The Maxims of Conversation

[Alec Goreman]

The rain had intensified from a light drizzle into something much more substantial. Alone in the churchyard, Alec Goreman was studying the feeling of cold water dripping off the chin length tangle that his hair had grown into. Recently, he'd not been taking care of himself as well as perhaps he should have. The droplets had made his hair heavy and darkened the usual sunny blonde into a darker shade, plastering some thin strands to his forehead. Truly this was most unbecoming. Something ought to be done; his mother would have had something to say about the state her son had worked himself into. Worked into through a lack of working. It was the school's doing - something to do with extending compassionate leave so that he couldn't hurt the children with his abilities.

"Play nicely, Alec."

He would never have hurt those children. Didn't they see? A teacher was compassionate and understanding, and would never harm those who learned from him. And he had always played nicely as a child. He'd had a friend - a girl, Amelia - who they had to be careful with while playing in the streets. If she fell and got a graze, or a cut, she would bleed and bleed until there was no more left. Alec himself had been the one to run to her parents on long, skinny legs and tell them that she had been hurt. The ambulance had arrived, Amelia swallowed into the dimness of the back of the vehicle, the wail of their sirens still heard several streets away.

He had taken the water from Natasha's lungs, pulled it out. And they thought he might hurt her.

Alec changed the direction of his gaze, fixed it on the headstones. This is his solace. His place where nobody else will go, because they don't know the reasons.

It has been fourteen months. He has eaten little, slept little, and become a shadow. A ghost, even. At this moment he wants to plunge his hands into the wet grass, to worm his fingers into the cold earth beneath, to make it fresh again as if they had just been buried. As they were when he stood alone after their funeral, in the rain. As he does now.

I played nicely. I was always good.

They had been good people, too. Stephen and Elizabeth Hart, loving parents and thoughtful, contributive members of society. Alec had wanted for nothing, not even the identity of a father who was really his own. Stephen had been more than adequate; the purest form of kindness had been shown as he raised with utmost dedication a child that was not his own.

He was wet, sodden now. And alone. Without either. It had been fourteen months of solitude, thought, reflection. Madness.

[Hurucan]

He had known that he would come. It hadn't taken much to learn to understand how his mind worked, broken as it was. This Alec Goreman was a creature of habit, or had at least become one of late, ofen seeking solace and solitude at the graveside of his lost parents. Unfortunately, those habits apparently hadn't allowed for much focus on personal hygene; Alec's hair (http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w231/porcilingirl/dustfingerandgwin600.jpg) was long, tangled and untamed, his clothes tattered, battered and old. Something about him reminded Hurucan of how he had appeared in his youth (http://www.christopherheyerdahl.com/chpic/johndoe_124.jpg). That had been a lot of hair ago, of course.

Hurucan smiled at the irony as he watched from a distance, rain rolling down the dark leather of his jacket. He had been watching him for near two weeks now, cataloguing his movements; biding his time; waiting for the perfect opportunity to act. From his pocket, he produced an antique pocket watch, a button-press later flicking it open. The hands ticked slowly around; Hurucan could feel the pulse of the clockwork in his fingers. The timepiece was a necessity: he'd learned the hard way that being an electrokinetic could have an adverse effect on any devices he carried about his person. Fat raindrops exploded across the surface of the dial. Hurucan clicked the watch closed. It was nearly time.

Alec turned, leaving the grave side as he always did a few moments after noon. From nowhere, Hurucan materialised in his path, the warm smile on his face not enough to offset the surprise of his looming appearance. The smile grew ever so slightly wider. "Hello, Alec."

[Alec Goreman]

Eyes like ice widened in shock, their owner jerking backwards from his usual route out of the churchyard. The rain swept back with him, the droplets swarming like tiny insects around honey. His abilities were not enough under his control that things did not happen instinctively.

Stranger danger --

From beneath the cotter-ridden curtain of hair, Alec peered up with bleary eyes at the stranger. He was a good head taller than Alec himself, with hair cut close to the scalp and piercing eyes not unlike his own. Dressed in dark clothing, he seemed every inch a terrifying apparition; an omen of some kind. Alec waited, as still as stone, studying this stranger with all the focus of a wild animal. He could run. But it would be the wrong way, not the way back that he wanted to use. He could not retrace his steps back towards their resting place.

The rain broke the silence between the two men, slamming hard against their bodies in an ever-constant, yet somehow rhythmic beat. It was soothing to Alec's ears. He let his shoulders slump, and drew himself into a more relaxed stance, cupping his hand at his side. There, freezing rain splashed against bare skin, slowly collecting in his fingers.

