A/N: SO HEY GUYS. TWILIGHT. IT IS A BOOK SERIES AND A MOVE FRANCHISE. CAN WE MOVE ON AS A CULTURE PLEASE?

I have a list of things I want to stop getting stuck in my head. 1) Every Lady Gaga song ever, since she terrifies me; 2) Batman; 3) Cloud Smiles; and most importantly, our new edition, the part of One-Winged Angel where the chorus goes "SEPH-I-ROTH!" (dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN) "SEPH-I-ROTH!"

I mean, it's not really a good thing to be humming to yourself in public, yeah?

"Hey, what's up?"

"SEPH-I-ROTH oh sorry what I didn't hear you."

Chapter Three: Hiding Our Flaws

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
- Edgar Allen Poe

He woke up three forevers later (really woke up, not the groggy rolling over because Seifer's hand was dangerously close to touching your belly waking up), and had another weird sleepover moment. The ones where he'd open his eyes after a sleepover and forget he wasn't at his house.

Nature was really…wiggly. The grass was wiggly. Trees were wiggly. Clouds were wiggly. He was wiggly, too.

Hayner Conway really, really wanted to go climb a tree.

He felt weird and naked and lumpy, like his body was shaped by the clothes he wore and not vice versa, so not wearing them made him revert to a formless fleshy mass. Ew.

"Seifer," he hissed. "Seifer! Are you awake?" All he had was a decent view of the guy's back, wide and slightly tanned. There weren't any scars or anything on it. But when he lay on his side like that you could see his ribs. Hayner wanted to run a stick across them to see if they made a clanking noise like with fences.

"Kinda." The reply came so late it was almost a shock.

"Oh. Sorry." And then again, a few seconds later, "Sorry."

"Hey, you know what's weird?"

"What?"

"You remember how Saturday morning cartoons always made high school look so awesome?" He hadn't turned around or anything. Seifer was just talking with his back to Hayner's face.

"...yeah."

"I dunno. You feel like you missed out on something?"

Hayner thought about saying something like 'Can't miss what you never had' but he knew that wasn't really relevant. "No," he lied. "Never really occurred to me. Why?"

"Just thinking. Jesus." Seifer rolled over onto his belly to pull on his pants, and Hayner idly did the same so that rustling cloth and zippers were the only thing to punctuate the silence.

"So – so where now?" Hayner asked, reasoning with himself that asking Seifer something unsarcastic was about as good as rolling over with his paws in the air with them.

"I just thought we'd keep walking along the river until we get to the ocean."

"Then what?"

"I don't know. Why don't you think of something for once?" he spit, standing up and pulling his vest tight around his shoulders.

It went on like this.

The day he remembered best so far started off pretty normal, and ended pretty normal too, except for the middle went funny. They woke up and washed their faces and their mouths, and tried and failed to catch a big fish in the river, and looked at anything but each other's eyes. They settled for raw fern leaves, which were bitter and stuck in your teeth, and Hayner took a chance at chewing on some bark he remembered being kind of sweet. It was sweet this time, too.

And then they were just walking along with the current, Seifer in front with his hands in his pockets and Hayner sort of wandering a ways behind him. He'd stop to look at funny plants growing by trees or something that looked like a snake or a lizard but turned out to be a stick when he got close, then realize he'd fallen behind and jog to catch up.

All of a sudden a funny pressure in throat, like he'd swallowed an acorn, and no matter how much he swallowed he couldn't get rid of it. And a churning in his stomach, like somebody was mixing it with a spoon, and the pressure built and built and pushed on his ears and he felt absolutely awful. He felt like he'd been reading in a car. He stumbled to the river and fell to his hands and knees, dry heaving once or twice before puking up his breakfast. It was sort of pitiful to watch nothing but slimy, chewed up ferns some out of your mouth, stewing in watery stomach acid and nothing else. He breathed in and out for a second, then puked up more water, leaving a sour and foul taste in his mouth. He may as well have sucked on a brown, rotting crabapple. Hayner grimaced and wiped his hand over his mouth, and cleaned it on the grass. He watched his watery puke sink and wash away in the river, and watched a couple of thin silvery fish come to the surface and try to eat it before spitting it back out.

