SWAN 5 -Legion-

Song Without A Name
Part the 5th

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No Hours at Claire’s and
Lady Yate-xel

****

“Seems like a better turn out this time.”

“Yeah, I think so too. What did you do the first time?”

“Once upon a time, they all died. The end.”

“No, really, what did you do?”

“Oh come on. Don’t you play video games? They all have a reset button. You can’t always play it exactly the same afterwards, but reset will always save you, you know, in a tight spot.”

****

Edgar sat on the floor and watched Johnny tear some shirts apart, and then select some green thread for combining them. Johnny was surprisingly handy with a needle, far more than Edgar would have expected.

“Stripes or solid?” Johnny was holding up two sleeves, threaded needle between his lips. He looked at Edgar, questioning, but only for a moment, then seemed to deem him unfit to answer. “We’ll do both, then,” he said, taking the needle from his mouth.

At this point, Edgar seriously doubted the ability of this shirt to be even remotely flattering, but said nothing and was determined to let Johnny do whatever he wanted with them/it.

The pair sat in almost silence, save for Johnny’s humming, for quite sometime, as Johnny lost himself in the sewing project.

The silence was broken (and Johnny’s humming interrupted) several minutes later, by a digital beeping rendition of ‘Ride of Valkyries’, which Johnny responded to by pouncing on his bag. He retrieved the tiny beeping cell phone from the bag’s depths and flipped open the top.

“Hey-lo?” he chirped, sitting cross legged on the floor.

A female voice screeched from the speaker, and Johnny flinched, but only slightly as he was otherwise occupied with an already wide grin.

“Ooh, Chet’s girlfriend, you say?” he asked sweetly. “That’s really funny, yeah, he never said anything to me…” Johnny’s voice was completely unaffected by his smile; he sounded entirely innocent on the phone, though his face said otherwise. He and Edgar seemed to have a gift for bullshitting people on telephones. Johnny just bothered girlfriends he didn’t have, while Edgar abused telemarketers.

“Who am I? I’m the guy Chet’s been sleeping with for three months, the one from the club. Surely he told you? No? Maybe that was one of the other girls then… Are you sure you have the right Chet?” He paused to allow some space for screaming on the other end.

“You’re ‘damn sure’? Oh, so sorry for your luck.” With that, he clicked the phone closed, a satisfied smirk still on his face. He gave a content sigh, as though he’d just finished a full meal, then looked at Edgar.

“I love that phone.”

Edgar laughed. Maybe he should have thought it was wrong to abuse this Chet’s phone (“He’s got so many minutes, Edgar!”), but the fact that three girlfriends call the guy on a regular basis assured Edgar that Chet was a scumbag who deserved every laugh Johnny got at his expense. Besides, it wouldn’t be long before Chet had the phone turned off anyway.

“Do any people you actually know call you on that thing?” Edgar finally asked, wiping his eye.

“Eh, Jimmy calls all the time,” Johnny shrugged, “you know, if he counts for anything.” He continued sewing, and would often stash the needle in his mouth when he needed both hands to look at his project.

Edgar sat now with his legs hugged to his chest, chin resting on his knees.

“Speaking of him,” Edgar started, “that bit about him earlier… with the fucking and all that… does he really…?”

“I think so,” Johnny mumbled though the pins in his mouth, before taking them out to position the last bit of a sleeve, “the sheer number of attempts to get me to come home with him seems a little less innocent than ‘I bet it gets cold in the school at night.’ And even that’s vaguely sexual, now that I think about it.”

“That doesn’t bother you?”

“He can like guys if he wants. I’m not his mother, I don’t give a damn.”

“And… you…?”

Johnny blinked. “I what?”

“You don’t like him?”

“I like him well enough,” Johnny explained. “I’m not going to go and have musical sex with him or anything, though.” Still sewing.

The images conjured by that wording made Edgar incredibly grateful he wasn’t drinking one of the cherry drinks he’d left downstairs.