"...You know me." There was no need for an introduction on his behalf, it seemed. The stranger seemed well aware

-- dangerous --

of who he was already. He had uttered his name calmly, the way a crocodile would do to a rabbit before swallowing it whole. Alec's eyes flickered; was an escape possible? Even if he strayed from his usual path, surely he could correct it quickly and leave ...

Perhaps it had just slipped his mind. Perhaps it was a colleague, one he had forgotten since his time away from the school. It had been fourteen months, of course. Fourteen long, solitary months. His mother's family were American, so naturally a trip to see a pathetic, grieving creature was hardly worth the time - particularly an illegitimate one. And Stephan's family ...well, he wasn't even that man's child. Indeed, why worry?

"I have forgotten." The words were slow and - strangerous - difficult to form in his numb mouth. The cold was making conversation difficult. "...What do you call yourself?"

[Hurucan]

Hurucan narrowed his eyes, icy blues probing Alec with interest, rather than anything threatening. Unless his senses were somehow being affected - while far from flawless, his keen intellect usually helped him to see through the casual deceptions that sight and sound were able to conjure up - the rain had seemed to shift in response to both the younger man's movements, and apparently with his emotions as well, if the expression he displayed was anything to go by. It was possible that the strange phenomenon had been the result of a freak gust of wind, but Hurucan hadn't felt anything of the sort acting against himself; the fact that his own body shielded the only direction from which such a gust could have come also gave pause to his acceptance of that theory.

No - logic implied that some other force must be in action here, and it followed that an answer to one of his later questions had already been provided. So, Mr Goreman; it seems you posess the ability to manipulate water. Hurucan allowed the slightest of smiles at that. Good for you.

His entire face seemed to express his intregue, as he mentally chewed the younger man's words over in his mind. "What do I call myself?" he repeated, carefully considering each word as it tumbled off his tongue. "Such an intreguing question, Mr Goreman; an interesting choice of phrasing as well. Ordinarily I would cast such things aside as a linguistical oversight, but given your particular -" He made a vague flourish with one hand, encouraging his memory to search out the appropriate phrasing. "- former occupation, it might be overzealous of me to do that so readily."

Brow tugging downwards ever so slightly, considering his response a little longer. "You asked what I call myself, Alec; that is the question I shall answer." He le his smile grow. "My true name is Hurucan; my other names have long since faded from the memories of anyone of consequence."

More consideration followed, and seemingly a decision was released. His arms fell apart, fingers lacing together behind his back. Seriousness washed the smile, smirk, or whatever it had been from his face. "You may know me as something else, however." A beat passed; the slightest of hestiations, but to Hurucan it felt like an eternity. Finally, he revealed his truth:

"I am your father."

[Alec Goreman]

Blank. Alec, his mind, is nothing. Blank like a disused blackboard. Whiteboard. Whiteboards are used now. They have many coloured pens which can be used to demonstrate any aspect of every subject in a dazzling spectrum, bringing some clarity to more difficult modules taught. He enjoys writing with those pens - allowing the first years to take their turn, because they always love to contribute. Nothing, nothing. What had the stranger said?

Hurucan. It is his name.

Nothing, nothing. Whiteboard, blackboard.

"Can it be called a whiteboard?"

The student's voice holds bemusement, "Why can't it, Mr. Goreman?"

Alec stifles a smirk, addressing the whole class with a hand gesturing to the object in question, "Well, isn't it rather non-PC?"

White and black, like chess pieces. Perhaps that is what they are now; chess pieces, like a black knight bearing down on a white pawn, the mount's hooves flailing, flailing like a baby's fists in the arms of his mother. No father. Father. There never was a father for Alec Goreman. Kind Stephen Hart, yes, the quiet, placid churchgoer who did not force Elizabeth to marry him, who accepted the toddler Alec as his own. But there had never been a real father like those of his friends - the men whose sons bore to them a definitive resemblence.

Father. Father.

He wants to believe it. He wants to believe that there are miracles in God's garden like Stephen Hart had told him, even though he did not believe.

And I have not wanted to know my father until this moment.

It could not be true; there was no possibility that this man could have found him at this place, and come to tell him just that. Just plainly: I am your father, like something the moving pictures would tell. In those dancing pictures, a boy with one hand had screamed denial at the man who declared such a thing. Should he do the same?

