. I can fight in self-fucking defense, which is useless. I can't defend someone else. According to the fucker who put the thing on me, I'm supposed to 'call for help'. Like that's ever worked in the history of human-fucking-kind."

Bitter now, he waits for Lark to unlock the kitchen doors.

[ukan]

He opens the door and holds it for Trevor. "I'm not your warden which means I can't lift it. But if I was your warden, I'd ask you how far back your idea of 'defense' goes. Would you kill someone over something they might do?"

[atowncalledtreffy]

Trevor lugs in the meat and sets the animal up on the table, then goes to seize a knife. Hygiene? What's that?

"You're my temporary warden. What good's a temporary one if they can't do all the regular shit on a temporary basis? And sure. If I thought there was a good chance of them doing it again."

He bends down to start working on the boar.

"Take what happened a few days ago with the animal souls everyone had. One person starts beating up on his: it's a defenseless little rabbit. He beat the shit out of her. She's hiding under the table in a crowded lunchroom and no one gives a fuck, clearly, because it's somehow all right if it's his. I go to break his arm and the curse triggers."

[ukan]

Lark frowns and gets the mop. They'll need it. "That's different. That's reacting to something that is actually happening. And if it was up to me, you would have been able to stop him."

[atowncalledtreffy]

He stares down at his handiwork and rolls up his sleeves, preferring not to stain his clothes as best he can.

"It is up to you. Zack seems to think so."

[ukan]

"The second we aren't paired anymore he can--and will--put the restriction right back on you." Lark rests a hand on the pig to help hold it steady.

"If I lift it, it's not going to be to give you no restrictions, Trevor. You're acting on what you learned works in your world. It doesn't work that way here, and my job is to get you to where you can function in and adapt to both places."

[atowncalledtreffy]

"Yeah. Had a feeling you'd say something like that." He carefully begins to carve down the middle in order to skin the boar first.

"My job used to be to protect people and now I can't even do that poorly anymore, if I wanted to. So now that you've all made me fucking useless as dirt, might as well see what trouble I can get up to."

The knife in his hand twitches.

[ukan]

He sighs. "You were getting into plenty of trouble before. I'm not telling you to stop protecting people, Trevor. I'm telling you to find new ways of doing it because everything you were doing at home doesn't apply here."

[atowncalledtreffy]

"And I'm telling you that it doesn't make sense for me to find new ways when you're going to turn me back around and supposedly send me back."

Back: not home. The bones crack from the boar as he begins to sever tendons and cut through skin.

"Sure, I can be creative. But the point is that I shouldn't have to be when every other fuckhead gets to kill people in front of me or hurt animals or go after people and the second I try to stop them, I get stuck as a fuck-off ghost."

He exhales, and then brings his fist down on Lark's hand to end this conversation that's going nowhere. Trevor's hand passes harmlessly through him, the knife drops, and the job's barely done as he stares at his see-through fist.

"See you in an hour."

[ukan]

Lark stares at him a moment. "I agree. I'm not here to strip you of things that let you survive at home. But here on this ship, the rules are different. People here need to learn how to protect themselves. Did you ever stop to think maybe you'd get further teaching them what you know, instead of throwing yourself into their fights?"

He kicks the knife up and catches it, hands it back. "Compromise with me. Don't shut me out because you've been told it has to be all one way or another. I want you to step in when people are hurting, I would have cheered if you had protected that rabbit. But you need to learn the boundaries here, you need to operate in a way that benefits everyone."

[atowncalledtreffy]

Trevor lingers in his ghost form, unable to really say no or fuck off to Lark despite how much he really wants to.

"It's more complicated than that."

[ukan]

"All right." I'm listening. "What am I missing?"

[atowncalledtreffy]

"Prisoners don't love their chains." He replies back, rubbing at his face. "And telling me I'm lucky to be in purgatory isn't a way to endear me to it."

"Fuck, I need a drink." Trevor starts for the door.

[ukan]

"You're right." After a while even Lark's eagerness to learn and adopt every opportunity had dimmed into bitterness. It had taken a few years, but it still happened.

"I have a bottle you can have."