the marquis de Carabas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mattersverymuch) wrote2013-10-11 11:25 pm
mattersverymuch) wrote2013-10-11 11:25 pm
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.
[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.
[Private] watch me change my mind
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.
[Private]
[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.
[Private]
But it doesn't matter. You'll never feel safe again. Not even when the threat is removed.
Safety is an illusion.
[Private]
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?
[Private]
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I doubt it would work for you. You're not that sort of person.
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[He's genuinely curious.]
[Private]
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.
[Private]
[He pauses to inspect his cuffs.]
You haven't decided how to shore yours up, then.
[Private]
No.
[Private]
[He hesitates again. Then, reluctantly:]
There are . . . other viable ways. Other ways of being strong in the face of evil.
[Private]
What other viable ways?
[Private]
Making goals can be helpful.
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There was a young woman who was the sole survivor of her family's massacre. She made goals. She carried them out. Although they could have - did cost her. Empathy carried her. There are ways.
[He just doesn't understand them.]
[Private]
I want to..take everything that's hurting me and roll it up into a ball and hold it while I sit away from the world where no one can do what they did ever again.
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Alpha doesn't need me doing that.
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Please can we drop the subject.
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