(S)He Who Has the Most Toys...

“France… Japan… very similar pronunciations. Mine was a momentary laps, I corrected myself.”

She protested weakly, it would be highly embarrassing to have missed this having lived in Paris for a couple of decades. She’d just be leaving out mention of that for a while, at least she’d try to.

Now that Kem mentioned the concrete floor, she noticed her toes were cold. That meant moving out of the garage was necessary. Shutting down the 64 she nodded.

“You promised me non-cultural movies. I think that might be a very good idea.”

She hadn’t really intended to crash and burn tonight but it was going quite well. So the might as well keep it up, besides she was officially in no condition to drive back to the towers.

"I did, indeed, promise something that would require very little thought."

As they moved back into the house and made their way through the kitchen, Kem nabbed the Glenlivet as well, after all. He missed it on the first grab but the second was golden. He was planning on drinking until those green eyes stopped burning holes onto the back of his brain.

In the living room, he pointed out the bookcases lined with DvDs. He had quite the collection; he loved movies. Particularly when they got the history correct.

"All right, I think movies like that are somewhere around the middle shelf here." Kem waved a hand vaguely. "Uh, shall we just pick one at random?"

Following along Pak unceremoniously, half sat have fell onto a sofa that seemed to provide a good view of the very large TV. All the while taking care not to spill her drink, which was disappointedly almost empty. She finished it, satisfied she was starting to numb quite effectively.

“I couldn’t pick a movie and you want me to pick a drink?”

Wait, that sounded wrong. Apparently, she was numbing very effectively.

“Strike that, reverse it. Just promise me no musicals.”

Well, Kem was very glad he wasn't the only one too think to drunk. "Absolutely, pick a drink it is." He emptied the bottle of Oban equally into both glasses, satisfied to see that he could still do it the lazy way.

In similar fashion he opened the first DvD case that caught his eye. Or two DvD cases. No, just one. He did manage to get it onto the DvD player successfully, and folded himself into a cross-legged position on the thick carpet as was his habit.

The next swig of Oban damn near went down the wrong pipe as he recognized the intro to the random movie he'd put in. Fate wasn't just playing games with him tonight... she was dressed in leather with a cat o' ninetails and bending him over like a naughty schoolboy.

Life was so unfair sometimes, but he struggled to maintain a calm front - as he hacked up half the glass of scotch.

Damned had they finished a bottle already? Boy, she was in more trouble than she had originally thought.

Adjusting herself into more of a curl than a sprawl, Pak didn’t even wonder why Kem sat on the floor. The carpet was clean and it had felt good to walk on, and it was much harder to fall off, if you had been drinking. Who in the world had thought that making bar stools tall was a good idea?

While not an empath, coughing up a perfectly good scotch was a dead give away that something was not kosher. And given her company and the movie it didn’t take all her mental capacities to figure out what; good thing too as she didn’t have all of her mental capabilities right now. Pak cringed on Kem’s behalf.

“At least its not a musical…” She paused trying to find something to say. Nothing was really adequate. “Maybe we should try again?”

Drink back down the appropriate pathway, Kem shook his head. "No, no. It's all right. If this works for you I'm fine with it."

Why the hell do I even have this movie?

He didn't mind it usually.. it was really well done, in his opinion. But honestly, fate couldn't have been more cruel than to put The Mummy into the DvD player at that moment. The sets became more and more real, and Rachel Weisz was looking more and more like Aishe by the moment.

That realization was almost sobering... and that was the last thing he wanted to be. The Glenlivet might meet its untimely end sooner than anticipated. Kem thought to apologize to Pak, and to that end he backed up so he was leaning against the opposite side of the couch from where she sat, bottle within easy reach for them both.

"Sorry," he managed to mumble. "I'm even worse company than usual tonight. I didn't mean to drag you down too."

He wasn't sure how much sense he was making anymore, so he simply shut his mouth for the time being and watched the screen, petting Zoe absentmindedly when she poked her furry head around the corner of the couch to eye Pak suspiciously.

Truth be told Pak was rather fond of this movie. Historically accurate or not (and she wasn’t sure) it was rather entertaining and didn’t take much brainpower to get through it. Her answer to the question was a rather non-committal sound.

