[By the time the healers arrive, Myr has made it to a space of fragile peace where he can let go. Not even in the merely physical sense--though they hardly have to pry him from L's arm; it's a duty he gives up with shaken relief to those better-equipped to handle it--but an emotional, a spiritual sense as well.
This has spiraled (once again) beyond the abilities of a lone sheltered Circle mage. It isn't--maybe never was--his to control, for all his struggling, and even his endurance has limits. And there is something deeply seductive in what the healers offer, in taking all responsibilities beyond a simple accounting of himself entirely out of his hands. It feels safe. It feels like home and Hasmal's high encircling walls, with Templars to demarcate the boundaries of his world and tell him when he's gone as far as is permitted, as far as he's trained for.
They need nothing from him. They ask only questions he can answer without thinking.
So, like a swimmer gone beyond any hope of shore, he lets himself be pulled under the current of their regard.
He is quiet, pliant. Lets himself be reassured and told what they'd surmised; gives back what he knows of the situation. Answers questions, has his few answers. Submits to be scrubbed free of blood and, at last, left at the kitchen table with two potions to hand to tide him over until L awakens.
After a little deliberation on the late hour, he takes the one to bring on sleep and pillows his head on his arms right there where he sits.
Waking is thus a cramped affair but a convenient one for finding breakfast. Bread, jam, and butter are all things he can locate and set on the table with his head still in a gray fog from last night.
He's sitting in front of this cold repast when L finds him, food still untouched and hands folded before him on the table as in prayer. (The absent drifting of thought and emotion through their Bond shows him to be anything but praying; that is a focused activity, this is avoidance.)]
L.
[Wrong name. Myr feels the first little prickle of anxiety he has in a long time and gives a drowsy shake of his head.]
[L is starving. The modest breakfast is a tempting spread, light and sweet, just the sort of thing he goes in for, but he looks past it toward his groggy Bonded, trying to figure out what Myr needs. He recognizes something in the mood and the posture, because he's felt it, is feeling it now beyond the vicarious connection. Avoidance is the clear read; it's what keeps him from crossing a certain threshold, wondering if it would be better to retreat back to the bedroom, or the cottage's front door, but...
...those steps would take him back to Niles, tear his stitches out, mash the chimera into a wall. He'd deserve it for putting L in this painful place, for letting their feud double back to hurt Myr again. High on his cheekbones and creeping toward his hairline is a stinging warmth; it's shame, or something like it, but the impulse is there to take it out of this place that Myr made a home, give way to flight and dogged pursuit and this time, aim to kill so this never has to happen again.]
Oh, you... know, it's...
[The words stick in his throat, nothing like the easy flow of communication through their Bond.]
Fine.
[Really, this time. His head and heart are different matters entirely, which Myr must be able to feel; cracked and jagged things, scrambled like broken mirrors whose pieces have been kicked and scattered across the floor.
He glances up at his Bonded, looking so tired and miserable after sleeping at the table. Swallows; he's still parched.]
If... you need some time, I can go.
[He wants to take some of this crushing feeling, this weight, away from this house. Place it where it belongs, at Niles' feet, and finish it the way it should already have been finished.
[Myr's tone is far less foggy on that word; now that he's a reason to be awake, he's awake frightfully quickly. His usual emotions haven't found their way back to him yet but perhaps that's a blessing when so many of them seemed to be anger lately.
Perhaps this fog's a gift he can use, for whatever time it's granted him until it's gone.
He gestures in the vague direction of the food he's laid out and not eaten.]
Eat something. Drink something.
We need to talk.
[This needs to be done sooner than later, before his own engraved patterns betray him and put them both firmly back on the downward spiraling path he'd been heretofore unable to stop.
(Hadn't known enough to stop. Thank Niles at least for that.)]
[L nods, though Myr can't see the gesture, head hanging a little lower as he wraps clockwork fingers around the back of a chair and pulls it out just enough to tuck himself into the seat. As he reaches for a slice of bread, the notion occurs to him that it could be poisoned, something that he hasn't thought of in months... but if one thing would keep him from going after Niles, that would do it. He wonders, idly, which bite the poison would be in if it was, even as he understands that it would be ridiculous to call healers only to kill him later.
Unless Myr has learned more, while he was resting, and reached some new conclusion about what must be done? L takes a bite, chews thoughtfully, tries to detect any new flavor with a tongue that just hasn't been the same since Niles almost ripped it from his head.]
Who else have you talked to?
[The obvious question, to establish a baseline level of mutual understanding. Does Myr think he hurt himself? Does Myr know anything about Niles' involvement? Did Connor talk, did Niles talk? There are a few relevant variables.]
[One thing that had attracted Myr to L in the first place was the pure intellectual pleasure of sparring with a mind the faun knew outclassed his own.
It's that same knowledge, robbed now of sentiment, that leads him to discard any idea of dissembling without consideration.]
Niles contacted me to say it was all an accident. He'd jostled you too hard; you nearly took a fatal fall and he dug in with his claws to save you.
[He is, he realizes now, grateful to the Chimera for that. Grateful beyond reasoning that L isn't dead, even if it leaves him with so very many other exhausting messes to clean up.
How long he'll be able to let that gratitude rule him, rather than lower emotions... Remained to be see.]
You lied to me about all of this.
[Ah. There's the hurt begun to break through, emberglow through enfolding clouds.]
