Event Log: January, Return to Dorchacht

[faileas]

Event Log: January, Return to Dorchacht

I. A Tarnished Reality The teleporter to Dorchacht becomes operational by the 4th and the ambassadors return to their city with the first open, ceremonial operation of the device - along with any Mirrorbound who wish to join them, and Theodore Rosethorne and Sowilo, who make the trip as representatives of the Coven to ensure that all is well. Those who missed the first teleportation, never fear! Now that both waypoints are functional, Mirrorbound and others may travel freely between Aefenglom and Dorchacht at any point they choose to. Notably absent from the group, though - most of the Dorchacht refugees originally smuggled into Aefenglom. Only three or four are going back with the ambassadors, and they're primarily Witches. The rest have chosen to stay. Upon return to Dorchacht, it's obvious that some major changes have been made with the new regime. The sky is overcast, but it's merely fault of the weather at this time of year - the oppressive fog that used to hang over the Black City is gone, along with its effects on the natural lunar cycle. The auction blocks, damaged in the fires of the event the locals now call "The Rising", have been fully torn down, not a trace of them left to sully the streets. Where the triple stars of the Resistance used to be worn in secret, a majority of citizens now bear them openly (and in many cases, proudly) on pins and on clothing. In fact, any Witches who do not display the triple stars on their person somewhere, are generally regarded with suspicion, disgust, or fear unless they're recognized as Mirrorbound Witches - careful not to be mistaken for a Drummond sympathizer. The Monster citizens won't be outwardly cruel to any Witches, but will be somewhat fearful, hurrying their children along or crossing the street to get away. Recognizable Mirrorbound, those who were there during The Rising and before, are treated a bit like celebrities on the streets, though any Mirrorbound are given a warm welcome, albeit a little less warm for Witches. Storytellers share tales of how diplomats treating one another, Witches and Monsters alike, as equals so publicly and openly within Dorchacht gave them hope that such a life is attainable, or how a band of Mirrorbound snuck into the city under the cover of darkness and helped give their Resistance a leg up in the good fight against Drummond's extremists. Others share stories of being rescued from burning buildings or cruel Witches during The Rising by brave heroes. Many of these tales are shared in the form of song, as homage to those Mirrorbound who brought hopeful music to Dorchacht through the radio, which is still operational and playing a selection of music with a little more variety. Still a bit soft, their speakers and songs are, but as time passes, they grow a little more experimental, branching out from the lullabies that used to be played. Overall, the Black City is much less black these days, a little greener and brighter from the plants left by Mirrorbound before. Where the old Dorchacht could take your breath away with its feeling of barred oppression, many of those barricaded windows have been opened, reinforcements on the doors broken down. Though things are never perfect after a revolution, and it's clear that the work continues. Armed Resistance guards patrol the streets in trios, normally two Monsters and a Witch, to keep the peace. Their first priority is the protection of Monsters, many of whom still seem anxious and scared as they go about their days - not of the guards themselves, who they often greet with smiles, but of the Witches and humans they pass on the streets. In some cases, keeping the peace means breaking up fights between their own and those humans and Witches who do not want to accept Monsters as their equals, and in some cases it means putting Drummond sympathizers in their places with intimidation and force. While they do their best to keep skirmishes out of Mirrorbound sight, it's clear that despite the improvements, Dorchacht is still no utopia, and the road to a true peace is fraught with speedbumps. As noted, characters are free to travel between Aefenglom and Dorchacht by teleporter as often as they'd like! The waypoints will remain open even after this month and travel will be unrestricted; we will note if this situation changes in the future. Dorchacht quests are also now available ICly!

II. A Few Alterations a. The Coven Major changes are still underway. One of the biggest that Mirrorbound will notice is that the new administration of Dorchacht have moved the Coven. The old building is in a state of disrepair right now, doors and windows wide open, the interior stripped of trappings. The library has shed its books to somewhere else. The basement where so many horrors took place is abandoned. Instead, a sign has been erected outside it, stating that this center of Drummond's operations will be turned into a museum to remember their unpleasant history, and to memorialize those who lost their lives fighting for freedom. It's still a work in progress, and not high on the priority list when survival and care of the citizens have to take precedence, but inside, characters may still find small shrines set up in various places to Resistance members who died there. Instead, Dorchacht's new Coven is currently based inside an old manor located just a handful of blocks from the town square, and it's a much more informal affair. Magic lessons have continued with Resistance Witches, though the subject matter has changed instead. They experiment with different types of magic based on their own interests, but many are studying plant magic, medicine, and defensive spells that can be used out in the Wilde. Anything that will prove to be practical going forward. Lessons are also open to Monsters now, so they can see what their magical brethren are learning (and know that the compulsion and control spells that Morgana loved so much are no longer being taught). With the Coven being moved, visitors from Aefenglom are offered places to stay either within the manor of the new Coven, or in various empty houses around the city. Stay as long as you'd like, they say, and apologize that the accommodations aren't nicer - reconstruction is still obviously ongoing all over the city, repairing damages from The Rising and the fighting that happened afterward. They don't really have anywhere as nice as the rooms their ambassadors were given in Aefenglom. b. The Walls One of the biggest on-going projects in Dorchacht right now is removing the Monster control spells from the set of enchantments on their city walls. High on the list of priorities is making sure that Monsters can feel safe again, secure in their own minds and bodies. As the spells are made visible, particular sets of runes have to be ground down and smoothed over. A spell is either cast or provided to soften the stone temporarily, and then it's basically going at it with magitech-powered sanders created by Hilda. The particular runes that need to be gotten rid of will be provided on reference sheets - please don't touch the others, they chide! Those are to protect from the Cwyld, and are still very important. While help is welcomed with open arms and enthusiasm at most sections of the walls, those guards posted at one particular small district, guarded with trios of Resistance members at each entrance and warded with alarm magic to warn of escape, turn Mirrorbound away; these runes are being altered, not removed, to help contain unruly Drummond loyalists, they say. The people who now live in that guarded district are all human, whether they're Witches or no, and all refuse to bear the triple stars. "Troublemakers," the guards will explain grimly. "We have to contain them for now. It isn't a perfect solution, but they've hurt people, or tried to hurt people, since Drummond was run out of town." c. Bond Lessons Bonding is a bit of a tricky subject in the new Dorchacht. Many Monsters are afraid of the idea, as it was once used as one of the collars around their necks, but the Circle of Three recognize it as an important way to wean citizens off the lullabies and calming draughts that prevent going feral during full moons. As part of encouraging others to form Bonds, partnerships at the very least the way most Resistance members describe theirs, there are demonstrations and public seminars that pop up around Dorchacht on the regular. They may be as informal as a circle in what's going to be a park or as official-seeming as a talk held inside a shop or lecture hall, but they have one thing in common. Many of the citizens are keen on getting Mirrorbound in on it -- mostly by dragging them in, asking if they have a Bonded, and if they do, they tell the Mirrorbound to talk about their Bonded. They're interested in the ups and downs (but mostly ups) of having one in order to show that if the Mirrorbound are into it, you should be too! They accept all stories but prefer the happy ones - the aim is to encourage their Monster citizens and help them be less afraid of taking that step with Witches. And for those who aren't in a Bond, or decline to talk -- well, they get what amounts to a "flour sack baby" in the form of a Dorchacht citizen of the opposite role of their own (a Monster would receive a human/Witch, a Witch would receive a Monster) that they must hang with for a day, ensuring no harm comes to them, bound by one of the temporary Bonding potions so popular in the Wilders' ranks. (As a note, for the second option, you have free reign of the NPC; do the personalities you find fun, be they cooperative or mischievous, shy or loud, abrasive to your character or someone they can genuinely get along with. They are all willing - no one is being forced into this. No Fae or Dragons allowed for Monster NPCs, unfortunately, as they are still very much not about.)

