[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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no subject
...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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
[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.]
no subject
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.
no subject
[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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
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.]
no subject
[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.]