[A lot can happen in five minutes. L's inexact potion work and uneven ingredient pantry has resulted in a quick and dirty attempt at something to bring him down, soothe what's cornered and thrashing and hold it underwater until it stops.
It's not working. He's completely out of thistles and powdered dragon teeth, and the resulting unique concoction leaves him lethargic and uncoordinated, but no less agitated. Myr will find him sitting on his side of the chess board that usually has an ongoing game with Light in progress. Today, the pieces are scattered and jumbled.]
...is it quieter?
[Over the Bond, he means. The implicating, twisting, emotional strains that have managed to radiate to every one of his partners.
He's convinced that things have been more wrong, before, and not managed this level of impact.]
[Long experience lets Myr recognize what L's done in the time it took him to get here. His ears droop at the question but he manages to keep a frown from his face as he shoos Crookytail toward his Witch.
The wormipede is all too happy to go see one of her favorite people. She near-gallops over and lifts her front segments off the ground to reach for L's attention.]
No--just garbled. [No sense mincing up the truth.
He does frown as he hears something go skittering away from Crookytail's lolloping advance, and makes sure to pick his steps carefully as he follows her.]
[L's expression, already dull and blank, actually seems to fall further, even as his hand settles on Crookytail's velvety head after a bit of searching.
Garbled is better than a piercing arrow, better than something keening and clear. Ugly is acceptable if the result was effective; he's always thought so.]
Careful...
[There are a few chess pieces on the floor. Tripping hazards; he starts to stand, but his legs are leaden, even without the wormipede's gentle weight.
The question raises a defensive spike over the Bond. L reaches past it, gathers the tattered shreds of an answer to present.]
Light. Near, and also...
[Mello, but he's not sure if that conversation has concluded. It seems to have; he hopes that it's the case.]
[It stabs Myr to the heart to hear--to feel--L in this state. And, he suspects, it always will. He is still picking his way over as he hears his Witch starts to rise.]
Stay there--it's all right. [He should've brought his staff, though he's gotten out of the habit for short trips in known territory. Ah, well; feeling out each step with the tips of his hooves suffices to knock any stray chess pieces out of the way before he can step on them.
He reaches out as he closes with L, to find the edge of the expected table and guide himself around it. Then reaches out, palm-up, at shoulder-height for a seated man: The request for further guidance is implicit. Where is he needed most?
Crookytail asks no such questions, of course; she gives a sigh of indignation through her spiracles when L tries to stand, then loops more of herself onto his lap when he can't make it.]
[L realizes that standing isn't going to happen; he sinks back, resigned, and Crookytail galumphs heavily over his bony thighs in an indulgent drape.
He does reach out for Myr's hand; though his vision is fine, the gesture takes effort, feels weighted and drifting. He does make contact, fingers resting in Myr's open palm.]
No. Light doesn't know... in our timeline, he and I were both pulled from an earlier point, and... unlike me, he hasn't heard an account of the future from present allies.
[That wild restlessness tilts and rears uneasily as L works through his thought.]
There's a complication. While Light doesn't know who Mello is... he knows who Deneuve is. Mello chose to use a name that belonged to me, in our world.
[One of his trophies, taken from another detective and worn audaciously.]
He's asked how this former Bond of mine would know it, if he's empty of memories from this world. I'm not ready for him to know the truth... he can't know the truth, Myr, but he knows when I'm lying.
[He uses that single point of contact to reel himself in, until his shins bump against the soft bulk of the wormipede draped over L's lap. His ears go forward to catch his Witch's explanation of the situation; the lack of motion from his tail broadcasts what he thinks of it (be still, there's a threat here) as much as the Bond does.
This is dangerous, and neither of them is in a state to navigate these complexities right now. The stag in Myr--as ever--suggests that they run, or hide, and--for once, the man in him is inclined to listen to the wisdom of the prey.]
Then, amatus, [gentle words, punctuated as he takes L's hand entirely in his own and rubs his thumb over the knuckles; he does not feel calm himself, but he has hard-won years of experience at acting it when he must,] stop talking to him so you don't have to lie.
[For now.]
Buy yourself the time you need to reason through this. And--
[...a thought he'd been meaning to speak nearly since Light's arrival occurs to him, and he stops, but doesn't voice it yet.
The tip-of-the-tongue feeling hangs there, though, in the Bond between them.]
[His hand in Myr's is slow to respond by squeezing back, just enough to seem strange.
He speaks softly, dictating the text to his watch. Myr's stopped by. Sorry, but I have to step away.
It'll frustrate Light, almost definitely seem suspicious. But Myr's correct about it buying them time, and L's certainly troubled enough by the reappearance of a Bonded who left him more damaged than he found him that he might quit a conversation suddenly even without a timely visitor.]
And...?
[He prompts, dropping his watch into one of his larger pockets that doesn't require much fine coordination.]
