fandomhigh | Library, Thursday

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Library, Thursday

Evan was still feeling pretty reserved after the whole maze thing. It was one thing to be kidnapped in a world that kind of accepted the heroes-and-villains thing as a mainstay. But Fandom was supposed to be his safe place. Even when Umbridge took the island over, things hadn't been too bad for him, but being trapped without his powers in a maze that was actively trying to kill him - that had killed people he knew and cared about - that was enough to leave him reeling.

So he was doing more quiet reading at the desk today. Even the books seemed to sense his mood and were more or less behaving themselves, today. Except for the occasional opportunity they'd grabbed to act out the ending of the last of the Space Battles prequel novelizations, which had kind of scarred Evan for life last week.

"You guys are jerks, you know that?"

Heroes were supposed to stay heroes, weren't they? Not...

... Well.

He was going to just ignore the books and get back to reading.

[Open!]

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Evan nodded a tiny bit.

"I guess... I don't know. I know he's not even real. He's just made-up for some movies that aren't even close to being realistic anyhow, right?"

But maybe that was a sticking point, too. Evan still wasn't sure what was and wasn't real, these days.

"The whole thing's a big fairy tale," Victor nodded. "Like Cinderella or Paul Bunyan or something."

A fraction of a pause, then: "But if it gets to you, it gets to you."

"That's what people tell stories for, right? To get to you?"

Evan was fidgeting a little, now, his eyes back on the top of his desk.

"I guess this one just gets to me a little more than some others might. I wanted to think he could be the hero and then I was wrong, and that's not something I want to get into the habit of being wrong about."

"That makes two of us," Victor said, brushing hair out of his eyes. "You don't want to start following somebody around who's going to stab you in the back. Even in a story."

"Even in a story," Evan echoed quietly. "And I should know better by now. People are... are liars. I can't just go assuming the best of everyone just because they seem like good people at first glance."

That had been a horrible lesson to learn.

"Did something happen." Victor asked, then thought to clarify because of course something had happened. "Recently. You sound really down."

There was a moment's silence, before Evan hitched his shoulders up a little in a shrug.

"I've just been thinking," he admitted. "The... the maze thing probably started it. Sholeh got pretty badly hurt in there, and I think it was someone she really trusted that did it. A-and I tried not to think about it too much, but I can't help but think about all of the people back at the Jean Grey School who must have known something about me but decided to keep it a secret anyway, and it's just... tiring, not being able to do anything about things like that. Not being able to see it coming, when it should be so obvious that someone out there is doing something to hurt people."

"Oh." Victor hesitated, there, because he couldn't argue with any of that. "Yeah. I got killed in the dungeons. Still really bothered by that and ... other things."

Mostly what Gert's ghost had said.

"Maybe people just suck."

He didn't honest;y think that, but arguing this kind of thing, being a cheerleader for something he wasn't sure he believed in, was going to make him tired. Easier to let himself fully feel his pessimism for a moment.

"Maybe they do," Evan replied, sounding all too tired, himself. "I'm starting to wonder if it's not a matter of heroes and villains so much as it's a matter of victims, and the people that want to hurt them."

Where did heroes figure in the world, when even the heroes had lied to him?

Victor's jaw clenched. "I still believe in heroes," he said. "I get it, it's cheesy, but -- I'm not going to be a victim. That's giving up."

The world needed heroes, from what he could tell. Even if they messed up a lot.

"All I ever wanted to be is a hero," Evan admitted softly. "And I've never been that. I'm pretty good at being a victim though, apparently."

That bothered him, too.

"I don't want to be, anymore. I need to be... not that. And not the person who hurts people. I just need to find a way to keep believing in heroes when all of mine have done nothing but lie to me."

Except for Deadpool. Deadpool hadn't lied to him.

Victor raised an eyebrow. "Do you want to hear what I actually think, or do you want to feel sorry for yourself?" he asked. "'Cause if this is a pity party, guest list 1, I'm not going to get in your way. God knows everybody needs one of those once in a while."

Evan sat quietly for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek. And then, after taking a deep breath, he shrugged his shoulders.

"I've been feeling sorry for myself a lot lately. If you have something to bring to the table that's... helpful? I'd like to hear it. I have nothing. I mean... I've been trying, but I really don't have any sort of starting point."

So far, the most useful coping strategy he'd gotten since he'd been kidnapped came from Wade, in the form of porno magazines that he hadn't actually used. Because weird.

