Working on the Rules

Who: Dorian and Mathias
Where: Somewhere in Colorado
When: Around noon

Since his conversation with Caleb on the night of the new moon, Dorian had been relatively quiet. Internally, he'd assumed the worst, taking it as confirmation surrounding the worst of the fears he held about himself. He wasn't sure what he'd become or what to do about it, which was almost as bad as pretending to be something he wasn't. If he'd found himself on his quest for enlightenment, if that was indeed what he'd been doing, then he wasn't pleased with the result. Maybe he'd have been better going insane in Marquette, running Nevermore day in and day out.

Sitting at the table, he went through the task of cleaning his gun, something he should have done yesterday. He'd put it off, initially annoyed by his claws. Even after they were gone, it took him a while to get back around to it. Now they had all the time he could need and he wasn't sure what else to do.

Mathias had slept. He felt comfortable here. He'd been here before, he'd been careful as they were traveling here, checking they weren't being followed, taking every precaution they could to throw anyone who was attempting such a thing off their trail and now, now he was fairly sure that they were safe here and he'd finally relaxed. And he'd relaxed even more after the stress of the new moon was gone and he'd resumed his normal shape. "Hey bro," he greeted Dorian as he walked into the room, mug of coffee in one hand, half-smoked cigarette in the other.

"Hey," Dorian said, looking up from his task. His eyes narrowed in on the coffee mug and he realized he wanted a cup himself, that the scent had been there the whole time. He'd been too focused to realize he was hungry. Coffee would have to do. "Rest well?" he asked, leaving his gun for a moment to rise from the table and make himself a cup.

"Yeah," Mathias agreed, sitting down on the couch, feet up on the coffee table as he rolled his head round to watch his brother move. "Needed it as well. Where's Caleb?" he asked, not seeing his other brother anywhere.

"He's outside. Went for a walk, I think," Dorian answered, glancing towards the window. He didn't see Caleb, but that didn't mean his brother wasn't around. "Want a refill?" he asked, holding up the coffee pot after pouring himself a cup.

"Nah, I'm good - this one's new," Math said, gesturing with his mostly-full mug. "Thanks anyways. I take it I didn't miss anything while I was asleep?" he asked, just checking.

Dorian returned to the table, mug in hand as he sat back down. "Not really. We've mostly been doing our own thing," Dorian said. It was a little bit weird. He was back with his brothers, but he didn't know what to say. Apparently being out of contact with friends and family for so long had only made his ability to communicate with them worse, or so he thought.

Mathias let that drift for a while whilst he finished his cigarette, then he stubbed it out and lay full length on the couch, setting his coffee down on the table. "Go on then - tell me what you've been up to - before the shit hit, anyway. Find anything?" he asked, referencing more about Dorian himself, than any actual physical thing.

Did he want to talk about this? Dorian wasn't all that sure. He wasn't exactly looking forward to distancing Mathias from him as he thought he'd probably done to Caleb. But then, he'd been gone long enough that he had to say something. "Nothing I'm all that proud of," Dorian said, leaving his gun on the table as he looked up at his brother. "I thought I knew what I was. Now I'm not entirely sure."

Mathias considered that. "Why did you do it then?" he asked, not judging at all, just curious. he didn't know what had happened, and hell knew, he'd done enough in his past life he wasn't proud of, but he worked every day to minimize that. And living with no regrets sure helped there. Mathias was Mathias - the center of his own universe, he lived by his own rules and his own moral code. That meant that the only person he could fail was himself.

"Because I wanted to?" Dorian said, then sighed. "You ever steal something, even though you know it's wrong, but you do it anyways because you want to? I feel like that all the time. And when I'm not, when I'm doing what I think is right, or what I should be doing, it's like... I'm restless. I feel trapped." Unlike his brother, Dorian didn't know how to live without regrets. Every action had a reaction and Dorian wasn't always sure how to live with it.

"Yeah, I've taken what I want, just because I want it," Math agreed, easily. "Can you justify it?" he asked, again, curious. "Weight it up between your gain and another's loss. You gain more than they lose and it's fine." It was that easy. And even then, it that balance didn't work out. Well - such was life. There were losers. Math wasn't one of them.

