Voices Speaking Words [King]

He listened to the voices of the people as he walked down the street, catching and grabbing onto broken pieces of conversation of laughter, trying, as he always did to bring them together in his head, to understand, hoping that at least some of the answers he was looking for were hidden somewhere between them.

Children laughing as they chase one another down the street on bikes. A scream, a cry. More laughter

He wonders why they are laughing. Are they happy? Is that how happy looks like? Sounds like? He wonders how happy feels like.

...and he just broke up with me. Over the phone!

He wonders why the boy sitting at the corner table of the cafe is crying. Is he sad? Is that how sad looks like? Sounds like? He wonders how sad feels like. Sadness is a negative emotion, he knows. Something people try to avoid. Still, he wonders, for even sadness would be better than the emptiness that is him.

That sucks, buddy

He wonders about those words too. Are they supposed to comforting? He doesn't know comfort either, so he wouldn't know. He doesn't understand relationships much either, that connection that one person can have with another. He closes his eyes and imagines a line connecting the boys to each other. Friendship. He tries the word in his head. It feels weird. Like it cannot fit.

He wonders how friendship feels like too, as he continues to walk down the street.

Like I'd pay fifty dollars for that piece of crap!

He fills the few bills crumbling in his pockets, his hands buried deep within them. Fifty dollars. He thinks he has that much. More. Much more. He used to have thousands upon thousands of dollars. Killing people paid well. He never understood why. He never understood why people needed money in the first place until he found himself suddenly free. Now, the money he earned through blood was finally thinning out and he found himself wondering about jobs too.

Now that there was much he could do besides killing. And he wasn't going back to that.

Grace, get back here, right now!

A mother. Calling for the daughter. He thought about his own child in the Academy. Family was a strange word too. One he could not grasp. One that he could not fit into his head. He thought about the girl's mother. He wondered about love.

He walked the streets of the city and listened to the people talk, listened as he had listened in Paris, Tokyo, Moscow. He listened, hoping that one day he would understand how it was that they led their lives, and failed, like he always did, for to him, they all spoke in tongues.

@King

The broken man blinked, not surprised, he did not know surprise, but perhaps, taken by surprise, for the first time in a long time, as a string of voices he had been listening too suddenly....broke.

...here...with me...some carrots...

...love you...call me later...god, you're awful...

...is this...I don't know...have you met...

''Leo'', he spoke, after a long moment of silently staring at the man who had suddenly appeared in front of him. Staring, but barely seeing, registering only what was most necessary to survive.

''Tall'', his mind supplied without him really registering it at all. ''Probably strong. Has wings. Can fly.''

Then, as he took a step back, unconsciously as well, for it was something that had been trained into him forever, to defend himself, and assume that others were about to attack, it was something that he had to act on, even now, when he was trying to be different, to do better, to know better, he suddenly realized another thing, something that his mind could never tell him, but this voice deep within always did.

''Is a Zodiac'', it whispered, and Leo took an even bigger step back.

Still, he had replied, from a safe distance, yes, but replied, for that was what people did when asked a question, when somebody spoke to them, they replied.

Right?

''I am Leo'', he added, for it was not really his name, was it? He had none, in the end. He had simply chosen to identify himself by what he was, for he had never known anything else in his life.

He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising, his whole body knowing it for a warning that it was, as something he could not see suddenly wrapped itself all around him, barely touching him, and not even confiding him, yet still making his palms itch with the need to touch, to make explode. He was never good with other Zodiacs.

He knew, however, he could not do that here, now. And he did not even want to do something like that, to fight. He wanted to change, to be something different. Even though he did not know how.

''I am Leo'', he repeated, shaking his head slowly, as he tried to remember whether he had met, or heard anything of a Libra before. He hadn't.

''I have...no other name'', he added in the end, guessing from the man's own introduction that for Libra, his name and power were two different things, and that he had expected the same from him. He was not like that, however. He was simply Leo.

''Yes'', he said when the winged man asked him had he arrived on the Island recently, for to him, a few years-he was not even sure how many any more, not that he had ever exactly been-nothing more than that-with almost no time passing between the question and his answer as he slowly adapted to the conversation, constantly reminded of the fact that yes, when asked a question you answer. He did not need to stay silent, like he once used to.

''Talk?'', the the broken man repeated after the Libra then, his body slowly relaxing as whatever it was that had been wrapped around him slowly receded. He was still on edge, however, unable to help it, for it was not a conscious things, like much of it was not with him. It was instinct. He had no idea about things such as like or dislike, but other Zodiacs...they came close, in ways they triggered some memories that his body still held close, of small places and torture.

''Why?'', he managed to ask, as well as look the other man in the eye, and while doing so, he let his instincts try and guess what it was that this man needed from him. People wanting to talk, usually wanted something else as well, something he was no longer willing to do.

The man stared at the winged Libra, his eyes as empty as they ever were silver pools of eerie light, reflecting nothing, despite the slightest dance of not emotions, but instincts, happening inside his head. The instinct of an assassin, but also memories of someone who had suffered at the hand of a man who previously held his name-or at least a tittle. He had never known the previous Leo as anything but that-a previous Leo, a Zodiac. And now, another one stood before him, claiming they were like family.

He did not understand family, has had that proven to him multiple times. When a woman with a child tracked him down. When the child turned out to be his, and did nothing but make him stare at it blankly, much as he did now. All of this, it was much more than he could ever understand, it seemed.

His silence had lasted unnaturally long, or well unnaturally long according to the social rules, he thought, because for him, silence was not unnatural at all. In the end, he simply said: ''I am...not like him'', for that was something that he did understand, people seeking him out for things that he used to do but did not any more.