[L blinks, caught off-guard by the accuracy of the account, as well as its source. It digs at him, of course, being reminded that Niles rescued him after securing a win. Being reminded that he's fragile, and that he was in a position at all to be at the mercy of someone who should have destroyed him when he had the chance.
He's also reminded, of course, of the double life he's been leading this whole time. What had coaxed him out the door that first time, those ensuing times, wasn't the promise of a tender outing with Myr, but vicious chances to continue to prick and pull at Niles in a way that L felt he alone was entitled to. It's what's lent him vigor and motivation on days nothing else could. Like the addictions he'd set aside, it had consumed so much.]
All of that is right.
[Confirmed in a low voice. Niles' account, his own lies, whether blatantly spoken or simply by merit of omission. The spirit was the same. It came from a place of fear, that some sustaining presence he needed to keep living would be taken away from him if he was honest about what made him tick.]
When I found out he was still alive, for sure, it felt wrong to just leave it alone. Then I couldn't leave it alone, and I thought I could manage it without involving you, when it seemed like things were making you happy again.
[He hates that Niles talked. He hates that Niles talked after not letting him fall. Is this really the chimera's cowardly out?]
I have no excuse for myself.
[All of his efforts in other ways to be better, these last months, suddenly seem so trivial and meaningless.]
And also one of the hardest, most gutting things Myr has had to hear: You were not enough.
It is a reality that's stalked him for months but a realization he's only really inhabited since Niles' day-old revelation of L's double life. He wasn't enough: A sheltered home, a listening heart, a safe harbor weren't sufficient to repair what was amiss with the detective and never had been, for all the progress they had made.
(How much of that progress was real? He remembers clearly when L had turned a corner in his recovery, not so long after their shared dream. Had he found Niles then? Was that what had mattered most?)
Necessary, but not sufficient.
And Myr had known as much, too; he had said as much to L, had pointed to the wound in his Bonded that could only be redressed through justice rendered to the one L had injured. But Niles' attack had come so swift after--had not been justice--and the Chimera's apparent death had aborted the very idea of restitution being made.
(Now the fog's gone and all he wants to do is give up and weep again, until some other more responsible person comes to take this from his arms once more.)
Maker, forgive me. You gave me this task and in forgetting You I lost my way. ]
What do you believe we should do about this?
[Not I. Not you. Still we, though it's a heavy word to bear for all it's so small.]
[One fundamental truth of existence is that no one, ever, can be expected to be enough for one who is not himself complete or capable of standing on his own. It's too much to ask. It's too much to demand, it's certainly too much to expect even if a partner's intuition and dedication are preternaturally good, as L considers Myr's. He rests his hands on the table; heavier than they once were, colder, chafing at times at the knuckles and the wrists where tender skin makes contact with artificial materials. The clockwork fingers suffice for daily tasks and even magic, but regulating their grip remains a frustrating and imprecise challenge. It's not safe to reach for a lover's body, relegating L's to inanimate receptacle or disembodied voyeur.
Not that he's taken on such a role, since Mello. In his view, Niles turned him into a ghost without even the decency to leave a corpse, left him to haunt and burden this cottage Myr works so hard to keep well-lighted, clean and cheery. He took L's delicate, fine-fingered touch, left him with a tongue that can feel the syrupy texture of honey, but not taste its sweetness. Why even bother with honey, anymore, or sweetness in taste or touch?
Stealing eyepatches to add to a growing collection, driving a needle deeper into bundles of nerves through a pieced-together doll, tormenting through permitted nightmarish illusions, all feel like the only ways he's entitled to getting high anymore. It breaks up the hours in this cottage; it is activity and stimulation for an overactive mind that has been otherwise cut off from the world and the humans in it. One more glowing screen (or scrying basin) providing a momentary escape from a well-padded and comfortably-furnished cage.
His breath catches, because what Myr is asking for is a solution to... a solution. A broken and terrible solution, but one that was working in some way for L, for quite a long time. How does one put a cage inside another cage if it's not sufficient to contain a monster?
Maybe the food is poisoned. L takes another bite of bread, considers the gentle mercy of such a quiet, understated fix. He might as well be some dumb and trusting animal, for how willingly he swallows. And perhaps that's all he is, waiting for Myr to do the responsible and kind thing for creature ruled by impulse, victimizing others beyond its own ability to reason or regulate itself.]
There's what I believe, and what you'll consider an acceptable answer. I don't think they're reconcilable, Myr.
[Just as he doesn't really think that his Bonded has poisoned him. It's a comforting thought that gives a struggling mind and body reason to believe it deserves a bite of bread, in the end.]
[The blackest mark Myr counts against Niles--the one that drives him to wish the Chimera's death even when he rejects Niles' suffering as undeserved--is that they'd lost so much progress. The total extent of that loss hadn't even been obvious to the faun until this dismal breakfast where his Bonded sits contemplating whether a poisoning would be a kinder, quieter end. Glimpses of the parallels between the haven he'd constructed for his Witch and the crippling prison L had grown up in serve to turn Myr's stomach further. How could I have not noticed? How could we have gone so wrong?
Despite the sodden lump of misery in his gut, Myr picks up his own piece of bread and begins buttering it methodically. Some comforting fantasies need doing away with; have from the start, if he had not been too soft-hearted and partial to realize that.]
I'd hear them both, even so. Lay them out for me.
Then I'll give you my reasoning on the matter and we'll see what conclusions we draw.
