markedformore | (no subject)

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carla jean

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After the assault at the party -- deserved, needed, desperate -- Erik had shrugged off any help before making his way through the cold and dark streets. His lip bleeds sluggishly with no need for attention and the bruises on his face will fade. If anything, the cold weather is a balm to the pain and so he takes his time.

That and he's fairly sure he's managed to get lost in the process. The Boarding House is usually down these same streets, but Erik's been wandering aimlessly and the scarf and coat he's wearing do nothing to keep out the chill. As well, it's allowed his thoughts to run rampant and he curls the coat tighter about his thin frame as he walks.

One more turn and he's going to need to ask for help, but for now, he settles for swearing under his breath in German, an angry and quiet litany that he sees no point in stopping.

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"I can do that," Carla Jean says with a short, decisive nod, admittedly a little relieved. At least this way, she feels a little useful, rather than like she's just sticking around with him for no good reason. She'd have worried, anyway, no matter what he said about none of the damage being severe. "Someone ought to take a look at them."

"I'm sure Charles will fuss over them eventually," Erik dismisses with a wave of his hand. That, or Billy might insist he see someone. He'll put it off until then, though. "I've been through far worse. This is nothing."

Carla Jean doesn't know who Charles is, but she supposes that isn't what matters anyway. As long as he has someone, that's the important part. Not wanting to think about his having apparently been through worse, she bites her lip through a frown, thoughtful. "Still," she says, "better to be careful. Shouldn't be far now, right?"

"Not at all," he agrees, thinking that he can see it in the distance. He presses his palm gently to his jaw as they walk, allowing the cold to soothe him. "Do you believe that someone can change what they were made into when they were younger?"

Carla Jean falls silent for a moment, thinking about that, but it doesn't take long at all before she nods, a little confused, but not the least bit uncertain. "I do," she says, thinking back briefly to the conversation that preceded her arrival here and shivering a little for it. "There's no reason why anythin' should be set in stone. People can make their own choices, an' if someone wants to change, they should be able to."

It sounds so simple when she says it like that and Erik wishes that he could believe it. It sounds as though a fairytale, however, and Erik's been partial to the pragmatism of the real world for far too long. "Come inside," he says, choosing to dismiss the topic -- for now. "Before we both catch our death of cold."

If there's anything dismissive about his response, Carla Jean doesn't pay it any mind. He'll tell her why he asked if he wants to; she has no reason to press the subject (though she has to wonder if it has something to do with the bruises darkening his face). Instead, she just shoots him a thin smile as she steps inside. "Thanks," she says, though she thinks she's said it already. "Lord, will it be nice to be out of that weather."

"It's miserable, isn't it?" he murmurs his agreement as he stares out the window to the wind whipping snow through the streets. "I've been to a great many places in the world. Some of them were kind to me, others were brutal. I don't think I've felt this dark and depressed since I was a boy."

"I'd never even left Texas before I showed up here," Carla Jean says with a shrug, though her agreement is clear on her face. It is miserable, especially at night, with everything so gloomy and bitter cold like this. "But it don't exactly encourage a person to be happy." She has trouble enough with that these days as it is, and with a sympathetic glance in his direction, she suspects the same is true of him.

"I never made it to Texas." Or, rather, no mutants had brought him that far and Erik is somewhat glad for it. While he's hardly appreciative of the cold, he's not well-enamoured with the hot, either. "And I'm not sure that I was ever predisposed to happiness. I don't think the weather has much affect on me, either way. You?"

"Well, it never got this cold there, I can tell you that," Carla Jean replies wryly, though she imagines that much is obvious. They had their winters, even the occasional snowfall, but dealing with this is a different story. "Doesn't affect me as much as it does some others, so there's that, at least. But as far as happiness goes, I..." Trailing off, she lets out an exhale of a laugh. "I think I've all but given up on that."

"And why is that?" he asks, as blunt as he ever gets. He's not the man one goes to when it comes to soothing emotional replies, but he's hardly without a heart -- no matter how much they tried to cut it out of him with his deepest loves.

