Work Text:
Darius, is, inherently not a wrathful man.
He much prefers to verbally vivisect his enemies than getting out the carving knife to do it on the kitchen floor. For one, there’s less mess. And usually when you’re actually vivisected; you die of infection.
If Darius rips apart every ounce of self-perception and misplaced self-confidence or at least lowly acceptance of one’s situation; you have to live with that. Or you throw yourself off one of the ribs and traumatise a troupe of schoolchildren. Either way, Darius avoids the hassle of having to go to court for a murder.
It’s a great system, so he’s found that he doesn’t need to think much about all the horrible things that he’d like to do to people he dislikes, because he just has to say what he can see anyways; ladle out all their deepest insecurities and darkest secrets out for a little family barbecue and dish up.
It’s something he’s been doing since middle school. It was the reason himself and Alador got along, and how they ended up falling out—too. He said the wrong thing to Odalia, and at the time, he didn’t know what the consequences were for pissing Odalia off.
Odalia is one of the few examples of someone that Darius does indeed want to hurt. Another one, and the reason he’s telling this story about not wanting or more correctly, needing to hurt people, is Belos—and he’s also the reason that Darius is sitting patiently at Eda’s kitchen table, looking at a brown stain on the floor and imagining the satisfaction of creating a similar while Eda puts her kids to bed.
Darius’ own kid is up there, too, as well as a couple other stragglers. It’s a massive sleepover, one that Luz was excited to host and one that Hunter was even more excited to attend. Hunter’s been doing so terribly well, but he’s had a bad week filled with nightmares, and Darius almost thought that Hunter would bail on Luz and the rest of their little gaggle of filthy misfits that did unholy things in the mud with Eda’s infernal bird tube, until Eber had a brilliant idea.
An idea so brilliant that Darius felt ashamed that it was Eber who thought of it; because a couple hours before it, he’d caught Eber rooting through their neighbour’s garbage for banana peels. Life had surely taken a turn, huh? Taking advice from a dumpster-diving trash demon, and sitting in the Owl Lady’s house, watching a bird tube bake like nobody’s business.
Hooty’s cooking could probably kill a man; Darius had only ever tasted soup, and he thought that it could work as lighter fluid in a pinch. By Eda’s practiced concealing of the utter disgust evident on her face to Darius—she’d never changed, since school; she’d always had this thing where she scrunches up her nose around thing she didn’t like, and he’d always laughed at it because he thought it was unladylike—she agreed. But Owl-Boy could bake like it was nobody’s business.
To be honest, Darius felt a little embarrassed. Hooty baked better than he did. And his chocolate fudge crunchy brownies had won awards in the Emperor’s castle! Repeatedly! For multiple years! He knew the depths of depravity that his co-workers would sink to just to secure themselves a piece of a batch he’d made!
He’s rambling. Sure, it’s annoying and an insult to be outclassed in something as intimately his thing in broad daylight in front of his kid—back to Eber’s brilliant idea. Eber’s brilliant idea was that Darius should just invite himself to dinner and mention to Hunter how he’d probably just stay over, since himself and Eda would be up drinking until late and talking about “disgusting grown-up things” like taxes and refinancing mortgages. As if Eda gave a shit about any of those.
He didn’t think that it mattered. He thinks that Hunter got the message, by the tight hug that his offer was answered with; the hug that he was sure would leave fucking bruises, the hug that he was warming up to, if he was being honest. Humans had such wonderous things as hugs and fabric stores selling silk by the yard for nothing!
Eber had even somehow caught onto that Darius had been attempting to get Eda alone for a couple weeks and had been failing miserably at it—because Eda was Eda, who thrived on that you just got the balls to grab something without asking, and he… well, he didn’t do that. Not with things like this. Not with conversations like this.
If he had any other option at all, he would take it. But he thinks that Eda’s the only one who would truly understand where he’s coming from, so he’s waiting in her kitchen, sitting on a stool and sipping leftovers of the lemonade that Luz was excited to show them how to make. It’s a recipe that her mother perfected throughout her childhood, and Darius must admit that it’s one that he’s probably going to pull her aside and get her to write down later, because he’s already forgotten half of the steps.
Old age will do that to you, kiddo. Ha.
