time is industry; I don't know what else to do
Like passing your palm through candle flame, St. John's pretty little metaphor is that he's never quite what he (or anyone else who falls for it) expects. His life keeps getting lived out in anything but experience; he keeps being formed from expectations and deprivation, those twin leeches pulling and sucking him into this strange shape.
One: his mother's looked hurt in and around the eyes since before he can remember. When he was old enough to despise her, after summers with distant relatives, unwanted, he hardly looked at her and he didn't look back.
Two: he stands there looking at Bobby's 2D family and thinks, unwillingly, in bright envious tones, that it might work. He already knows he himself doesn't.
Three: he's never been as tough as he pretends. But he's never pretended to be that tough. Blowing shit up on Bobby's porch wasn't pretending. That was living.
Four: Magneto -- Erik -- is as classic as a magician's hat, a dry sonorous voice summoning forth willpower from black velvet, a tiny flick of movement taking everything he's ever really valued from his hands -- and returning it, with ridiculous gifts, words he can't even say in relation to himself ever because even he can't pretend that hard. He's heard or read or maybe it was something Professor Munroe said, that lightning leaves a mark when strikes a person, and a mark where it exits. He's still looking.
Five: Sometime before he started sleeping at Liz and Henry's house, and sometime after they'd met, he realized the look in Liz's eyes she got sometimes was a guardedness that had to do with him and nothing else.
Six: When he's drunk or tired or sick, there's a short period right before things go bad when it doesn't matter and he can just go on like nothing's happening because in a way nothing IS happening, he is blind, he can't understand what's going on around him, and he's fucked. So he might as well keep walking.
"I don't understand you," says Warren, and John always has to grit his teeth to stop all the things he wants to say from coming out. All the bile, for instance, that rises from the seat of who he is. He contains worlds in all the things he's never said. But if that's so, it's because he's too petty, too unjustifiably bitter to stop scowling people away; and too stubborn to abandon his inconsequential drawing up, except.
Except he's not sure he's not still right, because even now he'd burn his fucking house down, all of it. He wants the warped piano crammed into the hallway to whine as strings heat and drip down in beads. He wants the fridge to literally explode with flames, glass and plastic and noxious fumes accompanied by the sizzle of cooking meat. He would force the flames higher, through the hollow portions of the walls so the house would heat like it never was during the winter. When Liz looks at him -- I know you know I know you know -- all that stops because it's all he really ever wanted, someone who knew. When he looks at Liz he doesn't know anymore who he is, but she does. (How much string is in the world.
Who has it.) He could live with that, except.
"You are a god among insects," and every time John hears that he hears something new, including things he didn't want to hear. That his voice is rich with irony, and that gentle patronizing feels like a warm hand down his spine. (I’ve heard of the light
no one wants to be photographed in
and this must be it.) "Never let anyone tell you differently." That even if it's charity, there's a gift of truth in it, and he gave it easily. That even the beat of helicoptor blades can't stop him from knowing exactly what he says to Mystique, and that the freezing torrent of wind that comes with the craft's lowering feels like triumph.
From day one, this has grown wildly beyond anything he'd hoped for.
On the other hand, John has never known what he wanted to be when he grows up, and he still doesn't. He has no concept of what college would be like. He has no idea what's going to happen once this is all over. Maybe nothing at all.
Wanda and Pietro have both told him that their father is likely to be more forgiving once they know why he's been gone. John was too afraid to ask them what the Magneto they know is like. Whether when he looks at you -- you know I know you know I know -- it's like there's no point in doing or being anything but straightforward. When Pietro said the other Pyro had disappeared when Magneto did, his stomach seemed to drop inside. Suddenly he felt sorry for this other John, this older, clueless John who tried to burn through stone and only had fire to laugh at. It's as if they've been on this same trip together, invisible to each other and so fucking different, but everything ends up the same.
(Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me)
And if they ever met, he wouldn't ask how it felt, and he wouldn't show him that he doesn't need the lighter anymore. He wouldn't send him to Liz. This is his. He's still selfish enough for honesty, when it concerns this. He's always been very adept at selfishness.
