Alexander Pierce-Beales
January 10, 2021 10:42 PM
Let's talk about brothers. [Nathaniel] by Alexander Pierce-Beales
OOC: I've made some assumptions about Nathaniel's state since break; let me know if it should be changed. BIC:
Alexander and Nathaniel's relationship had seen a wide array of (mostly Alexander's) life problems and it had always circled back to family. Siblings were the heart of it all - foster sisters, half-sisters who were also your classmates, half-brothers who you'd never met and probably wouldn't ever . . . the list went on and on. Now, for the first time, it was a half-brother that Alexander would definitely be meeting that brought him to the Teppenpaw Common Room in search of his prefect. He'd left the letters that spurred this game of hide and seek in his room since he didn't need them to relay what was on his mind; he'd reviewed them enough times both by himself and with Mab that he knew the contents by heart.
Nathaniel was as dark and brooding as ever (maybe a bit more than usual since break? It was hard to say) and Alexander approached with his usual caution. "Hi," he said, wide eyes searching his role model's face. "Can I talk to you about something? It's about family again," he said with an apologetic grimace. "Brothers, in this case." It felt weird to say, especially since he had been an only child for all intents and purposes until recently and his relationship with Mab, whilst familial in nature, wasn't the same sort of sibling relationship as what people normally thought of. "I can try again another time if that's better?" he added, not sure whether he did so to be polite to Nathaniel or to himself.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Let's talk about brothers. [Nathaniel]
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Nathaniel Mordue
January 17, 2021 4:59 PM
I'm already thinking of them, so why not. by Nathaniel Mordue
There was something a little surreal about being back at school, calmly going about his business as if nothing had happened, when it felt like the ground beneath his feet had cracked and irreversibly shifted over midterm.All his life – well, most of it, anyway; certainly most of what he could remember – Nathaniel had prided himself on his ability to suppress his emotions, to hide everything that was not suitable for public consumption. He had built his whole identity around that single solid point: no matter what the truth was, he could at least look like the perfect son and brother. And now, as he calmly went about his business as if nothing had happened, he was wrestling with the knowledge that he no longer had that ideal to hold onto.
Sometimes, he still couldn’t quite believe it had really happened. His behavior had been reprehensible. Shouting, swearing, grabbing - horrible behavior. Weak. Wrong. Bestial, horrible – surely it must have been someone else, doing those things, not him, or else someone putting him under Imperius or a Confunding Charm or something –
And yet, it was now clearer than ever (it had been fairly clear before, admittedly, but he had done a better job of ignoring this then) that perfection had not been the correct approach. All doing his best had done was turn his brother into a stranger, someone so alienated from him that he didn’t recognize the person Jeremy had seemed to think he was – all while seeing exactly how Jeremy had come to that conclusion…
It did not make sense to him that good could come from bad, but good had not come from good, either. Clearly, therefore, he was missing something. He had never had the best mind for pure logic – his early tutors could surely all attest to that, with varying degrees of irritation or despair – but it hardly took a gift for rhetoric or mathematics to see that now. So – what was it that he was missing?
The only answer he could come up with was that he had, at some point, made an error when he had formulated his definition of the term ‘good.’ He didn’t like that answer, though. For one thing, it opened up the door to justifying doing what merely felt good – things like allowing himself to lash out and give in to his emotions – and that was a road that could only lead to more pain for everyone. He remembered how it had felt, to just let go, in vivid detail – could see how that feeling could rapidly become addictive. He thought he could have seen that even had he not had so very many bad role models to look at. And for another thing…He had built his definition all around the lessons he had been taught as a child, those long-ago stories about what honor and strength and truth were. So if he added his failure with Jeremy as yet another mark, among several others, against those lessons themselves being true…if he did that, how much longer could it be before the whole thing fell apart, leaving him with nothing but that empty, evil, simple world he had perceived as reality when he was fourteen?
He was much better now. Everyone said so. He knew it himself. And yet…no matter how hard he tried to suppress it, there was always that nagging feeling in the back of his head that being better was just a state of denial. That the world really was that amoral, pitiless blank, and that health was just a sort of collective delusion. That thought frightened him as much as the thought of not being able to do his duty did; he had tried as hard as he could, for years now, to deny it. If everything else fell apart, though, and he couldn’t deny it anymore…what then? How could he live like that and not go utterly mad?
He was brooding on this yet again, staring through some homework without really seeing it, when Alexander approached him. He supposed he must have, based on the quick offer to go away again, had an odd look on his face when he looked up; certainly the topic, once it reached his brain, was not one to reassure him after he’d been startled. He quickly composed his features into something more perfectly. “No, not at all,” he said politely, gesturing toward a seat for the younger boy. “Brothers, hm? I only have one of those, but – how can I help you?”