God, that smell. It was awful. Puke smell.

"Hayner!" Seifer's footsteps were soft but intrusive. "Hayner, Jesus shit, are you okay? Hey. Hey." He kneeled in front of him, Hayner still on his hands and knees, and put his hands on either side of Hayner's head. "Whoa. What happened?"

Thumbs stroked gently across his temples. Breathing in through his nose, Hayner tried to forget the taste in his mouth. "I'm fine," he said thickly. He burped. "I'm okay."

"You sure? Do you need to puke again? Did you eat something rotten? Shit, you didn't try a mushroom, did you? We can't risk shit like that."

"I didn't eat anything you didn't see me eating. I'm just – I'm fine." The hands were still on his face, still cradling, Seifer still kneeling.

"You don't just puke randomly. Nobody just does that." Hayner breathed deeply, and shifted to sit on his butt, eyes still half-closed. "This can't become a thing."

"It happened once," came the weak reply. "Calm down."

"Yeah," Seifer said. "Right." He stood up and dusted off his pants, then turned and kept walking.

Hayner scratched at his cheeks and wobbled to his feet.

The funniest thing happened to your skin when you lived the way Seifer and Hayner did, sick little puppy nomads herding lost memories the way they did. No more watch-shaped tans, white bands with white bulges in the middle, or farmer tans. No more beautiful crisp lines because all of your shirts were the same shape – instead their skin was darkest at the hands and wrists, and faded slowly to white, copper at the forearm, then light brown then pinkish-beige. Their legs were a little stranger; feet were, for the most part, a light golden brown (bake ten years or until done) with slightly lighter bands where straps went in summer – it was easier to make flip-flops than boots – and then that same pattern, dark less dark medium lightdark more light lightest. Some days, when they woke up by the side of the river naked, waiting for their clothes to dry...on the days when the sunlight was mellowed by clouds, Seifer's back looked like a surrealist painting.

It was slow enough out here to notice these things.

God, it was so slow.

It was slow like the river which didn't ever look like it moved but which would take away your shoe if you let it float too long. A giant black snake which swallowed things but gave them back if you only asked.

It went on so long. One day could stretch so far and there were so many days that even ten years in the junkyard city seemed to fade to half of what it was, and twice as long ago.

Hayner had absolutely no clue where they were, of course, or if places like this even had names any more, or whatever. Because holy shit, even with someone like Seifer, he was starting to understand people like the native Americans or crazy religious people who were convinced that God watched everything you did or people who believed in ghosts and yetis and shit. Something made it...hard to remember logical stuff when he woke up one morning smelling a weird bitter mint smell and something faintly sweet inside of all the green.

Seifer was still sleeping, the bastard; he'd always seemed to adjust to everything better than Hayner had.

Standing, and with an uncomfortable stickiness in his mouth, Hayner looked around and headed out across the forest, determined to go out and back before Seifer woke up.

The trees were different here and it was so slow but they'd never actually settled down so nowhere actually felt like home, they'd never really stopped not ever it was so lonely sometimes, sometimes, sometimes.

Sometimes, he had dreams, and he was scared that Seifer could see them when he woke up in the morning. He was scared Seifer could see him say things in his sleep, even if they weren't about his dreams. He didn't know. Hayner had never watched himself asleep.

So sunny and bright. Forests never passed judgment. They were an ecosystem centered around trees and the things that flocked to them. Here a stack of eerie white flowers, there some ferns, there a bush of fine leaves. He sat down, forgetting why he'd walked over here in the first place, and just appreciated it for a while.

There was something beautiful and mechanical about plants, he thought to himself. If he stared at the moss just so, and at such an angle, he imagined he could see water slowly getting sucked up. Like a really slow paper towel, absorbing the water through capillary action. Tiny and inescapable veins branched off into more and tinier inescapable veins, until the whole plant was waterlogged and sagged down, wet and sated.

He had a song stuck in his head. A mopey piano song from when he still played piano. He remembered it because he remembered what his teacher had said to him: this is a sad song Hayner, don't just do the dynamic markings on the page, you have to feel the sad part. You feel sad sometimes, don't you? Pretend that your dog got run over and you're sitting there going Why God, why did you take him? And play it like that's what you're feeling.

