[Artemis/Nova] - I don't need your pity

[graveyardmoon]

Who:
Artemis
Nova
When: Monday, 7/25
Where: Artemis's house, Khaharet
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Artemis is a super fucking asshole in this one



Paying Artemis visits uninvited was not normal anymore, or at least it wasn't something Nova had made a habit out doing of since they'd both awakened. But he had been encouraged by the fact that Artemis had actually sought him out to exchange contact information when dragonmail had been suspended. It seemed to be a good sign, one that suggested maybe his frequent intrusions into Artemis' life weren't so unwelcome after all.

So, despite having several different means of warning Artemis that he was dropping by, he decided to do it unannounced, instead. It was a bit of a tradition between them, wasn't it? And since he had inadvertently cast doubt on whether they had very much common ground anymore, it seemed like it would help to draw on something familiar. At least he stopped himself short of letting himself in.

He knocked at the door, and waited.


It was something Artemis would deny, but the truth was that, when he stopped to think about it, he missed Nova when he wasn't around. He just didn't stop to think about it much. He didn't stop to think about anything much, except technical issues which could be solved by sufficient application of brainpower. Feelings, inconveniently, simply sat there, refusing to be solved, forcing you to confront uncomfortable truths about yourself. Life was much simpler if you ignored them.

The knock, he assumed before he even put down the circuitboard and jeweler's screwdriver, must be Nova. Who else was there to visit him at home without warning?

Though he may act as though the visit were an inconvenience to Nova's face, the truth was that he was almost relieved for the distraction. As thoroughly as he threw himself into his work, today's was tedious, nothing more than mindless assembly. He pushed himself up from the desk, taking a moment to comb his fingers through his hair and fix it on the way to the door.

When he opened the door, he stopped, and stared. There was no attempt to hide the confusion and suprise on his face.

Nova? Or...not Nova...?

Rather than embarrass himself by guessing incorrectly, he waited for Nova(?) to speak.


Artemis usually didn't open his door with astonishment to see him. Nova met his surprise and confusion with some of his own, until he realized what the problem was. His hand went up to his now-shortened hair, reflexively.

"I cut it!" he said. "And changed the color." No explanation was offered; 'I'm concerned that your player might try to shoot me on sight' would have been a little jarring without any context. Considering how often Nova had changed his appearance before, maybe Artemis would take it for a sign of restlessness and leave it at that...


He did. His expression melted into something that was the complete opposite of the previous, a beleaguered perfect understanding of Nova being Nova. "I see," was all he said.

Got sick of being stuck in the same body permanently after a remembered lifetime of switching, he assumed.

Artemis stepped aside, holding the door, and motioned Nova into the house.


Nova headed inside, pleased to be let in without grumbling.

In keeping with the theme of drawing on the familiar, he had decided that since Artemis seemed steadfastly disinterested in talking about anything important that had happened since awakening, he would just have to go back to acting the way he had before they had awakened -- or at least, his best approximation. Instead of treating Artemis as though he were fragile, then, he would try gleefully annoying him and hope for the best.

He smiled and dropped into the first chair he came to, "I'm sure you've been wondering what I've been doing since I became a berserker!"


The first chair Nova came to would be the sitting room, and the plush armchair that Artemis had sat in before Nova had stabbed him and forced Heimdall to reveal himself. The carpet had been replaced, along with the table, and anything else that might have soaked up a bloodstain. Other than that, it was the same. Shelves along the walls, new table in the old one's place at the back of the room, pair of armchairs facing one another across a throw rug with no coffee table between them.

Artemis settled in the chair opposite him, looking at Nova with his usual cold, aloof, patronizing disinterest. "Yes, Nova, I am positively mad with curiosity."


"That's what I thought," Nova said, ignoring the sarcasm. "Well, the main thing I've been doing is facing my fears -- since berserkers should be tough, of course. I faced my fear of glass mandras... I sort of faced my fear of my friend Alex, if you want to count that..."


Despite his complete outward lack of enthusiasm, Artemis was glad to have this familiar dynamic. It was a comfortable annoyance, one he knew exactly how to approach, and nothing that challenged him to become introspective or examine the things about himself he'd no desire to examine.

With a skeptical arch to his brow, he asked, "You had a fear of your friend Alexander?" He wasn't that imposing, Nova.


"You saw him at the tournament, didn't you? Imagine that, plus moods! It's a little frightening. I asked him to train me and I furied and stabbed him and he broke my arm." He indicated where the break had been, looking rather proud of himself. "And then Ravindra showed me how to start a bar fight, and it turned into some sort of riot..."


