Toronto (But Not Sparkle's Toronto), Thursday Evening

[myownface]

So, for a couple of days now, Sparkle had been kind of just going with the flow, figuring that whatever this intervention was meant to accomplish, Hannibal would probably figure he'd gotten it off his chest sooner or later. Monday had been full of eventful conversation, and after that had been through, Tuesday and Wednesday had been all about self-care. It was hard to focus on much else in the wake of a talk like that.

So today he'd been more or less willing to just roll with it when Hannibal had informed him that he was calling a cab, and they were going out for a few hours. Sure, Hannibal wasn't telling him where, and that had him squinting a bit, but at this rate he was willing to do just about anything to be able to get out of this damn city.

Sorry, Hannibal. Whatever else it was you were trying to accomplish here, you were never going to redeem Toronto for Sparkle. You just weren't.

"Are we almost there, at least?"

[OOC: For that guy! Be forewearned that I'm gonna be slapping some manner of trigger warning up here at some point. Which I'll do when I know exactly what that warning is gonna have to be. Warning number one is for assaulting and drugging a man.]

Comments

[myownface]

"I mean," Sparkle squinted out the window. "I kind of see? I am definitely seeing a street in Toronto."

One of those 'familiar in that he'd walked down it at least once' streets that really didn't mean much to him otherwise, mostly. Which didn't put him any more at ease than before.

"And I guess I don't get to find out why we're out this way until we get there, huh?"

[sharp_man]

"Consider it a surprise," Hannibal said.

Right about when the cab pulled up and stopped.

Hannibal thanked the driver and paid him, along with a good-sized but not extravagant tip.

[myownface]

"Surpriiiise," Sparkle said under his breath, slipping out of the car and looking around the street they'd stopped on.

Yup. Ringing exactly zero bells, here.

"It's definitely a residential area. I'm super surprised."

Honest.

[sharp_man]

"Don't worry," Hannibal said. He checked the numbers and headed for a specific house. There was nobody on the street, which was just as well.

He stepped onto the porch and knocked briskly, one hand slipping into his pocket.

"Remember," he told Sparkle, "I have your back."

[myownface]

"You... what?" Sparkle barely had time to process the implications of that statement as the door opened, and a man in his early fifties blinked out at the two of them.

A very familiar man, but altogether different, a face that was fifteen years younger in his mind's eye, weathered by time and life, like the face from the news article that Sparkle had brought up on Hannibal's tablet on Sunday. That face was looking out at the both of them now, not recognizing either of them, looking fairly put out that his evening had been interrupted at all, and Sparkle was going to be sick.

"Yeah?"

God, even his voice sounded the same but... not. If Sparkle had been firing on all cylinders at that moment, he might have pinched himself to see if he was actually awake.

[sharp_man]

"Hello, there." Hannibal stepped closer to the man, still smiling. "We have a few things to say to you. Fortunately," he slipped the hand from his pocket and deftly inserted the syringe into the man's neck, "you aren't required to talk."

[myownface]

"Fuck!"

It was remarkable, really, just how much father and son sounded alike at just that moment, both of them swearing loudly at once. Sparkle, eyes locked on the men in front of him, legs refusing to move, contents of his stomach threatening to betray to the world what he'd had for lunch. His father, eyes on Hannibal, hands reaching up to try to grab... him? The syringe? Whatever was in it worked fast, and hands raised in anger and fear were only weakly managing to grab at the sleeves of Hannibal's suit.

So the continued litany of "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck..." was all Sparkle.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal grabbed the man's arm as he started to crumple and, with one last glance at the street to make certain they weren't seen, guided him back into the house and onto a couch which was possibly more unsavory than the one in Jono's old apartment.

He didn't particularly care how the man fell, nor bother to check his vitals. He'd done his best without actually meeting him first, but if things went awry, well.

[myownface]

Sparkle's brain was not working. Sparkle was like ninety-nine percent certain that he'd just watched Hannibal stab some other-reality version of his father in the neck with a syringe, and now they'd vanished back inside, leaving Sparkle on the front step freaking the fuck out. He wanted to look inside, wanted to see what the hell was going on in there, but it was that same sort of perverse curiosity that led people to stare at train wrecks, knowing that nothing good could ever come back out of them again.

So, yeah... Sparkle was good out here? Except for how he was feeling not terribly good at all, and was actually actively trying not to bend over and retch into the dead patch of weeds that, in the hands of any other homeowner, might actually have become a garden.

[sharp_man]

After a moment, Hannibal came to the door. He put a hand on Sparkle's back. "Will you come inside?"

[myownface]

It was probably pretty clear from the way Sparkle tensed at Hannibal's hand on his back that he was not super okay with this.

"Why? What am I going to find in there?"

