[The one thing they feel in perfect tandem is the disconnect. Its absence used to be what made Myr stand out vividly, from the rest of the incomprehensible grey mass. Now, it's difficult to remember what's normal, in no small part because L has already begun to construct a new normal with new rules and new secrets. He might have no technical home, but that doesn't mean he still doesn't need a place to lie down when all the dust has settled.
He won't crack, not when he's been so careful and his resolve is so firm. For both their sakes.]
Myr.
[The faun will be conflicted, of course. Perhaps it's a testament to just how good L is at manipulating people, even when he's not actively trying to. All the better to cap the poison.]
I appreciate that you came to talk to me.
[But he's too clever for it to put him at ease, rock him into a false sense of security. He'd be insulted, if he didn't believe with such certainty that Myr's intentions were so pure.]
That being said... I'm prepared to go to the Circle with you at any time. I won't make it more difficult than it needs to be, and I'll be alright.
[He's not sure that he will be, but there's such a sense of weightlessness that accompanies it. Selfless, almost graceful, and soon, Myr will step into the light again and wonder why a brief eclipse interrupted it.]
[The Circle still has such a different connotation to Myr that it takes him a moment to catch on to what L's saying he's prepared to do. Then the fur on the Faun's neck and shoulders bristles, his tail half-flagging with alarm.]
Sweet Andraste singing, Linden! I'm not here to annul our Bond.
[If he didn't understand exactly how keenly his Bonded felt the call of the Void he'd be insulted by the implication he took his vows so lightly. As it is it still hurts, the way it had when Rich accused him of wanting to take his fists to the dragon next. (Perhaps, in this case, because he isn't so perfect he hadn't briefly entertained the disloyal idea--and promptly been disgusted at himself.)
He gives a sharp shake of his head to dislodge the thought and takes another cautious step toward his Witch. This puts them in touching distance, now; here he could just reach out and lay a hand on L and take the comfort from that he sorely wants. That they both (surely) sorely need.]
I vowed to walk this path with you to its end, [and so long as you would have me, a traitor voice reminds him, and maybe it's not that L truly expects Myr to want this as he's decided himself that their association's run its course and they were better quit of it.
Well, fuck that! a small and defiant part of Myr says; and the rest of him stills at the thought because wasn't that exactly the level of selfish, grasping possession Mello regarded his mentor with?
No. No, don't entertain that doubt. Myr had never asked for L to fit any mold to deserve his loyalty and affection. Not that way.
But he'd also never meant their Bond as a trap or suicide pact, either. And if L thought it so...]
That hasn't changed. Whatever else might between us, amatus, that hasn't changed. Nor do I, [breath,] love you any less.
[The cultivated focus of the quiet room makes every syllable stand out more, and all the tonal variations and nuances are more crisp and vivid. It should be easier to hear the truth under such conditions, so why is L reacting so extremely, standing in haste to put his chair between them when Myr takes a cautious step closer? Everything Myr can feel through their Bond is shrouded in dim panic, sliced through periodically with sharp spikes of the same weightlessness that is nevertheless not the same. This isn't the soles of his feet peeling away from the ground; this is the ground suddenly dropping away, resulting in a state of heart-stopping free fall.
It's jarring, how his perception of any situation could be so wrong. It makes him regard Myr with distrust bordering on fear, swiftly trampling that border as his state escalates, taking with it his heartbeat and his breath.]
You don't have to talk like this.
[And he especially doesn't have to make it sound like it could be real when L's compass for such matters is already spinning.]
You've given this an admirable effort. It's more than most people would have, and you did it for far longer...
[Moderating his tone is proving difficult, so his words hasten, rattling off his tongue to get them out.]
...it's not your failure, Myr.
[Sometimes, something beloved or cherished turns rabid. There's only one thing to be done in such cases, preferably before awareness is wholly lost to madness.]
[Truth--however difficult, however painful--has ever been Myr's policy for their Bond. Even with himself, for all he is inclined to turning his inward gaze from whatever he should not feel, could not contemplate--because whether he would share it or no, L would ferret it out of him. Easier, then, and more honest (and more freeing) to say what it was he felt and thought from the start. Even if old habits still made him hedge it 'round with charity and gentleness, he has given L the truth--
But what is he to do when the truth is insufficient, when speaking it has driven his Bonded to panic and disbelief? He draws his head back, ears lowering, clearly and utterly stymied at L's insistence. Does he want this? Does he earnestly believe I want this? There is no feeling out the delicate threads of underlying motivation and reasoning when fear chokes their Bond to strangling. He can only lean on the patterns he has learned through half a year of sharing a heart with the detective; he can only remind himself that left unguided, all L's paths spiral in toward the Void.
It frightens him to be face-to-face with that once more; it is a fright that beats double-time with the pulse of L's own, demanding action: Confront it or run.
Myr takes a slow breath to quiet his racing pulse.]
And what, [softly, achingly controlled,] if that does not feel like love to me?