“I see,” he said, half laughing, “And Devi?”

Johnny nearly gagged on his needle, which had, once again, found a temporary holding place in his mouth as he surveyed his work so far.

“Jimmy and Devi?” he choked.

“No, no. I mean you and Devi.”

Johnny coughed once, taking the needle in his hand, then quickly finished sewing a sleeve. He ripped the excess thread off with his teeth and tossed the now finished shirt in Edgar’s lap.

“You realize,” Johnny teased, “that I have free reign to randomly discuss your sexual preferences now, right?”

“Sorry, I’ll drop it,” Edgar replied quickly.

“OH. Shy are we? Ask Johnny about Jimmy, but don’t let him ask Edgar anything in return. Quick, hide under this pile of shirts! Maybe you’re dating Chet now, too?”

Edgar laughed a little, then looked at the shirt in his lap. Mismatched sleeves, thick green stitches. More hieroglyphics on the front.

“I’ve got no interest in Devi,” Johnny continued. “That’s Tenna.”

Edgar looked up from the shirt. “Tenna?”

“Devi’s friend,” Johnny explained, “you know, the one beside the hobo key.”

“Oh, right, right.”

Edgar wondered if he really cared about Johnny’s preferences so much as he was looking for more of the same wisdom about these sorts of things as Johnny had previously shown in relation to the fortune cookie calendar. Hoping for all the Johnny Brand (™!) insight into the world of sexuality in general, perhaps. It didn’t look like he was going to get it.

“So, I told you all of that, now I want to hear why you’re so interested,” Johnny said through a grin.

“It just seemed like a pretty daring accusation to make, I guess, calling Jimmy gay or… whatever. Maybe I was just trying to … get your views on such things.”

Johnny raised an eyebrow. “A little worried about something there?” Teasing him again.

“No, no… I’m fine.”

“Great. Glad to see you’re comfortable with being gay, Edgar. Congrats.” Johnny stood up and walked to the door, lingering in the doorway for a moment. “I left my cherry thing downstairs,” he said bluntly, before disappearing through the doorway.

Edgar blinked still holding the shirt.

“Wha – no! I didn’t say that!”

****

“But how often should you hit reset? Every time things get bad?”

“No, you know this stuff, come on. Just when it’s the worst, when you’re the last guy standing, and you can’t do anything else.”

“That was you then, wasn’t it? The first time…?”

“Yeah.”

****

Edgar sat, still frustrated when Johnny returned with his cherry fix. It wasn’t pleasant having memories of only one person you cared about. How was Edgar supposed to have any sort of sexual preference when finding his best friend was all that had ever been on his mind? He’d been too focused on that to spend any time of any sort of romantic pastime. No one else interested him enough, and there was no reason to be concerned about anyone but Johnny.

Johnny didn’t bother to sit back on the floor when he returned, but just strolled around the room, looking at the walls as though they were decorated with photographs or little keepsake angel statues from the card shop. They weren’t, at all, but Johnny paused and glanced around at each of them, as though paying them some well deserved attention. When he finished the final wall, he glanced down at Edgar who was fidgeting a little in regard to this ‘gay’ issue.

“What?” Johnny asked with a sip through his straw. “Did I haul you out of the closet prematurely or something?”

“No,” Edgar snapped. “It’s just that I don’t have anything to base that on, it’s unfair… I’ve been too busy looking for you.”

“Sounds gay to me,” Johnny half said into his straw, staring at the ceiling fan.

“I’m telling you, that’s not fair.”

“Hey, try on that shirt,” Johnny said suddenly, perhaps resolving to just ignore Edgar’s faulty logic.

“Oh. Yeah… Ok.” Edgar had almost forgotten about it, and was more than willing to get off this topic of conversation. He struggled out of his shirt, and pulled the ‘new’ one over his head. The sewing was crude (Edgar suspected it was that way on purpose), but it had its charm.

