with revin, there hadn’t be anything to take but the chains off his wrists. continued survival: a parting gift. he’s so careful of them since. ]
I don’t want whatever you steal.
[ which is two lies, really. he’s never given a fuck about graverobbing, and what he wants,
what he wants is someone still alive to scream at. fifteen years' caution and still he hasn't learned, but this time, there's no one left to hate. what he wants, idiotic: cloth between his fingers, a lungful of funeral smell. to bury his face in denial.
but that will pass. it has before. ]
I couldn't say which knucklebones are his, we haven't precisely sorted. You're welcome to try.
[ a string of beads doesn’t mean anything, and the fear in ilias’ face wasn't enough to keep him from lying of it for so long. leander could have them and their secrets for nothing at all,
save that leander's used his name. isaac has bent so often to the needs of the moment that it’s strange to remember now, what it’s like to spit in a face. it doesn’t feel any better.
but then, he never thought it would. ]
Edited (SORRY minor wording edits u kno how it be) 2019-05-25 03:56 (UTC)
[Absurdly, it hadn't occurred to him the remains might all be together, a jumble of bodies impossible to distinguish. He remembers suddenly the knife-glint of anger, the radiance of it, so close, the fist on his breastbone. They had to reconstruct most of her skull. Did you know that? It hadn't occurred to him then, either, and the way it does now—
Leander could run his fingers through ash and bone for weeks, months, for the rest of his life, and never find him again. Nothing left to reconstruct. He will never be brought back to Nevarra, to be arranged, to be treated with gentle reverence, the way he's meant to be. He will never cross the Veil.
Softly,]
Later tonight—closer to dawn than dusk. Come up to his room. I'll be waiting there for you.
which is stupid. that much crosses his mind, for all he doesn't expect a threat, it's stupid to be coming here. but the fortress is wrapped in its private dramas; if anyone knows of this, certainly they don't care.
where else was he going to go?
he looks poorly. that can't be a surprise. unslept, for all he's bothered to shave; posture drawn newly tense, and the phylactery out of sight. he'd thought to just hide the damn thing, but keeping it's never been the purpose. it rests heavy as it has since leaving livia's bag — in a pocket, away. ]
[Leander is already there. Has been there. He's opened the door, and closed it again, but the latch hasn't caught. It would be simple enough to push open.
On approach it becomes clear to the discerning eye that something about the door itself has changed. Happened to it. Alongside the mechanism's iron plating, the wood is worn smooth, as it would become after decades of grasping fingers; the surface is raised in places along the grain, as it might become after many seasons left outside; the pattern of the grain itself has shifted. Warped. As if by defect, natural or otherwise. Even the plating itself shows signs of buckling, the little bolts not quite set. An error of design, perhaps... overlooking this amount of protrusion seems unlikely.
It's not a mistake, any of it: this was design wrought with patience. Hours worth of it. Materials shifted, pried apart, put back together.
The latch still works, it just hasn't caught. Enter, it suggests. Simple enough.
Inside, the room is just as orderly as Ilias would have left it, with all the little signs of a life permanently interrupted, the contents undisturbed save for a few candles, necessarily lit. A few pieces of the lock's mechanism lie on the table nearest the doorway, as though placed there in a handful. (Some are twisted beyond repair. Ask him if he truly gives a shit.)
Leander himself sits on the bed, his back facing the door. Rounded shoulders, head at a slight angle, hands in his lap.
[ he makes no attempt to conceal his footsteps, or their pause outside the door; the creak as it swings on shifted hinge.
he picks up the mangle of the lock, looks it over — still heavy enough to brain him with, and it's funny, the things you reach for in those moments. a poker, instead of the poisonous hand of a spell. a learned response. education, not instinct. if someone hits you, you don't pull a blade. if someone pulls a blade,
metal drops back to the desk, a small clamour. isaac watches the bed, his shoulders. watches those, for lack of his hands, and waits.
[Leander sits patiently until the body behind him sounds like it's grown likewise still. Softly, he clears his throat of the catch he suspects is waiting there; the result is smooth enough.]
Thank you for coming.
[His head turns to one side, enough to show the profile of his own face past the mess of curls, and to verify the shape in his peripheral vision as the correct one. It isn't; it is.]
I'm going to ask for your help.
[The shameless flash of a hook, just in case Isaac is more angry than he is curious. He wouldn't refuse a fight—it would be satisfying, probably for them both—but it's not what he's after. (Not the only thing, anyway.)]
First I'd like you to know something. Will you hear it?
leander turns, and free fingers flex — halfway to a fist, only to uncurl once more. if someone pulls a blade, you look for an intention.
the splay of a palm: go on. it's a hell of a silence, from someone so chronically loquacious, but this little performance wears at his nerves. how many hours has it been rehearsed? stone as a statue on that bed, animated only by the presence of an observer. it isn't wholly unfamiliar.
who is isaac, when he's alone? not much, he thinks; maybe nothing at all.
