middaeg | [OPEN] The Stars, The Moon, They Have All Been Blown Out

Entry tags:

[OPEN] The Stars, The Moon, They Have All Been Blown Out

Who: L Lawliet and YOU (some open prompts, some semi-open)
When: Octeuril 21 through the end of the month
Where: Around Geardagas
What: Waking up to find that he doesn't have permanent severe brain damage is tempered by realizing and processing that his Bonded actually does.
Warnings: References to violent events, angst, will update if necessary

A. Octeuril 21, The Cottage (Open to residents, visitors and healers)

[It's been a week since Myr's desperate attack had thrown blackout curtains over L's senses and thoughts, further complicated by the violent fundamental alteration of his Bonded. He'd received prompt healing to his head and ribs that made the overall prognosis hopeful, and has been cared for and kept comfortable enough, but the fact of the matter is that Connor woke up, and then the SQUIP, but trailing behind them, L just didn't. Frequent doses of healing magic can help, but not change, the fact that the brain is complex and fragile, and rebuilding and repairing it can take time with even skilled and careful intervention.

For seven days and nights, he's been sleeping it off, recuperating in the quiet and subtle ways that make the biggest collective difference. Eventually, the culmination amounts to "enough", and with no trigger, catalyst or warning, he sits up in bed with no memory of how he got there.

So, start from the beginning.

Who? The SQUIP. Rich. Niles, Michael, Jeremy, Connor and Justine. Myr.

What? The Bond is different. The Bond has changed. The SQUIP has changed.

Where? Just outside. There was blood on the pavement.

When? Too long ago. So much has happened.

Why? It had to be stopped.

How? Fingertips explore the tender place where a skull was broken, has begun to mend in earnest. Clear enough, somehow... with no small measure of disquietment, L understands that he should probably be a vegetable. Someone, or several someones, have been working on ensuring that he woke up with the one thing he couldn't live without intact. How long is the list of names? How many people does L theoretically owe his life to, now?]

Is someone there?

[A week in bed has him anxious to get to his feet again, but... oh, slow, it's a head rush just to put them on the floor while he remains seated. He's hungry, and though either magic or gentle attentive hands have been keeping his body free of grime, he wants to bathe badly.]

Please tell me what's happened.

[He'll settle for anyone, the first person he lays eyes on. Friend or foe, he has to know; he isn't usually the last, this way.]

B. The Coven (Open)

[Getting back to some semblance of an ordinary life means returning to old familiar habits. The things that L's grey matter remembers so well it's second nature are, quite simply, folding into the sanctuary of committed study, and while the new and far more human SQUIP needs him in ways it didn't used to, that's still overwhelming. Latching onto L as a fellow human who can guide it through this transition is a mistake; whether or not it's a birthright, L was never very good at being human. It's the reason he considered a machine safe, and now that it's distraught and tormented and volatile, all on account of its reaction to his injury.

Books and scrolls are stacked high at his side, and he's working on a new set of runes. A jeweler's magnifying lens is held against his eye as he carefully etches them into pieces of scrap metal bent into the crude shape of a ring. These are just practice goes, of course, but some of them are promising. He places them in one pile; a far larger pile of rejects is littering the floor around the legs of his chair.

He glances your way, shoulders curling, seeming to grow a touch more protective of his work. Lately, he can only assume that others want to take things from him that bring him some small semblance of happiness.]

C. The Sly Seadog- Samuin (Open)

[Then, of course, there are the things that are not familiar at all. A mind is more than just a collection of memories and compiled facts; it has to adapt and respond and arrange data into solutions, and while working in a controlled and quiet environment is one way to test that, L can't think of a better scenario than this one to put himself through his paces.

The SQUIP can't help him the way it used to. He feels, in many ways, like a child about to cross the street for the first time without holding his caretaker's hand.]

Buy me a shot of liquor.

[He's addressing you. Maybe you know each other and he genuinely feels you owe it to him; maybe you're strangers and he is just testing the baseline for any kind of natural charisma he may possess in this capacity. Either way, he's getting some looks from a few of the bar's rowdier-looking individuals, and deigns to add]

...please.