III. Ahoy Mateys! With Dorchacht opening up again after the last few months of closed off internal fighting, plenty of trading ships' Captains are ready and raring to go build business relations with the new regime and find a new market for some of their wares. There has been increased interest in finding a shorter route to Dorchacht by sea - the teleporter is useful for small groups of people, sure, but it can't handle much cargo. The only problem? Ships are being turned back, barely halfway there, with significant damage to their hulls. Brave individuals looking for a seafaring adventure are asked to come aboard and help the crew navigate tumultuous waters, hopefully figuring out along the way what's causing the damage to previous ships. It's a three day trip to Dorchacht if the waters are kind, and characters can simply teleport back home once there. On board the various ships brave enough to return to the sea, Mirrorbound find the problem halfway through the trip: a colossal squid that's made it home at this point, thrashing ships that come too close to its den. While uninfected, it does have injuries on its body, which may be the source of its lashing out. The ships are able to bring themselves close enough for longer ranged attacks, and the Harpy on board are careful not to be captured by the churning waves caused by the thrashing, but there's others who want to seek a less violent mean to end this surf and turf conflict. Killing, healing, subduing, or relocating it are all valid options, but getting in close to do any of those will be difficult, as it has a tendency to ink up the waters around it and reduce visibility to nothing. Be careful of any creatures swimming around that are interested in the weakened squid as well, such as various carnivorous fish, sea-plants, and things that appear alike to Merrow, but rely only on instinct. The Merrow cannot be spoken to, nor are they infected; the Captains of the ships will explain that they're "wild", and refer to them as distant cousins to the Merrow that sparsely populate Aefenglom itself.

IV. Back At Home Back in Aefenglom, the stir caused by the Circle of Three's arrival takes time to calm. It's the talk of the town for days - many seem happy about Morgana Drummond's apparent demise. "Good for them," is the general sentiment in the residential areas more populated by Monsters and the Harbor District. They're glad to know that things are on the way up there. Others think this is a boon; should anything happen, now Aefenglom has an ally city to stand with them, one in their debt. Others still don't really care either way, and go about their lives as if nothing's happened. The refugees, in their neighborhoods on the far reaches of the Haven, seem happy to hear news from home and find The Dragon/Starlight/Fafnir freed, and while a few of them choose to return to Dorchacht, having never put down roots in Aefenglom, more still don't wish to leave the homes and families they've formed here, or the Mirrorbound who have helped them so much over the months. Some even doubt that things are as good as they say, and choose to remain for that reason - slavery and ill treatment from the upper class in Aefenglom instilled in them a sense of (well-earned) paranoia regarding the intentions of Witches, especially those back home. They hear that things have changed, but don't necessarily want to find out for themselves. Even still, the mood is upbeat, with a general consensus that if Morgana is really gone, that's at least a solid step in the right direction. In the Aristocratic District, though, the atmosphere is sour. The general sentiment is that they wish the refugees would have left with those ambassadors. The kinder ones think Aefenglom should focus on its own citizens - the people from the Outer City brought in to weather the blizzard have never left, after all, still living in the neighborhoods with the refugees. Those who are more vocally outspoken about the Mirrorbounds' presence in the city think they should have all left to Dorchacht. Let another city shoulder all the misfortune they bring with them! Many of the people grumbling about that are ones who were directly affected by the Mists back in October, either through temporary changes themselves or through being attacked by ferals. Some of the more hot-headed young people try to spread this message - through graffiti, on homes and businesses in the Haven and the refugees' district, though if caught, they're quick to run away and not willing to enter into a confrontation. The graffiti is wholly mundane and not particularly difficult to remove, just unpleasant, telling Mirrorbound and refugees alike to "go home" or "go back to Dorchacht", in so much colorful language. Seems there's still some work to do at home, as well.

Welcome to your establishing post for the current situation in Dorchacht! This log takes place through the entire month; characters can come and go as they please. As always, you can direct all your questions HERE. This month we're also putting up a City Tracker for PC actions, both in Aefenglom's plot later on and Dorchacht's log here. Let us know what your character is doing, good or bad! The cut-off for the tracker is February 3rd.

Comments

[hearthebell]

[Myr navigates so easily and gracefully within his home that it's almost easy to forget that he can't see, to the point where L grows subconsciously a little slower about removing his clothing. His reticence isn't relegated to self-consciousness alone, however; nakedness is a kind of vulnerability, too, and the chill that nips and needles at his exposed skin is a reminder that "talking" means difficult questions with corresponding difficult answers.

He listens to the ambient, static rush of water for a few minutes, and his mind is troublingly blank as he attempts to process what Myr is asking. If he remembered in any great detail the events leading up to what had happened, he probably would have had enough of a handle on the situation to keep it from progressing the way it had. But there have been other nights and other incidents; specifically, the night of his birthday stands out. So does his failure to safeguard himself and get a necessary monster Bond when his life was stretched so incendiary and thin against the haunting ache of infinite stars.

Niles' recent words drift across his thoughts. That is what you want right? To die? You want an angry drunk to send you through a window and crack your skull. Failing that you want me to find you and finish you off. You want that pastry to be poisoned because you want an easy way out... But what I'm saying is that I don't want to watch your pain. I want to cause it.

And then, of course, the answer in L's own voice.

One person causes my suffering. He's a joyless master of the craft...

L is joyless; L is a master of so many crafts, and an architect of so much that is pointless evasion of pain, and then boredom, coming full circle once they prove to be their own temporary remedies in a torturous cycle.

He knows what Myr is really asking. He doesn't begin to know how to answer it.]

Because I'm a gambler.

[A supreme aristocrat, in the words of an author. Dostoevsky was dead; most of the men L admired were.]

I knew that I could win or lose against Niles, and that there would come a point where I'd have no control over something. He was determined enough to catch me unawares eventually, and I was getting tired... so I let go of control, and accepted the outcome on my own terms.

[He won because I let him, which is not the same as a true win. It's scored differently; it matters.]

When you have a committed stalker, everywhere is dangerous. When you have an absent lover, everywhere is sad, and so... leaving yourself is the logical way to separate yourself from all of it. The danger and sadness remain, when you come back, but... just knowing the option to leave exists, that you can always do it again, is something like a refuge.

