[From outside, L can feel the scattered confusion, the strange sense that something is missing or scrambled. It's bizarre, coming from a presence as reliably stable as Myr. He's frustrated, and maybe a touch afraid, because he's not drunk or drugged, but still somehow addled.
It's not like him. L's immediate instinct is to reassure, launching into a way to solve the problem through Divination first and other means if that doesn't work, but... there's also the notion, old and insidious, that suggests he's being somehow tricked or misled and taken for a fool. It's an insult, to believe that he is stupid enough to believe any of this. He doesn't think Myr is lying, but isn't that the definition of trust? Would he even be able to tell at this point?
He chews his lip for a moment, stepping into the cottage more carefully than he might, otherwise.]
Friday, like you said. Like we said...
[A prodding reminder that they had agreed on this, with a doubtful downturn at the end of the last word. He knows what he heard; he knows that the expectations set weren't unreasonable, though he's liable to believe that any time Myr spares him might be more happily spent elsewhere.]
It has become routine, and I would trust that alone, but we confirmed it on Wednesday.
[He wonders if Myr thinks what he thinks, which is that he's being gaslighted, led to believe something absurd and untrue, for no immediately explainable reason. The energy over the Bond is uneasy and anxious.]
[Myr shuts the door behind his Witch as he digests this answer, and the underlying roil of anxiety that merely feeds into his own. Friday, like you said.
Then what had he been late for? What was it that he was supposed to be doing, that he'd confirmed with L on Wednesday and then missed by hours tonight?
Having the object of their agreed-upon meeting left vague does feel cruel to him, like he's done something wrong and L's decided to drag him into the kind of mocking game he'd play with Rich.
Except L wouldn't do that to him, so wherever this feeling is false as a demon's visions in the Fade. Myr reaches up to rub at one temple, expression crumpling further in dismay.]
Yes, all right. It's Friday. But what were we going to do? What did I miss, Linden? I don't--
[Please, stay your hands in this matter, if only for a while.
...No, it isn't that he doesn't remember, exactly, it's--
Those of your friends, as well.]
--Didn't we cancel? [The abrupt shift in topic is accompanied by a plaintive tone he rarely uses. There is some reason to not want this conversation and even he, familiar as he is with his own internal world, has...no idea what it is.
[L's intention isn't to be cruel. This feels like navigating something dangerous; his intuition tells him to proceed cautiously and hold all of his cards very near his chest, but the cognitive dissonance is powerful. He's not supposed to need to with Myr. The kind of footwork that is exciting and expected with Light feels upsetting in this context.
Ah, there, an opening to strike. He won't lie to Myr about what they planned to do, although it would be interesting to see his reaction, whether Myr would admit to catching him in it or be trusting, relieved that he didn't need to find the answer himself.]
If we had canceled, you'd know what we had canceled. And there would be a reason.
[Quite clearly, Myr has no other obligations. He's here alone, and somehow, that is worse than Myr surrounded by amorous reveling fauns eager to fold him into hedonism.
The theory gains traction, takes on a life of its own. Myr doesn't want to talk; there is also a reason for that, and the newly forged weapon in his hands can chip away at it.]
Why would you cancel, Myr?
[Pointedly, it is you and not we. L never would; L wants to remind him, petulantly, that he values their time and what they have deemed important enough to work toward.]
It isn't. Myr doesn't understand why it is. Under any other condition he is certain that if he'd confessed to forgetting one of their appointments, or sleeping through it, L would just tell him what it was he'd missed.
(Never mind he isn't supposed to forget that sort of thing; never mind he keeps his calendar as meticulously tidy as his room, or as much as it could be around his erratic sleep schedule. He doesn't completely forget appointments with his Bonded. Not this way.)
If he could, he'd stare incredulously at his Witch at the reversal. He even does turn his face toward L, head lifting and shoulders stiffening. He doesn't know why he's under this sudden assault, doesn't know what's made L think he deserves it, but it's happening on his territory and there is a sneaking implication beneath those words he cannot abide--
(and a distraction, a distraction, a distraction from the ideas he cannot look at headlong, cannot think about, cannot act on,)]
Do you believe, [he enunciates the words carefully,] that I am lying to you about this, Linden?
[The framework of righteous offense behind the words is brittle with bewilderment, obvious to the Bond: Is he lying about this?
He doesn't have any idea because he doesn't know what he doesn't know.]
[The distance between them is always more than an arm's length. Whether or not L's doing it on purpose, his steps maintain it, giving him room to maneuver, think, and, if necessary, strike.
In the time he's known and been Bonded to Myr, his way of approaching problems has ebbed and flowed and adapted, in equal parts toward benefit and ruin. His habits can erode his clarity and sharpness, but Light's arrival heralded another piece of the detective slotting into a place it always was, and always belonged, something that slept at times but never truly left.]
I haven't decided anything. I need more information before I think that you are.
[He hasn't ruled it out, because he can't, because there is a glaring discrepancy he is being asked to ignore.]
[Myr's tone is brittle now, and quiet. He's noticed his own emotional disarray and begun trying to tamp it down--something that feels even more urgent now there's an unexpected opponent on the other side of his Bond--but everything is so abruptly precarious he's having little success at it.
[L doesn't know how to say that he's on Myr's side when he is so certain that something is wrong, compromised, perilous. In situations like these, there's one place he knows he can turn, and that seems handily out of the question. It leaves him without a true north, panicked, precarious.]
The source of this uncharacteristic lapse.
[That sounds harsh, doesn't it? Like L is blaming Myr, regardless. Pedal it back, or keep biting?]
I don't know, [Myr shoots back, pretense of control shattered and voice rising. He tosses his antlers in a stag's display, the charms on them jangling. Next he'd scrape a hoof on the floorboards, as if L were a rival in his territory (smells like one, like not-himself, like the other who's inserted himself into every good thing they had) to be driven off.