[And as L makes that exposition, Myr will eat his piece of bread with the same grim determination of a man with his last meal.]
[Myr's eating, now, too. L watches in his gaunt, forlorn way, because while seriously entertaining the notion of his tenderhearted Bonded poisoning him was traipsing a bit too far into the territory of pure make-believe, this does dash it beyond even the most creatively magical thinking.
Just bread, after all. Just breakfast, after all; a jarringly mundane backdrop for the feat of mental acrobatics Myr is asking someone so tired to perform.]
I believe there's a way to deal with monsters.
[L's particular definition, at least the way the magic translates it, excludes creatures as understood by Aefenglom, at least on that basis alone. On L's tongue, with his context, it carries a darker meaning: human or not, those who take, and steal, and devour, and prey. Those who sustain themselves in a selfish cycle of eating and excrement, and always at the pain and expense of others. His definition, of course, includes Niles, as well as himself.]
I think you want me to say that I can change, and adapt, and reform, but that isn't...
[Time has shown that he can't, that offerings of light and kindness and mercy have been wasted on him. Whether his better nature was butchered by Niles, along with his hands and his mouth, or he never actually had more than an imitation to begin with, he belongs in the dark and the dirt, right there with him. Myr does not.]
I still don't think you'll let me leave you alone.
[The Bond won't; by this point, L will cling as hard as Myr, feel the pain of rejection and inadequacy and severance, and grieve its loss more than rejoice at his Bonded's liberation. His reaction, before Niles' attack, might have been to choose a direction in the Cwyld and start walking until a monster killed him or his unbonded feet lifted from the substrate in a flash of blinding light. Now, it would be to turn that hopelessness, destruction, and chaos on the one person who deserved it just as much as he did, reveling in the equilibrium and release.
Myr knows that's in his heart, that he has the capacity for it. He won't let L, any more than he had let him walk out the door a few minutes ago to rush straight back to Niles, again.
Prison, or poison, then, seem like the choices available to a monster locked and committed into such a cycle. Already, he's thinking of how he can balance the two tolerably with the use of potions, neutering and declawing and reducing himself to something harmlessly occupied and requiring no more space than a cell. He can find Mello's old contacts, make a deal with what money and talents he has left, and make himself smaller.
The decision is as good as made, but he still keeps his eyes on Myr, curious in spite of his outlook to hear his Bonded's thoughts on the matter. Maybe they're his idea, with slight modifications; maybe it's a key to a door he's overlooked repeatedly for never having expected it to exist at all.]
[Myr listens to all of this, said and unsaid; his ears flick, now and again, to follow the words as he makes a tidy end of his bread (and its unvoiced point). This is all ground they've tread before, though cast in a light more lurid and hopeless by the previous evening; this is the place, before, where he would give those steel-backed reassurances L's preemptively thought to refute. (You are not a monster, not irredeemable, not beyond help...)
He doesn't, now, but it's not that they've become untrue in the time since he'd said them last. It is that they are not enough (necessary, but not sufficient) to solve the problem before them; fine and bolstering words could pull someone out of a little mire, a small struggle, but would pale with repetition and sound untrue to someone drowning in a bog without even a glimpse of a path out of it.
Too obvious--though it always had been--that from where L's standing there are no paths out; and Myr...had not known well enough how to light the one he could see. Niles' "death" had broken apart his plans; L's melancholy had stymied the growth of new ones, and now they're all that much more tired and battered and the worse for wear because--
Because Myr hadn't known. Because people he'd trusted lied to him. For once, not your fault, though he wishes it were because that breed of anger is easier to work with than the sort carried for those he cares about.
Let that be. He picks up another piece of bread and applies himself to putting both butter and jam on it. Far more jam than he usually takes for himself.]
"A mage is fire made flesh and a demon asleep," [he quotes, of L's solution.] So you'd name yourself intractable and good-as take the brand, because you can't control yourself any longer. The Circle's fix.
[He finishes the piece of bread and feels for a plate to put it on, then pokes the whole affair across the table at his Witch.]
Let me suggest an alternative: You're not meant to do this on your own. You weren't raised to it because it didn't suit the people who made you.
[Who else might that apply to, Myrobalan?]
I told you before you're wounded for want of justice in what you did to Niles, as much as for want of justice for what he did to you. The two of you should stand trial for that and pay the restitution that's owed--him for your fingers and tongue, you for what you made him suffer in that memory and after.
And then once that's settled, we'd find you work outside this house--and I, [he breathes out a sigh; this is the hardest part for him,] will stop being your wall.
[It's abundantly clear he can't stand between L and Niles, and standing between L and the rest of the world had only made his Witch stifled, fearful--involuted and infected with only his resentments to brood on.]
[So much of what Myr could say in the way of reassurance is bound to fall on deaf ears. L's heard such encouragement before, only to slip and stumble, or make some inching infant progress that's rapidly undone by some other setback. It would be discouraging even to the most stubborn and determined heart, from both sides; no, what's needed is something concrete and tangible, an actual plan, which Myr serves up alongside a thick slice of bread heaped with enough butter and jam to at least summon a fragrance.
Myr sums up L's own solution, analogous to something terrible in his own world. A relief, still, to those whose circumstances were too crushing or overwhelming, a path that L would at least be tempted to take even with the best of circumstances. If he could silence the parts of his mind that drive him to damage, he could live a long and useful life, perhaps, but... no, Myr rejects the premise, considers it absolutely unacceptable to nullify in any way a mind sharp enough to cut.]
