Well, it seems like I'm telling you everything, covering your shifts for you, asking after you and making sure you get fed, and your answer to me is 'Zack can punch you and I'm not going to talk about my own shit and also if you try to do what you warned me you might, I'm going to use the Admiral to fuck around with your God-given abilities."
[He at least stops his scowling when he realizes something he's said hits home for Lark. Trevor takes a breath too, knowing he's sulking like a child and hating himself a bit for it]
I know you were an inmate. I know you're a lawyer and you used to drink but don't, and you're a skinwalker who changes into a wolf. I know you have a pack, and I know now you had the potential to kill millions of people.
That's about it. Every time we get into these conversations you turn it on me. I don't get to hear what the fuck's going on in your life. That week everything went to shit and you stayed in your room? I thought your partner had died and I was giving you space to mourn.
You come out to either crowd me or tell me off. I don't know what we are but a partner is someone on equal ground and as long as you have this power to take charge of my life and you use it, we can't be partners.
I haven't intentionally kept you at a distance, Trevor. You, more than anyone, deserves some transparency from me. I didn't realize I was doing it, it's- a very old habit.
You've had my back whenever I've needed it. I've noticed. I appreciate it, and I hate that apparently I haven't done enough to reciprocate.
The problem is that I agree so strongly with your motives, and your methods are so wolf-like I have trouble disagreeing with those, too. I know now there are better ways. That's why I stopped killing anyone who just got in my way. This place might be fucked up. It is fucked up. But it stopped me from being just another monster, just another killer.
Well, it's a shit habit and you should look into breaking it. I've been that person before. Makes you feel like the whole world's against you and it makes you a worse person.
....In my case it was because most of it was, but people are a little nicer here than back home.
[He relaxes - not completely, but a little - when Lark acknowledges it. Trevor had been feeling a little...he hates to say it, but needy. He liked being able to talk easily with Lark and now with all the warden-and-inmate bonds in place, things have been awkward. At least now they're getting it out in the open]
Well, that's...shit. God, no wonder we're at each other's throats. Too much alike.
[With one exception:]
I don't kill people who 'get in my way'. I'm not trying to be more moral or anything, it's just - I don't do that. Sorry. Sticking point.
I know you don't. And I'm trying, every day, not to go back to being someone who does.
Fuck, that's part of why I want to work with you. You keep me questioning myself, and it's a good thing. I need to be reminded sometimes that my job here is to keep people as safe as I can.
But the Admiral didn't give you that job, did he? I mean, if we're being exact, your 'job' is to get an inmate to graduation. Right? I don't know what he tells you.
I've never let anyone tell me what my goals should be, not even--as you put it--a giant fuck off necromancer.
When I was an inmate I saw where things went wrong. I exploited a lot of loopholes, and I was abandoned in places I needed help. I want to fix some of that, to make things better for the inmates now.
Okay, yeah, we can all agree Zero is stupid. If we'd met when you were an inmate, and I'd have tried to kill you, you would have...what, gotten angrier, or just kept on doing what you were doing?
....I mean, I'd be curious who'd win, because Sypha is a magician and Adrian is Adrian, so you'd have to get the jump on them because I've seen them both kill wolves and one of them turn into one....
Sorry, sorry. Not the point.
So what did stop you? Or did you end up stopping yourself when you grew tired of killing?
I killed a magician. Everyone I've killed here except one had some kind of power I don't. So even if I lost the first attempt, or the next, or the next, I would have kept going. I had nothing but time to figure out who to kill and how. I'm a wolf. My kind were created specifically to kill.
Which means I never get tired of it.
I just realized over time that I could be more than a monster. My ideas helped some people, and I finally let myself see it happen. I don't know how to explain it because it was so gradual, but I went from seeing the world as something I could master and instead became something I enjoyed existing in. Coexisting in.
Not that it stopped me from being a control freak, because I still am. Ask anyone. I just think about things in a new way.
You kill but you weren't born to it. Not the way you're describing it.
There's a, uh. A difference between killing and murdering. Wolves kill people very rarely where I'm from. It's almost always because they're rabid or got cornered and scared. One time it was because one was so injured that it couldn't go after its usual prey and took to feeding on humans.
And if you were born to kill, how do you think that makes me feel as someone who was born to hunt down your kind?
Becoming a lycanthrope is a rebirth. Everything in us, down to the cells that make up our organs, stops being human. Nothing in me is human anymore.
But that's why I'm telling you this. I was reborn into a species designed to kill. But here you and I sit, talking. I suppose I've never been sure how you see me, knowing I'm a monster.
[A slightly confused frown at cells, because he might have a lot more knowledge than the average person from his time but Trevor's still not much for science]
You've never tried to kill me or another person in front of me. I don't see you as a monster at all. If anything, you're a slightly overgrown dog.
I choose to be that way. It gets easier to choose it the more often I do, but it's never my first instinct.
