hate_gettin_older | (no subject)

He is -- not in the battered lawnchair that sits outside the Jaeger (another folded up, leaning against the empty crate that once held pulleys and now serves as a side table), but somewhere inside Tacit's back. He's assessing cable health, and if anything needs to be sectioned out and replaced.

He's not visible, but the walkie talkie taped to the post out front is blinking a happy green that indicates he's in range of it.

Edgar breathes out, looking at that blinking green light, then leans over to speak into the walkie-talkie.

"Hey, mate. You busy?"

There's a long moment of silence, while Chuck anchors himself to something.

"Tacit's in a real hurry to get fixed," he says, with a bit of a crackle that indicates distance from the hanging walkie talkie. He clips his flashlight to his shirt, and secures the toolbox for later. "Meet me 'round back?"

"Sure. Uh, could you use a hand, or are you coming down?"

He's actually sort of hoping Chuck could use a hand. Having something to work on while they're talking might make this easier.

Nobody could call Chuck good at cues. But he and Edgar having been rooming together for -- a year? Maybe? 6 months?

"Sure, whatever, come up," he says, abruptly stopping prep for coming down. "I'm in the anterior cable compartment, cataloging damage."

Edgar's been up here... once. It's a bit tight, but there's definitely space for at least 3 mechanics with no personal space to get shit done.

It's a little while before Edgar climbs into the compartment in question. The cramped space throughout the jaeger doesn't bother him; it's how vertical the whole thing is that makes him uncomfortable.

The compartment smells of rust, which is familiar, and something salty and dank which isn't. He ducks in through the access panel, and eels around to look over Chuck's shoulder into the open cable box he's working in.

"How's it coming?"

"I'm through 80 percent of this one," he says, cheerful enough. "No rust yet, so here's hoping. That case," he jerks his head at the one to the right of him, away from Edgar, "cracked open, so the whole thing's ruined -- or enough to not matter. I'd swear it's still damp. Not too hopeful about the one by the door, either, with the cracking on its base."

He glances sideways at Edgar, a sort of silent what's up if he wants to acknowledge it.

Edgar makes a face at the description of ruined cables. (It doesn't sound like a disaster to him; he's used to things being broken, worn out, basically junk, before they ever get into his people's hands.)

He's about to ask what he can do to help, but at Chuck's glance he hesitates and says instead "The other night ..."

And can't figure out how to continue that sentence, and starts over.

"So I was thinking, and ... I don't think you ever asked me anything about, um. About Curtis."

Chuck's not really sure where to look, whether or not Edgar wants to acknowledge the fact that his voice is all sorts of emotional waters ahead read flags, but he decides on leaning back against the cracked case and pulling his work gloves off.

"It seemed kind of rude to," he says, and tries to make himself sound as normal and not-tensed-for-potential-emotions as possible.

He takes his tablet out of the cubby nearest him, so he's got something to look down at if stuff gets awkward.

A slight jerk of the head, more or less a nod, acknowledges that.

"And I forget how much I told you about the train. Where we came from."

It's frustrating, suddenly, having to fill in history that should be something people know.

"-- Well, some asshole fucked up the climate," Chuck says, "and the only thing that kept running was the train." For... some reason. He's not going to ask how the track stayed viable. "But everyone in the fancy parts treated the people in the Tail like crap."

And at some point, Edgar died. Probably in a revolution, from the ways he doesn't talk about it.

He shrugs, awkward. "I -- guess I assumed it was worse than you said."

"I mean, yeah. Worse. Or ... there was more to it, maybe. Anyway."

He frowns at the rust-streaked wall as though it should have the next thing to say written on it somewhere.

"And I mean that's the fuckin problem, isn't it. There's always more, you can't tell everything, it's years of piled-up shite and there's too much of it that's so fuckin horrible no one wants to talk about it. Or hear about it. Right?"

Chuck shifts slightly, feeling at a loss, looking at the open cable mechanism.

"If you don't want to," Chuck says, "you don't -- need to. You don't ... owe me." He looks back to Edgar. "I can deal with it, though. If you need to. I mean -- they're different sorts of fucked up, but I'm not from utopia."

"Too fuckin right," Edgar says, the words coming out on a sigh.

(He's pretty sure it's down to Gilliam that he knows what that last word even means.)

"All right. The bare bones of it's like this."

And another moment, while he works out where to start.

"I was a baby when everything froze. I don't remember anything before the train. My ... my mother died, sometime in the first month, lots of people did. Curtis basically raised me."

For a moment, Chuck's not sure if Edgar's finished talking.

(Dead mothers aren't exactly a unique story, but he's holding himself differently than he would be if Edgar hadn't mentioned it.)

"Okay," Chuck says, quietly. "He's family. Basically."

