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.]
[Don't apologize, he wants to say, and cannot find the words around the feeling of drowning in something he does and doesn't understand.
Does: Because he's known what it is to want something, someone forbidden and having to bury that deep to avoid shattering a friendship. Has known, too, what it is to fail at that quarantine and lose something precious because of it.
Doesn't: Because for all his own self-image has suffered in the past few years, he remembers to his bones what it is to be instantly desirable to others. He was handsome once (still is, he's been reassured over and over again); even if he feels undesirable now, the notion of his own desire having always been an intolerable imposition on others is as foreign a feeling as breathing water.
He's in no place to try and sort through the knots and skeins of this right now. He doesn't even realize half of it, what points of their history align (or don't) to make this moment both profoundly sympathetic and profoundly discordant. He only knows that they both hurt, they are both afraid and nearly ill with that fear, and both want to be anywhere but confronting this thing that they can only stay and confront together.
Myr dimly registers how his fingers ache as he unknots them from his sleeves and reaches both hands up in supplication to his Witch. It's a gesture with a powerful longing beneath it, a need to draw L to him and hide his face against his Bonded and erase every other sensation in his awareness (scent-touch-sound-Bond) of the other man.
Let him fix this.]
Please. [Very quietly.] I trust you to.
[Even if he is gashed inside and still bleeding, still confused. He trusts the hurt was incidental.
[Trust is a form of grace. In L's world, and in his particular sphere, it's a profound thing to give it to someone, and in spite of the fact that they are Bonded, that they have been for over a year and were friends even before that point, it hasn't lost its weight or significance.
In L's mind, there's no if; there's no maybe or hopefully. He'll fix this; it's as certain as if it's already done, and the only thing he has to worry about is what connects the intention with the result, a simple tether tied between two stakes driven firmly into the ground.
Such certainty has a way of quieting fear, at least momentarily. His breathing is shallow and soft as Myr reaches for his bony shoulders, drawing him close, pressing against him like he's any source of strength or security and not an outright mess of a human being who can't help but damage even what he means not to.]
I'm sorry I accused you of lying.
[It's easier to say it over Myr's shoulder with a face that's hidden against his own. His own hand hovers, not quite touching the faun's back.]
When reconciling what my heart knows, with what the evidence seems to say, I don't always know where to place my own trust. Especially since...
[That whole Kira thing; that whole dying thing, which is why in his mind, and his dreams and his attitudes toward the future, he is a pale drowned man who just happens to still move and speak.]
[This is better. The storm across their Bond is quieting; Myr has his Witch in his arms and can reassure himself through contact that L wasn't about to slip away from him. That L hadn't judged him faulty, mad, dangerous and worth abandoning.
Myr's Witch is a source of strength to him, even if it's often the sort of strength one must dig up to protect another. Right now, though, the detective's conviction--and physical presence--are a more straightforward support. Which is why--
I'm sorry I accused you of lying.
--the Faun's embrace tightens; he pushes his face further against L's shirt and shudders in a soundless sob. It's ordinarily so easy for him to forgive, to understand the strange twists his Bonded's mind takes and know whatever offense was given wasn't meant. It's ordinarily easy but right now it isn't despite how desperately he needs his Witch's help. Guilt writhes in the pit of his stomach at the contradiction and at his own utter weakness in this moment, born of old curdled terror and new fear and exhaustion.
I knew you weren't lying.
What does one say through all of that?]
I understand, [he mutters, cloth-muted, into L's shoulder.
(He does. But put aside what's been revealed about Light, for later. If they make it to later. When they make it there.)
A moment, a breath. Myr swallows hard and pulls back enough to be heard; it puts his lips nearer his Witch's ear.] I do understand.
[But.]
I rely on you. You're my Witch. My partner. [Helpmeet. Beloved.] And that--hurt.
[It still hurts.
His voice drops to a whisper, guilt and guilt and guilt in their Bond that he has to ask, has to make his own forgiveness conditional:] Please don't do that again.
[If being faulty, mad, or dangerous were enough to render someone worthy of abandonment, even if L believed those about his faun, making that judgment would be hilariously rich coming from him, wouldn't it? L can be a hypocrite, but in the places he recognizes where cognitive dissonance or double standards exist, he can at least try not to be ridiculously obvious about it.
He curls his shoulders, head hanging lower as Myr's embrace tightens. His hovering hand makes careful contact with his Bonded's back at the sound and sensation of that soft sob, and he can feel the guilt rolling off of him in sick waves. He holds, until Myr pulls away to better be heard.
Does he understand? L nods, wondering if his meaning came through, if his meaning is something he himself can even fully parse.]
...of course.
[The fear is still suppressed, but it wants to rise again. L's intuition, or what he feels in his heart and his gut, is good, almost preternaturally so... or at least, it was. His final case and difficult time adapting to Aefenglom had taught him to doubt and dread that innate certainty.
He'd dropped the key to his apartment down a storm drain after the SQUIP left. He'd abandoned all his paychecks in a dresser drawer in Mello's spare room. He'd had his "talk" with the Leviathan, committed to the cold and dark, pledging to the often-contradictory paradoxes that often precluded an elusive, secure truth.