You are my Witch. My dear friend, my beloved. I need you and want you by my side. Leaving me isn't in my best interest and, [his tone rises, his ears flattening back in a stag's assertion,] throwing yourself away isn't penance.
[Silence follows, stretches on the space of three breaths as Myr masters himself.
When he speaks again it's so quiet as to demand attention:]
No life was ever redeemed by destroying it, L Lawliet.
[The truth is painful, and it's what L's dedicated his life to finding in all its dark desolation. Perhaps there's an inextricable association that makes it therefore impossible not to seek pain, and all but inevitable to brace for it even where it was never intended. Myr didn't come here intending to leave his Bonded, and that is absurd. Unbelievable. Actually insane, given what L knows and (perhaps more so) what his paranoia and guilt have led him to assume.
Later, he'll realize that such assumptions were unfair to Myr, whose honesty and faith remain in the end steadfast... but at the time, in the revulsion so far transcending mere disappointment felt through their Bond, there had been no other reasonable conclusion. It had taken root and gained traction in their two weeks apart. Accepting it as fact had been natural and even comforting to L, because at least the world made sense again, and now that it's been ripped away...
He should probably feel relief. Instead, it's more along the lines of confusion and anger, and combined with the fear, it's probably a miserable cocktail for his Bonded to have poured vicariously down his throat.
L freezes and stares at the use of his real name; if he doubted that Myr was sincere before, it's no longer the case, but his shoulders still curl inward, his arms pulling protectively against his core.]
Then I misunderstood... it seemed so clear at the time.
[It's disturbing, actually, how far off the mark he was if this really is true, and he's never far off the mark. At least, he shouldn't be. Either way, there are troubling implications.]
Why did it seem so clear?
[And, more importantly, what redemption is possible for the kind of man who can only see one grim and solitary ending? L may have changed and grown since what happened between them, but the past can't be changed, and Niles won't stop coming. When he arrives, the pain will only come back to Myr, continuing a cycle only a masochist would want to be a part of.]
[There is a razor edge of humor to Myr's tone, not meant to wound but made sharp by that threat of drowning in the emotions swamping their Bond. He is hardly in a fit state himself to weather the storm of L's dismay and upset, but there is no other recourse at the moment. That they've come to this perilous place is in no small part due to Myr's own neglect and withdrawal and it stands to him to fix it. But there are oh, so few tools left in his armamentarium and he is reduced to grasping at what he has; the bleak, black amusement of a man who'd seen half his friends winnowed before twenty is never far, all else failing.
Neither, though, is his innate need to draw his loved ones close when any of them are suffering; to fix and to tend whatever small things he is still competent for. He breathes out as much of his own distress as he can, puts his staff up, and holds out both hands to his Bonded.
(Having L flinch back from him mere moments ago hurt enough to make him wary, even if everything in him aches for an embrace.)]
Your Bonded walked away from you after witnessing the most shameful thing you've done in recent memory. You've likely not been eating or sleeping since then. Mello's gone and Niles isn't.
Shit accumulates. [A huff of a laugh punctuates the obscenity.] What was left to go wrong but I'd leave you? And that, at least, would've been final.
[L is tense and hesitant for a few watchful beats as Myr raises his staff only to momentarily stow it. His hands are open, an offer, welcoming. L's impulses to add and subtract distance are perfectly balanced in a span of indecision just long enough for Myr to explain his thoughts. L's already overlarge eyes widen as it unfolds, because it is...
...absurdly simple, all of it. To the point where he actually feels foolish that he needed to ask. More so, because Myr (as far as L knows, at least), is not aware of how he spends his solitary Friday evenings, or the fact that two of three nights are spent awake in a coffee shop or the Coven library instead of in any kind of home. L has myriad very elaborate reasons for why he chooses to do things the way he does, and in the end, none of them are actually good or satisfying.]
All of that's true.
[He picks his way back around the table, slowly, navigating around the chair with a careful shuffle. Again, he and Myr are almost close enough to touch.]
There's solace in finality, because it means that nothing else in fact can go wrong.
[He's not speaking of the end of a chapter, but of a book.]
I know it'll happen soon.
[He may have given Niles a reckless verbal nudge, after leaving Myr's sickened side.]
There are days I'm certain I'd fight him with everything, and there are days I...
[Well.]
I don't know what's right. I'm just so tired, and if we were to annul our Bond, today, it... would bring me comfort to think that you won't have to feel any part of this.
[His head in the harbor, his limbs scattered in districts throughout Geardagas, his torso rotting in a shallow grave in the Wilde. His imagination has supplied a lot of very vivid scenarios that he's not likely to come back from with any amount of healing magic or Coven-sanctioned resurrection, and he had told Niles, himself, to be thorough about it.]
[Myr would not aspire to measure himself against his Bonded's powers of deduction where much of the world was concerned; L had been Made peerless in that realm. But where it came to matters of the heart and all the woes, large and little, that could weigh someone down--that was Myr's particular expertise. To say nothing of his advantage of distance, bound at the heart with L but out from under the most immediate and crushing of the detective's concerns.