[A single nod, thank you. He begins with a full breath, and a sigh through his nose, and a courtesy:]
I read one of your letters.
[No sense of restraint, no tension in his voice; merely a fact.]
Until I read it, I couldn't have cared if you'd lived or died, any more than someone might miss... [a quick facial shrug,] a new piece of furniture, or a particularly nice shirt. I liked you. I liked meeting you. After the spirits came, when you started avoiding me, I wanted to chase after you and at least get you to admit why. But you were irrelevant.
[Isaac might track his gaze by the movement of his eyelids, his lashes; vague, unfocused, moving occasionally through memory.]
I liked to sit where he sat, sometimes, just to feel it, to... see the things he saw, where he saw them. I saw a piece of paper that seemed new, [wherever it was left, slipped, or tucked; he'd been scavenging for the barest scraps of insight,] and I opened it.
[Slouching in Ilias's chair, the click of candy on his teeth, swallowing his own sugary spit, just another trivial moment among many—and there, under the negligible weight of Isaac's pen, on the page's very ordinary surface, the universe shifted. The incredible power of a few humble strokes left unsigned. Leander thought what had opened was a wound, or a mouth full of teeth; it felt keen and greedy and it bled for a while. In nursing it, he discovered it was more like another eye. It surprised him. He wasn't sure what he should do with it, or about it, so he did nothing. But now...]
And I put it back. I don't think he knew—he'd have said something to me if he did. He never shied away from that. [The ghost of a smile; his head tilts again; he's watching his own hands, moving vaguely on his lap.] But I knew, then, that it could never be like it was again. He doesn't— [Frustration, briefly and softly sighed.] He didn't stop loving people, not completely, so there'd always be... you. You'd always be there, even if you weren't.
[More blood—if only he knew. (He may, soon enough.)]
[ anger bites again, the echo of a glove already thrown: that wasn’t meant for you, ]
Until you read it.
[ he repeats, at last and aloud. the words taste like exertion. leander can assert whatever he likes, but love has never been on the table, only more than my affection —
hairs that split upon a pattern in the grain. unimportant, unexamined; until something else emerges, a shape from noise. isaac was never the point of it. irrelevant, still, to the central image. ]
What you’re trying to say is that he loved you.
[ as though that changes anything. stakes some greater claim, else puts them in on it together. the transitive property applied to some stupid, seasonal fling.
(as it will be, when he rewrites this; a month from now, a year. when ilias becomes just another name he doesn't say.) ]
He turns upon the bed, suddenly but not quickly, and as he twists to look back at Isaac his nearer hand reaches around—and it's empty, appearing only to settle on the blanket. Silence as his eyes move from one miserable detail to the next, observant and emotionless. Inquisitive, too, as though from a distance much greater than the steps it would take to bring them together.]
It's more than that.
[A voice not his own, not his, but hers: Do something, Lea.
It feels so fragile in his hands. He mustn't repeat his mistake.]
[ the lock is within reach. too far to do so casually. it isn't the first time he's considered dispensing with this (conversation and speaker) it won't be the last. at some point his eyes have fallen away, broken the discomfort of contact.
he doesn't look up again. ]
Why don't you tell me? [ the lock; the door. (the boathouse, the blood; they're a bit beyond lies) ] That wasn't my dream the spirits found.
[ obviously: he'd fled from it like a child. something of the memory scrapes, sends him a step closer to the bed. away from the desk, and its civilized violence. ]
[It's the first ember of a warning, not inspired by that step forward, but timed with it nonetheless. If it compels Isaac to keep his distance, that may yet be for the best.]
I'm asking because I want to understand.
[Surely he wants to be understood. The way he referred to himself—if it wasn't only a show of melodrama, a way of gathering pity from one so willing to give it, he must know what it means. The necessary distance. The incredible lonesomeness of it. And if it was that sort of contrivance...
Given the letter's recipient, and the nature of this keen-eyed creature on the other side of the bed, one hopes it wasn't only that.]
isaac turns. raises a hand, and that Other sense entangles: finds the threads of skin and sinew, all those quiet places where flesh and fade once knit. finds them, and pulls.
for a moment it doesn't seem he's done anything at all. almost comic, the way that sweat collects, that his expression soars with brief triumph. somewhere beyond the window, a breeze stirs. canvas flaps.
the first scars break open onto blood. ]
Edited (SORRY i broke the icon) 2019-05-27 05:57 (UTC)
[Isaac's hand lifts, and Leander is up and turning, quick as a snake—and he holds. Holds, fingers half spread, and in this state of readiness he waits for something to happen that he can detect. Anything to counteract. There is a sense of gathering that brings to memory the scent of decaying plant matter and a mouth full of blood, and in that dreadful anticipation he resolves to stop this before it starts. A sharp burst of will should do it—but before the decision can coalesce into action, it's already begun.