[The sluggish clumsiness of L's physical responses is worrying, to be sure--but it is the detective's mind that's his best asset, and that seems to be running fast as ever. Myr sorts his priorities thus: Find them some path out of this panic-inducing situation, then deal with whatever L's drunk this time (possibly by putting his Witch to bed).
Always do the hardest thing first. The Faun breathes out as he's prompted, marshaling his thoughts quick as he can. It's good, at least, that he's been thinking about this for a very long time--even if he's unsure he has the capacity to make a good argument right now.]
He, [Light,] was bound to find you out at some point, no matter how flawlessly you played the game.
[Because the Mirrors introduced an element of uncertainty that no amount of genius could account for: Which see.]
I'd advise--while you still have the advantage--you make those revelations happen on your own terms, not his. So that you, [unsaid: and those of us who love you more than life,] get the upper hand in the engagement--and keep it, before he can gather the power he had on your world.
[L blinks owlishly, face pale and haunted. The only sound, for a few moments, is Crookytail's rustling movements as she settles in to get comfier.
Myr's right, isn't he? It was always going to end at some point; there was always going to be a point where the easy, natural domesticity L and Light had accessed was going to collapse. Perhaps L is not responding to the reappearance of an attacker so much as he's desperate not to grieve the loss of something that was fragile, and fake, and cherished all the same. Mello's arrival might as well be a doomsday harbinger, in that regard, threatening L's carefully maintained truce.]
I'm not ready.
[He says it like a lost child, realizes it after the fact.]
It's just... there's a right way, like you said, and the moving parts are all in the wrong alignment. It's not the right time, as ideal as it would to be strike first, and... for now, I just need to know how to answer his questions in a way that will satisfy him, and not compromise or betray someone who gave his life to my legacy.
[Oh, and how sorely Myr wishes to comfort that child, to assuage the ache he feels in his own chest. He realizes--dimly--the magnitude of what he's said; he has threatened the treasure that's drawn his beloved out into the light and life of the world. He's imperiled L's meaning in saying so, and how well he knows (with his own meanings bent and scattered and faltering) the hurt of that.
To say nothing of the complications Mello represents (the wounds the man's reappearance has reopened).
How tidy it would be if Light and Mello could be set to destroy each other. "Tidy" except for how it would leave L a ruin if that played out here and now, because for all Myr's Witch believes himself irredeemably broken in most human pursuits, he knows enough of duty and enough of love to try in the face of opposition.
And that has always mattered most, in Myr's estimation.]
It needn't mean the end, amatus. Not of you, or of him, or what's between you. The stakes are different here, and if he values you a fraction as much as you do him, [dubious, in Myr's overprotective estimation, but he must allow the chance,] you might find peace on your own terms here.
[But he will accede that now is not the time to untangle that knot; there's the more immediate problem that needs solving. Myr sighs, and sinks to rest on his hocks, before adding his other hand to wrap around L's.]
How long can you delay before he comes looking for you in person?
[Myr may well realize it better than L, himself. L, who is supposed to be powerful for Myr, and fix things, and help, reduced to fear of pain and loss, mixing haphazard potions to dull it for his Bonded but truly for himself.
It's this avoidant realization, as well as the strange and panicked mood that is garbled but not quiet, that influences L's uneasy receipt of Myr's words. Encouraging as they are, optimistic and sensible, L knows his Bonded and himself.
It would mean the end. Whether in blood or ice, a chapter would close irreversibly, and perhaps L also knows at his core that Light doesn't value this as much as he does. Light is younger; Light has not witnessed L's final breath, or had the time to mourn and miss him that L has experienced.]
Long enough, I'm sure.
[Forced flippancy, as though it's casual, no great matter or reason for concern. What does it matter, when his Bonded comes back?]
He wants to know what Mello called himself when he was here, last. "M", also, is too close to a name I called myself.
[There's a level here that Myr isn't reaching his Witch on, and well he knows it; knows it while also despairing of the effort it would take to achieve that understanding.
He is not well, himself; not rested or healed. He still has a lot on his mind--but he, too, needs to strive in the face of adversity for the sake of what he loves.
Absently, apologetic, he lifts the hand he's holding and presses his lips to it. I'm sorry; you deserve my best and I've lost it. ]
You may have already lost that one. [His memory, at least, is improving again. Thank the Maker for that.] If Light's paying attention to everyone else who greeted Mello--that young woman he was friends with called him "M".
[A sigh.] Any strategy to protect him will need to take her into account.
[It would take effort, indeed, as L is actively resisting being reached. He's hiding and hoarding away the salvageable scraps of his Bond with Light and the gentle reality he's come to covet like so many stolen eyepatches.
They have an understanding, after all. They are of one mind, a like soul; the fluid ease with which they can accomplish miracles together as a team is more addictive than any substance L has ever sampled or swallowed. The only flaw is that honesty would kill it; it's a big flaw, certainly, but he believes it is the only one.]