No. Myr turns himself bodily from that, stomping away from the front door to the far side of the room. Damn good thing there's nothing in here to trip him.]
I didn't know there was a lapse until you told me and you still won't fucking tell me what it is I've forgotten!
[Pivot. Stomp back, never crossing within L's personal space without any awareness of the avoidance. They are both so attuned to each other that something like this shouldn't happen, and yet--
And yet.]
Something--allegedly!--goes wrong with me and I forget a--supposed!--appointment and now I'm a case? A suspect? Or--
[Pivot. Back the other way again.]
Simply absurd for trying to hold to what I do remember, a ridiculous spectacle of a cripple who can't even remember the day of the week!
[There is real fear behind the gouges he digs in himself with those words; in the flexing of his hands and bristling of his fur and flagging of his tail. Is this what it means to finally go all the way mad?
Is L making the same choice his Circle did, confronted with the same evidence--]
[The name of L's arrow is concern, almost childish in its broad simplicity. The target is what complicates it, ever shifting into jarring false starts and ambiguous shadows.
He relaxes very slightly when Myr tilts his rack of antlers, increasing the distance between them, but is it just as likely that Myr views L as the threat?]
Memory is easily influenced and malleable. If you're lying, that'll become clear, and if you truly don't remember...
[Both options are bright red bullseyes, begging for L to bury his concern in them. Both are troubling, even potentially disastrous; both mean different things. It would be stressful to consider even if L was alone, but he isn't; Myr is pacing and openly (if indignantly) panicking, as well.
It reads as wholly genuine. L wouldn't doubt the assessment, if his trust and affection for Myr didn't run so deep. For all of Myr's insecurities, some of which he voices now, L has always rather put the faun's goodness and worthiness up on a pedestal. That means that he's biased; it means that his ability to sense Myr's lies could be hopelessly unreliable in a moment he needs that ability unblemished.]
If you truly don't remember, there's a reason for it. And if you're not lying to me, you want to know the reason, too.
[The reason matters more than the engagement, itself. It's arbitrary; L isn't sure if that's coming through, given Myr's fixation on what he forgot.]
[Difficult to know which is the worse accusation: That he's untrustworthy because he's mad, or because he's lying.
Myr halts his pacing with a jerk.]
What would ever make you think that I would lie to you? [Over something so stupid, so trivial, no less. It hurts less for the insult to Myr's integrity than that the man he's known--and loved--for the better part of two years could turn on him so.
He should not be surprised: L has implicitly assumed deceit from him before when there was none. But Myr's reserves of patience are holed and drained by the hideous anxiety that vibrates in the Bond between them; he has nothing to draw on to untangle the knots his Witch has gotten himself into.
And, too, it's a different kind of hurt to be accused of lying direct, instead of some gentle shaded falsehood meant to salve his Bonded's feelings.
L is right, though, damn him: Myr wants a reason for what's wrong with him more than he wants to maintain his pride by besting L in whatever convoluted game they're playing. He waits a scant moment more before stepping into the no-man's land between them. Just one step, then he drops to his knees before his Witch and bows his antlered head. He reaches, groping, for L, to find the nearer of his Witch's hands and bring it to press against his head.
It could be a fond gesture, if he were not wound so tight even self-simulated affection might shatter him.]
I do want to know. Come find your reason, diviner.
[He gave permission for this when they Bonded; his soul is open for one who'd walk it.
(He trusts so very, very much. L hasn't walked away yet.)]
[The suspicion for the lie is easy to justify on paper: something is untrue, and therefore, someone has lied. L, committed to finding the truth above all else, will simply uncover who has lied, and if it is Myr... well, Myr himself doesn't seem to realize it, in fact seems eager to disprove it. That bodes well for his earnestness, at least, the fact that he's willing to let an experienced Diviner look into his head to look for the missing pieces that they both believe are being hidden by the other.
There's no use speculating further until he has looked, found more to work with and base conclusions on. Myr brings his hand to his forehead before he can reach out himself, and he scrambles to clear his overactive mind that is already overheating, already out of calibration and off-kilter. He brushes aside an errant strand of Myr's bangs, perhaps a clumsy attempt at comfort combined with a grasp to buy himself a few more moments to recenter his thoughts.
He's only partly successful. What he feels, immediately, is disorientation that seeps over the Bond as tilting vertigo. His breath deepens in an attempt to soothe a building wave of nausea, and he's searching for a landmark to focus on, some kind of temporary true north that can steady him, but this is unfamiliar magic. It's off the beaten path of what he's studied, not a witch's magic, and nothing like the Fae illusions he's probably the most adept with when dealing with monsters' natural craft.]
It's...
[He's hoarse. Myr's mind provides him so much comfort, so often, but being near it now is miserable. It's like being handed two knotted balls of yarn, the same color but wildly different textures, and being asked to turn them into one sweater with a pair of al dente noodles.
It's a mess... there's a void here, something has canceled something else out and only fog remains...
He withdraws his hand, reaching for the back of a nearby chair to steady himself. The vertigo lingers.]
Give me a second.
[He'll give it another shot. He just needs to regroup, consider a different strategy that is more compatible and more likely to yield a good result. His usual techniques won't work; he can't form anything with the materials those turn up.]
You're just so confused.
[More helpless, than accusatory, but he doesn't consider how one already terrified of being thought mad might take that.]
[A drawback of Bonds, Myr has long known, is how easily one could get into an emotional mire with one's Bonded. It's the price of the openness he prizes and offers: If they'd kept themselves safely isolated as so many "for-business" pairs did, they would not bleed the worst of their feelings into each other in times like this.
