[Myr listens to all of this, said and unsaid; his ears flick, now and again, to follow the words as he makes a tidy end of his bread (and its unvoiced point). This is all ground they've tread before, though cast in a light more lurid and hopeless by the previous evening; this is the place, before, where he would give those steel-backed reassurances L's preemptively thought to refute. (You are not a monster, not irredeemable, not beyond help...)
He doesn't, now, but it's not that they've become untrue in the time since he'd said them last. It is that they are not enough (necessary, but not sufficient) to solve the problem before them; fine and bolstering words could pull someone out of a little mire, a small struggle, but would pale with repetition and sound untrue to someone drowning in a bog without even a glimpse of a path out of it.
Too obvious--though it always had been--that from where L's standing there are no paths out; and Myr...had not known well enough how to light the one he could see. Niles' "death" had broken apart his plans; L's melancholy had stymied the growth of new ones, and now they're all that much more tired and battered and the worse for wear because--
Because Myr hadn't known. Because people he'd trusted lied to him. For once, not your fault, though he wishes it were because that breed of anger is easier to work with than the sort carried for those he cares about.
Let that be. He picks up another piece of bread and applies himself to putting both butter and jam on it. Far more jam than he usually takes for himself.]
"A mage is fire made flesh and a demon asleep," [he quotes, of L's solution.] So you'd name yourself intractable and good-as take the brand, because you can't control yourself any longer. The Circle's fix.
[He finishes the piece of bread and feels for a plate to put it on, then pokes the whole affair across the table at his Witch.]
Let me suggest an alternative: You're not meant to do this on your own. You weren't raised to it because it didn't suit the people who made you.
[Who else might that apply to, Myrobalan?]
I told you before you're wounded for want of justice in what you did to Niles, as much as for want of justice for what he did to you. The two of you should stand trial for that and pay the restitution that's owed--him for your fingers and tongue, you for what you made him suffer in that memory and after.
And then once that's settled, we'd find you work outside this house--and I, [he breathes out a sigh; this is the hardest part for him,] will stop being your wall.
[It's abundantly clear he can't stand between L and Niles, and standing between L and the rest of the world had only made his Witch stifled, fearful--involuted and infected with only his resentments to brood on.]
no subject
He doesn't, now, but it's not that they've become untrue in the time since he'd said them last. It is that they are not enough (necessary, but not sufficient) to solve the problem before them; fine and bolstering words could pull someone out of a little mire, a small struggle, but would pale with repetition and sound untrue to someone drowning in a bog without even a glimpse of a path out of it.
Too obvious--though it always had been--that from where L's standing there are no paths out; and Myr...had not known well enough how to light the one he could see. Niles' "death" had broken apart his plans; L's melancholy had stymied the growth of new ones, and now they're all that much more tired and battered and the worse for wear because--
Because Myr hadn't known. Because people he'd trusted lied to him. For once, not your fault, though he wishes it were because that breed of anger is easier to work with than the sort carried for those he cares about.
Let that be. He picks up another piece of bread and applies himself to putting both butter and jam on it. Far more jam than he usually takes for himself.]
"A mage is fire made flesh and a demon asleep," [he quotes, of L's solution.] So you'd name yourself intractable and good-as take the brand, because you can't control yourself any longer. The Circle's fix.
[He finishes the piece of bread and feels for a plate to put it on, then pokes the whole affair across the table at his Witch.]
Let me suggest an alternative: You're not meant to do this on your own. You weren't raised to it because it didn't suit the people who made you.
[Who else might that apply to, Myrobalan?]
I told you before you're wounded for want of justice in what you did to Niles, as much as for want of justice for what he did to you. The two of you should stand trial for that and pay the restitution that's owed--him for your fingers and tongue, you for what you made him suffer in that memory and after.
And then once that's settled, we'd find you work outside this house--and I, [he breathes out a sigh; this is the hardest part for him,] will stop being your wall.
[It's abundantly clear he can't stand between L and Niles, and standing between L and the rest of the world had only made his Witch stifled, fearful--involuted and infected with only his resentments to brood on.]