Just a year or so ago, he would be loathe to admit that he was growing old. Growing old meant being ugly and out of touch with current trends, and he absolutely was none of those. And secretly, growing old meant that he would have to step back from the only thing keeping him standing; the thought that he could avenge his beloved, and free the Boiling Isles of the tyranny wearing the face of their saviour.
He doesn’t think he’d have been able to keep drawing breath if he had to admit that he’d outlived his chance. The trick to living through shit is to find whatever keeps your feet hitting the floor in the morning and sticking to it by all means necessary. And for him, it was seeing Belos deposed, and hopefully, dead after too much agony.
Back to the wrath. Eda’s gentle footfalls against the stairs remind him that he’s not alone to ruminate, as does the crackle of her voice, asking him if he’s still there.
“Yeah,” he answers simply, “I’m in here.”
Eda drops a mound of something that Darius doesn’t bother to investigate, before he notices her leaning against the doorjamb. He has to admit, it’s not a sorry sight; he sees why Raine’s speech malfunctions around her. If he’d been a different man in a different life, he might have been more proactive about letting Eda know of his thoughts about her physique, but now he’s just a man with flair for nice things appreciating said things in the flesh.
Eda quirks her brow as if she knows and approves, points behind her and says, “I grabbed you some bedding while I was up, you still good with taking the couch?”
He doesn’t ask where the fuck else he would sleep, both because he really is fine with taking the couch—he doesn’t want to kill his image in public, because being so unapproachably pretentious has so many advantages, there’s a reason that he started to cultivate it after heartbreak in the first place—but because he’s genuinely disturbed by how Hooty might answer the need of another bed.
Hooty’s the Owl House and the Owl House is Hooty; when they fled and brought the incomprehensible horror with them, the house lost all its life and half of its internal structure, and Darius really, really doesn’t need a lesson in how that was possible.
“Yeah,” he finally answers, “I’m slept on worse than your couch, Eda. I’m fine. Thanks for thinking of me and my poor back, though.”
Eda snorts. “Of course, bitch-boy with all the personality of a lemon that’s been sucked dry.”
He knows she means it with all of the affection possible, of course.
He chuckles, and she closes the distance between them, sitting down next to him. Their shoulders bump as she pulls a bottle of hard apple blood from her hair, and he doesn’t even ask. Not even when two glasses follow. Instead, he patiently waits for her to pour one out, then another and only then does he allow his fingers to wrap around the glass.
He brings it to his lips, sniffs and realises that it’s better apple blood than he expected her to have.
She seems to notice.
“It’s a gift,” she says, “One of the many. For saving the world, you know. Except, this gift is from someone who actually knows me. Or at least the type I am.”
He laughs again, real and loud and filling up her kitchen. He spent years being terrified of what would happen if he dared to see his old classmates again in a casual setting; even though he worked with Lilith and was forced to see Alador through official meetings about the Coven’s collaborations with Alador’s beast of an ex-wife. It turns out, that what happens when you confront your issues and topple the totalitarian regime that kept you all in invisible chains, is just casual familiarity.
He doesn’t feel like he has to explain or apologise for his cloak being a little rumpled around Eda, and he doesn’t feel a need to chide her for her drinking, either. She’s just Eda, and he’s just Darius, and they used to get along, when she’d sneak into his classes, dressed up badly as whatever student she believed would be absent that day. Usually because she’d bribed them.
He doesn’t know how Bump survived Eda learning and perfecting illusions, but he applauds him. Darius isn’t sure that he would have. Every time Hunter reminds him of the Eda that he knew all those years ago and the Eda sitting next to him now, he has to remind himself to breathe.
He wants the best for his child, and he’s willing to admit that Hunter wouldn’t be able to live Eda’s life. Or at least, more selfishly, that his heart wouldn’t be able to handle it. Something along those lines, between them, he supposes.
“And you’re wasting it on an old fool like me,” he chides. Eda quirks her brow, knowingly, like a fucking asshole.
Back when they were kids, he’d always been annoyed by how easily she understood the people around her. Especially since she used it for such trivial matters as scamming, instead of finding lifelong love or power. But he supposes that it’s each their own, and that perhaps; in hindsight, Eda was the one of them who made better choices.
