October knows that Daemon walked the (twistedkingdom) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-23 17:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | daemon, hook |
Who: October and January Fischer
What: A rare fight & a change of guard for Toby
Where: Toby's office
When: On the heels of this thread.
Warnings/Rating: Some harsh langauge. Toby-anger. Jan-anger.
Jan was upset. His emotions coursed close to the skin, hot and immediate, unnerving in their unfamiliarity. His knuckles were white as he gripped his steering wheel and, later, when he would look back on this moment, he would shake his head at himself, ashamed. He didn’t remember much of the drive over, so caught up was he in the uncomfortable hairpin turn in his intestines and with the little drummer boy’s bam bam bam on his heart. Driving while emotional was dangerous, he knew, and he would never have advocated for such. But that didn’t stop him.
Jan was angry. He wasn’t often angry, but he was now, and it had his feet pounding on sterile tiles and his eyes burning with tears as he made his way through the labyrinth of a hospital toward Toby’s office. Once he reached the door, he didn’t stop. He swung the thing open. Not hard, not with rage, he just didn’t knock, which was just as out of character as the wildly unhappy frown on his face.
Jan was hurt. He didn’t understand why Toby was so irritated with him. He understood the dangers of experimental drugs as much as anybody who had no advanced medical degree, and he’d sat and listened to the doctors and counselors with his full attention. He wasn’t as smart as his brother, no, and he didn’t study medicine, but they’d made their case, and it was convincing, and it seemed like the thing to do. Honestly, he expected Toby to be happy, not angry, not quiet like this, quiet in the bad way.
“Toby, I need to talk to you,” he said in as level as voice as he could as he walked in, the heels of his over-shined shoes clicking on cold floor. His pill blue polo and sun yellow pants were not made for the anonymity or unhappiness of hospitals. Jan shivered.
Toby wasn't used to exchanging harsh words with his brothers, particularly Jan, but some of the things that Jan had lobbed at him had cut him deep. Was he really that selfish, keeping their mother's care to himself? He felt he was best for the task, what with his knowledge of the field, of the current treatments, leaving him able to make decisions that were informed, educated. Most people didn't look at it the way Toby did, and he didn't mean anything rude towards his brother, but honestly. If Toby needed information about pop culture, about Elvis, he would go to January. For information on psychiatry? It was only natural that he would be the one in charge.
He was still in a mood when the door to his office opened and Jan marched in, brows raising in surprise. "That's well and good," Toby started, putting his pen down, hands folding together in an expression of cool distance. "But next time, you ought to knock. I thought you knew your manners, January."
The mood was conspicuous from the door. It pervaded the office that doubled as his brother’s bedroom and it made it difficult to come in more than two steps. Toby was always quiet, but this was the angry sort of quiet that belied seething, churning thoughts, despite tight-pressed lips, and, in truth, it scared Jan more than yelling. He didn’t like being in trouble or falling out of anyone’s favor, especially Toby’s.
The hand-folding didn’t help.
Jan’s frown deepened. He took a deep breath and -- dropped his eyes to his shoes, trying so hard to be defiant and failing.
“Toby, I think you should let the doctors put Mom on the new regimen.”
Toby watched the set of Jan's shoulders, the deep breath, the way eyes dropped to the floor instead of meeting his gaze, and through it all, Toby was a quiet thing. He didn't say a word until Jan had spoken, and his initial response was a lift of his brows, surprise etched over his face. "You already made that decision for all of us, January," Toby said quietly, his voice even, his doctor's voice. "The papers have already been signed, the drugs have already been administered, and even if I could, I can't stop what's already in place. So really, you made the decision, and now I'll have to live with it." The coolness of his voice, the lack of emotion leaking into his words, it was wholly Toby, at least in the way he dealt with others. He didn't talk this way to his family, especially to Jan, but words had stung deep, left their mark upon him. Had all of his decisions in the past concerning their mother's treatment been absolutely perfect? Perhaps not, but Toby had made those decisions carefully, wanting to preserve her health above all else, and he wasn't prone to throwing his hopes and dreams at drugs that were in testing, too wary of the bad that could happen at the cost of the good. And it seemed that January was not in agreement with him.
"Did you have something else you wanted to say?" Toby asked, the cool emanating from him, making it feel as though the room itself was actually getting colder. Dimly, he was aware that something had changed inside him, that the burst of anger earlier in January's direction had burned something out, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, and something new had risen up inside him. It didn't have a name, but it had a feeling that was peculiar, frightening, and above all, cold. Goosebumps rose over his arms, the hair at the back of his neck stood up, and his fingers wound around his pen a little tighter as he tried to go back to his files, to the work that never ended. "If you don't," he found himself saying, his voice positively frosty, "you are welcome to leave."
‘And now I’ll have to live with it.’ Jan’s fuse disintegrated quickly after that and everything else gave way, leaving him alone, a boy in a cold room, and his eyes, those light-dark things that had settled on the shine of his shoes, swung to Toby’s face dangerously fast. His frown went from sad and scared to furious in all of two seconds. His dark eyebrows tilted at a never before seen degree.
“You’ll have to live with it? It’s not about you, Toby! It’s about Mom! This is the problem.” Jan’s voice grew louder with each word. He didn’t yell, but he wasn’t quiet and he didn’t shy, as he normally might. He stood, fists balled at his sides in a bright show of childish, exceedingly innocent anger, and he took steps toward that distant desk. He didn’t know what was going on with Toby, he didn’t understand, all he knew was that suddenly, things seemed different and Toby felt like someone else, and that he didn’t like it. Not one bit. “What’s wrong with you?”
