Title: Catharsis [2/4]
Series: FE9 AU
Character/Pairing: Ike/Soren , there's minor mentioned BoydMist and TitaniaRhys (with a brief mention to GreilTitania that never was, but that's canon anyways) and Ranulf/his fanclub
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU Trust stemmed the bleeding, comfort dulled the pain.
A/N: 30_ways: #23 - What you say, what you mean / The Gauntlet, 26. I would stop running, if knew there was a chance.
Winter
Soren fingered the fringe of matted, unweaving thread in his coat. He needed a new one, but couldn't afford it anytime soon. That was life in its purest form; everything had a monetary value and his current was not enough. Money made the world go around, not love. Only fools and dreamers would think otherwise.
If he could just make a bit more, just a bit, perhaps he'd find some elusive freedom. He certainly couldn't trust anyone else to help on this endeavor.
Soren remembered begging for a few scraps and living. He remembered the constant pangs inside and how he watched each person, wondering if this one too would pass by him as if he were nothing but gutter filth.
Not one stopped. No, not one.
The fear had already begun to rise in him, like cold digging in during the fall nights. He had thought that it was conquered with his sameness, the rituals but now this change clawed at him. He knew. He knew, and the certainty came with the clocklike beating of in his chest.
He knew.
.
With the money he'd received Soren bought exactly three units of nonperishable foods (nuts, something reasonably healthy and easy to put in far places.) The rest was to be deposited within a hidden place which would have to substitute for a bank account for the time being.
When he reached his blank, orderly room, he pulled out the pristine sock drawer and shoved the packages deep down. He smoothed the lines of black, grey and white socks over the stash. When he was sure it looked inconspicuous, Soren closed the drawer.
Sometimes Soren woke in the middle of the night to check and make sure the food hadn't been stolen. There were other caches of food behind books and between clothes. He always kept a few packets twisted into the lining of his worn book bag. Something within him never could quite accept that starvation wasn't going to come and haunt him again. If anything, at least he would be prepared.
.
Their studying became a routine. Every day after school and Ike's practice, they'd meet up gates and go from there. At first it had been to the library, but since he would inevitably invite Soren home for dinner anyways, they simply skipped the middle step and took it straight to Titania's residence.
He came home later and later. Each time the silent house that awaited him and the sliver of light into the dark rooms was harsher after the warmth of Ike's place. Soren set his books down, neat and precise, so they wouldn't fall.
Stefan leaned against the doorframe. "I see you seem to be getting along well."
"Shut up."
"Ooh. It seems I hit a raw nerve. So let me give you some advice of the world: these things never work out. It's best to give up to the inevitable," Stefan said.
Soren stared away from Stefan's penetrating, knowing gaze. They were all things he himself would've said.
"..why are you even bothering to talk to me?"
"I think you're like looking in the mirror to what I was ten years ago."
Soren turned on him. "Che. Don't project yourself onto me. I'll do what I wish. It's of no concern of yours."
"My, is that any way to treat your father?" Stefan said in mock horror. He held his hand over his chest where his heart purported to be.
"You're no blood of mine," Soren shot back.
Stefaan tilted his head. "But I did take you in from the cold. Shouldn't that count for something?"
"It counts for nothing. The minute I'm eighteen, I'll never darken your doorway again."
"You break my heart," Stefan said sardonically.
"You don't have one to break," Soren shot back.
"Fine. Trust the boy and have that trust betrayed because that is what life does. It betrays. If you give someone your trust then they'll eventually find some way to gleefully break all that faith you put in them."
"You've told me to get out more, to be more congenial and open—"
"Ah, you were listening after all. I wasn't trying to get you to open up, I was trying to get you to be a little more pleasant. It's boring to hang around a stoic all the time. I never said anything about trusting anyone. I don't trust you, you don't trust me and neither of us trust the world. We're alike that way."
"So you were trying to get me to live a lie?"
"The world's a lie inhabited by nothing but empty, vapid liars. Guess what? I'm a liar too," Stefam said.
"...you're incorrigible," Soren replied.
"But of course. I'm human, aren't I?"
"At times I truly wonder," Soren said.
"Of course I'm human. I'm just filthy enough to be one. And you, you're the same. Just as selfish and cruel as all the other humans out there."
Stefan crossed his arms, stuck in his own cynicism. The battle had been won and Stefan was the definite winner. And so it was. Soren had the scars and hunger pangs to prove that the world was not a kind place. How could he believe otherwise when all proof lead him to the same conclusion?
.
