a_littlefaith | (no subject)

Entry tags:

edgar

(no subject)

It's not really late when Beth comes out of the bar carrying her guitar case. She had played earlier in the evening this time and although the sun has long since set, the streets are still relatively busy and she has to carefully make her way between people who are laughing and headed into the bar she's only just come out of. On the other side of them, she spots Edgar and immediately feels a little surge of guilt for not having seen more of him lately.

Right after Curtis disappeared, she'd avoided him for a little while, worried it would make the pain even worse to see someone who'd once been so close to him, but that's long since faded. Now she recognizes it as having been a little silly, because if anything, it should make her feel better to be around someone who'd known Curtis as well as Edgar had. He wasn't always the most forthcoming person in the world, but she'd known him well, better than most everyone else, and it's a comfort to know there's someone else who can say that, too.

But lately it hasn't even been a matter of avoidance. She's just been busy. Between work and Judith and Carl and her shows, plus the big one coming up at the Majestic, she's had a rough time keeping in touch with everyone. That's her fault, too, but she thinks she can remedy it at least a little right now.

"Hey," she says, sidestepping another couple so she's in line with Edgar. "How's it goin'?"

Weirdly, it suddenly occurs to her that she might be able to talk to him about Zhou. If anyone would know how Curtis might feel, if he'd hate her for this, it's probably Edgar.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

For a second, Edgar wasn't quite sure what to say. It belatedly occurred to him now that he ought to have checked in on her more often, except he'd been too wrapped up in the loss himself. Then there'd been Philip and everything with Neil and then time had passed until it felt beyond his rights as a friend of the boyfriend.

And now he stood on the sidewalk, looking every in a hopeless idiot.

"It's all right," he said, a beat late. In his ears it sounded awkward and formal and he let out a rough breath, sighing. "Been a while, eh? How're you?"

"Yeah," she says, then laughs softly. "I've been really busy, I'm sorry. I've got this big show at the Majestic in a couple months, Curt booked it for me, and I've been freakin' out about that, tryin' to make sure I don't suck and a lot of stuff sorta fell by the wayside."

Then her smile turns crooked and she shrugs. "And things sucked a lot for a little while there. Y'know."

Because he does know. Edgar lost Curtis, too. Their friendship had of course been different, but that doesn't mean he misses Curtis any less than Beth does.

Edited 2018-03-09 16:47 (UTC)

Edgar's brows raised. He didn't really know Curt, just knew of him, but that seemed pretty fucking big. "Your own show?" he asked, returning her crooked smile. Neither of them, he thought, we made for straightforward happiness. "That's fantastic." She would be good. It was less an observation than a decision. Edgar didn't actually know enough about her playing to say but he thought he could just go ahead and say it.

"And yeah. God yeah, they sucked." He'd had Neil and Grantaire and then Yona had had him. He hoped Beth had had someone.

She's played a few shows as a headliner already, although definitely in smaller places. Much smaller. That's the thing she's trying not to think about too much, because while she definitely has some fans, she's not sure if she can actually fill a place like the Majestic. Curt thinks she can and she knows he has a much better idea about what the music industry wants than she does, but it's still terrifying. Because if she doesn't manage to sell enough tickets, if she fails at this, she's not sure what she'll do from here.

Go back to school maybe.

"Thanks," she says with a smile, then gives him a gentle nudge with her elbow. "Wanna come get a drink with me or somethin'? I almost said coffee, but I guess it's kinda late. We can talk about how things sucked and maybe how they suck a little bit less now?"

"Like I'd ever turn down coffee either, no matter what time." He didn't think Beth actually would either but this did seem like a good conversation better had over a pint than an espresso. Edgar liked Beth but the undeniable reality was that they were friends because of someone now missing in their lives.

It was probably time to pour one out.

"Yeah, same," Beth says with a laugh before she turns them back toward the bar she's just come out of. They're between sets right now, so it won't be quite so long as it'll be a little later and it'll give them a familiar place to talk. They know Beth here, they'll probably give her drinks on the house, and they'll leave her and Edgar alone if she asks them to.