It is not a distance necessarily well- or gladly chosen, but he will take what he can from it and make best use of what he's wrought here.
Hearing L draw near--near enough to feel body heat across the gap of air between them--Myr reaches cautiously forward, fingers outstretched and tentative. Even without sight he knows how far he must go to touch, how to stop just shy of doing that and let L complete the contact as he would. If that is not to be--and oh, it may not, from the ache that echoes between them--then at least he has left L the option. Even if everything in him cries out to grab his Bonded and drag them both away from the gibbet L sees looming inexorably in his future, he will leave the choice.]
I do not know, [he says, soft and low,] I could bear any better the thought of you going through this alone.
[Whether it be death, as L expects, or less-than--as Niles had promised--the very certainty of it in L's mind is shattering to bear. It tears down all Myr's hopes of eucatastrophe waiting at the end of this, all his illusions that he could protect his Bonded, if only he were quick and clever enough. If only he hadn't ruined himself for a knight-enchanter's work--
Except if he hadn't, he would not have been the man who took so instantly to someone who sounded like home the way it was before everything shattered. He would not have had empathy for the wounded heart that protected itself by lashing out vilely at others; he would not have known what it is to feel the Void dragging on his limbs at every step and long for any kind of finality to free him from it.
His own night would not have been black enough to see L's stars in it, and there is something woundingly sad in that thought.]
Even if we can't succeed in evading him forever, [because that's what this really is, isn't it? It's a war of attrition. Niles would not stop unless killed or pulled back through his mirror. And L hadn't the endurance for it, not burdened as he was by the weight of his own sins. Eventually, no matter how Myr warded him, he would make the mistake that got him caught.
Or he would lie down and wait, thinking himself deserving of that ending.] I wouldn't abandon you to this. Bonded or not, a part of me would die to lose you.
[Breath in, breath out.] I can endure that, to know you weren't alone. Anything less...
[Myr's altruism can be really inconvenient. Even annoying, but... that being said, it goes toward filling a deep and aching hole, to hear his Bonded's earnest voice offering him support in the face of his own fatalistic deduction. It's not reassurance, quite, but that would be the wrong approach; it would make light of the situation's seriousness, which L's never appreciated or abided from anyone. Least of all in a dire situation like the one he-- no, they?-- currently face. It's better to face it head on and accept that the worst-case is a very possible, or even likely, scenario.
He finally closes the distance between them completely, stepping so that his wiry frame can lean into Myr's shorter and sturdier one, and the contact brings with it collapsing relief after desperate deprivation. His next inhalation shudders, and it's a moment before he can speak.]
I believe that you still care that much and... it's a problem. It means I can't keep you from pain, regardless of any approach or concession I make. I wouldn't ask you to endure it...
[Except that he rather has, by accepting a Bond in the first place. Perhaps even merely a friendship. Every day proves further to the detective the sheer foolishness of letting others close, to the point where they can be held hostage over his own decisions.]
You haven't felt a Bond break due to death, before. I won't ask for anything else, and I'll do whatever you want me to with my remaining time, if you just let me spare you from that likelihood.
[Inevitability, if they remain Bonded... though L chooses not to use that word, chooses to dwell instead in the momentary feeling of completion and peace that comes with being so close to his Bonded for the first time in weeks.]
[The Faun himself would be quick to demur from the charge of altruism, even if an outsider to their Bond would observe little in it for him but pain. (There wasn't--it was far from being suffering only, though he had not words to frame every moment of surpassing awe or quiet contentment or simple bone-deep satisfaction it brought him to be Bonded to L. As now, when his Witch finally consents to lean against him after weeks apart and he feels like he can breathe properly again, like everything trouble heaped up before them is just a little more surmountable.)]
I am choosing, [he continues, quiet,] because you would not ask.
[Because that is one of the sparks of goodness that he hoards up like fireflies, one of the proofs that L is on the path--however long, however dark--to his own best self.
A path that--despite L's own near-conviction on the matter--they are not due to step off any time soon. Myr tightens his arm around the detective's waist in mute comfort as L makes plain just which agony he thought to spare Myr from; mute, because there's a lump of sorrow in his throat at his Bonded's adamant willingness to protect him from pain. It's moments before he can swallow it down and shake his head where he's leaned it against L's shoulder.]
You needn't, amatus. As I said: I wouldn't have you face the dark alone.
[Then, with less iron surety:] He has told me he doesn't intend to kill you.
[Which could have all been an elaborate, months-long lie to keep Myr off his guard; it could have been part of an attempted false bargain to get his collusion against Mello and leave L the more vulnerable. But--somehow--he doesn't believe Niles would lie to him in this, whatever else the Chimera might have deceived him about.]
I think he believes he can be safe while leaving you alive, and not be hunted and hung for a murderer. [He doesn't understand.