He'd barely understood what she'd meant, really, but at the recital somebody's mom told his dad that his song had made her start to cry. His dad said that was a compliment when Hayner asked. Silly way to compliment a person, though, with crying. Being able to make somebody sad wasn't a compliment.

"What're you doing out here?"

Shit. Had Seifer seen him? Gonna make fun of him for communicating with the flowers or whatever? Call him a dirty hippie? Hayner said nothing.

"What, you're giving me the silent treatment? The fuck did I ever do to piss you off anyways?"

"Sorry," Hayner said, ignoring the blond coming to sit next to him.

"Nothin' to apologize for. It's just, Jesus, you're worse than a girl."

The phrase 'How the fuck do you figure that' came to mind, but the signs at the zoo always said Do Not Feed the Bears. Best not to give Seifer any more fodder for the insult cannon. Tick, tock, tick. They always got bad around each other when there was nothing to run away from.

Lying down on the grass, he stared up at the funky stained glass window of the leaves on the sky. They rustled against themselves comfortably and made lacey patterns.

"Where now?" Seifer said abruptly.

"What?"

"The house, or just keep going down the river? I don't care so I'm letting you decide," he waved his hand dismissively in the air, though Hayner had absolutely no idea what he meant.

"Well thanks, master of all. I'm so glad you're trusting me with this decision. Lowly little me is so honored." It was out of his mouth before he thought about it. Haha. Oops? Shit.

Seifer just rolled his eyes and worked on picking apart a tree sapling he'd torn out of the ground. Leaf, by leaf, by leaf. "You're such an annoying fucker." A distinct decrescendo punctuated his sentence, like he lost conviction halfway through but felt the need to keep talking.

Kshrrk. A piece of bark came off the sapling.

He still had nightmares about Marluxia and the green room and the locked up girls, but he couldn't remember them at all. He just remembered being afraid. He remembered being really, really alone, and really afraid.

It was the smile, and the perfect, light brown skin, and the sparkling eyes. It wasn't fair. He had been old enough, when people started to run away, to know enough things to keep going. Had an education. He wasn't ten years old and looking forward to the big adventure of middle school.

His nightmares were gonna start having to take shifts because he had too many things to nightmare about: Marluxia, the teenagers with the knives in the streets, the old relief shelters, "By the way, Hayner, your Dad died in the food tent. It was gross; all the other refugees had to clear out."

"What house?" he asked quietly, letting go of the argument in its entirety. One of these days he was going to have to sit down and organize all his shitty thoughts. They popped up in weird places. He should file them.

"There's a house or some shit over there. Probably abandoned. Didn't you see it? I definitely saw a chimney or something."

"I didn't see anything. It's probably just a rock." He bit a sliver of dead skin off his lip. "...we can check it out if you really want."

There was a snort, and Seifer shifted next to him. "It's right there, you probably just can't see it from where you're sitting. Come over here and look before you just decide I'm stupid." Oh, right. He'd forgotten the cardinal fucking rule. Seifer's always right, just because. What an absolute dick, but whatever.

There was a house there, of course.

Hayner was in a sour mood when they approached it, careless, walking out in the open right up to the front door.

It was huge, unraveling, and beautiful. They hadn't either of them seen a house for an awfully long time, but it wasn't like the thing was a typical house, either. A fading, rusty orange paint peeled off wooden planks; brown shingles came to a sharp point on several parts of the roof. Perhaps it only looked outlandish because it wasn't surrounded by a manicured lawn, no forsythia in sight. The tall sort of weeds that grew on the sides of highways where nobody could be bothered to plant grass dominated, four feet high and rattling with seed pods or slim white flowers. There were all sorts of things on the deck. Buckets, and tools, and a hose coiled to one side. A shovel and a few brooms leaned against the corner next to the screen door. A couple of t shirts draped over the railing.

It was – unsettling. Someone lived there. Who? Would they hurt Hayner, hurt Seifer? But it was so clean and nice – it probably belonged to a woman. It smelled so sweet.