[faithlikeaseed]

[As always, Myr listens to the answer he's asked for, and what lies beneath it, with focused attention. But for the tapping of his fingers against one haunch--deliberate, to the rhythm of the Canticle of Transfigurations, as he counts down the time the bath's got to run--he is still; his side of the Bond briefly limpid and quiet as a forest pool.

Beyond listening, he is understanding what he's being told--and that's no passive thing.

There are parts of L that stand out to him with the sparkling clarity of Serault glass, cut and etched and fine as gemstones. Then there is this, at once familiar and deeply alien in the same way spirits were. Myr had never much been one for fraternizing with the Maker's first children--had even, in his heart of hearts, feared them a little--but he knew as much as all mages knew that their lens in the world was much different from mortality's. The Realm of Opposition bewildered and twisted them, contorted solutions appropriate to the Fade into the stereotypy of madness. So it felt here, with L's talk of gambling.

Though maybe--the more Myr listens, the more is revealed--it's only the description he's given that's odd; the reasoning and emotional weight behind L's words have a blackness to them Myr knows far better than he'd like. Maker's breath--he knew his own odds against the threat Niles posed, and could read the helplessness in that knowing; even now he's struggling not to hate the chimera for reaching so effortlessly into his life and ruining any illusion he had of giving L safety.

(Nothing to it but to fight the harder.)]

I-- [A sigh escapes Myr. What will I do when you don't come back? he wants to ask, agonized; but does not.] Wish dearly you'd chosen another avenue for that retreat. We aren't meant to bear such things forever, but we're also not meant to bear them alone.

[He reaches to turn off the tap, judging the tub full enough.] I've believed since I was a boy we're given danger and sadness and all hardship in order to forge something better from them. All of us mortals, together.

[It's the core and heart of his theology laid bare, the faith that made him seek bare-faced those things he knew would hurt and haunt him.

Because they could be redeemed. Because knowing them was the first step on that path.]

Provoking him further--that's part of the gamble?

[He steps back from the side of the tub as he asks, gesturing L toward it. Go on, you don't have fur or even much body fat; he can feel how the chill of the air bites.]

[hearthebell]

[There are odd dichotomies at work here. Because while L has to uncomfortably admit, privately at first, that the thought of asking for help continues to feel unacceptable to him, he's watching the tub, too, and wouldn't permit it to overflow with or without Myr's counting. Giving all of himself to one way of life for so long meant that L felt justified in his selfishness, which extended to the problems and enemies that he guarded jealously. Whether or not they were damaging or dangerous, they were his, and wasn't he entitled to something of his own after giving away his name, his face, any chance for a normal life?

Debts are cleaner when he holds the reins, controls every possible way he could ever be asked to give away even more. Even a gambler decides what he is betting, and when it is time to walk away to nurse his personal losses in face-saving privacy.

If I bear it alone, and win or lose, it can still be mine.]

It's in the nature of all sentient, reasoning beings to try to make the best of a bad situation. Otherwise... there wouldn't be a will to struggle or survive. You'd see a response to stress similar to what any prey animal feels when they've been injured or captured.

[This is what I was made for. This is the end, and that's OK.]

I'm convinced that we still have that response, even if the threats aren't the same. In some way, we're all trying to escape stress, which is pressure that has the potential to break what isn't strong enough. We haven't evolved to the point where we're indestructible just because we're clever and capable of building weapons or wielding magic to fend off our predators.

[He follows Myr's gesture, moving toward the tub, stepping carefully into it. He is shivering, and it's apparent in his voice. Should Myr reach out to steady him, the hairs on L's shuddering body are raised on puckered gooseflesh.]

No... it wasn't part of the gamble. Or if it was, it was a safe bet. He wouldn't have hurt me, today, no matter what I said.

[L is as certain of this as he is of the fact that Myr wouldn't. Absolutely no doubt stalls or shadows his tone, even if "today" is a notable qualifier.

Because Niles fully intends to hurt him in the future... no matter what he said.]

[faithlikeaseed]

Yet we're still more than the sum of our animal parts. [It's said patiently, with the academic cadence of all their debates; and yet there is a deep sorrow beneath it, a thing that resounds with echoes of L's conclusions. His philosophy isn't wrong but it is incomplete in its scope, and see where those unfinished edges have made an awful ruin of what should have been (will still be) a man fine as he is brilliant.

Myr does reach out to steady his Bonded, glorying a little in that he can even without sight-- And wincing at the cold flesh beneath his fingers. He should have drawn the bath hotter.]

We can and do rise beyond what's expected of us--we know we'll not reach our full potential without being put to challenges that might kill us on the way. [Once L's safely in the tub, he shucks out of his own shirt--his voice a little muffled and a wan smile hidden as he pulls it up over his head,] You've especially got a taste for stress--and if not a delusion you're already invincible, a conviction you should be.

[It breaks Myr's heart even in the admiring of it.

He folds the shirt, lays it aside where he might find it again later, and perches on the edge of the tub clad only in the kind of split kilt most accommodating for his sort of faun. What a pair they make: One dark and one pale, a gangling bird-boned Witch and a Monster with muscle more suited to the front lines than a library.]

What would you say motivates him in that? [A question asked with intent, as Myr takes up a lump of soap and holds it out to L.]

[hearthebell]

[L appreciates and likely needs that added steadiness that Myr provides, leaning against the support as he sinks to submerge himself to his shoulders. He craves heat, and could absolutely stand more of it, but he's also ravenously hungry, exhausted beyond measure, faded and wilting after a long stretch of self-abuse. Not that it seems to impact his ability to converse to a devastating degree; L is accustomed to engaging in conversation and debate when the stakes, pressure and stress are actually higher. Although... this level of emotional introspection and examination are admittedly new and strange enough to perhaps balance out the difference.

Is this a challenge that can kill him? He wonders, as Myr willingly comes even closer, strong and handsome and committed to making things whole in spite of the twin holes in his face. L doesn't want to break anything about him, even as he begins to pick apart the ways he knows he could. He wishes he didn't know; maybe, then, it wouldn't seem prophetic and inevitable that he will break Myr and leave nothing but dust in his wake. Is genuine care just another term for deciding who gets to be the unstained meek one, surviving to inherit while the other swallows all the evil for their sake?

L does have a taste for stress. Also, perhaps, for evil. He's always been willing to confront it, but is it really to spare the good in the world, or to feed his own corrupted appetite to enact viciousness toward a societally acceptable direction?

He takes the soap, cradling it for a few moments in his long fingers as though gradually remembering the sweet-scented cake's purpose. Then there's an audible dip and murmur of the bathwater as he wets it and begins to form a biding lather. It does help, immensely, to have something to do with his hands while they have a serious conversation; he's grateful that Myr seems to have anticipated this, whether or not it was just a side-effect of a practical gesture.]

Isn't he a predator? One of the feline persuasion, even?