Alex.
[He sighs. Kind girl, innocent to all of this. She wouldn't know better.]
She has a gentle way about her... a gentle way with him. But Light will surely notice it if he hasn't already.
[More work; more risk, more smoke and mirrors to haul and carry and maintain so that the superficial illusion can remain, because he is not ready.]
I need to figure something out. Given that he took my name, Deneuve... he could also have chosen the name M to align himself more closely with me.
[It makes Mello sound obsessed, even more dangerous and unhinged. L is well and bleakly aware of the further problems it creates, but there were always going to be more problems. There's no way around it, now.]
[There's something in Myr that's earnestly relieved to hear there's one person in all Talam who could be gentle to Mello. For all his own anger and despite for the young man, he cannot help but share some of L's sentiment that Mello had been maltreated by life--had deserved better than he'd got. Deserved, as much as anyone did, a chance at redemption.
But Myr is not going to be the one to offer him a hand onto that path. Not and keep true to his own promises.
His ears flick again as L plans aloud, his expression growing more and more troubled. While he understands whole-heartedly why his Witch is scrambling to avoid the confrontation, why L isn't ready, this isn't the right path for it. Everything in him wants to not have to point that out; it would be much easier to be comforting, to murmur assent and support his Bonded's decisions...but it would also be making himself party to lies, and ones that invite disaster besides.]
He'll see right through that. [It's taking a lot not to rest his head against L's knees and mute himself to mumbling. Indistinct advice can be ignored, the conflict safely postponed until a later I-told-you-so makes it inevitable.
That isn't worthy of either of them.] It won't add up. The man's plainly obsessed with you in a way that takes years to accumulate. But to keep him and Eli safe you've got to pretend you've only known them casually--or better, you've only met them in Aefenglom. But you can't catch every contingency or anticipate what either of them, or anyone else who's met them, might give away, and the more explanations you've got to extemporize the more liable you are to cross yourself in your lies.
They're none of them mushrooms. [To be safely kept in the dark and fed bullshit.] Keeping Light and Mello blind to each other won't make them safe in the long run; it only delays the reckoning and favors whoever works out the truth first.
[The level to which L is aware of his own denial is questionable. He seems to at least realize that there are contradictions and paradoxes at work, that he is struggling to resemble his typically logical and collected self. No one should have that kind of power over him; not Mello, and not any of his Bonded, and yet his panic at helming a situation with so many uncontrollable factors is battering him, and those attached to him, like so many violent waves in a storm.
He's angry. Frustrated. He has nowhere fair to fling that anger. Crookytail's hedonistic nazzling into his lap isn't worthy of it, and Myr, present and exhausted and trying anyway to help him sort this tangled mess, isn't either. The chess board is already scattered, and he's already scrambled something of his own with a haphazard potion.
He knows that Myr is right. There's so much he can't control, so many puppets dancing too far and breaking their strings off. He's not even babysitting his watch, which at least feels controllable even if he can't police the activity of others.]
The takeaway's that a reckoning is coming, then.
[Anything to stave it off. Anything to keep it from crushing him, and the others in his path.]
He saved my life, you know. At Alder's gathering. A shade's claw clipped me, tearing through a crowd, and he could have let me bleed out on the spot. Don't you think he would have? If he really intended to end me, here?
[If Myr must be the voice of the inevitable that stalks them, so be it. (Those who bear false witness and seek to deceive others, know this: There is but one Truth.)]
You've known it was since he came through his mirror. A tidy, static life suits neither of you. The game's always only been a delaying action.
[He straightens, lifting his head with a jingling of charms. Would that he could look his Witch in the eyes and impress on him the utter futility of trying to manage the situation, prolong his current detente with Light.
Thus he can't hide his wince (nor the guilt-grief-pain in the Bond) when L mentions his near-death, and just who had been there to hold L's life in his hands.]
You know him better than I, [he admits, and does not say though I worry about the lens you see him through.] And you would know best the circumstances that would make him deem you a threat worth removing, rather than keeping close.
But, [quiet and inexorable,] consider also that he surely had that noose around your neck already back home. Here, you're an ally he can't afford to lose--and we've no evidence whatever that either of you killing the other would change the course of events you already know have happened.
You know how that game ends. What does it profit you to waste your time playing out the steps of it when you could have something better?
[It surprises him, internally, that there's not as much envy as he thought there would be in that suggestion. Something better does not, and may not, mean Myr himself. It is a broad spectrum (infinite) of possibilities where L does not have to end dead in a gutter or splitting his time between a meaningless life and a bottle.]
[He knows. He hates that he's smart enough to realize it when Myr points out he would have. He hates that he needs to pretend this weight isn't heavy, while being absolutely unwilling to let go of it.