Seifer's white and dark blue were an ugly contrast to the dusty reds. Hayner wanted there to be a plump, gray-headed lady there instead, not quite old enough to be a grandma, but still old enough to know things and give words of advice and who was good for hugging. Or anyone, really, who didn't hate him.

"D'you think a lot of people live here?" Hayner asked, mostly to himself.

"At least two people did." Seifer pointed to a cross in the ground made of a piece of pipe, tightly knotted to a wooden stick. Grass had taken firm hold of the grave in front of it, but the outline was still distinct.

"They can't be bad people," he said. "If they bury their own so nice."

With a scoff, Seifer rocked back on his heels and stared at the door. "Marluxia – " he started.

"Just knock."

He did. There was no answer.

"Well, somebody had to bury that body."

"Maybe they're out."

"Doing what?"

"I dunno. Hunting and gathering. Or farming. Or something."

Pursing his lips, Seifer reached out a hand towards the door, hooking two fingers around the knob. "Then let's loot while the parents are away."

At least two-thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religous or political ideas.
- Aldous Huxley

Clink. Clink. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp. It was their own fault, really. It wasn't as if they were being quiet. They clomped around the house like newly adopted puppies. "I found the bathroom! Seifer, I found the bathroom, should I see if the sink still works?"

"Hang on, hang on, I found the kitchen! Score! There's – there's food everywhere! There's like a whole rack of stuff!"

"Holy crap, how many people live here? There are four or five shirts in this closet!"

So when Hayner rounded the corner and saw, in the open doorway, a figure leaning over a table, back to the door, his heart stopped. He backed up. A person. Shit. Shoulders, and long hair and a lean back, and movement, oh God oh god oh god oh god. What was it doing? Was it coming? It can't have not heard the- she can't have not heard them, not with the noise they were making. She was just – just waiting there. Like a sick joke. Knowing the little boys would come into her trap. Raid my house? Come in here and take my things? I can wait. I know where you are. I know what you look like, now. I'll grind your bones to make my bread.

Clink. Clink. Stomp. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp. Oh God.

He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, because probably it was a towel rack or a hat and a coat or something that wasn't actually a living breathing person and he just couldn't remember what a not-Seifer looked like anyways so that was okay, oh God, but the steps echoed in the corridor and softened on the Persian rug he'd spotted on the floor, this was just like being at a haunted house because it was just a house and not a mansion or anything, so he closed his eyes and breathed through his nose and prayed.

And when the footsteps stopped, he prayed out loud. "Please, please, please please please please please," he whispered.

"Please what?"

He kept his eyes closed. I can't see you if you can't see me.

"Please," he said again. What was he even asking for?

"It takes courage to ask for help," said a decidedly male voice. "But you really ought to know what to do with that help once it's been offered. Most of us don't have this problem."

Hayner inhaled loudly.

"Interesting." A finger on his chin, but he didn't open his eyes. "People usually disguise fear as arrogance. Not the other way around."

"Hayner! I found weapons! Get down here!"

His opened his eyes.

He was staring at the man's neck, where a long chain disappeared down the front of his shirt, and a small scar was indented above his collar bone. And he raised his stare, already dreading what he'd find, the preemptive contempt in the returning gaze of someone furious and wronged.

What he found was a sharp face with hollow cheeks, proud structure and green eyes. Two swathes of long, dark blond hair fell in front of his ears, and he couldn't have been past forty. And he was smiling. Of all things. Not Marluxia's smile, a venomous thing, but a real one, like he knew something and was waiting for Hayner to realize.

"There, now. I'm not scary," he said. He took a step back, putting his hands on either of Hayner's shoulders, "Now, let me look at you. Call your friend up here too, if you please." After giving him a quick once-over, the man shook his head, his hair swaying with the movement. What was this? He wasn't a rich man, but he sure wasn't gruff. Did he live here alone? "Look at you, look at you. Unacceptable. What are you? Two percent body fat? Honestly. You're barely hovering above the definition of starvation, is what you are."

"I- I'm sorry?" Hayner said. What, was he being assessed for a stew?

"Ha!" he barked. The man shook his head. "Now, just hang on a minute. You'll understand I haven't had visitors in quite a while." He turned around and went back into the room he'd come from, Hayner still frozen in position.

