the marquis de Carabas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mattersverymuch) wrote2014-01-27 07:20 pm
mattersverymuch) wrote2014-01-27 07:20 pm
19 ɂ spam & text; fin.
spam } snow
[He doesn't know how he knows. He just does. Every atom in him turns like a key in a lock, with a very nearly audible click.]
[All that's left to do is wait. Which he does on the deck, looking out at the stars with a curious and abnormal stillness.]
private } ned
I want pie.
[Firm and straightforward, for once.]
private } door
[He heard it once, from mysterious sources. His voice is rich, thick, syrupy as he repeats it. The sound of satisfaction.]
I turn my head and you may go where you want. I turn it again, you will stay 'til you rot. I have no face, but I live or die by my crooked teeth.
What am I?
spam } dean
[It's easy enough to let himself into Dean's room after all this time. He knows how and, moreover, is allowed; is encouraged, in a silent way. Because Dean is his friend.]
[Out of respect, he doesn't sit on the bed, but leans against the dresser and thumbs through one of the more arcane books on the shelf, for something to do until his friend - his friend - comes back.]
[Attachment was unforeseen, and distresses him.]
text } public
[The marquis de Carabas is not in the habit of goodbyes; certainly not to a population that he is not, as a whole, fond of. This is what he gives instead, as a gift, or something.]
There are a hundred thousand ways to die, a hundred thousand traditions of death, a hundred thousand death gods. The people who know all of them are probably dead. [Which is fitting enough.] But death isn't exactly real.
An image can die. A person can die. But they don't have to.
There was a monstrous giant named Goëmagot, set by fate or one or the other's stupidity against Corineus in what is now Cornwall. He slaughtered a number of men who are forgotten by history and then was captured, by some miracle, by Corineus, who wanted to wrestle him, to best him. Goëmagot broke three of Corineus's ribs; then Corineus threw him into the sea, and Goëmagot died. That place is called Lam Goëgamot - Goëgamot's Leap - probably to rub it in.
So the giant was dead. But remembered alongside Corineus, which was probably not the man's intention. Corineus is, in fact, inextricably tied with the story of the monster now. And somewhere under the ground two very tall men walk hand in hand, and we call them Gog and Magog, because that's what they're called. That's what they've always been called.
That's what death is.
[And that's all.]
[There may be a point, but there is no moral.]
[He doesn't know how he knows. He just does. Every atom in him turns like a key in a lock, with a very nearly audible click.]
[All that's left to do is wait. Which he does on the deck, looking out at the stars with a curious and abnormal stillness.]
private } ned
I want pie.
[Firm and straightforward, for once.]
private } door
[He heard it once, from mysterious sources. His voice is rich, thick, syrupy as he repeats it. The sound of satisfaction.]
I turn my head and you may go where you want. I turn it again, you will stay 'til you rot. I have no face, but I live or die by my crooked teeth.
What am I?
spam } dean
[It's easy enough to let himself into Dean's room after all this time. He knows how and, moreover, is allowed; is encouraged, in a silent way. Because Dean is his friend.]
[Out of respect, he doesn't sit on the bed, but leans against the dresser and thumbs through one of the more arcane books on the shelf, for something to do until his friend - his friend - comes back.]
[Attachment was unforeseen, and distresses him.]
text } public
[The marquis de Carabas is not in the habit of goodbyes; certainly not to a population that he is not, as a whole, fond of. This is what he gives instead, as a gift, or something.]
There are a hundred thousand ways to die, a hundred thousand traditions of death, a hundred thousand death gods. The people who know all of them are probably dead. [Which is fitting enough.] But death isn't exactly real.
An image can die. A person can die. But they don't have to.
There was a monstrous giant named Goëmagot, set by fate or one or the other's stupidity against Corineus in what is now Cornwall. He slaughtered a number of men who are forgotten by history and then was captured, by some miracle, by Corineus, who wanted to wrestle him, to best him. Goëmagot broke three of Corineus's ribs; then Corineus threw him into the sea, and Goëmagot died. That place is called Lam Goëgamot - Goëgamot's Leap - probably to rub it in.