“What do the symbols mean?” he asked, looking himself over.

“Vulture, hand, stool, vulture, mouth.”

“No, I mean, what does it say?”

“’Edgar’,” Johnny shrugged, “what else? It's approximate, of course, because the phonetics of Ancient Egyptian aren't quite the same. ”

“Of course…”

Johnny grinned as he took some time to survey his handiwork in use. “It doesn’t look bad on you, you know?” he observed, chewing on the straw slightly, “It’s not boring at least.”

“I’m not as completely ‘blah’ as you make me sound,” Edgar defended.

“Really?” Johnny fell on his back onto the bed. “And what do you do?”

“The keyboard was interesting, wasn’t it?” Edgar ventured weakly.

“That,” Johnny pointed at nothing, “really impressed me, actually. But what else do you do here? This whole place to yourself and everything…”

Edgar scratched his head, attempting to think of something, anything. There just didn’t seem to be anything that was exciting in his life at all. He read. He ate. He slept. Johnny was all the excitement his life had.

“Nothing, huh? ‘S what I thought. Let’s find something then,” Johnny announced, sitting up. “If I’m going to be here for the weekend, it’s going to be marginally entertaining.”

“Nny, I’m letting you stay here,” Edgar said sharply. “I’d expect some thanks and not you complaining about entertainment.”

Johnny didn’t seem to hear him, and began testing the bounce-ability of the bed. It evidently didn’t suit whatever taste he was hoping to fill, because he hopped to the floor after just half a bounce and walked out of the room.

Edgar sighed and followed. Johnny had meandered into Edgar’s room, and apparently liked the look of the potential bounce on Edgar’s mattress; Edgar heard a ‘HEY!’ just seconds before the sound of springs being crushed by sudden force. He leaned in the door and saw that Johnny had indeed approved of his mattress. Johnny had taken his boots off before they’d come upstairs, so upon entering the room Edgar was greeted with Johnny’s striped socks bobbing through the air to the tune of his old mattress.

“See?” Johnny said, inches from the ceiling, “Entertainment made easy!”

“Nny! Don’t! You’ll break it!” Edgar shrieked, seeing how hard Johnny was impacting the bed. He held his hands up hoping to prevent a fall of some type.

“It’s quite alright, you only have, what…like, three beds in the house, plus the pink chair,” Johnny said between bounces. “You have backups.”

The sad part was that this logic made sense to Edgar. After all, he hadn’t paid for the bed, so if he and Johnny fell through…

They’d tear their own legs off. Shit.

Just as this realization hit Edgar and he made a motion to stop his friend, Johnny stopped bouncing and fell on his back, letting the last remaining bounce in the bed toss him a few more times. He sighed, satisfied for the moment, took several other breaths, then sat up and looked around the room. There were pictures in this room. Paintings and photographs that Edgar had liked when he found them in the basement had ended up here.

“You don’t have any pictures of yourself in here,” Johnny observed.

“Why would I? I know what I look like. I don’t need a constant reminder.”

“Hmm. I’ll have Devi lend me her Polaroid next time.”

Edgar sighed. “Alright, but – Wait, next time?”

“Of course,” Johnny said. “It’s almost the end of the year; they’ll want my room almost every weekend until June. They use it as a last minute prep place for band concerts, pep rally preparations, prom bullshit… you know, everything but choir anymore.”

“And Jimmy and Devi…?”

“They have places of their own, I showed you their keys.”

“So you’ll be…”

“With you. Every weekend.”

Edgar felt dizzy. He’d spent so much time looking, so much time worrying he’d never find Johnny, never be closer than hearing him from the hallway, and suddenly, he would not only spend the entire day with him while at school, but now Johnny was staying with him on weekends.

Johnny squinted at him. “Unless you don’t want me here…?” he offered, raising an eyebrow.