"Hayner? Hey, Chickenwuss. Respond, you asshole." Hayner kept his eyes on the door, on the long hair draped over a clean brown turtleneck, and long fingers gathering together papers covered in narrow handwriting and diagrams. His legs were shaking – with relief or panic, he couldn't tell, but whatever it was was yellow. "Hayner! I'm gonna start thinking you croaked or something!"

Seifer stomped up the stairs, stopping halfway when he saw his partner, and he scowled. "The fuck, man? You're right here. Why aren't you – "

"Just get up here, Seifer. And shut up." He scuffed his boot on the wooden floor.

"Seifer, is it?" The man returned to the room, pursing his lips and nodding satisfactorily. "Good name, solid name."

Seifer stared at him. He didn't talk.

"You are both extraordinarily rude," the blond commented.

"We're in your house, uninvited," he replied. "I don't know how many people would welcome that with a smile and not a knife. I know I wouldn't." That was Seifer for you. Hayner stood there like an idiot and couldn't get a word out, but Seifer just slid in and acted like an action movie hero.

"Yes, well, what's the harm. It's not like you'll kill me," the man said, waving a hand dismissively in the air and walking past them down the stairs. "Come on, then! Get some food in your systems before you both keel over."

Hayner and Seifer exchanged glances just before Seifer went thundering down the stairs after him. "We might kill you." They all three of them rounded a corner, though the boys stopped at the threshold of a room with three glass walls. "We have the means."

There were plants lining shelves upon shelves, each one neatly labeled with a tag. The tall sort, and the weed sort, and dandelions, and – mostly boring, green ones with broad leaves. He must've run out of pots at some point, because the lower levels of plants were all inside old shoes, and buckets, and glass jars and things. They grew just the same.

"You? No." He pulled a lever or something, somewhere, and dirty green water rushed into an empty bucket from a PVC pipe. "No, you wouldn't kill," he continued gently, "Not me, not in this situation, not when it's easier to run away. Not if you haven't killed anyone before."

Hayner leaned against the doorframe. He was exhausted to his bones – hadn't they just woke up? He fought a feeling of relief.

The man turned around the look them both in the face. He had a curious smile, this man. "There's a line, and you wouldn't cross it for something this petty. Once you've killed, you don't get over it. There's a look in your eye – call me sentimental. There's sadness to your face. If you're a proper human being, anyways. Given enough examples, I've learned to recognize it." He could have been giving them a biology lecture for all the passion in his voice.

"Now – Hayner, right? If you'll kindly hold onto this pipe for me – I think the tubing outside is twisted."

If you're a proper human being, anyways. Hayner dumbly held onto the PVC pipe, keeping it steady over the bucket. He would ride out this strangeness until he was given a moment of relative piece. Then he'd sort all this out. This stranger, and a house, and the slight shaking in his hand because something was so unnatural about smooth white plastic with digitized numbers stamped on the side.

The man opened a sliding door to the outside, walking in front of the windows and fiddling with was looked like a thick black hose. He gave it a good tug and stared at something on the roof.

Hayner licked his lips and glanced back at Seifer, who leaned against the doorframe with crossed arms and narrowed eyes. "Seifer? What – "

"I vote we stay. He's got food, and he's obviously gone nuts all by himself out here. Did you hear him talk?" His voice took on a bumbling, cartoonish tone. "Dur, you haven't killed before you guys, I can just like tell, you know? I'm sure it's fine to let desperate, starving, violent people half my age and with twice my strength into my house and then ask them to do me favors." He snorted and glanced at the guy outside, still straightening out kinks in the hose. "Unbelievable."

"A – aheh. Well, at least he's harmless, though. So – sure. We can just stay for a while. Maybe get information. He seems like he's adjusted pretty well to this place – I mean he's got a system worked out and everything. He might have maps. I'm not really sure where we are and I saw him taking notes." The spill of information came out in blurts, and he tried to fill the building silence.

Hayner promised himself, silently and meaninglessly, that if he could start over with another person the way he'd started with Seifer, he wouldn't let the hatred spin out of control into this paranoia. But it was already too late. Best cut his losses, and soon.