Curious now, just curious. Loosening his shoulders, Alec moved with all the delibaration of a stray cat, tentatively stepping closer to the stranger. The man's height was such that Alec had to tilt his head back to see him better, squinting through the rain at the well-defined features. The shapes and lines that made up this person who called himself Alec Goreman's father ...

...He knows me. He looks as I do.

A hand frozen by rain - Alec realised that it was his own - rose up to touch the younger one's stubbled face, the gnarled hair, the furrowed brow. This man, so alike to himself. Water was still pooling his his cupped hand.

Conversation - that was what Alec was murdering with his silence: Paul Grice would not be pleased. Relation, quantity, manner ...quality. What to say ...?

"My mother ...she lies in this place." Alec's eyes lowered, too weak to match the identical ones the man who claimed to be his father held, "...Did you ...did you come to pay respects?"

[Hurucan]

She lies in this place.

For a moment, Hurucan selected an arbitrary headstone, and looked at it with longing. Beneath it, he decided, was the grave of Elizabeth: poor, loving, forgiving Elizabeth. Their liaison had been a strange one; short, and born out of naught but desire and longing. She had found herself exiled from her infant family, so terribly alone and with no one else. Hurucan... well, he had issues of his own. He had been there in a moment of weakness; their relationship had burned with passion, but had consumed it far too quickly; she had somehow doused her pain, but found Hurucan's only grew regardless of the efforts to contain it. Like throwing water onto an electrical fire, the result had been explosive.

Given what he knew of her, he wondered if she truely was buried in the place where Alec had indicated; reading of her demise in the obituaries had come as something of a surprise. More surprising had been the mention of her infant son, and the fact that the man with whom she had died had not been the father. Investigation revealed more - the age corresponded; their looks seemed the same; those eyes...

She called you 'Alec'. Shame - I never did like that name.

Hurucan's brow fluctuated, as if unsure what emotion it intended to convey. His mouth worked as he searched for he correct way to articulate his response, the vaguest hint of disappointment and hurt creeping into his voice. "I came," he said, holding his arms out, welcoming, "To meet my son."

[Alec Goreman]

In all ironic truth, this man seemed to be lacking the maxim of quality. Clarity. Truth. His statement should be truthful and valid. It should be all truth and no lies. He had tried lying to his mother before; she had seen through it in an instant. He had been six years old, and told sternly never to do it again. Later, Stephen Hart had explained just why it was wrong to lie, with his own biblical-aided twist to the reasoning.

She had never hit him. Not once. He had been a good, well-behaved toddler, child, adolescent, student, and she had been patient and forgiving. It was an experience uncommon, he had discovered when talking to his peers and to his own students, to the first-born. However, the fact that he did not have any siblings might have made the difference. As an only child, had he been doted on?

He stared at the open arms of the man opposite him with all the intensity of a statue. Father? No. Impossible. He might want it to be, but it could not be. To be, not to be. Who had quoted that little pearl of wisdom?

And yet they were so alike, two strangers stood quite close in a churchyard, not far from where a woman who had meant so much lying so close by with someone who he knew was not his father, could not have been, because he had been born before they were ever met. There had been no talk of the real father of Alec Goreman, and so content was he that he never sought to ask.

And now he wishes that he had.

"...You cannot be him, sir." The words are as cold as the icy rain that pelts them. Alec moves his hand, feels the tiny pool of water collected in it. Again, he glances at the stranger, Hurucan, the word reminding him so much of hurricanes and storms. Hurucan does not move, simply stands with his arms wide, as if expecting Alec to dash and bury himself into the embrace, to call him 'father' and to have no qualms or worries about the truth of it. "Please, leave me."

Hurucan does not move. To Alec he is like a tower, one that will not crumble despite his best efforts. He wants to run, but the stranger blocks his path. He wants to be indoors, home - he shivers from the cold - and away from the confusion. His mother is dead, as is the man who pretended to be his father for more than twenty years. And Alec Goreman never wanted more.

Hurucan did not move, and in a flash Alec's temper was unleashed.

"I said, leave." The sharp utterance was accentuated by Alec thrusting his frozen hand forward, the water collected there shooting out like a dart, straight for the stranger's face. He cannot be my father. He moved again, stepping back and raising his arms - it does not matter who sees - movements of long forgotten Tai Chi classes resurfacing as he pinwheels furiously, the rain swirling and collecting like a shoal of the tiniest fish.

And all at once, Alec cast his hands forward, the water surging towards his adversary in an icy wave ...