They would not soar so high in mutual joy, either; though those days have been rare with L, they're something Myr treasures still. (All the more so for the serendipitous confluence of hard work and perfect circumstances it took to achieve them.) Yet in this cold, hard moment--this bruising moment where he kneels before his Witch with evidence of his mind's dissolution arrayed around them, and evidence of said Witch's mistrust echoing between them--the Faun briefly weighs those against the hollow-hearted emptiness of being unable to convince his Bonded he's not lying, and wonders if the balance squares.
O Maker, o Creating Glory, o Redeeming Lady, forgive me for thinking so.
The moment passes in silence. It isn't worth keeping when there are so many other things he need latch on to in his confusion; but letting go of that little piece of blackness doesn't leave Myr feeling any better when L delivers his interim assessment. (He hurts. Is it all right to look that square in the face and say his amatus had hurt him and he hasn't instantly forgiven it?
Could that be balanced against all the hurt he'd ever done L and been forgiven in?)]
Tell me something I don't know, [he grits out, punctuating it with a huffing non-laugh.] I've been confused since you came looking for me. Wait--
[He lifts a hand before L's "second" has expired, forestalling the immediate dive back into his head.] --before you go on, now that you've your initial evidence.
[It should be exculpatory, shouldn't it? Someone who was so confused couldn't be engaged in deliberate, malicious falsehood; he doesn't even know what he's supposed to be covering up!]
What is it I forgot?
[(The strands of a Naga's persuasion are almost no spell at all; the real effect is in what the hypnosis has made Myr's mind do to itself in trying to simultaneously carry out his orders and be the man he has always been.
He could not, would not interfere with L's investigation of the Evergreen Circle; but continuing to meet and pass on information without trying to dissuade his Bonded from the whole enterprise would not be staying out of things.
Better, then, to forget the point of conflict entirely.)]
[L needed more than a second. He's still dizzy, still trying to make sense of what had looked like something clear-cut and desolate in his Bonded's normally lush and coherent mind. He's anxious about going back, he's anxious about looking at it and trying to get close enough to navigate it. Maybe he's afraid that he's close enough to Myr's mental state that the confusion will rub off on him, and that's why he tenses, shifts his weight back when Myr raises his hand.
Injury, perhaps, and just heaping on the insults after.
He swallows, considering possibilities, wondering who else has been here and what influenced the once-familiar ground that's currently baffling both of them. Is it a risk to actually tell Myr? Could it compromise his case? Is another diviner using him as a vessel, siphoning off information that slips through that bare spot like a sieve?]
I want to tell you. Really, I do, but... depending on the catalyst for what I saw just now, it might not be safe.
[It does hurt, further, to have L recoil from him. It's a painful, perverted reminder of home, an involution of the nostalgia he's clung to in his darkest days in Aefenglom.
He sinks back to sit on his hocks, lifting both hands to hide his face. (Like his blindfold had slipped; like that self-inflicted scarring is what had driven L back from him.) Ears and shoulders both droop as he tries to breathe through the desolation of the moment and set his own emotions in order.
Depending on the catalyst, L had said, and there's at least something in there to grasp at as evidence that maybe he isn't just dissolving for no reason.
His voice is muffled when he speaks again:]
What is it, then? [And then,] --breathe, Linden. This hasn't killed me yet; you've time to breathe.
[Even if L has halfway turned on him, he's still Myr's Witch, and his sole lifeline out of this in the moment. Myr can lean back into the patterns they've laid down over months and borrow words from them even while he's struggling to feel anything more than self-eradicating despair.
[L's shoulders curl forward, stiff. This would be so much easier if he was the type who knew, instinctively, how to comfort. Hurting Myr isn't his goal, was never his goal, and yet it's like his words and reactions all have hidden razors. The paranoia that makes him a great detective is proving, as it often does, a handicap for helpfully relating to others.
He realizes that he isn't breathing, at least not properly. He fills his lungs like one very carefully pouring water, concerned about overflow.]
Have you... been with others, lately? Who have you seen?
[A relevant question, because clear-cutting doesn't happen by itself. Some willful hand (or strike of lightning) gets the process started, sets the spark that swells to flame. But perhaps the timing, and the phrasing, are blunt and unskilled.]
I need to know.
[As earnest as it is unfair, when he and Light are thick as thieves as a rule.]
[It's an unfairness Myr scarcely notices in ordinary times, because there is no reason here for him to make a secret of who he keeps company with. Even if Circle-bred reticence means he's not about to noise about who he's bedding--
Well, that's not really the question L's asking, though it's the first razor Myr seizes on to fling back while he's still bleeding. He opens his mouth--
--and shuts it again so quickly he nearly bites his own tongue. He's trying to help.
Awkward as the attempts always were, at least this isn't what happened to Niles.]
Keep breathing, [he advises, to distract himself from cruelty for cruelty's sake.] How recently do you need? The past week?
[He shouldn't be the one providing more of a framework for this odd interrogation, but here they are: Myr soothes his own hurts by building structure on structure, where L's dissolves in the wash of their emotions.]
[Barbs within barbs. Myr puts a hand over his face again and focuses a long moment on not hearing that all in the worst way possible.
Because you're a Faun and you think with your dick. Because even if you're a Faun you're not pretty enough anymore for anyone to want you unless they need something from you.
None of it is true. None of it is what L's saying, really, but the black little demon-voices in the back of Myr's mind never ever quite shut up no matter how much work he puts in.
Maker, grant me strength.]
Not, [he carefully measures the words,] the way you're implying; I've not slept with anyone new. I did speak to Niles a week ago, [about what? Can't examine that,] and messere Jin Guangyao dropped by with a Modranicht gift earlier this week. [Given who Myr had overheard slipping names to the Evergreen Circle... Though the Naga's is one name in a litany of a half-dozen, as Myr continues to recall everyone outside his routine contacts he'd encountered in his last week.] --And there was a little slip of a woman tonight at the meeting who did seem terribly interested in making my acquaintance, who said she had a thing for Fauns, but I'd wanted to...