"Yeah, alright," Seifer said. "Sounds reasona- "

The sliding door was opened again, and the man reentered, dusting himself off. And he gave them this look. It was absolutely deadly. It did things to the insides of Hayner's stomach. It was over in a flash, a quick glance, but his eyes were carved into his face.

"Sorry about that. I like to use rain water for drinking when I can, since I don't have to boil it first. And you boys could certainly use some tea – clears a sore throat." He dumped the green water out of the bucket and pulled the lever again, filling it up with clear water right from the pipe.

"We don't have – "

"You do." He looked at them again, and if anything it solidified Hayner's fear of the previous one, because now the smile in his eyes was real, and gentle. "I suspect you've been halfway sick for so long you've forgotten what it feels like to be healthy."

Before Seifer could object again, "Just humor an old man. I'll give you your information, and your maps."

And as he walked past them, he stopped to tap Hayner right on the forehead. "Fools rush in where fools have been before," he said.

You dehumanize a man as much by returning him to nature - by making him one with rocks, vegetation, and animals - as by turning him into a machine. Both the natural and the mechanical are the opposite of that which is uniquely human. Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.
- Eric Hoffer

Steam rose in little curly puffs from plastic cups. Hayner held his protectively, marveling at a source of constant heat without the burn of fire. Water sure does stay warm for a long time...

"My name, for our purposes, is Vexen," said the man. He fetched a round glass jar from one of the shelves and put it delicately on the kitchen table. "Doctor, professor, mister – they're all applicable, if you feel the need to apply them." Vexen took a plastic spoon and transferred some of whatever brown chunks were in the jar into each of their cups. "That'll take a few minutes to brew. It's sweet birch bark – closest we'll get to sweet, really, at least until the Stevia begins to grow back."

"'For our purposes'?" Hayner asked. It seemed to be a good question, since Vexen chuckled.

"That means, you call me Vexen. I haven't asked for your last names, have I?" He laced his fingers and placed them on the table, crossing his legs. "I've been here for – oh, quite a long time, now. Years. Found the house abandoned, probably in the initial panic. You know, everyone forming refugee camps, starting up their little utopian socialist farms or whatever that was. Shame. Lucky break for me. Yourselves?"

"We – " Hayner started, but was quickly shushed. Seifer pushed a nervous hand through his hair.

"Went to the same school," he finished.

Vexen quirked an eyebrow, smiled, and shook his head. "Indeed," was all he had to say. He seemed to be a very calm person. He didn't fidget, and didn't glance from one boy to the other. Maybe it was just Hayner projecting what he wanted in a grown-up, but he seemed like he knew what he was doing, like he knew what – everyone was going to say – nobody knew things like that. You're being stupid, Hayner. Vexen was a person, after all. For all they knew, a pedophile, or a secret minion of Marluxia's.

"Who were – who are you?" Seifer asked, poking at the slowly unfurling strips of bark in his tea. "I mean – what were you a professor of?"

"Oh, whatever I need to be. Anatomy, botany, ecology, biology, oceanography – a bit of geology, if I have to. One picks up on these things from colleagues. I do have my PhD in optics, which is to say, the physics of light (1). Not much call for that nowadays," he chuckled.

"And what happened?" Hayner asked.

"What happened? I don't know, quite," Vexen took a sip from his cup. "The world hit the off button. Or maybe it was restart. I can't tell, not this early in." Early? Eleven years? Early? It was half Hayner's life.

"To you." Seifer, it seemed, wasn't nearly as good at keeping a neutral tone. He growled, almost. As much as Hayner liked Vexen, Seifer seemed to hate him. He fidgeted when Vexen leveled his gaze on him.

"I adapted, young man. A colleague and I traveled down here and set up shop in the house, worked out a system, got some plans in running order – and he died, so the going is, of course, much slower." There again, that calmness. 'He died' as if it were nothing more than a conversation topic.

Hayner picked up his drink, still watching the steam rise steadily up from by now reddish-brown liquid. He took an exploratory sip, wary of Seifer's eyes on him, and gauged it was cool enough to drink. He took a gulp.

Vexen was right. It was sweet, sort of. It was the sweetest thing Hayner had drunk in a long time. It melted the insides of his throat, and rose up his nostrils, extending warm little tendrils to his brain.