And oh, how it writhes in Myr that he'd tried to warn Niles off the whole enterprise in terms that would make L's death seem the better option.]
[Myr's choice is unshakeable, more than L's; the Bond isn't even necessary to realize it. It's in the way he holds L back, the firmness in his voice, small but absolute tells that he doesn't mean to renege on his pledge. It's more than the detective really deserves, to the point where he wonders what masterful, if unintentional, manipulation has led to this upsetting juncture.
It wouldn't be upsetting, under any other circumstance. His bony body is as starved for touch as it is for actual, non-sugar nutrients, and he could wilt and nestle into Myr's arms for hours if allowed. But the faun's next words cause him to grow tense and rigid, not drawing away, but only because the instinct was scarcely suppressed.
Close to Myr's ear, there's a shallow exhalation, then brisk, frantic shaking of L's shaggy head.]
No, that... isn't right.
[It's the same tone one might use with a child who's made an understandable mathematical error, that is frustratingly dense all the same.]
He's going to kill me, if he bests me. He'd... really have to.
[He rattles off the words in a low monotone, as though calculating the odds of survival, disappointment, and... well, horrific retaliation carried out in a dreamlike state of involuntary, unrelenting cruelty.]
Myr, it's OK... I-
[Won't let you down, again.]
--I'll make sure he does more than he intends to. He's emotional and volatile; I can upset him to the point of fury and carelessness. I... can be a real prick, you know.
[Myr's rebuke is sharp and instant as the unsheathing of a sword; the anger that ripples and flares along their Bond likewise. For as much as he wants, achingly, to speak of none of this in favor of holding his Bonded in close and wordless comfort--it will only delay the problem, only make it worse, if he defers to address it now.
Because the path he's chosen to walk at L's side is long, and full of reversals. There will be missteps, deliberate and not; there will be stumbles, and they will have no small consequences when his Bonded is both so brilliant and ruthless as L is. There will be future moments of disappointment, despair, and they may not survive them if L's first instinct is to respond to his own monstrousness with a dart toward the nearest ledge, lake, or furious Chimera.
They may not even survive the next two weeks, no matter what Myr chooses to do now, but above and beyond all else he must claw for some kind of hope in the situation. He must act as if they will. And so he moves only far enough from his Bonded that they can stand face to face; he lifts his chin, even if he's off-angle, even if he can't meet L's gaze, he will act as if and let it carry him.]
You will not, [he repeats, more softly.] Because your death would be a shameful, awful waste with neither justice nor redemption in it.
[In no small part because you will take half my heart with you, should you die.]
What you did to Niles was indefensible. [The words are blunt. The emotion behind them is not crushing disappointment nor horror; it is not acceptance, either, but a quiet rejection of the act without turning aside the man who did it. It was not good you did this. I don't like it. But I love you no less.] You wounded yourself as much as him with it and you believe yourself unrecoverable.
You are not. Do you understand? You are not past redeeming, but destroying yourself for your sins isn't penance, any more than what you let Mello do to you.
[A breath, then, and his tone becomes more impassioned:] Nor what Niles will do to you. And if, [when,] he should get you from my side, do all you can to win free of him. Fight,amatus, for my sake if not your own.
You do not owe him this.
[Whatever else L owed--that ledger was far from balanced--he did not owe Niles his death or suffering; on that much Myr is adamant.]
[Whatever L was expecting out of Myr's reaction, it was something else. Melancholy acceptance, perhaps, even some kind of bittersweet relief. L has offered to remove the conflict so that the venom can drain away in its own time. Painful, perhaps, but ultimately necessary for whatever is left to heal.
Dazed, he blinks back at the face of what does come, and all of it is so difficult to package up neatly, put in a box with a label and shelved for later analysis. In realtime, it requires prompt reaction, and there is simply no way to react promptly to what is perhaps L's first genuine, full realization that there is more to his human worth than the sum of his actions, alone. At least in the eyes of his Bonded, one cruel turn wasn't cause to condemn, or approve of repayment in flesh or blood.
He thinks he understands. Myr's fierce words, tone and posture communicate ultimate sincerity. His anger is real, his passion a force to reckon with, and it's unnerving to L. Passion is spectacular; it can also be dangerous, when expressed by people who would probably be better off kept in a closed box for their entire lives.]
I don't want to die here, any more than I did back home.
[It's just that acceptance makes what feels inevitable a bit easier.]
I don't want to kill, either. You won't hate me, if "all I can do" results in something really...?
[It is a good point L raises: Is that not, of course, the crux of his Bonded's fear? Myr ducks his head in acknowledgment of that, though his verbal response is slower in coming.]
I will not hate you, [he says, at length, lifting his chin. He raises a hand to L's face, feeling to rest his palm against the curve of his Bonded's cheek.] Because I was raised to kill when I must, and war's never fair.
But, [a slow breath out,] there are laws in war and I would ask you not use that memory against him again, if you hold back nothing else. And if you must kill, kill cleanly.
