houseofcards_rp | [ota] shake me, break me....

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[ota] shake me, break me....

There was always a chance of injury when sparring. Particularly when sparring with someone that you were particularly competitive with (like ones brother). Hadyn didn't even remember how it happened, other than a series of complicated moves, and progressively annoyed Jordan. He'd lost his knife, but thanks to Elisha's training over the past year, losing his knife was no longer the most worrisome thing in a match.

He'd blocked a slashing motion from Jordan, and had moved to step in and disarm his brother when Jordan suddenly (and unexpectedly) changed tactics. He let go have his knife and latched on to Hadyn's arm before he was able to adjust and scramble back- and then, between his own twisting, and Jordan's- he felt the searing, hot pain rip through is shoulder as he came crashing down on it, Jordan having flipped him, almost without his notice, onto the training mat.

Surely people would forgive him for looking pained as he gets his shoulder iced and wrapped before heading to the theatre to work.

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"And now you won't be rematching me until next week." Because he might have almost had Jordan, but he didn't. Not entirely.

"We weren't exactly raised to be zen about that kind of thing, you know." If Mother had seen how close it had been...well. Jordan would have been in for several more hours of training. He might do it anyway. Now wasn't the time to get sloppy.

"No reason to not change. We're changing everything else, after all." He said with a bit of a sigh. It was what it was though. "Next week, though- I'll definitely get you next week."

It was the start of something at least. Even if Mother would have scolded Jordan endlessly, Hadyn felt it wasn't because Jordan was getting worse- he felt it was being he was getting better.

"Yeah, well. I'll work on it." It was weird to think of his younger brother getting better than him at this. He'd always been the best at it, Hadyn had been the artist, and Jordan had never had his kind of talent that way.

Still, he was theoretically an adult in control of his own destiny, so...

Hadyn would say he devoted an untold number of hours to training. Training and working, and very little to sleep in his ever growing longer days. His mental health probably suffered the most of it- an untold amount of pressure on himself to 'do better' and 'be faster'. That didn't even take into account the pressure that others put on him to achieve ever higher, and to grow as an artist and as a fighter. He wanted to be the best- he needed to be the best. If he failed at something, he worked twice as hard to achieve it the next time.

And he never made the same mistake twice.

"At least you can't get worse." Or so the saying might go.

Neither of them had the other's perspective, really. Jordan had never measured himself against Hadyn; he'd measured himself against his memories of his father, against Uncle Davin, even against their mother, in a way. At this point only one of them was a tangible force to measure himself against, and things with Uncle Davin continued to be distant after what had happened.

He'd grown up knowing what he was meant to be, but he wasn't meant to be that anymore, and it left him adrift. It twisted his smile into something rueful and a little bitter at the corners, because there was a part of him that knew that switching back to the Spades might be the right thing, but it also might just be avoiding the inevitable truth that he didn't have much of a place in life.

He wasn't sure yet. "I think that's yet to be proven," he said, dryly. "We'll see how January goes."

"Don't worry so much," Hadyn offered with a one-shoulder shrug. "If Clive can make King, surely you can make it to Seven." Which was the sort of comment that was bound to get him slapped up-side the head and a scowl. But whatever the future held for either of them, the end was going to be the same- they were going to be something other than the future they'd always planned for.

Perhaps it was for the best, too.

"I'm sure I could single-handed maim every Seven they have- and you still beat me." Even if Jordan had to earn it these days.

"That," Jordan said. "Is not something I particularly worry about." He didn't have to have a target in mind to know he could take one. He'd just feel better about things if he had some idea of what was next.

But he didn't, in anything but the vaguest of senses.

"Are you planning to test that out. Say, with Ethan?" He'd just like to know ahead of time so he can avoid the complaints.

Hadyn made a face at that, before pulling his shirt back to him and contemplated pulling it on. Ethan should have stayed missing, if anyone asked him.

"As far as I'm concerned, as long as Ethan is there, I've no intention of spending more time than necessary in Spade Castle." Which was a lot, of late, considering her was the Ambassador to the Spades.

"That makes two of you." Ethan had said much the same thing, and was back to living at his house in Town. Which made Ethan and Hadyn theoretically closer than they'd been at the Castles.

Except Hadyn was mostly at Clubs, anyway.

"Well, I suppose I'll have to do the visiting once I move, then."

"I don't even understand why you are friends with him- less so than Amy, even. At least she's too stupid to realize how much of a piss poor example of a human being she is." Which was, perhaps, unfair. But then he didn't understand Amy- nor her sudden change of heart when it came to him, and in wanting to be his friend.

Or at least something more than Civil.

Jordan could have told him that Amy had finally realized that everyone hated her, and she was belatedly trying to make friends where she'd burned bridges before. He didn't think it was going to work so well, but then, Jordan wasn't exactly an expert at friends himself.

"I don't have enough friends that I can afford to toss away the ones I have left from childhood," he said after a moment, baldly. "Even if they can be pretentious assholes. Sometimes he's not, and he listens. I don't have that many people who care to do that, you know."

When Jordan put it like that...Hadyn almost felt like a horrible brother. It wasn't that he expected Jordan to come to him with things- he wasn't sure he could hold Jordan up, anyway. It was just that; in comparison, Hadyn had everything.

Certainly more than Jordan at least.

"I'm...sorry." Was about all he could say.

"It's not you," Jordan said, softly. "We're sort of talking now, aren't we?" Maybe not with much depth, but Jordan had his own issues when it came to Hadyn - as much as they were rivals, he'd also always been expected to take care of his younger brother. Hadyn had been more visibly fragile, after all.

"We both know I'm kind of a bastard," he said with a crooked smile after a moment. "It's not the kind of thing that makes most people want to have a heart-to-heart. And it's okay. I don't think I really know how to have one of those, anyway."

"You're still my brother," Hadyn said, looking up at Jordan as he repeated the same words his brother had told him months ago. And he was- he was the only thing, in some ways, that Hadyn still had that kept him feeling....normal. Like he wasn't something created to be used, or...countless things.

They just were.

"Bastard or not." He said, smiling a little. "You got better- maybe if you smiled a bit more. And offered to get ice cream."

Jordan snorted a bit at that, shaking his head. "I smile," he said. "I've been told it just makes me look like I'm judging everyone around me, though, so that might be part of the problem."

He raised his brows, though. "Is that you hinting I should bring you ice cream?"

"No, are you kidding? I would gain far too much weight." Which, yes, he was aware that most people would think that was a good thing. But whatever.

"I will take you up on dinner though. Because...I need some food before going to hell."

"Oh, we couldn't have that." His tone was only a little dry, though.

"Come on, then," he said. "We can pick something up and eat at your place. God knows what your new addition will have done to Freddy's nerves by now."

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[ota] shake me, break me....

Apparently SWS is broken.

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