[He moves the soap toward his curved and knotted back, winces at the bundles of aches buried there. His wrist is still bandaged from his ironically damaging attempt at self defense, and he makes a conscious effort not to wet the hasty dressing. Torn from L's garment, he doubts that it's exactly sanitary, but his own healing magic leaves much to be desired, and he'd prefer not to even look at it, yet. He'll stitch it later when he's alone with the pain that is his.]

It's the reason I felt an allusion to the wild world was appropriate. To hurt me today wouldn't have been any fun, because I wasn't up for a fight. It wouldn't mean the same thing; it would be scored differently. His pride won't let him take out someone who's weaker than he is, so... he's waiting for that to change.

[L doesn't sound enthused about that changing. If it's a guarantee of safety, it actually benefits him to exist in a wan, anemic state of ill health.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[Were it anyone else that Myr cared for but L in this state, he...likely would not be carrying on this conversation quite so casually, but something of his Bonded's own disregard for his needs--and something of the fact so much of their relationship is bracketed in cerebral dissection of the world around them--has crept in to take the urgency off his usual anxieties. He's hardly about to let L walk out of here before he's bathed, eaten, and slept, preferably for more than one day under Myr's care... But they can move through each step of that care without frantic haste.]

He is that, [Myr allows of Niles, with a wince. Cats play with their kills, is such a vivid truism that even Myr, who had not known a cat in person until coming to Aefenglom, had memorized it. Now that he's borne actual witness to the sounds of the household cats after mice or birds or even exceptionally large spiders, L's reference to Niles as a proud feline predator is distressing in its accuracy. Not just the direct target of his ire he's toying with here, either.

(Remember there are reasons for that. But it is so, so hard to be forgiving of anger and hurt transmuted into cruelty. Harder still to forgive the imagined, awful future being held over the both of them.)

L's surface hurts throb through the Bond, so much so that it's nearly instinct for Myr to reach over and press careful fingers to one of those aching spots, to knead it away. The thought that Niles' wrath might be deferred indefinitely if only L can linger, if not on Death's doorstep, then somewhere in Death's front yard--gets a huffing, unhappy laugh out of the faun.]

And brought you right to me, knowing I wouldn't let you stay miserable that way. No, intimus, it isn't a long-term solution; even if you could talk me into letting you suffer, [which is not impossible, but damn near,] I suspect he'd turn to other methods to get satisfaction from you.

[Then, more quietly, without any trace of that black humor,] Is it only a matter of pride that motivates him in his plans for you?

[He'd hear what else L has deduced is behind Niles' intentions.]

[hearthebell]

[Initially, L stiffens and shudders at that touch. Such aches tend to get worse before they get better... but under Myr's gentle fingers and the warmth of the bath water, it is, in fact, getting better. The knots are thick and ugly between thin skin and brittle bone. He pulls his arms a little closer to his core, both to conserve heat and to quietly conceal recent and deliberate injuries.

He didn't expect Myr to allow him to insist that it could be sustainable, with the right combination of determination and insanity. For him to argue that case successfully would take more energy than he currently possesses by far, to the point where somehow it's actually easier to try to answer Myr's question, as well as the one he's really asking.]

Pride...

[L confirms, pausing. These things are all intertwined, tangled in messy knots.]

...and revenge. For the ways he thinks I could have helped him more.

[And there's real bitterness and frustration, there. He had tried to help Niles, or at least it had started that way. For however pride and stubbornness had warped his motives toward malice at the end, it's an old and tired story for L, extending a hand toward a world that would cry out for help and reject him in the same breath. L's retaliation might have been overkill, for Niles' attempt to strangle him and the grazing bullet wound to his thigh, but if he had done nothing... well...

Niles wouldn't be after him. He would probably break even on the pain and physical suffering, considering what he's currently experiencing at the hands of a persistent stalker. But pride is everything, because in the moments L exposed a fledgling altruistic streak, Niles was unhelpful, ungrateful, and seemed to have no shortage of entitlement for how his help arrived and performed. And things had gone wrong at just about the mark, L believes, where he had snapped and behaved not like an object or a slave, but a petty, flawed, immature brat of a human being who refused to lose an arbitrary game.]

Under the circumstances...

[Physical, mental, emotional]

...I truly don't think that I could have helped him more.

[faithlikeaseed]

[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.

[hearthebell]

[The dullness and flatness of L's tone communicates, clearly enough, that he has no belief that no one could have helped Niles more. His meaning is starkly literal; he, subject to certain vices and frailties of character, could not have helped him more. His breath catches as Myr's fingers continue to go about a task that is equal parts deeply uncomfortable and soothing, and his curled body is tense in the indifferent embrace of the water.

He tries to listen, tries to understand. He knows how his intentions began, motivated out of duty if not outright heroism. He didn't hate Niles then, doesn't even hate him now, and he can tolerate both insult and injury on their own... but the combination frosts him to his core, overwhelming all sense of patience and his charity. At that point, it represents a challenge that his life might or might not rely on, but his pride, and sense of safety, and mastery of himself all do.

It isn't alarming to him that Myr had spoken with Niles; he believes he's already disclosed an honest version of events that admits to decisions a better man would have made differently, and any omitted details were left out because they were irrelevant or out of some obtuse respect for Niles' private trauma, not his to smear around with capricious abandon. If there are inconsistencies in the stories, he is confident that they could be chalked up to differences in emotion and perspective, as opposed to clear glaring factual contradictions. He's rationalized to himself that at worst, his greatest transgression was inaction, and the results would have been the same if he had obeyed his first impulse and simply left Niles to ungratefully fend for himself. That would have been unambiguously callous; more, or less so than remaining and failing to remove a binding spell put in place so that Niles couldn't lash out and injure his rescuer again?

It's all an expanse of grey in his mind. Occasional spots of black and white, flashes of color that don't fit and feel as though they can't be scored fairly. It's overwhelming, and Myr's disapproval, however gently expressed, doesn't make the picture any more cohesive. Though L tries to prevent it from jumping the tracks to certain bleak conclusions, it's difficult not to hear subconscious whispers of what Myr believes, what Niles is correct in, what L deserves.]

I don't want you to stand in his way.

[His voice is leaden, quiet.]

The truth wants to be known. So does justice. If he's not wrong to want restitution, and I was wrong for trying to help him, the only way to establish equilibrium is for it to first come to a head. He'll get satisfaction, or he won't, and Mello will make it his singular goal to destroy him. He'll probably die.

[L says it matter-of-factly, dispassionately.]

Please don't get involved in this. You don't want to be one of Mello's singular goals.

[faithlikeaseed]

[It did not snow in Hasmal and so until Aefenglom, Myr has never in his life experienced a blizzard in the waking world--and now, he'll never see one. He has not seen the sky grow curdled and clotted with black clouds, nor how the first swirling flakes that seem so beautiful in isolation grow thick in flurries that veil the world in white. Navigating without eyes, he will never know what it is to have light enough to see and still be hopelessly lost in terrain turned treacherous, uniform and fatal in the freezing cold.

