turin ursa | six | fin

T U R I N

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He'd gotten good at lying in recent years, standing outside a night club with an unimpressed bouncer scowling down at him, "Yes, Teddy Ursa."

He said the words slowly, each syllable drawn out so it would seem like he'd said the words thousands of times before. The bouncer squinted for good measure, hulking arms that were folded over his chest flexing for a moment before he sidestepped to allow Turin's entry.

"Jeeze," he said to his friend Grayson, "Almost 23 years old and still getting carded."

There were certain perks that came with looking like a celebrity; it didn't matter that places like these weren't really his cousin's scene. Anyone who hadn't ever spent a particularly long while staring at Teddy's face couldn't tell the difference.

Just as soon as they were in, he turned to Grayson, snickering.

"You, Mr. Hawke, owe me twenty dollars."

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It wasn't that he was bad— he wasn't. The rest of them were just so damn good. Teddy and his insufferable need to help, Loic and those ridiculous pipe dreams, Malachi and his golden heart, Lily and her silver tongue. Even Koda was already too chivalrous for his own good.

Turin just focused on himself, and that made him selfish. That made him the one every relative felt the need to advise during family meals, the one every adult whispered their worries about. He'd grown used to their remarks; a boy who plays in fire will, almost every time, get burned. It wasn't ever enough to stop him from striking match after match and setting his own reputation ablaze.

The first time he pretended to be Teddy, it was out of mockery. Turin has always had a rather wide circle of friends, though most have only stuck around to watch him perform some stupid, reckless act, but there were those lucky few who fucked up and wound up caring about him. It was those few friends who were with him, standing in an empty lot of a market well past midnight. The group had just gotten finished ramming into each other with shopping carts, an idea that had seemed fun in theory, but ultimately only granted Turin a skinned knee and a few laughs at his expense. Somewhere amid the teasing, one of his friends remarked, "I wonder what Teddy would think if he saw that landing," and, instinctively, Turin stood up to perform.

He stiffened his posture, folded his hands together as if he simply couldn't help all of his boyish charm.

"W-Well, he probably... wouldn't be that pleased." They'd all gasped and laughed, exclaiming things like "Your voice sounded just like his!" and, thus, the game was born.

It was more a test of Turin's ability than anything, but the others found it amusing. Once a week, someone different would give him some random task to do in which he had to pretend to be Teddy the entire time. Examples included, but were not limited to: asking the housing authority of the Victor's Village for a new key because he'd "lost" the old one, and getting a cat from the shelter and sending the bill to Teddy's address. Sometimes he was more successful than others, but he could, theoretically, go into Teddy's house at any time with that key, and he'd kept the cat and named it Yogi.

Nowadays, the game wasn't as commonplace as it had been, and he really only used it to get him and his friends into clubs they weren't legally allowed in. It was all in good fun, and he really didn't mind his older cousin. At the very least, he was nice to Turin at those aforementioned dinners.

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"Turin, how have your grades been?" the voice belonged to a great aunt, and she'd asked between slurping spoon shovels of soup into her mouth. She had those really strange jowls. You know, the ones that seemed to be reserved only for white people past age 70. The kind that, when she chewed, made her glasses bounce up and down atop her cheeks.

"Fine," he said, and it was true. Not great, but passing.

"Mostly C's then?" she said the words as if she meant them light-heartedly, but the lack of laughter was proof enough of the hidden weight behind them.

"And a D, actually," he smirked.

You would've thought he'd slapped her in the face from the theatrical sigh that fell out of her wrinkled, soupy lips.

"Your mother was just telling me little Koda made perfect grades this semester."

He smiled humorlessly, "Yeah, so does everyone else at that age."

"Turin!"

His mother and father said this in unison; they were annoying like that, always synced up like they had some sort of weird telepathic connection.

"Well, maybe if we stopped making him feel exceptional for reading at a 12th grade level—" he started; his great aunt interrupted, "That is something to celebrate!"

Their smiles never faltered, like somehow they were still able to pretend this was all just a joke; Turin's never faltered either because, to him, it was.

"Maybe. Until he's in the 12th grade. Then, it'll just mean he can read."

"Bed. Now." his father said; he left without another word.

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SYNOPSIS

You're the reckless boy; you carry band-aids with you now because you're prepared for the fall. You know how to be real, no porcelain masks and flammable dollhouses, and you love the confrontation of all things plastic by nature. They call you arrogant and hasty. They say you're quick to act and slow to think, but it's because you don't think like them. Your mind is your own, as is every single fiber of you, and you'll never give yourself away to anything that wishes to change you. Strike the match, watch as the flame eats away at itself. In the end, just a tiny bit of char remains, but it tells the story of what happened. I was here, it'll say, I existed. And I burned bright.