Leander's face changes, not in fear, but in comprehension.
It burns in strips down the back of his neck, his chest, both of his arms, warm, and it begins to run. His shirt is dark; the blood blossoms darker. He looks down to see the bright rivulet cross his palm, watches mutely as it reaches the webbing between his fingers and keeps coming, dribbles from his knuckle. Jerks his hand back, too late to keep it from staining the blanket on the bed, and shortly finds himself against the wall. A bump, and he leans there, sagging.
When he meets Isaac's gaze again, he looks dazed—his mouth is open, working in subtleties of indecision—until finally there come a few syllables of laughter. It's weak, mostly breath, but laughter all the same.]
You fucking idiot.
[Slick with red, held in a casting claw, a hand raises toward him, the heavy charge of power impossible to miss—
(Never in desperation, never in panic. This is well within his rules: he's not afraid—he's never afraid—and Isaac drew it for him.)]
[ leander reels. fingers splay, begin thoughtlessly to carve new shapes against the air. isaac's chin tips, comprehension sluggish behind its work, and
— fuck, what is he doing? what has he just done? ]
Maker, I —
[ will never know how to finish that sentence, because leander's laughter startles his attention, and now it is instinct: nothing but plain ugly reaction. weakness ripples out from the fade, a smothering miasma.
isaac stumbles forward. doesn't know whether it's enough, even as he's moving, as slickness catches his foot. it's half a fall that brings him down, fumbling for a bloody palm. ]
If you try that again, [ breathless, distracted. ] I will leave you here.
[ alone, to crawl towards help that isn't waiting. ]
[The catch looses in Leander's throat, barely vocalized, strain of exertion releasing in surprise, inspired by both the surge of atmospheric weakness and the strange resistance in his own wounds. A bloody smear follows him down the wall. While his hand trails at a stubborn delay, the barest beginning of metaphysical theft is snuffed before it can siphon much of anything at all. (Perhaps it assisted Isaac in stumbling; he'd like to think so.)
It's amazing, isn't it, how many trifling scars a body can accumulate. There's a small cut on Leander's left cheek from some forgettable piece of shrapnel, and the wet patch in his hair is negligible, opened the first time by a childhood fall. His nose, fractured at the age of seventeen by Averesch's fist during a boys' quarrel, the skin split anew both inside and out. Any number of tiny marks on his hands, acquired in the course of work or play, little red beads on his knuckles, all those little lines too thin and pale to see beyond close scrutiny made bright all at once. The orderly wounds that line the sensitive medial surface of his biceps, though, and the slices up his forearms, contrived to look defensive—those are significantly less trivial.
Most meaningful of all are the marks left by Ilias (nearly a decade older than the one Leander gave to him). Sentiment aside, without a blade left in to staunch it, the deep wound in the back of his neck, alongside his spine, is
concerning.
(To say nothing of the internal warnings beneath his breastbone.)]
Don't—
[The shadow of a nightmare's wheezing desperation. Don't— you promised— Whatever his hands catch, slip against, they grasp hard. It isn't altogether friendly. Neither is the flash of his teeth, their creases limned in blood.]
[ leander’s not going anywhere soon. is that what he wanted? better off asking another: the magister, or whoever it was rutyer had a go at —
surely he didn't think isaac an optimist.
the hand tightens around his own. there's no affection in isaac's answering squeeze, there's no we beyond a certain guilty pulse. his free palm gropes for leander's neck, cups over the hole only to slip red. heat flares in the gap between flesh and fade; isaac's lip catches itself, gnaws. he's never tried to fix this before.
it's only quite now that he realizes his own exhaustion, how much this has already taken. it's time to run. give this up, find his bag, and go. now, before anyone thinks to look past the misshapen door and its simple latch. before the noises draw attention, the fatal kind. ]
Hold still,
[ it isn't gentle. neither, the radiant pressure in his wounds, plastering itself between receded skin and air. power stirs. need be coaxed, managed, lest it leap to something that festers. words repeat under his breath, inaudible and orlesian.
he's good. this much he might still manage — another day, on fresher spirits and other injuries; here and now he struggles to stem even the worst of it. something in the walls won't hold: slides off the little hurts to leave knuckles and nose still streaming. layer by fragile layer, divided between the worst, will and repetition close the hollows (motion still jerking them to weep). leander's neck, his chest,
the arms are a problem. he's lost a lot of blood. and these, monuments to it. isaac's bag, his useless bag, is still far and away. the sheets closer, not so easy to tear as in the stories.
[The catastrophic amount of damage he's taken, the concept of his own mortality, it's well eclipsed by the urgency of his designs—but he stills, as commanded, and for a while he is quiet but for his breath. It's shallow, but steady, with conscious effort. Occasionally the rhythm catches as though with the urge to clear his throat, each time unrealized. Like bubbles of suffering, quiet until they pop.