Yes, they had been dancing around their issues tonight but apparently fate wasn’t in the mood to be subtle with Kem, first the game now this. She was sorry she’d ever brought up histories, but maybe it was a good thing.

She slowly finished her drink and poured another. She wasn’t at all worried about Kem dragging her down, undoubtedly that would have been accomplished without his help. She could take herself down better than anyone.

“No… no apologies it happens to me without help.”

Deep breath, she didn’t want to break the unspoken no prying rule, but…

“How close is it?”

That was as subtle as she could be, basically all she did was open the door. If she had to Pak would put her foot in the door to keep it from closing but she couldn’t help but think it was better if Kem got it out.

Pak's question was awkward, but, Kem reflected through whatever drunken stupor he'd managed to fall into, not really unwelcome. It was more that he didn't know where to begin, or what part of it was bothering him the most. He'd been fine till tonight, since his chat with Alfarinn, since taking over the archives temporarily.

He drew his knees up and rested his arms on them. Tearing his eyes from the screen he simply looked down at the carpet.

"Not completely accurate," he said softly. "Just close enough to be really annoying."

Kem sighed and glanced at Pak where she sat on the other end of the couch. "I'm honestly not sure why this happens. I'm not like this all the time."

Words were deserting him for the moment. He knew it would probably help to get it off his chest like he seemed to have to do every now and then. Alcohol loosened his tongue a great deal, but it didn't help him shape the words at all, and now he found himself somewhat at a loss.

For whatever reason, Pak seemed curious - whether out of a genuine desire to know, or because they seemed to have this in common, or both. Kem wasn't opposed to discussing it with her at that moment; hell, it would probably do them both some good to vent, but he had no idea where to start.

He finally just shrugged. May as well. "What do you want to know?"

He didn't snap; just simply figured as long as she was curious and he was willing to talk, he may as well let her ask what was foremost in her mind. They'd not pried into each other's pasts at all, but Kem was beginning to realize that prying wasn't always a bad thing. Therefore, with that question, he gave Pak permission to ask and pry as she wished.

Thank god, they didn’t make movies about Siam; very few movies, heck there weren’t even a lot of books.

Even without knowing Kem for hundreds of hears she knew he wasn’t like this all the time. From her own experience Pak felt certain if you were you’d have lost your mind and it would be impossible to make it fifteen hundred years if you were a mad man. Her nod, therefore, was one of sympathy and agreement.

It was odd, awkward to dig around in someone else’s problems. It was all quite personal and apparently quite powerful. Worse yet, her own issues and emotions were clouding her mind, and the scotch didn’t help much. She opened her moth once to say something but stopped.

Frowning she thought for a second. The only thing she had to go on was city hall and her own history.

“Who turned you? How, why?”

All pretense at subtlety was gone she’d asked a point blank question. She took another slow drink of the new scotch aware that she’d also more or less opened the door for return inquiries.

Kem stared for a few seconds, not at Pak but off into space. She sure didn't beat around the bush, but that was really fine with him at the moment.

"The ancient Egyptians, as you probably know, put great store in the afterlife," he said softly. "It was a trait that persisted even though my time was after the greatest of the temples and pyramids." It seemed important to point that out, since it had a great deal of impact on the rest if his... history.

"My civilization was also more progressive than most. Men and women were free, for the most part, to love and marry where they would, and separate if it suited them. Much like today, fathers would take responsibility for their children even in that case. And much like today, women who were beaten, abused, and mistreated often became too terrified of leaving their husbands to even think of doing so."

He turned his eyes on Pak. "That was my sister, Ha-Neferet. She took shelter with me and my w... wife, whenever that happened." The word came out roughly; he hadn't been much of a husband in the end, had he? "On one such occasion I accompanied her back home; she insisted on going back although we tried to get her to remain with us. I shouldn't have gone with her. It made things worse; her husband hated me, resented me for being the one Ha-Neferet ran to. He was afraid, like many others."

Kem gestured to his hair and his eyes then, certain that Pak would understand what he meant when he said they were afraid. He hunched his shoulders, leaning down and resting his chin on his bent knees. "We fought, he and I, but Ha-Neferet came up behind me with a knife... and he ran onto the blade. When the guards showed up I had taken the knife from Ha-Neferet. It looked... bad. They imprisoned me, and it was ruled that I would be cursed. No afterlife would be granted me, although I didn't realize then that that was because I would never really die. My name was erased from all the records, all the city and family scrolls."

