[Memory] The Bridge To Nowhere

Once a brat, always a brat.

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Lars
Posts: 447
Joined: Sun Nov 25, 2018 1:04 pm
Topics: 44
Race: Passive
: nil igitur mors est ad nos
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Thu Jan 03, 2019 1:14 am

Cafeteria | Hamis 19, 2712 | Dinner hour
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If Clover didn't leave him alone, he was going to snap. At first he had been kind and polite, as all servants were expected to be, and had treated the fellow passive with the same respect he showed the others. One could call him a lot of things: uneducated, vacant, lifeless... but not unkind. It wasn't hard to see that there wasn't a lot of life in the young man, but to find anything resembling a cruel nature would certainly require some deep digging.

However.

This girl wouldn't leave him alone--hadn't left him alone in over a week, in fact, and the blonde was just about at his breaking point with her. He could understand wanting a friend. She was new to Brunnhold, despite being twenty-four (having been gated after living on the streets her whole life and running into trouble with the law), and he knew as well as anyone that friends could be hard to come by. Even though they were all pushed together in one university, rivalries sometimes felt more common than any genuine friendships, and Lars couldn't blame anyone for wanting to stick close to a friendly face.

He tried not to, anyway. He couldn't help but blame her for things he knew he shouldn't, for things she couldn't help having been so unfortunately born with. Her voice squeaked and scratched like nails against concrete, and in recent nights he found the noise stuck in his head, driving him away from sleep in the later hours. Her face and form, although naturally pretty, were already so worn and torn from years of the harsh outside world. Her auburn hair was chopped to pieces, the workings of her own hands, uneven and matted atop her head like a bird's nest.

"You can borrow my comb," he had allowed.

"But can't you brush it for me?"

Lars had dealt with her for days. The only solace he found was in the latest hours, spent in his dorm with his roommates Jamie and Bennett. Even then, their chatter rose above their covers, intruding into the corner of the room Lars claimed for himself, knocking on his eardrums and keeping him awake night after night. Perhaps the added stress from the lack of sleep was what made dealing with Clover so difficult, but he was done with the noise.

The passive had been here for almost ten godsdamned years--he would be twenty soon. He was so tired of the noise.

"Lars! There you are!"

There was that screechy voice, shouting across the cafeteria from the entrance and waving her arms wildly in his direction. He closed his eyes briefly, an audible sigh escaping his lips, the man sitting at the table closest to the kitchen's entrance. Never having been the most social of people, there weren't many others at the table, but his roommates made an appearance to sit across from him only moments later.

"Hey," greeted Bennett, all the while Clover neared the table, closing the distance and sitting down beside Lars with a bright smile. Bennett and Jamie alike gave their roommate a knowing expression, a note of silent pity in the latter's eyes.

"Lars, I shouted at you," said Clover, "why didn't you wave back at me?"

"He's sorry, Clover," replied the younger meekly, "he was distracted."

The woman shook her head in dismissal, looking to the food in front of the three men before abruptly standing again, taking off towards the kitchen.

"He's going to die. She's driving him moony."

"You really need to see about getting on different shifts or something, don't you think?" suggested Bennett, the red-headed servant raising an eyebrow almost expectantly. As if they'd had the conversation many times already that week.

Lars did little more than frown, biting the inside of his cheek and poking at his meal with his fork. He knew that he should just talk to his patron and get things sorted out, if possible, but he had little hope that anyone would be understanding of his plight. The passive had never requested anything from them before; he had been content to deal with what he was given and sort things out along the way, but Clover was an entirely new type of problem.

"Oh, come on," Jamie started, speaking as he chewed, "it's clear the poor girl's interested in you. Be nice."

"He is nice. He's always nice--that's why she wont leave him alone, because she's been around cruel people all her life and for some clocking reason, he decided to be the first nice one."

"Well. I think it's kind of cute. Don't you think, Ben?"

"Cute... not the word I'd use."

"Eh, whatever."

The conversation was cut short as Clover returned, plopping back down with food this time and offering smiles to the boys.

"Isn't this just wonderful?" the woman inquired, "four friends eating together every night. You know, when I was in Old Rose--"

"Yes, it's nice."

Clover looked to Lars, her smile faltering only for a moment, "it's nice to see you again."

The boy nodded, plastering a smile to glance her way, "you too; he hasn't seen you since... right before dinner, of course."

Bennett found it hard to suppress a chuckle, the man covering his mouth with the excuse of coughing into his hand.

"Anyhow, how are you boys?"