The issue was, Dorian wasn't only talking about stealing. There was a laundry list of things he'd done that society had taught him was just plain wrong. "I killed people, Math. And even if they all deserved it, I don't know how to justify it. I don't know why I made it my business, other than that I wanted to... and nobody else was." Dorian ran his fingers through his hair, then shook his head. "I'm pretty fuckin' sure I'm going to hell."

"Since when have you believe in god, Dor?" Mathias asked him with a laugh, reaching for his cigarettes again. "The fact that they deserved it is your justification. If you can't live with that - don't do it," he said, as if it were that easy. And for Math? It was. He couldn't justify it to himself, so he didn't do it unless it was unavoidable. But he didn't think his brother needed to be preached to, right now. He'd made his choices - he had to live with them, not be told they were wrong.

"Sometimes seems like there should be something, you know?" Dorian said with a little laugh and a shrug. He didn't necessarily believe in God. How could he? God was one of the few beings that he'd never seen actual proof of existence. And if God did exist, then he was screwed for what he was, so it really didn't matter. "Angels and demons running around, though maybe the issue is that neither serve a higher purpose and never have. That humans created the association between angels and heaven, even if heaven doesn't exist. If we're all damned to rot in the ground, no matter what we do, then my only issue is my contradictory conscious."

"What would you prefer? That mom was in league with some kind of satan character? Would that make any difference in the scheme of things?" Mathias asked him. "We all know what demons are, just like we know what angels are - beings driven to good or evil, lacking that element of free will, holding onto that excuse."

"I don't think mom's in league with satan," Dorian said, rolling his eyes. "I just don't know that I have an excuse. If I was human, completely clean, they'd say I was crazy. Certifiably insane. But I'm not. Does that make it okay? No. Can I justify it? To myself, maybe, but the rest of the world would probably have an issue with me dealing out justice where I see fit. I... I don't know how to separate the two," he sighed. "There's what I think and know, and what I feel, and they clash. All the time."

"Bro - the rest of the world would have a problem with you, period, if they found out your mother was a demon. You could be a damn saint and they'd still have issue. And you're not human. It's - we're different. We're never going to be human. We might look it, most of the time. We might have some attributes, but - it's different. We're not human, so we don't live by human rules. It's like trying to get a square peg into a round hole - it doesn't fit," Math stressed to him. yes, he was worried about his brother's confession that he'd killed people, but - Dorian had to find himself. They could deal with what that was later. Mathias had realised the hard way that pretending to be something you weren't didn't work.

Dorian wanted to whine that he wanted to be a round peg, square or not, but he knew that was ridiculous. Mathias was right; it was just a concept he had trouble getting his head around. There was a part of him that had always wanted to play the human because it was socially acceptable, but that could only last for so long. "So, what? We make our own rules?" Dorian asked.

"Yes, we make our own rules. We figure out what we want, what we're comfortable with - then we stick to them. And what's right for me, might not be right for you, might not be right for Caleb. Brothers we may be, but we all inherited different things from our parents, we're all very different. We're a mix, Dorian," Mathias reminded him. "We're not one thing, or another - we don't fit neatly into boxes. There's no rules for us. So we either drive ourselves crazy trying to be something we can never be, or we figure out what the hell we want and do that."

Mathias' explanation helped, but it still left the ball in Dorian's court. He had been hoping that there would be some magical line in the sand, but it turned out that if there was to be a line, he was going to have to draw it himself. Dorian was quiet for a few minutes, letting it sink in. "I'm not entirely comfortable with what I want," he said. "I was comfortable with what drove me insane. There has to be something in between." He just didn't know what that was.

"If you're looking for a rule book, Dor - you're going to be looking a long time. There isn't one. You just need to accept that," Mathias told him, getting the distinct impression that his brother just wanted someone to hand him all the answers. Unfortunately, their lives would never be that easy. "If it drove you insane, you weren't comfortable with it now, were you? Those two really don't go together," he pointed out.

"But it felt right, like... it was what I should want. Now I'm just kind of stuck wondering what to do next. I've been hunting on and off, and something about that feels right, but at the same time... wrong. It goes against what we're taught as humans, and even if I'm not, it's hard to leave that all behind," Dorian explained, feeling a bit like he was talking himself in circles. Mathias wasn't going to have an answer for him. He knew that. But he still wanted one and sometimes bouncing things off another person helped.