The blood seems darker with each passing moment, both in congealing and against the growing pallor of his skin. He has yet to close his eyes; they remain fixed on Isaac. A whisper:]
Here.
[One fistful of fabric slips free, and cramped fingers loosen to cover Isaac's wrist—slowly, lest he be scolded. (And because it's too heavy to move at any speed but this.) What little focus he can spare, he urges to flow through skin and bone, this time to assist. If he can. If it makes any difference. It might—this school always did come naturally. It helps that he isn't moving. Isn't doing anything else at all but bleeding, and even less of that as the seconds move sluggishly on.
At length, with his bloody face and watery eyes, wearing a lethargic approximation of wonder—still staring—]
— it's too slow for that, but awareness shifts to his wrist with a discomfort absurd before its circumstance. strength flows, bone catches; the both of them rendered a temporary conduit. when he finally meets leander's eyes it's to whisper. ]
Shut up.
[ he turns to stand, already clawing a stained hand at his pocket for the crystal. the other drags a chair to the door. it's not much. it'll have to do: back pressed against it a cheap reinforcement.
[Were anyone looking, they'd see the urge to rise in Leander's face, bright as blood, though it amounts to nothing. He's well past the time of adrenaline, when wounded men can do astonishing things; he allowed that momentum to wane under sharp command. He tries to sit up—feels like he's trying, barely moves—and the same hand that slipped free of a wrist now reaches after receding legs a moment too late to catch even a cuff or a heel.
Don't, he mouths, desperately tired. His arm lands gently, lies just there. Through the blur of his own eyelashes he watches Isaac reach the door, watches him secure it, and stay, and he closes his eyes and breathes. Listening.
Occasionally he tries to flex his fingers through their stiff chill, cracks an eye to one glittering slit to check they're actually moving. (They are.)]
[ the scrape of shifting furniture, then it's Isaac's face at the crack of door. he ushers her within; replaces the chair.
blood trails from bed, to floor, to leander's heap. isaac's clothes — hands — are little cleaner. the front of him stains from kneeling, footsteps streak red. don't scream, he thinks to say,
but lexie was right: he didn't choose her carelessly. the battle of ghislain; the ambulance crew. the orlesian court. ]
He's stable.
[ enough. isaac sounds no less winded in the trade tongue (this much leander ought to hear) ]
I don't know what he was trying to accomplish. But I know what it will look like.
[ There was a time when she would have needed to be told that. Don't scream. Even if that time hadn't passed, she is sheathed in a numbness at the moment that means only a sharp breath in through her nose as she takes in the room.
Leander looks like her heart given form: sliced open in a hundred places. A perfect pinprick bead for each curl righted, carved lines from the merciless growth of tenderness she'd thrown up her arms to ward off, the darker red depths of truths that have seen no light but incisive green eyes or air but breath between lips pressed to their edges. Although she can see she'd been given the right of it, that it has slowed to stability, the vital weeping of his body had been made obvious, had soaked into everything, and the hawk in her chest shrieks a greeting-warning to see another winged shadow cast over its home.
Gold and emerald glints serpentine against the pristine white of her glove as Alexandrie crosses her arms against it. ]
Like a Sunburst brand. Or the gallows.
[ Perhaps for both men. In Orlesian, quietly: ] I will not play with only half a hand showing. Not at this table. [ Trade then, so both will know she asked: ] How came this?
[ Leander. Issac. The room. She would hold something in reserve, and she is neither in the mood to try and ascertain whether or not they are nor to dig after it. Alexandrie finds she can't spare a thought for her own reputation under the circumstances, but a secondary rumor of associating with maleficarum at her feet—she looks down, briefly, checking to make sure her hem hasn't dragged through any of the literal blood there—lends credence to the first, and if she remains a vocal ally of Thor's, Benedict's, as she means to, it will leap to them easily enough.
As much information as there is risk to her and those she deems hers. That is her buy-in.
(They would both be free, of course, to keep the coin of their knowledge, pay her in gilt wood and bet she will stay regardless. She will, and Isaac at least knows so, but there are three choices of whom she will play for in this room that holds both mages and blood, and this is a chance to sway her.) ]
[Sounds of movement rouse him to awareness (barely), rumbling of furniture, the door (distant as his own heartbeat, quickly, lightly), and he cracks his eyelids to watch the hem of a dress glide in, sideways (the smear a little longer, now, painting his trail to the floor). His mouth flutters a smile, light as a moth.
Of course it would be her. Something stirs, some sense of—not comfort, but something—a gathering. Some vague significance. He should resent the Lady's involvement, the further complexity it creates, but in this misty-edged moment he's simply content to see her.
And while he has faded (is still fading, by the smallest increments), he's been listening, too.