"I'm exhausted and hungry... mostly hungry," answered Jamie, continuing to shovel food into his mouth even as he spoke. It brought Bennett to roll his eyes, glancing afterwards to Clover and then to Lars.

"I'm about as good as I can be. How are you, Clover?"

"Thank you for asking! But, I'd prefer to hear how Lars is doing, first, after all I asked him."

"You asked all of us, Clover," corrected Lars, irritation starting to slip into his tone, "he is fine. He is tired. He is--"

The man shook his head, earning a concerned look from Clover, who set a calloused hand on his shoulder.

"I hope you can rest soon. You're turning twenty in a few days, aren't you?"

Lars' steel-blue gaze shifted to the woman, "how did you know that?"

"I--Bennett told me."

"Bennett doesn't know."

"Oh. Well, you must have told me at some point--"

"He hasn't told you anything," countered Lars, "how did you know that?"

Clover blinked, expression one of shocked consideration, as if she hadn't expected the conversation to go this way. After a moment she squeezed the other passive's shoulder, leading the man to shrug off the touch.

"I... asked your patron, but he didn't know, and he didn't like me coming into the boys' dorms either, so then I looked around and I found your information and so--"

"You... um," the blonde took a breath, contemplating his next words.

"...why did you do all of that, Clover?"

She cleared her throat in clear discomfort, glancing to the other two passives at the table briefly before turning her attention back to Lars.

"Could we speak alone?"

There were a few moments of awkward silence, the two roommates' gazes downturned and focused on their meals as they tried to ignore the conversation between the others at the table. Lars shifted in his seat, breathing out a sigh of frustration before offering a nod. Wordlessly, he stood, and the woman followed him closely across the room and out of the dining area. It wasn't until they were outside the doors that either of them spoke.

"Lars... I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make things weird for us."

"For us? What do you mean, for us?"

Clover shot him a look that clearly displayed her thoughts--that he should know what she meant, that he was being childish for even asking. It made his skin crawl, to be looked at like that.

"I didn't intend to make things weird with us and your roommates. It's probably weird for them anyway without me doing anything, but--"

"You--you keep saying that, us, he doesn't know what you mean. What do you think we are?"

The woman appeared crestfallen then, "Us... us, of course. Me and you."

"He's sorry, do you--" the man shifted on his feet, "do you think there's something between us? Besides friendship?"

"Well obviously, why are you talking to me like that?"

Lars' expression seemed to shift; eyebrows raised, his typically vacant face taking on a note of what looked like offense, or something of the sort.

"You think that I would want you?"

For once, the woman was quiet. It was such a new and exhilarating noise, the silence, after a week straight of constant chatter and clinging.

"You're... funny. You're moony. I--" he broke off, unable to help a smile, "I would never lower myself to someone of your kind."

"My kind? Lars, we're the same kind!"

"No, no I don't mean passive. I mean your kind, your class, your filth; you absolute trash--do you know who I am, Clover?"

Clover struggled to fight back the tears at her red-rimmed eyes, biting her tongue and managing, "Lars. You're Lars. An unwanted servant like me."

The blonde man moved all of a sudden, grabbing onto the woman's shoulders and pushing her against the wall.

"Laurentius," he snapped, "of the Savatier family of Hesse. My family wanted me--my family wanted everything and they got everything, and do you know why, Clover? Well, they got everything because they took it from the trash like you and your poor little parents and they made it into something. I was going to be a leader, Clover, I was going to take everything like they did, I was going to take everything," the man had to take a breath, glaring into the woman's Anaxi green eyes, "I was never meant to be here. I was never... I was--"

Lars' gaze fell, losing that sudden rush of anger that had pushed the woman and pinned her to the wall. He swallowed, letting up on his hold however not letting go.

"He wasn't meant to be here."

By now Clover's face was stained with the trails her tears had made, her face contorted and mouth turned down in a frown. She sniffed, blinking another few drops of tears into existence, "I didn't--I didn't mean to make you angry. I just wanted to know more about you, I didn't mean to make our relationship public."

The man's eyes darted back up to her face then, "no one ever means to. Not really. He supposes none of us were meant to be here, were we?"

The woman shook her head rapidly, and the motion of it all made the man finally let go, glancing away as Clover stepped hesitantly from the wall. Despite her tears, she came closer, trying to wrap her arms about the other passive however being pushed away. Only, not pushed--the man backhanded her, as if slapping a servant that had spilled something on his clothes.

"Don't touch me," he hissed, "I might be a servant, but at least I came from something."

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