Stand... trial.
[Something he's never been asked to do, before. Myr wouldn't suggest it if he thought a ruling against him would result in too much time locked away, or the loss of something irrecoverable. Certainly it couldn't rival the daily pain and penance he puts himself through as a hobbled victim gouging back in petty ways at the pound of flesh that he believes will make him whole again.
It sounds absurd; maybe it's not even possible, given the Mirrorbound's uncertain status in Aefenglom, but if it is? He's listening, interested, engaged. The way Myr paves and paints the cobbled stones of a foreseeable and attainable future are especially anchoring, because none of it feels insurmountable or unfair. He's worked outside the home before, even when he had no home; it's given him purpose and meaning, with any money he earned an afterthought tossed into a drawer. And though he'd certainly never meant to be, had the very best and most protective of instincts and intentions... Myr had become a wall, of sorts. Meaning well, he'd kept the Sun from his Bonded, and he had wandered and found danger, anyway, because even walls needed room to breathe.]
It's different... not like what we've been doing.
[We, not I. L's accepting the tandem nature of the task, though it's slow to feel natural even after Myr's pointed observation that he's not meant to handle such matters by himself.]
It could work.
[He wants it to work. Not as a fix-all, they both realize the malady facing them has no perfect cure, but it would regain some of the progress they'd made and lost. Maybe they could save themselves from losing more.]
"Could work" I'll take, to not have another night like last night.
[There's a tangible lightening in Myr's mood at hearing L think through and accept what he's offered. It isn't a total balm to the pain weighing heavy on his heart--that will take time, and rebuilding shattered trust--but it is a much-needed palliative.
It would be different. But different is certainly what they need now, having seen the disastrous ends this path could lead them to.]
You can ill-afford any more of them, amatus.
[And now, now his fear and worry (and love, above all love) can be let to seep through; the horror of the near-miss they'd had and awful realization L truly was trapped in exactly the pattern Myr had warned Niles against. (For all the good it did.)
He lingers on it (lets it linger in the Bond) for only a handful of moments, shivering once in reaction, before steadying himself with a long breath out. Exhaustion has crept back in, too; his heart's been dragged over rocks and drugged sleep at a kitchen table is hardly the kind of refreshment one needed after that kind of shock.
But there is so much more to do now, now that they've set their feet once more on a better path. Getting up and acting on them...is harder, at this juncture.]
I've a visit to pay to Connor next, I think, [he says, half to L and half to himself.] And Azura. And you need something to drink, as much as you can stomach.
[It's telling on his state when he starts voicing the first thing to drift through the Bond.]
[Easier said than done, when it resulted from a long-held habit after L presumably weighed the risks and benefits and accepted them... but fortunately, the memory and misery of almost bleeding out are fresh in L's mind, like the flavor of a specific type of liquor on the morning of a brutal hangover. It makes it far easier to pledge cooperation with the sincere intention to follow through, though he realizes Myr's trust in him is bound to be broken for quite some time. Whether or not he had to lie is still something he is sorting through, but he can resolve; he can set, again, down a better path with his steadfast Bonded at his side. Myr knows where he's likely to falter, after all, where his control and judgment seem to slip, and it's better that he knows even if it seems a shameful thing to admit to.
Metal fingers clink against the glass pitcher's handle, and he pours himself a glass of water. He doesn't remember the healers' visit clearly, having been drugged already when they arrived and well into a state of shock before he was given another potion to gentle him into compelled sleep. He knows they would have replenished some of his lost blood, but actually keeping up with aftercare is a responsibility that falls to him. He needs to rehydrate, and stay on top of it so that Myr is assured that at least in this way, he's able to care for himself.
They're Bonded, so... that goes both ways, doesn't it, even if it comes more naturally to one of them?]
It can wait a few more hours, Myr. Those potions aren't like true sleep... which you need. If you require some sort of guarantee that I won't do something reckless while you're resting, you have my permission to tie me to the bedpost until you wake up.
[It is a long path--and the wrong time to contemplate the length of it, and all the very many stops they must make along the way, is when Myr is exhausted. Even so, he's a moment from protesting L's insistence that he sleep--it's right there, in the Bond and on the tip of his tongue--before he gives a sighing laugh and relents.
Not without some humor, though:]
Tie you up while I'm sleeping? That's a shameful waste; I'd far rather be awake for that.
[Half-meant, half-teasing, but entirely fond, though he's tired enough (and their Bond so precious a thing to him) that it's more a shell of a faun's fabled lust than the thing itself.
Still...
He picks himself up out of his chair at that thought, collecting the last of the bread to deliver to the wormipede that comes padding into the kitchen.]
But you're right, [he picks up, after a moment,] that all can wait; and I would sleep easier with you there.
[Tacit invitation to share the bed they have so many times before. That much at least has not changed for all the bruises to Myr's trust.]
[It startles laughter from L; the fact that it sounds so strange and unpracticed is the surest sign that it's real. He knows that Myr has no shortage of partners who are to his taste and able to keep up with the rigorous carnal demands of a faun. He knows that Myr cares deeply for him, even loves him, but... the role of beloved and lover don't always go hand-in-hand, and L, as a rule, doesn't permit himself to desire what he doesn't feel is a realistic goal.]
