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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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In case you don't want to interrupt all of that mindless busy work that Evan's doing.

He's on about his sixth dusting pass of the top of the same shelf. Halp.

If he's about today!

Judging by my cough, I seem to have caught the studio plague. Sigh.

After talking to Victor last night, Gert stopping by the library pretty much had to happen at some point, and when she saw that Evan had his shift today, she decided she might as well make it today.

So hopefully he wasn't startled by the sudden "Hey" from behind him as he was dusting. "Morning."

"Gah!"

He was... maybe a tiny bit startled, yes. He didn't rocket-boot through the ceiling or anything, though, so it wasn't so bad. Not really, anyhow. He took a breath, and then craned his head around a little to blink at the one that had snuck up behind him.

"Oh! Gert, right? Hi. Can I help you with anything?"

He was nothing if not helpful, see?

Eh. Well, she was mostly here to talk, but since it was a library, she figured she might as well get a book or two. "Yeah, actually," she said. "I have a friend who just finished The Starvation Competitions trilogy and she said it's really good. Any idea where I'd find that?"

"Oh-- that is a good series," Evan replied, smiling as he turned and nodded back toward the appropriate aisle. "It would be in the science fiction section, under C, for Collins."

And, now that he'd told her where to find it, he was starting to walk in that direction to show her all the same. Because it was his job, see?

"It's not really a happy read, though, so you might have to brace yourself for that. It's still totally worth picking up!"

"I'm not really a happy-books-only kind of person," Gert assured him, following him through the shelves. "On top of being boring, that stuff just seems fake."

Edited 2013-05-02 17:37 (UTC)

"Sometimes, a little fake isn't so bad, though," Evan offered, turning a corner and running his fingers along the spines of the books, looking for the right titles. "I mean... so long as it's not presented as the truth. Sometimes people just need happy things, you know?"

He pulled the first book of the trilogy off the shelf and gave it a quick flip-through before holding it out to Gert.

"I mean, as a balance. The happy stuff as a place, too. Maybe just tucked away in the kids' section, but... some people need to take that break from the heavy things, once in a while."

"Thanks," Gert said, taking the book. "And yeah, I guess, but I prefer reality. Especially after the past few months I've had. Once you see how much things can go to shit in the real world, it's hard to buy that candy-coated BS they try to feed kids."

Well, that was one hell of a way to hit all of Evan's buttons in one casual statement. He blinked a little, took a deep breath, and then gave a slow nod as his gaze dropped toward the floor.

"The real world is a pretty damaged place," he agreed, softly. "It's hard to believe, when you grow up on the stories, just how decayed people really are."

"Yeah," Gert agreed. "If we were raised on this stuff--" she held up the book-- "just imagine how much less of a crappy surprise it'd be to find out that most people kind of suck."

This wasn't really the way she'd pictured this conversation beginning, but it seemed kind of fitting, didn't it?

"Not sure if you knew this, 'cause it was all over the news, but my parents were supervillains," she said -- and actually, she was just going to take a seat on the floor against a bookshelf now. "Same with my friends'. We ran away, our parents got killed, and I got sent here."

"I'm... sorry to hear that," Evan murmured, hesitating for a moment before setting down to take a seat on the floor beside her. "I kind of missed a lot of the news, growing up. There's actually a pretty tiny window of time where I would have caught the news, even if your world is the same as mine."

Which had something to do with being cloned all of two years ago and raised in a self-contained time-stream. Funny, that.

"Yeah, you're from a farm, right?" What with Victor's 'baling hay' comment and all. "What's that like?"

It sounded pretty boring to her, but...

Oh, Gert. It was most likely unintentional, but the question on its own caused a pang in Evan's chest, and he found himself pulling his knees up and wrapping his arms around them.

"Pretty much exactly like those happy stories we put on the shelves with the kids' books," he answered, softly.

So, perfect.

And fake.

Gert wasn't sure what she'd just reminded him of, but it seemed painful, whatever it was. She shifted just an inch or two closer to him, in case that helped.

Then, in a tone much gentler than her usual: "Miss it?"

Edited 2013-05-02 19:10 (UTC)

"I miss it so much it hurts," he confirmed, quietly glancing her way, and then, taking her inching a little closer as an offer of comfort, leaning sideways so that his shoulder was resting against hers. "The farm, and Ma and Pa. I'd go back in a heartbeat, if it had ever been real."

Wait. "What?" Oh, Evan. "You mean it wasn't?"

"None of it," he murmured. "My parents weren't real. My home wasn't real. It was all an illusion. A... a computer simulation made by the person who made me."

He couldn't call Fantomex his Uncle. He couldn't.

Well. That was... yeah.

"I'm sorry," Gert said, drawing her own knees up to her chest now. "Who was that? And what was the point?"

"I was supposed to be an experiment," Evan sighed, turning his gaze up toward the ceiling, because his toes just weren't all that fascinating anymore. "Nature versus nurture. If you take the DNA of Apocalypse and you re-create him, raise him right..."

He shrugged his shoulders a little.

"Have you ever heard of Fantomex? I guess he wanted to know if evil was genetic. Or... something. He... he called himself my uncle. And nobody told me. Not him, or heroes like Wolverine, or any of the other X-Men."

"Yeah, well, they wouldn't, not if they were using you for some sick experiment," Gert said harshly. "Bunch of assholes."

No wonder he seemed averse to the whole hero thing now. Who could blame him?

Evan gave his shoulders another tiny shrug.

"Doesn't matter anymore," he noted. "I know now. And... and Fantomex was killed, s-so..." He let out a ragged breath. "I just... have a lot of sorting things out to do. I don't want to give in and be the bad guy, even though it would be so easy..."

He just wanted to hurt everyone who had hurt him. He couldn't go home to Ma and Pa, he couldn't even ask Fantomex why he'd been lied to for so long. There were people whose lies had hurt him deeply, and he wanted them to feel the way he did.

But that wasn't who he was raised to be. On the farm that didn't exist. By the parents that were programmed into a computer by a murderer.

"... But if the people who lied to me are supposed to be the heroes, what's the difference?"

"Motives, mostly," Gert said, and she sounded pretty confident about that, like she'd thought this through. "And theatrics. Doesn't always mean a whole lot of difference in what people actually do. Heroes ruin a lot more lives than some people who just go to school and work every day. And there's plenty of 'normal' people who do a lot more damage than supervillains."

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Library, Thursday

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