Kyle and Anika, philosophy.

[x-wildchild.livejournal.com]

After the funeral for McInnis, Anika talks to Kyle - about the events of Keep the Faith, about Mistra, and about moving on.



"Did I just not notice you eating, or have you actually not?" Anika's voice came from behind Kyle as she stepped out the back door of the villa, joining him on the terrace. No one else was out here around the pool area, although Nathan's tall form was visible down on the beach. She offered Kyle a tiny smile. "Don't make me start fussing."

"I.. uh..." Kyle thought for a moment, eyes going off towards the sky. "I know I ate. Something. uh. Today?" He was still in dress slacks and shirt, although his tie was stuffed into one pocket and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone. "I just ... nothing seems like it'd taste good right now." Which obviously annoyed him, given the tone of his voice. "I think I had a sandwich or something a couple hours ago."

"Right now, food is fuel," Ani said, her eyes lingering on Nathan. "Best to look at it that way. Taste is for other days." The slightly manic edge to her tone was softer, somehow, than it had been years ago. She looked sideways at Kyle, her blue eyes wiser than they had been, as well. "There have been better months, haven't there?"

"Is there a invisible sign over my head, or did Nate tell you?" Kyle asked, glancing up once just to make sure there wasn't a invisible neon sign floating over his head. "It doesn't suck as hard as say, last spring. Kinda. It's a different kind of suck. No crazy nutso doctors or pigs, but I get to be nuts like everyone else now." He let out a sigh that sounded more like a growl and did not fidget, but was obviously fighting the want to. "And then this. I mean, what the hell? Nate doesn't need this crap. I don't need this crap. No one needs this crap!"

"We survive," Anika pointed out. "You and I, maybe more than the average." She reached up and tugged at his collar, then smoothed it. "We're the resilient ones, or we're meant to be. Teflon ferals, bouncing back from everything."

Kyle coughed into his hand. "Yeah, about that." He resisted the urge to swat Anika's hands away from his collar, and ended up stuffing both hands into his pockets instead. "It'd be nice to, you know, bounce back instead of growing all new stuff to keep my therapist in a paycheck for." That the ferals he knew were fifty percent totally nuts and fifty percent just a little bit nuts wasn't sitting well with him either. He'd been perfectly happy on the 'not nuts at all' side of things.

Anika gave him a sly little smile. "Does your nice therapist even know what to do about force-disassociated parts of your personality? Because my therapist used to gibber."

"I dunno." Kyle said. Doctor Samson had made some noises about the possibility of Kyle seeing someone outside the school, but they hadn't made any decisions yet. And Kyle was just fine with that. The less he had to deal with it, the better. "We're still mostly dealing with how pissed off I am about it. I wasn't supposed to have one." He looked at Anika carefully. "Are they all freakin' sarcastic? Because seriously, is that just necessary?"

Anika tilted her head, then sat down on one of the deck chairs. "They are what you are. In case you hadn't noticed, Kyle, sarcasm and you? Not strangers."

Kyle actually laughed, and a small amount of the tension in his face washed away. He cupped one hand to his mouth as though and leaned in towards Ani. "Nate thinks his is an asshole." he stage-whispered. "He told me so. Which, well, I hear he yells at the people in Stanstanistan all the time on the phone."

"Nate's would be different. There are things they did to him that none of us had to go through," Anika said, smiling slightly at the joke despite the seriousness in her eyes. "Then, well, there were the ghosts in his head. At least yours doesn't have company?" She patted the chair beside him. "Sit down, you're looming again. You're also smelling rather like annoyed bumblebees right now, although not as much as you were a minute ago. It's just a reflection, you know," she said. "No obedience imperatives. It can't make you do anything."

"I'm six foot five. I loom sitting -down-, Ani." Kyle said, but nonetheless, he sat down on the terrace, knees pulled up to his chest. "Bees? I smell like -bees-? How do you just up and decide to smell some bees?" He chattered, not entirely paying attention to what his mouth said while his brain was off doing other things, like thinking about what it would be like to have two, or four, or several dozen more voices in his head. And -then- remembering NOT to mention Haller, because there were just some things that you didn't talk about casually. "Yeah. Nate pretty much said it won't bug me or take me over. It's just.. fuck, I'm repeating myself a lot, I wasn't supposed to have one."

"It bothers you because it's a reminder," Anika surmised. "Right? You think you're past it all, getting on with your own life, and suddenly, boom, there's another you hanging around your head."

"I don't like thinking about it." Kyle admitted after an unusually long pause, even for him. "I barely remember any of it and I don't like remembering what I do remember. Having like, a walking, talking reminder making itself comfy in my skull is not my idea of fun time. I was supposed to sit on my ass all summer and freak out about my student loans, not have therapy sixty seven times a week."

"Kyle..." Anika's voice was very kind, and she leaned in, kissing him lightly on the cheek. "I wish you could leave it behind for good. I really do."

He really wanted to be angry still, but it was honestly hard to be angry when you knew that being angry wasn't going to fix it, because then you'd be angry for years, if not for the rest of your life. And it was honestly hard to be angry when Ani had just kissed him on the cheek. Kyle let his head fall backwards and his shoulders drop and rumbled for a second. "I wish everybody could, because it sucks. I guess I kinda can't though. I mean, if I went back and undid it, if they never picked me up, maybe I wouldn't be going to college in September. I was in jail when Mistra got me. I'd be just getting out now." He shook his head and snorted. "Man, that's fucked up, to think that in the end, I turned out better because of it."

"We're all more than we were. More than they ever meant us to be. Isn't that worth celebrating?" She reached up and tapped his forehead lightly. "You don't know how far you've come without knowing where you've been. You don't appreciate here without there. And wow, I sound flakier than usual, as Isabel would say. I suppose it's been a bad week." She offered him a crooked, affectionate smile that had a certain degree of sadness to it.

"Nah, you're not flaky until you quote that weird Bucakroo movie with Robocop in it." Kyle offered. "Which means that I am -way- more flaky then you since I thought of it." Coping mechanism to fall back on dumb jokes or not, it was easier then continuing to be all philosophical about things sometimes. "I don't think it was flaky, like, at all. What happens to us changes us, so we learn from it, or don't, and that changes us, and there's, you know, like always change. You can't not evolve, because if you don't adapt..." He scratched at his head for a minute, frowning in thought. "Evolution. Adapt, or don't survive. I'd rather adapt, even if it hurts."