So the giant was dead. But remembered alongside Corineus, which was probably not the man's intention. Corineus is, in fact, inextricably tied with the story of the monster now. And somewhere under the ground two very tall men walk hand in hand, and we call them Gog and Magog, because that's what they're called. That's what they've always been called.
That's what death is.
[And that's all.]
[There may be a point, but there is no moral.]
[ Spam ]
[He could tell the truth. Easily, actually; it no longer rankles him to be honest when there's nothing to gain, although he always considers gain even now. He could definitely tell the truth. He could say he's graduated, like he will say to Ned, and weather the storm.]
[Or he could lie. Could come up with some quip and spend the moments that he last sees Dean here grinning, thrilled with his own cunning. Could slip away at the last moment, unbeknownst to anyone. No way to know for sure until Snow makes the announcement that the marquis is sure to come.]
[Dean's smile slips. The marquis finds himself unwilling to lie in this moment, or to tell the truth.]
[He is calm, unsmiling; he stares at Dean, and puts the book back on the shelf.]
[Not a word.]
[ Spam ]
Dean hadn't, then, looking too pointedly, too deliberately, too desperately in the completely opposite direction until he'd honestly fooled himself. This time he does know inherently - and he chooses, again, to look away from it even when the Marquis does not respond, his dark hazelgreen eyes meeting the cat-black of his friend's squarely. Dean closes the door definitively behind him, strides forward to his writing desk to find the file he'd come here to get.
His voice is cheerful, bright. Fondly exasperated, pitch perfect in every way but for how it only goes surface deep. If the Marquis is unwilling to lie, Dean will pick up the slack for just a few moments more.]
Fine, take it. I probably owe enough in library fees to fund a third world country anyway. Good thing we're already in prison, huh?
[ Spam ]
[And yet the marquis cannot manage to be angry with him. Not even annoyed. There is a certain hollow feeling that gives him an unexpected lightness - sorrow, he will discover later, when he comes solidly, heavily back to earth - but no frustration.]
[This has already happened. Only a matter now of admitting it's happened.]
[His mouth tugs up at the corners in a smile. Fond. Unexpected. Unplanned. Unpredatory.]
Idiot.
[ Spam ]
His mind gets there before his body does, before his ruse runs out, barreling onward without brakes. He shuffles through the papers on his desk without any memory or attention for what he actually came here for, what he's looking for. Too distracted, even, to just pick one up and fake yet another thing. This goes on for several long moments, Dean's back to the Marquis, his eyes unfocused because too much is happening inside his own head and he can't process any of it. He couldn't even say, really, what it is he's reacting to. He doesn't know on the level that has language.
Not until he hears that smile. Then it clicks. His voice is still cheerful, but his throat is dry, and he does not look up.]
You're going home, aren't you? [His aimless hand turns over the same folder for the third time, and reaches forward for a loose piece of paper with several numbers and no real information on it.]
[ Spam ]
[Home to the narrow wrecked streets and not-streets of London Below, to intrigue and backstabbing and danger of the magical and wholly human variety, home to people who want him dead and people who want to torture old truths out of him. Home to mist and fog and smog and damage. Home to a wrecked place.]
[Home away from the Barge, with all its childish traumas that have nevertheless not molded but tweaked him, made him what he was before but with an extra little something. Or, perhaps, brought out a certain hue in him, like wearing a particular item of clothing to make one's eyes seem brighter. He doesn't feel different, necessarily, but he does, entirely.]
[Home, away from Dean Winchester and all of his ridiculous foibles and attempts (successes) at friendship.]
[Home, away.]
[The marquis de Carabas is not sorry. But he is, at the same time, very, very sorry.]
[It aches.]
[ Spam ]
It's a good thing. It's a good thing. He makes his mouth smile but he can't feel his face, and glances up. It's a good thing.]