"So, what you're saying is that you live your life to what other people think you should be, right?" Math posed. "You talk about what you 'should' want, what you're 'taught' - you're letting society impose standards on you. And, okay - if that's the way you want to live, then fine. If you can live with that. I can't - and I saw you before. I don't think you can either. But, if you want to straitjacket yourself, then fine - do that, if that's what's right for you - Nevermore's still waiting for you back in Marquette. But go into it knowing that it's your choice. The only person who's going to impose rules on your life, is you, Dor. Like I do on mine. I decided for myself what I could and couldn't handle. The human rulebook, it never worked for me. Not from when we were kids, but to live without any rules at all - I like chaos, but anarchy might be taking it a bit too far," he said with a grin.

"You make it sound so easy," Dorian said, rolling his eyes with a small laugh. "So I go with what's right for me. I find my balance, my own set of rules. And then I have to live with the world that can't accept me. Hell, I'm not sure Caleb can, based on my last conversation with him. I can handle hiding what I am-- I've been doing it my whole life-- but hiding who I am to everyone... I don't know if I can do it. Long term, I mean. And I don't know if I can handle them turning away in disgust." As much as he hated to admit it, Dorian knew he needed people. He needed his brothers. Not to accept every little decision he made, but for them to accept him as a person.

"I didn't say it was easy - I said it's what needs to be done. And Caleb's seventeen - I'd be floored if he was actually totally with it - what teenager ever is? Even straight human ones are screwed up at that age," he pointed out. "But - nobody's ever going to accept you if you can't accept yourself. I'm not saying that they always will, but if you're uncomfortable in your own skin, if you don't know what you are and are okay with that? How's anyone else meant to be okay with you?" he posed.

"Yeah," Dorian sighed, now seeing what Mathias meant. He wasn't sure how he'd hoped to 'find himself' in such a short span of time, but at least he felt on track. There were just some issues to figure out along the way, things he'd have to accept about himself before he could move on. "How'd you do it?" he asked his brother. "How are you so sure of--" Dorian laughed. "Never mind. I guess some of that's just who you are," he smiled. "You've always seemed so sure of yourself."

Mathias shook his head. "Bro - yeah, okay, I always.. I know I'm right, right? That's the way it's been put to me before. That I walk through life shaping it around me, but - I've been there, okay? I've done the whole 'trying to be something I'm not'. From both sides, actually. Neither worked out for me, but I found out the hard way that I couldn't be something I'm not - I don't want you to have to go through that, Dor. Either of you."

It was hard for Dorian to believe that Mathias had struggled through anything, particularly because everything seemed to come to him naturally. Easily, even. Sometimes he wondered if Mathias just wandered the earth asking people to give him what he wanted. With girls, that might actually be the case, but he didn't know for sure. The world was a different place for Dorian, where he had to work for everything he got, and then sometimes realized afterwards that it wasn't even what he wanted. "What happened?" he asked. "I mean, you've always seemed to know. Or I didn't notice you struggling."

Mathias chuckled. "You were my little brother, Dor. And you were definitely my little brother then - you were still at school, we didn't really have in depth conversations back then, y'know? The short version was that playing with pretending to be human got me my... girlfriend, I guess - anyway, it got her killed. Playing at being a demon near enough got me killed - I don't know if you want the details there," he said, willing to tell Dorian if he were interested, but not going to impose it on him as he pulled out his cigarettes and lit up before offering the pack to his brother.

Dorian hadn't thought about it like that. Being seven years younger than Mathias, it probably wasn't something to tell a teenager, especially one that looked up to his older brother the way Dorian had. It might have shattered something, or distorted it into confusion. "I didn't know you'd ever had a girlfriend," Dorian said, not expecting to hear about her now that she was dead. That... sucked. "I think I've had enough of playing at being a demon. This was as closer to being killed than I prefer to get."

"That's because I don't talk about her," Mathias told him. He had with Caleb, but that - circumstances. Just like now, really. It took circumstances for Math to be willing to talk about Rachel. "And I - don't really know if she'd classify as 'girlfriend'. From the point of view of a normal person, probably not," he offered, taking that subject because he had his reservations about Dorian's claim to be playing at being a demon. He very much doubted that his brother had been doing that. He viewed it the same way as he'd viewed Caleb's claims to be becoming a monster - the claims of someone who simply didn't know what the hell they were actually talking about.