[Hurucan]

Before the blow had even had a chance to land, Hurucan was gone, vanished from the place where he had been a moment before, appearing somewhere else entirely. "Come now, Alec," he called, the sound of his voice snapping the younger man's attention around. Another futile attempt at throwing water - Throwing water? My son's abilities can be matched by a bathing three-year-old? - landed in thin air, as again Hurucan moved faster than eyes could percieve to a new location.

His arms remained non-threatening, but Hurucan's lips twisted, unleashing a disappointed sigh. "Your mother was Elizabeth Goreman," he announced, voice loud and theatrical, but laced with frustration at having to go through this arduous process. "She was born in England - Essex, in fact - but studied at University in Cambridge. Not -" he threw in as an aside "- the Cambridge in this country, but rather Cambridge, Massachusetts."

He continued his orbit, watching Alec watching him, their twinned icy blues never straying far from the gaze of the other's. "She married a man who she met there - John Heller - but after five years and three children, the marriage failed. She returned to England, and met me." He finally stopped his pacing, rounding on Alec, his anger suddenly rising. "Are you sure she never mentioned anything about me - no photographs, no descriptions, no stories of our short-lived love?"

[Alec Goreman]

Facts, facts. It was all that this man was reciting; just facts, things any person on any level of friendship, acquaintance with his mother could have learned. He had asked of her life before him; she had mentioned America, broadening her horizons as an intelligent young woman, determined to make a difference, but had said that she missed her England and returned, and decided to settle down. She had become a part-time librarian, spending four days a week doting on her infant son, every evening reading to him, singing, cradling that tiny child in her arms whom she adored.

"Alec, Alec. My Alec. My beautiful, perfect little boy." She had crooned at him even when he was twenty, upon his return from University for the summer. She had told him many things - admitted how he was not Stephen's child, but never ventured to tell whom his birth father was, exactly, and he had never asked. Perhaps wondered, in his mind, in just whose image he had been born, but never asked. Because Stephen Hart had been too kind, too wonderful as a father.

It makes no sense; he goes over and over in his mind as Hurucan rushes around him, too quick for his rage-fuelled shots of H2O. Alec turned, arm sweeping to unleash another volley collected in his palm, loosing it with the force of a cannon ball - and his quarry darted away, leaving the water to smash into a headstone. Not enough to break it, but to crack it. Again Alec turned, gathering the milieu of rain to him, sending another furious blast. Again, Hurucan dodged, with tormenting ease.

Alec's mind was in a storm.Thinking, wondering, contemplating every possible interpretation: father, and the word loses meaning, all too suddenly, as he rolls it over and over like a barrel. Father, like a bouncing ball, watching it as he himself will tumble to the ground in a puddle of senseless words falling from the sky and splashing on his face, as he aborbs each one and they consume him ...It wasn't, wasn't.

Father, father, FATHER.

And Alec Goreman crumbles, his legs failing to allow his knees to smash into the cold paving, his fingers tight in his hair, pulling at it, his lips screaming words to beg mercy: "O, will it not stop! I have heard her ask for me many times but I don't know where to look ...and I came here and she was still dead." Alec trembled like a lamb left in the cold, hands moving to cover his ears as he sobs now, uncontrolled with no mother to hold or comfort him, "A-and I saw her ...w-watching me ...stay, stay; she wanted me, her Alec, and I-I did ...oh, I was loyal like a dog ...like a dog or a son ..." His voice trailed away like a stream, shaking in his hysteria. Lowering his head, his fingers scratched at the harsh stone: "And there are words ...there are so many words ..."

Quietly, Alec knelt on the stony path of the churchyard, and the rain did not cease. All that he had flung in his rage was quickly replaced by more. Almost healing. At length, he murmured: "...She never spoke of you. Not once. But I did not ask for you, either." Another lengthy pause; Alec chews at the inside of his mouth in thought. For the first time in many weeks, he does not purposefully draw blood. The flesh inside his cheek is battered, tired, and gives little resistance. It tastes like the copper pennies, trickling ...slowly. "I am conflicted. Much of me wants to deny you, Hurucan, but there is something else. Reason cries to me in the frailest of voices --"

Lifting his head, Alec's eyes locked onto Hurucan - he had come to stand still not far from the younger man. Alec's eyes are full of wonder, curiosity. "It cries: if you are not my father, then why are you trying in earnest to make me believe?"

[Hurucan]

Conflicted. That was certainly one way to describe the deranged and irratic way in which his son's disturbed mind seemed to flit and dance from thought to thought, mood to mood. For a moment disappointment gripped him, and for a fleeting instant he hoped that this mere shadow of a man was in fact not the child that he had sired; that there had been some mistake, and that this Alec really was the worthless no-man that he seemed to be.