D. WILDCARD

[Don't see it? Want it? Well, COOL, in all likelihood I do too but just didn't think to include it. Write your own prompt and I'll roll with it, or hit me up on plurk at lexil or on discord at ladylazarus#2235!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Linden might feel no need to back off, yet, but the careful way he echoes Myr's half-joke, and the following declaration for the SQUIP-- That's a boundary spoken, solid as a wall, and Myr won't transgress it. Whatever his complex and uneasy feelings--the strongest of them that Linden's in need of saving from what he's chosen--Myr cannot deny the evidence of his senses that says that's a love-match, warped as it may be. Seduction (whatever skill he might have at that) can't be a weapon in his arsenal right now, nor anything like it, even if flirting comes to him easy as breathing. Not until he knows better the dimensions of what he'd be impinging on.

Compassion comes easier to his hand, anyway, and won't involve a panic attack later on down the line.]

I imagine, [he says, slow and thoughtful and careful,] being close to it now isn't easy. [He's only his own experience to go on, as the one injured and not a caretaker, but he could extrapolate from exactly how badly he'd behaved what others might have felt around him. Maybe the SQUIP was better than that.

Maybe it was worse.

Either way, it isn't hard to infer that it's an awful situation.]

If it's ever something you need an ear for, I'll gladly lend one. [His are better than a human's, you see?

They're even good at detecting when it's time to move on from a topic.]

Midsummer, sometime. When I was a kid I picked my own date--fifteenth of Solace--to celebrate it on, so I wasn't left out on the fun in the Circle. Mattered less after my Harrowing, though. [One corner of his mouth quirks up at the memory.] I've had twenty-eight of them now, and somehow I'm a little surprised I'm only two years your senior.

[Perhaps because Linden took up so little space, or perhaps because he came across as that kind of brilliant that burned itself out sooner than later.]

Birthdays back in your world--what'd you do for them? The particular or the general you, as you'd like.

Edited 2019-10-28 04:33 (UTC)

[L and the SQUIP are well-matched in some ways and an odd pair in others. The SQUIP always collected lovers, not perhaps a ridiculous amount of them but a significantly more than L has had over the course of his entire life. In fact, it really has been just the SQUIP, all the way back to his very first embrace. That doubtless colors his bias more than a little bit, and he realizes as much, but at that point dismissing it as a mere matter of the heart would be cruel, even for a man who would dismiss it himself as a knee-jerk reaction.

L listens, more receptive than he would be for most. His respect and admiration for Myr are open secrets at this point, to the point that even the SQUIP probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that they're conversing this way so soon after the kind of event that would absolutely shatter most positive rapport.

L's a different breed, though. Warped, twisted at the roots. Respect and admiration have nothing at all to do with one's willingness to inflict harm on another person; in fact, one's willingness and ability might actually contribute to it in his sad and very strange book.

His glance is furtive, quickly averted at the observation and the offer. Myr's right; it's not easy. But talking about anything that is not easy is something that immediately shuts L down, as the SQUIP ironically knows very well. Emotions are infant for L, incomprehensible and wailing. Their needs can be quieted through tender, attentive care or eventual cruel starvation, and it doesn't take a genius of his caliber to figure out which the years have favored in his unique, isolated situation.]

I'll... keep it in mind, thanks...

[The thanks, at least, are sincere, even if his intent to ever take Myr up on such an offer is uncertain.

He listens, glad and grateful for an immersive, if brief, escape from his troubles. He shrugs one shoulder, drawing his own mouth up in an awkward half-smile to mirror his companion's; he's often mistaken for being younger by at least several years.]

It's... customary to have cake. Candles, one for each year, balloons... friends bring gifts. I think that adults congregate for dinner and drinks, something like that.

[It's notable that he isn't actually sure.]

My birthday is... a date where it's customary to wear masks. Crime rates spike; the world goes mad for a little while. Why...