[He trails off, voice and mind. The thought gets as far as talk to you before I, and then drops out, because he can't touch the reason he'd wanted to discuss bedding someone he picked up at a cult meeting with L, first.
(They'd tried to control him before; it's half the reason he and L had set the Friday meetings. Don't examine that.)]
Edited (verisimilitude. enjoy contract-tracing this dork, L, he's given everyone faunvid) 2021-02-04 06:54 (UTC)
[L's tone is clinical, his questions businesslike. He defaults neatly to the persona he works the most efficiently in, with less room for error, less room for errant and petty emotions to complicate what needs to be a smooth process.
He nods, committing the names and descriptions to memory, face and mind demonstrating no clear or strong emotions. His reaction to Niles' name isn't terribly different from those he doesn't recognize, but will certainly follow up on.]
So you are aware of the meetings. That's encouraging.
[More encouraging than not knowing the day of the week, at the very least.]
You'd wanted to...?
[He prompts. He's asking as a professional, truly, but maybe a tinge of something else creeps into what he asks.]
...go home with her, tonight? Or take her home?
[Why the "but?" Why the intermittent, sudden blanks, through their Bond?]
That goes against type for you. Is that the reason you didn't?
[L has seen no evidence that Myr goes in for "little slips" of partners, which is to say that he pays enough attention to notice trends.]
[When it's as much of a psychological intervention as an investigation, some kind of bedside manner might help... But the façade of cool and distant stability, absent (most) emotion, is at least something steady to lean on.
When Myr leans, and he does not now, for his hand has fallen to his lap and his expression gone oddly abstract. In a man with eyes, it would be the look of someone staring off into an infinity only he's privy to.]
...the reason I didn't what? [he finally says, ears lifting as his recollection of the conversation returns.
(She'd been out-of-type for him but he'd wondered if taking her home would help his cover, or better--get them information they hadn't known. The idea was distasteful but seemed practical. L might have been able to tell him how practical.
[L's voice is steady, level, patient. It also might not sound quite like the man Myr has come to known, the one he has Bonded with; this is a voice that never breaks or raises.
He squints, watching the strange shift, doing his best to draw a bead on it through the Bond.]
The reason you didn't sleep with her.
[As a faun probably would, with anyone willing... or, at least almost anyone.]
She was interested, wasn't she? And if you'd forgotten another obligation [ours] there would have been no reason for you to turn her down, right?
Likely because it would've upset you. [There's no processing of that thought; the response is automatic, spoken more to L's feelings--the look on L's face he remembered from that shared nightmare weeks ago and the fluttering confusion in the Bond from an unconsidered kiss--than the question asked. He doesn't know who it was he didn't sleep with or why but he knows himself well enough to know he'd avoid hurting his amatus, and that is enough in this instant of profound dislocation.
(A lurching, dizzying static between them as he tries to reorient himself on the interrogation. They'd just been talking about people he'd met in the last week, was that it? Met and slept with, or so L seems to be accusing. Was this an issue of infidelity?)
He lifts a hand to scrub it through the hair around one antler, frowning now.] I do know how you feel, you know. I'm not--I'm sorry I've been far slower in picking up on it than I should've been, but it's not an issue of my being repelled.
I simply don't want to hurt you further, when I don't know where your edges are. [After Mello. That had been a horrifying revelation, one to kill even a Faun's libido.
Quietly, then,] Though if it is hurting you that I'd sleep with someone else casually--that I'd even think of it--if that's what all this about, [the accusations of lying, that he'd forgotten something important that L couldn't tell him about,] I won't. I'd not be so unfair to you, amatus.
[There are true things in what Myr says... but blended, distorted, distressing. If Myr's intention had been to derail the clinical interrogation, that was perhaps the fastest and most effective way to manage it, and for a moment, L's only answer is blank silence, absent even of the typical background scraping and shuffling of preparing new tacks and strategies. It's just a moment of supreme, eerie stillness, the kind of quiet that's only so complete before an eruption of intense and primal violence.]
It's... no, it isn't about--
[Does Myr think he's so jealous and petty? What if he is? Is it obvious, does he look like a fool? Is Myr mocking what's obvious by pointing it out to him, now? Did he hear about what L had said, from Hector? The footing is slippery; the quiet still hasn't erupted, and as a result there's a vice-grip around his chest just waiting for it.
Recenter, recalibrate, reset.]
You're not responsible for anything I've come to feel. I'm not owed, or entitled, and I'm only asking about any of this because it's relevant.
[That's a lot of words, to say "I swear I'm not pathetic, please believe me." Too bad you can't unring this bell; too bad you can't manipulate your way into the kinds of things that just come naturally to those who are really and truly good.]
I'd call and consider it your business, except... there's a part of your mind that looks like a long string of operations canceling each other out in an ongoing attempt to balance something that doesn't add up, and I'm... trying to figure out why. I think a person was the deliberate catalyst, and so... I'm asking about people, who may have had access to you when your guard was down.
[The instinct to fight or flee is powerful. The stillness still hasn't broken; his ribs are a claustrophobic cage holding pure dense adrenaline, heavy enough to sink through the floor. He wouldn't dare to ever ask, and it's important that Myr realize that. It's so terribly important that Myr understand he's not been scheming and conniving and trying to figure out a way to possess what he has no right or claim to.]
[What does not show in L transmits itself to his Bonded, transmutes to an uneasy ruffling in the Faun's fur and the flagging of his tail. The sudden impulse to flee is unmistakeable as the stag struggles to overcome the man and get them both (get them all, because it's L's fear as much as it is his own) out of here. The fear's dragged him far enough out of his momentary fog to remember it is fog, that his mind is a chancy thing right now and he could at any moment slip into further madness if pushed wrong.