He shook his head slightly. "I don't know the name of my creator. I fought the guard when they took me to him. I was bigger than they were, they had to beat me over the head to get me to go along." He gave a dry, humorless grin at that. "I was half-dead when they threw me into the Priest's ritual room. I remember nothing but pain, and then waking up on my own doorstep later on in the night."

Now that he had begun it was just better to keep going. "My wife came out to me. Sennwy. She was a good woman. We already had two children; a third was on the way. And I killed her. I killed them both."

He drained his glass again, totally numb to the burn as it slid down. "That's why, even after so many years, I have nothing to offer her. I've caused nothing but pain since this began, and she would feel nothing but hurt if she were here now."

It didn't occur to Kem that Pak had no idea who he was referring to now. He was lost in thought, and more than a bit lost in the very welcoming bottle of Glenlivet that needed far more attention than it had thus far been granted.

Good he was a talkative drunk. She wouldn't have the courage to keep pestering him with questions, or it would take a lot more to drink.

Listening intently Pak felt herself grow cold and any remaining semblance of subterfuge left her. There wasn't anything she could say, nothing that she wasn't sure that Kem hadn't heard before but the whole story was extremely cruel and almost too much to take in. What he said kept crossing over with her own history and that only made it worse.

A distant part of her brain realized the she was Aishe but the two remaining sober brain cells knew to keep her mouth shut. They also, however, got her to keep quiet on that point by finishing her drink and that was the end of Pak's sober self.

She half lashed out, but there was no real venom in her words.

"How were you supposed to know? It isn't easy..."Â?

That train of thought trailed off. Pak was hardly the person to give advice and shook her head and poured another.

"I..."Â?She sighed there were no words of wisdom here and they'd sound stupid coming from some one eight his age (at least one eight seemed like the right fraction). "I'm sorry."Â?

No she wasn't going to offer any judgment just support.

Kem looked at Pak with a ghost of a smile and lifted one shoulder. "Don't be. We are what life makes us, isn't that right? At any rate I got by. The first century or so wasn't exactly easy. I don't really know what kept me from walking out into the sun, except for the hope that I could somehow reverse whatever had been done and live out the rest of my natural life... or at least die like a real human."

He shook his head. "Meeting Alfarinn answered a lot of questions. It was natural for me to join Evenhet and I've managed thus far. Or I thought so, anyhow." That brought on a scowl. He was feeling selfish at the moment, and what he very much wanted was to drive back to Aishe's place and do the things he should have done when they were still seeing each other, more than just hold her hand but hold her and tell her how important she really was to him. Way to screw the pooch, he thought. It was far too late for that now; some things weren't meant to be fixed. He'd only end up watching her die anyhow.

As for turning her... he could have. If he daydreamed a bit he could see her accepting it, see her as she was now, forever, young and vibrant and full of... undeath. That would never do for her. And even if it had, he could never perform the deed. Too many memories lay seeded in the act of turning a human for him to ever desire a part in that happening.

Kem realized he'd been quiet too long, and gave Pak a drunkenly appraising glance. She offered nothing but acceptance, and that went a long way with him. But there was more in what she'd said, in her tone, and while he normally found her almost impossible to read for a moment there was a flash of something else in her words... anger, or righteousness... some sort of emotion that mirrored his, back when he was younger and had the energy for feelings aside from depression.

The level in the bottle dropped again as he refilled them both. He was fortunate to have been leaning back on the couch already, and he managed to focus Pak's several faces into almost one.

"So. No flowers and red carpets for your turning either, huh? Someone really ought to do something about that," he muttered with barely veiled disgust. "It doesn't always need to begin with violence."

“I think it more like we are what death made us.”

Waxing philosophical, that couldn’t possibly be a good sign or maybe it was.

Why had she never thought to try to find a way to reverse it? Of course that wouldn’t have helped, and she’d been too busy trying to figure out what she was and how to survive to even think of trying to undo it.