"But then you get all jittery at three in the morning, which isn't so great when there's a toddler who gets up at six in the morning and demands breakfast and cartoons," she adds, holding the door open for Edgar and then pointing him toward a booth. "What d'you want? I play here all the time, so they probably won't charge us if I go grab the drinks from the bar."

He laughed at that, trying to imagine it. In the Tail, babies had wailed whenever they wished and there'd been no real escaping it, but they also hadn't gone to Edgar when they wanted something either. Except maybe Timmy, before he realized Curtis was more willing to bend to the kid's whims.

"We've got Yona though. It's sort of the same." He cracked a real grin at that, knowing she'd be the last person to argue if she were here.

"If they've got some kind of stout, that'd be good," he said, making his way to the booth in case someone else got ideas.

“You got it,” she says, heading to the bar to get them both drinks. In the end, she goes with the same thing she gets Edgar, even if she’s never really enjoyed beer all that much. Ever since she had remembered everything that happened to her back home, she’s really wanted to be good about trying new things. Even if she ends up not liking it, at least he can tell herself she tried.

“The bartender said this one is good,” she tells Edgar as she returns to the table and sets their glasses down, then slides into the booth across from him. “I can’t make any promises, I don’t really know anything about beer. I’m gonna have one, too, but if I hate it, it’s yours.”

"I can't promise to know the difference anyway," Edgar said. Mostly, he knew he liked dark beers better than light ones and that there were plenty of folks who had a far more discerning attitude than he did. But at least he and Beth seemed to be on the same page and the bartender probably wanting them to keep drinking, so this seemed a safe bet.

"So..." he began. As much as they'd come here to talk about how things had gone to hell, they were now in the odd position of having to sort out where to start with that.

Beth laughs softly at that single word, her nose wrinkling, then she says, "It's weird, huh? I mean, what do we even say about Curtis bein' gone?"

It sucks so much. It still sucks. It's been almost five months and she still thinks about him a lot, but she knows that's to be expected, especially when she still thinks about Daryl, but it's even more difficult with Curtis. Mostly she thinks that's because she knows Daryl still has a chance, but Curtis isn't going back to anything but the train.

"He never told me how he died," she says. "He told me he did, but that was all."

"That it sucks," Edgar said, holding up his pint glass for a bitter toast. Beth might not know his world and he might not know hers but they knew enough to recognize the shittiness of their lives, which was why they were friends.

"He told me a little about it but not all that much more than you, probably." Up to the end, there had been things they just didn't talk about to keep themselves from utterly caving in. Ever since that other version of Darrow had come around and Edgar had realized just what his connection to Curtis was, he'd been angry and then he'd accepted that there were some things that were never going to be said and that it was better that way.

"He was one of those people where it didn't feel like he was keepin' anything from me by not tellin' me," she admits, shifting in the booth and tucking one of her legs under her other. "Y'know how some people won't tell you stuff and you think they're lyin' about something, right? It was never like that with him."

She'd still felt like she'd known him better than most people. It's like he'd been one of those rare people where the past really didn't have to matter. Not to what they had become.

"Do you wish he had?" she asks. "Told you more?"

"That's a complicated fuckin' question," Edgar said. It was true that Curtis' manner had always made it feel easy, believable. Maybe he'd never believed that Curtis had no secrets but he had believed that they couldn't be that bad. It was naive as fuck, honestly.

"First part I gotta ask to answer that is how much did he tell you? About him and me?" He'd never been particularly secretive about what he'd found out, mostly because the only way he'd found to cope with the horror had been to talk it up, to make a joke of it.

"He told me about your mom," Beth answers, knowing it's very personal information about Edgar that Curtis had shared with her, but she also thinks it's fair now to tell him. Curtis isn't here anymore, she doesn't need to keep all his secrets and although there's lots that will remain between just the two of them, this is something that has to do with Edgar, too.

"And about how... what he might've done," she says. "To you."