Edgar shook his head a bit too enthusiastically. “No, no! It’s fine! I like having you here!”

“Okay, good. Come with me.”

He took Edgar’s hand, and dragged him from the room.

So dizzy.

****

“What was it like?”

“Black. Like someone spilled a jar of ink on the world. Nothing like fa – “

“Which one is it?”

“What?”

“Which one is ‘reset’?”

“I trust you, you know, but I’m making sure no one finds it again, so I’m not telling you.”

“I wanted to know so we didn’t accidentally…”

“No. I know, and that’s enough.”

****

Edgar thought he could die again, but this time, die happy. He hadn’t had more fun in an evening in any prior lifetime, he was sure of it. Johnny had showed him the multitudes of things in his house that could be used to cure boredom, aside from the keyboard.

Recliners were good for launching things. Couch pillows were excellent shields. Blenders could make any multitude of disgusting things to drop from windows (or smoothies, which, if you really wanted to, could also be dropped from windows). And cell phones were amazing fun to abuse (only, of course, when they weren’t really yours).

Edgar blinked at the ceiling from his current state on the couch, still half-laughing from the spectacular fall he’d executed in the ‘Floor Is Lava’ game. Johnny, who was on his pink chair also half-laughing and half-exhausted, had been far too good at jumping from cushion to chair to coffee table and back again, and had ensured Edgar a swift burning ‘death’. Everything they had done all night was so childish, but it had been a long time since Edgar was a true child, and he relished it.

“Nny,” Edgar managed after a few deep breaths, “are you hungry at all?”

“Have any Sketti-O’s?” Johnny questioned.

Edgar smiled to himself, closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“You can’t make those in a blender, can you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Damn. Make them anyway?”

“Absolutely.”

Edgar stood up, and walked across the lava/floor to the kitchen. (“You just died about six times over, Edgar! That was all lava!”) As far as he was concerned, things were perfect. He was happy, Johnny was happy, no one was lost, dead, or badly reincarnated, and he had Sketti-O’s in his cupboard. He wondered, as he opened the can, if the old Johnny would have been this way, had he also been not homicidal. Would he have had so much sharp humor in him? The same artistic tendencies, the same brilliance, the same ideas… Would he have been so…

He resolved not to finish that sentence, and poured the contents of the can into a pot.

Still, he couldn’t help but ponder it. After all that searching, he had expected to find the same old Johnny, and had found him, but somehow that much better. So, the question was, who was it that he was so devoted to now? The maniac? Or the eccentric high school student? Could he really continue to assert that were one in the same? Johnny had seemed a little bothered by the idea as well.

“EDGAR! YOU DIDN’T TELL ME YOU HAD A STEREO!”

He didn’t have time to reply that, yes, of course he had one, before he heard random music blips as Johnny skipped tracks on the CD he had put in. He listened to a few tracks for perhaps thirty seconds and either became bored or didn’t find anything he wanted right at that moment, because Edgar heard him switch to the radio.

“- in just seven days or your- “

“And that’s all coming up in the next hour, so just sit tight –“

“Only yooooooou…-”

“CALL RIGHT NOW!”

“-I can guarantee
You won't find nobody else like me-“

“Fuck, there’s nothing on. I’ll turn it on later…”

Edgar continued stirring the Sketti-O’s as he heard Johnny switch to the television. He imagined he’d be hearing a good deal of Johnny’s music now that he knew the stereo existed even though he currently favored the television.

The Sketti-O’s finished heating up, and Edgar tossed them in bowls, almost forgetting to grab silverware on his way back to the living room. Johnny was in the pink chair, watching infomercials while hanging upside down. He was completely engrossed in the television until he saw Edgar’s knees instead of the ‘best new cleaning product on the market today.’ He contorted himself back to a reasonable sitting position and accepted the bowl Edgar held out to him.

“Let me know if they’re too cool,” Edgar said, handing them over. “I like to heat them up just enough so that they don’t burn my face off when I try to eat them. Some people like them scalding, though.”

