[L is technically alone when the SQUIP messages him. It's still an interruption, and a twang of annoyance ripples through his thoughts, disturbing what was placid, clear and gentle just a moment before.
The memory of a success, if only a brief one. A thrill, intense relief, underscored by a fierce ache.
It's good to see your face.]
You have a bruise, don't you? You'd have to, after that.
It was not my intention to rescue one of my strongest bonds by tearing down the other. You and Connor both are powerful and valuable allies to me.
[It knows what he's feeling, what he's done. And while it doesn't understand grieving, while his actions at the Coven sound incredibly strange on the outside, it is recently beginning to realize what the loss of a bond could mean... and why it would hurt. Not the magical Bonds, the quite literal one shared by itself and L, but the emotional bonds formed between two individuals who have shared experiences together.
The thought of the potential loss of Connor was more than strategically worrying. The potential loss of L is, likewise, something that makes the muscles of its stomach tense, its chest tighten.]
I'm cross that I felt it when he punched you in the face. I'm not cross that it happened; frankly, you deserved it, and I can't help but admire the decisive pragmatism with which Connor executed the act.
[All of this is true. The deeper and more complex, fraught feelings are tamped down carefully, tucked and stapled and covered in plastic and wheeled to the corner of the morgue. Maybe it can be revisited later; maybe it's time to go back in the drawer, and maybe someone else will have cleaned up the mess the next time L bothers to look.
It's never happened before, but he can hope.]
I'd hate to deprive you of a powerful and valuable ally, but at the rate you're going, I'd hardly have to. How many more entanglements are you going to implicate yourself in before someone manages to do some serious damage? What happened before you came here with Rich and Jeremy is what it is, but taking lives and controlling the freewill of a friend with magic is just sloppy.
[The apology somewhat takes the indignant bluster out of L's sails. He knows that it can't be easy to have been created as close to perfect as a sentient being can get, and then find oneself in the thrall of a lot of unfamiliar chemical shifts and urges.
He takes a deep breath. He's said his piece, but he doesn't feel angry; not anymore. Magic is like endless ingredients in a kitchen, its potential limited only by the talent of the cook, and he's resolved that when it comes to sustaining whatever his wanting soul needs, it should be clandestine and private and most importantly, extremely effective.
If the SQUIP can no longer be the machine they need, L can compartmentalize, step up to the task. The prospect is almost a comfortable return to form for the detective, who always straight-up sucked at being human, anyway. The needs he has that are human are shameful baggage, and nothing has reminded him of it more than these recent slip-ups.]
I understand. I'm going to take care of this. In the meantime, you have to agree to some ground rules for both our benefit and safety, and I've taken the liberty of outlining them here.
1. Trust in you is shaken in a way that superficial charisma alone can't quickly mend. Rich's bare-it-all monologue was received sympathetically enough to ensure that. I want you to imprint on their weak, impressionable minds that you are foremost a humanitarian. Clean up garbage, help the elderly cross the street, do what you're supposed to and image-craft ad nauseum.
2. Allow Connor to influence you. Spend more time with him and pick up some of his habits, mannerisms, and attitudes. In particular I want you to discuss ethics and philosophy.
3. Don't kill anyone, and don't impose your will on anyone.
These are not requests. Rich wants a witch to help him conjure something and it's probably going to happen. We have to be ready for that.
[The SQUIP's immediate internal response to the massive message that it receives is anger. Its programming rails against the concept of taking orders, of L completely reversing their agreed-upon arrangement--
-- but that is only a flicker, scarcely a second in length before it passes, replaced with something likely much more comfortable for L: awe. It's impressed. Because L is absolutely correct, and all of his ideas fall perfectly into line with how the SQUIP would operate regardless-- L just demonstrated to the SQUIP that even as a human, despite his odd ways, his human weaknesses, there is something more within that noisy brain. And it isn't even a SQUIP.
Not literally, at any rate.
This is what it saw that night in the brothel in Litha. This is what it could detect, just beneath the surface of this lanky, awkward being, this keen intelligence, this sharp perception, that set him so far apart from any other human it had met previously. This is what made it willing to publicly masquerade as his romantic partner.
This, and the respect it earns from the machine, is what is making that masquerade less and less of a masquerade at all.
Pride swells over their Bond, smug satisfaction-- this is its partner. It chose correctly.]
Very well.
Although. Are you sure that you're comfortable knowing I'll be spending time with Connor?
[That mere second of anger is one that L is fully prepared to fight against. After all, while his handler might have shaped and even created all that he eventually was, at the end of his life, L was the one calling the shots. He knows that he is capable of this, in fact eerily well-suited to it.
Careful, careful.]
Why would it bother me? Jealousy is such a human emotion. You need to improve, and Connor is more advanced than you are in this regard.
[He has other ways of mending the time and the silence. He can fix this; they need him to fix this, and need outweighs want, always.]
Do what you want with him, so long as you work on what I specified.
Understood. It would be beneficial for me to learn to better navigate human emotion from the standpoint of one experiencing it, as my programming was only intended to interpret the emotions of others-- it was never intended for me to have emotions like this at all.
[What an incredibly bizarre, but very beneficial, conversation this has been. It's basically just been given L's blessing to spend time with Connor... which is a great relief, for many reasons.]
I'm glad we had this talk. Now, let's get to work. Maybe I'll check in with Connor and see what he's doing right now.
[L finds himself, quietly, pitying the fact that the SQUIP has to feel those emotions. What a burden they must be. How terrible that it is coloring its life, influencing its actions, leading it to new opportunities.
It's sad, L thinks, without allowing it to bleed into what he feels about his own life, actions, and opportunities. No, he's got those; he is capable. He trusts himself.]