Can you do that?
[There is something--deeply interesting--going on in the Bond between them, something he cannot resolve by feeling into it with half his attention. Even though he hasn't the facility to understand what's changed, it yet feels like a kind of hope to him. Something's made a difference. Something's begun to grow.
[Myr's acknowledgment of L's point, prolonged and thoughtful as it is, doesn't raise anxiousness on L's part. No, it's a sign that his concerns are being taken seriously, respected for the monsters they might mutate into if left unchecked.
With his palm resting against L's cheek, the faun will be able to feel a subtle, slow nod.]
I think so.
[He's as certain as he can possibly be, for one who has never taken a life directly before.]
[Myr rubs his thumb over the too-sharp curve of his Bonded's cheekbone, fond and gentle.]
I think, [softly now,] we ought to give the Coven their room back.
Come home with me? [An offer, not a demand. Even feeling what he does through their Bond, even having just ordered L to avoid his own death, he will not demand in this.]
My dreams have been, [nightmare-haunted, distressing,] lonely, of late.
[Even L's presence in his bed--let alone those dreams--would be proof against the worst of it. He misses it sore.]
[It's difficult not to melt into the contact, as soft and subtle as it is. He missed this, in a way that he only properly realizes after feeling it again after a long absence.]
Could I?
[Just for the night, of course. L never stays more than two of them consecutively with Myr, afraid to impose... but his current lifestyle would be hard even on a completely healthy body. Resting anywhere is a tempting offer, and resting alongside his Bonded is irresistible.]
[Whether it's for the night or--Myr would dearly wish, but knows better than to hope--much longer, L's welcome in his home... And not nearly so much of an imposition as the detective supposes. (Impose more, a part of Myr always, always wants to ask, but forebears. Though after the particular success he's had here in simply taking charge...perhaps not for much longer.)]
Let's go--straight there. We can both use the rest.
[Welcome home, L. He's missed this, too.]
Edited (finally noticed i had the wRONG ICON...... dang) 2020-05-23 03:37 (UTC)
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He won't crack, not when he's been so careful and his resolve is so firm. For both their sakes.]
Myr.
[The faun will be conflicted, of course. Perhaps it's a testament to just how good L is at manipulating people, even when he's not actively trying to. All the better to cap the poison.]
I appreciate that you came to talk to me.
[But he's too clever for it to put him at ease, rock him into a false sense of security. He'd be insulted, if he didn't believe with such certainty that Myr's intentions were so pure.]
That being said... I'm prepared to go to the Circle with you at any time. I won't make it more difficult than it needs to be, and I'll be alright.
[He's not sure that he will be, but there's such a sense of weightlessness that accompanies it. Selfless, almost graceful, and soon, Myr will step into the light again and wonder why a brief eclipse interrupted it.]
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Sweet Andraste singing, Linden! I'm not here to annul our Bond.
[If he didn't understand exactly how keenly his Bonded felt the call of the Void he'd be insulted by the implication he took his vows so lightly. As it is it still hurts, the way it had when Rich accused him of wanting to take his fists to the dragon next. (Perhaps, in this case, because he isn't so perfect he hadn't briefly entertained the disloyal idea--and promptly been disgusted at himself.)
He gives a sharp shake of his head to dislodge the thought and takes another cautious step toward his Witch. This puts them in touching distance, now; here he could just reach out and lay a hand on L and take the comfort from that he sorely wants. That they both (surely) sorely need.]
I vowed to walk this path with you to its end, [and so long as you would have me, a traitor voice reminds him, and maybe it's not that L truly expects Myr to want this as he's decided himself that their association's run its course and they were better quit of it.
Well, fuck that! a small and defiant part of Myr says; and the rest of him stills at the thought because wasn't that exactly the level of selfish, grasping possession Mello regarded his mentor with?
No. No, don't entertain that doubt. Myr had never asked for L to fit any mold to deserve his loyalty and affection. Not that way.
But he'd also never meant their Bond as a trap or suicide pact, either. And if L thought it so...]
That hasn't changed. Whatever else might between us, amatus, that hasn't changed. Nor do I, [breath,] love you any less.
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It's jarring, how his perception of any situation could be so wrong. It makes him regard Myr with distrust bordering on fear, swiftly trampling that border as his state escalates, taking with it his heartbeat and his breath.]
You don't have to talk like this.
[And he especially doesn't have to make it sound like it could be real when L's compass for such matters is already spinning.]
You've given this an admirable effort. It's more than most people would have, and you did it for far longer...
[Moderating his tone is proving difficult, so his words hasten, rattling off his tongue to get them out.]
...it's not your failure, Myr.
[Sometimes, something beloved or cherished turns rabid. There's only one thing to be done in such cases, preferably before awareness is wholly lost to madness.]
Can't you let me love you back, this way?
