fandomhigh | Library, Thursday

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Library, Thursday

Sure, it was the break. That wasn't going to stop Evan from coming in to the library, though. After all, there were so many things that needed to be done! Shelves that needed straightening! Books that needed shelving! Um. Dusting!

It was possible that Evan was reaching pretty far, about halfway through the day, for more things to do. Break was slow, he knew that when he came in, but that didn't mean he wanted to sit around all day to just read. Besides, the next books on his reading list were the novelizations of the original Space Battles movies, and after the prequels went and broke his heart, he wasn't in any hurry to press on.

That space knight was supposed to be the hero!

[Open!]

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Evan nodded a tiny bit, sitting in silence while his gaze traveled back to the vicinity of his toes.

"Why do you and your friends do it?"

Edited 2013-05-02 22:17 (UTC)

"'Cause we want to," Gert said simply. "Not as some... making-up-for-what-our-parents-did thing. Just. It feels good helping. But I'm not putting myself in epic danger 'cause other people want me to. That's crap."

Evan was quiet again, taking a moment to decide whether or not he wanted to share a little more. She hadn't accused him of having a pity party yet or anything like that. Heck, she was listening, participating in the conversation... giving him good advice.

So he'd keep sharing.

"My Unc-- Fantomex trained me with some of my powers, showed me how to fight," he said, at length. "So... I could go out there and help people. I could be a hero, if I wanted. It isn't like I haven't been in fights already, ones that really matter. And before I found out about everything, that's why I did it. Because it felt good to help. There was a kind of... I don't know how to put it. It kind of all went to my head when I knew I was making a difference for the better, and I liked that, so I wanted to do it more."

"Man, where was he when Captain America was forcing me and my friends to not be heroes?" Gert grumbled. "I thought it was screwy for adults to tell kids they couldn't do this stuff. Never thought about how much worse it is to tell someone he has to."

She paused, shifting a bit to get more comfortable.

"Putting yourself out there in danger is basically the biggest decision you could make," she said. "I'm not saying you shouldn't, 'cause I do it and I like it, but if you're going to, it'd better be for you."

"Can I do it for my friends, too?" Evan spoke before he even really thought, and then blushed a little and attempted a smile. "I mean... because I want to keep them safe. Not because any of them told me to."

The short answer was yes, but Gert was just going to take her time getting there.

"Here's the thing," she said. "If some bad guy charges at you and you lose an arm or get stuck in a wheelchair forever, you don't want to hate your friends for guilting you into it and wind up miserable for the rest of your life. You want to be all, 'Yeah, I took out that scumbag's power supply and now some people are safer. I did exactly what I wanted.' Does that make sense?"

"I think so," Evan agreed, nodding a little. "I... don't think I'd be able to hold it against my friends if I got hurt protecting them, anyway."

A beat.

"... And I'd probably just grow a new arm."

Shapeshifters.

"I probably would," said Gert frankly. To the holding-it-against-people, not to the regrowing arms. "If it was a peer pressure thing."

So. There was that.

"So have you ever actually done the hero thing?"

"Kind of," Evan replied, drawing absent-minded little circles on his knee with one finger. "When I was taken away from... home... the very first thing I did was fight somebody. It's why I was pulled out of there. Apocalypse's successor had stepped up, and was going to pretty much eliminate everything on the planet and re-create it in his own image. Or... something like that. So... I fought him."

And he'd been trounced, but he'd distracted the fiend long enough for Betsy to kill him. So... yay?

"You fought Apocalypse?" Okay, Victor hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said that Evan's powers were awesome. "...Yeah, my friends and I are more the stop-convenience-store-robberies type. Seriously?"

"Kind of Apocalypse," Evan corrected. "Apocalypse was dead. This was the next person to step up and take his place. But he had way more experience than me, and I sort of lost."

You know. Kind of. He was still alive, which said a lot.