(And what would he mutilate this time--)
It's the sheer force of a mage's will that keeps Myr kneeling where he is and keeps his hands down despite the urge to grasp at his Witch and reassurance. But he is trembling as he does it, visibly, and his fingers knot in the fabric of his sleeves as he curls them there.
Breathe. BREATHE.
It's not working. It's not working but he needs to answer L's line of questioning, or offer some kind of reassurance, but he can't--]
Amatus. [A shallow breath in, pulling against a constriction fit to crush lungs and heart.] L, [and he would not use that name, were this not deadly serious,]
I can't hear you over your own fear.
[I don't know what to do and I'm terrified I can't be strong for both of us. Help me--]
[The Bond is hemorrhaging across neat partitions and divides. Maybe even Near and Light feel something of this, and that makes all of this so much worse. Weak and pitiful, hungry for things that shouldn’t matter to him, the warm gentle fiction and the stupid crush he occasionally takes comfort in is stripped and exposed.
He thought he’d hidden it well. He thought he’d done a good job keeping it from burdening one who deserved better. Is it out, is it on land now...?
He realizes that Myr is correct. His fear is deafening; he’s ruining what was good, because he got greedy.]
Sorry... I’m sorry. S—-
[An apology both excessive and half-formed. He’s got a job to do, and he’s failing; some part of him believed he stood a chance when it shouldn’t even have been a fantasy. He dropped the ball utterly on keeping Myr safe from something he can’t kill, and this time he can’t kick Myr from a dream that is here and horrible.
The door is tempting. The impulse to rifle through a medicine cabinet for some semblance of control is overwhelming. But even if he should be muzzled, he knows it’s wrong to leave his blinded, confounded Bonded this way.]
I’ll turn it off. I’m going to help you...
[He could be sick; he could use the chance to see what’s in the cabinets in Myr’s home away from him.]
Let me fix this.
[He needs help. Any help; already a plan is forming to find a problem solver, somewhere, so that he can solve a problem.
A problem remains, though: he can’t walk away from that look on his faun’s face.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
It's not like him. L's immediate instinct is to reassure, launching into a way to solve the problem through Divination first and other means if that doesn't work, but... there's also the notion, old and insidious, that suggests he's being somehow tricked or misled and taken for a fool. It's an insult, to believe that he is stupid enough to believe any of this. He doesn't think Myr is lying, but isn't that the definition of trust? Would he even be able to tell at this point?
He chews his lip for a moment, stepping into the cottage more carefully than he might, otherwise.]
Friday, like you said. Like we said...
[A prodding reminder that they had agreed on this, with a doubtful downturn at the end of the last word. He knows what he heard; he knows that the expectations set weren't unreasonable, though he's liable to believe that any time Myr spares him might be more happily spent elsewhere.]
It has become routine, and I would trust that alone, but we confirmed it on Wednesday.
[He wonders if Myr thinks what he thinks, which is that he's being gaslighted, led to believe something absurd and untrue, for no immediately explainable reason. The energy over the Bond is uneasy and anxious.]
no subject
Then what had he been late for? What was it that he was supposed to be doing, that he'd confirmed with L on Wednesday and then missed by hours tonight?
Having the object of their agreed-upon meeting left vague does feel cruel to him, like he's done something wrong and L's decided to drag him into the kind of mocking game he'd play with Rich.
Except L wouldn't do that to him, so wherever this feeling is false as a demon's visions in the Fade. Myr reaches up to rub at one temple, expression crumpling further in dismay.]
Yes, all right. It's Friday. But what were we going to do? What did I miss, Linden? I don't--
[Please, stay your hands in this matter, if only for a while.
...No, it isn't that he doesn't remember, exactly, it's--
Those of your friends, as well.]
--Didn't we cancel? [The abrupt shift in topic is accompanied by a plaintive tone he rarely uses. There is some reason to not want this conversation and even he, familiar as he is with his own internal world, has...no idea what it is.
Only that it needs to be avoided.]
no subject
Ah, there, an opening to strike. He won't lie to Myr about what they planned to do, although it would be interesting to see his reaction, whether Myr would admit to catching him in it or be trusting, relieved that he didn't need to find the answer himself.]
If we had canceled, you'd know what we had canceled. And there would be a reason.
[Quite clearly, Myr has no other obligations. He's here alone, and somehow, that is worse than Myr surrounded by amorous reveling fauns eager to fold him into hedonism.
The theory gains traction, takes on a life of its own. Myr doesn't want to talk; there is also a reason for that, and the newly forged weapon in his hands can chip away at it.]
Why would you cancel, Myr?
[Pointedly, it is you and not we. L never would; L wants to remind him, petulantly, that he values their time and what they have deemed important enough to work toward.]
no subject
It isn't. Myr doesn't understand why it is. Under any other condition he is certain that if he'd confessed to forgetting one of their appointments, or sleeping through it, L would just tell him what it was he'd missed.
(Never mind he isn't supposed to forget that sort of thing; never mind he keeps his calendar as meticulously tidy as his room, or as much as it could be around his erratic sleep schedule. He doesn't completely forget appointments with his Bonded. Not this way.)
If he could, he'd stare incredulously at his Witch at the reversal. He even does turn his face toward L, head lifting and shoulders stiffening. He doesn't know why he's under this sudden assault, doesn't know what's made L think he deserves it, but it's happening on his territory and there is a sneaking implication beneath those words he cannot abide--
(and a distraction, a distraction, a distraction from the ideas he cannot look at headlong, cannot think about, cannot act on,)]
Do you believe, [he enunciates the words carefully,] that I am lying to you about this, Linden?