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But what is he to do when the truth is insufficient, when speaking it has driven his Bonded to panic and disbelief? He draws his head back, ears lowering, clearly and utterly stymied at L's insistence. Does he want this? Does he earnestly believe I want this? There is no feeling out the delicate threads of underlying motivation and reasoning when fear chokes their Bond to strangling. He can only lean on the patterns he has learned through half a year of sharing a heart with the detective; he can only remind himself that left unguided, all L's paths spiral in toward the Void.
It frightens him to be face-to-face with that once more; it is a fright that beats double-time with the pulse of L's own, demanding action: Confront it or run.
Myr takes a slow breath to quiet his racing pulse.]
And what, [softly, achingly controlled,] if that does not feel like love to me?
You are my Witch. My dear friend, my beloved. I need you and want you by my side. Leaving me isn't in my best interest and, [his tone rises, his ears flattening back in a stag's assertion,] throwing yourself away isn't penance.
[Silence follows, stretches on the space of three breaths as Myr masters himself.
When he speaks again it's so quiet as to demand attention:]
No life was ever redeemed by destroying it, L Lawliet.
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Later, he'll realize that such assumptions were unfair to Myr, whose honesty and faith remain in the end steadfast... but at the time, in the revulsion so far transcending mere disappointment felt through their Bond, there had been no other reasonable conclusion. It had taken root and gained traction in their two weeks apart. Accepting it as fact had been natural and even comforting to L, because at least the world made sense again, and now that it's been ripped away...
He should probably feel relief. Instead, it's more along the lines of confusion and anger, and combined with the fear, it's probably a miserable cocktail for his Bonded to have poured vicariously down his throat.
L freezes and stares at the use of his real name; if he doubted that Myr was sincere before, it's no longer the case, but his shoulders still curl inward, his arms pulling protectively against his core.]
Then I misunderstood... it seemed so clear at the time.
[It's disturbing, actually, how far off the mark he was if this really is true, and he's never far off the mark. At least, he shouldn't be. Either way, there are troubling implications.]
Why did it seem so clear?
[And, more importantly, what redemption is possible for the kind of man who can only see one grim and solitary ending? L may have changed and grown since what happened between them, but the past can't be changed, and Niles won't stop coming. When he arrives, the pain will only come back to Myr, continuing a cycle only a masochist would want to be a part of.]
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[There is a razor edge of humor to Myr's tone, not meant to wound but made sharp by that threat of drowning in the emotions swamping their Bond. He is hardly in a fit state himself to weather the storm of L's dismay and upset, but there is no other recourse at the moment. That they've come to this perilous place is in no small part due to Myr's own neglect and withdrawal and it stands to him to fix it. But there are oh, so few tools left in his armamentarium and he is reduced to grasping at what he has; the bleak, black amusement of a man who'd seen half his friends winnowed before twenty is never far, all else failing.
Neither, though, is his innate need to draw his loved ones close when any of them are suffering; to fix and to tend whatever small things he is still competent for. He breathes out as much of his own distress as he can, puts his staff up, and holds out both hands to his Bonded.
(Having L flinch back from him mere moments ago hurt enough to make him wary, even if everything in him aches for an embrace.)]
Your Bonded walked away from you after witnessing the most shameful thing you've done in recent memory. You've likely not been eating or sleeping since then. Mello's gone and Niles isn't.
Shit accumulates. [A huff of a laugh punctuates the obscenity.] What was left to go wrong but I'd leave you? And that, at least, would've been final.
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...absurdly simple, all of it. To the point where he actually feels foolish that he needed to ask. More so, because Myr (as far as L knows, at least), is not aware of how he spends his solitary Friday evenings, or the fact that two of three nights are spent awake in a coffee shop or the Coven library instead of in any kind of home. L has myriad very elaborate reasons for why he chooses to do things the way he does, and in the end, none of them are actually good or satisfying.]
All of that's true.
[He picks his way back around the table, slowly, navigating around the chair with a careful shuffle. Again, he and Myr are almost close enough to touch.]
There's solace in finality, because it means that nothing else in fact can go wrong.
[He's not speaking of the end of a chapter, but of a book.]
I know it'll happen soon.
[He may have given Niles a reckless verbal nudge, after leaving Myr's sickened side.]
There are days I'm certain I'd fight him with everything, and there are days I...
[Well.]
I don't know what's right. I'm just so tired, and if we were to annul our Bond, today, it... would bring me comfort to think that you won't have to feel any part of this.
[His head in the harbor, his limbs scattered in districts throughout Geardagas, his torso rotting in a shallow grave in the Wilde. His imagination has supplied a lot of very vivid scenarios that he's not likely to come back from with any amount of healing magic or Coven-sanctioned resurrection, and he had told Niles, himself, to be thorough about it.]
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It is not a distance necessarily well- or gladly chosen, but he will take what he can from it and make best use of what he's wrought here.