But, he thinks, he knows something of it now when confronted with those glimpses of L's internal landscape. What does light matter without a way to resolve a direction to walk in; what does knowledge of one's own shortcomings avail without any hope they can be overcome?]

Oh, Maker. [A breath, a sigh of a prayer--oh, Maker, o Creating Glory, Master of the world seen and unseen, grant these your children strength and wisdom to navigate the wasteland the world has made of L's soul. Myr trails his hand up L's back to rest on his Bonded's shoulder and hold tight there.]

Linden, [L, brother of my heart,] you weren't wrong in wanting to help. You weren't wrong in trying, even if he and you both now think it would be better had you walked away. [Where Myr stands on that is...a more complicated thing. Certainly it would have been better if Niles' suffering hadn't been made worse; certainly it would be better if the sword of the chimera's retribution didn't hang over L.

But it would not have been better for L to have turned aside and permitted callousness to rule him once more. Acting on that inclination to save another soul in danger mattered even if it never guaranteed good results.]

And what he wants to do with you is not justice by any stretch of the word; your blood and suffering won't requite what happened and I will not stand aside for him to take them from you. I won't.

[Niles had said he wouldn't kill L.

He'd also left whether L would want to continue living in Myr's hands, and the thought of what horrors could live in that space makes the faun ill to consider them.

Leaving aside entirely the other behemoth in the room that L brings up. Ah, Mello--]

I want you to be whole, intimus. I want you to be the man you aspire to be at your best, the man you were Made to be. If that puts me in Mello's way, [I'll simply need to be up to that challenge,] then so be it.

[His voice grows softer, but no less intense:] There is a way for you to be that man, even if the path's not clear now. Even if it demands everything we have in us. I promised you I'd be at your side on it, for every step of it.

[Even if I'm still learning how best to be there. I'm sorry I didn't already know.]

No threat will turn me from that, so long as you'd have me.

[hearthebell]

[L shoulder is a knot of bone in Myr's warm hand; the longest strands of his tangled hair fall just about to the faun's knuckles, damp but yet unwashed, as his ear is angled toward the ardent, insistent words spilling out of his mouth.

From anyone else, L might dismiss them as nothing but words, but it's clear that every syllable is backed by Myr's honor, and sincere intent, and absolute chivalry. L's sigh is shallow but slow; his heartbeat is a frantic rattle. For all his talk of beasts and prey, he might as well be a hunted rabbit in the bush, because knowing the extent of Myr's brazen honesty does frighten him. It'll discover him someday, see him for what he is, and tear him to pieces.

No... even then, he'd not be able to. It'd fall to me.

Even worse, he believes, sincerely, that L can be "that man," in spite of L feeling that he might as well be just as blind in the blizzard as Myr. It's worse than anything Niles could do to him, really.]

You're risking so much for something so uncertain.

[A noble cause doesn't exactly change the odds by merit of being noble.]

It's far away, isn't it? I can't perceive anything about it, beyond a vague idea. It may not exist at all... but the threats are so real.

[And you stand to lose so much, ache so much, burn so much, just because you aligned with me.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[Myr's own intensity when he's like this is not lost entirely on the faun himself; there is a reason he keeps a portion of his true feelings sleeping well beneath the surface of his being, caged and controlled. It wasn't all his upbringing as a Circle mage but some extension of his empathy, some realization that what blazes in his heart can simply be too much for others to bear.

But when it's important, as it is now...

The edges of their Bond taste of fear, anxiety, and Myr cannot properly place it amongst all the many causes they've got between them. It does, however, make him pause for a breath, make him consider his tactics--and at length, he squeezes L's shoulder again, before lifting his hand to stroke those trailing strands of hair behind L's ear.

There is a note of wry, self-effacing humor in his voice when he speaks again,]

The gambler's taking issue with the stakes I'll accept? [Yet it's not a joke made to defer from the seriousness of L's concerns, from what he suggests by them... though the temptation's there to leave things at that and recoil from the self-examination those concerns demand.

He cannot in fairness ask L to consent to work he will not do himself, though.]

I am. And I risk it gladly-- [He's reminded of his conversation with Sokie, not but days ago; of his own despair and uncertainty at his purpose in a world where he didn't even have the magic that was a faun's due, let alone his full gifts as a mage. Choose both, she'd said, when he expressed his inability to choose between Thedas and Talam, between the duties inherent in the Maker's gift (between finding Vandelin again) and the promises he'd made to both his Bonded.

I don't even know if I'm meant to go home.] --because I choose to. Because I believe I'm meant to be here, with you. I've faith a way exists and we'll find it.

The threats are real. But, [he lapses silent a moment as he considers what he truly fears, from all angles,] I'm less afraid of losing my own life than I am of failing in my purpose.

[hearthebell]

[Sincerity and conviction are both intimidating, in their own right. One who feels truly and purely that something must be done is the most likely to actually accomplish it, which is why L carries healthy wariness when it comes to zealots. Misa was in love with Light, and would do anything for him with no hesitation or caveats. L had determined through a particularly manipulative session with the two of them that her devotion to Light even outweighed her devotion to Kira, and that she considered a world in which the two were the same ideal, and her own comfort, safety, and even her life itself took a backseat to her true, pure priority.

He's felt that way about his work. He knows that some successors have felt that way about him, and one of them is even here in a Bond with him that he covets. In short, it's no coincidence that some people channel this into their faith, because at its core, pure conviction is religion. The workaholic prays and sacrifices for his job, the grieving successor prays and sacrifices for his effigy... the faun, on a mission to salvage someone hollow and ruined, prays and sacrifices for the prospect of making him whole.]

The gambler is taking issue with ire and vengeance that you have no right or reason to claim.

[If your heart was stolen, and offered up as a stake for a bet, is it correct for you to let them rake it in with the chips?

He feels he knows how this will play out. Rook takes Knight; Bishop burns Rook to a cinder. Checkmate.]

A lack of purpose is distressing to you; I know because it's distressing to me, as well.

[I wasn't anyone before I had a purpose.]

Tell me. When purpose is bound up with an individual...

[a person, just now, feels like a stretch]

...how much responsibility does the individual bear in the completion of the purpose? If I fail, it means that I'm failing you.

[faithlikeaseed]

[A breath catches in Myr's throat, as at a rebuke, to hear these words; the table's been handily turned on him, hasn't it?

Therein lay the risk of Bonding someone as sharp--no, sharper--than he was. There's only so far he could press into L's life, only so far he could cajole his Bonded in exercises of self-reflection, before all that fearsome insight was turned back on him. For a moment, Myr's fear echoes L's: He could easily be ripped to pieces by this, every shameful lack in him exposed and demanded an accounting of. Such is his nature that to be torn open that way would obligate him to fix what he'd been shown, to change, to grow beyond his little jealously guarded patch of shade into something better and grander.

Or find his own limits, burn out, and die trying.

But he knew in taking on a Bond that he had consented to change.