The first try is a soundless whisper. The next, he licks his lips, lingers in meandering distraction at the taste of blood, and finally manages,]
Everything he says,
[A pause, both to catch his breath in shallow puffs, and to create a moment of suspense—even the dying can multitask—as he turns his gaze on Isaac. Hooded eyes in a mask streaked with blood and liquid salt. He lets loose the only weapon he can reach:]
is the truth.
[Take that, fucker. Let's see what you do with it.
His eyes close; his brow knits in controlled discomfort as he tries to shift the jut of his hipbone to a marginally more comfortable position against the floor.]
well, fuck. agreement is more damning than any protest: returns him the burden of supplying a secret worth this liars’ story. agreement creates the illusion of alliance, where tolerance might have served.
isaac paces to the wardrobe, the better not to block the door. he needs a change of clothes. de fontaine needs to own some control of this scene, beyond the caress of metal, the invocation of doom. a grey wash of loathing sluices past, but however long tranquility has been held threat, it’s not one he’s cared to examine. the habit doesn’t break now. ]
These are Speaker Fabria’s rooms,
[ were, but she could read that on a list, and there’s little harm that can be done a dead man. if there’s value in this, it’s for words already said: ilias had been thoroughly apolitical, ilias had lately taken enough interest to take up asking her favours. isaac trusts she can spy between the lines. ]
We were close. [ the tip of his chin to leander, however reluctant, ] He wanted to go back. I don't know what he —
[ was trying to accomplish. a whistling breath. ]
Edited (word repetition SORRY IM VERY SLEEPY) 2019-06-04 04:47 (UTC)
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no subject
with revin, there hadn’t be anything to take but the chains off his wrists. continued survival: a parting gift. he’s so careful of them since. ]
I don’t want whatever you steal.
[ which is two lies, really. he’s never given a fuck about graverobbing, and what he wants,
what he wants is someone still alive to scream at. fifteen years' caution and still he hasn't learned, but this time, there's no one left to hate. what he wants, idiotic: cloth between his fingers, a lungful of funeral smell. to bury his face in denial.
but that will pass. it has before. ]
I couldn't say which knucklebones are his, we haven't precisely sorted. You're welcome to try.
[ a string of beads doesn’t mean anything, and the fear in ilias’ face wasn't enough to keep him from lying of it for so long. leander could have them and their secrets for nothing at all,
save that leander's used his name. isaac has bent so often to the needs of the moment that it’s strange to remember now, what it’s like to spit in a face. it doesn’t feel any better.
but then, he never thought it would. ]
no subject
Leander could run his fingers through ash and bone for weeks, months, for the rest of his life, and never find him again. Nothing left to reconstruct.
He will never be brought back to Nevarra, to be arranged, to be treated with gentle reverence, the way he's meant to be.
He will never cross the Veil.
Softly,]
Later tonight—closer to dawn than dusk. Come up to his room. I'll be waiting there for you.
no subject
which is stupid. that much crosses his mind, for all he doesn't expect a threat, it's stupid to be coming here. but the fortress is wrapped in its private dramas; if anyone knows of this, certainly they don't care.
where else was he going to go?
he looks poorly. that can't be a surprise. unslept, for all he's bothered to shave; posture drawn newly tense, and the phylactery out of sight. he'd thought to just hide the damn thing, but keeping it's never been the purpose. it rests heavy as it has since leaving livia's bag — in a pocket, away. ]
no subject
On approach it becomes clear to the discerning eye that something about the door itself has changed. Happened to it. Alongside the mechanism's iron plating, the wood is worn smooth, as it would become after decades of grasping fingers; the surface is raised in places along the grain, as it might become after many seasons left outside; the pattern of the grain itself has shifted. Warped. As if by defect, natural or otherwise.
Even the plating itself shows signs of buckling, the little bolts not quite set. An error of design, perhaps... overlooking this amount of protrusion seems unlikely.
It's not a mistake, any of it: this was design wrought with patience. Hours worth of it. Materials shifted, pried apart, put back together.
The latch still works, it just hasn't caught. Enter, it suggests. Simple enough.
Inside, the room is just as orderly as Ilias would have left it, with all the little signs of a life permanently interrupted, the contents undisturbed save for a few candles, necessarily lit. A few pieces of the lock's mechanism lie on the table nearest the doorway, as though placed there in a handful. (Some are twisted beyond repair. Ask him if he truly gives a shit.)
Leander himself sits on the bed, his back facing the door. Rounded shoulders, head at a slight angle, hands in his lap.
Just
sitting.]
no subject
he picks up the mangle of the lock, looks it over — still heavy enough to brain him with, and it's funny, the things you reach for in those moments. a poker, instead of the poisonous hand of a spell. a learned response. education, not instinct. if someone hits you, you don't pull a blade. if someone pulls a blade,
metal drops back to the desk, a small clamour. isaac watches the bed, his shoulders. watches those, for lack of his hands, and waits.
why are they here? ]
no subject
Thank you for coming.