Eda rolls her eyes with barely masked fondness, something that Darius considers a win. He’s had a lot of those recently. It’s nice to not feel like you’re constantly living on the edge of a guillotine meeting the soft part of your throat. He’s got a lot of gnarly scars to show for his lessons, and four bottles of pain medications of varying strength have now taken up permanent residence in his bathroom cabinet. That’s probably not going to change for the foreseeable future, and when he thinks about it, he’s not angry.
Not about that. Not about sitting at Eda’s table, listening to a house breathe.
He thinks Eda knows. He thinks Eda sees it in him. He wonders if it’s just her wrath wearing a different suit—he wonders if there’s something infinitesimal that separates them, cleaves the path in two, hollows it out and leaves them distinct. Because to the naked eye, it looks like they’re both two bitter pieces of shit who should have made better choices and are mad that they didn’t.
He takes another sip. Admits, again, that it’s good. He’s almost offended that he didn’t get a bottle of such fine liquid courage for his part in saving the world. He just got a lot of fabrics, medical bills, and lingering stares as he saunters around the Night Market. He’s not angry about it, but he’s still angry.
Eda seems to catch it; he imagines her doing it with the beak of the beast she’s earned her moniker from, he imagines her grasping his thoughts between her claws and slowly picking them apart into more manageable pieces. It doesn’t surprise him that this too, reminds him of the Eda he knew before he allowed circumstance to pull them apart.
Sitting her kitchen is like mending a tapestry of forgotten nostalgia, and it’s nice. It feels like something a Darius who doesn’t have to worry as much about continuing to draw breath would do. It seems like something a Darius who now has more complex, beating-heart-kind of problems would do.
“You didn’t uncork a bottle of good alcohol just to glare at me,” he says, slicing through the heavy silence around them. It’s not uncomfortable, per se. It’s closer to inquisitive, introspective, perhaps. Eda leans back against her chair, swirls her glass.
“You’re angry,” she says simply. He’s always liked that about her. Whether it was Faust being a dick, Lilith being uptight or Odalia being a bitch—Eda had never cared whether the recipient of her words wanted her bluntness. She’d been a true equalizer, delivering anything to anyone in the exact same way as the last guy. If she liked you, she would tell you it straight to your face without any flowery overtures. If she disliked you, you would be innately aware of that fact.
There would be no questions.
There were no questions about Eda’s intentions, not even when she turned her back on society. They’d been so direct that Darius had found them intoxicatingly understandable. After watching the only person he trust slowly turned to stone due to his failure, Darius understood them even better; but he’d also realised that he’d turned into the exact man who couldn’t act on them.
“I am,” he answers. He doesn’t know if she needs one, if she’s been waiting for him. She just continues to take small, uncharacteristic sips of her drink, like she’s really trying to enjoy it instead of just necking it back to make the vulnerability flow easier from herself and him easier to listen to.
“When I left you to put the kids to bed,” she continues, “I thought you were going to throw your teacup straight at the wall. What gives? You’ve never been afraid of your anger, but you’ve always held it in check better.”
He works his jaw, thinks a little. It seems like the kind of thing that you mull over before letting it all spill out onto the floor, letting it stain the carpet. It seems like something that you have to be sure about.
The apple blood smells like it’s spiced; like it’s not just the cheap kind that’s meant to be shotted back. He’s never been very good at describing the aroma of things; even when his mother brought wine to his lips and whispered that he had to show his grandmother how much he appreciated her gift, how he had integrated into high society. He’d been twelve, and he hadn’t integrated for shit. Twenty minutes prior, he’d been inventing an abomination-powered slingshot with Alador.
The childish part of him wants to run away from it because he’s ashamed. Pure and simple, blunt like Eda. He’s ashamed of this part of himself, and it makes him want to hiss that Eda knows nothing of him and slink off to curl onto his side on the couch.
But knowing Eda, she’d just slink right after him; insistent on bothering him until he showed her his wounds and described every stroke of the knife leading to them in great detail.
“You know me,” he tries, “And you know that I have a complicated relationship with expressing my rage. You know that I would much prefer to bring my enemy to their knees in the court of public opinion than I would like to get my hands dirty.”
Eda nods, doesn’t say a damn thing. As a kid, she’d never been able to shut up, even when you desperately wanted her to. Now, she’d seemingly learned when to allow someone to sink their own ship.
“Yet,” he purses his lips, “I don’t know how to think about what’s happened recently without the urge to stomp a specific asshole’s skull under my boot. And I don’t get to have that catharsis, and I don’t know how to find peace with any other option.”