He'd debated whether or not he should tell Myr about the incident at the party. Myr knew he was injured, surely; it was impossible for him not to notice that over their Bond, no matter how he might otherwise have been occupied that night. Maybe L had wanted to avoid the guilt he knew would manifest for both sides once it was mentioned; Myr, for not being there, and L, for managing to be a distressing distraction even many miles away.
"Something better" is too broad a spectrum, too infinite, to the point where it feels like it can't possibly be real. It's at least as imaginary as L's idealized Bond with Light, and maybe that's why he finds himself able to interact with the idea, respond to it a though it could happen, and he and Light aren't just two vicious, violent creatures that deserve to tear each other apart eternally.
Besides, Myr has looked unhappy for too long. L could stand to heap a few less burdens on a mind overloaded, already.]
What else would you call what I've been working to build with him? We have a Bond, and a business, and a household. We work and eat and play alongside one another.
[Even when the pieces scatter, and he doesn't want to lose any of it. But "better" is vague and broad. It could mean a wide swathe of things. It could mean Myr leaving this cottage feeling like he's not Bonded to something weak, and needy, and insistently self-destructive, to the point where even passively caring for it is overtaxing, guaranteed pain.
If the best L can do is seem like he's at least worth wasting that care and concern on, he must, and he is worth it, isn't he? Myr needs him, he reminds himself. Myr relies on his runes, his divination, his experience as a detective, and Myr's trusting, kind heart would surely be no match for Jin Guangyao's cunning without those things.]
I have a plan, you know. A design, and... I meant it, when I said you didn't have to come over.
[He wishes now that he'd insisted otherwise. Did Light respond? Will he be angry? What is happening that he can't see while his watch is stowed away?]
Unless... if you're here for my help, I'll always make time for that. You're a good friend to me...
[The word that feels most appropriate, in the niche L has chiseled out for himself. It's the one that won't disappoint Myr, or leave his Bonded witch aching.
He sits forward, Crookytail snorting in disgruntlement as she's nearly dislodged. He pushes his hand toward Myr's face with a desperate kind of energy in spite of the overall sluggishness of his movements. He begins to divine immediately, brazenly, without any of the safeguards or preparations that are typical for his attempts.]
["What else would you call what I've been working to build with him?"
One--mercy--of Myr's current mood is that as exposed as it leaves him, as bleeding-raw as he is, it's also stripped away so many of his filters and so much of the mannerly pretense he's accustomed to handling life with. Is that a good thing, when L loves him for his gentleness and apparent innocence?]
A fantasy built on a lie. [Bluntly put.] If you believe him worth saving, Linden, save him. Don't continue to act as if you're ignorant of the path he's on.
[He can feel through the Bond that this is slipping out of his hands despite his efforts. Damned for not having tried sooner, before the Evergreen Circle and the mess they'd made, of Aefenglom (and indirectly, of him). If he'd just had all his faculties about him he could argue this persuasively, he could--
He stiffens as L reaches for him with hand and magic. What's ordinarily welcome in this context suddenly becomes loathsome, threatening, and he lashes out to grab his Witch's hand without thinking. Catches it at the wrist with a grip not quite hard enough to push the bones together.
It takes him a moment--a shocked, betrayed, awful moment--to find his voice; his words are ice and iron.]
Don't.
[Crookytail, disturbed by L's movements and the tone of Myr's voice, slithers off the Witch's lap in an abrupt retreat.]
Do not start that. You are drugged and I do not give you permission for it.
[How horribly like this is to those men or women who take a Faun for an easy opportunity, nearly desperate in their drunken need.
(How horribly like it is to a Naga creeping into his house and touching his mind without his consent. Don't dwell on that.)]
[Myr, tragically, doesn't understand. He doesn't see that ideologically, there is no way to reconcile their philosophies, no way to bring Kira over to L's side, or vice-versa. He can't save Light, and he can't feel his extremities particularly well.
The urging, though, to save, only makes him more determined to reach for what he can access, and control, and salvage. He can do some good here, he can reconcile this, make it whole, channel everything into a worthy endeavor.
It takes him a moment to process what's happened, when it has. There's a sharp, severing crack as the connection he attempts breaks harshly. He's not in Myr's mind, but leaden-limbed and stunned in his chair. The wormipede has absconded, and his Bonded is furious.
He can only stare in frozen silence for a few moments, eyes wide. No longer impeded by the wormipede, he tries to root his feet to the floor and pull away, but he's weighted down, and no less anxious.]
S-sorry. I...
[Could he teleport? He doesn't have the coordination or the focus for it, so... no.]
I shouldn't have touched you.
[His wisp of a touch, but they both know what that can mean at the delicate fingertips of a diviner. Even so, he shouldn't touch Myr, should he? It's not for him, not where his assigned niche permits him to go.