Soren kept to himself even more than usual. He avoided places where he would usually run into Ike, and focused simply on his detachment. This is nothing. He is nothing. You are nothing. It was a mantra, a refrain that sang through his mind with a thousand voices. With the woman, the scholar and every foster parent who had treated him with that same plastic politeness.
Soren managed to continue like this until about lunch. It was then that the rhythmic mantra was broken. He always ate lunch alone, as far from the noise of the cafeteria as possible. His meager lunch was in a bag on his lap. Ike's voice broke the spell of Nothing, nothing, nothing in his mind.
"There you are. I was looking for you," Ike said. "I saved you a spot."
"I don't like it," Soren said. He hunkered over his sandwich like a starving animal. Ike's eyes upon him made Soren want to flinch back. He hated having anyone watching him while he ate.
"The cafeteria? No. I don't go there."
"Are you sure? There's pepperoni pizza."
"I said I'm not interested."
Ike shrugged. "There's salad too. If you're into that kind of thing."
"...Why are you still here?" Soren said. "I said that I'm not interested."
"Because we're friends?"
Soren stared down at the floor. The food he'd just wolfed down felt stonelike in his stomach. Nausea swept over him in waves as Ike stared, comprehending him. Learning him. Understanding just what a pathetic person he was, a person who had never quite left the gutter trash childhood behind.
Nothing, nothing, nothing—
"Don't make something out of nothing. I'm your tutor. As soon as our business transaction is finished, then so will our interaction."
"'Interaction' What are you talking about? Like this was some business transaction – Do you really believe that, Soren?"
Soren whetted his lips. He couldn't look Ike in the eye.
"...Yes. I do."
Soren threw the rest of his food in the wastebasket. It was practically physically painful to do it, yet the mere sight of it left him nauseated.
.
When Soren got home he stripped off his clothes and went straight to the shower. Something felt putrid inside him, a blister about to break. A part of him had wanted to go with Ike, even knowing how out of place he'd be among the muscleheads Ike hung out with. Even knowing that it would hurt more when their bonds were severed if he gave into these foolish longings. Still, he wanted it.
Wistful. Wanting.
His skin was ruddy from the merciless rough bristle of the scrub brush. The water was relentlessly hot. Soren scrubbed as if Ike were a virulent form of flu he could expunge from his body if he just scoured hard enough.
Sobs caught in his throat. He felt lightheaded and dizzy, as if the world was moving, moving, moving and he couldn't find a bit of solid ground.
The sameness of his days was being broken. His routine had changed with Ike, and the assimilation had been so complete that Soren hadn't even realized that through it all, he cared.
And that was the worst thing that could happen.
It was breaking, this control, his even rhythm. The walls were no match to warmth and a promise of acceptance. Breaking, breaking his cocoon and last guard. Open was vulnerable. Nothing good came of trusting, for in a world this abysmal, this cruel and twisted, the only thing could come was pain. The shower sang with the sound of Nothingnothingnothing. It rung in his ears, hollow and final and ultimately true.
.
The next day, Soren canceled the appointment. The inevitable result was Ike ending up on his doorstep. A part of him hoped that Ike would take the hint and simply let him fade into a forgotten memory, but Ike wasn't quite so easily cast aside.
The knock came later, as Soren washed his hands his hands, the lather a nest of bubbles flowing over him. Stefan answered the door and must have told Ike where he was, for not long after there were footsteps and a door opening.
Ike turned off the hot water before he said another thing. Soren's hands were raw from scrubbing and his skin under his clothes even more raw.
Nothing......
"What's with you? You're acting weird all of the sudden," Ike said.
"Nothing," Soren said, as giving voice to the mantra, the song in his mind.
"'Nothing' wouldn't having you all in fits over...whatever this is."
"Surely you've heard enough gossip to make up your own story by now," Soren said.
"I don't pay attention to gossip," Ike said.
Soren whetted his lips and took a breath. Where to begin? The starvation, the verbal abuse or the abandonment?
Instead, he didn't. He turned to Ike with all the sourness and bitterness he contained. All opponents to his sameness must be dealt with shortly, before the rhythm was broken irreparably.
"Why are you even bothering to be here?"
"Because you're my friend. Because when friends freak out for no reason at all and cancel appointments, I check on them. That's what I do."
"I don't have friends," Soren said. "Why are you still bothering to be here? I don't want you around. I don't want this–"
Ike closed over his hands, holding them still.. "Soren...what is it? If you don't let it out you're never going to get any better."