He didn’t realise what he said until it’d left his lips, until he couldn’t take it back, but meeting Eda’s gaze, he doesn’t think he needs to; and he lets the truth seep into his bones, take their rightful place next to his still-beating heart, wrapped around his ribs. Yes, he thinks, even if he couldn’t put a name on it before he verbalised it, he knows that it’s what’s simmering inside of him.
Belos took so much from him, and he took so very, very little from Belos.
Belos took the reliable mobility of his right arm; Belos made him have to wear a stupid sling in mismatching orchid purple to a meeting with Principal fucking Bump because Hunter had made it for him and was doing the that thing where his eyes get impossibly wide. Belos made it so that Bump was too awkward to say anything about it, just steal fleeting glances when he thought that Darius was too busy one-handedly filling out school enrolment forms.
It'd been very obvious that Bump had to swallow the urge to offer to hold the page steady for him.
Belos took Hunter’s peace of mind, which was, as previously mentioned, worse than Darius’ bum arm and noticeable limp—he took one of Eda’s whole arms, even if she seems to be satisfied with Alador’s replacement—Belos took his happy, bouncy little prince and turned him into a quivering husk as soon as the sun kissed the water.
And what did Darius take from Belos? Absolutely fucking nothing, even if everyone swears that he saw through the destruction of Belos’ regime and plans. It’s not enough. It’s not what Darius wants. It’s not what he desires. Desire is a disgusting, sickly complicated thing. Desire is not rational.
He desires to bend Alador over his workbench, and he desires to crack Belos’ throat under his own fist. He desires to peel away the skin like he’s preparing fruit for Hunter’s lunchbox and play with the sinews with his dirty fingers. He desires a lot of things that he knows he’ll never get.
Most of all, he desires not to think of any of this. Circling back to Hunter, because Eda really doesn’t fuck around when she says that everything begins and ends with what you’re willing to do to keep your kids safe—he doesn’t want to be another Belos-shaped figure in Hunter’s life. He wants to be safe, reliable and everything that goop fucker wasn’t.
Which means that he can’t think about all the things he wants to do to aforementioned fucker. He can’t be up until three, pacing out of rage in his kitchen, because it always ends with Hunter staggering down the steps and asking if there’s anything that hurts with a voice that comes out begging.
He knows that Hunter worries about him. That much is obvious. He knows that Hunter’s heard about the Coven Heads taking the majority of the long-term damage from the Draining Spell, because some piece of shit mentioned it at school. He knows that he prefers Hunter worrying about him than worrying about what he’ll do to Hunter. But in the end, he doesn’t want Hunter to do either.
A man who shared Hunter’s face once told him that his anger wasn’t dangerous. It was justified, righteous, even. And look where that’s gotten him.
Eda’s nails clink against the glass, pulling him from the depths of his mind.
“Hey,” she says, obviously disarming. Ha, that’s probably his worst pun yet. He’s got to get good at them. He’s got to beat out Alador at terrible dad jokes now that they’re both on an equal playing field. It’s only fair. It’s a good distraction, in the parking lot outside Hexide.
“You don’t want to think like that, do you?” Eda’s looking at him like she’s not expecting him to answer her, at least not directly. Like she’s still expecting the same evasive young man who’d refused to answer her relentless barrage of questioning under the bleachers, the day before he had his magic and fate sealed.
Eda seems to be thinking of the same day, and pensively, at that. It’s always dangerous, when Eda puts more than a second’s worth of thought into something. It means that you should brace yourself, in his not-so-inconsiderable experience.
“Do you remember how terrible of a liar you are?” she asked, her lips wide open.
She doesn’t give him a chance to do much more in his defence other than sputter out a half-realised “Am not!”.
“Do you remember how you insisted, up and down, back and forth, to me, that you wouldn’t join a coven, the night before you joined a coven?”
He rolls his eyes, mirroring her. “In my defence,” he tuts, “I didn’t expect that you would be crashing my pity party in the middle of the night. I hadn’t seen you in a whole year.”
Eda plays with a loose strand of her grey hair. Darius remembers that she used to have the same habit, back when it was red. “You went to the Night Market,” she finally says, in a small voice, “I remember seeing you, and I remember thinking that I’d never seen you there before, and that you were buying too big of a bottle to drink it alone.”