I'll... keep it in mind for the future, when wakefulness is a resource we can both afford.
[Who knows when that could be? It's still a fond notion, something to consider at least a distant, pleasant possibility instead of one absolutely ruled out by Myr simply not viewing him that way.
He reaches a hand down, keeping the clockwork fingers open and at ease in case the wormipede wants to nuzzle into a palm that is still flesh after it's claimed the prize of bread from Myr's.]
I won't go anywhere, as long as you do sleep. You don't seem to really need things very often but... when you do, it's very obvious.
[Myr meets his Bonded laugh for laugh, though his own's a quieter thing and more wistful. When wakefulness is a resource we can both afford embeds a painful truth about their Bond and how far they'd come to their own limits. Easier to feel optimistic about that now, after a relative triumph; but how they will inhabit it upon waking when so many problems yet remain...
Leave it for tomorrow. Likewise the comment on his own needs--expressed in L's utterly direct manner, it cuts right to the bone of Myr's cultivated and half-believed illusions about himself. The faun's tired enough, though, that it merely twinges sinking in, lodging near his heart for later rumination.
He lifts a hand to acknowledge the hit and concedes the field:] True enough, and I'd best get to it or I'll end up asleep Maker-knows-where again.
[That's his call to make his way to the bedroom, now that he's stowed the jam and butter. He starts that way, trailing a feeling behind them through their Bond like the fond touch of a hand through hair.
Crookytail, meanwhile, drops the slice of bread it's enthusiastically masticating to press its crummy face into L's hand. Antennae wreathe and wave around the detective's arm; you are still here, still the same size, still herd. All's well.
How nearly it might not have been is nothing a wormipede need concern itself with.]
[They're things, at least, that they won't need to deal with upon waking. L will spend more time recuperating once his body, tethered and soothed by the Bond, recognizes its own need, and he's likely to sleep long after Myr rises and departs to confront difficult conversations with other people.
For now, though, a velvet-soft worm is nuzzling into his palm, and then he's standing to follow something equally welcoming in spite of the distance of lingering dishonesty. The idea that Myr still thinks he can do better is inspiring, more nourishing to the soul than anything he's done by himself in the last months to feel that he and Niles might this time pull even.
He's inclined to feel it, even believe it, in terms as simple and trusting as the wormipede. He takes that spirit with him to bed, curling onto his side and resting a cheek against Myr's shoulder after he's removed and set aside his prosthetics.]
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This has spiraled (once again) beyond the abilities of a lone sheltered Circle mage. It isn't--maybe never was--his to control, for all his struggling, and even his endurance has limits. And there is something deeply seductive in what the healers offer, in taking all responsibilities beyond a simple accounting of himself entirely out of his hands. It feels safe. It feels like home and Hasmal's high encircling walls, with Templars to demarcate the boundaries of his world and tell him when he's gone as far as is permitted, as far as he's trained for.
They need nothing from him. They ask only questions he can answer without thinking.
So, like a swimmer gone beyond any hope of shore, he lets himself be pulled under the current of their regard.
He is quiet, pliant. Lets himself be reassured and told what they'd surmised; gives back what he knows of the situation. Answers questions, has his few answers. Submits to be scrubbed free of blood and, at last, left at the kitchen table with two potions to hand to tide him over until L awakens.
After a little deliberation on the late hour, he takes the one to bring on sleep and pillows his head on his arms right there where he sits.
Waking is thus a cramped affair but a convenient one for finding breakfast. Bread, jam, and butter are all things he can locate and set on the table with his head still in a gray fog from last night.
He's sitting in front of this cold repast when L finds him, food still untouched and hands folded before him on the table as in prayer. (The absent drifting of thought and emotion through their Bond shows him to be anything but praying; that is a focused activity, this is avoidance.)]
L.
[Wrong name. Myr feels the first little prickle of anxiety he has in a long time and gives a drowsy shake of his head.]
How's the arm?
no subject
...those steps would take him back to Niles, tear his stitches out, mash the chimera into a wall. He'd deserve it for putting L in this painful place, for letting their feud double back to hurt Myr again. High on his cheekbones and creeping toward his hairline is a stinging warmth; it's shame, or something like it, but the impulse is there to take it out of this place that Myr made a home, give way to flight and dogged pursuit and this time, aim to kill so this never has to happen again.]
Oh, you... know, it's...
[The words stick in his throat, nothing like the easy flow of communication through their Bond.]
Fine.
[Really, this time. His head and heart are different matters entirely, which Myr must be able to feel; cracked and jagged things, scrambled like broken mirrors whose pieces have been kicked and scattered across the floor.
He glances up at his Bonded, looking so tired and miserable after sleeping at the table. Swallows; he's still parched.]
If... you need some time, I can go.
[He wants to take some of this crushing feeling, this weight, away from this house. Place it where it belongs, at Niles' feet, and finish it the way it should already have been finished.
He actively hopes for Myr to tell him he can go.]
no subject
[Myr's tone is far less foggy on that word; now that he's a reason to be awake, he's awake frightfully quickly. His usual emotions haven't found their way back to him yet but perhaps that's a blessing when so many of them seemed to be anger lately.
Perhaps this fog's a gift he can use, for whatever time it's granted him until it's gone.
He gestures in the vague direction of the food he's laid out and not eaten.]
Eat something. Drink something.
We need to talk.
