He really, really didn’t want to get in the car.
He didn’t want to be an even more enclosed space, where Sulphur could basically take him anywhere. His survival instincts told him that would be a stupid fucking idea. He’d just admitted to torturing one of Sulphur’s brothers to death, basically. When Sulphur’s back was turned, he glanced over his shoulder, back down the way they’d come. He could leave at any time. He should leave now, actually.
He got in the car.
He closed the door behind him, but didn’t put his seatbelt on. With the relative security of the SUV, he decided to at least let his face relax again, let his eyes turn blue. The interior of the car smelled like everyone, all of Slate in one place, much like the Diamond, or the apartments above it. He breathed it in, starting to identify the scents as a kind of mental exercise.
Then, Sulphur hit him. Not physically, but with the revelation that Malachite had chosen to die for Obsidian – that Jasper had decided to die for Ethan. Todd hadn’t been ready for that. He knew that Jasper’s powers were probably more complicated than just turning into things he touched, but the idea that the whole time he could’ve turned, well, inedible... that hurt. That hurt, because it didn’t surprise him. Malachite was one of the few people who’d given Todd a look of real prey resignation before he died. He’d been resigned long before that.
“He told me I should agree to join, when someone came around to find him.” Todd’s voice was soft, but it was once again his own, even if he still wore the plastic demon mask. He stared out the windshield, pushing the guilt down for later. He’d feel guilty later. Right now, he needed to survive. Just in case the anger Sulphur had lurking under the calm surface broke out. “He said you’d do everything you can to kill me, but Obsidian would make sure you were smart about it. And that you might forgive me, if I agreed to join.”
He shook his head, a little bit of the aggravation with the situation as he remembered it flooding to the forefront.
“I wasn’t going to join. I’m still not, not really. But… you’re not what I picked up from Mal. What he told me about was a metahuman arms dealer who thought human life was less important than meta lives. Which… yes and no, when it comes to Ethan, sure. But I’ve met human arms dealers who’ve realized they can literally own a gang war. That’s dangerous enough as it is. And then you add someone who – who thinks metas should be free to be what they are, even when what we are is monsters. Someone who believed that we should be allowed to hunt without consequences if we need to – fuck, if we want to. I’ve been that person, I’m never–”
He stopped. He didn’t have a right to that speech, not anymore. Not when Ethan had pulled him out of the hunt, not with everything Ethan had offered to help him fix it. Sure, he was still wary of Ethan’s intentions. But he couldn’t assume the worst, anymore. And given how he’d relapsed into the hunt, he didn’t have a leg to stand on about becoming that person again. Suddenly, all the anger left him. Sadness flooded in, along with another memory.
“He talked about the revolution. Security, safety, everything. And Jasper reiterated that. That Obsidian, that Ethan, really just doesn’t want to be afraid anymore. And… I get that. I know now that that’s closer to the Ethan I’ve gotten to know. But – but at the time, you’d all become this big, vague, overhanging threat in my mind. So when Jasper died, and I found that chip, I – I had an idea.”
Had he deliberately given Todd the clues to find Ethan, he wondered, or had he just assumed Ethan would find him all on his own? It’d been a mix of the two, in the end, but if Sulphur was right… Todd hadn’t given Mal enough credit. He would now.
“I put the parts of Mal I couldn’t eat in a warehouse, and I set up to watch and see if anybody showed up. I called in to work, I barely slept all week. It paid off, though. I expected to just take note of whoever showed up, then slip out. Ethan saw right through it, called me out, and I saw right away that he was the predator. We recognized each other. But I spent a lot of time beating around the bush about what’d happened to Mal’s body. Obviously, he figured it out. Fuck, I found out Jasper wasn’t completely organic the hard way, but leaving the parts I’d… well, chewed up, leaving those out of the pile would’ve just gotten more questions from anybody who knew. And he reacted pretty much exactly how I expected him to, which was not great in my book.”
He sighed, deeply, and leaned back further into the passenger seat.
“He wanted me. It’s not really that Jasper’s death didn’t matter to him anymore. That wasn’t what was happening, but that’s how it came across, and that wasn’t what actually mattered anyway. He wanted the part of me that I keep locked up in a box that if I could help it was never going to see the light of day again. He tried to play coy about it after. I mean, I do the same thing, sometimes, when I can’t get someone to do what I want. But man, did it piss me off.” He shrugged, weirdly casual about this part. “I told him to fuck off. I told him to go home and forget I existed, basically. That pissed him off. He grabbed my shoulder and started to drain me. I think he expected it to take me off-guard, or maybe I just recovered faster than usual. I had a point to make, though, and that’s when I stabbed him. That was the end of the posturing period, and we played twenty questions until–”
Another pause. A full stop, actually. Because that, he realized, was when he told Ethan about Arlo. And when Ethan had told him about Zeheb. That was the moment, he knew, that Ethan had decided to lie to the pack. He didn’t know if he wanted to tell Sulphur about Arlo. But… but. But it was the least he could do, wasn’t it? He just had to be stronger about it, this time. He couldn’t feel sorry for himself. He didn’t deserve that. Not here.
“Until he told me about Zeheb. And then I told him about how I killed my best friend because he went into a blind rage when he found out what I have to do. I told him that because I needed him to understand why I can’t be what he needed me to be. That thing he wanted isn’t me anymore. I don’t want to be that, I can’t slip ag–”
He stopped, breathed, closed his eyes. Right.
He might as well let Sulphur know about that.
“Right. Right, there’s – there’s something else I don’t know if Ethan’s told you. We went hunting a few days ago. And, I – there’s this… it’s hard to explain. I learned that it’s not just my brain turning off and going purely instinctive, it’s – I don’t know. I call it the hunt. I told you about it loosely, I think, but… It’s not what I thought it was. I go into a high when I’m chasing someone, and I come out with partial amnesia about it. Ethan’s the first person who’s ever seen me like that and lived. He was able to pull me out of it. He – he chose to pull me out of it. And I don’t really know what to do with that. Because I know what he wanted, or – or I thought I did. Maybe Mal’s right, maybe I’m fixing him, or– or maybe wasn’t ever what I thought he was in the first place.”
He sighed, deeply. “I don’t know. I– don’t think that was something you needed to know, except it could be a problem if it happens again. It– I wasn’t like that with Mal. Until a few nights ago, it hadn’t happened in like, seven years. But a relapse is possible. Ethan’s offered a way to help, but… I don’t know. I told him I’d think about it. And… and I think that’s everything.”
He went quiet, and looked at Sulphur again. He didn’t deflate, didn’t necessarily go still, but he was waiting. Waiting for judgment, or questions, or consequences. Just waiting. Patience was the virtue of the ambush predator. Even if he had no intention of taking Ethan’s other brother away, he couldn’t bring himself to just lie down and take whatever Sulphur had to throw back at him.