Myr should leave, he realizes. Myr should go. He can make that happen if he's enough of a callous monster, can't he? No, he can't kick Crookytail, but...something else? Something petty and terrible and irredeemable, to balance the equation?]
Myr lets go finger-by-finger as his Witch pulls away from him, sitting further back in something that's nearly a slump. The flash of fury is gone as quickly as it materialized--it is hard for him to maintain that--and leaves only a hollow shell that disintegrates as L's tone turns sharp.
He recognizes this pattern: They have done this before, when L feels unworthiness and insecurity rising to choke him. The Bond pushes at him to leave with the same inexorable force the moons have over his mood and thoughts, the force that bids him to not resist or suffer worse for it.
But getting up and walking away requires an action and he cannot find it in himself to move.]
And if I leave you, where do I go? [It's Myr's turn to sound lost--to sound abandoned. Yes, he has his other Bonded for comfort, but L is his only Witch. L's the one he entrusted his sanity to, who promised him that he'd fix things, that he is fixable even when Myr believed otherwise.
But L would also have him live party to a lie until that lie destroyed itself.] What do I do?
[The Bond has, indeed, swiftly become something pressing and claustrophobic, stifling and difficult to inhabit. L's hands curl inward, wrists crossing over his ribs when Myr lets him go. There's no spryness or agility after he drank whatever he put together with the arrogance of one who never thought precision in potions was worth as much study as the other arts, the ones that get him in trouble just as well.
A rhythmic chant reverberates in his skull, when Myr asks where he goes after this.
Anywhere, but here. Anywhere, but--
He grips the sleeve of his jacket in his clenched fist, which doesn't actually close all that tightly.]
Go?
[Softer, pleading.]
I'll figure something out.
[I have a plan, I have a design, I have a list of other witches, because who does he think he is? At the present moment, he has no clear ideas, just knows that he will do and say anything to get Myr out that door. And why not today, when everything has gone to hell, anyway? Why not burn it all to the ground, now that fire incarnate himself has returned to Aefenglom.
He glances at the prone, soft, vulnerable wormipede. No; he still can't do it. He still can't quite go that far or that unconscionably ruthless.]
[The question's small and despairing. Myr still hasn't found it in himself to get up, though he has begun to take hold of his presence in the Bond and pull it back in. It seems so clear to him that whatever this is he's become in the wake of Jin Guangyao's meddling, it's too much for L to bear (and who would be surprised at that, if even Myr finds himself unbearable to be around).]
Please say you'll do something for whatever it is you've taken, [he adds, after a moment; he can feel it dragging at L's limbs, even now. It frightens him, as so much of this does, though the fear seems distant and receding as everything now is.]
--Crookytail, come. [She leaves off a study of whether L's lap might be safe to return to and creeps over to her Faun, nudging her head under his hand.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wELFARE CHECK (march 1st, post-mello, voice)
So we've Mello back among us.
Shall I come over?
[It's more a rhetorical question than anything; he's likely already packing up.
It also skips right over "how are you doing" because that--is fraught.]
no subject
We have.
[Snappish. He failed to pull back the last tone he was taking with his other Bonded. Rein it in; by all appearances, this has rattled you to pieces.]
...you don't have to.
[If L truly didn't want Myr to come over, he'd have said "no." Doubtless Myr knows well enough what noting no obligation actually means.
Ironically, were L better at communicating what he wants and what he'll permit, a lot would be different about Mello's return.]
no subject
It's not about him, though, he knows, and he's able to correct--though it takes him a little longer than it ordinarily would.
Deep breaths. L is, understandably, in a much worse state than Myr is right now.]
In five minutes, then. I'll see myself in.
[That's about how long it takes him to roust out Crookytail and head to L's cottage with the wormipede in tow.]
no subject
It's not working. He's completely out of thistles and powdered dragon teeth, and the resulting unique concoction leaves him lethargic and uncoordinated, but no less agitated. Myr will find him sitting on his side of the chess board that usually has an ongoing game with Light in progress. Today, the pieces are scattered and jumbled.]
...is it quieter?
[Over the Bond, he means. The implicating, twisting, emotional strains that have managed to radiate to every one of his partners.
He's convinced that things have been more wrong, before, and not managed this level of impact.]
no subject
The wormipede is all too happy to go see one of her favorite people. She near-gallops over and lifts her front segments off the ground to reach for L's attention.]
No--just garbled. [No sense mincing up the truth.
He does frown as he hears something go skittering away from Crookytail's lolloping advance, and makes sure to pick his steps carefully as he follows her.]
Who else are you talking to, amatus?
no subject
Garbled is better than a piercing arrow, better than something keening and clear. Ugly is acceptable if the result was effective; he's always thought so.]
Careful...
[There are a few chess pieces on the floor. Tripping hazards; he starts to stand, but his legs are leaden, even without the wormipede's gentle weight.