He dips his head, chin to chest, and swallows against the fear. If he would ask anyone else to do this...]

Mello's, you mean. You're afraid I'll become a scapegoat for everything that took you from him, the first time.

[A kind of helpless feeling flits through their Bond; he does not yet know what, if anything, can be done for Mello. His basest instinct is to simply shove the younger man out of L's life, but that is brutally unkind even if fear for L makes it feel necessary.]

I don't know what to do about that, intimus. I don't know how to reach him nor how to soothe that fear. But nor can I let him destroy you because he knows no better.

[Another pause follows--and he lifts his head once more with a knight-enchanter's instinct for an opening.

"If I fail..."]

Are you afraid to fail me?

[hearthebell]

[L is not an emotionally demonstrative man, through mannerisms, expression or tone, and Myr's blindness makes it even more difficult to pick up on the shreds and fragments that might sneak their way through. Truly, their Bond is what allows the faun to keep fingers on the pulse of someone who does possess a deep and complex emotional range, in spite of appearances...

...but in comparison, Myr is something of an open book, especially to a detective. L glances up as Myr all but braces against his question, prepares to answer and parry, in spite of the affection the two of them share.]

"Afraid" is not the right word, for Mello, or even Niles.

["Afraid" implies uncertainty. L knows his successor too well to have a shred of doubt, and Niles, while exhausting, is also predictable.]

I think it may be the right word for you. You believe in things I'm not certain of... or things that I can see on the edge of catastrophy or collapse. You believe them like I believe that the Sun will rise tomorrow, and your evidence is faith in the kind of goodness that might be beyond even "good" humans. Not millions of years of a planet continuing to rotate and revolve around a reliable constant, like mine.

[faithlikeaseed]

[That--cuts to Myr's pride.]

You'd give me no chance.

[His voice has gone abruptly level but the emotion across the Bond...is complicated, prickling. Of course his own evaluation of their straits had been bleak--he's weaker still than either Mello or Niles, though committed to making up as much of that as he can--and of course he trusts L's analysis of the situation... Insofar he thought his Bonded had all the pieces of it to hand.

But it hurts, yet, to have his own difficulties pointed out to him. (Echoes of Enchanter Philomela, naming him a liability in combat.) He shifts where he's perched, stretching a leg that's gone numb...and buying himself a little space to think instead of react in the first flush of his wounding. Listen to the rest of what L said, and think about it...

...Because it is actually more familiar territory, and that makes him smile, small and wan.] Dear materialist, d'you mean to say you can't trust the footing where I'm leading--or that you think I'm off on the wrong track?

[He suspects and wishes for the former, but the latter's nothing new and has no power to wound him.] Have your folk really been around all those millions of years to number the sunrises?

[Rhetorical and leading. The next question isn't:] Where's the soap gone?

[hearthebell]

[L blinks at the shift in Myr's tone, as well as the uneasy pall it casts over their Bond. Both of them do have their pride, after all, and its wounding extends to other parts of their reactions and their general mood. It's comprised of what they've built and accomplished and bled for, and to threaten that pillar is so much worse than any personal attacks that could volley their way.]

On the contrary, I'd give you as many as I possibly could.

[Because he trusts Myr... but that number is uncertain. To give a chance, one must be alive, or at least otherwise able, and so much can happen as a result of Niles' sheer determination catching up once more to one already self-destructive, living to tempt near-misses and risky headrushes.]

There is faith absolute, and then what I would like to name for our purposes "informed faith." You can deduce with fair certainty that the world did not begin with your birth, that your parents and theirs were born as you were even though you didn't witness it. Likewise... knowing the age of humanity, their ancestors, the planet, the galaxy... we can, with informed faith, deduce that the Sun rose then, and will tomorrow, and our senses will tell us that it has.

[Myr might not be able to see it, but the faun can feel the warmth on his upturned face, feel the leaves beneath his palm that rely on the light to produce chlorophyl, and smell the dew at dawn and notice its absence as the journey toward the zenith continues.]

I understand informed faith. Any established pattern inspires it, and very logically so, but... when a pattern is random, or suggests that failure is more likely as a trend... I would call faith in those cases absolute.

[And so very, very illogical.]

In short... my meaning was that yes, I am afraid to fail you.

[He switches hands, even though it's a strange cross-wise reach to hand the now slightly-mushy soap he's been holding too tightly to Myr. He doesn't want to risk the dingy, bloodied bandage brushing his Bonded and raising inconvenient questions, distressing reactions and a call to improvement that is too draining and demanding just now.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[Ah. Even a Bond, it seems, can't entirely prevent errors of interpretation. Myr ducks his head--relieved, a little chagrined--to hear L's clarification.]

I mistook you, then; forgive me.

[The odds ranged against them have not changed, but there is something to be said for the assurance they are on the same side. It clears the gloom of self-recrimination from Myr's side of the Bond, like a cloud fleeing before the sun; terrible habit, that, but one he can function around.

Goals and hopes aligning, of course, does not mean their beliefs must; and Myr listens with patient sympathy to L's unpacking his two sorts of faith. He's silent even after his Bonded's made an end of speaking, rolling the ball of soap between his palms as he turns thoughts over in his mind.]

Deducing back beyond living memory relies on the patterns we see here and now being fixed, [he begins slowly, after a due space of thought. Such is his trust in and comfort with L that he is willing to think other than quickly, not seizing on the first answer and extemporizing when needs must. This should be correct all the way through.

He can do no less than that to honor his friend entrusting a fear to him.] And so far as that concerns the sun and the constant stars, we're not apt to err. They, after all, haven't any choice but to do as the Maker Made them; some catastrophe might tear them from their place, but they can't of themselves choose to leave it.

Mortals, on the other hand-- [Now that he's built up a sufficient lather he reaches out, feeling for L's hair. Washing it's a chance to see what he can do for the edges of that hangover--and an opportunity to touch. For a moment he'll rest his hands oh, so lightly on L's head, black strands tangled through his fingers. ] --tell me if you'd rather I not do this, will you? --Mortals, for all we're prone to becoming fixed in our own arcs, always have the freedom to alter them. And we're far easier to persuade or coerce than sunrise; neither Niles nor Mello seems much preoccupied with the idea they might not be able to bend us to their wills.

Better, though, [more just, more moral, more loving,] to make space wherein choice and change become possible. To tell someone he isn't bound to the pattern life has pressed into him--and show him the way beyond it. It's hardly faith absolute to have that hope of everyone; we're all capable of it. Though, [and here his voice turns wry,] many people take a lot of convincing.

[A fond skitch of fingers against L's scalp punctuates the comment.] And many others need a change in circumstances [Mello,] that's harder to provide.

[More softly, then,] Those who'd hurt or kill you outright can be fought. I know how to win those battles. [Even if right now he lacks the means to do so.]

How might I help you choose something other than oblivion?

[There undoubtedly many other elements to that fear of failing that they will get to in due time--

But this is top of mind.]

