before Silent Hill
we ain't sure where you stand.'>With enough time, all that he is (for example, carbon), will succumb to the clenching inside and become coal. And coals can become diamonds but nobody withstands that amount of pressure for such a long time. There's a part of him that vaguely understands this. There's a part of him that rejects this, because he has better things now, lucky things, and nice things (that is a word someone like him is sure to dislike). "Nice" does not mean smiles and puppies and kittens. "Nice" means that he can act like he's seventeen years old and it will be okay. "Nice" is the way the curtains move in the wind in the kitchen, where they might never be an ideal family but it works out; it's when he and Henry and Warren don't have to bite their tongues every second trying to keep it together. It's the way Helena's hair feels in his hand, light and bereft of history dating to the time when he hadn't been able to decide who he was. (What I tell you three times is true.)
It means domesticity, not without tension but it's proper, good tension, the kind that keeps the surface of the water calm by always reaching, always pulling and holding.
It's only one part of him (because you are, in your simplest form, no molecule or element but the outright expression of your desires), however. And it's not a choice he likes to make. He is reasonably certain, however, that loving Liz is not what's going to get him and his family through this. That will be the heart of it, maybe, but hearts reside behind bones, and John's bones are made of anger, venom, mirror shards, and vegetable graters. He's a psychic junkyard, protected as much by the presumption no one would want to pick through the razor-edged cans and body-shaped bags as the miscellanea itself. Inside, he saves small things: memories, Helena's ring, the ghost of his old lighter.
He knows but he doesn't know how Silent Hill will peel back the scrap metal and leave him raw. But that's just what happens, when you're living a certain kind of life, such as the life of John "I'm the worst one" Allerdyce.
(In his defense, that had been prior to meeting Erik.)
(He wonders what Magneto would be like in Silent Hill.)
The fact he still wonders things like this, he knows, is a sign he hasn't left as much behind as he'd like to think. As he says. As he acts. It's no longer a conscious decision to do these things. You are what you want, and you are what you do. If he is quiet and still, then maybe he will become the reflection he stares into. (What I tell you three times is true.)
Or he'll become very quietly fucked up, but that's incredibly angsty and dismissed immediately. He doesn't do that. He isn't that. Who he is, and will become, is clear to anybody who is looking: he likes Helena, her sturdy, down to earth, straight-shouldered peaceable defiance to life, her laughter, and he likes who he is around her. He likes control: being calm, trying to be useful, anticipating, reacting, the mildly masochistic satisfaction in not allowing himself to act as he once might have. And while blowing up cars will never stop being fun, he's had his fill of that, and the consequences that come with it. He's done with that. (What I tell you --)
He hadn't fully unpacked when he'd returned. It doesn't take long to do it again. The boxes go in the closet. There's a short letter on his desk. The room looks clean and bare, ready for somebody's new beginnings. John hope they'll be his.
It means domesticity, not without tension but it's proper, good tension, the kind that keeps the surface of the water calm by always reaching, always pulling and holding.
It's only one part of him (because you are, in your simplest form, no molecule or element but the outright expression of your desires), however. And it's not a choice he likes to make. He is reasonably certain, however, that loving Liz is not what's going to get him and his family through this. That will be the heart of it, maybe, but hearts reside behind bones, and John's bones are made of anger, venom, mirror shards, and vegetable graters. He's a psychic junkyard, protected as much by the presumption no one would want to pick through the razor-edged cans and body-shaped bags as the miscellanea itself. Inside, he saves small things: memories, Helena's ring, the ghost of his old lighter.
He knows but he doesn't know how Silent Hill will peel back the scrap metal and leave him raw. But that's just what happens, when you're living a certain kind of life, such as the life of John "I'm the worst one" Allerdyce.
(In his defense, that had been prior to meeting Erik.)
(He wonders what Magneto would be like in Silent Hill.)
The fact he still wonders things like this, he knows, is a sign he hasn't left as much behind as he'd like to think. As he says. As he acts. It's no longer a conscious decision to do these things. You are what you want, and you are what you do. If he is quiet and still, then maybe he will become the reflection he stares into. (What I tell you three times is true.)
Or he'll become very quietly fucked up, but that's incredibly angsty and dismissed immediately. He doesn't do that. He isn't that. Who he is, and will become, is clear to anybody who is looking: he likes Helena, her sturdy, down to earth, straight-shouldered peaceable defiance to life, her laughter, and he likes who he is around her. He likes control: being calm, trying to be useful, anticipating, reacting, the mildly masochistic satisfaction in not allowing himself to act as he once might have. And while blowing up cars will never stop being fun, he's had his fill of that, and the consequences that come with it. He's done with that. (What I tell you --)
He hadn't fully unpacked when he'd returned. It doesn't take long to do it again. The boxes go in the closet. There's a short letter on his desk. The room looks clean and bare, ready for somebody's new beginnings. John hope they'll be his.