It had been hard for Curtis to talk about and she doesn't blame him for that. The information she'd gotten had been sparse, but she knows enough.

Edgar nodded. It was a strange relief, not having to be the one to tell her. It made his complicated answer a little easier. "Yeah," he said, still hunting for the words. "It never felt like he was keeping anything from me." How much of that was on him? On hero worship and stupidity. How much of that was Curtis?

It wasn't the first time that the thought occurred to Edgar that he ought to hate Curtis a little, except that he couldn't. They'd been through too much hell for him to ever really hate the guy.

"Leaning the truth of that was fucked up but do I wish he'd told me when I was old enough to understand?" Edgar could only shrug.

"Been honest instead of trying to protect you," she says with a nod. Stuff like that took the choice away from the other people involved, she understands that, especially because she felt so often, as one of the youngest people in the prison, people had kept things from her because they thought she might be too fragile to deal with them.

"I get that," she says. "People did that to me all the time. 'Cause sweet little Beth couldn't handle what was really goin' on."

Curtis hadn't done that with her, though. Maybe he hadn't shared every last detail, but she still knew.

Edgar barked out a laugh at that before he could stop himself. "Sorry," he said. "It's not funny. It's just...who the fuck thought you needed shielding." Maybe it was the people he knew and the circumstances under which they'd gotten acquainted, but Edgar had one hell of a time imagining Beth as someone who couldn't handle the truth.

"Thing is, I don't actually know if I'd have been happier knowing. How the fuck do you wake up in the morning and look at the bunk below you and say, 'Hullo Curtis. Sleep well? Remember how you tried to eat me the one time?'"

Beth laughs, too, appreciating Edgar's reaction, then gestures at herself. "C'mon. Big blue eyes, all this blonde hair. I was the baby of the family. I always needed to be protected." That's what they'd thought anyway. It's what they'd all thought. Even Daryl. Just another fragile little girl who was headed straight for death.

And in the end they hadn't been entirely wrong. She'd died, after all, she just hadn't been fragile.

"Is that how you would've greeted him?" she asks and she's grinning even though it's not funny. None of what they're talking about is funny, but at the same time she feels like laughing is the only way to get through some of it. "Every morning?"

Maybe she had but Edgar couldn't see it now. He didn't say as much but he thought the look he gave her said enough. He might do a great many stupid things but underestimating Beth wouldn't be one of them.

"I don't know," he said of her question. "The whole thing was shit, really. Curtis not telling me was bullshit. Him telling me would've also been bullshit. What happened on that train was even more bullshit. No winning."

"Seems like that's the case with a lot of situations," she admits, pausing to take a sip of her drink. "I mean, a lot of what we all dealt with before we came here. It's like there was no good solution for any of it."

If Curtis had told Edgar earlier, maybe he would have still been angry or maybe something else entirely would have happened. Maybe there was never going to be a happy resolution no matter what they did.

It's the same thing with Beth in a lot of ways. If only she hadn't done this or that, maybe she never would have been hit by that car and taken to Grady. Maybe she wouldn't have died.

"Yeah, this place is damned good at finding people from shit situations, eh," he said, rotating his pint in his hand, watching as the liquid came perilously close to the edge before flowing away again. Maybe it was his mood but something about its dark color put him in mind of the protein blocks and he suddenly had to blink rapidly, like that could clear away the association.

"God, thinking of home makes me want to punch something." He sneered. "If you can call it 'home.'"

"Then don't think about it," Beth suggests, leaning over and nudging her shoulder against Edgar's. "I know it's not that easy, there's a lot of other stuff that comes into play, but just... I know we lost Curtis, but we've both got a lot of other good stuff here, don't we? You've got Neil and Grantaire. I've got my music and Carl and Judith."

And now there's Zhou, too, although she doesn't technically have him in any way. It's complicated and she feels a little guilty, but also she has that familiar sense of an impending crush and that's not such a terrible thing.

"He'd want us to be happy," she says. "To be... not to be weighed down by losing him or by the stuff from before."