"I mean... Technically, genetically, I am Apocalypse."

He didn't sound thrilled about that, but it felt good to get it off his chest, all the same.

Well, that wasn't a big shock; he had already said that he had some of the guy's DNA, and also, you know, there was the face.

"Somehow not making it any less impressive," Gert said, completely unfazed.

How was that for a response to that, Evan?

"I don't think impressive is quite what I'm going for, though," Evan sighed. "Anyhow, I'm kind of bad at 'impressive.' I'm here on the island in the first place because for all I can do in a fight, I still can't bring myself to stand up to a handful of bullies."

"Yeah, well, who can, without practice?" Gert pointed out. "You have to know you're awesome before you can do that."

Just don't ask her how long it had taken her to know that she, personally, was awesome.

"Not a ton of bullies here, though."

"Not really, no," Evan agreed, giving Gert a thankful little smile. "Most people here are pretty nice. They don't always get it, but at least they try."

Generally.

"It's kind of... how dumb is that? That an Apocalypse ran away to a different boarding school because people were picking on him."

He was going to be the worst Apocalypse ever, at this rate.

Yeah, sorry, Evan, not seeing the connection here.

"I have a sorceress friend," Gert said. "She controls this thing called the Staff of One. It does pretty kickass spells. I still saw her cry more than a few times in middle school. Even a few times more recently."

In case the lesson wasn't clear, she summarized, "It's pretty hard to be badass twenty-four-seven."

Edited 2013-05-03 05:26 (UTC)

"I... guess it is," Evan allowed, blinking. "And, anyhow, being angry at people is hard. I don't feel like me when I get mad, so I'd rather just avoid the worst of it when I can."

It probably had something to do with growing up in an environment where the worst thing there was to get angry about was an unwanted bathtime when he was about three, or his favorite player striking out at the big ball game. With no real experience at it, he had no idea how to deal with it. And that's when people would get hurt.

Tiny, squishy Evan... had literally explosive anger management issues.

"And that's something we don't have in common," Gert remarked wryly. Being mad was kind of her thing.

"But," she added, though she hated to compliment Fandom under any circumstances, "if you can chill out here and take a break and not be angry or harrassed or hunted down or whatever, I guess that makes this place kind of the place to be."

"But even here, we get grabbed and thrown into dungeons with our powers locked off," Evan noted. "Here's pretty dangerous, too. Just... in different ways. But I think if I'm looking for a place where I'll be really safe, the only way to do it is to just leave the real world behind entirely again, and I don't think that's even an option."

"Don't I know it," Gert grumbled in response to the part about the dungeon. She hadn't totally forgiven Fandom for that yet.

But then came Evan's mention of leaving the real world behind, which prompted a slight head-tilt and a, "How does that work?"

"It doesn't," Evan sighed, shaking his head. "I can't just crawl back into some virtual reality where everything is perfect and ignore how horrible the world can really be. But it's kind of left me... not knowing how it really is, too. Up until a little while ago, I always just kind of figured that good guys were good, and bad guys were bad, and that's just how it was. Everything made sense."

He'd never had to deal with a single gray area in his life. But that's all the world really was.

"Not so much, huh?"

It was a pretty sucky realization to come to.

"In my experience, trying to pretend it's not like that just makes it worse."

"I've kind of noticed," Evan agreed. "So I'm trying to take it one day at a time... Kind of learn how the world really works before I try to do something big in it. There's not much I can do unless I actually understand it, right?"

"If you're thinking about going into heroing? Yeah, I'd say it's pretty important to have a decent grasp on reality," Gert agreed. "A lot of the big names back in New York don't."

"... Don't they?" If you were going to pique Evan's curiosity, Gert, you were definitely going to have to elaborate. "How do you mean?"

Re: Talk to Evan!

arsenicmauls - 2013-05-04 02:42 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Talk to Evan!

genesishero - 2013-05-04 10:36 (UTC) - Expand

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