nexus_crossings | What's keeping you awake at night ...

What's keeping you awake at night ...

There's a man sitting in bench in the nexus with medium length length sliver hair and hard eyes of a blue-gray hue. He leans forward in the seat with his hands clasped together in front of him. He looks as though he's trying to crack his knuckles, but they won't crack. His fingers are the right shape. Joints in all in the right place, at a glance, but the hands are entirely formed of stain resistant metal.

Zero looks as if he's not looking at his surroundings, but through them and through you too, if you're approaching him. He feels a question like an inch in the back of his mind and it's apparently one that he can't help, but to scratch.

"What's keeping you awake at night?"

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"Oh as would I, but unfortunately one can't change the past. We simply push forward and learn from our mistakes, however tragic they may be."

She gives him a bit of a shrug, leaning back on the bench.

"Though that's not to say nothing good came of things... It's just a shame she had to grow up never meeting her father."

Her voice lowered a bit, more an idle musing than speaking to Zero directly. She cast a melancholic gaze towards the ground as her mind wandered to what could have been.

Zero winces when he hears the mention of a girl growing up without a father. In his case, he was the would-be father who got old with the passing of a daughter, but he understands the pain of familial loss. It has defined him in a number of ways.

He opens his eyes again.

"A family torn apart by loss is sadly common where I come from." He said after a slow breath. "Everyone's lost someone, it seems like."

She sighs, nodding in agreement.

"Thankfully she was young enough to not remember the horrid event... and had the heart to forgive this old bat for handling things as poorly as I did when she eventually learned the truth..."

She gave him an empathetic smile as she looked him over.

"I take it you've suffered something similar?"

"The old bat." He said with a brow raised and smile that could pass for charming. Considering the subject matter they'd been discussing, he couldn't summon a broad one for the moment. "Surely, you're not talking about yourself."

Zero took a breath and shrugged. He had spent enough years telling himself that everyone lost someone that he more or less believed it. Bringing himself to talk about it still hurt even now, yet, not talking about it made his loved one's seem even more gone than they were.

"The love of my life." He said, which was the only phrase he'd been able to come up with that did his feelings justice. "... and our girl."

She chuckled a bit to herself.
"Well, who else would I be talking about, though I must say, I look pretty good for someone pushing three-hundred..."

She took another quick swig of her flask, giving him a solemn nod.

"Something we have in common then... losing the one we held most dear. Despite my best efforts, I've never really found anyone who could fill that hole he left behind... Hopefully your luck has been a bit better..."

"Really."

There's a dose of skepticism in his voice and you can't blame him. Where he comes from there's not vampires or people that live that long, so you can't really blame him. She looks like any ordinary person from what he can tell, though he is a little unsettled by her flask ...

"I don't know if I ever tried."

He said with a shake of his head. Perhaps at the time he wasn't sure that he'd end up a one woman man, but he had known when he was falling in love with Renata that she wasn't like anyone he knew. So the idea that he could replace her at all was not something he considered. And since his daughter had not yet been born, losing her before he had gotten to meet her, was processed in its own way.

"I kept busy with work and then I started to wonder if I was really the type cut out for being in a family." He found himself reaching to crack the mechanical knuckles of his metallic hands. "I suppose there's been a few that might have called me a mentor over the years. That seemed a better fit."

She gives him a nod, leaning back on the bench a bit.

"I never thought I'd be one to settle down and have a family until I met Cyrus... and even then it was more of a cruel twist of fate that I was able to. It was a bit of a miracle I was even able to have a child... though the same circumstances that let such a wonderful thing even occur are the same that eventually led to me losing him... which brings me back around to your original question."

She let out a somber breath, shaking her head.

"Had I not been forced to turn him, he'd likely still be alive and well, but on the other hand my daughter never would have been born. Had I the chance to do it all again, it would be impossible to keep one without losing the other in a sense."

The books and movies you would find vampires in had been obsolete when he was middle aged. He knew of them, but they weren't real where he came from and he hadn't been in the nexus long enough to realize they might be real somewhere else. He was new to the multi-verse, after all.

So even as he was digesting her story, some of the details were sinking in better than others.

He recognized her being presented with an impossible choice. One that would have felt awful to have to make and left her unsatisfied either way. He could empathize with that, even if he couldn't relate to it or follow the supernaturalness of it.

"Doesn't seem fair."

He said, and swallowed down the thought that followed, 'life isn't fair, is it?' While true, it wasn't particularly useful to point that out in this moment.

She sighed softly.

"Oh I'm quite familiar with unfair situations in life. One might say my life has been full of tragedy... save a few glimmers of hope that keep me going."

She shrugs as she lets her head lull back a bit, gazing up at the sky.

"Best we can do is make due with what life gives us."

"Not the type to fall into the trap of vengeance, eh?"

Somewhere in a corner of memory and mind, Zero can hear the sounds of screams and bullets flying in run down old building. His agent, which to most would sound indistinguishable from the beep of any smart phone, chimes and seems to be ignoring both things.

At least for now, anyway.

"I remember feeling like it was the only choice I had."

"Oh god no, I do love getting some sweet delicious vengeance... though my circumstances are a bit more... complex."

She let out a heavy sigh, shaking her head.

"Besides, I've punished myself more than enough... I did what I had to do, but still... being forced to take his life by my own hand certainly takes a toll."

"I'm not sure I can relate to that."

Any of it, really. He hadn't been involved in the deaths of his small, would-have-been family. They just were with him on one day and were gone the next, leaving him to figure out how his life could have any meaning without them.

And. He hadn't found vengeance all that satisfying in the end. It hadn't brought anyone back to him. Nor had it made it any easier to go on without them. Though ...

"My tour of vengeance ended in a job offer."

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What's keeping you awake at night ...

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