Those thoughts were soon quashed, however, and his mind turned to sympathy. There had been no mistake, and he knew from experience the dark depths that loss could drag the soul into. His brows furrowed, the only sign of his inner contemplation and torment, and he wondered if he would ever be able to fully free himself from the abyss that held him captive.

Still, there was one glimmer of amusement that he could cling onto in all this: Hurucan prided himself on having an intellect that responded faster than lightning; Alec's thought processes seemed to observe the zig-zag pattern that popular culture might associate with the same.

"Why indeed?" Hurucan said, finally contributing to Alec's vocal tirade with his own thoughts. An articulate, ellegant speach - the one he'd been preparing ever since he became aware of his son's existance - balanced on the tip of his tongue, but with a sigh that slumped his shoulders, he let it tumble away. Instead he turned to Alec directly, and fixed him with eyes that seemed to have somehow had their razor's edge dulled in the rain.

"I read about your mother's death," he said softly, honestly. A slight laugh at the irony escaped him. "Quite by chance, in fact. I read about how she died, and how she had left a son - you - and I knew, knew that the man she died with was not your father. I came to find you; watched you; and every moment that passed I only grew more sure. And as I look at you now -"

Another half-laugh, rain sreaming down Hurucan's face, rolling around his softened brows. "- you are my son; my son. I have no proof, and I have very few answers for you. I cannot undo the loss you have suffered, nor make up for all these years when your existance was unknown to me." Words failed him, and he struggled to maintain his composure. A few sighing, frowning moments passed before his eyes climbed back to Alec's again. "I am not here to force my way into your life, or to take the place of those who raised you. I just -" His eyes shimmered, almost pleading. "- I would like the opportunity to get to know my son."

His expression fell away, willpower shoring up his shoulders and repairing his neglected posture. "Dinner - one meal; one conversation - is all I ask. After that, simply say the word: I shall be gone from your life again, if that is what you wish."

[Alec Goreman]

A conversation. Those maxims, again. They will apply.

"So, which maxim is George lacking?" One of his favourite teaching methods to assist those students who found English difficult. There were more than some teachers deemed probable; those with so-called 'learning difficulties' were just too lazy to pay attention and put in the effort required for passing grades. Alec's opinion differed - it was not that the children were lazy, rather that the adults assigned to teach them were impatient. Through his extra hours at home and two-minute meetings with students after classes, he had discovered that three students in this year group alone displayed elements of dyslexia - a condition not well-enough recognised for the students concerned to receive adequate support.

In Alec's classes, at least, that would change.

One such student raised his hand now - something he had been too frightened to do for his junior years of schooling - and Alec met his eyes, nodding his approval for him to speak. "Er, is it ...like, quantity?"

"Excellent, Dylan." Alec rose from his perch on the edge of his desk and headed round to the white board, pointing at the main body of text: "For the question he's been asked, it's too much. Why is this?"

Somewhat encouraged by their classmate's contribution, more students raised their hands; Alec couldn't keep the smile from his face. He gestured to a girl with straight, bleached hair, who was making no effort to hide he illegally crimson-painted nails. "Natalie."

"Sir, is it 'cause, like, he's like, using fancy words?"

"Good suggestion; not quite." Alec dug his hands into his pockets, glancing aroudn at his class. Perhaps due to Natalie not quite hitting the nail on the head, the students had gone quiet. Perhaps they had all been planning to propose the same answer. Alec shrugged, "It's because he's talking crap."

A ripple of laughter met this statement, beaten out in decibels by the school bell shrilly screaming overhead --

"...A dinner?" From where he was knelt, Alec looked up at Hurucan with tired, haunted eyes. Slowly, tenderly, he levered himself to his feet, his mind now in the eye, the middle of the storm. The rain around them was lightening, its beat softer upon the paving stones. His knees ached. From behind a matted lock of hair, Alec stared, his numb lips forming silent words.

Dinner? What did a meal mean? In the moving pictures it meant a man and a woman who found one another amiable sat down together to eat, to learn about one another. Did fathers and sons do the same? Stephen had taken him to church, to dinner in an expensive restaurant to celebrate his passing of O level and A levels ...but Elizabeth had been present, too. There had been three, not two.

It was impolite to make him wait so long for an answer. Although his manners had not quite been at a gentlemanly standard, perhaps some degree of modicum could be restored: "You believe I am your child." A pause; from Alec's face it is easy to tell that he is absorbed in thought once again. "...Very well. Lead the way, sir."