"I haven't been through what you've been through," Victor cautioned. "So I might be talking out my ass. But you sound to me like you're waiting for somebody else to tell you how to be a hero. Or like you think only the people at Jean Grey school count, when we live on this insane amazing school where like half the people fight bad guys one way or another. (And, not that I know every second of your life, but most of us aren't liars, either.)

"I mean, Gert Yorkes -- take away her dinosaur and all she can do is be sarcastic until you cry, and I'm pretty sure she thinks of herself as a hero. So to hear you be like this, when from what you've said you can beat me into a bunch of bloody circuits any time you feel like it ... do you get why it's a little tough to take?"

That was an incredibly long speech, by Victor's standards; he had to pause there to catch his breath.

"The point is," he said more gently, "you can be a hero. Just do it."

Evan listened to what Victor was saying, quietly, letting him get what he wanted to say off of his chest. And then he pulled in a deep breath of his own.

"Being able to beat someone into a pulp isn't the same as being strong, though." Or being good. And neither was being a hero, was it? "It's... maybe it's knowing when not to, but I've been kind of bad at that, too."

Evan's temper, when he lost it, was very literally explosive.

"I want to just do it. I want to go out there and save the world, if I can. And maybe the people at the Jean Grey School aren't the definition of heroism, but... I don't know. I'm maybe two years old here in the real world at best and I'm kind of lacking for good examples. I was ready to take everything Magneto said to heart, and Loki, and Deadpool and people keep telling me I'm choosing wrong but at least they were all honest to me."

He was kind of hurting for role models that people thought of as acceptable, here.

"So, you say you believe in heroes, and I'm stuck all the way back at trying to figure out what a hero even is."

"Better than not being able to beat someone into a pulp." And now Victor was going to push his hair back and calm down. "And ... maybe you need to figure out the hero thing for yourself. To me, I guess, it means somebody who takes chances and uses what they can do to make the world better."

Evan... still wasn't convinced that being able to beat the crap out of people was necessarily a blessing. Though it might've come in handy if he'd been able to do it before the days of brutal torture at the hands of Sabretooth and Daken, and all.

"... Then I guess I make the world better," he said, softly. "Somehow."

"At least you aren't making it any worse," Victor said, and bit on a thumbnail as he considered Evan. "Have you ever been in a -- I hate to say a 'good' fight. A fair fight. One you felt good coming out of."

He didn't exactly have any nuisance-level villains handy to pass over to Evan, but he was wondering if a couple months rounding up D-listers the way the Runaways did would be good for Evan.

"You mean ones I came out of still conscious?"

Or where he hadn't come close to just outright killing the people he was fighting against?

"I've been in a couple of fights that went pretty okay, I guess. I mean, at the time I thought they went well. In retrospect, I kind of worry about them a little. I can hold my own in a fight when the person I'm up against isn't the next guy to ascend to Apocalypse, or my powers haven't been shut off. But I'm afraid I might get carried away."

"Well, yeah, you have to watch that," Victor nodded. "But if somebody goes and picks a fight, they usually deserve about what they get."

Or at least that was how he justified what he did, anyhow.

"Do... you get into a lot of fights, then?"

Evan didn't. Not if he could help it. He could count on one hand the number of times he had to fight since leaving 'home.'

"Not here," Victor quickly clarified, feeling like he sounded like a thug. "And I never roam dark alleys looking for muggers to beat up or anything. But at home ... yeah. There was usually something going on, since I got my powers."

"It's funny how having powers is like a one-way ticket to getting dragged into trouble, whether you want to be or not," Evan noted, looking thoughtful, at least. "I mean, that's what it looks like with everyone else I've met with them, and once I got out into the real world, too..."

The real world was a horrible place. Evan kind of wanted to crawl back into the fantasy world he grew up in, but that wasn't really an option.

"If you have powers, they're like a magnet for it."

"I know," Victor said, letting himself gripe a little. "I'm a good student. Back at my old school I was, you know, one of the kids who was supposed to graduate and be somebody. And all of a sudden half the time the only thing that matters is how fast I can get out of trouble."

"At least maybe that means you're getting better at getting out of it faster?"

Trying to find bright side was kind of difficult, but Evan was going to give it a go.

"But... it's hard to come to terms with, having your whole life ahead of you and then suddenly it's been turned upside-down into something completely different, because out of nowhere you're not what you thought you were."

Library, Thursday

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