[The framework of righteous offense behind the words is brittle with bewilderment, obvious to the Bond: Is he lying about this?
He doesn't have any idea because he doesn't know what he doesn't know.]
no subject
In the time he's known and been Bonded to Myr, his way of approaching problems has ebbed and flowed and adapted, in equal parts toward benefit and ruin. His habits can erode his clarity and sharpness, but Light's arrival heralded another piece of the detective slotting into a place it always was, and always belonged, something that slept at times but never truly left.]
I haven't decided anything. I need more information before I think that you are.
[He hasn't ruled it out, because he can't, because there is a glaring discrepancy he is being asked to ignore.]
no subject
[Myr's tone is brittle now, and quiet. He's noticed his own emotional disarray and begun trying to tamp it down--something that feels even more urgent now there's an unexpected opponent on the other side of his Bond--but everything is so abruptly precarious he's having little success at it.
What's wrong with me?
And what is it he's done to L?]
no subject
The source of this uncharacteristic lapse.
[That sounds harsh, doesn't it? Like L is blaming Myr, regardless. Pedal it back, or keep biting?]
The degree of absurdity you're aware of, also.
no subject
No. Myr turns himself bodily from that, stomping away from the front door to the far side of the room. Damn good thing there's nothing in here to trip him.]
I didn't know there was a lapse until you told me and you still won't fucking tell me what it is I've forgotten!
[Pivot. Stomp back, never crossing within L's personal space without any awareness of the avoidance. They are both so attuned to each other that something like this shouldn't happen, and yet--
And yet.]
Something--allegedly!--goes wrong with me and I forget a--supposed!--appointment and now I'm a case? A suspect? Or--
[Pivot. Back the other way again.]
Simply absurd for trying to hold to what I do remember, a ridiculous spectacle of a cripple who can't even remember the day of the week!
[There is real fear behind the gouges he digs in himself with those words; in the flexing of his hands and bristling of his fur and flagging of his tail. Is this what it means to finally go all the way mad?
Is L making the same choice his Circle did, confronted with the same evidence--]no subject
He relaxes very slightly when Myr tilts his rack of antlers, increasing the distance between them, but is it just as likely that Myr views L as the threat?]
Memory is easily influenced and malleable. If you're lying, that'll become clear, and if you truly don't remember...
[Both options are bright red bullseyes, begging for L to bury his concern in them. Both are troubling, even potentially disastrous; both mean different things. It would be stressful to consider even if L was alone, but he isn't; Myr is pacing and openly (if indignantly) panicking, as well.
It reads as wholly genuine. L wouldn't doubt the assessment, if his trust and affection for Myr didn't run so deep. For all of Myr's insecurities, some of which he voices now, L has always rather put the faun's goodness and worthiness up on a pedestal. That means that he's biased; it means that his ability to sense Myr's lies could be hopelessly unreliable in a moment he needs that ability unblemished.]
If you truly don't remember, there's a reason for it. And if you're not lying to me, you want to know the reason, too.
[The reason matters more than the engagement, itself. It's arbitrary; L isn't sure if that's coming through, given Myr's fixation on what he forgot.]
no subject
Myr halts his pacing with a jerk.]
What would ever make you think that I would lie to you? [Over something so stupid, so trivial, no less. It hurts less for the insult to Myr's integrity than that the man he's known--and loved--for the better part of two years could turn on him so.
He should not be surprised: L has implicitly assumed deceit from him before when there was none. But Myr's reserves of patience are holed and drained by the hideous anxiety that vibrates in the Bond between them; he has nothing to draw on to untangle the knots his Witch has gotten himself into.
And, too, it's a different kind of hurt to be accused of lying direct, instead of some gentle shaded falsehood meant to salve his Bonded's feelings.
L is right, though, damn him: Myr wants a reason for what's wrong with him more than he wants to maintain his pride by besting L in whatever convoluted game they're playing. He waits a scant moment more before stepping into the no-man's land between them. Just one step, then he drops to his knees before his Witch and bows his antlered head. He reaches, groping, for L, to find the nearer of his Witch's hands and bring it to press against his head.
It could be a fond gesture, if he were not wound so tight even self-simulated affection might shatter him.]
I do want to know. Come find your reason, diviner.
[He gave permission for this when they Bonded; his soul is open for one who'd walk it.
(He trusts so very, very much. L hasn't walked away yet.)]
no subject
There's no use speculating further until he has looked, found more to work with and base conclusions on. Myr brings his hand to his forehead before he can reach out himself, and he scrambles to clear his overactive mind that is already overheating, already out of calibration and off-kilter. He brushes aside an errant strand of Myr's bangs, perhaps a clumsy attempt at comfort combined with a grasp to buy himself a few more moments to recenter his thoughts.
He's only partly successful. What he feels, immediately, is disorientation that seeps over the Bond as tilting vertigo. His breath deepens in an attempt to soothe a building wave of nausea, and he's searching for a landmark to focus on, some kind of temporary true north that can steady him, but this is unfamiliar magic. It's off the beaten path of what he's studied, not a witch's magic, and nothing like the Fae illusions he's probably the most adept with when dealing with monsters' natural craft.]
It's...
[He's hoarse. Myr's mind provides him so much comfort, so often, but being near it now is miserable. It's like being handed two knotted balls of yarn, the same color but wildly different textures, and being asked to turn them into one sweater with a pair of al dente noodles.
It's a mess... there's a void here, something has canceled something else out and only fog remains...
He withdraws his hand, reaching for the back of a nearby chair to steady himself. The vertigo lingers.]
Give me a second.
[He'll give it another shot. He just needs to regroup, consider a different strategy that is more compatible and more likely to yield a good result. His usual techniques won't work; he can't form anything with the materials those turn up.]
