photophobic | [IC CONTACT]

There's no use for it. What would an apology achieve. What could it ever achieve. It can't change the past.

The past is dead.

Most people never understand what I mean when I say that. They assume I mean it's worthless. Irrelevant. That it should be left behind, or that it no longer possesses any power. But you and I... I think we know our dead. Our lost. I think we know what it is, to carry them.

Death doesn't change the nature of anything, only our ability to reach and affect it. No. Death is the opposite of change. It freezes. It locks what it claims in place and locks us out.
That's why I don't believe in forgiveness. I don't believe it's truly possible.

Did they ever explain why? Not that an explanation would make anything better. But can you understand what they did?

I always wondered if I'd be capable of forgiving. It wouldn't change the hurt, you're right, nothing will, but sometimes I'm so fucking sick of grieving for the past without understanding what happened. I'm not sure if I can stop mourning without at least some kind of explanation. Feeling this much anger and grief for something in the past, that I can't change or do anything about, makes me feel even more powerless than before.

They didn't have to explain why.
I can hear thoughts. I feel fears. Can you understand what that means? What it does? There was no uncertainty. I knew. I always knew exactly what they thought of me. I always knew what would happen should I ever fail in my efforts to hide everything I was that would prove them right.
Knowing isn't a relief from pain. It won't free you from despair. You might find nothing to replace your feeling of powerlessness but the certain knowledge of it.

[There's a pause.]

Though I don't know why they gave up on me before I had failed.

Who failed you, Apollo? Are they here?

[ For a wild moment Apollo isn't sure whether Kylo is saying he can feel his fears, all the way from wherever it is Kylo is (or isn't) sleeping. That fear of the Darkness, the absence of light, the loss of power and helplessness that he swore he'd never feel again. It's a purely irrational thought that passes as soon as it comes; they'd met in the flesh for barely a few minutes, and surely no telepath could be that skilled...

And then the questions give him pause, a welcome distraction from his irrational worry. Apollo takes a moment to listen to Midnighter's steady breathing beside him before slowly typing out his reply. ]

A version of him. Not the same man. You know how things are here.

[ Complicated. As for the what: ]

Have you been in love? Proper love, I mean. I think from your poems you must have but it feels wrong to just assume these things...

[Kylo stares at the question.
Has he ever been in love?

There are a hundred, thousand things he could say. He could expound on love, as a concept. He could answer the question with any number of diversions. He could avoid it, reframe it, respond with a description of his bond with Ronan and leave Apollo to draw his conclusion from the evidence— and he almost does. But in the end, there's only one answer to the question, immediate as instinct.

Impossible as it is.]

Yes.

[ Well. Here goes. ]

You know when people say they were made for each other? Midnighter and I literally were. Made. Together. My question earlier about soulmates had this in mind, I guess. I was so sure.

I always thought you don't stop being love, not if it's real love. The lifechanging kind of love, or I guess it's more a life STARTING kind of love, the kind of love where you didn't really exist before. Because I didn't and neither did he, the people that existed before Apollo and the Midnighter just didn't matter anymore.

Our jobs were hard but we had a purpose and we had each other. We got married, not that it was legal anywhere at the time. The world hated us for all kinds of reasons but we were defiantly in love and determined to show it. We adopted our daughter. Her name is Jenny, she's eight now. She can tear things apart with her mind and she is very, very loved. She'd adore this world, she really would. I wish she was here every damn day.

Anyway, our jobs got harder. The world hated us even more. I don't think I was a very good husband. We fought occasionally, not often but apparently enough to put a crack in things. One day Midnighter walked out on me, on both of us. That was three years ago. I've seen him since but he won't tell me why he left. He says I wouldn't understand.

And do you know what's so fucking weird? Three years ago he was here. I've seen his post on the network. Isn't that fucked up? It makes you wonder.

I could say he wronged me but every time I try to tell this story I get this feeling that maybe it was me all along. Hence why I don't tell this story very often.

[There is a long, long pause, as Kylo reads and rereads the story.

I always thought you don't stop being in love, not if it's real love.

He has a wild, impulsive urge to wake Ronan immediately on reading those and the words that follow, and he's not even exactly sure why. It's something about the way Apollo's description of this love he experienced makes him feel— he wants to take the rushing, tangling heat of it and crush it into Ronan so he can be certain he knows it too.

The desire is still humming under his skin as he types out his reply:]

If it were me. And if I were a more generous man. If I could bear to allow the person who completes me to exist without being mine. If I could survive it. There is only one thing that would make me leave.

Consider it. What would it take for you to have made that choice. What would make you leave him. Your daughter. What would it take for you to make the decision to tear yourself away from love.

[ His head hurts. His heart hurts. This was a terrible idea, wasn't it? There was a good reason why he hadn't ever said this before, Apollo remembers belatedly. ]

What's your one thing?

[What would make him tear himself away from Ronan? What should?]

If by staying I would destroy what we have. But as I told you. I'm not the noble hero they wanted. I wouldn't spare him. I found him. The one person who could see everything I am and want it all. And he chose to give himself to me. I would see us destroyed before I would let him go.