The question raises a defensive spike over the Bond. L reaches past it, gathers the tattered shreds of an answer to present.]
Light. Near, and also...
[Mello, but he's not sure if that conversation has concluded. It seems to have; he hopes that it's the case.]
no subject
Stay there--it's all right. [He should've brought his staff, though he's gotten out of the habit for short trips in known territory. Ah, well; feeling out each step with the tips of his hooves suffices to knock any stray chess pieces out of the way before he can step on them.
He reaches out as he closes with L, to find the edge of the expected table and guide himself around it. Then reaches out, palm-up, at shoulder-height for a seated man: The request for further guidance is implicit. Where is he needed most?
Crookytail asks no such questions, of course; she gives a sigh of indignation through her spiracles when L tries to stand, then loops more of herself onto his lap when he can't make it.]
Does Light know who he is?
[One more question, and then he's done talking.]
no subject
He does reach out for Myr's hand; though his vision is fine, the gesture takes effort, feels weighted and drifting. He does make contact, fingers resting in Myr's open palm.]
No. Light doesn't know... in our timeline, he and I were both pulled from an earlier point, and... unlike me, he hasn't heard an account of the future from present allies.
[That wild restlessness tilts and rears uneasily as L works through his thought.]
There's a complication. While Light doesn't know who Mello is... he knows who Deneuve is. Mello chose to use a name that belonged to me, in our world.
[One of his trophies, taken from another detective and worn audaciously.]
He's asked how this former Bond of mine would know it, if he's empty of memories from this world. I'm not ready for him to know the truth... he can't know the truth, Myr, but he knows when I'm lying.
no subject
This is dangerous, and neither of them is in a state to navigate these complexities right now. The stag in Myr--as ever--suggests that they run, or hide, and--for once, the man in him is inclined to listen to the wisdom of the prey.]
Then, amatus, [gentle words, punctuated as he takes L's hand entirely in his own and rubs his thumb over the knuckles; he does not feel calm himself, but he has hard-won years of experience at acting it when he must,] stop talking to him so you don't have to lie.
[For now.]
Buy yourself the time you need to reason through this. And--
[...a thought he'd been meaning to speak nearly since Light's arrival occurs to him, and he stops, but doesn't voice it yet.
The tip-of-the-tongue feeling hangs there, though, in the Bond between them.]
no subject
He speaks softly, dictating the text to his watch. Myr's stopped by. Sorry, but I have to step away.
It'll frustrate Light, almost definitely seem suspicious. But Myr's correct about it buying them time, and L's certainly troubled enough by the reappearance of a Bonded who left him more damaged than he found him that he might quit a conversation suddenly even without a timely visitor.]
And...?
[He prompts, dropping his watch into one of his larger pockets that doesn't require much fine coordination.]
no subject
Always do the hardest thing first. The Faun breathes out as he's prompted, marshaling his thoughts quick as he can. It's good, at least, that he's been thinking about this for a very long time--even if he's unsure he has the capacity to make a good argument right now.]
He, [Light,] was bound to find you out at some point, no matter how flawlessly you played the game.
[Because the Mirrors introduced an element of uncertainty that no amount of genius could account for: Which see.]
I'd advise--while you still have the advantage--you make those revelations happen on your own terms, not his. So that you, [unsaid: and those of us who love you more than life,] get the upper hand in the engagement--and keep it, before he can gather the power he had on your world.
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Myr's right, isn't he? It was always going to end at some point; there was always going to be a point where the easy, natural domesticity L and Light had accessed was going to collapse. Perhaps L is not responding to the reappearance of an attacker so much as he's desperate not to grieve the loss of something that was fragile, and fake, and cherished all the same. Mello's arrival might as well be a doomsday harbinger, in that regard, threatening L's carefully maintained truce.]
I'm not ready.
[He says it like a lost child, realizes it after the fact.]
It's just... there's a right way, like you said, and the moving parts are all in the wrong alignment. It's not the right time, as ideal as it would to be strike first, and... for now, I just need to know how to answer his questions in a way that will satisfy him, and not compromise or betray someone who gave his life to my legacy.
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To say nothing of the complications Mello represents (the wounds the man's reappearance has reopened).
How tidy it would be if Light and Mello could be set to destroy each other. "Tidy" except for how it would leave L a ruin if that played out here and now, because for all Myr's Witch believes himself irredeemably broken in most human pursuits, he knows enough of duty and enough of love to try in the face of opposition.
And that has always mattered most, in Myr's estimation.]
It needn't mean the end, amatus. Not of you, or of him, or what's between you. The stakes are different here, and if he values you a fraction as much as you do him, [dubious, in Myr's overprotective estimation, but he must allow the chance,] you might find peace on your own terms here.
[But he will accede that now is not the time to untangle that knot; there's the more immediate problem that needs solving. Myr sighs, and sinks to rest on his hocks, before adding his other hand to wrap around L's.]
