bigapplesauce | History Obliterates [closed]

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History Obliterates [closed]

Steven is finally gone, and the Balladeer is alone with himself.

He needed this. He hates to be alone, but he needed this. For days the knowledge (and lack thereof) of what he's done has been crawling under his skin like a physical itch - the one assassin he should be most familiar with, and all he knows is what Greta relayed to him second-hand, from a search somebody did on their cell phone. It's funny. It's really very funny.

One way or another, he ought to know everything about this lost assassination. Either it's his job, or it's his. So once he's alone, he takes himself to a library and gets out every reasonable book he can find, plus a few documentaries on DVD. There seems to be a lot of ridiculous conspiracy theories surrounding the whole thing; sadly, he can't quite convince himself any of them could be true. If Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy, the Balladeer would never have any connection with him at all.

(The stop at the liquor store is an afterthought, a whim built on memories of a thousand morose drinking sessions he never joined. He wonders bitterly if Sam would laugh, and buys whiskey the man could never afford.)

He goes home and spends the day reading. At some point, he opens a bottle. He meant to eat something with it - that helps, right? - but instead he ends up putting one of the documentaries on to watch. He just needs to know.

He loses track of time.

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The Balladeer runs a hand through his hair, curling in on himself a little. "I dunno."

He's been wondering that himself for days. He can't begin to define the amount of time he spent there, but he's been running through it all in his head. Were there signs? He's always thought he knew them like the back of his hand - they can't all keep secrets that well. Even if he never discovered exactly what it was, he'd have realized there was one.

Wouldn't he?

"It's like..like, time's weird," he tries to explain. "So if I were gonna...go, it'd be hard to tell?" There wasn't enough continuity that he's certain he'd notice a blackout. Finding himself somewhere new suddenly was commonplace. "They never really acted like it. Except maybe at the end? Things got scary right before I left - like, right before." He sounds morosely thoughtful. It's a topic he hasn't dwelled on much until now; he ended up here and safe, so it didn't seem to matter.

Greta hums in agreement. She'd taken it as a given that the Balladeer would never have remembered turning into Oswald - he didn't when it happened here, and that was without the added complication of time behaving oddly. But that only excuses him, not the rest of them. Could they really have kept it a secret? Would they have even felt the need to? How many secrets can there be in a universe where the same stories play out over and over, and they all sit around and drink between sessions?

The Balladeer's explanation takes a sudden turn for the alarming, and Greta lifts her head off her hand. She hasn't heard this part of the story before, but there's already something a little too resonant about things getting bad just before a Rift intervention. "What happened?" She scoots a bit closer so she can lay her hand on his shoulder. "What did they do?"

"Iiiii don't...know," the Balladeer replies, focusing hard on the memories he has. They're clear enough, but a lot was happening all at once. "I said some stuff - nothing new, but they got pretty upset. And the music went funny! It was sort of a - a mob situation?" He sounds pretty casual about it. Mobs happen from time to time!

But he frowns, gesturing at the air. "Usually, it's not...I know they're not gonna do anything. They don't like me, but they're not gonna shoot me for real. That'd be stupid! But this time they were just...different."

The Balladeer shrugs. Despite the time that's passed, he seems somewhat wounded by the recollection. He'd felt like he was in real danger. It's not that he'd trusted them, exactly. It's just that he thought he knew where they all stood. The whole thing felt like being at home and having the floor suddenly drop out from under you. "So they were all comin' at me, and I was cornered, so I kinda tried to get out somewhere else, but it didn't go right. Rift got me instead." He's still not entirely clear on if he got out and then was grabbed, or if he never would have escaped at all otherwise. "It was confusing for a minute. I thought - " he snorts " - I thought maybe it was just a new one, like they'd let the President go to Central Park for some reason."

"They mobbed you," she repeats, caught somewhere between concerned and stunned. That doesn't seem like them, from her admittedly limited perspective. What were they even trying to do? Kill him? Would that have allowed Oswald to sort of... step in? The thought makes her shiver, but it's only a guess, and not much of one. There's just no clear path between 'the assassins ganged up on the Balladeer' and 'the Balladeer became Lee Harvey Oswald' (if that's even how it happened, or what would have happened).

It's not as if he needed anyone else's help for the change to occur here. Steven is about as far from a gang of murderers as it's possible to get, and the Balladeer didn't die, he just fainted for a few moments. But the assassins turning on him feels too significant to just be a coincidence. She can't see how it relates, but she also can't see how it wouldn't.

"Nothing like that happened before?" she asks. If it did take mobbing him to make him turn into Oswald, and it's something that had happened over and over, would he at least remember the 'being mobbed' part? Maybe he wouldn't.

Ugh. This is all so... mad. She might have a whole stack of personal reasons for wanting to downplay any connection between that horrible man and her friend, but even if she didn't, it's proving to be an awfully elusive connection.