[His head turns to one side, enough to show the profile of his own face past the mess of curls, and to verify the shape in his peripheral vision as the correct one. It isn't; it is.]
I'm going to ask for your help.
[The shameless flash of a hook, just in case Isaac is more angry than he is curious. He wouldn't refuse a fight—it would be satisfying, probably for them both—but it's not what he's after. (Not the only thing, anyway.)]
First I'd like you to know something. Will you hear it?
no subject
leander turns, and free fingers flex — halfway to a fist, only to uncurl once more. if someone pulls a blade, you look for an intention.
the splay of a palm: go on. it's a hell of a silence, from someone so chronically loquacious, but this little performance wears at his nerves. how many hours has it been rehearsed? stone as a statue on that bed, animated only by the presence of an observer. it isn't wholly unfamiliar.
who is isaac, when he's alone? not much, he thinks; maybe nothing at all.
but something with more blood than this. ]
no subject
I read one of your letters.
[No sense of restraint, no tension in his voice; merely a fact.]
Until I read it, I couldn't have cared if you'd lived or died, any more than someone might miss... [a quick facial shrug,] a new piece of furniture, or a particularly nice shirt. I liked you. I liked meeting you. After the spirits came, when you started avoiding me, I wanted to chase after you and at least get you to admit why. But you were irrelevant.
[Isaac might track his gaze by the movement of his eyelids, his lashes; vague, unfocused, moving occasionally through memory.]
I liked to sit where he sat, sometimes, just to feel it, to... see the things he saw, where he saw them. I saw a piece of paper that seemed new, [wherever it was left, slipped, or tucked; he'd been scavenging for the barest scraps of insight,] and I opened it.
[Slouching in Ilias's chair, the click of candy on his teeth, swallowing his own sugary spit, just another trivial moment among many—and there, under the negligible weight of Isaac's pen, on the page's very ordinary surface, the universe shifted. The incredible power of a few humble strokes left unsigned. Leander thought what had opened was a wound, or a mouth full of teeth; it felt keen and greedy and it bled for a while. In nursing it, he discovered it was more like another eye.
It surprised him. He wasn't sure what he should do with it, or about it, so he did nothing.
But now...]
And I put it back. I don't think he knew—he'd have said something to me if he did. He never shied away from that. [The ghost of a smile; his head tilts again; he's watching his own hands, moving vaguely on his lap.] But I knew, then, that it could never be like it was again. He doesn't— [Frustration, briefly and softly sighed.] He didn't stop loving people, not completely, so there'd always be... you. You'd always be there, even if you weren't.
[More blood—if only he knew. (He may, soon enough.)]
no subject
Until you read it.
[ he repeats, at last and aloud. the words taste like exertion. leander can assert whatever he likes, but love has never been on the table, only more than my affection —
hairs that split upon a pattern in the grain. unimportant, unexamined; until something else emerges, a shape from noise. isaac was never the point of it. irrelevant, still, to the central image. ]
What you’re trying to say is that he loved you.
[ as though that changes anything. stakes some greater claim, else puts them in on it together. the transitive property applied to some stupid, seasonal fling.
(as it will be, when he rewrites this; a month from now, a year. when ilias becomes just another name he doesn't say.) ]
no subject
He turns upon the bed, suddenly but not quickly, and as he twists to look back at Isaac his nearer hand reaches around—and it's empty, appearing only to settle on the blanket. Silence as his eyes move from one miserable detail to the next, observant and emotionless. Inquisitive, too, as though from a distance much greater than the steps it would take to bring them together.]
It's more than that.
[A voice not his own, not his, but hers: Do something, Lea.
It feels so fragile in his hands. He mustn't repeat his mistake.]
What was the monster you gave to him?
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he doesn't look up again. ]
Why don't you tell me? [ the lock; the door. (the boathouse, the blood; they're a bit beyond lies) ] That wasn't my dream the spirits found.
[ obviously: he'd fled from it like a child. something of the memory scrapes, sends him a step closer to the bed. away from the desk, and its civilized violence. ]
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[It's the first ember of a warning, not inspired by that step forward, but timed with it nonetheless. If it compels Isaac to keep his distance, that may yet be for the best.]
I'm asking because I want to understand.
[Surely he wants to be understood. The way he referred to himself—if it wasn't only a show of melodrama, a way of gathering pity from one so willing to give it, he must know what it means. The necessary distance. The incredible lonesomeness of it. And if it was that sort of contrivance...
Given the letter's recipient, and the nature of this keen-eyed creature on the other side of the bed, one hopes it wasn't only that.]
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isaac turns. raises a hand, and that Other sense entangles: finds the threads of skin and sinew, all those quiet places where flesh and fade once knit. finds them, and pulls.
for a moment it doesn't seem he's done anything at all. almost comic, the way that sweat collects, that his expression soars with brief triumph. somewhere beyond the window, a breeze stirs. canvas flaps.
the first scars break open onto blood. ]
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Leander's face changes, not in fear, but in comprehension.