The but I knew you were going to was left blissfully unsaid. He appreciated it.
The and I know exactly where you’d go to feel sorry for yourself because I would do it too was said in the curl of Eda’s brow, as she challenged him to continue, to finish the story for her.
“You drank more than half of it,” he eventually says, after a beat of watching the walls breathe, of looking around the kitchen and seeing the pictures dotting the walls and the drawings stuck to the fridge, “In the end. And thanks, by the way. I think I was too much of a prideful ass with a raging guilt complex at the time to properly thank you.”
Eda runs a hand through her hair. “Don’t sweat it,” she grins, “But now that we’ve remembered our lovely childhood memories, remember how much of a shitty liar you are.”
He sighs.
“So,” Eda says, not missing a beat, “It feels good, doesn’t it? To think about tearing someone apart while doing the dishes.”
Darius stiffens. Did he make it obvious? Did he make it obvious that every day was an act of walking the fine line between wrath and mercy and that he was slowly losing his way, jerking back and forth from one side to another—
Eda clicks her nails against her glass again, tapping a little more insistently than last time.
“I didn’t say that it was shitty,” Eda rebuts the comment that he hadn’t even spoken aloud, “I was going to say that I do the exact damn thing and I think that it’s healthy to a degree.”
Darius thinks about the cracking, mulching, gurgling, hissing form encroaching in his mind, mud creeping across the pristine tiles, getting ready to lunge. Darius hadn’t always been a germaphobe, after all. Once upon a time, Darius had played in the mud until his heart’s content, soared out into the wilds.
Eda knows this. She must.
“I don’t like the reminder of what it’s closer to,” he settles on; it’s an explanation without ripping himself open for her to poke at, even if he knows that she’d rather like that. He made the mistake of, when younger, to think that Eda only made you bare it all when she wanted to rip it apart with her own two hands. Now, he knows better. Now, he knows that deconstruction and honesty in one of the ways that Eda shows love, one of the ways that comes most naturally, most wretchedly intimately, to her.
Now, he almost indulges her because he trusts her as much as he’ll ever be able to trust someone again.
After all, he trusts Hunter in her strange breathing house that makes better baked goods than himself and could talk your ear off about the different flavour profiles of various native invertebrates. That’s the highest compliment he can give—to how much he trusts Eda, not Hooty. Jury’s still out on Hooty. Jury will probably forever be out on Hooty.
“You’re not like Belos,” Eda interrupts, a cool and cleansing breath. She rolls her wrist, glaring at it. “You’re nothing like Belos. You couldn’t be, even if you tried. For one, you don’t have the presentation to lead a cult of personality to their very well-dressed doom.”
“Excuse you!” he exclaims, “I could perfectly well—”
Eda leans across the table, places her finger against his lip. “Please,” she orders, “For once, shut the fuck up and let me get my thought out before I’m too drunk to carry it through.”
He doesn’t know what to do other than let her, so he slowly pushes himself back. He hadn’t even realised that he’d begun to stand up, which probably wouldn’t have ended well, considering the tremor whacking his right leg to pieces against Eda’s dining chair. It’s nothing against the chair, it’s as comfortable as the ones he owns himself and despite Hunter’s suggestions, no, he absolutely does not need something more ergonomic. It’s just how things are now.
“I…” Eda sits back, shoves her legs onto the chair, wraps her arms around her shins and rests her head on her knees—a position that absolutely isn’t good for any of her joints, one that he almost mentions, before she settles him with a glare.
“… I don’t think that I make the right choices for my kids a majority of the time, and that’s mostly because they’re attached to me. I chose my own lifestyle, sure, but I chose it thinking that if I fucked up and met my end, the only person affected by it would be me—”
“Eda, I—”
“No,” she interrupts, again, her hand waving dismissively in the air, “I know, I know that I would have people who missed me and attended my funeral and talked about what they should have done different. I know all of that bullshit now, because Raine and Lily have been beating me over the head with it. I know that you’re eager to join the choir, but let me whack you one first, let Mama Eda speak before you make her need to take a long swig of this drink that’s too good to neck.”
Slowly, he nods. He doesn’t know if it’s agreement, approval or simply encouraging her to continue. Most likely, it’s a swirling mass of all three.