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Nathaniel Mordue
I'm already thinking of them, so why not.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
January 20, 2021 8:28 AM
I can think of lots of reasons why not. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander took the seat Nathaniel gestured to and fidgeted a bit, his hands in his lap and his eyes on the table as he struggled to formulate exactly what his question was. That was the problem with life; it more often appeared as a question mark than an actual question and forcing words to come out was like trying to reach onto the page and turn the little symbol into an exclamation point."I'm not sure what I'm asking," he finally admitted, giving way to his vulnerability as he exhaled a lot of air he hadn't realized he'd been holding. "The woman who gave birth to me wrote to tell me that my little brother is probably coming here in the fall. That's their plan at least," he added, feeling grumbly about his half-siblings getting to know about this whole place before they were whisked off to a sorting ceremony and years of wondering if they'd lost their minds. "There's five of them altogether and the oldest is almost old enough to come I guess. Winston," he added with a wrinkled nose, feeling like it was generally a pretty ridiculous name.
He looked up at Nathaniel, wondering what Nathaniel felt when Jeremy was about to come to school. It was different of course, but still. Actually, the more Alexander thought of it, the more he hoped that Winston at least wasn't so bad as Jeremy, not that he was going to tell the prefect that.
"Evelyn, Ness, Mab, me, and Winston will all be at school at the same time," he said thoughtfully. "Big happy family reunion. But it's weird, and I don't know how to feel about it. Or what to do about it."
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
I can think of lots of reasons why not.
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Nathaniel Mordue
January 20, 2021 9:25 PM
Well...you're not wrong. by Nathaniel Mordue
Nathaniel found the wording Alexander chose a bit strange – it was almost as if he was a society person in Nathaniel’s own official position, talking about his mother without acknowledging that she was his mother. Nathaniel doubted that Alexander meant it that way (the world seemed to look very different through Alexander’s eyes, which was hardly surprising, given his upbringing; that upbringing was one of the few things Nathaniel had ever heard of which even he could accept as a valid reason to truly and completely discard one’s own mother), but he noted it anyway. It was unlikely that anyone in society was ever going to say something to him that he would have to answer with a reference to his mother, but it was a thought to keep in the back of his head.Other memories, older, were useful to him now, though. Specifically, those involved in putting together who in Alexander’s life was connected to everyone else, and how. Evelyn and Winston – those were Alexander’s half-siblings, but his understanding was that they were not at all related to each other. Mab – he had gathered that was the nickname of one of the younger girls here at school – was not really related to anyone, and neither was Ness McLeod; Evelyn lived with Ness, and Mab and Alexander both lived with some woman in Boston. This meant Ness, presumably, didn’t have to have anything to do with Winston, but Mab and the woman in Boston (Belle, he thought he recalled Alexander calling her) might arguably, as they were only connected to Alexander, just as Ness was only connected to Evelyn – at least, within the first degree. To an extent, perhaps, Ness was also connected to Alexander, considering Ness was connected to Alexander’s sister and Alexander was obviously connected to Alexander’s sister, but….
Sometimes, he thought, it really was tempting to thank his mother for at the very least not having children with Elphwick. He was afraid that doing it might put the idea into her head, but he really was deeply grateful to her for at least sparing him that additional complication. Really, he thought, Alexander was very good for him, in terms of creating perspective. He would keep this in mind the next time Jeremy was, inevitably, a jerk to him.
“I can’t say that I blame you,” he said finally. “It sounds like a…difficult situation all around. I can’t really fully imagine what that would be like.” His brother might be a stranger to him emotionally, but he really could not imagine what it would be like to have strange relatives he did not know coming out of the woodwork all the time like poor Alexander seemed to. “I suppose…at least they aren’t all connected to each other directly? That’s a few…fewer complications. And – does this Winston know anything about you, or the others?” he asked.
If Nathaniel had been in his shoes, he’d have done all he could to keep these disparate threads of his life separated from each other, preventing them from converging into a mega-family – but then, what did he know about the right thing to do? If he’d known how to handle family members, he’d have a much nicer brother, who he wouldn’t anticipate spending the next few months forcing his company on even while said brother presumably cursed at him and possibly hexed him…if he’d really known any secrets of how to manage people, he might have even still had parents.
You really should have asked anyone else in the world for advice, he thought, a bit sadly, regarding his mentee-of-sorts. Surely any of the others could have done a better job. But here they were, and so, he supposed all he could do was his best – however often that seemed to never be the right thing.
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Nathaniel Mordue
Well...you're not wrong.
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