mattersverymuch | 19 ɂ spam & text; fin.

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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.]

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Yes.

[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.

[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?

[Dean does not look away.

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.]

[The marquis smiles. It's one of those in-between smiles, knife-sharp, wicked and mean, but meant all the more genuinely for being a heartbeat away from cruelty. He is a cruel man; however, he also has the capacity to be merciful. He is a bastard, but he also knows the depths and heights of man and beast, all of which he has experienced in the course of his lifetime. He is jaded, but he perseveres.]

[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?

[Once upon a time, Dean firmly believed that if he took his eyes off his friends, his loved ones - particularly just after they'd graduated - they would disappear, or unimaginable evil would befall them. He still believes it, of course, that hasn't changed, but he is able most times to overcome the intensity of it. He would not have held it against the Marquis if he turned back around and found his friend gone - he forces himself to turn away because if it happens, then it happens. Nothing he can do about it.

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?

[The look on the marquis's face as he stares at Dean's back, as Dean rustles around in the fridge, is a look almost never seen passing across his features at all. It's not a look of tenderness. It's not softness. It's just a quiet sort of respect. He is only undramatic when he feels truly accessed, when his self is seen, and so few people are capable of seeing him behind the masks and the dance and the costume and the posturing . . .]

[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.

What?

[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?

[The moment draws out too long, that is true. The marquis just stands and observes time passing, a quiet, satisfied smile on his face. He's won, and winning will always be satisfying to him. He will not admit the bittersweetness of this victory; he will just savor it, because there is a very real possibility that he'll never have another victory over Dean Winchester.]

[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.

You are so full of shit.

[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.

[The marquis catches the bottled with the practiced ease of someone who is practiced at everything . When he opens it, it's with a touch of caution which he does his best to conceal. The drink goes down cold, unlike the last taste of alcohol he had, which was red wine and warmer. The carbonation makes his lips tingle. It tastes like malt and earth and breath. Not terrible.]

[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.

No. And I mean that as an answer, too, not just because it would kill me to disappoint you.

[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.]

I've never been a compulsive liar.

[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.]

[Dean knows that for the victory that it is, knows a sound strategic tactic when he hears it, even if it isn't one he would make use of himself. He raises his bottle in toast to it, and keeps wearing his own grin like a badge of honor. Whose honor, though, is somewhat in question.

Dean doesn't know what, in fact, the Marquis intends to do with his life; he does not expect that it is his business to know. He has the general idea - he knows he will die, someday permanently, in service to his city if he dies at all - but the specifics escape him as he suspects they escape even his friend himself. There have been moments, from the day he realized in conversation with Ned that this day was coming soon, that he has worried that there is one more skill, one more advantage he could have imparted to help that death be a long ways off, that there is one more thing he should have done.

And then he looks at that sharp-toothed smile and knows himself for a fool, that this man could ever need one more thing from him to survive; knows himself for a fool and worries anyway. The Marquis, after all, did not learn love from Dean Winchester. He did, however, learn to apply it - and he learned a whole host of other things that will either make him unbreakable if used cunningly, or break him if exploited.

The hunter shakes his head.] So, back to the badass thing: you'll mind yourself, yeah? You'll keep your friends close and your enemies closer, all that jazz?

[Fortunately, the marquis's ego is fully intact. He doesn't foresee any future in which he will use his skills anything less than exquisitely. What's the point of a skill if you can't wind it deftly into place in use against your enemies, or, when it becomes necessary, your friends? He certainly doesn't know.]

[His gaze ticks over to Dean. Then he takes another drink, without blinking, without looking away.]

All that jazz.

[He wants to say You're worried out loud, to get it out of the way and out in the open, but he doesn't. It would be discourteous, he thinks. Dean would not thank him. Not that he particularly wants or needs Dean's thanks, but - well. Consider this a pleasant last look. He doesn't want it to be of Dean pouting.]

I will be exquisite. Don't bother considering any other outcomes, they're statistically so unlikely as to be basically impossible.

[Dean knows himself for a fool, and worries anyway, though he's put the lightest possible face on it he can. He's joking, anyway, and the Marquis's response only makes that easier: smirk at what could never happen, the ridiculousness of it, the humor.

He won't pout. And he wouldn't have thanked him and he doesn't now. He drinks again and nods, offers characteristic cocky arrogance for the more elegant, practiced version of it that de Carabas has claimed as his.]

Well, you learned from the best, after all. I suppose that counts for something.

[He looks down his nose at Dean, all haughty narcissism, Machiavellianist duplicity, and marvels at himself. He is so many things all at once, so many more things than he was before. Most of the credit is his, of course; he will continue to believe that for his own survival. But some of it - a good portion of it - is thanks to this man, who is also so much more than he appears to be.]

[He takes another drink, like a man who has been drinking beer all his life and thoroughly enjoys it, like this is something they do often.]

The best the multiverse has to offer.

[It sounds dismissive. He doesn't recall a time when he was more serious.]

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19 ɂ spam & text; fin.

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