That's awesome. You can... [But words fail him. He looks at the Marquis, at his reluctant, hardwon, dear friend, standing for the last time in his room, safeguarding and coveting his belongings for the last time, looking at him with something Dean can't even put a name to in the smooth planes and clever lines of his face, and the act - the lie - drops into a vice around his chest. The smile fades. The line of his shoulders drags down.
Caught between his palm and the desktop, forgotten, is the necklace he was attempting to fix. He swallows, eyes dropping, and tries to think of something, anything to say.
There's nothing. It's a good thing, it was inevitable, Dean had faith in him from the moment he looked up from this very couch through the unimaginable pain of a death toll he was trying desperately to hide and saw something in de Carabas he recognized, and he knew that he would go home when all was said and done. It hurts, though. It hurts so much.
He straightens, hands empty, and walks back out the door.]
[ Spam ]
[His eyes are still. He watches Dean go without interruption, because that is, if not the right thing to do, the thing that he feels must be done in this moment.]
[His understanding of his own emotions are, in general and in this moment, basic. He is sad. He is frustrated. He is tired. He is homesick. But he is also rested and well-fed, and he has a plan. For once he gets home, at least, he has a plan.]
[He can . . .]
[For now, he can - what?]
[Awesome is not the word. No one here is awed. He knew, Dean knew, Ned knew that this would happen, although admittedly he knew later than they did. The word is struck. They are struck, still, dumb.]
[He stands for some period of time, leaning his head against the bookshelf. When he begins to move again, it's slowly, glacially - as he is wont - until the momentum he's built up is unstoppable.]
[It all starts in the eyes, which latch on to the necklace. The amulet. He doesn't know everything about it, but he knows enough.]
[When Dean returns, the cord will be knotted securely, the amulet itself unmoved from the place on the grain it rested originally. Impossible to say one way or another whether it was tied by hand or by magic, or if it was tied from the start and its dissolution was illusory.]
[The marquis de Carabas stands against the bookshelf. Has been standing against the bookshelf for hours, in the same exact spot.]
[ Spam ]
He first becomes aware of where he is when he can't get into the pub; he reaches for his item, but it's not there, and that simultaneously resonates so perfectly and is so impossible that he cannot comprehend it at all. By the time anyone arrives that would let him in, he's gone.
He next becomes aware of his surroundings standing at the forward rail, staring hard out into space. He hates the deck. He hates being reminded that they're sailing, floating, flying on nothing, that there is more nothing - nothing upon nothing - around them; he is terrified of the deck. Afraid on a visceral, uncontrollable level, but he has been working for months to quell what will not die. It seems, in the face of his only other visceral fear, much more manageable. He stares out over the railing, his hips bruising and cold where he leans against it, and if anyone tries to speak with him he does not respond and does not remember.
Dean Winchester is not a man that knows how to say goodbye. His very presence here is evidence of that, but he's only recently realized the problem inherent in that selfsame presence: everyone here is working tirelessly towards the goal of no longer being here. Everyone will go. Everyone must go. Everyone should go. Including the Marquis de Carabas, including Dean, including every person here Dean knows, every person here he loves. It makes no sense to be upset when it happens. When it's a good thing, a goal reached, an opportunity available. And he is happy.
He is also terrified. And angry. And fiercely proud. And silently desperate. And thinking of all the what ifs, the what nows, the hundred thousand ways his friends - the people he loves, the people he's given pieces of his heart to without any thought about taking them back - could die out of his sight. And trying to accept that there is nothing he can do about it that he has not already done.
He does nothing dramatic, though he very much wants to. That is the price of growing up. He stares at the space that used to intimidate him, and wishes profoundly that he could navigate it like some here do, that he could know with certainty that if any of those hundred thousand ways come for his people, he could be there to stop them. Wishes for the hundred thousandth time that there were even one way - one, single way - that he could be included in the lives that they keep with them. That they would stay. That he could go.