He tried to ignore the way Seifer wouldn't quit staring at him, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt, shooting little glares at Vexen. "It's really good," Hayner said. Warm, and brown, and simple.

"Hot liquid will do that."

"Where do we sleep?" Seifer asked, crossing his arms.

That was Seifer for you. He never bothered with niceties. But the professor didn't even look like he was listening – probably wasn't, loopy old man. He frowned, his eyebrows drawn, staring down into his cup. "Then again," he said quietly, "I suppose the rest of the world couldn't care less. Sit here and make a big deal about poor old us and nothing else is affected. Funny. Funny world."

He glanced up. "On the second floor, the first door on your left is an empty bedroom. Only one left – used to be my aforementioned colleague's. We converted the other into a laboratory, and I'd rather you didn't sleep in my room. Blankets and things are in the attic. Spare clothes, too, should you need them."

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning again.
- Andre Gide

There was an actual mattress on a bed frame and everything. It was a large room, as rooms went – enough space for a two-person bed in one corner, a window, a line of wooden shelves and a bookcase. One of the walls was a bit slanted where it met the roof, and the whole thing was faded wooden paneling. Even a light switch. Seifer gave it a flick, but nothing happened.

Hayner sat down on the bed, hunched over, arms on his knees. He stared at the threadbare shag rug under his boots.

First the gas stations upped their prices. Then they shut down, one by one, and with them the trucks which carted goods. Grocery stores had scarce shelves, and then they were empty. People horded food. People realized they could grow their own food, and got together to do it. Lazy people stole food, and farms fell apart. Some left and some stayed and some died. All a part of growing up. Hayner lost everybody, and he saw Seifer lose his everybody, and one night of "Shit, Lamer. I thought it wouldn't happen to us. Not us" turned into five years of a silent promise. Five years in a city turned into an accident and imprisonment. Then escape, then forever walking, and now this.

It had to happen some time. They all knew that.

Hayner was just like everybody else. He'd just wanted it to last long enough for him to grow up. Then everything could fall apart. Why did he have to miss out? Why wouldn't he ever go to high school? Everybody else did. Why wouldn't he get to go to drunken parties in college? Why wouldn't he get a job? The plan was be a professional Struggle player and have a mansion and like eight puppies. Everybody else got to grow up. Why couldn't he? It wasn't fair.

It wasn't – he was just like everybody else. Why did it have to change, right when he was about to get his own chance at the world? It was like it was his turn at kickball and some kid had popped the ball right when he was about to kick.

And now he was here, with a boy who hated him, missing what he'd never had, and trying to scrape out a routine when everything kept changing and he couldn't do a thing about it! Here he was in a stranger's house in a dead man's room, when he wasn't a proper adventurer. Hayner was suited to going to the beach and not doing homework.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Not like this.

So, Hayner Conway started to cry. The crying started with a thickness in his throat, replacing the tea-cured soreness, and built and built. His thoughts were tiny monsters chasing the water from behind his eyes with fire pokers. He cried because it wasn't fair, and he hadn't gotten what everyone else had always gotten. He cried because of all the silent promises that had withered with nobody there to break them. His mouth started quivering, and he bit down on his lower lip to choke it back. But it wouldn't go. It went inside of his heart and pushed from there until he was crying for real, sobbing with a sort of dark, dark orange color, almost black but not. The tore out of his throat and started to hurt, like a fork was stuck in there. He put his face in his hands carefully and cried and cried until he got a headache throbbing in the front of his skull, and then he cried some more.

As for Seifer, he just stood in the corner quietly, watching Hayner's back shake sporadically. But then, what could he do? They couldn't comfort each other. This moment was too personal. It was too open. Too private.

Seifer left the room, shut the door behind him. He put both of his hands on the railing of the staircase and tried to ignore the building thickness in his throat.

A/N: (1) SEE WHAT I DID THERE OH MAN I'M SO CLEVER

Don't worry, I'm not under the impression that that last part was oh-so-heartbreaking or something. You just do not understand my literary genius.

Also, meet Vexen. Vexen speaks only in movie trailer quotes. Yeah, he's...a lot cooler in my head.