and so we descend...into the oblivion...only two more chaps and an epilogue, loves! hope this chapter is okay...i just typed this chap and the next blindly and sat numb...

a/n: like a good deal of VG fans out there, i choose to believe that Tommy still looks like Brian, and that Tommy's face is a product of a lot of makeup and prosthetics. i don't like Tommy, to be perfectly honest.

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Chapter Thirteen: "In the Shadows"

He had sat in the back of the pub as well. Not far from him. He was ever the same. Long bleached blond hair still, swept now back into a ponytail save for the sections that framed that far-too-familiar face. Those eyes... They were a grey-green at the moment, in the poor light. But still beautiful. He was pale, with a disgruntled air about him. An ever-present loneliness, frustration.

He understood those feelings well himself.

Curt Wild. He missed him. He honestly did. More so than he did Mandy. He had been in love with her when they had met, in the beginning of their marriage, but as she often said, Curt had changed everything. Because he had. He had been like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was amazing, and consuming, and then it had all fell apart and it had been devastating. Curt, unlike Mandy, had just walked out, disappeared. No confrontation, no sudden drop-ins. Just -- gone... But now he was Brian Slade no longer. He hadn't been for the longest. He was not Maxwell Demon either. He had killed that alter ego. He was someone different again, entirely. He was Tommy Stone. Underneath the makeup, his face was still the same, maybe a bit more aged. His eyes were still the same, maybe a little more haunted. But he had modified his personality as well as his public appearance to go with this new persona. He had even blocked out memories and parts of his soul. But damn Curt... He stalked Curt as much as he knew Curt was stalking him. The bastard had figured Tommy out. But he still hadn't figured out the face beneath Tommy. And he was grateful for that and hoped Curt never did. It would hurt too much in the end. They couldn't just go back to the way it was before, and they both knew that.

He had narrowed his eyes as he recognised the young man Curt was talking to. Yet one more person who had figured him out. Damn it. It was almost an epidemic. He'd almost certainly have to change himself again -- he could not fall from the light -- after that little bugger printed his damn story. Damned journalists. Fucking parasites, the lot. And damn Shannon. She was almost as bad. If she had let him handle it...he was sure he could have dispelled any notion of a connection between Tommy Stone and Brian Slade. Or could he have?

Curt had recounted the tale of how he had gotten the pin rather vaguely, but nonetheless endearingly. He remembered that holiday quite well. One of the happiest times of his life. "A man's life is his image." His bloody mantra. Albeit one he had always, always lived by. His entire life he had held true to that simple ideal, and it had gotten him places. All the disasters behind the stage ignored, of course.

Curt offered the shining emerald green oval pin to the boy, who gracefully declined. It did nothing to raise his opinion of the young journalist, though he did take advantage of letting it be a reason to yet again lower his opinion of the boy – which was becoming a harder and harder thing to achieve; on a scale of one to ten, the boy was approaching a negative fifty.

He watched as Curt took advantage of a momentary distraction – the song "2HB" had begun to play on the jukebox, Jack Fairy's smooth vocals filling the dingy bar. Jack was good, yes. But no one pulled it off like he had.

Curt had slipped the pin down the brown bottle of the boy's beer…he was paying such close attention to it all he could swear he heard the wet plunk! as it hit the liquid. The boy had turned back. Curt, with a sad look that was well-masked, though Brian could catch the faint hint of it (he had come after a time to be able to tell when Curt was upset, the problem was he could never exactly just by expression tell how deeply): "See you around, then?"

The boy nodded and smiled, a little awkwardly, and Curt faded back and walked out. He watched him, barely noticing – though finding it faintly amusing when he realised what it was – when he spit his beer as he coughed up the almost-swallowed pin.

But he had no interest in the boy. He looked back at his drink, staring hard, swirling it. He did that for a solid twenty minutes, until the warring voices in his mind reached a crescendo.

Go.

No.

Go on.

No….

Just to end it. To satisfy that curiosity. Just to find some closure. Go.

And so he did, pushing back his chair and heading off in the direction Curt had gone.

(The lyric in the page break is from "2HB" by Thom Yorke and the Venus in Furs)