But wishing never got anyone anywhere, and he is not this person. The Marquis does not require Dean to be happy for him, which is fortunate because he's not sure he can be yet. There is only one way to know, and the thought that finally breaks Dean away from the rail and sends him back belowdecks is that the Marquis has graduated - it may already be too late. He may be gone, a thought that speeds his pulse and makes his path back to level four direct and swift.
But he is not gone. His door is still there, across from Dean's where it has been for a year and a half, and the hunter pauses to brush his fingers over the coarse, solid wood of it. Then he turns away decisively, more centered but no more certain about what he's going to do now.
It is hours later when the knob turns again and Dean lets himself into his cabin. It is the last place he saw the Marquis - he is, a little, surprised to find him there still. And then again, maybe not at all. He steps inside and closes the door again, quietly, and breathes out.]
Sorry. [For leaving. For reacting like an asshole. For being someone that someone like de Carabas would stand and wait for. For needing it. He smiles again, and this time it sticks - sad but warm, the pieces of himself he managed to pick back up, changed but still true.] I know you miss London Below. I'm glad you get to go back, now. I am.
[ Spam ]
[What he wants is not closure, precisely, but - a completed sentence would be nice. A sense of certainty, even if it's certainty in uncertainty, precision in imprecision. He does not require Dean to be happy, but he does require him to be present. For that, he'll wait.]
[He smiles, just barely, and doesn't indicate the completed repair of the necklace because that's something that some other person would do. Some other man who likes praise, who wants it, who demands it, who expects gratitude. Who knows friendship, which is still such a foreign animal to the marquis de Carabas that he is incapable of treating it as anything but a lion at the other end of a chair. Perpetually wary of love, he allows it, but is baffled.]
[Nevertheless, he does things like this - repairs, jokes, moments of silent camaraderie - and they feel right. Snow had faith in him. Ned loved him. But Dean showed him about what is right.]
[Someday, he'll even trust that instinct. Not today, but soon. He is a work in progress. He is a puzzle one quarter complete; the corners, at least, are located, the edges in progress.]
[The laugh begins low in his throat and bubbles out into something giddy, disbelieving.]
Do you want to know something funny?
[He grins, shark-sharp, and doesn't pause but for breath.]
I don't remember my name.
[ Spam ]
Dean says he's glad the Marquis can go home now; the Marquis responds with that laugh, that smile, and something Dean had suspected for a while, now. He chews his lip, and nods as he steps away from the door again. This - this waiting, this visit, this exchange - is for Dean, but it is also for the Marquis. He does not know how to do friendship, does not know how to be selfless, except in the way that he has just now admitted to: being without self.]
I was wondering. [The hunter is finding his stride, now; someone needs something from him. He can meet that need. He always could. It gives him purpose. He moves for the mini fridge, glancing at the desk on his way by, pausing but only because he glances, then, at the Marquis again.] And there's no one else, is there?
[ Spam ]
[If he weren't, he suspects, they wouldn't be friends.]
[His eyes travel, full of their same old mad sanity, from fridge to shelf to Dean's retreating back to (briefly) his eyes to his hands to the surface of the desk again. No one else. Who else would there be? There is no one else.]
Dead.
[Family dead. Name dead. Records lost. What did it ever matter anyway? He was always his own man.]
[Which means something different now. Good or bad or both or neither. Confusing - the only thing he knows for sure.]
[Irony.]
[ Spam ]
Dean who is, himself, dead back home. Supposed to be. Dean who cannot use his full name anymore. Dean, who came here because his family was dead, and that he could not bear. Dean, who looks now back to the desk and sees his amulet there, the newly reknotted cord. Dean, who suspects the cord will never break again, the knot never come untied, and god knows what else.
The Marquis does not know how to do friendship. He is still uncertain about what is weakness and what is strength entrusted to others; Dean picks up the amulet, turns it over in his palm and inspects the cord, and knows that it isn't far off no matter how little confidence his friend has in this part of himself. In its power.]
Well. Good thing you aren't anymore, then.