How long can you delay before he comes looking for you in person?
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It's this avoidant realization, as well as the strange and panicked mood that is garbled but not quiet, that influences L's uneasy receipt of Myr's words. Encouraging as they are, optimistic and sensible, L knows his Bonded and himself.
It would mean the end. Whether in blood or ice, a chapter would close irreversibly, and perhaps L also knows at his core that Light doesn't value this as much as he does. Light is younger; Light has not witnessed L's final breath, or had the time to mourn and miss him that L has experienced.]
Long enough, I'm sure.
[Forced flippancy, as though it's casual, no great matter or reason for concern. What does it matter, when his Bonded comes back?]
He wants to know what Mello called himself when he was here, last. "M", also, is too close to a name I called myself.
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He is not well, himself; not rested or healed. He still has a lot on his mind--but he, too, needs to strive in the face of adversity for the sake of what he loves.
Absently, apologetic, he lifts the hand he's holding and presses his lips to it. I'm sorry; you deserve my best and I've lost it. ]
You may have already lost that one. [His memory, at least, is improving again. Thank the Maker for that.] If Light's paying attention to everyone else who greeted Mello--that young woman he was friends with called him "M".
[A sigh.] Any strategy to protect him will need to take her into account.
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They have an understanding, after all. They are of one mind, a like soul; the fluid ease with which they can accomplish miracles together as a team is more addictive than any substance L has ever sampled or swallowed. The only flaw is that honesty would kill it; it's a big flaw, certainly, but he believes it is the only one.]
Alex.
[He sighs. Kind girl, innocent to all of this. She wouldn't know better.]
She has a gentle way about her... a gentle way with him. But Light will surely notice it if he hasn't already.
[More work; more risk, more smoke and mirrors to haul and carry and maintain so that the superficial illusion can remain, because he is not ready.]
I need to figure something out. Given that he took my name, Deneuve... he could also have chosen the name M to align himself more closely with me.
[It makes Mello sound obsessed, even more dangerous and unhinged. L is well and bleakly aware of the further problems it creates, but there were always going to be more problems. There's no way around it, now.]
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But Myr is not going to be the one to offer him a hand onto that path. Not and keep true to his own promises.
His ears flick again as L plans aloud, his expression growing more and more troubled. While he understands whole-heartedly why his Witch is scrambling to avoid the confrontation, why L isn't ready, this isn't the right path for it. Everything in him wants to not have to point that out; it would be much easier to be comforting, to murmur assent and support his Bonded's decisions...but it would also be making himself party to lies, and ones that invite disaster besides.]
He'll see right through that. [It's taking a lot not to rest his head against L's knees and mute himself to mumbling. Indistinct advice can be ignored, the conflict safely postponed until a later I-told-you-so makes it inevitable.
That isn't worthy of either of them.] It won't add up. The man's plainly obsessed with you in a way that takes years to accumulate. But to keep him and Eli safe you've got to pretend you've only known them casually--or better, you've only met them in Aefenglom. But you can't catch every contingency or anticipate what either of them, or anyone else who's met them, might give away, and the more explanations you've got to extemporize the more liable you are to cross yourself in your lies.
They're none of them mushrooms. [To be safely kept in the dark and fed bullshit.] Keeping Light and Mello blind to each other won't make them safe in the long run; it only delays the reckoning and favors whoever works out the truth first.
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He's angry. Frustrated. He has nowhere fair to fling that anger. Crookytail's hedonistic nazzling into his lap isn't worthy of it, and Myr, present and exhausted and trying anyway to help him sort this tangled mess, isn't either. The chess board is already scattered, and he's already scrambled something of his own with a haphazard potion.
He knows that Myr is right. There's so much he can't control, so many puppets dancing too far and breaking their strings off. He's not even babysitting his watch, which at least feels controllable even if he can't police the activity of others.]
The takeaway's that a reckoning is coming, then.
[Anything to stave it off. Anything to keep it from crushing him, and the others in his path.]
He saved my life, you know. At Alder's gathering. A shade's claw clipped me, tearing through a crowd, and he could have let me bleed out on the spot. Don't you think he would have? If he really intended to end me, here?
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[If Myr must be the voice of the inevitable that stalks them, so be it. (Those who bear false witness and seek to deceive others, know this: There is but one Truth.)]
You've known it was since he came through his mirror. A tidy, static life suits neither of you. The game's always only been a delaying action.
[He straightens, lifting his head with a jingling of charms. Would that he could look his Witch in the eyes and impress on him the utter futility of trying to manage the situation, prolong his current detente with Light.
Thus he can't hide his wince (nor the guilt-grief-pain in the Bond) when L mentions his near-death, and just who had been there to hold L's life in his hands.]
You know him better than I, [he admits, and does not say though I worry about the lens you see him through.] And you would know best the circumstances that would make him deem you a threat worth removing, rather than keeping close.