The Balladeer shakes his head in the negative, shrugging in an expansive gesture. It was a very vivid experience, being cornered. He feels like he'd remember if it had happened before. If he didn't, surely they would. And then it'd be all over their faces every time he argued with them.

"I'm - I know when they're lying," he insists, and immediately doubts his own certainty. He's been certain about a lot of things. They've all been proven wrong. "I think. Who knows what I know?"

He lets his head drop back against the arm of the couch, letting out a rather weak chuckle. "I'm such a - a hypocrite."

And down he goes. Greta watches him keel over, wincing in a sort of weary resignation. It's good that they're talking about this, but she still wishes--

... Well. There's not much point in wishing, anymore.

"No, you're not," she says, giving his arm an encouraging rub. "You didn't remember any of Oswald's business. You still don't. I'm still not convinced you're even the same person." She leans forward a little, trying to catch his gaze. "Regardless, you can't blame yourself for not remembering. That's not your fault."

The Balladeer pulls his arm away, draping it over his eyes. He can't quite bear to be comforted, and certainly doesn't want to meet her gaze. "I should've known. Why'd there just be killers and a - a guy with a guitar?" Ugh. It sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. It sort of always did, he supposes, but...it's all a little more logical now.

"And here's me acting like - " Like he's superior. Like he's not just as much a monster as anyone else in that place. Like he speaks for the country. There's too much to say, so he just waves his other hand in a sharp, hopeless gesture.

Greta sighs when he shrugs her off, but pulls her hand back. She doesn't want to smother him, and she certainly knows how it feels to not think you deserve any comfort.

Still, that doesn't mean she has to take any of this quietly. "No disrespect to your universe," she says with a disapproving little frown that suggests all the disrespect, actually, "but it never did make that much sense. It wasn't even just you and them; there were other people - crowds of other people. How could you possibly have known?"

Edited 2016-04-02 22:48 (UTC)

"They don't count. They're not even real." He regrets it as soon as he's said it. That's not fair. At some point in time, somewhere else, they were. The Balladeer has never discounted the presidents, after all, even if they're just as oblivious to him as all the bystanders. It's a slippery slope. Even if they weren't dead at the end of things, they matter as much as anybody.

He sighs and tries to figure out how to correct himself. "No, I mean - they weren't there." It was only memories of them. They'd done nothing to deserve being trapped like that. He snorts. "They might've been more real than me, I dunno."

There's a considering pause as Greta wonders how best to respond to all this. She's yet to plainly state some of their collective theories from the other day. Part of her worried that 'it was all some sort of fiction' would be too overwhelming on top of everything else... but if he's drinking himself into a state because he feels personally responsible for things that happened decades ago in this universe, well. Maybe the thought that he was just playing a role would be a comfort.

"You know," she starts cautiously, "the other day, when we were trying to figure all this out, we thought... well, we guessed that your universe might not be... real, exactly." That might not be the best way to put it, but he used the term, first. "That it sounded more like a story, with the way things kept repeating. Maybe not a book, because of all the music, but something like a - a show, or a play."

It sounds a bit mad, and she's not sure she's helping, but she barrels onward, anyway. "We were looking up some of the assassins, like Booth, and none of the pictures from history look quite right, not like how I remember from that dream. Maybe none of them were really who they... were." Her brow furrows. Is that really the best she can do, clarity-wise?

She rubs her forehead and sighs. "I think I might need a drink," she mutters.

For such a wild theory, the Balladeer barely seems to react. Instead, he lifts his arm from his face, tilts his head, and peers in the direction of the television without really seeming to see it.

"History, story," he says, turning away again after a moment. "Same thing after a while. 'S no audience here, so this is probably realer." There never has been, to the point that he stopped looking for them months ago. He can't even see the space where they used to exist, but he hasn't yet lost that trick of the eyes that let him distinguish it to begin with. The absence was one of the first things he noticed when he arrived; he just never let it bother him terribly. Before, working himself into an existential crisis when he so clearly did exist hadn't seemed worth it.

As it turns out, his physical presence is maybe not the sure sign of reality he thought it was.

Reaching down, he fishes around for a bottle. Greta's moved them, though, and the ones here were probably all empty anyway. "'Smore in the kitchen, I think. Didn't know what I wanted." If he bought enough alcohol, surely he'd hit on at least one he liked.

Greta's midway through getting to her feet when the Balladeer mentions an audience, and she then she wavers for a moment before straightening. Has he ever mentioned that before? No, she definitely would have remembered.

And she definitely needs a drink.

Iman has given her enough in the way of cocktail lessons for her to not be at a complete loss. Granted, she doesn't have the usual ingredients at her disposal, but there's vodka, and juice in the fridge. It's not terribly sophisticated, but it'll do.