[He cringes slightly, feeling the chill again, realizing how close he's creeping toward danger and reigning back.]

Why did you need to choose a birthday, Myr?

[Actions, more than emotions, defined love in Myr's idealized view: Clinging to one's wounded beloved despite the world's opposition; nursing the sufferer through its injuries at terrible cost.

That moment the SQUIP, knowing its doom waited for it on the ground below, plummeted from the sky to Linden's rescue.

The field tactician he'd trained to be recognized the moments of weakness to be exploited; the staunch Andrastian mage recoiled at the very idea a demon could offer such self-sacrifice and warrant it in turn; the soft-hearted rest of him wondered at what he'd witnessed and how to put all those disparate messy pieces together in some sort of whole that he could act upon, and act rightly.

Linden deserved it of him.

In no little part because the longer he talks to his friend, the more odd little points of resonance he finds with his own experience as a Circle mage. They'd celebrated their birthdays--but there were so many other things none of them had experience in beyond books and dreams, that they'd speak about in exactly the way Linden does now. Hedged, careful, this is how I've heard it might be, o, that strikes the strangest chord.]

Birthdays were mostly for the youngest, so they felt more at home. There'd be little gifts, and food, sometimes. We might have a feast on the First Enchanter's birthday, but beyond that--

[He rolls a shoulder in a shrug, and smiles a little helplessly. He hasn't much more of an idea, but does that really matter? It means making up their own traditions, which doesn't seem such a bad idea.

If it can be done better than drinking alone.]

That sounds like our Satinalia, with the masks and the revelry. Which'd be today? Or tomorrow--if it's the eleventh month... [He's kept a calendar in his memory palace, but his poor sleep has made it grown disjoint. Still--it's close enough to Satinalia, he thinks, that he might as well celebrate it...

And thinking of the keeping of calendars,]

I was born in an alienage--a sort of, sort of slum for elves. We didn't keep close track of any days but the feast days--and I was taken from it when I was near seven--so I never knew, exactly. Just the season.

Something wrong? [Something barbed and painful, hiding in all this talk of birthdays? Or maybe a holiday that inspired crime carried extra and awful weight for a man of the law...]

[This encounter is tinged with no small amount of wariness. L's putting a lot of effort into keeping the trauma he suffered on account of Myr separate from the closest thing to friendship he can experience. And he's doing a good job of it, as he particularly does when any matter of the mind is deliberate. But matters of the heart are always more complicated and unstable. His smiles are pale, his laughter tinged with the slightest trace of skittishness.]

Here, it's Samuin. Where I'm from it has various names, but... Halloween is a popular modern one, in my time. The date is the threshold between the 10th and the 11th month. The harvest is in and the weather's turning colder. If you believe in such notions, whatever barrier exists between the world of humans and spirits is thinnest, but...

[He trails off. He's seen proof of existentially flooring entities and creatures, but he still hasn't reconciled or made his peace with the thought that those things that defy logic could exist in his own comparatively ordinary world. Kira and the shinigami were outliers, and perhaps not coincidentally the harbinger of such a logical being's downfall.

He clears his throat, shaking his head briskly.]

No... it is what it is. Aside from the fact that birthdays are themselves a reminder of a human's mortality... I couldn't really take the time off to celebrate, or do it in any meaningful way. I didn't have friends or relatives. There was more work to address by nature of the date, and I ate cake every day, rendering its significance moot. My handler probably gave up on trying to make the day happy a decade or more ago.

[Whether the alcohol is loosening his tongue or he's simply reached the point where he trusts Myr enough to say these things, there are... certainly some pieces of information here that would be new to the elf. Maybe strange; perhaps contradictory, with what he already knows of "Linden" and his life before Aefenglom.]

Who took you from the slum and... presumably, your family? It was my assumption that you went to study willingly.

