open | prompt six | DEMONS

[wrens]

prompt six | D E M O N S be careful in casting out your devil ‘lest you cast out the best thing about you. ( friedrich nietzsche )

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[biter]

[ As if on cue, Polly's thoughts bounce from one concept to the next, as if each suddenly demanded recitation. (The Übermensch, the Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy, perspectivism.)

She doesn't share with the class, shrugging again. ] Yeah, I guess,I dunno. He talks about God being dead an' other philosophical bullshit.

[blitzes]

[ Polly's smart. Barry had never made it to uni, and he hadn't gotten much knocked into his head in school besides how to stay alive, how to keep his head above the rising water. He'd remembered bits and pieces (like blitzkrieg, like flash-bang and shit like that) but not things like Nietzsche, nor perspectivism, or anything of the sort.

It's not pride that colors his expression whenever she starts talking smart, but it's something close. Like pride and awe, like yeah, you've got the upper hand, because where he'd usually blow smoke, he knows he's outmatched, and this isn't a fight, anyway. ]

That kind of talk make him popular?

[biter]

[ Polly snorts because, really, what does she know about being popular? She's never wanted it before and — truth be told — she wouldn't know where to start if she did. It takes too much effort and too much investment for a girl so riddled with insecurities that she has to fight anyone who comes within arm's reach, in order to overcompensate. ]

Fuck if I know. [ Normally there'd be brass in that response — a little bit of bite — but she's less on edge today than she usually is, so Polly just lets it slide. ] Popular enough for me t'know him. Guy's been dead for, like— [ (25th of August, 1900, at age 55. Weimar, Germany.) ] —ever.

[blitzes]

Bully f' him, then.

[ Apparently satisfied with this as a conclusion (relatively speaking) to the discussion, he reaches out to wind a lock of her hair about his fingers.

(Unlike Polly, popularity is the sort of thing that Barry has followed like a dog chasing a car. He doesn't quite know what he'd do upon catching up, and he doesn't realize that it's a race he's never really going to win, either. He just pursues it mercilessly, pursues being likable with the same manic energy with which he does everything else.) ]

Can't do anything for us if he's dead, can 'e?

[biter]

[ Whenever Barry touches Polly the same series of events plays out, a miniature melodrama of insecurity and agression played out in body language and shifts in posture on a small scale. He reaches for her and she flinches — less so now than she used to, once upon a time. She flinches and part of her starts to draw back. Her shoulders tense, she opens her mouth to say something and then—

She stops.

It had confused Barry he first time (and the second and the third, prompting oys and steady ons) but he's come to expect it as much as she's learned to even it out — the transition from recoil to not-quite-relaxed smoother now, more natural. These days all she manages is a twitch of her shoulders, a sharpening of her forearms and then she turning towards him but not offering. Dipping her head down she catches the ridge of his knuckles with her front teeth, a light, puppyish nip that tells him he's welcome (but that he shouldn't get too comfortable either). ]

Yeah, well. Fucker's still got us talkin' 'bout him, so. Had to've done something right. [ Her dark eyes dart up to look at Barry's face and there's some unintelligible sentiment there, like wariness. ]

[blitzes]

[ (It had confused him — and hurt him, to some small degree — for some time. He isn't dumb, as the Blitz murders will prove, but from time to time he's just a touch slow on the uptake. Mostly, it's because of the firm set of his own beliefs. He doesn't believe she couldn't think of herself as beautiful, doesn't believe that she couldn't think that he, at least, could. It's a dumb, dogged kind of loyalty — of love — that he has for her. The kind of love that could get him killed, easy, because there's no doubt that there isn't a person in the world that he wouldn't take on for her sake. And all this coming from a guy who's spent a lot of his life simply running.)

With a small smile, he brushes the pad of his thumb over her chin before dropping his hand back to his side. ]

Tell me 'bout something else. Anything y' want. Long as it's not Nietzsche.