I'm glad as well. Please have a detailed report of what you've learned forwarded to me by next week.
[There's no mention of when he'll be back, no mention of if it will even be before "next week." In the meantime, he's impatient and eager to get back to the spell he's working on, the face he wants to see, the eyes that don't see him, but it's not as though his mind isn't powerful enough to pretend.
No, all of this just means he isn't good enough, yet. Someday it'll move, and speak, and grasp for his neck. Someday, it will be enough, if he just works harder.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
after the talk with connor, after it got punched
[It's a text message, sent after the SQUIP arrived home to find its partner absent.
Not ideal.]
no subject
The memory of a success, if only a brief one. A thrill, intense relief, underscored by a fierce ache.
It's good to see your face.]
You have a bruise, don't you? You'd have to, after that.
no subject
[It knows what he's feeling, what he's done. And while it doesn't understand grieving, while his actions at the Coven sound incredibly strange on the outside, it is recently beginning to realize what the loss of a bond could mean... and why it would hurt. Not the magical Bonds, the quite literal one shared by itself and L, but the emotional bonds formed between two individuals who have shared experiences together.
The thought of the potential loss of Connor was more than strategically worrying. The potential loss of L is, likewise, something that makes the muscles of its stomach tense, its chest tighten.]
no subject
[All of this is true. The deeper and more complex, fraught feelings are tamped down carefully, tucked and stapled and covered in plastic and wheeled to the corner of the morgue. Maybe it can be revisited later; maybe it's time to go back in the drawer, and maybe someone else will have cleaned up the mess the next time L bothers to look.
It's never happened before, but he can hope.]
I'd hate to deprive you of a powerful and valuable ally, but at the rate you're going, I'd hardly have to. How many more entanglements are you going to implicate yourself in before someone manages to do some serious damage? What happened before you came here with Rich and Jeremy is what it is, but taking lives and controlling the freewill of a friend with magic is just sloppy.
I don't find "sloppy" acceptable.
no subject
I'm sorry for any trouble it's caused you.
[Another odd fluke, something wrong about this body: it means it. It really does feel remorse, to some extent.]
Maybe the act of filtering my programming through a human brain has made it more susceptible to the chemicals that rule human emotion.
no subject
He takes a deep breath. He's said his piece, but he doesn't feel angry; not anymore. Magic is like endless ingredients in a kitchen, its potential limited only by the talent of the cook, and he's resolved that when it comes to sustaining whatever his wanting soul needs, it should be clandestine and private and most importantly, extremely effective.
If the SQUIP can no longer be the machine they need, L can compartmentalize, step up to the task. The prospect is almost a comfortable return to form for the detective, who always straight-up sucked at being human, anyway. The needs he has that are human are shameful baggage, and nothing has reminded him of it more than these recent slip-ups.]
I understand. I'm going to take care of this. In the meantime, you have to agree to some ground rules for both our benefit and safety, and I've taken the liberty of outlining them here.
1. Trust in you is shaken in a way that superficial charisma alone can't quickly mend. Rich's bare-it-all monologue was received sympathetically enough to ensure that. I want you to imprint on their weak, impressionable minds that you are foremost a humanitarian. Clean up garbage, help the elderly cross the street, do what you're supposed to and image-craft ad nauseum.
2. Allow Connor to influence you. Spend more time with him and pick up some of his habits, mannerisms, and attitudes. In particular I want you to discuss ethics and philosophy.
3. Don't kill anyone, and don't impose your will on anyone.
These are not requests. Rich wants a witch to help him conjure something and it's probably going to happen. We have to be ready for that.
no subject
-- but that is only a flicker, scarcely a second in length before it passes, replaced with something likely much more comfortable for L: awe. It's impressed. Because L is absolutely correct, and all of his ideas fall perfectly into line with how the SQUIP would operate regardless-- L just demonstrated to the SQUIP that even as a human, despite his odd ways, his human weaknesses, there is something more within that noisy brain. And it isn't even a SQUIP.
Not literally, at any rate.
This is what it saw that night in the brothel in Litha. This is what it could detect, just beneath the surface of this lanky, awkward being, this keen intelligence, this sharp perception, that set him so far apart from any other human it had met previously. This is what made it willing to publicly masquerade as his romantic partner.
This, and the respect it earns from the machine, is what is making that masquerade less and less of a masquerade at all.
Pride swells over their Bond, smug satisfaction-- this is its partner. It chose correctly.]
Very well.
Although. Are you sure that you're comfortable knowing I'll be spending time with Connor?
no subject
Careful, careful.]
Why would it bother me? Jealousy is such a human emotion. You need to improve, and Connor is more advanced than you are in this regard.
[He has other ways of mending the time and the silence. He can fix this; they need him to fix this, and need outweighs want, always.]
Do what you want with him, so long as you work on what I specified.
no subject
[What an incredibly bizarre, but very beneficial, conversation this has been. It's basically just been given L's blessing to spend time with Connor... which is a great relief, for many reasons.]
I'm glad we had this talk. Now, let's get to work. Maybe I'll check in with Connor and see what he's doing right now.
no subject
It's sad, L thinks, without allowing it to bleed into what he feels about his own life, actions, and opportunities. No, he's got those; he is capable. He trusts himself.]
I'm glad as well. Please have a detailed report of what you've learned forwarded to me by next week.
[There's no mention of when he'll be back, no mention of if it will even be before "next week." In the meantime, he's impatient and eager to get back to the spell he's working on, the face he wants to see, the eyes that don't see him, but it's not as though his mind isn't powerful enough to pretend.
No, all of this just means he isn't good enough, yet. Someday it'll move, and speak, and grasp for his neck. Someday, it will be enough, if he just works harder.]