“It’s not revolutionary to say that the life of the rebel isn’t one that’s appropriate for kids. It’s not revolutionary to say that I should have protected mine better, and you should have protected yours, too. But we didn’t. For whatever reason, life got in the way. And it leaves me spending a lot of nights half-drunk, hunched over this table after I’ve snuck out of my lover’s embrace and gotten dressed enough to be presentable if one of the kids happens to want water at asshole o’ clock.”
Nasty, Eda. Of course, you’d have to brag about getting more than he currently was. Fair enough. She’d shown up at their weekly meeting about reconstruction, school, making a whole new system of government, figuring out whose problem after-flyer-derby-refreshment-and-snacks was this week, reforming the coven system because they realised quickly that you couldn’t uproot everyone from the only order they’d ever known and that wasn’t even talking about the fact that they had to get rid of those damn brands in the first place—
Anyways, she’d shown up that meeting with a motherfucking hickey on the side of her neck. And Raine had been wearing an uncharacteristic turtleneck, so Darius assumed that they were matching. Smug bastards. Finally. They were good for each other. Darius couldn’t wait for his invitation to the wedding.
“It’s also not revolutionary to say that my curse made me dangerous to be around. Maybe, I’ve got it under control, now. But I still had a small child and a bigger, but still stupidly reckless kid who would have thrown herself in front of me, did many times, as we both recall, actually.”
Darius winces. He sees her growing point; he sees why she’s telling him this; other than a need to just have someone to hear it. Someone to speak to in the flickering light of the evening, someone who won’t parrot everything you’ve said, someone who’ll nod at all the right parts, someone who’s known you for long enough that you don’t have to explain yourself. It’s more than half of the reason that he’s here tonight, after all.
He sees her growing point and he doesn’t like it one bit.
He thinks about the feeling of his power taking over; the sheer, addictive hit of it all, of feeling yourself give way to something much grander, something that can do everything you can’t but desperately lust for. It feels a little like losing yourself, but in the moment, you’re not thinking about that.
You’re thinking about how the magic sings in your veins, how it croons of possibility; in his case, of revenge. Wrath is probably the better word, even if he’s pathologically afraid of it sticking to him.
“Are you going to say that I shouldn’t be around my kids?”
She’s smirking at him like she knows she’s backed him into a corner, like she knows that she’s won.
“Because,” and the little shit is still shooting him that damn smirk that he remembers from school, that he can almost feel, deep down in his bones, “You and I both know which one of us has the most control over ourselves.”
He wants to scream at her. He wants to throw another teacup. He didn’t even tell her half of what she’d need to come to that conclusion, and yet, she did—with stunning accuracy. She chuckles a little to herself, laugh falling into her mechanical hand, all purple and gold and screaming of not just Alador’s work, but Alador’s passion project with probably a million gadgets and gizmos built into it that Eda will never use unless it can make her alcohol and fry her enemies at the same time.
“You’ve always been terrible at keeping secrets, Darius,” she says, as if that justifies everything. As if that explains why she climbed into his head and ladled out the truths and secrets.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your anger,” she mirrors a dead man, and he’s sure that she doesn’t know that. He wonders if she would still say it, if she knew or if she’d be caught where everyone else who’d been there was—walking on a tightrope with murky, unknown waters at the bottom. He hadn’t been the only one to watch the Golden Guard die, but he’d been the only one to hear how the bones cracked under Belos’ jaws.
He'd been the only one to collapse at the sodden corpse, ears ringing too much to hear the order to arrange the body for dramatic petrification. To play with the corpse, mutilate him.
He’d been the one who couldn’t look at mud afterwards without thinking about crushing. Without smelling blood.
“I think that it’s—”
Please, please don’t righteous or I don’t know if I’ll be able to prevent myself from face-planting into your rather un-tearstained kitchen table and making it very, very tearstained—
“—Fair enough, given the hand you’ve been dealt.”
There’s a lot of things Darius could say to that. He picks possibly the worst option.
“I chose most of it for myself.”
He studies his glass, notices that it’s empty. Notices that he’s been finishing it off without thinking. Notices Eda’s eyes meeting his, then darting to his glass. He slowly pushes it towards her, and she tops it off without saying anything. There’s a silent kind of acknowledgement, a silent kind of agreement. It sounds like a vow, to him. It sounds like something he could follow.