[This needs to be done sooner than later, before his own engraved patterns betray him and put them both firmly back on the downward spiraling path he'd been heretofore unable to stop.
(Hadn't known enough to stop. Thank Niles at least for that.)]
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Unless Myr has learned more, while he was resting, and reached some new conclusion about what must be done? L takes a bite, chews thoughtfully, tries to detect any new flavor with a tongue that just hasn't been the same since Niles almost ripped it from his head.]
Who else have you talked to?
[The obvious question, to establish a baseline level of mutual understanding. Does Myr think he hurt himself? Does Myr know anything about Niles' involvement? Did Connor talk, did Niles talk? There are a few relevant variables.]
no subject
It's that same knowledge, robbed now of sentiment, that leads him to discard any idea of dissembling without consideration.]
Niles contacted me to say it was all an accident. He'd jostled you too hard; you nearly took a fatal fall and he dug in with his claws to save you.
[He is, he realizes now, grateful to the Chimera for that. Grateful beyond reasoning that L isn't dead, even if it leaves him with so very many other exhausting messes to clean up.
How long he'll be able to let that gratitude rule him, rather than lower emotions... Remained to be see.]
You lied to me about all of this.
[Ah. There's the hurt begun to break through, emberglow through enfolding clouds.]
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He's also reminded, of course, of the double life he's been leading this whole time. What had coaxed him out the door that first time, those ensuing times, wasn't the promise of a tender outing with Myr, but vicious chances to continue to prick and pull at Niles in a way that L felt he alone was entitled to. It's what's lent him vigor and motivation on days nothing else could. Like the addictions he'd set aside, it had consumed so much.]
All of that is right.
[Confirmed in a low voice. Niles' account, his own lies, whether blatantly spoken or simply by merit of omission. The spirit was the same. It came from a place of fear, that some sustaining presence he needed to keep living would be taken away from him if he was honest about what made him tick.]
When I found out he was still alive, for sure, it felt wrong to just leave it alone. Then I couldn't leave it alone, and I thought I could manage it without involving you, when it seemed like things were making you happy again.
[He hates that Niles talked. He hates that Niles talked after not letting him fall. Is this really the chimera's cowardly out?]
I have no excuse for myself.
[All of his efforts in other ways to be better, these last months, suddenly seem so trivial and meaningless.]
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And also one of the hardest, most gutting things Myr has had to hear: You were not enough.
It is a reality that's stalked him for months but a realization he's only really inhabited since Niles' day-old revelation of L's double life. He wasn't enough: A sheltered home, a listening heart, a safe harbor weren't sufficient to repair what was amiss with the detective and never had been, for all the progress they had made.
(How much of that progress was real? He remembers clearly when L had turned a corner in his recovery, not so long after their shared dream. Had he found Niles then? Was that what had mattered most?)
Necessary, but not sufficient.
And Myr had known as much, too; he had said as much to L, had pointed to the wound in his Bonded that could only be redressed through justice rendered to the one L had injured. But Niles' attack had come so swift after--had not been justice--and the Chimera's apparent death had aborted the very idea of restitution being made.
(Now the fog's gone and all he wants to do is give up and weep again, until some other more responsible person comes to take this from his arms once more.)
Maker, forgive me. You gave me this task and in forgetting You I lost my way. ]
What do you believe we should do about this?
[Not I. Not you. Still we, though it's a heavy word to bear for all it's so small.]
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Not that he's taken on such a role, since Mello. In his view, Niles turned him into a ghost without even the decency to leave a corpse, left him to haunt and burden this cottage Myr works so hard to keep well-lighted, clean and cheery. He took L's delicate, fine-fingered touch, left him with a tongue that can feel the syrupy texture of honey, but not taste its sweetness. Why even bother with honey, anymore, or sweetness in taste or touch?
Stealing eyepatches to add to a growing collection, driving a needle deeper into bundles of nerves through a pieced-together doll, tormenting through permitted nightmarish illusions, all feel like the only ways he's entitled to getting high anymore. It breaks up the hours in this cottage; it is activity and stimulation for an overactive mind that has been otherwise cut off from the world and the humans in it. One more glowing screen (or scrying basin) providing a momentary escape from a well-padded and comfortably-furnished cage.
His breath catches, because what Myr is asking for is a solution to... a solution. A broken and terrible solution, but one that was working in some way for L, for quite a long time. How does one put a cage inside another cage if it's not sufficient to contain a monster?
Maybe the food is poisoned. L takes another bite of bread, considers the gentle mercy of such a quiet, understated fix. He might as well be some dumb and trusting animal, for how willingly he swallows. And perhaps that's all he is, waiting for Myr to do the responsible and kind thing for creature ruled by impulse, victimizing others beyond its own ability to reason or regulate itself.]
There's what I believe, and what you'll consider an acceptable answer. I don't think they're reconcilable, Myr.
[Just as he doesn't really think that his Bonded has poisoned him. It's a comforting thought that gives a struggling mind and body reason to believe it deserves a bite of bread, in the end.]
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Despite the sodden lump of misery in his gut, Myr picks up his own piece of bread and begins buttering it methodically. Some comforting fantasies need doing away with; have from the start, if he had not been too soft-hearted and partial to realize that.]
I'd hear them both, even so. Lay them out for me.
Then I'll give you my reasoning on the matter and we'll see what conclusions we draw.
[And as L makes that exposition, Myr will eat his piece of bread with the same grim determination of a man with his last meal.]