"Yeah, I do," he said. Yona and Beth counted too, at least as a part of the people he thought of as being firmly on the 'us' side of us versus them. "I got food and my boys. What more could you want, eh?"

It was a gross oversimplification, of course, but that didn't undo how truly grateful he was for what he had. Mostly, Edgar tried not to think about it but some things he couldn't help.

"Yeah, I like to think he would. Especially you, you know?"

It's so stupid and she knows it. She's just said it, she knows Curtis would want her to be happy, but the second Edgar says it, she feels that little flutter of fear and guilt she's been carrying with her for awhile now.

"I hope so," she says, then feels like that's stupid, too. Because of course he would. Curtis had never wanted anything for her but the best, he'd been willing to stand by and call himself her best friend while she married someone else if it made her happy. She's glad it hadn't come to that, because the year she'd gotten with Curtis has been one of the best she's ever had.

"There's this guy who likes me," she admits.

Ah, there it was. Edgar paused and contemplated that information, uncharacteristically thoughtful for a moment. "He going to treat you right if you do anything?" he asked. "'Cause if Curtis isn't around anymore, then I'm the one who beats up people who piss off one of ours."

And she was, he figured. Not in the same way as Neil or Grantaire or Yona, but it was there.

"If Curtis was around, we wouldn't be havin' this conversation," she answers with a soft laugh, but she's pleased all the same at being called one of his. One of theirs. It means a lot, especially to someone like Beth, someone who knows what it's like to find your family in the wake of a disaster.

"His name is Zhou," she tells him. "You can always go track him down and see for yourself. Do some judging. I think so, though, I think... he's a really great guy."

The name was familiar enough to give Edgar pause, making him squint like that could focus the memory. It took him a good second wherein he almost dismissed it as just city familiarity despite the nagging familiarity.

Then it came to him. "Dark hair? Chinese, I think?" They hadn't talked much when they met. "Was chained to a wall the one time, poor bastard?"

It shouldn't really surprised Beth that Edgar knows who Zhou is. Darrow isn't all that big, as much as they might like to think otherwise, especially when it comes to the people who aren't from here.

"He's from Taiwan," she answers with a little nod and a smile. "I dunno about the wall, but then, I didn't meet him until after he'd been here for a little while."

Hours, really, not even days. She's known Zhou almost right from the start of his time here.

There was probably a difference there that Edgar should have implicitly known or else risk offending someone but there was no way to polish that roughness out of him. His world had once been very, very small.

"We didn't talk specifics when we met," he admitted. "It was after New Year, you know? I think he was mostly concentrating on not eating me." Which was, to be fair, very kind of him given the circumstances.

"Oh, yeah," she says, then winces a little, even though she's laughing at the same time. She feels kind of bad about that, but the situation had been so crazy, she sort of has to laugh about it now. "I kinda locked him up in the music store for a little while after that. He was so mad at me for following him around."

Because he was worried about her. She understands it, but she hopes he understands now just how stubborn she is. She wasn't going to give up on him.

"At the Valentine's Day party, he ate a bunch of Magnus's enchanted chocolate and told me he likes me," she tells Edgar. "He's been kinda avoiding me since then."

Edgar laughed too, because he was a master at laughing at misery. Had to be if he'd wanted to make it to adulthood with any part of his sanity intact. How much was left was arguable but Edgar thought he was at least not the craziest person in the city.

"God, that chocolate," he said, shaking his head. "See, it turned Neil and 'Taire and me into a bunch of idiot saps. You're the love of my life and I don't know how I'd make it without you and shit." His smile was softer now though, because as over the top lovey-dovey as they'd been, all of it had been true and sincere.

"Idiot saps maybe, but it was all true," Beth answers, lighting up in a grin. Maybe the chocolate hadn't worked out well for her and Zhou, but it's nice to think it wasn't all bad and Edgar doesn't seem too sad about it. "I talked to Magnus after Zhou kinda spilled his guts and he told me the chocolate didn't make anyone say anything they didn't really feel."