It's not that. I wish it was, but it's not.

[ spoilers: it is. ]

Midnighter has a fight computer that tells him how to kill anyone in the room, everyone in the room, me and Jenny included. He has always lived with knowing how to kill us but it's never stopped him from loving us before. I told him I'd never leave him no matter what and I thought he felt the same.

Does he feel the same way you do? I'm not casting any doubts or asking for cynical reasons, I'm just curious.

[ And maybe it's a little reassuring, knowing this brand of fierce devotion still exists in the world. ]

This 'fight computer' you say he has isn't the factor though, is it. As you said, he's always had that knowledge. He's always known how. The knowledge isn't the threat.

[Thinking back over Apollo's story, and specifically this daughter of theirs who apparently possesses dangerous telepathic ability, Kylo wonders if perhaps the answer to the mystery lies there... but, for once, he's able to recognise that this is not the kind of puzzle he should attempt to piece together simply for the satisfaction of solving it and indulging his voracious curiosity. Instead, he offers a suggestion, carefully presented with a reminder of the secrets he has shared tonight:]

My family didn't fear my power in itself. They were afraid I would lose control or choose to use it to destroy them. And while you may be right to decide his choice to leave you demonstrates a loss of love. I think you know that severing those bonds isn't so easily accomplished. I think you know he left to protect you. And I think you hate the thought that he would take that choice from you so fiercely that you would rather believe yourself to blame.

[Aaaaall of which he was typing before seeing that last portion of the message. Finally reading the question, he stops short. Listens, for a moment, to the sound of Ronan breathing behind him, feeling his chest rise and fall.
Ronan wouldn't want to live abandoned, he knows that much— and he should know that Kylo couldn't bear it, either.
But he can't say he knows that Ronan wouldn't sacrifice himself. He's studied Ronan's god. He's shared in his dreaming. He knows how much of Ronan is built around the idea of sacrifice so that others can live.]

You'd have to ask him. He's far more giving than I am. He might decide to sacrifice himself for me against my wishes, if he believed it would be better for me to exist without what we are together than to be destroyed.

Edited 2019-09-29 07:00 (UTC)

[ Apollo wants to protest but he can't; summoning the energy to pretend otherwise is just too much. After three long years of grief in his own world - and a guilty six months here in this one - he feels hollowed out by the conversation he's shared with Kylo so far. Something - something heavy and awful and poisonous - has lived too long in the pit of his chest without seeing the light of day. Bringing it all out to the light has been exhausting. ]

Maybe. It doesn't make sense and I don't understand but you're right. I do hate it.

[ And he wouldn't wish this on anyone, ever. And it feels awful, confessing all this anger and loss while Midnighter - the other Midnighter in his life - sleeps so peacefully beside him. ]

I'm seeing a version of him here, in this world. Things are good. I gave him your poetry book, we're reading it together.

You're right to hate it. He had no right to make that decision for you. Leaving you and your daughter to suffer in confusion and abandonment is poor protection. You have every right to your anger.
Just as you have every right to find happiness here. Perhaps finding another version of him here is proof that you are meant for each other after all.

And I'll let you know. Should I ever decide to release any of the poetry I wrote for my 'soul mate'. Perhaps it would be of interest to the two of you.

That would be nice. I'd like that. Does the next cover have to be quite so relentlessly black? (That's a joke of course.)

They're lucky to have you, whoever your soul mate is. I'm sorry your family didn't see you in the same way but it sounds like you've found something better here. Much better.

If I release a volume of poetry about him, the cover will be Light.

[ ...NICE /crying ]

Sounds fitting. I hope you do.

And thank you for this. I don't make a habit of texting people about theology/the nature of forgiveness/my love life at 3am, I promise.

And outside of my work, I rarely open up my secrets. I only share with those who know how to listen.

[Which is... a high compliment, wrapped in Kylo-speak.]

May I ask you one last question. About your love life.

Of course you can.

If you could go back. Right to the beginning. To the Apollo who just found his Midnighter. If you could tell him anything. What would you say.

Oh, good question.

I'd say to myself... tell him that he's loved, every day, even when he's being an ass. Especially when he's being an ass, actually.

And I'd warn against how easy it is to take love like ours for granted over the years, because it's easily done. When you share something that feels so innately natural, like breathing or being warm or having all your limbs or being in love, you forget just how ridiculously amazing it is. Taking that for granted is criminal.

Declare every day lived in love as the miracle it is. Together.

It's good advice.

Yes. Poetically put.

You're with him now?

Perhaps it's time to put the poetry into practice. Both of us.

Yeah, I'm with him now (pretty sure he's pretending to be asleep at this point). It's early days for us, we're still figuring things out and I'm not the Apollo he knows. But I don't think either of us want to repeat past mistakes.

I'd say good luck but you don't need it. It's nothing to do with luck. 'Enjoy it' is better, I think.

[ Enjoy loving and being loved!! ]

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