Truth can be beautiful, worth the long and grueling chase. It can cause the world to make perfect sense for just a few moments. It can also wound deeply... and grow more tangled than objective facts and deliberate untruths.]
I won't.
[He's not lying now. He believes, as certainly as he believes he will fix things for Myr, that this will come to pass. His intentions are as gleaming as the key, as plentiful as his paychecks, as earnest as the notion that walking into dark waters is an acceptable sacrifice to confront what they hide.
His intentions are frail, in the face of the doubt and distrust he has come to feel for his own heart. It's good for making a fool of him lately, it seems, and precious little else.]
I can't stay long.
[He has to get started on this. He's anxious to throw his process behind something that will yield results he can stand on solidly.]
But I'll stay, if you want me to. For a little while.
[Whatever the strength L's intentions will prove to be in this instance, it is enough right now that he intends--that he will try. Myr gives a fractional nod, leaning in once more to rest his face against his Witch. The tension's fled from him, leaving behind it a shaky storm-washed ache in his heart--empty of the passionate fear that had filled it to overflowing, but so suddenly that the vacuum's painful.
Hearing L say he's got to leave wakes a new tendril of it, quickly wrestled down. You're not a child, Myrobalan. Whatever's wrong won't get worse while he's gone.
Yet:]
A little longer, [he mutters. And then, quieter still:] Is there anything else you can do for it?
[The absence in his head. The one he can't think of without losing it.
He'll certainly understand if there is not; he's still mage enough in training if not actual power to realize there are problems magic can't solve.
[Tired and vaguely humiliated by the fact that Myr had blithely called out affections he'd believed were subtle, it would be easier for L to leave, perhaps. He could go somewhere quiet and dark and nurse his shame, alone or at least anonymously.
What's easy has never impressed Myr. He sighs shallowly, reaching a hand once more to rest against his faun's temple.
He withdraws it almost immediately, with a short, impatient exhalation.]
It's like it was before. I haven't seen something like this... it's not even like when Light and I looked into matters for Lora Hastings.
[And given the timing, he rather expected it to be.]
I can get started. Faster than a little longer, if you want.
[It all depends on where Myr believes he'd be the most useful, at this moment in time. If that's researching, he'll go; if that's comforting, he'll be substandard, but remain.]
[They will need to talk about it later, that shame, and the feelings behind it Myr had been oh-so-careful around up until confusion and worry robbed him of pretense.
There are many things they need to talk about later. Later, after his mind is his own again--which it sounds will be a matter of days, at least, and not hours.
He slumps a little as L withdraws his hand and pronounces his diagnosis. Too much to hope for, then; better to let his Witch be about researching the cause of his distress.
The urge to hold L to him lingers, anyway. Myr draws in a deep, deep breath to steady himself and releases his hold on the other man--though he does reach in passing to catch L's hand and press a kiss to the palm.]
Maker walk with you and guide you, then, amatus. You'll know where to find me.
[Because making another appointment right now seems...fraught, if he might forget them at any time.
(He does not want to be here alone with his own thoughts.
He does not want to be any more of burden on the one who's suddenly had to shoulder him.)]
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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.]
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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.)]
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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.]
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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.)]
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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.
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[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.)]
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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.]
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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.]
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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?
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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.)]
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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.]
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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.)]
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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?
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(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
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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.]
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(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--]
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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.]
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Does: Because he's known what it is to want something, someone forbidden and having to bury that deep to avoid shattering a friendship. Has known, too, what it is to fail at that quarantine and lose something precious because of it.
Doesn't: Because for all his own self-image has suffered in the past few years, he remembers to his bones what it is to be instantly desirable to others. He was handsome once (still is, he's been reassured over and over again); even if he feels undesirable now, the notion of his own desire having always been an intolerable imposition on others is as foreign a feeling as breathing water.
He's in no place to try and sort through the knots and skeins of this right now. He doesn't even realize half of it, what points of their history align (or don't) to make this moment both profoundly sympathetic and profoundly discordant. He only knows that they both hurt, they are both afraid and nearly ill with that fear, and both want to be anywhere but confronting this thing that they can only stay and confront together.
Myr dimly registers how his fingers ache as he unknots them from his sleeves and reaches both hands up in supplication to his Witch. It's a gesture with a powerful longing beneath it, a need to draw L to him and hide his face against his Bonded and erase every other sensation in his awareness (scent-touch-sound-Bond) of the other man.
Let him fix this.]
Please. [Very quietly.] I trust you to.
[Even if he is gashed inside and still bleeding, still confused. He trusts the hurt was incidental.
He absolutely trusts that L can help.]
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In L's mind, there's no if; there's no maybe or hopefully. He'll fix this; it's as certain as if it's already done, and the only thing he has to worry about is what connects the intention with the result, a simple tether tied between two stakes driven firmly into the ground.
Such certainty has a way of quieting fear, at least momentarily. His breathing is shallow and soft as Myr reaches for his bony shoulders, drawing him close, pressing against him like he's any source of strength or security and not an outright mess of a human being who can't help but damage even what he means not to.]