And every time someone here with power decides to kill someone who doesn't, I want to tear them apart with my fangs. That's what my kind were created to do: protect the tribe that made us. Kill all their enemies, obliterate all the predators who threatened them.
Best fucking magician you've ever seen. She's got this command of the elements like no one's ever heard of. Fireballs, ice magic; hell, she can command lightning when she gets pissed off enough.
And she's incredibly well-read and probably speaks 15 languages including a few dead ones that nobody speaks, and she's gorgeous and sarcastic, and she knows healing arts because she's a Speaker, which is an enemy of God so she doesn't even care that I'm technically a branded heretic, and the sex isn't bad either.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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So that's not a partnership either.
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Trevor has a point and it stops him, and he knows it shows plainly on his face that Trevor has a good point.]
When have I not talked about my shit with you?
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I know you were an inmate. I know you're a lawyer and you used to drink but don't, and you're a skinwalker who changes into a wolf. I know you have a pack, and I know now you had the potential to kill millions of people.
That's about it. Every time we get into these conversations you turn it on me. I don't get to hear what the fuck's going on in your life. That week everything went to shit and you stayed in your room? I thought your partner had died and I was giving you space to mourn.
You come out to either crowd me or tell me off. I don't know what we are but a partner is someone on equal ground and as long as you have this power to take charge of my life and you use it, we can't be partners.
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You've had my back whenever I've needed it. I've noticed. I appreciate it, and I hate that apparently I haven't done enough to reciprocate.
The problem is that I agree so strongly with your motives, and your methods are so wolf-like I have trouble disagreeing with those, too. I know now there are better ways. That's why I stopped killing anyone who just got in my way. This place might be fucked up. It is fucked up. But it stopped me from being just another monster, just another killer.
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....In my case it was because most of it was, but people are a little nicer here than back home.
[He relaxes - not completely, but a little - when Lark acknowledges it. Trevor had been feeling a little...he hates to say it, but needy. He liked being able to talk easily with Lark and now with all the warden-and-inmate bonds in place, things have been awkward. At least now they're getting it out in the open]
Well, that's...shit. God, no wonder we're at each other's throats. Too much alike.
[With one exception:]
I don't kill people who 'get in my way'. I'm not trying to be more moral or anything, it's just - I don't do that. Sorry. Sticking point.
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Fuck, that's part of why I want to work with you. You keep me questioning myself, and it's a good thing. I need to be reminded sometimes that my job here is to keep people as safe as I can.
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But the Admiral didn't give you that job, did he? I mean, if we're being exact, your 'job' is to get an inmate to graduation. Right? I don't know what he tells you.
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When I was an inmate I saw where things went wrong. I exploited a lot of loopholes, and I was abandoned in places I needed help. I want to fix some of that, to make things better for the inmates now.
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Even if it means more murders? I'm just wondering what loopholes and who was suffering and why.
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Some of them deserved it and some of them didn't, but I think whatever they did after wasn't influenced by whether or not I tore their throats out.
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... This is hard for me to say out loud now.
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....I mean, I'd be curious who'd win, because Sypha is a magician and Adrian is Adrian, so you'd have to get the jump on them because I've seen them both kill wolves and one of them turn into one....
Sorry, sorry. Not the point.
So what did stop you? Or did you end up stopping yourself when you grew tired of killing?
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Which means I never get tired of it.
I just realized over time that I could be more than a monster. My ideas helped some people, and I finally let myself see it happen. I don't know how to explain it because it was so gradual, but I went from seeing the world as something I could master and instead became something I enjoyed existing in. Coexisting in.
Not that it stopped me from being a control freak, because I still am. Ask anyone. I just think about things in a new way.
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There's a, uh. A difference between killing and murdering. Wolves kill people very rarely where I'm from. It's almost always because they're rabid or got cornered and scared. One time it was because one was so injured that it couldn't go after its usual prey and took to feeding on humans.
And if you were born to kill, how do you think that makes me feel as someone who was born to hunt down your kind?
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But that's why I'm telling you this. I was reborn into a species designed to kill. But here you and I sit, talking. I suppose I've never been sure how you see me, knowing I'm a monster.
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You've never tried to kill me or another person in front of me. I don't see you as a monster at all. If anything, you're a slightly overgrown dog.
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And every time someone here with power decides to kill someone who doesn't, I want to tear them apart with my fangs. That's what my kind were created to do: protect the tribe that made us. Kill all their enemies, obliterate all the predators who threatened them.
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How good a magician is your girlfriend?
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[oh god this is a side he's never shown Lark. It's Trevor Belmont, head over heels in love]
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And she's incredibly well-read and probably speaks 15 languages including a few dead ones that nobody speaks, and she's gorgeous and sarcastic, and she knows healing arts because she's a Speaker, which is an enemy of God so she doesn't even care that I'm technically a branded heretic, and the sex isn't bad either.
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