After about three weeks, Kerr emerged from the fog that surrounded him. It was unpleasant at first, because his emotions - which had been so beautifully remiss in his numbness - returned and left him rather crippled in their cruel grip. He fluctuated from cold sweats of horror about finally ending his time with his \'family\', to fiery rages over the knowledge that Sawyl would have killed him and he now owed the bitches his life (though surely that was the least of what they owed him). He shed tears, he yelled and cursed... he broke things that were replacable.
Through all this, life slowly bled. He moved out of the hotel two days after his nominated week was up, having made the decision to find a real apartment and make a home for himself. He chose the Capital Building because it was completely different to anything he\'d ever owned before, anywhere he\'d ever lived. He inspected apartment one because it was furnished but quickly decided he would just get some ideas from that, instead choosing the empty half of the top floor - suite two, as it happened - to become his new home.
He commissioned specialised, hi-tech window/glass door covers to be installed (made of a fashionable metallic charcoal grey steel), complete with timers that would have them shutting down automatically every night, half an hour before the earliest of sunrises. They wouldn\'t open unless manually triggered. He spent exorbitant amounts of money ensuring the blinds would be done quickly and then on copious amounts of furniture - anything that caught his suddenly-whimsical eye - to fill up his abode. The smell of newness was everywhere.
He moved in as soon as everything was in place... and more strange surrounds encouraged further mountains and troughs of emotion. He wept, he flailed, he hated and loved... he found numbness again when he had nothing more to give. By the end of the second week, he was so ravenous he ate on the street, a few doors down from his building, because he was deep within the bustle of the city and there were always crowds to choose from, people he could drink from that would be none the wiser when he released them; half an hour gave him five victims and left him dizzy with gluttony.
In the third week, he went back to... his old house. He reclaimed any errant possessions he wanted and began negotiations with the twins. They requested that he retain power of attorney and control of all funds, acknowledging, after all, that it was he alone that had nurtured it all into the grand amounts they claimed today. They declared trust for him, where he expected none, convincing him to volunteer to continue paying the bills and watching over them indefinitely.
He blinked in surprise when he was graciously thanked, when they became emotional, when they tried to apologise. They didn\'t mention Sawyl by name - just said they were terribly sorry for everything - and he didn\'t ask after his sire. He felt him close by, but knew the wounds were too fresh on both sides for there to be conciliatory gestures at this stage.
When he left, his thoughts turned to Ben and he became ashamed that he\'d held them at bay for so long, though not surprised. It was a defense mechanism after all, a protective reflex that his mind had instigated in order not to overload him. It had been his time to mourn his past, not to entertain his future. Knowing what might yet be gave him no hope, nor strength to fight what had already come to pass; they were two entirely separate halves of his life and himself. He wouldn\'t have coped.
Of course, thinking about Ben and seeing him were two different things. Knowing that Sawyl had interfered and shown the fledgling misleading information - very intimate, misleading information - left him stymied with indecision. As a friend, he felt remiss; as a sire he felt inadequate. Nothing about his life was exemplary and there was certainly a lot of bad things he could be held accountable for but this... was embarrassing, more than anything. Ben wouldn\'t know why he\'d done what he had, wouldn\'t understand the depths of depression he\'d been in - over his imprisonment at Declan\'s hands and Mandy\'s pain - that had begun the whole thing, and he didn\'t think he\'d get a chance to explain. Part of him didn\'t feel he deserved that chance anyway.
Fate had other ideas, of course. He was out hunting at the beginning of his fourth week of solitude - early in the evening so he was still observing the homeward bound crowds more than anything - when he felt a familiar sensation that became a resounding quiver as he kept walking. His instincts recognised it for what it was before his mind was willing to acknowledge it; his feet picked up their dawdling pace to a brisk walk, he felt energised, excited and he stretched himself up, hoping to catch sight of his goal over the heads of the crowds.
Ben
His mind called it, pushing it into the space between them without preamble, keen to make contact despite his general indecision over the matter before now. Before he was faced with certain reacquaintance. The void was too great to deny this opportunity to fill it... at last Kerr saw him. His blonde head was lowered, silvery eyes glancing mostly down at the footpath or up at the crowd around him through his lashes, his body language closed off -- he looked like he was about to cross the street! Kerr broke into a run, pressing every part of his being forward in an effort to stop the fledgling.
BEN!