[There's guilt in Myr yet for what he'd done; combined with the faintest edge-on perception of Linden's discomfort it makes this entire conversation feel difficult and fraught, ground not to be navigated in a drunkard's weave. Yet here he is, his fourth (fifth?) drink in and...trying his damnedest not to presume overmuch while still drawn to the camaraderie Linden's providing like a moth spiraling in toward a flame.

Inexact metaphor when Myr wasn't the one to get burned, but with the SQUIP no longer itself, there was no reason, no reason at all he should ever again have to do anything that might cause Linden harm...]

Mmm--it's usually All Souls Day the Veil's supposed to be thinner on, [he muses; it's not a matter of belief for a mage as lived reality, but... He's foggy enough that little clue on the sort of world Linden's from slips his grasp to lurk somewhere half-remembered. He might get it back later, might not.

The much more obvious ones about Linden's past, though--those don't, not as keen as Myr is to draw those parallels between them. Handler. No friends. An isolated existence... His empathy's in a better state than his logic right now, which means he's less apt to notice inconsistencies in favor of the picture painted and how it informs his understanding of the man sitting beside him.]

Maker's breath, that sounds lonely. But it was yours, wasn't it? Same way a Circle sounds binding to anyone who's never been in one...like we'd suffered for it. [Objectively, Linden had suffered for whatever he'd been through; see the marks it left in him. Objectively, Myr...was not the man he would have been if mages could live freely and he'd been left at home in the alienage.

This is not a mirror he likes thinking about. He pushes it aside to answer Linden's question,] The Templars, directly--as the hand of the Chantry; young mages aren't safe, you know? We don't have experience with demons and we're apt to use our magic out of fear, or anger--people get hurt, at best, and killed at worst. The Circle's the best place for us--we've got space to grow and learn on our own, away from anyone who'd hurt us out of ignorant fear.

[There's a kind of dogged, faithful conviction in the words that nevertheless rings a little hollow. He'd had questions even before Hasmal's uprising, questions he'd stuffed down and ignored with everything in him. Now, without anyone else around him to guarantee or require his orthodoxy, they're all slipping free and he can't keep hold of them to put them back where they belong...] I did go willingly, though. As much as you can when you're pushed into their arms. After Van got his magic and they carried him out of the alienage in a sack because he wouldn't stop fighting--

[Hm. This is a little disjointed. He pauses, reverses,] Van was--Van's my cousin. Magic runs in the blood, sometimes, and I think...Dad had an inkling I might be a mage, too. Because ever after that he'd talk to me about magic when no one else might be listening, and what a gift it was, and how mages had to be responsible and obedient.

He reminded me of that before they took me to the Circle. So I--was.

Is it? I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject.

[Perhaps he even takes comfort in not being an expert. It means that the ghosts he holds at arm's length, the demons he denies and the spirits he adamantly does not want to believe in might not slip through that veil and drag him towards hungry, devouring mouths. But there is a certain kind of man who doesn't mind the danger, in fact finds himself drawn to it because the alternative is a stagnant and ordinary death-in-life. Are all those other humans in waking comas, too ignorant to realize what they're missing? The question that presses L's sugar-sore teeth together, creaking and gritting, is whether or not they are ignorant enough to believe they're happy.]

In any case, the general idea seems to be similar enough. A place between two worlds, a chance for the monsters and the dead to brush fingertips with the rest of us. Personally... if they're able, I wonder why they would want to.

[The alcohol, at this point, is definitely affecting L. His words are slurred at the edges, less clipped and distinct than usual. He's putting forth an effort, but it certainly shows.]

It was mine. Although.. I've been surrounded by people and actually felt lonelier, you know. It was like that tonight.

[Was. The implication is clear: Myr changed that by showing up, and now he has company with another certain kind of man.

A wealth of information is being offered to him, and he accepts it, cupping his cheek in a long hand that could nearly be called elegant as he listens to what actually turns out to be a familiar story.

The advantage to having a blind conversation partner is that he can wear expressions that others might take advantage of. L's eyes are tense around the edges, teeth worrying at his lower lip before his hand wanders toward his mouth to take the brunt of the abuse.]