When he leaves Erik again (if he lives, if he doesn't sink back into the easy obedience of a life following his voice) John wonders who he'll be then.
One: his mother's looked hurt in and around the eyes since before he can remember. When he was old enough to despise her, after summers with distant relatives, unwanted, he hardly looked at her and he didn't look back.
Two: he stands there looking at Bobby's 2D family and thinks, unwillingly, in bright envious tones, that it might work. He already knows he himself doesn't.
Three: he's never been as tough as he pretends. But he's never pretended to be that tough. Blowing shit up on Bobby's porch wasn't pretending. That was living.
Four: Magneto -- Erik -- is as classic as a magician's hat, a dry sonorous voice summoning forth willpower from black velvet, a tiny flick of movement taking everything he's ever really valued from his hands -- and returning it, with ridiculous gifts, words he can't even say in relation to himself ever because even he can't pretend that hard. He's heard or read or maybe it was something Professor Munroe said, that lightning leaves a mark when strikes a person, and a mark where it exits. He's still looking.
Five: Sometime before he started sleeping at Liz and Henry's house, and sometime after they'd met, he realized the look in Liz's eyes she got sometimes was a guardedness that had to do with him and nothing else.
Six: When he's drunk or tired or sick, there's a short period right before things go bad when it doesn't matter and he can just go on like nothing's happening because in a way nothing IS happening, he is blind, he can't understand what's going on around him, and he's fucked. So he might as well keep walking.
"I don't understand you," says Warren, and John always has to grit his teeth to stop all the things he wants to say from coming out. All the bile, for instance, that rises from the seat of who he is. He contains worlds in all the things he's never said. But if that's so, it's because he's too petty, too unjustifiably bitter to stop scowling people away; and too stubborn to abandon his inconsequential drawing up, except.
Except he's not sure he's not still right, because even now he'd burn his fucking house down, all of it. He wants the warped piano crammed into the hallway to whine as strings heat and drip down in beads. He wants the fridge to literally explode with flames, glass and plastic and noxious fumes accompanied by the sizzle of cooking meat. He would force the flames higher, through the hollow portions of the walls so the house would heat like it never was during the winter. When Liz looks at him -- I know you know I know you know -- all that stops because it's all he really ever wanted, someone who knew. When he looks at Liz he doesn't know anymore who he is, but she does. (How much string is in the world.
Who has it.) He could live with that, except.
"You are a god among insects," and every time John hears that he hears something new, including things he didn't want to hear. That his voice is rich with irony, and that gentle patronizing feels like a warm hand down his spine. (I’ve heard of the light
no one wants to be photographed in
and this must be it.) "Never let anyone tell you differently." That even if it's charity, there's a gift of truth in it, and he gave it easily. That even the beat of helicoptor blades can't stop him from knowing exactly what he says to Mystique, and that the freezing torrent of wind that comes with the craft's lowering feels like triumph.
From day one, this has grown wildly beyond anything he'd hoped for.
On the other hand, John has never known what he wanted to be when he grows up, and he still doesn't. He has no concept of what college would be like. He has no idea what's going to happen once this is all over. Maybe nothing at all.
Wanda and Pietro have both told him that their father is likely to be more forgiving once they know why he's been gone. John was too afraid to ask them what the Magneto they know is like. Whether when he looks at you -- you know I know you know I know -- it's like there's no point in doing or being anything but straightforward. When Pietro said the other Pyro had disappeared when Magneto did, his stomach seemed to drop inside. Suddenly he felt sorry for this other John, this older, clueless John who tried to burn through stone and only had fire to laugh at. It's as if they've been on this same trip together, invisible to each other and so fucking different, but everything ends up the same.
(Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me)
And if they ever met, he wouldn't ask how it felt, and he wouldn't show him that he doesn't need the lighter anymore. He wouldn't send him to Liz. This is his. He's still selfish enough for honesty, when it concerns this. He's always been very adept at selfishness.
When he leaves Erik again (if he lives, if he doesn't sink back into the easy obedience of a life following his voice) John wonders who he'll be then.