Chapter Text
to be real is to be heard, to be believed in. neil josten lives to be real, lives to be loud. his very existence screams loud enough to shake the world underfoot. he will not be ignored.
neil’s words leave scars, heard for months and years afterwards, the echo of his truth opening decade-old wounds. wars start at his say-so, the sound of gunshots punctuating every sentence. to be real is to be believed, and his words leave such lasting damage that the evidence of his reality is undeniable.
neil raises both his words and his voice and the morale of his armies are raised along with them. he has changed names and forms one too many times to ever truly be defined by one of them. he is a snake; silver-tongued and venomous, he is a fox; cunning and clawed, and he is a knight; loyal and deadly. he is the reckoning, come for the heads of the empire that came before him, and one by one, they fall.
there are no kings in neil’s court, only a distant lord, and even he has been wrapped up in neil’s speeches. nothing about him has ever been more than a lie, but the lie has never before been meant to be believed.
stefan, alex, chris; three names that never sounded true even to him. he always gave out standard lies, overused coverups. I fell down the stairs. My parents are out of town. I’m fine. they were never meant to convince anyone, just meant to be enough of an answer for any shallow questions.
the truth of the matter was this: no one had ever cared enough to call him on the lie.
now he has people to call him out on the regular, every lie that comes out of his mouth garners an arched brow, an unimpressed stare, an expectant silence. he has to scramble for the truth, the weight of it heavy and unfamiliar on his tongue.
it is far easier to craft convincing untruths than to give straight answers. over the years, neil has become the michelangelo of bullshiting his way out from between a rock and a hard place.
but the war is over now. nathan wesninski is cold in the ground. riko moriyama is but a corpse; disgraced and dethroned. ichirou moriyama has given him the right to a life. the authorities he has always run from have given him a name and an identity and a social security number. he has a pack of wild animals at his back; scarred and starving, but nevertheless unconditionally loyal.
neil josten is a reality. he has a place in the world, a household name for sports fans and those who keep up with tabloids. lying is unnecessary now that his father is dead and his men scattered like roaches in a lighted room. the fox no longer needs to be so cunning, what with all the hounds put down.
yet he still can’t find the words to give his confessions; the obituaries of past lives left unwritten. this is harder than speaking, harder than learning a language, harder than lying to keep himself alive.
lies are honey-sweet and thick, soothing his throat raw from screams. with his covers stripped away, the wounds are left to fester. he stops himself from speaking every time, fearful of the pain it could cause.
it’s the year after the fall of rome, and neil knows he was lost in the burning.
“you’re looking well,” bee smiles at him from her cushioned seat, mug of hot chocolate steaming in her hand.
neil focuses in on it; he remembers that mug. andrew bought it for her for her birthday, specially commissioned and imported from iceland. the purpose of the gift had escaped neil— the only special things about them were the imprints left for your fingers to slot into— but nevertheless, andrew had haggled with the artist and the studio until he had gotten a full set; three for the left hand and one for the right, as was her preference.
“neil?” betsy asks, maybe for the first time, maybe for the second.
he startles, stiff limbs jerking suddenly upwards; he would have spilled his own hot chocolate, had he opted to have one.
it used to take more than that.
“i know you would rather not be here, but you might as well take advantage of it,” she says— not chastising, just imploring. “sitting in silence does nothing to help either one of us.”
he breathes through his nose, looks everywhere but at her eyes, exhales, repeats. the world slows.
neil josten is a renowned wordsmith, turning the act of pulling stories out of his ass into an art form. it is on the nature of an artist to have an artblock.
he bites his lip. hard. breathes in through his nose. exhales. repeats. there’s a stain on bee’s wall, he wonders if she’s noticed. he blinks. it might just be him.
softly: a humming noise, agreeable in nature. that’s not what he wanted to say.
he tries again, though it takes several moments more before he can manage a sound. “maybe.”
all at once, bee seems to straighten, adjusting her hold on her mug. neil still can’t look her in the eyes, let alone at her face.
“you don’t need to speak if you have no words to say,” she assures him. “you can nod yes or no if you need to— any body language will do.”
neil is tempted to flip her the bird just for the sake of such a perfect set up. his arms are too heavy to even tap his fingers. he doesn’t feel very assured.
“I understand you have had quite a year since we’ve last met under these same circumstances. do you feel as though you have been handling it well enough on your own?”
it takes neil’s brain a few moments to decipher the words, to translate them into whatever language of silence it seems to have adopted. it takes another few moments to formulate and translate his response.
infitisimaly: a shrug. he’s handling it the same way he always has; pushing it back behind brick walls and waiting for the dam to break, inevitably running away from the flood before the waves can crash down on his back. he’s not very good at swimming.
in other words: it’s going as well as can be expected for a soldier out of war.
bee shifts in her seat again, settling in deeper. it is going to be a long session.
the remaining half an hour is spent much the same: bee asks a question. neil takes a minute or so to process. he moves microscopically and slow as life. bee takes another minute or so to confirm that that miniscule adjustment was his response. she replies. it repeats.
when bee finally announces that their time is up, neil realizes he’s been zoning with his gaze on the minute hand of the clock, not even registering the passage of time by watching it move.
it should feel like liberation, but neil feels no inclination to move. eventually, after several stolen moments that may have added up to more than a minute, he slowly moves to his feet and drags his steps on the carpet as he exits.
he manages to nod at her before exiting, not trusting himself with even a one-syllable farewell. she smiles and nods in return.
that much, at least, isn’t a loss.
he falls harshly into the shotgun seat of the maserati, body heavy with words left half-formed and unspoken.
“for the boy that’s been through war, you would think mandatory therapy sessions would be less of a hell,” andrew says. greetings for him are unnecessary, and he has never wasted words.
neil breathes deeply, letting his chest visibly rise and fall, tilting his head back against the leather seat and closing his eyes. child soldiers such as he have always been better seen and not heard.