Soren took a sharp intake of breath. "You.. You want to know so badly?"
"I want to know what's wrong," Ike said.
Soren turned away. He didn't dare look at Ike. With no calming ritual, Soren wrung his hands in a way which was far too telling. .
"I'm not one of your 'projects'," Soren spat out.
"Projects?"
"You...you're always helping people. Saving people from bullying like you're some kind of hero.
Why are you doing this? Why are you even here? I don't need this! You're wasting your time."
"Because I want to be here," Ike said.
"You.. You're lying."
People don't want to be near me. I'm...nothing. Less than nothing. Gutter trash in a vile world.
"I don't lie, you should know that already."
No, Ike's problem was far more a case of being too blunt with the truth. And from that truth came his own truth tumbling out, spilled on the floor, broken. It came out almost involuntary, like the purging of some long deep held poison.
"I'm.... I'm an orphan. I spent time on the streets. I nearly starved to death and now I'm in foster care. I'm nothing, less than nothing gutter trash. There. Are you happy now? Is that good enough for you? I'm a product of this iwonderful/I world and its stellar social services."
Soren hadn't even begun to skim the surface of his life. There were cold nights and frostbite, the constant filmy feeling of hunger, remaining like a ravenous void inside him.
"And?" Ike said. "I'm supposed to be bothered by this? With the way you were building it up I thought you might confess to drinking human blood or a stack of bodies hidden in the cellar or something."
Ike put himself in Soren's line of vision. Forced him to face him, and the kindness he presented.
"I'm a freak, all right? I'm come to terms with this. It's not as if I need all these banal cliches of s so-called 'happy ending'— I live in the real world and I'm fine."
"If you'd come to terms with it then you wouldn't be holding yourself like that," Ike said. His voice was soft, comforting.
Soren looked down. He held at his arms just above each elbow.
"D-don't you dare pity me. I'm not...n..not..."
"You should know me better than that by now."
Soren's lower lip quivered and he bit down on it. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood. It didn't stop the shaking, for it came from deep within him. It was the imploding of something seemingly strong, yet built with flimsy wires and rhythms and sameness. His sameness had long ago broken, and his bitterness was the mere pretense, a foregone snapping for a battle long ago lost. Still, he clutched to the only things he knew: cynicism and bitterness. The things Ike offered wasn't the cold he was used to. Yet, something floated to the surface. Something that too had been held long, since that first glance and first acknowledgment. Such a fragile, meaningless moment. Such a precious thing.
Soren took a breath, and the words came from deep inside. Without thought, with nothing less than the expression of the secret that had once been there, tied tight.
"...Ike, I.... I took the job because....because it was you. Because I thought you might be different, even if just a little."
"And am I?"
"Yes, you're different. You're not like them. I thought it might be a ploy at first, a way to fool people...but it's not."
"Then what's the problem?"
"Why do are you concerned about this? People never care about me and I don't care about them. That's my life. That's how life works. People are selfish beasts who can't see beyond their own lives to ever bother with another human being."
"I care," Ike said.
Soren stared down. He wasn't used to this. His knees felt weak. He wanted to curl up in a fetal position and wait for the thick heat of the panic to leave him.
"Come here," Ike said.
"No..... I'm not..."
"Then I'll come to you."
Soren found himself buried against Ike's chest, his hair being stroked as if he were a child.
Soren wasn't used to this. He'd never been cared about or held. The few times people had come close to showing any interest, it had been for his own skills, for themselves and their selfish reasons.
But here, a person existed who wasn't simply using him. It existed. It existed.
Of all the people who had told him he meant nothing, Ike disagreed. Every action, everything he had said had been a stark contrast that Soren was terrified and desperately wanted. Here he was, in Ike's arms, sobbing like a child. When he was younger, he had never cried, not even once since his infancy. Each rejection was taken with a blank face, and later, with the same vitriol.
Somewhere within him, the refrain stopped. For once, a tiny voice in Soren began to disagree with the sea of voices, and to agree with Ike's sole dissent. With that acceptance, there was no going back. It frightened Soren to be on the precipice of something that he could very well lose, and yet...there were the seeds of a devotion. He'd follow Ike anywhere. Ike was proof that the world wasn't entirely doomed, wasn't entirely selfish and evil and horrible throughout it all. To the ends of the Earth, to whatever path Ike took. Soren would never leave his side.
But there was no going back at this point. Beyond that was a realization of something that had always been there. Happiness was such a delicate thing. If Ike ever left or tired of him, he would return to the exanimate routines and it would be that much worse for having known the kind of living that was out there. That possibility always hung close, putting a damper on his first touch of hope.
