Re: Out of these shadows comes the light -- Main Street

"I haven't thought about why I quit ballet in years... Life happened, you know what I mean? Sometimes you have to do what's best for the people around you, even if that means giving up something you love."

Ezra stared thoughtfully through half-closed eyes up at the grey sky as he listened to her speak, and nodded. Life happens, he knew that well. He'd started thinking as well, now that the conversation had become more meaningful, and he was taken aback by a sudden and intense feeling of guilt that had unexpectedly welled up inside of him. He mulled her words over in his head. Sometimes you have to do what's best for the people around you, even if that means giving up something you love. What had he ever done for the people around him? Gotten a few killed, maybe. Hell, through carelessness he'd somehow managed to get an entire city reduced to cinders, because it was inhabited by people that the government felt threatened by, but who otherwise had very little, if anything at all, to do with the people he actually cared about and quite frankly their lives as well as his would have been the same with or without those people alive. He'd left people behind. He left his friends behind when he came to America. He'd never been there for anyone.

"I'm a really bad person." he confessed rather suddenly, frowning a bit as if realising something curious for the first time. "I was thinking about what you said, and then I had this epiphany. It's very confusing, I don't even know if I know what it is, or how many. Maybe there's more than one. That would make them epiphanies." Ezra rolled his head to the side a bit so that he could look up at Natasha, but was having difficulty keeping her in focus. Damn bench wouldn't stop moving. The floor wouldn't keep still either. "That made absolutely no sense whatsoever." he laughed.

"Do you get how incredible all that is? All that stuff you just told me about Ethiopia and operations and photography and everything. I've never anyone like you."

He shook his head. "It all sounds very far-fetched and wow, but it's all bullshit. All of it, it's amazing. The photography's not even a job, well it was supposed to be, but it never worked out, shoulda listened and stayed where I was. Oh well, the irony of life. It fucks you up. "You're ok now, it's gonna hit you when you're forty". Someone told me that, I can't remember who it was but why am I telling you all this?!" He smacked a hand against his forehead and suddenly felt very stupid and deeply embarassed. "I'm sorry, but let us be honest; I confess that I am completely drunk. The buildings are doing things I never thought would be possible for buildings to do. This is when I start talking a truckload of crap most of which is probably not even true, I have no idea, you may have noticed, I can't even really remember what I told you. Anyway, personally I'd freak out and run away if some piss-drunk asshole on the pavement randomly started telling me his entire life story." Truthfully, he really couldn't remember what bits he'd thought and what bits he'd said aloud, but it couldn't hurt to apologise anyway, because he still felt quite stupid.

Even so, if he could turn back time he never would've done what he did. He would've tried and gone to college instead, go out weekends with his mates, get horribly drunk every friday night at some or other social get-together, you known, what kids his age then normally did. Ezra had only worked for Mossad a little over a year, which was a very short time compared to most of the other people there, but he felt as though he'd given them a lifetime. He'd left the army and Mossad against his father's wishes specifically so that he didn't end up like him one day when he was an adult, broken, drunk and pennyless. Now at only twenty, after "pursuing his dream", that was what he was and the irony he felt was sickening. To be honest he never really thought much about that specific chapter in his life, he'd sort of deadened his memory of it. He hadn't the foggiest idea why he was all of a sudden thinking so much about it now, here, on the pavement.

"Urgh. Pavements do strange things to you." Ezra rolled over onto his stomach and slowly tried picking himself up, but once he'd sort of gotten into a kneeling position he merely tipped over onto his back again. He groaned, and then laughed again. "Ohfuckthis. I think you're gonna have to leave me here." Ezra thought back again to what she'd said earlier. "I haven't thought about why I quit ballet in years... Life happened, you know what I mean? Sometimes you have to do what's best for the people around you, even if that means giving up something you love". He still couldn't figure why those words had had such a profound impact on him. It made him exceedingly curious to find out more about Natasha, to him she was without a doubt a very interesting person, and he knew nothing about her because he spent so much time rambling on about utter nonsense. Get a grip, that was then, this is now. "But no, I know what you mean. Life happens, shit happens. What town are you from? I known you said it's a couple of hours from here, or minutes from here, I can't remember, but I am geographically retarded as far as America goes." In his drunken stupor he'd decided it'd be easier, or at least kinder to find out more about her to ask her in little details, instead of directly asking her "what happened that made you decide to leave?" He'd never been a ask-someone-directly sort of person.