A hopelessly optimistic side of Pak flashed the though that ultimately it had been a good thing, she was here, she had a good life and more to come. The drunken hostile depressed side squashed that, rather like a bug.

Oh look there was more to drink. Staring at the glass it took Pak a few seconds to comprehend Kem’s question. She laughed bitterly.

“Not quite that bad. Attacked left in a heap on the side of the road. He didn’t try and take my afterlife though.”

It was dark humor, but seemed fitting for the dark mood.

“Just the one I had.”

She hadn’t meant to say the last bit but the brain to verbal filter wasn’t in perfect working order. Having said it though she could see her husband and her children and it hurt.

A sneer was her only answer to the idea that their condition didn’t need to start with violence.

“It always will. There will always be some of us how start out this bad won’t there?’

And that might be the most depressing thought she’d had yet.

Hearing Pak's short recounting bore him a remembrance of an very appropriate adage, about misery loving company. It made him laugh dryly, right about where she mentioned her afterlife.

Her next words drew his attention away from his contemplation of the glass in his hand. "You had a family too, hmm?"

Kem's next question was entering into the realm of the ultra-sensitive, but hell, they'd gone this far. "How did they find out? Have you ever checked up on them?"

Her bitterness led him to assume there was no understanding involved; that someone or something had perhaps driven her out of her home, as it had his. Had he not bitten Sennwy; had he known in advance what he was, he had once thought that she might be able to cope with him. They'd never loved passionately, but they'd always been best friends. But he hadn't had any clue, no notion of what he was, or what he'd been doing when he'd tasted that first lap of rich, sweet lifeblood.

It wasn’t a great story, really there wasn’t much too it but not to share would have done a disservice to Kem.

Scowling suspiciously at her drink, as if it had something to do with it Pak started.

“It was an arranged marriage, but I liked him we were friendly supportive I guess you could say happy. We had three children, the second one was stillborn though. They were about seven and eight a boy and a girl Klahan and Lawan.”

Stalling for time she sipped at her drink. It just was hard to put things into words.

“I told you I was attacked. He didn’t stick around to explain anything. So when I managed pull myself together I went home. It seemed the sensible thing to do. I hid there, starving convinced I was dying and totally clueless. It was my husband,” The word came out with a sneer “who figured it out and he figured it out before me.

He came home the next night, the night after, I don’t remember how long but he put a very sharp, lethal scythe between us and told me to get the hell out. That I was a monster and he’d kill the children before he’d let me have them.

Of course I started shouting back, the kids woke up and they were in the middle of this. The bastard told them I was evil, that I was a monster and I would eat them up. Klahan tried to hide his sister behind him to protect her… from me.”

She could still see the looks on her children’s faces, pure terror. That they had been scared of her was unbearable, even now. It was the only time in her entire life when she’d truly wanted to die. Her free hand swiped violently at her eyes, she wasn’t crying, not yet but the urge was there.

“He should have killed me on the spot, shouldn’t have done that to them. But he promised to take care of them if I left and never came back. So I left. I didn’t get to say goodbye, he just jabbed that thing at me and shoved me out the door.”

How she wound up in Bangkok not even Pak was certain, but she had. She'd abandon her children to her bastard husband.

Very slowly very sadly she shook her head and finished her drink.

“No I was always afraid he’d hurt them, or they’d be terrified of me even a few decades later. I tried once to find them before I left but it had been a hundred years or so and I’d lost them.”

Kem knew his face continued to look grim as he heard Pak's story come tumbling out. It was everybit, if not more, horrific than his own, and obviously affected her just as deeply. Even he was further shaken by it; how could he not be, when the two histories held so many similarities?

So he returned the favor she had granted him, and simply nodded along.

"You would think," he said softly when she appeared to be finished, "that the span of our lives would give us enough time and wisdom to avoid the flaws that plague the human race... murder, rape, abuse. But it seems it isn't solely limited to those who are short-lived.

"I thought I was one of the only ones who seemed to have trouble moving on; apparently I was mistaken. And while I don't suppose that fact will make it 'all right' for either of us, it is... good to know that someone else can understand what it feels like, and I thank you for that. For sharing your story."

He fell silent, hoping his heavily slurred words had made sense. After a few moments, Kem looked back up.