She'd been hoping for some other kind of answer at the time, wanting Magnus to tell her it was all just a trick, but now she's not so sure. She does like Zhou, after all. She likes knowing he likes her. It's just complicated.

It's nice, too, knowing Edgar's got people like that in his life. A few years ago she never would have expected to be someone who was okay with stuff like that, guys being together, people having more than one other person in their relationship, but she's changed a lot over the years and all she cares about now is that people are happy.

The funny thing was, Edgar hadn't had any doubt that it was true. Mostly, he'd been amused and perplexed as to why they were all laying it on so thick. But at the end, he'd gone home happy and fallen into bed with two men that he loved and who had, for reasons beyond him, also fallen in love with him too. He called it a win.

"So he ate magic chocolate and then said he liked you?" Hell of a way to find out, he thought. "So now what?"

"Yeah," she says. "And then he bolted."

She can't really blame him for that, he hadn't wanted to say any of what he'd said, he'd been worried and probably confused. Beth is pretty sure, in the same situation, she'd have gotten out of there as quick as possible, too.

"I went to see him a few days ago," she tells Edgar. "Because... 'cause I like him, too. I'm just not- I mean, I still think about Curtis all the time. I don't think I'm ready to be with someone else yet, I just didn't want him to feel awkward, but I think I made it worse."

"I'd say that's a poor showing, except I'd probably have done the same." Or, if he hadn't, Neil or Grantaire might, especially when it was early days still and they had no idea of how to be around one another without flirting or fighting. Mix in truth-telling against his will and he'd have bolted all the faster.

Edgar considered Beth's words, frowning a little but only in concentration. He didn't want to speak for Curtis. Once, he might have felt as though he could but that time had passed long ago. "What's that period with all the rules for mourning? Edwardian? Victorian? Something Ian. Anyway, we're not living then. I think you get to go at your own pace."

It was probably more candid than was right for what they were saying but Edgar said it anyway. "He never liked me holding a torch for him when he was right there. I don't think he'd want you to do it when he's gone too."

Edgar is right. Beth knows he's right.

Hearing it from him makes it more real, though, and she's quiet for a moment, looking at her drink. Ever since the morning she woke up and realized Curtis was gone, Beth has run parts of their relationship through her head over and over, and the only thing that had been painfully obvious after every single memory is that Curtis had always just wanted her to be happy. No matter what scenario she went back to look at, he'd wanted her to be happy.

"I know," she says. "I've just... I know Darrow can take things away, but I really let myself believe he was it, y'know. And now I've gotta realign what I saw for my life without him." Then she smiles a little and shrugs. "Besides, he's not here, he doesn't get to decide if I hold a torch or not."

Because she'll always love him.

What Edgar felt for Curtis wasn't love, never really had been. He knew that now. What Beth felt? He couldn't say but Edgar had thought that the way they smiled when they talked to or about one another had always looked how he felt when he was talking about Grantaire or Neil.

"I think by now I'm a bit of an authority in saying that no one ever wrote a rule that said you had to only ever love one man in your life." He was just lucky he'd found them both at the same time but maybe for Beth it was one and then another. She had time to figure it out, Edgar hoped.

"Oh, I know," she says with a laugh. "I was gonna marry Daryl before Curtis showed up in my life."

And maybe it's a little cruel of her, but she's glad she didn't. Things there hadn't been complicated and a little confusing at times and a lot intense. Probably too intense. He'd been her first everything, though, short of first kiss, and she had poured a lot of energy into him. Into helping him try and fix himself.

She recognizes now how messed up that really is.

Edgar smiled and nodded. "Curtis was always good at fucking up plans, the bastard." Well, that was a little unfair. Curtis was also the ones making the plans they'd fucked up in the first place, which gave him some leeway.

"Don't know if I ever met Daryl," he admitted. He hated that that was how it was sometimes. A constant ebb and flow of gain and loss that never quite stoppered. In some ways, it was darkly familiar. At least in the Tail, you knew when someone was gone because they were dragged away.