It was also kind of a miracle that he managed to get that many coherent words out all at the same time.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal raised an eyebrow. "This world's version of your father, soundly asleep. And a rather unsanitary living space."

[myownface]

Sparkle wrinkled his nose a little at that.

"Yeah, I don't get my neat freak streak from him," he muttered, shuddering involuntarily before looking back at the doorway. "You just... like... knocked him out?"

Sparkle was mostly certain that this was probably the sort of thing Atton had in mind when he had told him to call if he considered doing anything that approached a six on the 'from one to stupid' scale.

[sharp_man]

"You, if I'm not mistaken, have quite a few things that you've needed to say to him," Hannibal said. "But I see no reason he should be able to speak."

He shrugged. "I could wake him and tape his mouth shut, if you would prefer." Or sew it shut, but he suspected Sparkle wouldn't care for that, and he hadn't brought sutures, anyway.

[myownface]

Sparkle shook his head maybe the tiniest bit frantically, looking between Hannibal and the doorway, not entirely certain which option had him more freaked out just then.

"Don't wake him up," he said a second later, hating that weirdly vulnerable, desperate child tone that had slippd into his voice. "Please, please don't wake him up..."

He hated being woken up.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal nodded.

"Will you come inside?" he asked again.

[myownface]

Sparkle hardly noticed the soft whining sound that he made at that question, hardly realized that he was hiding his hands behind his back, bunching up a little at the shoulder, his eyes turning down toward the ground and his breath the only real movement that he dared to make until he committed to taking Hannibal up on his offer, nodding a little, and then carefully making his way for the door.

His nose wrinkled almost immediately at the familiar smells; cigarette smoke, empty beer bottles, piss. Probably a dead rat or something decompozing behind the sofa, though it could just as easily be leftovers that never got put away, something going off in the kitchen. Everything going off in the kitchen. It was not doing wonders for how badly he wanted to puke just then.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal gripped his shoulder and gave him time. "Remember who you are, not who you were. Remember what you have accomplished, what you have already survived."

[myownface]

"What if who I am really doesn't want to be here right now?"

He thought that was a pretty valid question, right there. Who he was was a damaged child staring down his original poison, looking at the older, still too damn familiar face of the sleeping man on the couch. And the familiar face hadn't known him when he'd answered the door. He wouldn't have known him when he answered the door. In this reality, Sparkle had never been so much as a thought. Carla had been, and she'd never gotten a chance.

There was nothing about this place that made him want to be here. Not a single fucking thing.

[sharp_man]

"I know you don't." Hannibal's hand wasn't going anywhere. "But you are here. And you can do it. You have faced aliens, elder gods, creatures from people's worst nightmares, and you are still here. You have survived. This is one middle-aged man, asleep. All of the demons you face here are in your mind. And they will be with you wherever you are, unless you deal with them."

[myownface]

"... And how am I supposed to deal with them?"

There were too damn many of those demons here, sharing a face with that man. Too many monsters asleep on the couch, too close for comfort, bigger than him and dangerous if disturbed.

Always, always disturbed.

[sharp_man]

"You begin by facing them," Hannibal said. He nudged Sparkle to face the man on the couch. "And by knowing that you can."

He stood close behind, his hands on Sparkle's shoulders and his voice hypnotic. "When we met, there were sharks everywhere, and you were armed with only a labeling gun. You were scared, but you were prepared to do whatever you could. There is no shame in being scared, but don't let it prevent you from doing what needs to be done."

[myownface]

"This isn't the same," Sparkle protested, even as he took a few tentative steps toward the man on the couch. "This isn't Fandom garbage that everyone walks away from with a few bruises. This is... this is an echo of the person who ruined my life before it even got started. Fuck, maybe this one is even worse. This one killed my mom and sister."

His hands were shaking. His hands were shaking way too fucking much even as his fingers closed around the nearest safe thing he had at his disposal, closed around one of the knives he kept concealed on his person, one of the many that Leto had gifted to him. He didn't intend to use it, but there was no way in hell he was going to be this close to that particular monster without having that much.

[sharp_man]

Hannibal didn't move to stop him, just stayed close by, offering support. Backup.

"This is a true monster, then. The one that helped to create those demons in you that keep you from seeing your potential. Exorcise them now. See him for what he is, so that you can see yourself for what you are."

[myownface]

"I..." Sparkle took another few steps, his feet feeling heavy as lead as he stopped in front of the couch, staring down at the man, the sleeping, all too familiar man, who was laying prone there. "All I see are shadows."

He blew out a breath. Pulled in another, more shaky one. Let his hand hang down at his side, knife still clutched tightly in his fingers.

"I could leave him here with a scar for every scar he left me. One for every scar he left Carla. But with this asshole, it'd be one really deep one, right across his throat."