"If that's how you thought of her, then that's all that matters," Dorian said, thinking that at this point, it was true. He wondered who the girl was, if he'd ever heard Mathias mention her, but he had the feeling the answer was no. Either way, she'd made a profound impact on his life-- enough for Mathias not to play human anymore. It was more than Dorian had needed, instead finding himself stir-crazy working nine to five. "When you played at being a demon... what did you do?" Dorian asked. Maybe it would be easier to own up to his own experiences if he had something to compare them to.

"No - that wasn't how I thought of her. That was just a descriptor for you. I thought of her as... She was there. She was separate. I thought of her as a doll in a box if I'm honest. She loved me. Hell, she was obsessed with me. And I just... kept her there and played normal when I was with her," Mathias said, pulling hard on his cigarette, obviously unhappy with the subject, finding it hard to talk about. Thinking of Rachel brought up painful memories for him. "I thought I could have both worlds - playing normal with her, then leaving her and going off and causing chaos, doing what I do, what I really loved for a while. Then coming back to her to pick up where we left off." Mathias knew he had never really loved her. He wasn't sure that he even knew what love was, or if he could truly feel it. He'd felt strongly for Olivia, but, he couldn't say if he would ever be able to love in a truly human way. "I was wrong. The demon thing came after - you'd think I would have learned, yeah?" Mathias laughed a little, finishing off his cigarette and immediately lighting up another. "I don't know - maybe I rebounded. Human didn't work, so I went to the other side. Ended up in Africa. Found a scrios, decided that I wanted to be... I don't even know now. A protege, maybe? Some shit like that."

It was obvious to Dorian that Mathias wasn't pleased with the subject, at least in how he went from one cigarette to the next. Dorian did that himself, though it took a distinct displeasure for whatever he was doing, a nervous habit to take his mind of the issue. He suspected his brother functioned similarly. "I didn't know," he said softly, reaching out afterwards and stealing a cigarette for himself. There was a lot he didn't know about Mathias, but that happened when they kept themselves distanced. Dorian was guilty of it, and he could understand better why Mathias might do it as well. Now he wondered if it was safe to return home, or if something might follow him, coming after the people he cared about. Mathias and Caleb might be able to take care of themselves, but there were others that he was less sure of. "What would that entail? Being a protege of a scrios?" Dorian asked as he lit up.

"Did mom ever tell you bedtimes stories?" Mathias asked him. "She did to me - though fuck knows how I didn't end up with nightmares. Blood and torture and all sorts of shit that you probably don't want to hear. That's what's involved - not that that's what I got. That's what I expected. That's what I went in for, telling myself that I could do that. That I could be that. What I got was stitched up. Played by a fucking demon who viewed things like you and me as shit on his boot heel. Picked me up, fed me line after line, then skipped town, leaving me carrying the can in an African fucking warzone where the local tribal bushguy whatever wanted my fucking head, and laughing all the way with it."

"Shit..." Dorian muttered. He remembered his mother's bedtime stories, but hadn't thought of them since. They were the reason Dorian had checked under his bed every night, fearful that he'd wake up missing a limb, if alive at all. Their mother had rarely been short on the details when it came to talking about her own kind, the pride in her voice something Dorian had always been confused about as a child. "That's not really what I was doing," Dorian admitted. "More like, ruthlessly hunting some of those guys down. Not for what they are, but for what they did..." Sometimes he'd been paid, but others he just felt the desire to remove such a being from the earth. It didn't take much more than seeing the half-eaten body of a child, it's eyes permanently wide with fear and pain as it bled to death.

"A hunter's not a demon, Dor - you should know that. That's what your best friend does, isn't it?" Mathias asked him, raising an eyebrow as he pulled a drag on his cigarette.