Edited 2018-04-30 06:47 (UTC)

"Well, Daryl didn't meet many people on purpose," Beth answers with a soft laugh. "He liked them all when he finally met them, but meeting them was the hard part."

Because Daryl could be prickly. It was all a defence, she knows, a way to keep himself from getting hurt more than his father and Merle already had, but she wishes he could have seen himself as more. He'd started to, she'd seen it in him, the way he had changed and let himself open up bit by bit, but he was never going to be a social butterfly.

"But then, neither did Curtis," she adds. "And neither does Zhou. Kinda seems like I have a type, don't I?"

Men who didn't realize how good they really were. Who beat themselves up over decisions made in impossible situations.

"Don't we all?" Edgar said without judgment. Grantaire and Neil definitely had a hell of a lot more in common than they'd probably ever sat down and discussed. All three of them were a little more broken than they liked to say and thought they hid it well but it all came out when they were together. When they were safe.

"I think Curtis was afraid to love. Can't blame him, world we came from," he said. In some ways, he wasn't so different. His first year of Darrow had been spent fucking around, ignoring the possibility of anything permanent.

Beth had never felt that with Curtis. She knows she didn't know him from his first day in Darrow, she doesn't know how he might have changed, but she'd never felt like he was afraid to love her. Maybe that's just another thing that tells her how special he'd been for her.

"It didn't seem so hard, me and him," she admits, her cheeks flushing a little. Mostly she doesn't talk about Curtis. She didn't even talk about him a lot while they were together, but it's nice to talk about him with someone who'd known him. "I always knew he loved me. Even before I was ready to think about it. Even when Daryl was still around."

Funny thing was, Edgar believed it. Maybe it was time in Darrow that had softened him a little but Edgar was far more willing to bet it was Beth herself. He let that belief shine through his smile. "I think he was better with you," he supposed. "You're sweet."

He frowned because that wasn't exactly the word he meant. Sweet was only the surface of it. Beth had seen some shit, just like him and Curtis, but where it had made Curtis careful and Edgar strange, it hadn't taken away her kindness. That kindness brought out a lot from people like them.

"I think he didn't know why I would be sometimes," she says with a little laugh. "Y'know when that breach was open between here and that other Darrow? There was this version of me that survived bein' shot and she was so angry. It was really scary, lookin' at that version of me, but sometimes I wonder if maybe she made more sense to people. Not just Curtis, but everyone."

Because Beth doesn't feel angry. She's not angry with Dawn, who fired the shot. She's not angry with Daryl or Rick for not having found her sooner. She thinks Gorman is disgusting, but that's different than being angry.

"Yeah, I remember." He'd avoided it, mostly. Taken one look at that other Neil and decided the whole mess was too fucking weird and only got weirder as he saw people he knew or didn't know. And maybe he'd been afraid of running into another version of himself, finding out what he might have been as a front sectioner or as someone who died too soon or too late.

"Well then, I'm fucking glad you're the real you," he said, finishing his drink and putting the cup down a little harder on the table than was necessary for emphasis.

Beth laughs and says, "Yeah, me too. Although she sorta... I think she gave me the kick I needed to realize how Curtis felt about me. She could see things I couldn't."

It was like she saw everything Beth had taken for granted and threw it right in her face. A reminder of all the good things in her life, all the things people would do for her, the kindnesses they would offer. That other version had been so angry and so hurt that she'd seen all that good and been furious with Beth for not being as observant.

"Curtis met her, too," she says. "I think it was weird for us both, but maybe it was for the best."

"Small miracles, then," Edgar said. Once, someone had told him that there was no such thing, that 'small' and 'miracle' were inherent opposites. Bullshit, he'd thought. In a place like the Tail, any good thing, anything like a miracle had to be small. The only big things that survived in that train were dreams.

Not like here.

Of the two options, he thought he liked this one better but that could have been narcissism. In more introspective moments, Edgar kind of wondered how he'd ended up like he had. Not just the accent but with any shreds of hope left. He could wonder the same thing about Beth except, hey, maybe the end of the world needed people like them.

It was nice to believe.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only