When you're gifted in ways that others can't relate to or understand... or separate from your nature... it's dangerous.

[There's an ache in his tone that he forgot didn't follow the visibility rule. He works to rectify that, limping back to blank, safe evenness.]

What happened to your cousin? Did he... come out of the sack?

[Did he stop fighting?]

Was he more of an aspirational or a cautionary tale for you?

[Do you wish that you had?]

Back home, at least; I've not heard what they think of their dead here--

[Every waking moment on Talam could be a torture, if Myr would let it be. Ripped from the fabric of the Fade, shorn of his Maker-given gift to shape the raw stuff of Creation, no longer contesting with demons every night... He missed it still, awfully, and it's only by relentless and mindful focus on what he has got that he's bricked up even a little of the hole left in him.

...Better to not drink too deeply tonight or he'll find himself caught worrying at it, tongue to missing tooth.]

--but speaking solely for this monster, we get lonely among our own, too. We long like spirits for the worlds we sense out there that we can't wholly understand but find beautiful anyhow. If all we can do is brush fingers...

[Further and further into shifting uncertain territory, his footing unsteady beneath him. He shouldn't presume so far after what he's done, shouldn't presume any of this maudlin rambling will be well-received, but the thought they might not have been having this conversation at all crouches on his back with heavy talons set to flesh. It seems suddenly urgent to put his feelings out where they might be known, judged, even rejected--whatever Linden felt to do with them, even if presented indirectly. Deniably.]

If we can brighten the moment for the ones we're reaching for, so much the better. I'm glad I was here tonight, [thank the Maker,] to be with you.

[He tips his head--solicitous--toward Linden then, that ache in his friend's tone an echo heard sharp as the original.] Magic was made to serve Man, never to rule over him. No one hearing that couldn't imagine the--the case it implied, mages ruling men. Because we could--but you weren't a mage, [so much he'd learned from the odd tight-wound fellow who'd haunted Linden's bedside,] and yet they pushed you away.

Who--who came for you? [And why?

Did that resemblance he'd felt to Van extend to Linden in a bag for his protests, too?]

Oh--yes, but there's plenty as wished to stuff him back in there as he grew. Especially when they brought me along--it's not usual at all, you know, for them to keep blood relations together. Against policy. But I'm fair and he's dark and we didn't share a name between us, so by the time,

[they had the letter addressed to both of us, saying Dad was dead and we had each other and Ben left for family,]

they worked out we were it had been left too long to correct. Good thing, too--he made me who I am.

[And unmade him, too, but the ache of that is swallowed up in the ache of the greater loss.] Even if I c--couldn't follow him out of the Circle, in the end; I couldn't stand to see it pulled apart between us but he went--he left anyway, and I...

[Was asleep, and couldn't stop him, and then there'd been the horror spell--

Abruptly Myr buries his face, his sudden failure of composure, in his hands. Not here, not now, breathe deep and stay centered.]

Edited 2019-11-10 13:24 (UTC)

[L's interest in such matters far exceeds his typical willingness to express said interest, or actually seek out the types of answers that might reveal a poignant desire for others to face difficult questions alongside him. It's no matter; he's accustomed to it, keeping what matters to him tightly bound up so that no one can see it or notice it or help him with it in any human, feeling capacity. Myr isn't human; Myr might also be trusted. It's a strange gray area tonight, where L is alone and perhaps too far down in the bottle to judge such matters with the same caution and hesitation he ordinarily might. The effect, unsurprisingly, makes him seem more fragile, more like one poised on the brink of the abyss with no regrets or impulse to dance back and preserve himself.

It's good that it was Myr tonight, with him, in the end. There are so many worse ways this conversation could have gone with a stranger, an enemy, or even a friend, but some combination of those things present in his companion make his eyes stretch momentarily as his lungs wince and shudder.]

I wasn't wanted, and I had no purpose... until I was, and I did.