It burns in strips down the back of his neck, his chest, both of his arms, warm, and it begins to run. His shirt is dark; the blood blossoms darker. He looks down to see the bright rivulet cross his palm, watches mutely as it reaches the webbing between his fingers and keeps coming, dribbles from his knuckle. Jerks his hand back, too late to keep it from staining the blanket on the bed, and shortly finds himself against the wall. A bump, and he leans there, sagging.
When he meets Isaac's gaze again, he looks dazed—his mouth is open, working in subtleties of indecision—until finally there come a few syllables of laughter. It's weak, mostly breath, but laughter all the same.]
You fucking idiot.
[Slick with red, held in a casting claw, a hand raises toward him, the heavy charge of power impossible to miss—
(Never in desperation, never in panic. This is well within his rules: he's not afraid—he's never afraid—and Isaac drew it for him.)]
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— fuck, what is he doing? what has he just done? ]
Maker, I —
[ will never know how to finish that sentence, because leander's laughter startles his attention, and now it is instinct: nothing but plain ugly reaction. weakness ripples out from the fade, a smothering miasma.
isaac stumbles forward. doesn't know whether it's enough, even as he's moving, as slickness catches his foot. it's half a fall that brings him down, fumbling for a bloody palm. ]
If you try that again, [ breathless, distracted. ] I will leave you here.
[ alone, to crawl towards help that isn't waiting. ]
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It's amazing, isn't it, how many trifling scars a body can accumulate. There's a small cut on Leander's left cheek from some forgettable piece of shrapnel, and the wet patch in his hair is negligible, opened the first time by a childhood fall. His nose, fractured at the age of seventeen by Averesch's fist during a boys' quarrel, the skin split anew both inside and out. Any number of tiny marks on his hands, acquired in the course of work or play, little red beads on his knuckles, all those little lines too thin and pale to see beyond close scrutiny made bright all at once.
The orderly wounds that line the sensitive medial surface of his biceps, though, and the slices up his forearms, contrived to look defensive—those are significantly less trivial.
Most meaningful of all are the marks left by Ilias (nearly a decade older than the one Leander gave to him). Sentiment aside, without a blade left in to staunch it, the deep wound in the back of his neck, alongside his spine, is
concerning.
(To say nothing of the internal warnings beneath his breastbone.)]
Don't—
[The shadow of a nightmare's wheezing desperation. Don't— you promised— Whatever his hands catch, slip against, they grasp hard. It isn't altogether friendly. Neither is the flash of his teeth, their creases limned in blood.]
Help me, Isaac— we've got to go back there—
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[ leander’s not going anywhere soon. is that what he wanted? better off asking another: the magister, or whoever it was rutyer had a go at —
surely he didn't think isaac an optimist.
the hand tightens around his own. there's no affection in isaac's answering squeeze, there's no we beyond a certain guilty pulse. his free palm gropes for leander's neck, cups over the hole only to slip red. heat flares in the gap between flesh and fade; isaac's lip catches itself, gnaws. he's never tried to fix this before.
it's only quite now that he realizes his own exhaustion, how much this has already taken. it's time to run. give this up, find his bag, and go. now, before anyone thinks to look past the misshapen door and its simple latch. before the noises draw attention, the fatal kind. ]
Hold still,
[ it isn't gentle. neither, the radiant pressure in his wounds, plastering itself between receded skin and air. power stirs. need be coaxed, managed, lest it leap to something that festers. words repeat under his breath, inaudible and orlesian.
he's good. this much he might still manage — another day, on fresher spirits and other injuries; here and now he struggles to stem even the worst of it. something in the walls won't hold: slides off the little hurts to leave knuckles and nose still streaming. layer by fragile layer, divided between the worst, will and repetition close the hollows (motion still jerking them to weep). leander's neck, his chest,
the arms are a problem. he's lost a lot of blood. and these, monuments to it. isaac's bag, his useless bag, is still far and away. the sheets closer, not so easy to tear as in the stories.
the story. he's going to need one. ]
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The blood seems darker with each passing moment, both in congealing and against the growing pallor of his skin. He has yet to close his eyes; they remain fixed on Isaac. A whisper:]
Here.
[One fistful of fabric slips free, and cramped fingers loosen to cover Isaac's wrist—slowly, lest he be scolded. (And because it's too heavy to move at any speed but this.) What little focus he can spare, he urges to flow through skin and bone, this time to assist. If he can. If it makes any difference. It might—this school always did come naturally.
It helps that he isn't moving. Isn't doing anything else at all but bleeding, and even less of that as the seconds move sluggishly on.
At length, with his bloody face and watery eyes, wearing a lethargic approximation of wonder—still staring—]
That was extraordinary.