Earth was that much more vulgar for having a glimpse of heaven.
.
Soren took it in small steps. First, he tried simply walking home with Ike every day, and then he dared to go into the cafeteria. He eased into the routine of familiarity. He accustomed himself to the temperature of warmth, though he was more often than not, just as acerbic as ever.
Today he passed all the unpleasant people took the paces toward's Ike's table as if it were a rope bridge he might be swept off of . Ike patted the seat beside him, and Soren walked forward, without looking at the people about the noisy, bustling cafeteria.
"I can't believe the day when I'd see you late for anything," Ike said.
"A teacher kept me after class," Soren said.
"Ah, Nealuchi?"
"I have to fill out my volunteer quota some way. There's nothing quite like mandated volunteering. What isn't to love about school system?" His voice practically dripped with sarcasm.
Ike split his sandwich in two and placed a half before Soren.
Soren blinked for a moment. The sandwich half still remained there, and was not some trick of the eye or mirage.
"You're sharing your food with me? I didn't think that was physically possible," Soren said.
"Hey, I can if it's really needed."
"My impression was that touching your food meant death," Soren replied.
Ranulf leaned in and gaped in mock horror.
"You're sharing your food? Man, you must be in love. Head over heels to actually split your meal with someone. When I was hungry, he was just all 'Tough shit, go get it from someone else'."
"I was not," Ike said, with a laugh. "I said that you could probably get a whole sandwich if you asked Lyre or Kyza."
"And I did. In fact, they both bought me lunch. Scariest double date I ever went on."
"..Double date?" Soren queried.
"You know, a date with two people at once. A date, but doubly so!"
"I don't think it works that way," Soren said.
"Pffff. Fine. I'll call it an awesome date instead. Although I did barely escape with my life that time...it was uh, certainly memorable."
Both Soren and Ike stared at Ranulf as blankly as was physically possible.
"Fiiine, I'll let you two go off and make out in a closet or something. Wouldn't want to get
get in-between the 'Love Birds.'"
Soren suddenly became very interested in his food.
.
Stefan was drunk. Oddly for once it was a happy sort of drunkenness and not his usual cynical personality merely sharpened tenfold. He'd said he'd been out to meet someone, and Soren didn't want to no. Really, he didn't. If Stefan had a romantic life, Soren wanted to be as far from that knowledge as was physically possible.
Stefan grinned at him. He was seriously plastered.
"Pfff. Your problem is that you're not popular with people. Now if you just started dressing like Sothe, you'd get out more. And if you got yourself a girlfriend – or boyfriend, you'd be a lot happier."
Soren stared, his mind breaking in all the worst ways.
"What are you–"
"I'm telling you that you should go get laid, kid."
"...you are the worst father in the world."
.
As the weeks waned, they studied. Nose to the grindstone, unrelenting study for the coming exams. Ike steadily kept on, and Soren took what patience he had to teach Ike the basics. Whatever patience he had within him, it was Ike's. It was the least he could give.
.
Ike waved up a markup. Three instances of B-, two C's and one D. Not even Soren could help Ike figure out Trigonometry, but it'd been a passing grade. Everyone knew Ike wasn't about to go to Harvard anyways.
"You passed," Soren said.
"I did!. All thanks to you, that is."
"Well, here's hoping I can just keep it up until graduation. My GPA is pretty much a lost cause, though," Ike said.
"I didn't think you cared about such things."
"I don't really, but Father wanted me to go, and I don't foresee winning the lottery anytime soon. I guess I'll just have to experience the joys of student aid."
"So this is it..." Soren said.
But something within him fell and quivered, like a bird shot through with an arrow. This was the end of their involvement. What else was there to bind them together?
"Mist's expecting you for dinner. She says you practically need your own placemat now."
"...You still want me around?"
"I thought we went through this already. I told you, you're my friend. I'm not giving up just because you're on some weird angsting trip."
"....all right. But only if your sister isn't making meatloaf this time."
Ike smiled at the attempt of humor, a near first for Soren. He smiled back, although only slightly. Soren wasn't used to this camaraderie, and it felt odd in the best sort of way. Like waking up to realize that a wound had healed over and the pain was no longer a constant bedfellow.
Spring was coming, and with it came the thawing. Soon the ground would be free from winter's icy clutches and every apathetic white creased way melted into something new and beautiful It only took some time, but it was inevitable. Even the coldest of winter's would cease eventually.