"There was an audience?" she asks as she pours a modest measure of vodka in the bottom of a glass and fills the rest with orange juice. "You could see them? They saw you?" She gives her head a slow shake, rejoining him on the couch. "That sounds... distracting."

The Balladeer remains prone on the couch as Greta goes to make her drink. See, she understands the need for alcohol now.

Her careful comment - she doesn't know what to say, that's why he never told - just makes him shrug. "Seems like...like it'd be weird not to know your future." Actually, it's incredibly normal. But linear time was an interesting thing to get used to. It could have been distressing, to live in such uncertainty after an utterly predictable existence, but he's always been able to roll with things.

Point being, anything is normal if you've always lived with it. "Nobody else saw 'em. Just me, just sort of - " He lifts a hand, and it wavers up and down for a few seconds before he finishes, " - thereish." It's not a good demonstration, but he's not sure how to really indicate it. "Like one of those trick pictures."

"So it was like a play," she says, taking a pensive sip. "And if no one else could see them, that means you were different from the rest of them. Like the narrator." Iman was right. Or so it seems, anyway.

She falls into a thoughtful silence for a few moments. There's still no obvious connection between the Balladeer and Oswald, no obvious reason why the narrator would suddenly turn into one of his own subjects. The only inciting incident they might have is the assassins mobbing him, though she can't - or perhaps just doesn't want to - imagine how that would lead to Oswald's appearance.

"Maybe," she hazards, speaking slowly as the idea takes shape, "when they all ganged up on you, whatever they were trying to do... maybe that would have led to you turning into Oswald, but the Rift took you before it could happen. That might be why you don't remember any of it. It just... didn't happen, for you." She raises her eyebrows at him. "Even if it could have happened, I mean..." she gestures towards the stacked books with her glass, "you didn't do any of this. You're not even from here."

"It's the same thing," he insists fiercely. His world had that much reality; it had to have done, or there was no point to anything. "If I didn't do it here, I did it somewhere."

The other part is a little more tempting. But he can't really buy it, after a moment. "If it didn't happen, why'd it just happen?" He has, pretty incontrovertably, turned into Oswald. It didn't last, but who's to say it won't sometime? What is he going to do next November, or on the anniversary of Oswald's birth, or literally any other important time?

(The man's deathday has come and gone already with no change. That's some comfort.)

Greta frowns in disapproval. "Not if the Rift took you, first," she says shortly. "You could have been Oswald. I could have been dead, but I'm not tromping off to the Park with a shovel to dig myself a grave."

It's not a perfect comparison. She still mourned the loss of the life she could have had, and she doesn't really expect the Balladeer to easily shake off the knowledge of what could have been, either. But here, now, his supposed crimes seem as distant and unreal as her own supposed death. He can't dwell on it forever.

She leans over to put her glass on the coffee table, then fixes the Balladeer with a look that wavers somewhere between anxious and stern. "Listen to me. I don't know why it happened, but I do know that you are not Lee Harvey Oswald. You are the Balladeer, and you're my friend, and you're a good man. Oswald wouldn't have taken in Steven - he certainly wouldn't have strolled into ROMAC, unarmed, to rescue me. You're not the same person. And whatever would have happened in your universe," she grimaces, because it really is a terrible universe, "you deserve to be free of it."

Is any of this getting through? She lets her hand drop with a sigh. "Maybe the Rift did us both a favor, bringing us here."

The Balladeer laughs hollowly. "No kidding."

He leans back, shutting his eyes again. It doesn't seem fair that he should just abdicate responsibility for all this. That's something he's always sneered at in the others - they brag about their actions easily enough, but they're never willing to accept what the actual consequences were. But if this were happening to someone else? Say, Greta? He doubts he'd sit and argue that she should blame herself.

Whatever it may look like, he's not dropping off to sleep. "I bet it's falling apart without me." He felt conflicted about that even before Oswald. The assassins' fates don't worry him much; it's just that he spent his whole life seeing to one job, and then just...left.

Given what he knows now, that may have been a mercy for more than just himself.

"What'm I supposed to do?" he asks with a sigh. "It's not - it's supposed to be me and them, not...this." How can he even begin to make up for it?

Greta retrieves her glass just in time to snort faintly into it when the Balladeer mentions his universe falling apart. "Let it," she says pitilessly. It doesn't deserve him. It never did, really, which makes the Oswald revelation all the more cruel. It couldn't just let the Balladeer go, let him have something like a real life, oh no. That would be far too easy. He has to be dogged by some assassin, and if the others are unavailable, well, there's always the one lurking beneath his own skin.

It's really, profoundly unfair.