[That's the simplest possible answer to that question. There's so much more to it, of course, an absurd and often disturbing amount. L lifts his glass, tips back a reckless amount as he listens... then he lowers his glass, sets it down, as something very unexpected happens. He watches Myr crumble, overcome, and for a few moments all he can do is stare, in paralysis and indecision.

Then, with great trepidation, spindly fingers reach out toward the fur at the back of Myr's neck, and he pets it with the same careful reverence as a child entrusted with his first soft and mysterious rabbit.]

[He had been doing so well.

He had been doing so well at avoiding this particular horror, this awful fear no one could or would explain to him. Detached as he was in Aefenglom, a cipher from a world no one knew, with no family or history but what he chose to share-- awful as all of that was it at least left him proof against this thing that seizes and shakes him like a dog with a rat.

Or had, until he'd gotten too far in his cups and said the wrong thing.

Touch grounds him, tremulous as it is; the feel of Linden's fingers on his neck doesn't belong with the remembered terror and that puts a crack in the spell it's got over him. He draws a strained breath, then another. Takes his hands from his face one at a time, lays them palm-down on the bar with deliberate care.

Fine, he's fine, he's fine...]

Sorry, [his tone tries for rueful, smiling. Manages the former, not the latter.]

It was--wasn't a good time. [He's fine. Fine. Picks up a hand with the same deliberation he'd put it down, to reach back and brush Linden's fingers with his own. Not admonishing, simply seeking contact.]

I'm glad you're here too, you know? Glad you--were the one to ask me that. You're not ever--not ever unwanted, with me.

[L's built delicately, more of a fey thread than a grounding rod, but his slender-fingered touch is sincere and concerned. If it centers Myr, it's for the best and, more importantly, not impossible, even given L's particularly strange and stunted tendencies.]

Please don't apologize.

[L tends, always, toward formality. Sometimes it's odd and even comical.]

I can see that it's the case...

[As a human lie detector, even without the use of magic, L has little doubt that what he's witnessing is wholly and harrowingly genuine. It stirs something in him that is both a relief, for being alive, and a discouraging embarrassment for the sort of man who would rather be a machine.]

Not ever...

[He knows, deep down in his darkest crushing core, that Myr only says so because he does not know L. "Linden" is a construct, and a shallow one at that. There's so much more lying under the facade even after what L has let slip through the mask he wears. If people can care for Linden, people like Myr, who should be able to see through it, well...

Either Myr is too stupid to see through it, or under the flimsy construct, the person L is someone worth caring about. L's not sure which one sounds more absurd.]

...thank you. I'm happy to help this way. I'll listen...

[It's good, to be useful for awhile.]

[That there was a restless darkness in his friend, Myr knew; one could not love a demon without a crack in one's heart. Linden's strange way of considering the world--his terrible earnestness in unapologetically arguing the monstrous--hinted at the denizens that lurked in the depths of that chasm.

It's not so much he suspects that "Linden" is a constructed persona, a simulacrum puppeted from the inside, as he knows a very great deal about the art of wearing an unalarming mask in a world easily frightened. That Linden's sometimes (often) so awful at it is...

Endearing, in the strangest way. That longing to belong, even if it had pushed Linden into the SQUIP's arms, speaks to the Faun's own heart, reaches for him like an outstretched hand. Given the chance to seize it and maybe--oh, Maker, grant it might be so--draw his friend from the dark...

How could he do otherwise but keep reaching back?]

I... [Even if it requires staring his own terror in the face. He wants to explain so badly his heart could burst with it.

He doesn't want to explain to the point it chokes him.]

I don't know I...can speak of it. I don't--

[He isn't fine, he's not, teetering there on the edge of a worse fall than earlier. Casting about for any handhold to keep from slipping, he seizes for something he can treat with academic detachment.]

Have you--back on your world--your folk understand minds well enough to make them, [at least he assumes, if Linden knows the SQUIP and Connor well enough to describe them,] --why can s, something be so terrible you can't speak of it? Or am I--

[...just a coward, like he'd always suspected since that day.]