I'm sorry I accused you of lying.
[It's easier to say it over Myr's shoulder with a face that's hidden against his own. His own hand hovers, not quite touching the faun's back.]
When reconciling what my heart knows, with what the evidence seems to say, I don't always know where to place my own trust. Especially since...
[That whole Kira thing; that whole dying thing, which is why in his mind, and his dreams and his attitudes toward the future, he is a pale drowned man who just happens to still move and speak.]
I knew you weren't lying.
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Myr's Witch is a source of strength to him, even if it's often the sort of strength one must dig up to protect another. Right now, though, the detective's conviction--and physical presence--are a more straightforward support. Which is why--
I'm sorry I accused you of lying.
--the Faun's embrace tightens; he pushes his face further against L's shirt and shudders in a soundless sob. It's ordinarily so easy for him to forgive, to understand the strange twists his Bonded's mind takes and know whatever offense was given wasn't meant. It's ordinarily easy but right now it isn't despite how desperately he needs his Witch's help. Guilt writhes in the pit of his stomach at the contradiction and at his own utter weakness in this moment, born of old curdled terror and new fear and exhaustion.
I knew you weren't lying.
What does one say through all of that?]
I understand, [he mutters, cloth-muted, into L's shoulder.
(He does. But put aside what's been revealed about Light, for later. If they make it to later. When they make it there.)
A moment, a breath. Myr swallows hard and pulls back enough to be heard; it puts his lips nearer his Witch's ear.] I do understand.
[But.]
I rely on you. You're my Witch. My partner. [Helpmeet. Beloved.] And that--hurt.
[It still hurts.
His voice drops to a whisper, guilt and guilt and guilt in their Bond that he has to ask, has to make his own forgiveness conditional:] Please don't do that again.
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He curls his shoulders, head hanging lower as Myr's embrace tightens. His hovering hand makes careful contact with his Bonded's back at the sound and sensation of that soft sob, and he can feel the guilt rolling off of him in sick waves. He holds, until Myr pulls away to better be heard.
Does he understand? L nods, wondering if his meaning came through, if his meaning is something he himself can even fully parse.]
...of course.
[The fear is still suppressed, but it wants to rise again. L's intuition, or what he feels in his heart and his gut, is good, almost preternaturally so... or at least, it was. His final case and difficult time adapting to Aefenglom had taught him to doubt and dread that innate certainty.
He'd dropped the key to his apartment down a storm drain after the SQUIP left. He'd abandoned all his paychecks in a dresser drawer in Mello's spare room. He'd had his "talk" with the Leviathan, committed to the cold and dark, pledging to the often-contradictory paradoxes that often precluded an elusive, secure truth.
Truth can be beautiful, worth the long and grueling chase. It can cause the world to make perfect sense for just a few moments. It can also wound deeply... and grow more tangled than objective facts and deliberate untruths.]
I won't.
[He's not lying now. He believes, as certainly as he believes he will fix things for Myr, that this will come to pass. His intentions are as gleaming as the key, as plentiful as his paychecks, as earnest as the notion that walking into dark waters is an acceptable sacrifice to confront what they hide.
His intentions are frail, in the face of the doubt and distrust he has come to feel for his own heart. It's good for making a fool of him lately, it seems, and precious little else.]
I can't stay long.
[He has to get started on this. He's anxious to throw his process behind something that will yield results he can stand on solidly.]
But I'll stay, if you want me to. For a little while.
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Hearing L say he's got to leave wakes a new tendril of it, quickly wrestled down. You're not a child, Myrobalan. Whatever's wrong won't get worse while he's gone.
Yet:]
A little longer, [he mutters. And then, quieter still:] Is there anything else you can do for it?
[The absence in his head. The one he can't think of without losing it.
He'll certainly understand if there is not; he's still mage enough in training if not actual power to realize there are problems magic can't solve.
But oh, he wishes...]
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What's easy has never impressed Myr. He sighs shallowly, reaching a hand once more to rest against his faun's temple.
He withdraws it almost immediately, with a short, impatient exhalation.]
It's like it was before. I haven't seen something like this... it's not even like when Light and I looked into matters for Lora Hastings.
[And given the timing, he rather expected it to be.]
I can get started. Faster than a little longer, if you want.
[It all depends on where Myr believes he'd be the most useful, at this moment in time. If that's researching, he'll go; if that's comforting, he'll be substandard, but remain.]
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There are many things they need to talk about later. Later, after his mind is his own again--which it sounds will be a matter of days, at least, and not hours.
He slumps a little as L withdraws his hand and pronounces his diagnosis. Too much to hope for, then; better to let his Witch be about researching the cause of his distress.
The urge to hold L to him lingers, anyway. Myr draws in a deep, deep breath to steady himself and releases his hold on the other man--though he does reach in passing to catch L's hand and press a kiss to the palm.]
Maker walk with you and guide you, then, amatus. You'll know where to find me.
[Because making another appointment right now seems...fraught, if he might forget them at any time.
(He does not want to be here alone with his own thoughts.
He does not want to be any more of burden on the one who's suddenly had to shoulder him.)]
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