[A lifetime spent painstakingly shaping himself into a better man--knowing all the while it meant nothing to a world that feared him for an accident of birth--has left Myr acutely sensitive to those whose situations are evenly faintly similar. That inclination to try for better in the face of hardship and rejection, that spark of longing to do good by others for their own sake, oh--that is a powerful draw, and how much more so when it's found in someone that seemed from the start to be one of Myr's own? Little wonder he's fallen as hard as he has for L.
Yet how painful it is to have reiterated, not through his own mistakes but another's, that the mere aspiration to altruism might be necessary for goodness but wasn't sufficient to enact it. How crushing to see his beloved's efforts rewarded not with encouraging gratitude but vengeful spite.
How awful to possess enough detachment, enough commitment to the truth, that he can step back from the situation to recognize that what L had done could not, should not merit uncomplicated gratitude, if the world was to be a just one. (Nor did it deserve whatever Niles has planned: But the world is not just, and very few actions indeed were ever met with the response they deserved.)
He breathes out slowly as L gives his analysis, nodding once at its conclusion; that much is true and correct, though not entirely in a way according with its underlying premises. He spiders his fingers along the bony terrain of his Bonded's back, finding another knot of tension to massage out of existence. It's an odd contrast to what he must say next, but complimentary yet: I can't approve, but I do not love you any less; what I'm doing will hurt now but it's meant to heal you in the end.]
You also hurt him very badly, intervening as you did.
[He says it gently, with no appended assumption that L knew this.]
Not his pride alone, but his sense of safety and mastery over himself. I'd asked him, [by way of explanation,] after he came at you in Deceuer.
[He should, perhaps, have said something sooner than now. But it had taken him this long to process his own instinctive horror at what Niles had described, to parse through the chimera's half of the story and see how it meshed with L's. To understand just what of his Bonded's behavior--parts of it abhorrent--could be explained by that yawning disconnection between L and the world, as between a spirit and the Realm of Opposition.
He had not liked his own conclusions. But nor were they sufficient to drive him from L or make him regret their Bond, and so--]
That does not put him in the right in wanting you to suffer as he did. And I will stand in his way, [if you can trust me to, when I failed you today.]
But it doesn't make him wrong in wanting restitution.
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Yet how painful it is to have reiterated, not through his own mistakes but another's, that the mere aspiration to altruism might be necessary for goodness but wasn't sufficient to enact it. How crushing to see his beloved's efforts rewarded not with encouraging gratitude but vengeful spite.
How awful to possess enough detachment, enough commitment to the truth, that he can step back from the situation to recognize that what L had done could not, should not merit uncomplicated gratitude, if the world was to be a just one. (Nor did it deserve whatever Niles has planned: But the world is not just, and very few actions indeed were ever met with the response they deserved.)
He breathes out slowly as L gives his analysis, nodding once at its conclusion; that much is true and correct, though not entirely in a way according with its underlying premises. He spiders his fingers along the bony terrain of his Bonded's back, finding another knot of tension to massage out of existence. It's an odd contrast to what he must say next, but complimentary yet: I can't approve, but I do not love you any less; what I'm doing will hurt now but it's meant to heal you in the end.]
You also hurt him very badly, intervening as you did.
[He says it gently, with no appended assumption that L knew this.]
Not his pride alone, but his sense of safety and mastery over himself. I'd asked him, [by way of explanation,] after he came at you in Deceuer.
[He should, perhaps, have said something sooner than now. But it had taken him this long to process his own instinctive horror at what Niles had described, to parse through the chimera's half of the story and see how it meshed with L's. To understand just what of his Bonded's behavior--parts of it abhorrent--could be explained by that yawning disconnection between L and the world, as between a spirit and the Realm of Opposition.
He had not liked his own conclusions. But nor were they sufficient to drive him from L or make him regret their Bond, and so--]
That does not put him in the right in wanting you to suffer as he did. And I will stand in his way, [if you can trust me to, when I failed you today.]
But it doesn't make him wrong in wanting restitution.