Toby didn't say anything for the longest time, but that brown gaze was cool as it looked upon Jan, the emotions that flickered across his face, changing and mutating into something else in a way that might have been fascinating had he not felt so chilled inside. "You talk as though you think I don't know that," Toby said quietly, putting his pen down, straight and parallel to the edge of his desk, a precise movement. "You talk as though I'm doing this for me. Is that what you think this is about? Some ego trip, me acting out because someone took the reigns from me?" His voice was rising, bit by bit, and slowly, Toby got up to his feet, hands still resting on the edge of his desk. "I don't think this is fun, January. I don't enjoy it, but I do my best to make sure our mother has the best quality of life she is capable of. Schizophrenia? It isn't something that gets better, it isn't something that will ever go away. So I try and make decisions that will ensure she's safe, as healthy as she can be, and in an environment where she has the best care possible. I do not want to put her at risk by letting the medical community use her as a human guinea pig, and that is precisely what these kind of trials are. They don't know what it does, January, they don't know the long term effects, and I don't want her to be a statistic!" His hands slammed down on the desk hard then, causing the pen to roll off the edge and away, disappearing beneath a nearby chair. "And every god damned decision I make, I worry that it's not the right one. But I do my best, and I live with the decisions that I've made for her, knowing that if something goes wrong? It's my fault. And I'll accept that! I don't want you to have to deal with that as well!" Another slam of his hands and Toby straightened, giving January his back as he strode away from his desk, moving over towards the window, one hand resting against the warm pane of glass. He didn't say anything more, but his shoulders rose with every hard breath, and the tension around him was almost palpable in the air.
Jan orbited his brother on some ring far, far away, and his own gaze, so different from Toby’s glacial observance, was on fire. He was mad. He was. He felt helpless and confused and angry that he felt helpless and confused, and just generally unhappy. Toby wasn’t supposed to be mean like this. In fact, the younger Fischer brother couldn’t remember the last time they’d actually fought over something—when he’d been in high school and had been fully in the throes of adolescence, enough to want to sneak out, which, understandably, Toby didn’t like. But that was a long time ago. In the time in between, ...nothing. Nothing he could remember.
Indeed, he couldn’t seem to figure out exactly what it was that had made Toby so angry. He could understand his older brother being upset. Jan had been mean. He had and he knew it and he felt terrible about it, but he couldn’t change that. He tried apologizing and it only seemed to make things worse. Honestly, he was terrible at arguing, being wholly ruled by emotion without a shred of logic entering the equation at the best of times, and it made it all the more difficult to try to pick apart what someone was saying to him, especially at a loud volume. All he could operate and base things off of were the things he felt, and to his mind that was enough. Not so with Toby.
His brother stood, the look in his eyes alien, and Jan locked his knees where he stood and tucked his elbows in close. He was trying very hard to stand his ground, though said ground was slowly being capitulated anyway as he moved back toward the door, afraid and with definite tears in his eyes.
“She already is a statistic,” was all he could manage to say, the words wavering and timid, but trying.
"And so are we," Toby said quietly, and in a rush, some of the cold evaporated, and the feeling left him light-headed and unsteady on his feet. Fingers curled against the window as he closed his eyes, suddenly more tired than he could remember being in a long time. Too much all at once, and it was as though his body didn't know how to handle that sort of outburst - and really, it didn't. He was a quiet man, used to solitude and soft words, and this was wholly unlike him.
Sighing, Toby turned back in Jan's direction only to drop back down in his office chair, hands coming up to press into his hair, head bowing, fingers clenching in the hair at the back of his neck. "I'm sorry, Jan," Toby mumbled, barely audible from behind the shutters of his forearms. "I'm sorry. You - you didn't deserve that. I'm not mad at you, not at all." He felt dizzy, his head spinning, the blood rushing in his ears.
The ice floe broke. Toby fell back behind his desk and Jan hovered in the doorway. There was no eye contact, but something changed again, and where Jan might normally have come forward to offer a hug or consolation of some kind, right now—he didn’t want to. For the first time, he really didn’t want to.
“Then it doesn’t matter.”
He tried again to stand tall, and again he failed. The anger washed away in the rush of spring. His eyes grew softer as Toby hid himself.
“It’s okay. It’s... my fault. I’m sorry. I know you don’t-... I’m mean.” It was a simple statement, one Jan truly believed at the moment. He still didn’t want to hug, though, and he wavered. Finally, his foot fell back again, snicking on tile. “I... I need to go.”
At the soft words that Jan felt himself to be mean, Toby lifted his head, meeting the other man's gaze for a long while, as long as he could hold onto it. "You're not-" he started, just moments before Jan said that he had to go, his body already in retreat. Toby closed his eyes for a moment, hands dropping limply to the top of the desk. There was defeat in the set of his shoulders, a pain and guilt that ran deep, reaching up into his face, making him look closer to his age. "We'll talk later?" he asked, hope in his words, though he prepared himself for the worst.
“Yes,” said Jan, understanding Toby’s body language quickly, familiar with it, sensing the tension of hope and the disappointment warring together in the air of the room. He smiled as best he could, wondering internally at tiredness that had replaced the anger so fast. He continued backing out the door. “Yeah. Okay, Toby, I’ll ...I’ll let you know that I get home safely.”
Jan turned then and he walked away. There was a strangeness that had a hold of his heart, he felt. Its fingers were cold, delving between chambers, and the whole encounter had him confused, but otherwise free of any emotion. He was an empty vessel. The boy didn’t close the door behind him. He didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t wave. He didn’t say ‘I love you.’ He walked away.