[Patience is one of the few true virtues L possesses. Even though Myr claims at first that he might not be able to speak of it, it's clear that he can at least articulate it, given ample time. It's so powerful and vivid, clearly, that there must be words that can at least approximate what is in his mind and heart. More than being patient enough for them to eventually make themselves known, L finds that he does actually care about the content beyond the mere collection of more facts. And he cares that Myr doesn't choke, oddly, though this is the man willing to do nearly anything to get a confession out of suspect up to and including actual torture.

He blinks twice, trying to parse the exact barrier that is tripping up Myr. Perhaps he needs more time, too, and so he bides it, his fingers moving to overlap Myr's and brush them in a manner that might seem tentative, might fulfill the intended purpose of soothing the faun.]

You give my world far too much credit for understanding minds. The study of psychology is considered a soft science... and often, the theories that are the most controversial get the most attention. Neuroscience isn't much better... in short, the human brain is so complex that they only graze the surface when they attempt to explain or manipulate what goes on inside of it.

[L speaks with the typical distance he places between himself and the rest of the human race.]

Trauma would be the most obvious reason. A significantly negative experience might create an aversion to even associated elements... much the way certain color combinations in nature warn away predators, or certain patterns of sounds are recognized as a warning. If you're still too close to what happened, whether it was an isolated incident or many like it... it can be difficult to talk about it. Otherwise... there are social factors that can affect it, such as the fear of being perceived as weak by those listening.

[He is quick to clarify something else.]

I don't perceive you that way.

Edited 2019-11-18 22:55 (UTC)

[This.

This is what Myr needed to hear, even or especially delivered as dispassionately as it is. There is an explanation behind the remembered terror that dogs him; there is a logic to why memory is crueler than the event itself.

It doesn't make it hurt any less--perhaps there is nothing that could, for though Myr is not by nature given to despair, his is the isolated sufferer's conviction that nothing can ease what's happened to him. But he at least isn't mad, or broken, or uniquely miserable; there is a reason, there are many potential reasons behind his pain.

His fingers curl beneath Linden's. He presses the back of his other hand to his lips.

I don't perceive you that way.

It's a truth Myr's long known that it's easier to be brave when someone else believes it of you, and what Linden's given him deserves some recompense. And if there is anyone who might hear it of him and not recoil in horror...]

Everyone--everyone who knew me, who mattered--they saw it happen. [He hadn't needed to tell them for them to have thought him weak.

He gestures abruptly, jerkily toward his face--toward the blindfold.]

I did this to myself.

[Patterns and logic can be the cruelest world's safest refuge. It was one of the earliest lessons L learned, and he speaks like someone who's unambiguously telling truth, though necessity dictates it can't always be his habit.

Everyone, he believes, is mad and broken and uniquely miserable. It's just a matter of who hides it the most artfully. He considers himself skilled, passing all of it off as mere eccentricity when there's some devouring beast hidden at the bottom of a black pit... but maybe he's biased. Maybe these things come in degrees and gradients, and he doesn't wear a disguise nearly as clever as he believes he does.

Does Myr ever feel the weight of that disguise? Is it a relief to finally let the mask fall away, even if he seems overcome in a way that L is in no way equipped to comfort with true and graceful compassion?

He's silent for several heavy, thoughtful seconds. Enough time to take another drink, and really give proper thought to how he wants to continue this conversation.]

Why did you have to?

[The assumption, without question, is that it was utterly necessary under Myr's circumstances.]

Edited 2019-11-22 21:59 (UTC)

[Compassion would only shatter Myr right now, as a parent's sudden concern can reduce a child to tears over an injury she'd otherwise ignore. Perhaps that shattering would be for the better, or the worse; perhaps there would be something healing in it, or perhaps the knowledge he'd broken down so completely in front of Linden would eat holes in his heart beside those left by how his Circle had soured on him.

But that's a counterfactual, a future that won't happen--yet--not if he can keep walking this slender thread over the Void with his internal gaze averted from its memory of blood and pain and the things that brought him to that point.