[hearthebell]

[Though the situation is fraught and complicated in many regards, L speaks the most clearly with his actions. He wouldn't be here like this, permitting this state of prone emotional vulnerability, if he did not believe that they were on the same side. Even when unintended consequences have resulted in tremendous harm, L has never failed to believe as much, and therefore, there is nothing to forgive on Myr's part.

As Myr speaks and L listens, his shaggy hair is a tangled, neglected mess in the faun's fingers. Even when gently handled, little snags and tugs are inevitable, and he weathers them with as much grace as his situation can allow, but only gives a slight nod of consent for Myr to proceed with what simply will not get done, otherwise.

He wants to defend Mello to his other Bonded, insist that it's not like that and that Mello isn't trying to bend anyone's will... but he can't make himself believe it with any amount of mental gymnastics. If he can't convince himself, he won't be able to convince one who, while hopeful, also has a sharply canny and insightful streak. So he lets it rest, for now, perhaps to be revisited, but wouldn't it be a relief, in a way, if they never had to?]

When oblivion is what we come from, and where we're going and spend so much of our time, it makes sense to think of it as the only choice.

[Because, for all the power L has wielded in his life, the mental wattage at his command as well as the sheer number of real-world game pieces on a board he controlled, he's made shockingly few choices on a personal level. His gifts were great enough that to keep them to himself would only be selfish, and when one has no country, parents, home or name, it's easy for "personal matters" to be an insignificant, navel-gazing waste of time that people of less importance concern themselves with. Not only is it an immensely inhuman perspective, but it is largely at the heart of L's conflict with Mello, who wants all of the human connection without any of the frailty or uncertainty or inconvenience.]

The notion of other choices is, in fact, an auspicious start, but... as far as helping goes, you know that you do a lot of that already, don't you?

[And you probably feel, every day, that it's not enough.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[Rough though a faun's hands may be, they're not so ill-suited to tasks as delicate as transplanting seedlings or working the knots out of a matted coat. With as far as L's let himself go, pain from tugged hair might be inevitable, but Myr will do everything he can to reduce it.

Truthfully, he reflects, it might be easier and faster to simply take shears to some of it. But not only is that not a job for a blind man...it also would give him little chance to make something comforting and sensuous out of the everyday task of washing hair. He seeks out tender spots on L's head and neck with the same solicitousness he'd shown his Bonded's aching back, and takes that as worthy pretense for thought on what L's said--

"...it makes sense to think of it as the only choice."

It hurts Myr's heart to hear, though he knows even without a depth of detail on L's life where such a sentiment might come from.]

Still and all, [he murmurs,] even if we accept the frame there's nothing for us before or after this life, that's no reason to shorten the journey without due cause. If all that remains of us once we're gone is the memories of others, I'd think to spend as much of it as I can making worthy ones with them.

[They may never agree on the metaphysical frame of the world--and truthfully, Myr himself is unsure what might become of him on death, so far from the Maker's purview--but as the faun sees it, the recipe for a good, a worthwhile life might still be translated from one to another.

He dips a hand in the bathwater, cupping a palmful to sluice through L's hair where it's not quite wet enough to lather properly. And laughs, softly and a little chagrined, at the affirmation.]

With my head if not my heart, intimus. [It is impossible to see someone who has been deprived so thoroughly and not want to give him more than is reasonable, more than I even have.] But let's speak of choices, and not making the right ones,

[because it is in his nature to efface himself when faced with greater need,]

what d'you think it would mean to fail me? Barring death, which--you should know--I don't count. [If L died by his own hand or negligence, or from something it was (reasonably or not) in Myr's power to prevent, he very much would judge himself for it.]

[hearthebell]

[L is no stranger to pain, whether it leads somewhere gentle of even harsher. Most of it has been consequences long in the making; a back bent by cramped quarters and poor posture, malnutrition and restlessness grinding him in a vicious and wasting cycle, the now-familiar bite of a blade every time L taps into his own blood to give his magic an extra kick that he feels limited without.

Niles still has my blade; need to follow up on that.

He shudders; though the kneading contact targets aches and tight, sore places, Myr's hands are skilled at melting and smoothing it out, encouraging blood to circulate below his touch for the first time in likely a long while.]

Where I'm from, my journey was a short one. And hardly anyone knows I'm dead, much less remembers me.

[He was easy for others to impersonate for a reason. He probably survived as long as he did because he didn't reveal his name or his face, but it made sliding in to claim those unknown things so much more accessible for those with unscrupulous motives.

He was, outside of his work, effectively no one, but that isn't the case, here. It spreads an ache through his chest deeper than anything Myr kneads and coaxes with his fingertips.]

You're asking me to put something very complicated into words.

[Which is reasonable; it's what L does, very often, very effectively. The subject matter is just where he falls short in this case.]

I suppose you live your life by a moral standard that I have no problem identifying from a distance. I've always known a just man by sight, just as I've always known an unjust man... likewise, I could break them down into raw components. But some process in the middle is a blind spot for me. I know that in the end, the just man loses so much as a result of being just, outside of perhaps some potential eternal reward; it makes no sense from a survival standpoint, and only really allows a martyr ideological immortality. An unjust man might get ahead at the expense of others, hurting them directly or indirectly to attain his ends, and if there's no eternal reward... he reaps the only rewards, at the expense of the just and the innocent. He might get caught and punished... but many don't, and live undisturbed and remorseless.

When justice is reframed as mere fairness, it ceases to be quite so unwieldy, but it also loses the nuance required to measure things like freedom, life, and death. I've always framed what is "just" as what is "fair"; it's my north star when I'm in doubt, and I often am. But while functional, that's a childish shortcut, and you expect more from me.

[For some strange, misguided reason.]

I'm not a stranger to high expectations, but I've only recently become acquainted with falling short of them, or... learning that they are in fact not high expectations. It shouldn't be difficult to live a just life and see what's right instead of what's fair, but...

[His handler knew this. It's largely why L was cut off from other humans; he was shielded, and so were they. The kind of tenderness Myr is treating him with is largely undeserved; L hasn't even re-optimized his shrine's illusion, yet.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[Myr had known L was dead in his world--or guessed as much--but hearing it stated plain and dispassionate yet puts a frisson of irrational grief through him. He bites his lower lip, against that and against the unspeakable thought--

Few knew, but one of them still burns for you.

They both know it and it would be cruelty on top of the rest of the day's cruelties, necessary and not, to voice it. It was perverse, a horrid inversion of Myr's stated ideal, to be placed in the heavens and worshipped as the unwavering center of a madman's pantheon. He will not dwell on it, letting the physical action of caring for his Bonded drive it from his mind; letting his fierce focus adhere entirely to what L's saying.

Not that it hurts any less to contemplate--rather, more, as it reifies Myr's suppositions and intuitions on his Bonded. Rich--still in many ways a child himself--had not understood why a man grown would engage him with a teenager's tenacious pettiness. Myr had at first thought it an odd but effective strategy, but the truth of the matter--one of the truths--was far more painful; just as L had not grown entirely into his gawkish bones, the rest of him hadn't finished growing either, trapped and stunted.