He folded his arms, leaning back in the chair, his brow increasingly knitted as Nova continued.

A berserker Nova was such a strange thing, and yet not much different from Nova as an alchemist. Still focusing on the more ridiculous pursuits of his guild aspect, still enthused about creative mishaps; it was only the nature of those things that had changed. Artemis had suddenly become unable to relate, but he'd only ever related through condescension anyway, so was it really that great a difference?

"Was the bar fight related to another of your fears?" he asked, trying to piece together how that fit in with the topic.


"Sure -- there are all sorts of things that could happen in a bar fight that I was afraid of," Nova answered. "Excruciating pain, losing a tooth... I guess you could even die in one if you were unlucky enough. Especially that one, it turned out." A pause, as he tried to find his way back to the string of events he had been relating, heedless of any additional questions he'd raised.

"I also went to a water park. Have you heard of those?"


Artemis had never been in a bar fight and had absolutely no desire to experience one, so being afraid of what might happen during one didn't really strike him as a fear that needed overcoming. Emotions were inconvenient, but some fears were entirely reasonable as self-preservation measures. Whatever questions had been raised by Nova's continuation went unvoiced; he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Nnnno," he answered, cautiously disdainful, warily half-turning his head away from Nova. This was going to be ridiculous, wasn't it?


"They're supposed to be fun, even though they're terrible. Earth charges admission for people to go inside. They're full of slides -- you climb up a tall ladder and enter a tunnel full of running water, and shoot down it into a pool at the bottom. It's basically a nightmare. My friend Chisaki took me to one for my fear of water." He shuddered theatrically.

"Actually, I couldn't bring myself to go down one of the slides, but they also have pools that generate waves, and I went underneath the water in one of those."


He was right, it was ridiculous. Some of the things Earth had come up with...

Artemis did look sufficiently disapproving upon hearing the explanation, so at least Nova could take solace in knowing that he agreed on the subject of water parks being terrible. "Did you manage to overcome your fear of water?" he asked, skeptically. The way Nova described it, the experience only sounded like it would've made it worse.


"Ah--well-- not really..." Nova slumped back in his chair. "Actually, I didn't overcome any of my fears. But I did face them. And I suppose I could face them again. I think that sort of counts."

Overcoming a fear meant you didn't feel it anymore, right? That's what he thought it should mean, anyway.


"Well, we can't all be perfect," he replied, casually dismissive. Actually, Artemis didn't know anything about fears or the process of overcoming them. He'd yet to encounter any real fears, at least of the sort Nova described. He did have an aversion to taking warps, but that wasn't exactly a fear; there was a legitimate reason for it.

Actually, Artemis had plenty of fears, but none of them were as concrete and noticeable as, say, water or butterflies. They were buried deeper than that. Artemis had never confronted them, nor even recognized them for what they were. All he knew was that if he quit distracting himself for long enough, something began to surface in the far corners of his mind, and he did not want it to have the chance to show him its form. Every time his fears rose, he stomped them down and buried them under work--electronics, programming, tank modifications, potions, resource gathering, anything and everything he could find to occupy his every waking moment, filling the cracks with basic needs like food and hygiene or pursuits like researching Earth's fashion industry. He didn't give himself time to comprehend his fears.

And thus he could decide that he simply didn't have any, and that it made him superior to Nova for having all his ridiculous phobias.


"I suppose not," Nova said, recognizing and appreciating it as one of the little self-congratulatory jabs Artemis was so good at. He must be feeling better these days if he was back to making those!

"Anyway, that's all done with, now. I'm quitting."


Or feeling more comfortable with Nova. It was so difficult to be smugly superior when the other party kept treating you as though you were made of glass.

The speed with which he turned his utterly bewildered expression on Nova could've set a record. "Quitting?" he repeated, as though the word held some strange unknown meaning. "Quitting what?"


"Quitting being a berserker. I'm pretty much a danger to myself and others." He gave a shrug, like it was obvious. Since he couldn't tell the story that explained why, exactly, he was a danger to himself and others, he hoped Artemis would find it obvious, too.

"I suppose I'll have to be a mage or something."


That didn't garner any change in his expression.

Artemis had no trouble believing that Nova as a berserker was, indeed, a danger to himself and others. He was just confounded that Nova was thinking of switching guilds again.

It took him a moment to formulate a response. "If you hadn't been so intent on joining a guild as far removed from alchemy as possible, perhaps you could've avoided wasting your time on this in the first place."


Nova did enjoy the faces Artemis made when he was actually stunned by something. The fact that he seemed to be frozen in this one made it all the more amusing.