You're just so confused.
[More helpless, than accusatory, but he doesn't consider how one already terrified of being thought mad might take that.]
no subject
They would not soar so high in mutual joy, either; though those days have been rare with L, they're something Myr treasures still. (All the more so for the serendipitous confluence of hard work and perfect circumstances it took to achieve them.) Yet in this cold, hard moment--this bruising moment where he kneels before his Witch with evidence of his mind's dissolution arrayed around them, and evidence of said Witch's mistrust echoing between them--the Faun briefly weighs those against the hollow-hearted emptiness of being unable to convince his Bonded he's not lying, and wonders if the balance squares.
O Maker, o Creating Glory, o Redeeming Lady, forgive me for thinking so.
The moment passes in silence. It isn't worth keeping when there are so many other things he need latch on to in his confusion; but letting go of that little piece of blackness doesn't leave Myr feeling any better when L delivers his interim assessment. (He hurts. Is it all right to look that square in the face and say his amatus had hurt him and he hasn't instantly forgiven it?
Could that be balanced against all the hurt he'd ever done L and been forgiven in?)]
Tell me something I don't know, [he grits out, punctuating it with a huffing non-laugh.] I've been confused since you came looking for me. Wait--
[He lifts a hand before L's "second" has expired, forestalling the immediate dive back into his head.] --before you go on, now that you've your initial evidence.
[It should be exculpatory, shouldn't it? Someone who was so confused couldn't be engaged in deliberate, malicious falsehood; he doesn't even know what he's supposed to be covering up!]
What is it I forgot?
[(The strands of a Naga's persuasion are almost no spell at all; the real effect is in what the hypnosis has made Myr's mind do to itself in trying to simultaneously carry out his orders and be the man he has always been.
He could not, would not interfere with L's investigation of the Evergreen Circle; but continuing to meet and pass on information without trying to dissuade his Bonded from the whole enterprise would not be staying out of things.
Better, then, to forget the point of conflict entirely.)]
no subject
Injury, perhaps, and just heaping on the insults after.
He swallows, considering possibilities, wondering who else has been here and what influenced the once-familiar ground that's currently baffling both of them. Is it a risk to actually tell Myr? Could it compromise his case? Is another diviner using him as a vessel, siphoning off information that slips through that bare spot like a sieve?]
I want to tell you. Really, I do, but... depending on the catalyst for what I saw just now, it might not be safe.
no subject
[It does hurt, further, to have L recoil from him. It's a painful, perverted reminder of home, an involution of the nostalgia he's clung to in his darkest days in Aefenglom.
He sinks back to sit on his hocks, lifting both hands to hide his face. (Like his blindfold had slipped; like that self-inflicted scarring is what had driven L back from him.) Ears and shoulders both droop as he tries to breathe through the desolation of the moment and set his own emotions in order.
Depending on the catalyst, L had said, and there's at least something in there to grasp at as evidence that maybe he isn't just dissolving for no reason.
His voice is muffled when he speaks again:]
What is it, then? [And then,] --breathe, Linden. This hasn't killed me yet; you've time to breathe.
[Even if L has halfway turned on him, he's still Myr's Witch, and his sole lifeline out of this in the moment. Myr can lean back into the patterns they've laid down over months and borrow words from them even while he's struggling to feel anything more than self-eradicating despair.
(That's what you train for, Shivana.)]
no subject
He realizes that he isn't breathing, at least not properly. He fills his lungs like one very carefully pouring water, concerned about overflow.]
Have you... been with others, lately? Who have you seen?
[A relevant question, because clear-cutting doesn't happen by itself. Some willful hand (or strike of lightning) gets the process started, sets the spark that swells to flame. But perhaps the timing, and the phrasing, are blunt and unskilled.]
I need to know.
[As earnest as it is unfair, when he and Light are thick as thieves as a rule.]
no subject
Well, that's not really the question L's asking, though it's the first razor Myr seizes on to fling back while he's still bleeding. He opens his mouth--
--and shuts it again so quickly he nearly bites his own tongue. He's trying to help.
Awkward as the attempts always were, at least this isn't what happened to Niles.]
Keep breathing, [he advises, to distract himself from cruelty for cruelty's sake.] How recently do you need? The past week?
[He shouldn't be the one providing more of a framework for this odd interrogation, but here they are: Myr soothes his own hurts by building structure on structure, where L's dissolves in the wash of their emotions.]
no subject
Please. Whatever you can recall, and whomever.
[If someone's been biting chunks out of his Bonded's brain, he can at least get the names of some people of interest.]
Have you been seeing anyone new, and outside of your routine? Aside from Viren and Everett... and Hector.
[Hector, another randy faun. The rails shift.]
Do you have new friends, or... partners? Individuals you perhaps haven't gotten to know well, yet, who seemed to take a sudden strong interest in you?
no subject
Because you're a Faun and you think with your dick. Because even if you're a Faun you're not pretty enough anymore for anyone to want you unless they need something from you.
None of it is true. None of it is what L's saying, really, but the black little demon-voices in the back of Myr's mind never ever quite shut up no matter how much work he puts in.
Maker, grant me strength.]
Not, [he carefully measures the words,] the way you're implying; I've not slept with anyone new. I did speak to Niles a week ago, [about what? Can't examine that,] and messere Jin Guangyao dropped by with a Modranicht gift earlier this week. [Given who Myr had overheard slipping names to the Evergreen Circle... Though the Naga's is one name in a litany of a half-dozen, as Myr continues to recall everyone outside his routine contacts he'd encountered in his last week.] --And there was a little slip of a woman tonight at the meeting who did seem terribly interested in making my acquaintance, who said she had a thing for Fauns, but I'd wanted to...