He knew that. That part was easy. It was the enjoyment he got out of doing the actual killing that bothered him. Dorian had to constantly remind himself that he didn't want to kill everyone and everything, just those that deserved it. What bothered him about that philosophy was that he was pretty sure he shouldn't be the one passing judgment. "I guess," Dorian answered, recalling all the issues he'd had with Aiden's style of hunting. "He's out for anything supernatural. Or he was. Or anything with a price tag. I'm not sure if that's changed or not." Everything that went on with Aiden was so muddled up now that he wasn't sure. But he wasn't Aiden. "It's not the hunting that bothers me about myself. It's that... that I can kill something and not give a shit, so long as I think the fucker deserved it."

Mathias gave him a look at that. "Dor, bro - if that's... If you're okay with that, I don't see what your issue is," he said.

"Why am I okay with that?" Dorian asked, because he saw an issue with it. "I enjoy making the kill, I get off on the rush, and that is not fucking normal." Just saying so had Dorian wound up, and he sucked harder on the cigarette, glad for something to take his aggression out on.

"It is for you," Mathias countered.

That wasn't an answer that Dorian could completely accept just yet. It seemed too simple, though the fact that Mathias didn't seem too bothered by it helped some. "I don't want it to be," Dorian said, annoyed by himself. "It means that all that separates me from them is my preference on who to kill, how, and why."

"I already told you - there's no written rule book. What do you think think separates me from what I do?" Mathias asked.

"I don't know," Dorian said. He'd never thought anything against what Mathias did. He'd always found it acceptable, possibly because it was his brother. How other people might see it hadn't ever been an issue.

"You don't know?" Mathias asked, stabbing out his cigarette and leaning forward, facing his brother. "Then I'll tell you - I do. Just me. Nobody else. It took some time, but I figured out what I could live with. What I'm comfortable with. And I stuck to that. And you know what?" he asked. "Sometimes is fucking hard. Some times, I don't want to do it - hell, a lto fo the time, it'd be easier to throw it all away and just do whatever the hell I like. But I don't. I came up with the rules. I live by the rules. That's what I do. I don't kill humans. I don't get involved. I don't put people I care about in danger. If I think I'm doing that, I leave. I don't leave a trail behind me... It goes on. There's lots of rules, Dor. And I learned every single one of them. It's not easy, but fucking hell, life is never easy. Not even for me - though I know what you guys think of me at times. If I make it look easy, it's just because I've been doing this longer than you have, that's all," he said, sounding passionate about that.

Dorian listened, absorbed, and found there was nothing for him to argue about. He'd seen his brother's rules in action, knew the way he lived, and it made a lot more sense when he put it all together. He just hadn't had as many of the pieces before and hadn't taken the time to understand. Mathias had always just seemed so untouchable, so above the world he lived in, that Dorian had never imagined him struggling to find his place. It always just seemed like it was there, waiting for him. "I need to figure out my rules then. Find my medium, a compromise between this and that," Dorian sighed, but nodded to himself. "Have you always been so damn smart?" he asked, lightly teasing to bring up the mood.

"Yeah, I'm a fucking genius - just don't you forget it," Mathias smirked back, always ready to relax into ease again - though it didn't mean for a second that he'd let go of the previous conversation. He was just good at seeming realxed whilst being serious. It was a gift, perhaps.

There was no amount of words that would would suddenly allow Dorian to become comfortable in his own skin, but he was getting there, slowly but surely. It took more work than he thought it would, and everything Mathias had said had given him plenty to think about. He just didn't have all the answers yet, the rest the sort he would have to find on his own. "I don't think I can travel like you do. I like to have a base to come back to... but that will put anyone there in danger, won't it?" he asked, remembering how Mathias had learned his lesson in such a situation.

"I can't answer that for you, Dorian. I'm not advocating you live like I do," he told his brother. "You - my life? I know it's not for everyone. Or, possibly, anyone. I dunno." Dorian didn't know his life. Mathias hadn't shown his brothers anything more than the tip of his life. And he didn't intend to. "You have to find out what works for you, bro."

Dorian slouched back in his chair, his finger slowly tapping on the table as he took one last drag off his cigarette. "Working on it," Dorian said, wishing there was more there, that he'd already found all the answers. It was obvious he hadn't, but at least he was on the path, which was far better than he'd been before.

Math smiled at that and stubbed out his cigarette, getting to his feet. "Every day," he agreed. "Every fucking day." There was nothing else to be said, really. That was just the way it went.