He'd kind of figured. You don't hold grudges like that against non-family (or non-Drift partners).

He's not so much finished talking as needing a moment to work out which part to say next. Chuck's comment helps; it gives him something to respond to.

"Yeah. Pretty much the only family I remember. And he's, he was also ... like not all the way back when I was a little kid, but since then, like, since a little after this huge bloody riot when I was about eleven ... he sort of turned into somebody people look to. Not just me. Like, half the Tail. He wasn't the leader, but ... it was like maybe he was going to be, after Gilliam."

He looks down at the floor, eyes flicking into corners, trying to find something to pick up and fidget with.

Chuck doesn't really have anything to say to that -- doesn't know how to deal with power hierarchies that aren't formalized.

He nods, and waits, and tries to politely look only vaguely-in-Edgar's-direction, so's not to freak him out.

There's a few scraps of thin cut-apart rubber that used to be cable coverings, lying near one of the access hatches. Edgar stoops to pick one up, twisting it through his fingers experimentally to see how tough it is.

"So when we got organized, and made a push for the Front, to try and take the engine ... like, Gilliam was in charge, but Curtis was leading. You know?"

It's easier, talking to the ragged strip of rubber than to another face.

"So there was no fuckin way I wasn't gonna go with him. Have his back. Probably would've gone anyway, just to fight, but ..."

He sighs.

"Anyway. I din't make it more than halfway up the train. Except when I died I wound up here, and he was already here somehow, even though he didn't die till like a day later."

"Yeah," Chuck says, quiet, latching onto the easiest part of the explanation. "When I died, Pentecost was here from -- like, a week earlier."

Even though he'd been less than six feet from Chuck when the bomb blew.

"Fuckin Milliways, man."

He winds the rubber scrap around two fingers, then one.

"So like -- a few months ago. More than that, like ... half a year ago." He gives a small huff of breath that might be ironic laughter. "You probably remember the day. I ... I found out something. About him, and ... didn't have the first fuckin clue what to do about it. 'S when I first came down here."

Edited 2016-07-01 01:45 (UTC)

"Yeah," Chuck says, quiet. A few days had turned into -- more than a few months, maybe a lot more, but Chuck didn't mind. It was ... nice, having someone else around.

He's wondered what terrible thing Curtis could've done, had his own suspicions from experience. He swallows the urge to say Edgar doesn't have to tell him. He clearly doesn't want to, so if he is he probably has to.

"Did he explain it?"

When they talked.

"Not ... really. I mean it wasn't a thing that needed explaining, not like that, it's just -- he never told me, you know? And I din't know how to deal with that. And there was all this shite I wanted to say to him, except I din't want to say any of it."

He breathes out. "And then I did, that night we got stuck out in the snow."

Chuck breathes out gustily, shakes his head, and almost grins (it's restrained, but there).

"You've got shit timing, mate."

Edgar's own grin is crooked and wan, and short-lived. "Right? Only it wasn't timing. I just din't have anywhere to walk out to."

He looks down again, trying to tie a knot in the casing.

"Got it out in the open, though. I think maybe it helped. Cause I talked to him the other night, and ... like, we could talk again. Even though nothing's changed."

"Okay," Chuck says. He hesitates. "That's good, yeah?"

"Yeah." Low, but definite. "It was ... pretty fuckin awful, before."

"Yeah." Chuck doesn't know what to say, just feels a kind of low sick jealousy he can't verbalize.

(He just wishes his dad were here, would actually come talk to him. Either he hasn't been, or he just... doesn't want to.)

"Yeah," he echoes, in a sigh.

"... so I dunno what happens now."

"Please don't tell me you're asking for advice," Chuck says, and it's somewhere between amused and deadly serious. "People are complicated."

"Oh, christ no," says Edgar, half laughing and half genuinely horrified. "Nah, that'd be fuckin awful, wouldn't it? I just ... ah, it's such a mess."

The laughter fades, although he still looks a touch less gloomy for it. He turns the twist of rubber in his hands again, bounces one heel briefly against the grate.

"We used to be in the same room, and then this shite happened and I left. Only now he's bunking with Dejah, and -- I mean, if I wanted to have my own room I coulda done that anytime, so it's not like that's changed. But I dunno, maybe ... you might want this place to yourself again sometime?"

That last is a touch dubious; he still finds it a little hard to believe that some people prefer sleeping entirely on their own.

This takes a long moment of consideration, mostly spent looking to the right and up, into the metal of the Jaeger, as if he can see the conn pod from here.

"Nah," Chuck says, "I'm used to you."

And he's got a room back at the bar, still, which he can't imagine sleeping in -- not right next to that closet -- but it's an escape route if either of them needs it.

"Well." Edgar smiles a little, small and pleased. "Guess I could hang about, then."