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— it's too slow for that, but awareness shifts to his wrist with a discomfort absurd before its circumstance. strength flows, bone catches; the both of them rendered a temporary conduit. when he finally meets leander's eyes it's to whisper. ]
Shut up.
[ he turns to stand, already clawing a stained hand at his pocket for the crystal. the other drags a chair to the door. it's not much. it'll have to do: back pressed against it a cheap reinforcement.
(distance from leander, silent and chill)
the conversation is muffled. his voice is tight. ]
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Don't, he mouths, desperately tired. His arm lands gently, lies just there. Through the blur of his own eyelashes he watches Isaac reach the door, watches him secure it, and stay, and he closes his eyes and breathes. Listening.
Occasionally he tries to flex his fingers through their stiff chill, cracks an eye to one glittering slit to check they're actually moving. (They are.)]
hayyy
Silence, after it reaches the door, and then two knocks. The delivery is crisp, although the sound is muted. Nothing else accompanies them. ]
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blood trails from bed, to floor, to leander's heap. isaac's clothes — hands — are little cleaner. the front of him stains from kneeling, footsteps streak red. don't scream, he thinks to say,
but lexie was right: he didn't choose her carelessly. the battle of ghislain; the ambulance crew. the orlesian court. ]
He's stable.
[ enough. isaac sounds no less winded in the trade tongue (this much leander ought to hear) ]
I don't know what he was trying to accomplish. But I know what it will look like.
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Leander looks like her heart given form: sliced open in a hundred places. A perfect pinprick bead for each curl righted, carved lines from the merciless growth of tenderness she'd thrown up her arms to ward off, the darker red depths of truths that have seen no light but incisive green eyes or air but breath between lips pressed to their edges. Although she can see she'd been given the right of it, that it has slowed to stability, the vital weeping of his body had been made obvious, had soaked into everything, and the hawk in her chest shrieks a greeting-warning to see another winged shadow cast over its home.
Gold and emerald glints serpentine against the pristine white of her glove as Alexandrie crosses her arms against it. ]
Like a Sunburst brand. Or the gallows.
[ Perhaps for both men. In Orlesian, quietly: ] I will not play with only half a hand showing. Not at this table. [ Trade then, so both will know she asked: ] How came this?
[ Leander. Issac. The room. She would hold something in reserve, and she is neither in the mood to try and ascertain whether or not they are nor to dig after it. Alexandrie finds she can't spare a thought for her own reputation under the circumstances, but a secondary rumor of associating with maleficarum at her feet—she looks down, briefly, checking to make sure her hem hasn't dragged through any of the literal blood there—lends credence to the first, and if she remains a vocal ally of Thor's, Benedict's, as she means to, it will leap to them easily enough.
As much information as there is risk to her and those she deems hers. That is her buy-in.
(They would both be free, of course, to keep the coin of their knowledge, pay her in gilt wood and bet she will stay regardless. She will, and Isaac at least knows so, but there are three choices of whom she will play for in this room that holds both mages and blood, and this is a chance to sway her.) ]
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Of course it would be her. Something stirs, some sense of—not comfort, but something—a gathering. Some vague significance. He should resent the Lady's involvement, the further complexity it creates, but in this misty-edged moment he's simply content to see her.
And while he has faded (is still fading, by the smallest increments), he's been listening, too.
The first try is a soundless whisper. The next, he licks his lips, lingers in meandering distraction at the taste of blood, and finally manages,]
Everything he says,
[A pause, both to catch his breath in shallow puffs, and to create a moment of suspense—even the dying can multitask—as he turns his gaze on Isaac. Hooded eyes in a mask streaked with blood and liquid salt. He lets loose the only weapon he can reach:]
is the truth.
[Take that, fucker. Let's see what you do with it.
His eyes close; his brow knits in controlled discomfort as he tries to shift the jut of his hipbone to a marginally more comfortable position against the floor.]
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[ dry, before he can quite contain it.
well, fuck. agreement is more damning than any protest: returns him the burden of supplying a secret worth this liars’ story. agreement creates the illusion of alliance, where tolerance might have served.
isaac paces to the wardrobe, the better not to block the door. he needs a change of clothes. de fontaine needs to own some control of this scene, beyond the caress of metal, the invocation of doom. a grey wash of loathing sluices past, but however long tranquility has been held threat, it’s not one he’s cared to examine. the habit doesn’t break now. ]
These are Speaker Fabria’s rooms,
[ were, but she could read that on a list, and there’s little harm that can be done a dead man. if there’s value in this, it’s for words already said: ilias had been thoroughly apolitical, ilias had lately taken enough interest to take up asking her favours. isaac trusts she can spy between the lines. ]
We were close. [ the tip of his chin to leander, however reluctant, ] He wanted to go back. I don't know what he —
[ was trying to accomplish. a whistling breath. ]
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