[He twists to glance up at him, raises his hand with the amulet in it in silent thanks. There's no question about it.]
Names are important, but they don't make you who you are. You make them what they are. That's all.
[ Spam ]
Good thing.
[Life is always a good thing, except when stolen unceremoniously and without warrant. The marquis has always borrowed time from uncertain futures, until he ran out of lives. He doesn't know how he'll approach - anything, now; not even bare existence. He will survive, he knows. It's just a matter of how.]
[He isn't dead, but he's not alive yet either. He's on a choppy reverse-film journey with a terribly confused psychopomp, back to the underworld, the only place he can truly live. Who could blame him for not being sure what to make of that?]
[Him. He can.]
[Something sallow in his cheeks fills out at the gesture. Subtle, small. You're welcome.]
Then what am I? Flatter me.
[But really: do. The water is cold, and he's forgotten how to swim upriver.]
[ Spam ]
[Dean meets that smile with steadfast confidence, unhesitating; it's a good thing. He cannot accept death. He won't. He is fiercely, solidly glad his friend gets another chance, that he survived, that he will go home and pick up where he left off with new tools and new strengths and new friends.
Dean knows what to make of it. He raises hie eyebrows as he raises the cord to drop the amulet back where it goes, back around his neck.]
You're a bastard. [Dean is a creature built to love, to have faith, but he never learned how to express it; how to feel secure in knowing this about himself. It does not change the instinct, only his acknowledgement of it. It didn't keep him from picking one thing out about the man across from him and believing in it unconditionally to loan it strength. The Marquis asks what he is and Dean responds with the first thing that comes to mind - true, multilayered, safe.
Then he digs in before he can trip over himself.] Trustworthy, with the right things, more than most men are with anything. Impossible, too many things to be mixed into one person but formidable nonetheless. [He looks down, then, at the amulet, still held in his fingertips from the compulsion to settle it back where it goes by hand. At the necklace that had been all important to him, that he had lost as an inmate and that had cost his closest friend one of his nine lives and most of his borrowed times to exact as much vengeance for the loss of as they possibly could in that place.
So Dean would not do something even more stupid, and find himself more crippled than he already was.]
One of the best friends I've ever had. Not for the things you did, but for the things you didn't do. The things you will do. The things you would do, if I asked.
Which is only true because I don't. But others will, and because you are better than they are, you'll help them. [He glances up then, squints, barely able to recognize his own voice and the words he's saying except that he is. He has found himself here, at the point of no return, far too often not to recognize what this is.
Dean is not good at goodbyes. This is what he does instead. His voice lowers as his clumsiness catches up to him, but the momentum is gathered - it must be spent.] You are clever and careful and one of a kind. You are what you made yourself.
[ 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?
[ Spam ]
His steady gaze is there to meet the dark eyes when they turn his way again, unyielding in either direction. He does not retreat, he does not advance. There is no threat in Dean Winchester for the Marquis de Carabas. Not truly. Not while he knows himself.
His mouth quirks, his skin hot with a kind of embarrassment that won't allow him to repeat himself or make anything like a habit of what he's just done, what he's just said; but Dean is the realization of conviction if he is anything, and he stands by it.
And he laughs. It's easier than letting the mirror be reflected back on him, when he sees none of that in himself. It's easier to take the barb at face value - he is a bastard, too, by nature and by design - and so he does, despite what his knowledge of the Marquis may try to suggest lies just below the surface of such a remark.]
Now the truth comes out. You came here to get a few more jabs in for the road.
Well, c'mon then, sunshine. Let's have it. [His fist closes around the amulet. He continues to the fridge.]
[ Spam ]
[He is persevering now, by not leaving. He could leave. Dean wouldn't, he's sure, hold it against him. He could exit the room and disappear, and Dean would understand.]
[But while the marquis de Carabas is not, has never been, will never be a brave man, he is also no coward. Just because he doesn't remember his name doesn't mean he doesn't know himself.]
I was right about you, you know. You survived in my home. You thrived. Your heart beat with London's.