She leans against the back of the couch as well, but sideways, so she can watch him. "Be you," she says simply. "Play your music in the Park. Brighten people's days. Keep Steven company. Keep--" she gestures vaguely with her glass, "keep doing all the things you do all the time that none of them ever would, because..." She wants to say 'you're better than them,' but can guess how that might be received just now. "... Because you have a choice," she says instead. "You're not stuck in a loop, watching history repeat itself over and over. You can do whatever you want."

Just that, huh? A life of simple kindness. Mailmen and usherettes. Despite himself, the Balladeer smiles.

"I used to say something like that to them sometimes." They could have been better - even there, even them, he thought they could have been better people. History already happened, but that was no reason to stay trapped in their own cycles of bitterness. If they wanted, they could have learned from it. They didn't have to revel in their own cruelty for the rest of time.

Maybe that was foolish of him.

But it's kind of her. Painfully so; he can feel tears welling up again. Crying this much is another new experience. "Hey." He tilts his head to look at her, reaching out a hand earnestly. "You're - you're the best friend I've ever had." It isn't a high bar, but the point stands.

Did he? That doesn't surprise her, and she makes a 'well, there you have it' gesture with her glass. It's good advice. And unlike the rest of them, the Balladeer is actually in a position (or perhaps just of a disposition) to take it.

The vodka is starting to kick in, making her feel warm and expansive. As such, she's rather moved by the simple act of him finally turning to look at her. The fact that he's on the verge of tears doesn't help matters, and her throat is already tightening in sympathy when he reaches out a hand and pronounces her the best friend he's ever had. Now she's the one fighting back tears, and she hastily sets her glass down so she can reach back with both hands.

"Come here," she says with a sort of maudlin determination. "You need a hug. I need to hug you." It's very important - so much so that she doesn't so much wait for him to meet her as she does haul him over and into her arms. There we go, that's better. "I'm so glad you're here," she says, her tone bordering on fierce even though it's a bit muffled by his shoulder. "It's like Iman said. You're family."

Edited 2016-04-05 11:06 (UTC)

The Balladeer had barely started to move when Greta grabs him and pulls him into her arms. He makes a surprised sound in the back of his throat, one that quickly morphs into a chuckle. "Heyyyyy!"

He works his arms out to wrap them around her, tilting his head into her shoulder. "Did she really say that?" Iman's nice, but they haven't spent much time together except for that one dream. His voice might start getting choked up again; he's not usually quite this emotional, but this has been a roller-coaster of a day. An alcohol-soaked roller-coaster. "That's so nice."

Greta hums in affirmation. "You were there. It was back when I was a mess, and she said that as long as we were all here, together, we were a family." She pulls back just enough so that she can look at him properly. "It goes both ways," she insists, lifting a hand to his cheek, because it's important that he pay attention, and understand. She really means this. "We're here for you, too. No one's giving up on anyone."

Was he? The Balladeer doesn't remember that in the least. But it was a rough night for everyone - and, quite frankly, he probably hadn't interpreted the remark to include himself. Not like this, at least. That night was about Greta, not him.

He meets Greta's gaze as she draws back, caught somewhere between tears and happiness. "I don't - "

Truthfully, he doesn't really know how to handle people being so nice to him. It was a pleasant surprise when he first arrived, but he's never expected this level of support from anybody. He's always been on his own. Not being murdered was always the most he expected of anyone, and even that doesn't seem to have worked out in the long run. The Rift really did do him a favor, didn't it? The Balladeer lifts a hand to cover the one on his cheek. "Thank you."

This might be a bit much. Beneath the haze of stubborn fondness, she's aware of that. He's been through so much recently, and he's not used to kindness. Her instinct is to just pile it on, because he deserves it, and who knows how many years' worth of repeated histories they're making up for, but it's bound to be overwhelming.

Oh, well. She's tipsy; he'll just have to cope.

"You are very welcome." Using his shoulder as leverage, she hoists herself up to press a kiss to his forehead, then sinks back down onto the couch cushions. "You're all right," she adds firmly, more like a promise than a question.

Right. This is good. Even though Oswald's been gone for days, it feels like the Balladeer is finally, fully returned. "You should eat that," she says with a nod towards the muffin. "And we should find something nice to watch while we sober up." She brightens. "And I should text Iman! I have to ask her something. 'S very important." She untangles herself from the Balladeer, but doesn't really move away, instead shifting to lean companionably against him while she rummages for her phone.

The Balladeer snorts softly, a little bewildered by the kiss. That's definitely never happened before. But, he decides, he's okay with it!

"Okaaaay." He shifts back around to grab the muffin, breaking off a piece. It is pretty good - and, as it happens, he's just now realizing that he is kinda hungry. How long ago was lunch? Popping another chunk of muffin in his mouth, he turns to watch Greta text. "Are you having fun dating her? She's wanted to since forever, y'know."

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