Hearing L draw near--near enough to feel body heat across the gap of air between them--Myr reaches cautiously forward, fingers outstretched and tentative. Even without sight he knows how far he must go to touch, how to stop just shy of doing that and let L complete the contact as he would. If that is not to be--and oh, it may not, from the ache that echoes between them--then at least he has left L the option. Even if everything in him cries out to grab his Bonded and drag them both away from the gibbet L sees looming inexorably in his future, he will leave the choice.]
I do not know, [he says, soft and low,] I could bear any better the thought of you going through this alone.
[Whether it be death, as L expects, or less-than--as Niles had promised--the very certainty of it in L's mind is shattering to bear. It tears down all Myr's hopes of eucatastrophe waiting at the end of this, all his illusions that he could protect his Bonded, if only he were quick and clever enough. If only he hadn't ruined himself for a knight-enchanter's work--
Except if he hadn't, he would not have been the man who took so instantly to someone who sounded like home the way it was before everything shattered. He would not have had empathy for the wounded heart that protected itself by lashing out vilely at others; he would not have known what it is to feel the Void dragging on his limbs at every step and long for any kind of finality to free him from it.
His own night would not have been black enough to see L's stars in it, and there is something woundingly sad in that thought.]
Even if we can't succeed in evading him forever, [because that's what this really is, isn't it? It's a war of attrition. Niles would not stop unless killed or pulled back through his mirror. And L hadn't the endurance for it, not burdened as he was by the weight of his own sins. Eventually, no matter how Myr warded him, he would make the mistake that got him caught.
Or he would lie down and wait, thinking himself deserving of that ending.] I wouldn't abandon you to this. Bonded or not, a part of me would die to lose you.
[Breath in, breath out.] I can endure that, to know you weren't alone. Anything less...
[Would be easy, measured against that yardstick.]
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He finally closes the distance between them completely, stepping so that his wiry frame can lean into Myr's shorter and sturdier one, and the contact brings with it collapsing relief after desperate deprivation. His next inhalation shudders, and it's a moment before he can speak.]
I believe that you still care that much and... it's a problem. It means I can't keep you from pain, regardless of any approach or concession I make. I wouldn't ask you to endure it...
[Except that he rather has, by accepting a Bond in the first place. Perhaps even merely a friendship. Every day proves further to the detective the sheer foolishness of letting others close, to the point where they can be held hostage over his own decisions.]
You haven't felt a Bond break due to death, before. I won't ask for anything else, and I'll do whatever you want me to with my remaining time, if you just let me spare you from that likelihood.
[Inevitability, if they remain Bonded... though L chooses not to use that word, chooses to dwell instead in the momentary feeling of completion and peace that comes with being so close to his Bonded for the first time in weeks.]
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[The Faun himself would be quick to demur from the charge of altruism, even if an outsider to their Bond would observe little in it for him but pain. (There wasn't--it was far from being suffering only, though he had not words to frame every moment of surpassing awe or quiet contentment or simple bone-deep satisfaction it brought him to be Bonded to L. As now, when his Witch finally consents to lean against him after weeks apart and he feels like he can breathe properly again, like everything trouble heaped up before them is just a little more surmountable.)]
I am choosing, [he continues, quiet,] because you would not ask.
[Because that is one of the sparks of goodness that he hoards up like fireflies, one of the proofs that L is on the path--however long, however dark--to his own best self.
A path that--despite L's own near-conviction on the matter--they are not due to step off any time soon. Myr tightens his arm around the detective's waist in mute comfort as L makes plain just which agony he thought to spare Myr from; mute, because there's a lump of sorrow in his throat at his Bonded's adamant willingness to protect him from pain. It's moments before he can swallow it down and shake his head where he's leaned it against L's shoulder.]
You needn't, amatus. As I said: I wouldn't have you face the dark alone.
[Then, with less iron surety:] He has told me he doesn't intend to kill you.
[Which could have all been an elaborate, months-long lie to keep Myr off his guard; it could have been part of an attempted false bargain to get his collusion against Mello and leave L the more vulnerable. But--somehow--he doesn't believe Niles would lie to him in this, whatever else the Chimera might have deceived him about.]
I think he believes he can be safe while leaving you alive, and not be hunted and hung for a murderer. [He doesn't understand.
And oh, how it writhes in Myr that he'd tried to warn Niles off the whole enterprise in terms that would make L's death seem the better option.]
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It wouldn't be upsetting, under any other circumstance. His bony body is as starved for touch as it is for actual, non-sugar nutrients, and he could wilt and nestle into Myr's arms for hours if allowed. But the faun's next words cause him to grow tense and rigid, not drawing away, but only because the instinct was scarcely suppressed.
Close to Myr's ear, there's a shallow exhalation, then brisk, frantic shaking of L's shaggy head.]
No, that... isn't right.
[It's the same tone one might use with a child who's made an understandable mathematical error, that is frustratingly dense all the same.]
He's going to kill me, if he bests me. He'd... really have to.
[He rattles off the words in a low monotone, as though calculating the odds of survival, disappointment, and... well, horrific retaliation carried out in a dreamlike state of involuntary, unrelenting cruelty.]