What Artemis finally said, though, left him a little lost. He wasn't sure what his 'old self' would have said to that. Brushed it off, he supposed. Explained some eccentric, unlikely rationale for the decision that was meant to entertain them both. But really the answer was quite dismal. It had been a bad decision and he hadn't cared what would happen because of it, and now he was cleaning up the mess.

"You think all that sounds like wasted time?" he complained, meaning for it to be joking, but coming up a little halfhearted.


His expression evened out, hardening in that mildly irritated way that was so intrinsic to Artemis. The lacking in Nova's tone was not lost on him, but he couldn't find it in himself to be sympathetic. He didn't even consider that Nova might be regretting his decision and that he'd just poured salt in the wound. What he heard was Nova being upset over his disapproval, and he had no idea how to handle that.

"You didn't need to become a berserker to fight a glass mandra and visit a water park," he said, cold because he didn't know what else to be. "All the time you spent learning how to be a berserker is wasted as soon as you switch to a new guild."


Hmm, he hadn't looked at it in quite that depressing light. Mainly because he didn't think of life nearly so functionally as Artemis seemed to. Once his research into immortality had produced a workable result, he'd had nothing he desperately needed to accomplish, and nothing but time.

And now that his previous life had turned out to be nonsense, he had limited time, but anything he wished to do with it would be cut short and invalidated whenever he died -- much like Artemis' logic about changing guilds, it seemed to him.

"I'm mortal now," he said. "All my time is wasted time."


That sentiment did not sit well with him. But it wasn't the sort of not-sitting-well that he could disdainfully brush off and ignore.

He'd been immortal too, before reality had decided it wasn't feasible. Like Nova, he had proof of what his life should have been, and he'd awoken to find that proof incontrovertibly falsified. He still had 'Keryos' upstairs, without a core to power it, nothing but a metal skeleton draped in hide. He'd shoved it into a closet but couldn't bring himself to throw it out.

He'd never stopped to think about it. About the fact that he would grow old now, and die someday, and he'd never, ever be able to achieve the goal he'd originally kept himself alive for. There was no Parthena to bring back. There was no Keryos to feed souls to in exchange for an extended lifespan, and no reason to do so outside of inertia. There was no greater goal driving him anymore, no ultimate purpose to accomplish with the time he had left. It was just individual projects, which, no matter how large, held no personal importance to him.

Nova's words weighed on him like a physical force against his chest. A flicker of discomfort went across his face as he sank back against the chair. Arms still folded, his fingers dug into the fabric of his shirt and the flesh beneath, as though the physical discomfort could ground him from the mental.

He couldn't address Nova's sentiment. That would mean putting into words his own visceral reaction--solidifying it--validating it.

Condescension was his fallback. It was comfortable and it didn't force him to confront any harsh truths that he'd rather ignore. "You could at least waste it in a way that contributes productively to society," he shot back, a little too sharp to fit the tone of their usual exchanges.


"Why?" Nova snapped.

He could see that he'd hit a nerve. He didn't know whether to be frustrated with himself for doing it, or with Artemis for having so many taboo subjects to begin with. This visit had been meant as an experiment in not treading on uncomfortable ground. It would have been better to keep it light... at least then he'd know if an amicable conversation with Artemis was still possible.

But what was Artemis even doing, pretending to care about society just to criticize him!


He didn't have an answer to why.

There was no why, really, except because he disapproved of what Nova was doing. He was wise enough to know that response was unacceptable, because he knew it would just make him look childish.

"Why not?" he shot back, which was definitely not on par with Artemis's usual wit. He leaned forward, his arms falling to the armrests of the chair, his fingers curled like talons at the edges. "If you're going to whine that all your time is wasted, you might as well spend it doing something that actually affects things."


As Artemis leaned in, Nova drew back, slouching back against his chair with a frown. Artemis was really digging in. Had it reminded him of his own situation? He could really only imagine Artemis getting passionate about it if it had to do with himself.

"But you don't even like people," Nova said, frustration coloring his tone. He found that the 'whining' comment stung. How was it that he used to take anything Artemis said in stride...?

"How could whether I affect society make the slightest difference to you?"


He didn't like people, and it didn't make a difference to him, and Nova poking holes in his outrage only made him angrier. Artemis didn't like feeling ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. Nova wasn't supposed to point that out.

He wasn't going to answer Nova's direct question. There was no answer that made him look good. He deflected, like he always did, in this case by going back to the original comment that had cut so deeply. "If you truly think you're only wasting time until you die, why bother wasting time at all? Why not get it over with?" He didn't shout or raise his voice, but it was much more heated than the cold way Artemis's anger usually came out.