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Just bread, after all. Just breakfast, after all; a jarringly mundane backdrop for the feat of mental acrobatics Myr is asking someone so tired to perform.]
I believe there's a way to deal with monsters.
[L's particular definition, at least the way the magic translates it, excludes creatures as understood by Aefenglom, at least on that basis alone. On L's tongue, with his context, it carries a darker meaning: human or not, those who take, and steal, and devour, and prey. Those who sustain themselves in a selfish cycle of eating and excrement, and always at the pain and expense of others. His definition, of course, includes Niles, as well as himself.]
I think you want me to say that I can change, and adapt, and reform, but that isn't...
[Time has shown that he can't, that offerings of light and kindness and mercy have been wasted on him. Whether his better nature was butchered by Niles, along with his hands and his mouth, or he never actually had more than an imitation to begin with, he belongs in the dark and the dirt, right there with him. Myr does not.]
I still don't think you'll let me leave you alone.
[The Bond won't; by this point, L will cling as hard as Myr, feel the pain of rejection and inadequacy and severance, and grieve its loss more than rejoice at his Bonded's liberation. His reaction, before Niles' attack, might have been to choose a direction in the Cwyld and start walking until a monster killed him or his unbonded feet lifted from the substrate in a flash of blinding light. Now, it would be to turn that hopelessness, destruction, and chaos on the one person who deserved it just as much as he did, reveling in the equilibrium and release.
Myr knows that's in his heart, that he has the capacity for it. He won't let L, any more than he had let him walk out the door a few minutes ago to rush straight back to Niles, again.
Prison, or poison, then, seem like the choices available to a monster locked and committed into such a cycle. Already, he's thinking of how he can balance the two tolerably with the use of potions, neutering and declawing and reducing himself to something harmlessly occupied and requiring no more space than a cell. He can find Mello's old contacts, make a deal with what money and talents he has left, and make himself smaller.
The decision is as good as made, but he still keeps his eyes on Myr, curious in spite of his outlook to hear his Bonded's thoughts on the matter. Maybe they're his idea, with slight modifications; maybe it's a key to a door he's overlooked repeatedly for never having expected it to exist at all.]
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He doesn't, now, but it's not that they've become untrue in the time since he'd said them last. It is that they are not enough (necessary, but not sufficient) to solve the problem before them; fine and bolstering words could pull someone out of a little mire, a small struggle, but would pale with repetition and sound untrue to someone drowning in a bog without even a glimpse of a path out of it.
Too obvious--though it always had been--that from where L's standing there are no paths out; and Myr...had not known well enough how to light the one he could see. Niles' "death" had broken apart his plans; L's melancholy had stymied the growth of new ones, and now they're all that much more tired and battered and the worse for wear because--
Because Myr hadn't known. Because people he'd trusted lied to him. For once, not your fault, though he wishes it were because that breed of anger is easier to work with than the sort carried for those he cares about.
Let that be. He picks up another piece of bread and applies himself to putting both butter and jam on it. Far more jam than he usually takes for himself.]
"A mage is fire made flesh and a demon asleep," [he quotes, of L's solution.] So you'd name yourself intractable and good-as take the brand, because you can't control yourself any longer. The Circle's fix.
[He finishes the piece of bread and feels for a plate to put it on, then pokes the whole affair across the table at his Witch.]
Let me suggest an alternative: You're not meant to do this on your own. You weren't raised to it because it didn't suit the people who made you.
[Who else might that apply to, Myrobalan?]
I told you before you're wounded for want of justice in what you did to Niles, as much as for want of justice for what he did to you. The two of you should stand trial for that and pay the restitution that's owed--him for your fingers and tongue, you for what you made him suffer in that memory and after.
And then once that's settled, we'd find you work outside this house--and I, [he breathes out a sigh; this is the hardest part for him,] will stop being your wall.
[It's abundantly clear he can't stand between L and Niles, and standing between L and the rest of the world had only made his Witch stifled, fearful--involuted and infected with only his resentments to brood on.]
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Myr sums up L's own solution, analogous to something terrible in his own world. A relief, still, to those whose circumstances were too crushing or overwhelming, a path that L would at least be tempted to take even with the best of circumstances. If he could silence the parts of his mind that drive him to damage, he could live a long and useful life, perhaps, but... no, Myr rejects the premise, considers it absolutely unacceptable to nullify in any way a mind sharp enough to cut.]
Stand... trial.
[Something he's never been asked to do, before. Myr wouldn't suggest it if he thought a ruling against him would result in too much time locked away, or the loss of something irrecoverable. Certainly it couldn't rival the daily pain and penance he puts himself through as a hobbled victim gouging back in petty ways at the pound of flesh that he believes will make him whole again.
It sounds absurd; maybe it's not even possible, given the Mirrorbound's uncertain status in Aefenglom, but if it is? He's listening, interested, engaged. The way Myr paves and paints the cobbled stones of a foreseeable and attainable future are especially anchoring, because none of it feels insurmountable or unfair. He's worked outside the home before, even when he had no home; it's given him purpose and meaning, with any money he earned an afterthought tossed into a drawer. And though he'd certainly never meant to be, had the very best and most protective of instincts and intentions... Myr had become a wall, of sorts. Meaning well, he'd kept the Sun from his Bonded, and he had wandered and found danger, anyway, because even walls needed room to breathe.]
It's different... not like what we've been doing.