[He trails off, voice and mind. The thought gets as far as talk to you before I, and then drops out, because he can't touch the reason he'd wanted to discuss bedding someone he picked up at a cult meeting with L, first.
(They'd tried to control him before; it's half the reason he and L had set the Friday meetings. Don't examine that.)]
no subject
He nods, committing the names and descriptions to memory, face and mind demonstrating no clear or strong emotions. His reaction to Niles' name isn't terribly different from those he doesn't recognize, but will certainly follow up on.]
So you are aware of the meetings. That's encouraging.
[More encouraging than not knowing the day of the week, at the very least.]
You'd wanted to...?
[He prompts. He's asking as a professional, truly, but maybe a tinge of something else creeps into what he asks.]
...go home with her, tonight? Or take her home?
[Why the "but?" Why the intermittent, sudden blanks, through their Bond?]
That goes against type for you. Is that the reason you didn't?
[L has seen no evidence that Myr goes in for "little slips" of partners, which is to say that he pays enough attention to notice trends.]
no subject
When Myr leans, and he does not now, for his hand has fallen to his lap and his expression gone oddly abstract. In a man with eyes, it would be the look of someone staring off into an infinity only he's privy to.]
...the reason I didn't what? [he finally says, ears lifting as his recollection of the conversation returns.
(She'd been out-of-type for him but he'd wondered if taking her home would help his cover, or better--get them information they hadn't known. The idea was distasteful but seemed practical. L might have been able to tell him how practical.
If he could have remembered their meeting.)]
no subject
He squints, watching the strange shift, doing his best to draw a bead on it through the Bond.]
The reason you didn't sleep with her.
[As a faun probably would, with anyone willing... or, at least almost anyone.]
She was interested, wasn't she? And if you'd forgotten another obligation [ours] there would have been no reason for you to turn her down, right?
no subject
(A lurching, dizzying static between them as he tries to reorient himself on the interrogation. They'd just been talking about people he'd met in the last week, was that it? Met and slept with, or so L seems to be accusing. Was this an issue of infidelity?)
He lifts a hand to scrub it through the hair around one antler, frowning now.] I do know how you feel, you know. I'm not--I'm sorry I've been far slower in picking up on it than I should've been, but it's not an issue of my being repelled.
I simply don't want to hurt you further, when I don't know where your edges are. [After Mello. That had been a horrifying revelation, one to kill even a Faun's libido.
Quietly, then,] Though if it is hurting you that I'd sleep with someone else casually--that I'd even think of it--if that's what all this about, [the accusations of lying, that he'd forgotten something important that L couldn't tell him about,] I won't. I'd not be so unfair to you, amatus.
[
it's a real shitshow inside his skull
]send help, L
no subject
It's... no, it isn't about--
[Does Myr think he's so jealous and petty? What if he is? Is it obvious, does he look like a fool? Is Myr mocking what's obvious by pointing it out to him, now? Did he hear about what L had said, from Hector? The footing is slippery; the quiet still hasn't erupted, and as a result there's a vice-grip around his chest just waiting for it.
Recenter, recalibrate, reset.]
You're not responsible for anything I've come to feel. I'm not owed, or entitled, and I'm only asking about any of this because it's relevant.
[That's a lot of words, to say "I swear I'm not pathetic, please believe me." Too bad you can't unring this bell; too bad you can't manipulate your way into the kinds of things that just come naturally to those who are really and truly good.]
I'd call and consider it your business, except... there's a part of your mind that looks like a long string of operations canceling each other out in an ongoing attempt to balance something that doesn't add up, and I'm... trying to figure out why. I think a person was the deliberate catalyst, and so... I'm asking about people, who may have had access to you when your guard was down.
[The instinct to fight or flee is powerful. The stillness still hasn't broken; his ribs are a claustrophobic cage holding pure dense adrenaline, heavy enough to sink through the floor. He wouldn't dare to ever ask, and it's important that Myr realize that. It's so terribly important that Myr understand he's not been scheming and conniving and trying to figure out a way to possess what he has no right or claim to.]
no subject
(And what would he mutilate this time--)
It's the sheer force of a mage's will that keeps Myr kneeling where he is and keeps his hands down despite the urge to grasp at his Witch and reassurance. But he is trembling as he does it, visibly, and his fingers knot in the fabric of his sleeves as he curls them there.
Breathe. BREATHE.
It's not working. It's not working but he needs to answer L's line of questioning, or offer some kind of reassurance, but he can't--]
Amatus. [A shallow breath in, pulling against a constriction fit to crush lungs and heart.] L, [and he would not use that name, were this not deadly serious,]
I can't hear you over your own fear.
[I don't know what to do and I'm terrified I can't be strong for both of us. Help me--]
no subject
He thought he’d hidden it well. He thought he’d done a good job keeping it from burdening one who deserved better. Is it out, is it on land now...?
He realizes that Myr is correct. His fear is deafening; he’s ruining what was good, because he got greedy.]
Sorry... I’m sorry. S—-
[An apology both excessive and half-formed. He’s got a job to do, and he’s failing; some part of him believed he stood a chance when it shouldn’t even have been a fantasy. He dropped the ball utterly on keeping Myr safe from something he can’t kill, and this time he can’t kick Myr from a dream that is here and horrible.
The door is tempting. The impulse to rifle through a medicine cabinet for some semblance of control is overwhelming. But even if he should be muzzled, he knows it’s wrong to leave his blinded, confounded Bonded this way.]
I’ll turn it off. I’m going to help you...
[He could be sick; he could use the chance to see what’s in the cabinets in Myr’s home away from him.]
Let me fix this.
[He needs help. Any help; already a plan is forming to find a problem solver, somewhere, so that he can solve a problem.
A problem remains, though: he can’t walk away from that look on his faun’s face.]
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)