...
“We’re in a holding room.” Maven says, upset. He leans against the back of a chair, unclean hands pushing him in, and out, and in, and out. How strange that this is what disgusts Maven.
Then, a gasp, exasperated. “Why do you think you and I, of all people, are in here?” Vincent asks, elbow on the table face in his palm.
Maven keeps facing the red wall, jittery, craving no longer to think, but do.
“I’m not a detective. I don’t suspect things.” And then a moment, “I inject things.”
Horrid. Even with no stimulus Maven is just as Maven is. Is this what makes Maven so special? If only he were good with words, and popular, and made no mistakes, and think without getting a headache.
This holding room is Magu on Bryn. This boring place. Red walls, a table, no windows. Vincent watches Maven move, impatient. He would not survive one day being him.
And then, it settles. The frown upon his face. He looks away. The comparison. It haunts him. From one side of the table to the other, look how they sit- though sit is not much a word for the one on the left. Anyone here, speaking to both would look at Maven.
Recurring years of memories slap Vincent in the face. This cycle again, and that even though his birthday is 2 days prior, Maven’s "exaltation" is where they steer.
Vincent gives in to the wood. Weary, staring somewhere.
“Have you ever been at loss?”
Maven stops. And turns his head. My, the look’s ambiguous. Is he angered? Is he curious. Sometimes it can be so intense. The silence.
“What do you mean?”
Asked not with curiosity but flat, like a fact. Maven is frozen, back to Vincent, kneeling on a chair. There is red everywhere.
Vincent is a little flustered, kinda awkward. But he needs to know. But he can’t appear jealous, as he always does behind his back, to his face.
“Have you ever lost something. Or have you always won.”
Maven’s veins are huge, protruding through layers of cracked and fresh blood. He thinks, making his casual thinking face, under bloody goggles Vincent cant tell which direction his eyes veer.
Has he ever lost something? A game in the sun, or an item, or a person? He achieves anything he wants. Determination, or lack thereof, really makes Vincent that glum? He looks at him- lacking, self-pitying, and weak.
“That’s a strange, selfish concept of losing and winning.”
Vincent’s brows raise, aghast. He sees the fear in inferior. He’s been called out, feeble, identified from the outside in. How, without a scalpel, could he be right?
“What? What would you say that?!” he exclaims, leaning against the edge.
Maven sees he is offended, but through bloody lens knows he does so to cover up his weakness. A rib cage around a heart is still a cage.
“I don’t know if I’ve lost anything. I don’t know if I’ve won anything. Why would you dictate?”
He steps from the platform and raises his lens, moving closer to Vincent. Maven is tall, but strangely plain. There are loads of tools and trinkets attached to him. Colors of green and gold, and brown, and blue, though most are covered. Anyone in proximity’s eyes would wander, and mind would wonder.
What would that thing do? Why does he have three of these? Where did that substance come from? That is an interesting pattern, what does he know about it?
Among the colors, and many details, and gory toil upon his skin, his eyes are plain, very plain. Like footsteps on the earth. With a fire.
“And why would you do that to yourself.”
Maven makes a good point. Vincent blinks, and thinks awhile. Maven’s mind steers somewhere else.
“Self-deprecation, self-pitying by constituting who’s losing and who’s winning. Could he really be free of this self-made weight? Some kind of apathy or balance of self-esteem? And being this way, and thinking like him, will I fly and soar and achieve and win? Can I have that? Vincent over everybody.”
Vincent thinks his predicament hard and long. Maven thinks about how many deer skins could cover that wall.
Sighing, he comes to a conclusion, tired of trying. To have what Maven has, he doesn’t deserve it. It’s more comfortable to burrow in the dirt, and dream of the beaches he’s heard.
Lost in thought, Maven’s on the table now, writing notes on his throat. The ink is someone’s substance.
Believe it or not, they often forget they are princes, and that’s why they’re in the holding room. And royal affairs, they don’t care, lost in accomplishment and despair.