[A compact statement that means more than a his most convoluted. It thrums with respect, with understanding, with brotherhood; it speaks to resilience, cleverness, and in this case a certain amount of bravery. Most of all, it speaks to the fact that Dean, a man capable of swimming in the veins of the Undercity alongside him, is irrevocably connected to everything he is and ever will be.]
[It speaks, in short, to understanding. To equality. With a statement like that, what more need be said?]
[He tips his chin up.]
Are you going to get me one or not?
[ Spam ]
This has been the hardest lesson he has ever learned, and he is not anywhere close to mastering it. He is no better at goodbyes now than he was when anyone else he loves gave him the opportunity to say one. He won't be any less aimless in the days to come, whether others notice it or not.
But he turns away because what he has learned - what he has been working on learning, what has always been disconcertingly easy with this man in particular - is to trust that the people he loves will do what they think is necessary, and only that. If the Marquis needs to go, he'll go - now, not at all; Dean knows he'll go eventually - and if he wants to stay, he'll stay. Dean can trust him that far.
He smiles with his back turned when the other man speaks; he hears what the Marquis doesn't say, hears the compliment, hears that it's all the moreso because de Carabas also gets to indulge in his very favorite pastime of being right. It isn't a smile in any way appropriate for sharing; it's acknowledgement and gratitude and all the soft, brittle emotions they don't share. That Dean doesn't share with anyone anymore, not in anything like visible, acknowledge proportions. Your heart beat with London's, the Marquis says. It goes into the same niche in his chest alongside things like I just reminded you of who you really are and We will always be family.
So he pretends to have to look around the fridge, pretends to have to make a decision, and he's shaking his head by the time he turns around with his own beer in hand. If something else needs said, Dean doesn't know what it is.
He holds up one of the bottles of water that have, mysteriously, been appearing in his mini-fridge for several months now; unspoken, unacknowledged, and always present among the beer bottles and the occasional half sandwich. And he grins.]
Since when did you rely on me to get you anything?
[ Spam ]
[Until now, until here, until people like Dean who chipped away at him until he realized that, although he is mostly right, there have been one or two instances in his life in which he was not.]
[Dean turns back and grins at him and offers him a bottle of water. The marquis, reasserting his flamboyance, turns his nose up at it and rolls his eyes.]
Since when did you drink water? Give me a beer.
[ Spam ]
[It shouldn't surprise him - the Marquis has a habit of striking him speechless, almost effortlessly, certainly deliberately, so he shouldn't be surprised - but he blinks, glancing down at the water bottle, back up.
It's another of those moments, another where something unobvious is said behind something otherwise completely mundane, and part of Dean recognizes that long before his conscious mind catches up. It's the part of Dean that hangs onto the things that logic doesn't touch, that believes deeply and with conviction that he is not a good person, that he will fail, that those he loves are right to walk away and that they always will. That he is forgettable, useless, devoid of worth.
It hears what this is, and when the rest of him catches up he blinks uncertainly and, glancing up again, turns back towards the fridge without looking. He never really needed to anyway.
Then he snorts, because the moment has drawn out too long, and because he desperately needs something to cover up the deep, bloody twist of hurt that is a preview of what will be left when the Marquis goes, because he can't admit that what this is between them is a flavor of, of all things, love.
Because he can't miss his friend before he even goes.]
Man, are you sure? You don't have to like, drive or anything, right?
[ Spam ]
[He stands, hand on his hip, watching Dean and conducting the silence like the finest maestro with the twitch of lips and eyebrows. The irony's obvious, at least to him, but he wonders if Dean sees all of it. The only way to surprise this man - this friend of his - is to catch himself most deliberately in a trap of vulnerability. He must put a knife in Dean's hand and poise it against his own gut. He must be prepared to die if taken advantage of, and must assume he will not be.]
[He must be, not soft, but flexible. Not superhuman, not a story, but a man. Just a man, just for a moment.]