Johnny looked at him funny, and took several bites without a sign of caring about the temperature one way or another.

Edgar took seat on the couch, and glanced around his now disaster of a living room. Usually, seeing it in this state would give him compulsive cleaning urges. Usually. Now, it just made him smile. He didn’t care if this Johnny wasn’t exactly the person he had started searching for, at this point, he was the Johnny that mattered. This Johnny was all that was good in the old Johnny, just missing a few chunks, and once those came back... This Johnny wasn’t going to kill him for a wrong move, or for offering help. This Johnny really could be the best friend he had twisted the first one into becoming. This Johnny would make his life, and his living room, a little less boring.

This Johnny was…

No, not finishing that again.

He cursed himself a few times. He hadn’t expected this. Never expected to be so intrigued by Johnny, at least not even more than he had been of him last life. There were things about him that just amazed Edgar, and some of them he couldn’t even quite pin down; they just fascinated him. Part of him was a little depressed that the fascination was more than likely in no way mutual, but he dismissed the thought almost as soon as he had it. They’d had a good time, regardless of Edgar’s fascinating level, he told himself, and they would continue to do so. So there.

Somehow, ‘reasoning’ his brain into submission didn’t help much.

“Are you going to eat yours?” Johnny’s voice interrupted his inner debates. Edgar looked at his lap, where his pasta had sat untouched for at least one commercial break.

“You don’t need it that cold, you know.”

Edgar tried to laugh or something, but ended up sort of coughing. He pushed his glasses up, and scratched at something that wasn’t there on the side of his nose. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I was just spacing out, I’ve got it, and I’m fine, yeah.”

Johnny nodded slowly. “Riiight. I’m completely convinced here…”

Edgar stared at the television, eating his dinner purposefully. He had a sudden desire for a sign with ‘LOOK, I’M EATING, NOT THINKING ABOUT YOU’ scrawled across it in neon lettering.

Throughout the rest of the infomercial, Edgar noticed Johnny checking to see if he was in fact eating. He clearly suspected something, which, Edgar noted, was not entirely without reason. The television was on, and the infomercial played for nearly 20 minutes, but Edgar swore he just heard silence.

“So.”

Edgar looked up from his staring contest with the television. “So… what?”

“I decided you aren’t like Jimmy, although it’s similar, from what I can tell,” Johnny said, “and I can’t say you’re very much like Devi either. I like you regardless, though. I commend former me for not tossing you in a ditch somewhere.”

“Um… thanks?” Edgar was entirely unsure if this was a compliment.

“So, what I want to know is,” Johnny continued, “am I really so much the person you were looking for? I told you to wait to pass your judgment, so I want to know now; who am I?”

Edgar clinked his fork against the bowl in his lap and bit his lip.

****

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Keep it hard to figure out. Gave one piece to someone else. Hope they take it far away.”

“I don’t think it’s getting very far.”

“I know. That’s alright for now, I trust that one too.”

“You know him?”

“So do you. From a long time ago.”

“But, is it really ok?”

****

“I can’t quite say yet. You’re him, for sure, but… there are some things you do that he never would have done, because of how miserable he was. Seeing you happy makes me happy, and hurts in a way too. I searched a long time for you, but I wasn’t completely sure who I was looking for,” Edgar explained. “You move the same, talk the same, have a lot of the same ideas, but… he- you- Your laugh. I think, in the end, the difference is in your laugh… I’m not sure if it’s the tone, or the pitch, or the feeling behind it, but it’s your laugh.”