It really didn't matter quite how he said it. That wasn't something Nova wanted to hear from Artemis. He didn't react at first, trying to rationalize it away. Artemis was just trying to point out why the comment had been foolish. He didn't really mean he didn't care one way or the other.

But what sign had Nova ever had that he would care if he was gone? Heimdall had said that Artemis needed him around -- and he'd accepted that idea blindly because he liked it and wanted to believe it. But nothing else that he had ever learned about Artemis backed it up. Artemis was a person who couldn't -- and didn't want to -- feel anything for other people. Why shouldn't that extend to him?

As that idea took hold, he had to fight to keep his expression from crumbling.

"I'm afraid of the Dark," he answered quietly, but there was anger in it, an accusation that Artemis should know that.


He did know that, but knowing that didn't help. Nova should've known when he'd said it that he was telling Artemis all his time was wasted, too. But Nova hadn't considered that inappropriate to say, and so Artemis didn't consider this inappropriate to say. He didn't care that it was just vindictiveness driving him to say it.

"Then perhaps you could face that fear as well," he snapped, and shoved himself up from the chair to walk out of the room.

He understood what he'd said. He knew it was hurtful. That was why he'd said it. He'd rather hurt the only person he had left than force himself to face his own feelings.

And, of course, he took it for granted that Nova would put up with it and come running back like a lost puppy.


The words dazed him. Nova sat and watched Artemis walk out of his own sitting room, numbly, his mind still struggling with the idea that Artemis was indifferent to whether he lived or died. It was entirely new to him, yet seemed like something he should have noticed all along.

It had never bothered him that Artemis didn't like him. He liked Artemis -- he liked who he was. He admired the qualities in him that seemed so perfect and exemplary, and he found his failings endearing. There had been no need to be appreciated in return. All he wanted was for Artemis to go on being himself, so long as he let him -- what? Watch? That really was pathetic.

It seemed to be falling apart, now. He felt like he'd been pouring his feelings down a hole. Why did it matter to him if Artemis broke apart because of Parthena, or hid himself away forever? Just because he liked who he was? Well, it was very hard to like him right now. What would Nix have had him do in this situation? Smile and appreciate the inflection in his voice as he told him to consider killing himself?

He did come running back, in the end. But when he caught up to Artemis, the first thing he did was scream at him.

"People keep telling me to abandon you, because you're an asshole! The only reason I wouldn't was because your player said you needed me!" He took a breath, trying to steady himself. He hadn't had any goal in mind, saying that, except to get it out of his head and into the open. Maybe Artemis could finally tell him if it had been a lie.


Nova caught up to him in the kitchen, its doorway across the hall from the sitting room, making it the easiest room to run away to. When he heard Nova's footsteps behind him, he stopped, whirling to face him.

But when he heard Nova's words, his cold, angry expression turned stunned.

Nova was, really, the only person he had. There was no one else. Keryos, with whom he'd had some rapport, and Parthena, who had never been anything more than a false memory in the first place, were both gone. He had his work, but it was nothing more than a distraction to keep him from thinking about how miserable and lonely his life had turned out to be.

To hear Nova say that the only reason he stayed around was because of something Heimdall had told him, that everyone else in Nova's life was telling him to leave--and that would be easy, wouldn't it? After all, Nova had other friends who could tell him that.

Artemis had no one.

He realized now that the idea of being completely alone was terrifying.

And he hated it.

He hated that this affected him. He hated that he felt. And most of all, he hated that Nova was forcing him to confront this, and not allowing him the comfortable convenience of an emotionless existence.

He lashed out, grabbing the closest thing and throwing it in a burst of sudden violence. A chair, overturned, hitting the floor with a solid whack. "If you're only here out of pity," he shouted back, "then you can get the Darkness out of my house!"


There was a nuance to that statement that Nova had left out -- that Heimdall's words were all that kept him around when he clearly wasn't wanted.

But right now, anger had made the abridged, more cutting version more appealing, A petty, vindictive part of him wanted Artemis to realize that he'd always had other friends, that he'd never followed him around out of desperation, that he'd only played along with Artemis' complicated set of rules for maintaining his friendship to humor him. It wasn't a wholly conscious thing, but when he said it, the notion that he could walk away from Artemis hadn't felt like a bluff.