[We, not I. L's accepting the tandem nature of the task, though it's slow to feel natural even after Myr's pointed observation that he's not meant to handle such matters by himself.]
It could work.
[He wants it to work. Not as a fix-all, they both realize the malady facing them has no perfect cure, but it would regain some of the progress they'd made and lost. Maybe they could save themselves from losing more.]
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[There's a tangible lightening in Myr's mood at hearing L think through and accept what he's offered. It isn't a total balm to the pain weighing heavy on his heart--that will take time, and rebuilding shattered trust--but it is a much-needed palliative.
It would be different. But different is certainly what they need now, having seen the disastrous ends this path could lead them to.]
You can ill-afford any more of them, amatus.
[And now, now his fear and worry (and love, above all love) can be let to seep through; the horror of the near-miss they'd had and awful realization L truly was trapped in exactly the pattern Myr had warned Niles against. (For all the good it did.)
He lingers on it (lets it linger in the Bond) for only a handful of moments, shivering once in reaction, before steadying himself with a long breath out. Exhaustion has crept back in, too; his heart's been dragged over rocks and drugged sleep at a kitchen table is hardly the kind of refreshment one needed after that kind of shock.
But there is so much more to do now, now that they've set their feet once more on a better path. Getting up and acting on them...is harder, at this juncture.]
I've a visit to pay to Connor next, I think, [he says, half to L and half to himself.] And Azura. And you need something to drink, as much as you can stomach.
[It's telling on his state when he starts voicing the first thing to drift through the Bond.]
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[Easier said than done, when it resulted from a long-held habit after L presumably weighed the risks and benefits and accepted them... but fortunately, the memory and misery of almost bleeding out are fresh in L's mind, like the flavor of a specific type of liquor on the morning of a brutal hangover. It makes it far easier to pledge cooperation with the sincere intention to follow through, though he realizes Myr's trust in him is bound to be broken for quite some time. Whether or not he had to lie is still something he is sorting through, but he can resolve; he can set, again, down a better path with his steadfast Bonded at his side. Myr knows where he's likely to falter, after all, where his control and judgment seem to slip, and it's better that he knows even if it seems a shameful thing to admit to.
Metal fingers clink against the glass pitcher's handle, and he pours himself a glass of water. He doesn't remember the healers' visit clearly, having been drugged already when they arrived and well into a state of shock before he was given another potion to gentle him into compelled sleep. He knows they would have replenished some of his lost blood, but actually keeping up with aftercare is a responsibility that falls to him. He needs to rehydrate, and stay on top of it so that Myr is assured that at least in this way, he's able to care for himself.
They're Bonded, so... that goes both ways, doesn't it, even if it comes more naturally to one of them?]
It can wait a few more hours, Myr. Those potions aren't like true sleep... which you need. If you require some sort of guarantee that I won't do something reckless while you're resting, you have my permission to tie me to the bedpost until you wake up.
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Not without some humor, though:]
Tie you up while I'm sleeping? That's a shameful waste; I'd far rather be awake for that.
[Half-meant, half-teasing, but entirely fond, though he's tired enough (and their Bond so precious a thing to him) that it's more a shell of a faun's fabled lust than the thing itself.
Still...
He picks himself up out of his chair at that thought, collecting the last of the bread to deliver to the wormipede that comes padding into the kitchen.]
But you're right, [he picks up, after a moment,] that all can wait; and I would sleep easier with you there.
[Tacit invitation to share the bed they have so many times before. That much at least has not changed for all the bruises to Myr's trust.]
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I'll... keep it in mind for the future, when wakefulness is a resource we can both afford.
[Who knows when that could be? It's still a fond notion, something to consider at least a distant, pleasant possibility instead of one absolutely ruled out by Myr simply not viewing him that way.
He reaches a hand down, keeping the clockwork fingers open and at ease in case the wormipede wants to nuzzle into a palm that is still flesh after it's claimed the prize of bread from Myr's.]
I won't go anywhere, as long as you do sleep. You don't seem to really need things very often but... when you do, it's very obvious.
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Leave it for tomorrow. Likewise the comment on his own needs--expressed in L's utterly direct manner, it cuts right to the bone of Myr's cultivated and half-believed illusions about himself. The faun's tired enough, though, that it merely twinges sinking in, lodging near his heart for later rumination.
He lifts a hand to acknowledge the hit and concedes the field:] True enough, and I'd best get to it or I'll end up asleep Maker-knows-where again.
[That's his call to make his way to the bedroom, now that he's stowed the jam and butter. He starts that way, trailing a feeling behind them through their Bond like the fond touch of a hand through hair.
Crookytail, meanwhile, drops the slice of bread it's enthusiastically masticating to press its crummy face into L's hand. Antennae wreathe and wave around the detective's arm; you are still here, still the same size, still herd. All's well.
How nearly it might not have been is nothing a wormipede need concern itself with.]
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For now, though, a velvet-soft worm is nuzzling into his palm, and then he's standing to follow something equally welcoming in spite of the distance of lingering dishonesty. The idea that Myr still thinks he can do better is inspiring, more nourishing to the soul than anything he's done by himself in the last months to feel that he and Niles might this time pull even.
He's inclined to feel it, even believe it, in terms as simple and trusting as the wormipede. He takes that spirit with him to bed, curling onto his side and resting a cheek against Myr's shoulder after he's removed and set aside his prosthetics.]