“Which of us then, is the one you care so much about?” Johnny asked. “If you’re trying to make me happy, since that seems to be your goal here, in an effort to make up for his misery, you’re better off dying and trying again. No matter how happy I am, the man you knew won’t be any happier. He’s dead, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Edgar resigned himself to staring at his big toe, or the pillows on the floor. “I don’t think that’s true,” he started, “You’re him, just lacking the memories, and I’ve always believed that those were what really made a person. I think you’ll remember. I remember being all three of me…”

“And look at you! You’re a mess. As much as you don’t make me want to pluck my eyes out with sporks, Edgar, I wouldn’t want to be like you for anything. I want to remember enough to know where these holes are from, to know where I came from, but I don’t want to become whoever you say I was in addition to who I am now. I don’t want to be a pile of people inside; I’m only me, whoever that ends up being.”

“But, I…,” Edgar sputtered.

“See? It’s not me you’re so interested in. It’s whoever I used to be. You want to see how much I fit into the mold of the guy you remember, or else cram me into it. I’m convenient, maybe? Similar enough to satisfy, perhaps?”

Edgar put his head in his hands, careful not to completely upset the bowl in his lap. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. Ask me the question again some other day, I might have a better answer then.”

He stood up, returning the bowl to the kitchen. He appeared in the living room again to see Johnny staring at him from the recliner surrounded by a sea of pillows, books and cushions. Edgar closed his eyes, and shook his head. What he needed was to sleep on all this.

“Nny, I think… I think I’m just going to go to bed, if that’s alright with you…”

“Doesn’t bother me, I’ll wait here for you to get up.”

“Alright then, I’ll just – Nny, did you say you’d ‘wait here’?”

Johnny nodded.

“Yes.”

“You don’t want to… get some sleep?” Edgar asked, already worried about the answer.

“I don’t like to sleep when I have lots to think about,” Johnny said, stretching. “Sometimes my dreams confuse me into thinking things are real. I can’t tell if I’m remembering things, or if I’m just making them up. Happens when I’m awake occasionally, too. It helps to sing something or write it down, otherwise, I’ll contradict myself from day to day.”

Edgar shivered. That was old Nny talking. Yes, it was this Nny who mattered to him, but because he was not only the old one minus memories, he was the old one minus insane and plus…

…plus…

Once again, not finishing that. Still, it remained; he cared about this Johnny dearly, but had been caught off guard by him. And Johnny, Edgar decided, had wanted to know all about his prior self in hopes of finding inner peace, not wanting to connect everything together like Edgar himself did.

“Okay, well, the blankets are in the closet upstairs, if you need another one. Good night, Nny.”

Johnny blinked, and nodded again.

“Good night.”

****

“Of course it’s ok. No one is better for this.”

“You really trust -?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then who was he when I knew him? I mean, I don’t think…”

“If I told you, you’d lose faith in me.”

“Don’t make me reset you.”

“I dare you.”

****

Edgar and sleep never completely met. They certainly tried to, and Edgar tossed and turned in hopes of being granted some rest, but none came. In and out of consciousness, he floated on half dreams and barely sung words.

"And what will happen?
Will I dream?
I am too scared to close my eyes
For a second please hold me
No one can change in me these things that I believe
But I don't know what happens now
I am too scared to close my eyes"

He wasn’t sure where they were coming from. Was he dreaming them? Was Johnny blasting them over the house? Had he concocted them from Johnny’s words before bed?

He woke, suddenly startled. He looked around, and for a moment had forgotten he’d been trying to sleep and that he was, in fact, in a bed. There were still faint whispers of the words in the air, and Edgar stepped into the hall to sneak a look at what he was sure was the source.

Down the hall, into the previously empty room. The door was cracked, the song, which was now reduced to soft muttering had, of course, been coming from here. More specifically, it came from the corner, where the bed was crammed against the wall.

“…will I dream…? ...too scared…eyes…”

And even more so, it came from the thin object of Edgar’s fascination, curled in the tiny blanket he’d brought with him, clutching a CD player, finally drifting to sleep to his own voice singing a song that Edgar was sure was intended to keep him awake, or at least, to remind him why he wanted to be.

And when he was asleep, he was even more…

No. Still no.

05