"So how do we go on? And how do we solve the problems of the present and the past?"

He'd spoken with Artemis some time ago; Kem knew about the relationship between the two, the one at least trying to blossom, and he couldn't help but feel respect for the fact that they were, at least, trying to cope.

It was more than he had done. He'd run away from it and it was too late now to make amends, even if he could bring himself to ask someone to give up everything they had.

Pak closed her eyes trying to clear her head of everything but the effects of the alcohol. Pity she wasn’t more successful. What were the odds of two such scarred people discussing the horrors they just had? While she wouldn’t have wished a history like hers on anyone, and Kem’s came mighty close, but, Pak was grateful that he understood.

Ordinarily she might have protested that it wasn’t this bad all the time and that she could cope with it. That was the truth after all, mostly. But any one who had lived through what Kem had shared with her knew it never went away, not completely.

“Its good. Its good. I should thank you…”

Was she starting to repeat herself? Pak had been told she did that when she was drunk. At least she thought she had been told that.

Rather unfortunately for Kem drinking amplified Pak’s mood swings and she laughed. Slightly desperately and even a little sad; if she hadn’t been quite this plastered she might have gone off on a completely manic tangent. But alcohol being what it was she quickly settled back into her previous mood.

“Can we solve them? I’m pretty sure we can’t. We can keep trying, I keep thinking things have to get better. What’s pulled you through fifteen hundred years? Really and don’t tell me its just the scotch even though that does help.”

Kem shook his head; a bad idea as the room, already spinning, swung around wildly. He gingerly put his glass down, brushed his hair from his face, and waited for the rocking motions to stop.

He considered Pak's question. What had pulled him through? "Not scotch," he confirmed. "This is a recent development for me. I think I'm coping. That's the term." His head was muzzy. "The rest of the time? I don't know. Evenhet helped. I kept myself busy. Sometimes... well most times, I don't really know why I'm still here."

Raising his glass once more, he peered through the amber liquid to Pak's now-distorted face. "I thought this was supposed to make us forget. Not working very well is it?"

He thought for a few moments more. "You know, I really can't say what got me through the first 800 years of my life. There was more to it, there were people involved that I've tried to forget and can't, and things I wish I'd never said or done. I wasn't always concerned with doing the right thing, or with... not harming anyone else. That came a bit later."

He'd never mentioned that to anyone before. It was the side he preferred no one ever know about, but it slipped out for Pak, because he knew on some level that she'd understand.

Kem finished off the glass and let it dangle from his fingers. "I honestly don't know what changed it though. I just know I probably blew the best chance I've had for some kind of happiness in over a thousand years. I really wish wisdom had come with age in my case."

He grinned wryly at Pak, his expression full of self-recrimination. "That doesn't really answer your question. I'm sorry."

She was no longer quite sitting up, it was more like lying down. She was amused by how fuzzy Kem now looked. Someone needed to fix his vertical hold.

She nodded her agreement. They’d spent more time remembering than forgetting.

She cringed inwardly at the idea of things he wished he hadn’t… not harming people.

“I didn’t know I could feed without killing. Not for a long time.”

She offered that as support, not something she liked to volunteer but the shared pain seemed to be helping on some level, hopefully both of them.

“What made you happy? Maybe … maybe it hasn’t completely exploded.”

Pak sounded as out of it as he felt. He tilted his head at her... both of her. His lips had turned up in a sad, if floppy, sort of smile. "You know, nothing does now," he answered. "Not really."

He dragged himself to his feet, not an easy task. The couch was comfortable and there was no question of Pak's going anywhere at the moment. He handed her the throw that was draped over the back of the recliner and helped drape it over her. The windows didn't worry him; the sunlight wouldn't find its way through the tightly-closed shades. He'd spent many a sleepless day on the couch.

She was mostly gone; he settled one of the throw pillows on the floor by her hand if she should want it, and grabbed the empty bottle and glasses, depositing them in the sink as he made his way down the hall to his bedroom.

His bed threw itself at him; he succombed to it and let himself fall, down into the blissful oblivion of slumber, mustering up one incredibly blurry thought before he faded out.

[Mornin' Pak. Thanks.]

((ooc: Kem out. As far as I know he doesn't snore.))