Myr, it's OK... I-
[Won't let you down, again.]
--I'll make sure he does more than he intends to. He's emotional and volatile; I can upset him to the point of fury and carelessness. I... can be a real prick, you know.
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[Myr's rebuke is sharp and instant as the unsheathing of a sword; the anger that ripples and flares along their Bond likewise. For as much as he wants, achingly, to speak of none of this in favor of holding his Bonded in close and wordless comfort--it will only delay the problem, only make it worse, if he defers to address it now.
Because the path he's chosen to walk at L's side is long, and full of reversals. There will be missteps, deliberate and not; there will be stumbles, and they will have no small consequences when his Bonded is both so brilliant and ruthless as L is. There will be future moments of disappointment, despair, and they may not survive them if L's first instinct is to respond to his own monstrousness with a dart toward the nearest ledge, lake, or furious Chimera.
They may not even survive the next two weeks, no matter what Myr chooses to do now, but above and beyond all else he must claw for some kind of hope in the situation. He must act as if they will. And so he moves only far enough from his Bonded that they can stand face to face; he lifts his chin, even if he's off-angle, even if he can't meet L's gaze, he will act as if and let it carry him.]
You will not, [he repeats, more softly.] Because your death would be a shameful, awful waste with neither justice nor redemption in it.
[In no small part because you will take half my heart with you, should you die.]
What you did to Niles was indefensible. [The words are blunt. The emotion behind them is not crushing disappointment nor horror; it is not acceptance, either, but a quiet rejection of the act without turning aside the man who did it. It was not good you did this. I don't like it. But I love you no less.] You wounded yourself as much as him with it and you believe yourself unrecoverable.
You are not. Do you understand? You are not past redeeming, but destroying yourself for your sins isn't penance, any more than what you let Mello do to you.
[A breath, then, and his tone becomes more impassioned:] Nor what Niles will do to you. And if, [when,] he should get you from my side, do all you can to win free of him. Fight, amatus, for my sake if not your own.
You do not owe him this.
[Whatever else L owed--that ledger was far from balanced--he did not owe Niles his death or suffering; on that much Myr is adamant.]
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Dazed, he blinks back at the face of what does come, and all of it is so difficult to package up neatly, put in a box with a label and shelved for later analysis. In realtime, it requires prompt reaction, and there is simply no way to react promptly to what is perhaps L's first genuine, full realization that there is more to his human worth than the sum of his actions, alone. At least in the eyes of his Bonded, one cruel turn wasn't cause to condemn, or approve of repayment in flesh or blood.
He thinks he understands. Myr's fierce words, tone and posture communicate ultimate sincerity. His anger is real, his passion a force to reckon with, and it's unnerving to L. Passion is spectacular; it can also be dangerous, when expressed by people who would probably be better off kept in a closed box for their entire lives.]
I don't want to die here, any more than I did back home.
[It's just that acceptance makes what feels inevitable a bit easier.]
I don't want to kill, either. You won't hate me, if "all I can do" results in something really...?
[...indefensible.]
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I will not hate you, [he says, at length, lifting his chin. He raises a hand to L's face, feeling to rest his palm against the curve of his Bonded's cheek.] Because I was raised to kill when I must, and war's never fair.
But, [a slow breath out,] there are laws in war and I would ask you not use that memory against him again, if you hold back nothing else. And if you must kill, kill cleanly.
Can you do that?
[There is something--deeply interesting--going on in the Bond between them, something he cannot resolve by feeling into it with half his attention. Even though he hasn't the facility to understand what's changed, it yet feels like a kind of hope to him. Something's made a difference. Something's begun to grow.
Pray they can keep that safe.]
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With his palm resting against L's cheek, the faun will be able to feel a subtle, slow nod.]
I think so.
[He's as certain as he can possibly be, for one who has never taken a life directly before.]
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Good.
[Myr rubs his thumb over the too-sharp curve of his Bonded's cheekbone, fond and gentle.]
I think, [softly now,] we ought to give the Coven their room back.
Come home with me? [An offer, not a demand. Even feeling what he does through their Bond, even having just ordered L to avoid his own death, he will not demand in this.]
My dreams have been, [nightmare-haunted, distressing,] lonely, of late.
[Even L's presence in his bed--let alone those dreams--would be proof against the worst of it. He misses it sore.]
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Could I?
[Just for the night, of course. L never stays more than two of them consecutively with Myr, afraid to impose... but his current lifestyle would be hard even on a completely healthy body. Resting anywhere is a tempting offer, and resting alongside his Bonded is irresistible.]
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[Whether it's for the night or--Myr would dearly wish, but knows better than to hope--much longer, L's welcome in his home... And not nearly so much of an imposition as the detective supposes. (Impose more, a part of Myr always, always wants to ask, but forebears. Though after the particular success he's had here in simply taking charge...perhaps not for much longer.)]
Let's go--straight there. We can both use the rest.
[Welcome home, L. He's missed this, too.]