mattersverymuch | 14 ɂ private messages

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14 ɂ private messages

[There is an alcove of his room - his room, so to speak, because there are those who wouldn't agree that it's a room by any means - a corner, a hole in the ancient walls, where he has plans laid out. For minutes at a time, at least. He pores over them twenty-one times until they are memorized beyond memorization, until he could spit them at any monster who chose to cross his path, and then he lights a match and sends the papers crumbling to ash.]

[By the second day he has discarded one hundred plans and retained two, though elements of the first one hundred remain lodged in the back of his mind. He will never be rid of them.]

[He finds himself strangely driven. He remembers his preternaturally strong grip around Lamia's throat, the satisfaction he derived from her pain, because - despite everything - Richard Mayhew was useful in one specific sense: he was valuable to Door.]

[Revenge is not the word. It's not the word at all.]

[He doesn't go to Ned. He isn't good at comforting; he finds it distasteful and juvenile. Ned can pull himself together. He's strong enough.]

[But that isn't right and de Carabas knows it. Ned is strong in a very specific way, a way that the marquis will never know from the inside out. But he wasn't built to survive torture.]

[The marquis could tell him how it feels to have your palms nailed to a board, to be tortured over a period of hours to days until time runs slow-to-fast and nothing makes linear sense anymore, to be brave even though you aren't brave at all, to spit blood in the face of monsters. He could say that he understands.]

[He doesn't. And, until three days later, he doesn't say anything at all.]

private/voice } ned

There is a tradition in my home called the Floating Market.

[This isn't a hesitation; it's a deliberate pause. He's telling a story. No: relating a wonder.]

In my home, things are . . . chaotic. Dangerous. Unpredictable. But there are rules at the Market. No one can hurt anyone else under Market truce.

It's rarely in any one place twice, though we take minor delight in trespassing the places that the ordinary Londoner will walk during the day.

At the Market, we sell - everything. [We though it's not really we in that sense - he's not a tradesman or a merchant, such that they are in London Below - but it's the we of his home, and it's close enough.] Bottled dreams. Carrier pigeons. Time in lockets and locks of hair. Texts that were lost in the fires of Alexandria. Sandwiches and diamonds might go for the same price. Refuse and priceless things jostle side by side.

It's close-packed and swarming with pickpockets, and everyone walks around in the knowledge that they are, for the moment, safe to purchase whatever's sold. Which is everything that could ever be.

[He sighs and then - for once - hesitates, at a loss for words. But he leaves the feed open, just in case.]

private/voice } snow white

Come to my cabin. I have a proposition.

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[Snow doesn't bother with responding to his message. It'd just be a waste of time and result in him likely questioning her as to why she was taking the time to respond instead of walking to his cabin. It's not a marquis snaps, Snow jumps situation. It's a making-the-situation-as-easy-possible-with-the-least-amount-of-complaints situation.]

[She knocks on his cabin door.]

[He lets her in without a word. Shockingly, there is a reason he's asked her to come here, rather than tracking her down wherever she is at the moment. This is his home. He must maintain a certain standard of behavior outside.]

[In here, his fists can clench, ever so slightly.]

I want my power back. Or some approximation of it.

[She tries not to be nosy. He's always nosy when it comes to other spaces that do not belong to him, but that does not mean she needs to behave the same way. She glances around and accepts it as part of his home and that's that. The sewer bit doesn't even bother her a little.]

What for?

[He grits his teeth, but doesn't part his lips. What for, she asks.]

For everything.

I will need more than that, de Carabas.

For some approximation of completeness, my lady, surely you can imagine --

[But maybe she can't. And why is he demanding empathy from her? He doesn't want it.]

[He narrows his eyes.]

Your home. Do you feel connected to it? Do you feel as though a limb has been removed, being away from it?

[Snow tilts her head a little as his slight hesitation. She says nothing though. De Carabas is a man who must do, not be told. Telling would only cause him to draw back.]

At times. It is the only home I have ever known.

Do you feel as though your heart and your gut and mind are in tune with it, when you are there? That your blood beats in time to its movements?

That is the nature of my home. And magic is part of it - a part that can't be removed. I have been here for nearly a year, lady, here against my will with people who would choose to make me something I'm not. If I'm to be here, I could at least be whole.

I understand those feelings well, de Carabas, but you have not yet given me a sound enough reason to entrust you with any of your powers.

[The Piemaker, ever since being set free, has been sitting in a chair next to a recovering Alpha. He's bent over with his hands folded over his knees, staring straight at the ground and not speaking much to anyone. There's nothing he wants to talk about, no topic of conversation that can slice through the fog of anger and terror surrounding his mind.

He turns his communicator over in his hands, looking over the marquis' message and debating whether he even wants to answer.

Finally, he shuts his comm off and pockets it, going back to staring down at his hands.

No: not quite ready yet]

[It's a day later. Alpha is recovering, but slowly.

Waking up in his chair, the Piemaker shifts his shoulder uncomfortably, and runs through the messages he's been ignoring.

Finally, he writes back]

It's only safe until someone comes and makes it unsafe.

[The marquis isn't bothered by the lack of response. Well - mildly bothered. Or maybe bothered isn't the word at all. His resolve is minutely strengthened, and he goes back to work.]

[When he receives a message back, he responds immediately, still voice, still sedate and calm, though there's the hint of a smile about his words now.]

Yes. Well.

My home is a place of anarchy, as I've mentioned. No rules but the one, alliances but no rules. No police force. But when the rule is broken, the city falls as one organism onto the person or thing that's broken truce, that's made things unsafe, and -

[He wants to say crushes it.]

Removes the threat.

[He glances once to the sleeping Alpha on the bed, Digby flopped over his legs. Turning back, he writes out his reply]

But it doesn't matter. You'll never feel safe again. Not even when the threat is removed.

Safety is an illusion.

[Ned should not have had to discover this, he thinks. Ned should not have had to know. Ever. His voice remains calm.]

Safety is armor. It needs to be reconstructed occasionally, or repaired.

There are chinks, sometimes, where violence crawls in.

Why do you think I shore mine up constantly?

How do you shore yours up?

By cutting everyone out.

I doubt it would work for you. You're not that sort of person.

I used to be that sort of person. There was a certain benefit to being that sort of person.

Was it worth it for you? Or is this better?

[He's genuinely curious.]

...I don't know.

A lot of good and a lot of bad things have happened since I stopped being that person. I don't know if there's an etherial ledger out there somewhere tallying it all up.

There isn't. God doesn't care. Only people care, and not all of them at that.

[He pauses to inspect his cuffs.]

You haven't decided how to shore yours up, then.

When I was little, I used to go to the school chapel and sit in a pew and pray and pray for God to bring my father back and to take away my magic. He never answered.

No.

Your father sounds despicable. [In the same tone as one might say "It seems to be raining."] Anyway - worlds are different, yes. But the God I'm familiar with appears to have no control over his children, much less his world.

[He hesitates again. Then, reluctantly:]

There are . . . other viable ways. Other ways of being strong in the face of evil.

He was a jackass. And I'm not religious anymore.

What other viable ways?

I'm not sure I'm the best person to explain empathy as a strength.

Making goals can be helpful.

I thought you would have detested empathy as a weakness.

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