It was a bluff, though, and he realized that when Artemis told him to get out. What was he doing? Staying on Artemis' good side enough to be tolerated had been hugely important to him for what felt like fifty years. It was a delicate thing sometimes, and he had worried that much smaller missteps than this one might get him tossed out of Artemis' life forever.

And then he'd thrown it away. Because how could they recover from this, really?

His anger broke, replaced by panic and what he now supposed to be remorse. "Wait -- I'm sorry--"


"You're not sorry," he snapped. "You barely know what being sorry feels like.

"I don't need your pity, Nova. I don't need to be treated as though I'm fragile. I don't need someone who's only staying around because they think I'll shatter otherwise. And I don't need someone who thinks my life is just as meaningless as their own!"


He was being shut out! What a liar -- if Artemis didn't need to be treated like he was fragile, then why was this happening the minute Nova made the wrong move?

"What do you need? I can try to change!"

He didn't care if it sounded pathetic. What if Artemis never wanted to see him again, and this was his last chance to prevent it? He could worry about his pride later.


"Change is the problem!" he shouted, throwing an arm out as if to indicate everything that had happened since he'd awoken from Heimdall's control.

There was a moment of hesitation then, a span of a few heavy breaths where his anger melted into realization, and maybe a touch of fear.

He'd been trying to pretend nothing had changed. Trying to go on like everything was the same as it always had been. But it wasn't. It wasn't. Everything had changed, and he'd refused to accept it. Even his friendship with Nova. The one thing that had been a constant throughout it all, the one thing he could rely on with absolute certainty, and even that couldn't be the same any more.

He straightened with a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing his expression and his emotions under control again. He didn't want to think about this. Emotions were inconvenient; that just kept proving itself true time and time again. He'd rather go back to his busy life full of meaningless work to distract himself from all the emotions he didn't want to acknowledge and if that meant never talking to Nova again, then...

Then fine.

It wasn't as though Nova needed him. And if he hated being alone, that was just one more feeling to shove down with the rest and bury under work.

"Leave," he commanded, coldly.


Nova opened his mouth to reply, but Artemis's harsh expression stopped him.

So this was really happening. Maybe it was always going to happen. He'd lost the rest of his past. Why not Artemis, too?

They weren't the same people they had been. Their common ground was false. Their lives had diverged. And the topic that consumed most of Nova's thoughts, Artemis didn't even want to broach.

Not to mention that Artemis didn't feel the slightest attachment to him.

He nodded and turned to go, eyes stinging.

Why did Lera have to be right?!


Artemis waited in silence, watching him go until he was out of sight of the kitchen, standing perfectly still as he listened for the door to open and shut.

He remained still afterward, not to listen, but because he didn't know what else to do. Where did he go from here? That was the last thing that had genuinely mattered in his life, and now that was gone, too.

He turned away, calmly bending down to right the overturned chair. His world felt dulled, somehow. It didn't matter, he told himself. He could just go back to his work, back to burying everything underneath it until he didn't have to think about this anymore. It wasn't a significant change to lose Nova. He didn't need to care. He could force himself not to.

He did care. His hands tightened on the back of the chair, nails raking against the wood. He glared down at it, not seeing it, only seeing the fight with Nova played back to him.

The thought of sitting down at his desk and putting electronics together made him furious. The thought of Nova made him furious. And the fact that he even felt strongly enough about this to be furious over it made him furious too.

Maybe he wasn't as perfect and detached as he liked to think he was. Maybe he really wasn't above it all.

He couldn't deal with this. He couldn't just pretend this hadn't happened and moved on, like he had with Parthena, like he had with Keryos. At least with those realizations he'd been left with something.

He didn't want this to matter.

Instead of setting the chair right and walking away from it, he threw it over again, almost hoping to hear it break against the floor. It didn't. He moved to the next chair, and threw that too, and then heaved the table over onto the tile, and from there it was simply a process of taking his anger out on anything within convenient reach, until the kitchen looked like a crocobear had run through, and then the sitting room, which he got halfway through before he ran out of energy.

He stopped, standing over a low bookshelf, its contents spilled onto the carpet, spines compromised and pages bent. He set his hand against the wall and closed his eyes and breathed, forcing air in past the tightness in his throat. Beside him, the curtains lay pooled on the floor, and beyond that, the armchairs, the table, the other shelves. He didn't even think about how he'd have to clean this up later. He was too exhausted now to formulate coherent thoughts, everything coming to him as if through a fog. There was only static in his brain now, and a dull aching void in his chest, and that was acceptable.

He dropped to the floor and curled up against the wall, his forehead against his knees, his fingers tangled in his hair, and didn't think. And he was grateful for it.