[This is the splinter point of reality: the test. Where if the marquis will not make it, he'll spin on the axis of this conversation and slip and shatter on the floor. He will be a thousand shards but no one true whole. Or he might take the truth and run, sharp-eyed and dark-hearted, into the night.]
[Everything turns on this moment. Redemption, the decisions he is to make after he is redeemed - the series of decisions starting from this moment and stretching on into eternity, or as close to it as doesn't matter. He will live a thousand years, and he will be as many as ten men in that time, but he will never be complete if he doesn't walk away from this moment with completion.]
[Because Dean is his friend. His first and his truest, for seeing to the flinty heart of him, for being so inexplicably loyal, for being, in his way, a bastard. For saying this thing at this time in this way, well aware of the brittleness of sudden indecision and out-of-place insecurities in a man like the marquis de Carabas. For standing just to one side, enough to boost him surreptitiously when it's required, but never ask for.]
[Something in the marquis's eyes shifts, stutters, not the deliberate flicker of movement that so many take for insanity, but an instinctive looking away. For protection. And that's what it's been about all this time, underneath the scars of years.]
[A tense pause; an exhale. He feels safe. It won't last, but for the moment, he is truly immortal.]
[He meets Dean's eyes and nods.]
What is it they say - that it takes one to know one?
[ Spam ]
[Everything turns on this moment. Redemption, the decisions he is to make after he is redeemed - the series of decisions starting from this moment and stretching on into eternity, or as close to it as doesn't matter. He will live a thousand years, and he will be as many as ten men in that time, but he will never be complete if he doesn't walk away from this moment with completion.]
[Because Dean is his friend. His first and his truest, for seeing to the flinty heart of him, for being so inexplicably loyal, for being, in his way, a bastard. For saying this thing at this time in this way, well aware of the brittleness of sudden indecision and out-of-place insecurities in a man like the marquis de Carabas. For standing just to one side, enough to boost him surreptitiously when it's required, but never ask for.]
[Something in the marquis's eyes shifts, stutters, not the deliberate flicker of movement that so many take for insanity, but an instinctive looking away. For protection. And that's what it's been about all this time, underneath the scars of years.]
[A tense pause; an exhale. He feels safe. It won't last, but for the moment, he is truly immortal.]
[He meets Dean's eyes and nods.]
What is it they say - that it takes one to know one?