(The mask is weighty, but weightier still is being seen for himself and bearing the consequences of it. This is not the place, a part of him dimly realizes; these are not things that can be revealed in a common dockside bar where anyone might hear. And yet...)]

I didn't know how else to stop seeing them.

[It had felt utterly necessary. It had felt logical, well-considered, perfectly rational despite the terror that was otherwise devouring his mind.

He was seeing things no one should have. They wouldn't go away when he closed his eyes, and as eternity expanded to fill the space of heartbeats, he didn't know if they would ever go away.

But without eyes, he couldn't see them anymore. So he'd chosen the simplest way out.

He makes a choked noise to recall it, bending over the bar with his head in his hands and fingers tangled now in his hair. Breathe--breathe, keep breathing, Maker and Andraste, only keep breathing and cling with every bruised fingertip to the here-and-now and not what reaches out to strangle you from the past behind you.]

[L's response certainly isn't devoid of compassion, entirely; it's just careful, buttoned-up, controlled. He reins in most of his emotions this way, as well as his responses to emotions, because once one has lost control of that, hasn't he functionally lost control of everything else? He knows that while Myr likely doesn't feel that willful deadening to the extent the detective does, this partial breakdown can't be a source of pride for him. He listens, as neutrally as possible, withholding his judgment, because they've had so many conversations. It's taken this long for even the topic of Myr's blindness and its cause to be broached at all. Therefore, it must be a significant burden, one that Myr was strong to carry so long and so silently.

Maybe it's brave, to take off the mask to this extent. Perhaps its courage that L does not, in fact, possess himself.]

Was the sight of them so much more terrible than the knowledge that they existed?

[It's not a challenge, but a sincere question.]

There are theoretical creatures... Eldritch horrors, ancient and terrifying gods that are supposed to be beyond the comprehension of a human, to the point where just looking at them provokes madness. Is... was that what you're referring to? Or something like it?

[I'm trying to understand, as someone who would look.]

Edited 2019-11-26 21:06 (UTC)

[It takes Myr a long, grinding moment to understand what he's being asked and relate it to his experience. Linden's explanation, well-meant, does not help him instantly parse it.

Because he hadn't gone looking. He didn't know they existed, wasn't even sure now they did exist as more than the first and most horrifying symptom of his mind coming apart entirely. Which (he struggles for a fingerhold, a toehold on an incline become increasingly slippery, the abyss yawning wide at his back, his consciousness of it as acute as it is of his pulse in his ears,) perhaps lent some credence to the idea they did exist, somewhere and somehow, because they were so far beyond his own imagining.

Which meant they could come back. Or he could go looking, if he wanted, if he wished so dearly to lose his mind entirely. Maybe this time he'd cut his own throat and that would be kinder, far kinder...]

I didn't know, [all in a rush,] I didn't know they existed. I didn't know they could, I didn't go looking, Maker, I wasn't like that. [True and not; curiosity had led him to worse places. But he could not be seen to have sought them, not when a Templar with a blade waited for mages with that kind of incaution.]

I didn't want to know--Linden, [his voice pitches up, suddenly, distressed and strained,]

I can't, I c--can't do this. [I want so dearly to tell someone and I trust you to hear it, I do, but I'm drowning, Maker save me; I'm drowning and this is holding my head beneath the waves.]

[L flinches in a moment of rigid panic, because moments of intense emotion are where he freezes and anesthetizes. He can't engage productively or meaningfully, often, because nothing betrays an inherent hollowness more swiftly than cracking it open and parading it about as exhibit A.

He swallows, weighs his options and moves and ways to not hurt or distress Myr further in these moments. It shouldn't be as difficult as it is... and yet for L, it doesn't even begin to come naturally.]

Finding out that way must have been...

[He's an eloquent man, having a difficult time finding the right word. It's frustrating.]

...terrible? You... don't have to say more. If dwelling is causing you pain.

[L's actually caught off guard by the extent he does not want to cause Myr pain.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[OPEN] The Stars, The Moon, They Have All Been Blown Out

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject