evervale bot

quotes about eli ever/victor vale every 6 hours. all lines by @veschwab. made with @gimmickbots.

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Victor stared at the wall as if it were still a window. “He doesn’t know how patient you are,” he said. “Doesn’t know you like I do.”
Eli cleaned the blood from his hand.
“No,” he said softly. “No one ever has.”

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His heart skipped, then slammed forward in a disconcerting way.
Eli was talking again, low and urgent.

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“I don’t mean the method. I mean alone.” He brought his coke-free hand to rest on Victor’s shoulder. “You can’t do this alone. So promise me you won’t.”
Victor held his gaze. “I won’t.

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Both Eli and Victor had arrived at the same conclusion—that there was strength in numbers, potential in the complementary pairing of powers.

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But the strangest thing wasn’t the sensation of pain. It was the spark of memory—a bathtub filled with cracking ice. Pale fingers, trailing through the frigid water. Music on the radio.
Victor Vale, leaning against the sink.

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Eli lifted one bare foot to the rim of the bath, gazing down at the contents. “I put my life into His hands.”
“Well,” said Victor, earnestly, “let’s hope He gives it back.”

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“We could be dead,” said Eli.
“That’s a risk everyone takes by living.”

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“Don’t move,” Eli said again. “I’ll be right there.”
Victor nodded carefully, forgetting how easy it was to lie when he didn’t have to look Eli in the face.

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Eli blamed himself. Victor was right, he’d played God, even as he asked for His help. And God in His mercy and might had saved Eli’s life, but destroyed everything that touched it.

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Victor wondered if Eli would actually be able to do it, or if the cold would crack his mask of ease and charm, shatter it to reveal the normal boy beneath.

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“Honestly, Eli,” said Victor, perching on one of the folding chairs that scattered the makeshift patio,“spare me the scripture.”
Eli’s hand fell away.
“It’s not the Bible,” he said testily. “It’s Blake. Get some culture.”

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The blue eyes flicked toward Eli’s single suitcase, the box balanced on top.
“You travel light.”
Eli nodded at Victor’s own side of the room. “You came early.”
Victor shrugged. “Family is best in small doses.”

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“Admit it,” he said, “you feel different, too. Death takes something with it. What did it take from you?”
Eli lifted the gun again. “My fear.”

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Victor bristled—it sounded like something Eli would say.

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“I want to believe that there’s more. That we could be more. Hell, we could be heroes.”

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“Doesn’t the Sharpie ruin whatever’s on the other side?”
“You’d think,” said Victor. “But they use this freakishly heavy paper. Like they want the weight of what they’re saying to sink in.”

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Eli drew the knife out of Victor’s chest and stood there in the blood-slicked room, waiting for the telltale quiet, the moment of peace. He closed his eyes, and tipped his head back, and waited, and he was still waiting when the cops tore into the room, led by Detective Stell.

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His heart skipped, then slammed forward in a disconcerting way.
Eli was talking again, low and urgent.

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Eli was sitting in a chair by Victor’s bed, just as he had been in the apartment. Only now there were no bottles, no pills.

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And there, strapped to the surface, Eli.
Blood spilled down his sides from a dozen shallow wounds.
He wasn’t healing.
Victor cleared his throat.
The doctor didn’t jump, didn’t seem at all surprised by Victor’s arrival.

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Something in Eli had gone missing—fear, that’s what he’d told Victor—right down the drain with the icy bath water.