For just a moment, Carla Jean only looks at him, drawing in a deep breath. Bluntness is something that she's always been able to appreciate, something she likewise tends towards herself; these are just slightly more difficult things to say, though she has no reason to keep them to herself. "Not long 'fore I showed up here, my husband was killed," she tells him, the choice of words deliberate. He didn't just die, after all, nothing accidental or slow and drawn out, someone slipping away in the night, peaceful. "Few days after that, my Mama died, and I'd just got back from her funeral when the man who killed my husband came for me, too. S'why I was in the state I was when you found me that day."

Erik's blood runs cold at the thought of someone harming Carla Jean in such a way, especially given that she seems an innocent sort. She seems the type to never harm someone without cause -- and Erik has grown to like her. "I'm sorry to hear that," he murmurs. "And I would kill the bastard if he showed up."

Erik has very little hesitations in gravitating towards violence -- a fact he is aware is despairing to a great number of people.

If she ought to be disarmed by how quickly the threat comes, it doesn't occur to Carla Jean to be so, instead just nodding, a barely noticeable movement. When she knows full well that this place doesn't offer her any other protection, she actually appreciates it. At least there's someone on her side. "He was here, once," she says, tone growing momentarily distant. "I found that out a little while ago. He's dead now, but I don't think that means anything around here. People show up who've gone all the time."

"It seems that death comes swiftly and often changes the way we look at the world," Erik murmurs, half in his own world. It takes a moment to shake himself away from it, long enough that he wonders if she's begun to think warily of him. "Do you want him back?"

"I do," Carla Jean answers after only a moment, nodding once. She's a sensible girl; deep down, she knows she'll have to get over him eventually, that the chances of both of them showing up here a second time are slim to none. That doesn't stop her from wanting him here, though. Even if she couldn't be with him, she would want that, just to know that he was safe somewhere. Looking at Erik carefully, she draws in a breath before she asks, "Did somethin' happen to you?"

"Everything has happened to me," Erik replies calmly, keeping his gloves tightly on his hands. After all, they keep him warm and more than that, they protect his secrets. Even in the warmth of the island, Erik shies away from short sleeves because they reveal far too much. "The world was not kind to me, right from the start."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Carla Jean says, simple, without any over the top emotion, but genuine even so. There's little that can be done about something like that, she imagines, and if just a few weeks of that being the case was enough to leave her feeling like she was at her wit's end, she can't really imagine fighting a losing battle like that from the start. "It ain't fair."

"Life isn't. I learned that when I was very young and discovered that people hated me simply because of...well, the life I was born to," he says with a sad smile. It hadn't changed as he got older. No, in fact, it'd grown worse. It couldn't be so simple to be hated and feared once -- no, Erik lives in a special kind of hell where he goes through the same torture again and again.

"No one should do that," Carla Jean says, shaking her head. She isn't naïve, knows full well that it happens all the time, throughout history and on smaller scales, but that doesn't make it right, and she isn't that sort of closed-minded. "I guess sorry wouldn't do any good, but no one should have to go through it, either."

He makes his way into the strange little flat that has become his home. He feels like a stranger here, as though he's going to be evicted at any moment simply because he's not accustomed to living in such a wealthy arrangement. It all comes back to this; people will know him for the imposter he is. He's never had (and perhaps never deserved) a normal life. "I'd like to show you something," he says, turning his attention to the sitting room.

It's private there. Now that Erik is considering showing a second person the ink on his skin that speaks of the darkest days in his personal history, he wants it to be done where there will be no witnesses.

Carla Jean hasn't got the first idea what he might be meaning to show her, but she also doesn't have any cause not to trust him, and that's reason enough to follow along. It seems like the sort of thing that might be important, anyway, if only because of the conversation leading up to it, and if there's anything she can do to help, though it isn't as if whatever he went through before can be undone, she'll do it. "Alright," she says, nodding as she heads in the indicated direction, watching him curiously all the while. "What is it?"

Erik walks leadenly and rolls up the sleeve of his shirt as he goes, bowing his head down and staring at the marks that make up his history. "I had the ill luck of being born at the wrong time with the wrong blood and the wrong talents," he says, hushed. "I was feared and hated from the very start."

Carla Jean draws in a breath through her teeth, glancing from the numbers on his arm back up to Erik again, eyes wide with something like comprehension. It's long before her own time, but she always paid attention in school, and she knows what this means, gets now what he meant by what he said before. "I'll never understand how people could've done that," she says, quiet in turn, resting a hand over his because it seems like the thing to do. "They can be awful everywhere, but..."