Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying you hate me?

Timeline/World: Modern Monotony – Ticking Clocks
Characters: Murdoc Williams
Race: Human
Age: 38
Final Word Count: 577 words

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I’ve been all over the world. Never on my own, because travelling sucks and I’ve always been around Hanna, we complete one another in a way. He’s my oldest friend and it always feels good to be near him. We clicked from the moment we’ve met and we never had a fight and I’d like to keep it that way.

Now if only I could feel the same about everyone else I meet, my life would just be so much simpler but I’m not quite that lucky, no. My build and the kind of life I lead—helping others as part of the group of doctors without borders—has made me the target of plenty of angry people. I think the one person I’ve had the most issues with, on and off over the years, is Penelope.

I’d never thought much of it at first; she’d been a darling and a sweetheart, first making her moves on Hanna because, well, I suppose he’s the more approachable of us two. The blond hair, the almost feminine name, the androgynous features. He’s beautiful and I’ll protect him with my life. I’m more like a bear, a hairless one because I like to keep a close shave but that’s beside the point. I’m tall, I’m built and my family always told me I should have played professional football but I’ve never liked the sport and while this might get me booed at, I’ve never seen the point of it.

Penelope though, she tried her charms on Hanna, she tried hard. The issue with this is that she was the opposite of what he tended to look for when women cropped up briefly in his life and his penchant for men was a little stronger than for women though he was open to both.

I never liked her, there just was something off about her from the start and we’d been at work in a little, lost corner of Spain when miss prime and proper first made her first entrance. She zoomed right towards Hanna, like she’d been planning it all and he ignored her in favour of treating the patient he’d already been talking to. I tried to veer her away so he could continue what he was doing but the ugly look she gave me made me pause. She was going to be a problem. I didn’t even know her and I was pretty sure she already hated me for reasons I couldn’t even begin to understand.

It wasn’t as though we were famous. We weren’t doing this job for the glory; we did it because we could help others. We didn’t have all that much money either.

She kept on trying to gather his attention and while, on off-work hours, he allowed her a few dates, it never went very far and every time I was near her and he wasn’t, she’d give me such ugly looks that it really did make me wonder as to what was going on in her brain. Did women like that really exist? The kind who saw someone from a distance and decided that this was going to be ‘their man’? It did feel like that. The look in her eyes always made me feel like she was a jealous lover and they never even made it that far. You have no idea how relieved I was when we were shipped elsewhere, out of Spain and far, far away from her.

The taste of glory is sweet and I want to experience it again. Will you help me?

Timeline/World: Main Profile
Characters: Pride aka Kian
Race: Emotion – Pride
Age: 29, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 590 words

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He knew it had all been a lie. Even at the tender age he had been then, it had been a lie and he had hated it but he’d gone with anyone. He had been desperate to be accepted as part of this new group they were in and it had not done him any good at all. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t like to be surrounded by others, he hated it when there were too many people around him, it made his chest constrict and his breathing come in shallowly.

Aven had told him that these had been the signs of a panic attack on the edge of happening and since that particular day, he’d not done ‘the thing’ ever again. He’d closed himself off to others who weren’t his family and even to his family he had closed himself up a little.

It had been his nature that had made him act the way he had, his nature that had made him say, ‘Yes, I’ll help you.’ He’d been ten, eager to discover the world, to better control his nature the way they all were, though in a way, not really. The others all seemed to be well ahead of him and he was simply, gently told that it was likely he was a late bloomer but that he would discover his control very soon. He’d discovered it in the weeks following that particular attempt after he’d shut himself away in his room for everything but their mandatory time at school.

Kian could still recall all of the details so clearly that they made him ache whenever he did think about them, he didn’t want to. He still could remember the way the other boy had whimpered and cried as the bully he had been helping then, knowing better but not really able to help himself and not be at the bully’s side, had beaten up the innocent boy. Just because he could, because he wanted to, because the ‘glory’ of being the winner in a schoolyard fight had been sweet. It made him want to hurl.

Of course, the moment all was said and done, he’d run off to tattle, tattling had felt as foul as helping the bully but it had appeased something in him. He’d gotten in trouble for the whole thing because he’d been honest in his tattling, adding his name to the list of those guilty of being part of the fight, even if he hadn’t physically hurt the other boy. He felt like what he’d done had been so much worse; he’d been the one to hold the boy down while the bully delivered the blows.

The thought made his stomach turn but Kian closed his eyes, forcing the memory partially away. He breathed in and out deeply, trying so hard to not think of anything but the present but there had been a necessity to remembering that memory when his eyes had skimmed across the obituary, not for the boy they had beaten up but the bully. Lung cancer. He’d crossed paths with the man a few times in their lives and had been aware of the heavy smoking being done, so he wasn’t all that surprised, was he? No, he might have honestly pushed a little at the other, emotionally, to feel pride in his smoking, to bring back that feeling of glory about what he was doing much as he’d done back then in that schoolyard.

Kian felt no remorse for the death of a bully.