[He doesn't remember the last time he was just a man. Maybe once, on the cusp of death, blood trickling from the corners of his mouth - but never before, never after, not in memory.]
[Not until Dean, and Ned, and Snow. Not until he found fragments of home lodged in the souls of other people.]
[Slowly, he blinks, an acquiescence of all the things neither of them are saying. Yes. He's sure. It's a small sacrifice, to lose the edge of sobriety in the company of a friend, but then again, for a man like the marquis de Carabas, it's not so small at all.]
I don't drive. I walk, or take public transit, or occasionally become motes on the wind and float on air currents. None of which are methods of transportation that prohibit the consumption of alcohol.
Give it to me.
[ Spam ]
[Dean laughs this, because he isn't truly meant to believe that crap about motes on the wind and air currents; other people are, but he doesn't, because he does know the truth of it. The Marquis is just a man, but Dean will never tell. He will keep this secret just between the two of them, a man with a name but no sense of self, a man in control of himself with no name. He will take it to his grave and beyond.
Dean is comfortable holding the knife, as it were; even with people he loves on the other end of it, he knows he will not plunge it home. It's not in him to violate trust in that way. If he is asked, if he is invited, he will not waver. If he is entrusted, he will not falter. This is where his most basic confidence lies. This is where he is the man everyone thinks he is.
He tosses the bottle of beer to de Carabas, and wrinkles his nose.] Just this once. [Except always: always he will give it to him, no debt attached, not for a while now. Not for this.
There are other debts he could name, he could ask, but he won't. Instead he pops the top off his own with a practiced motion of his fingers and his ring, tosses the cap at the trashcan, and looks down at the froth that builds up under the release of pressure.]
You'll be more of a badass than ever, now. Back to life again, no tricks up the sleeves this time.
[ Spam ]
[He laughs, a deep and throaty and pleasant sound, rich and dark as peat. No tricks.]
You can't possibly believe that.
[Not that he won't be quote-unquote "a badass". He always is; no point in acting as though he's anything but highly competent. But tricks, he's always got those. Redeemed or not. There will always be something more. He will always be planning a hundred steps ahead of the enemy.]
[This time, maybe he won't have to give his life and find a way to steal it back. But he will do what needs to be done for his home.]
Do you really think London Below would welcome me back as a man of complete honesty? Please don't disappoint me and say yes.
[ Spam ]
[Dean grins, then, and surprises himself with the ease of it. With how he can be happy, really happy, when every other moment he is reminded that this is all a series of lasts. And, in some cases, firsts.
It has a lot to do with the laughter, of course, and he doesn't even care that it is in ridicule of him. He's never cared. He invites it, and he grins - really grins - back at his friend as he takes a sip of his own beer.]
But don't you try to tell me it's not useful, having complete honesty as one of the tricks up your sleeve. I'm sure it adds to the confusion of when you're lying, and when you're not.
[He smiles around the mouth of the bottle at his lips, raising both eyebrows impishly. He did, after all, pay at least a little attention. It would be much harder to be sure of the Marquis - or would have been for anyone but Dean - when he can also suddenly count among them being sincere for the sake of sincerity, not just gain.]
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[He sounds insulted at the crassness of it, but his lip twitches, too. Then a smirk comes out to play, all fang, and he is watching Dean from across the room with something that could be mistaken in a dim light for admiration. Yes, Dean has paid attention. That is one of the most important qualities about him: his attention to detail, and that cleverness that masquerades as something much more like stupidity.]
It might not be totally useless, [he admits as though it's been dragged out of him.] I suppose.
[It will be invaluable. No one will know what to make of him. It will be marvelous, and he will laugh and laugh when he has the privacy to and the luxury of laughter. Things will be different, but he has come around to the belief that they will be easier this way.]
[And even if they're not, he doesn't think he wants to go back to the old way. Not entirely, anyway. What use is immortality if you're not adaptable, is what he thinks - what good is a life like his if he can't recognize the use of change?]
[That other thing, too. An object lesson. If a man like him can change, so can the city.]
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