(Deliberately stunted? Maker forfend against the mirrors ever bringing the man who'd found a use for L to Aefenglom. Yet that chimes off something from Myr's past, a recognizance he'd made within a month of their meeting...)]

We say it shouldn't be hard--but the consistent failure of men to live just lives even when they intend to puts the lie to that. It's a struggle for all of us, intimus, and too many are willing to give up the fight. Even when they've got what you haven't--I've suspected [gently, sadly now,] you're at some of the disadvantage the Tranquil are, in relating to others.

--You can rinse this now, [he adds, tousling L's soapy hair; having him do it would be a recipe for suds in L's eyes.

The mention of the Tranquil will of course want for an explanation, but Myr will leave that a moment, until he's put to direct question. He's more yet to say on the topic of expectations.]

That said, I don't believe it beyond your ability to achieve--at your own pace. There isn't some timeline on this and I'd not ask anything of you I'm unwilling to help you with--as I said when we Bonded.

[They walk this path together--though Myr is, as ever, leaving an expectation of himself that he's brought to the table unspoken: That he shoulder L's fate as his own, too, if it came to it.

It wouldn't be right to ask so much otherwise.]

[hearthebell]

[L nods, finding a compromise between an arch and a slouch to dip his head back. He agitates his dark hair gingerly so that the warm bathwater can effectively relieve him of the soap and grease alike; care is needed because he still would prefer not to get his bandaged wrist wet, if possible.

It's a few centered moments to think about what Myr's said, and the implications beyond L's proper context. He knows the meaning of the word "tranquil," of course, a serene sort of peace associated often with meditation or a state of grace. But no... that's not what Myr means, is it? He was using it as a noun, not a verb, and there's some significance attached to it. Maybe even personal significance.

Over the Bond, Myr can likely sense his conflict and restlessness. Because L's successes in his world, even this one as a talented magic-user, imply that he very much has advantages. The kinds that others, like Mello, covet, but... those gleaming boons have been taxed at the expense of something else. Watari always knew, and framed it as a deficiency in others to protect his charge's ego and productivity, but even as a child, L hadn't been an idiot. He could read between the lines of every argument, impasse, and dismissal. He couldn't help but turn the self-critical knife back on himself and his perceived imperfections and shortcomings when things went wrong, because he had control over so many things that it could really be nothing but his own failure, in the end. And an insurmountable one, at that; disappointingly, not intriguing or mysterious, but as clear and plain as someone pushing themselves to their limits in a footrace and still coming in last.

He pulls and props himself up in the tub, smoothing his wet, clean hair away from a somber face.]

"Tranquil?" I don't...

[You think there's something wrong with me. But if there is, it's only deceptive to try to conceal it, especially since so many, less perceptive and intelligent than Myr, have figured it out. ]

My handler would say that we all had gifts... and that's what we should focus on in our lives. That it was rather a waste of energy and resources to worry about what we couldn't change, or could never excel at.

[Only the mundane concern themselves with mastering the mundane.]

He said that I'd only ever face rejection from humans... and that I could live a good life, considering, if I focused on my work alone and let him take care of everything else.

[faithlikeaseed]

[Trained as he is in assessing how others move in combat, Myr--or some subconscious part of him--has taken note of something a little odd in how L's conducting himself, a strangeness beyond his Bonded's typical. But it goes unremarked for now, subsumed beneath his other concerns--

(Empathetic, listening heart he is, Myr does not realize how his hands avoid L's arms and the evidence of blood magic, not through the faun's volition but his Witch's.)

--much as L's physical hurts distress Myr, they are ultimately symptoms of the widespread damage to the detective's very soul. The unwinding threads of that story--and, oh, the feelings and thoughts that come with them--capture his attention wholly. He sets the diminished ball of soap down, dipping his hands to rinse them of suds in a motion purely automatic.

This is familiar. So much of it is familiar, at a slant; and just enough of it is strange that it comes at Myr with an edge sharp enough to scythe through the thick mat of justification he'd woven around the necessity of his own imprisoned childhood. Not deliberately crippled, no, but stunted all the same because the place the world ordained for them was small and safe and hedged about by fear.

It's the Void's own realization to hit him out of ambush when he's already open and vulnerable. Vandelin would crow at the concession, then turn immediately conciliatory when Myr hunched like he does now--like he's been punched in the gut.

This isn't about you, Myrobalan. It's not about the Circles. Suck up and keep moving.]

That presumed, [staggering's movement, right? Saying these words with a voice made hollow as his insides is better than shocky silence,] he'd always be there. That your Circle would last and you'd remain safely inside it--

[But they don't, do they? Witness the both of them out here on their own, the one more adapted and adaptable than the other but still tripping over all he'd never been given the chance to learn.

Myr takes a breath, and another.] --but they don't. Nothing like that can remain forever, not in justice.

You are gifted beyond reason, intimus. But how much better it would be if they hadn't set your, [our,] gifts at odds with the world. With kindness, with patience--you, [we,] can live alongside humans as well as anyone.

[After a slow breath out--deliberate, prolonged, so it's not a mawkish self-indulging sob over his own clutching grief,] The Tranquil are what comes of man's fear of magic, and mages' fear of demons.

[Ask him. He'll speak of them, but it's not to be done as an interjection. The subject's too heavy for that.]

[hearthebell]

[Myr may not notice; L definitely does, every time the blind faun's fingers manage to miss those clusters of cuts in various stages of healing. This many times can't be a coincidence; either he knows, and is trying to spare L the vulnerability and the questions, or something is leaking through their Bond to compel it. Either way, he's grateful, when so many other things are difficult just now.

A change has come over Myr, clear and concerning. It's deeper than sympathy or even empathy, at least... L is sure he knows how both of those things feel, coming from his Bonded, and this is new. It's dawning on him before it's swiftly confirmed by Myr's sudden shift in posture, one that has L grasping the side of the tub, pulling himself upright before he's quite ready for the head rush. He watches, warily, even after Myr seems to recover and keep speaking, though some unseen wound conspicuously remains in his face's shadows, the tenseness and emotion in his voice.]

No... they don't last. Mello is living proof of that, and the others who were like him.

[Ironically, the old man who had taken him under his wing had died the same day L himself had. In a way, he always was there for him, up until forty seconds before L's own death.

He keeps observing Myr, convinced that there's something deeper here than merely feeling grief on L's behalf. He's heard some already about Myr's world and circumstances, and an increasingly clearer picture is forming; should he regret being a catalyst for it, or embrace it as a way to share the burden of being so hopelessly unfixable? A segue presents itself, and though L doesn't think he'll like to hear the more detailed answer, it's something he already guesses at. It makes it no easier to entertain, because the implications are bleak and isolating, even with the gentle kindness so willingly and generously at hand.]

And what are the Tranquil, Myr...?

[Something you think of as broken, incomplete, and horrifying? Yes... that much is obvious.]