But, [quiet and inexorable,] consider also that he surely had that noose around your neck already back home. Here, you're an ally he can't afford to lose--and we've no evidence whatever that either of you killing the other would change the course of events you already know have happened.
You know how that game ends. What does it profit you to waste your time playing out the steps of it when you could have something better?
[It surprises him, internally, that there's not as much envy as he thought there would be in that suggestion. Something better does not, and may not, mean Myr himself. It is a broad spectrum (infinite) of possibilities where L does not have to end dead in a gutter or splitting his time between a meaningless life and a bottle.]
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He'd debated whether or not he should tell Myr about the incident at the party. Myr knew he was injured, surely; it was impossible for him not to notice that over their Bond, no matter how he might otherwise have been occupied that night. Maybe L had wanted to avoid the guilt he knew would manifest for both sides once it was mentioned; Myr, for not being there, and L, for managing to be a distressing distraction even many miles away.
"Something better" is too broad a spectrum, too infinite, to the point where it feels like it can't possibly be real. It's at least as imaginary as L's idealized Bond with Light, and maybe that's why he finds himself able to interact with the idea, respond to it a though it could happen, and he and Light aren't just two vicious, violent creatures that deserve to tear each other apart eternally.
Besides, Myr has looked unhappy for too long. L could stand to heap a few less burdens on a mind overloaded, already.]
What else would you call what I've been working to build with him? We have a Bond, and a business, and a household. We work and eat and play alongside one another.
[Even when the pieces scatter, and he doesn't want to lose any of it. But "better" is vague and broad. It could mean a wide swathe of things. It could mean Myr leaving this cottage feeling like he's not Bonded to something weak, and needy, and insistently self-destructive, to the point where even passively caring for it is overtaxing, guaranteed pain.
If the best L can do is seem like he's at least worth wasting that care and concern on, he must, and he is worth it, isn't he? Myr needs him, he reminds himself. Myr relies on his runes, his divination, his experience as a detective, and Myr's trusting, kind heart would surely be no match for Jin Guangyao's cunning without those things.]
I have a plan, you know. A design, and... I meant it, when I said you didn't have to come over.
[He wishes now that he'd insisted otherwise. Did Light respond? Will he be angry? What is happening that he can't see while his watch is stowed away?]
Unless... if you're here for my help, I'll always make time for that. You're a good friend to me...
[The word that feels most appropriate, in the niche L has chiseled out for himself. It's the one that won't disappoint Myr, or leave his Bonded witch aching.
He sits forward, Crookytail snorting in disgruntlement as she's nearly dislodged. He pushes his hand toward Myr's face with a desperate kind of energy in spite of the overall sluggishness of his movements. He begins to divine immediately, brazenly, without any of the safeguards or preparations that are typical for his attempts.]
I said I'd help you. I'm going to make it better.
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One--mercy--of Myr's current mood is that as exposed as it leaves him, as bleeding-raw as he is, it's also stripped away so many of his filters and so much of the mannerly pretense he's accustomed to handling life with. Is that a good thing, when L loves him for his gentleness and apparent innocence?]
A fantasy built on a lie. [Bluntly put.] If you believe him worth saving, Linden, save him. Don't continue to act as if you're ignorant of the path he's on.
[He can feel through the Bond that this is slipping out of his hands despite his efforts. Damned for not having tried sooner, before the Evergreen Circle and the mess they'd made, of Aefenglom (and indirectly, of him). If he'd just had all his faculties about him he could argue this persuasively, he could--
He stiffens as L reaches for him with hand and magic. What's ordinarily welcome in this context suddenly becomes loathsome, threatening, and he lashes out to grab his Witch's hand without thinking. Catches it at the wrist with a grip not quite hard enough to push the bones together.
It takes him a moment--a shocked, betrayed, awful moment--to find his voice; his words are ice and iron.]
Don't.
[Crookytail, disturbed by L's movements and the tone of Myr's voice, slithers off the Witch's lap in an abrupt retreat.]
Do not start that. You are drugged and I do not give you permission for it.
[How horribly like this is to those men or women who take a Faun for an easy opportunity, nearly desperate in their drunken need.
(How horribly like it is to a Naga creeping into his house and touching his mind without his consent. Don't dwell on that.)]
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The urging, though, to save, only makes him more determined to reach for what he can access, and control, and salvage. He can do some good here, he can reconcile this, make it whole, channel everything into a worthy endeavor.
It takes him a moment to process what's happened, when it has. There's a sharp, severing crack as the connection he attempts breaks harshly. He's not in Myr's mind, but leaden-limbed and stunned in his chair. The wormipede has absconded, and his Bonded is furious.
He can only stare in frozen silence for a few moments, eyes wide. No longer impeded by the wormipede, he tries to root his feet to the floor and pull away, but he's weighted down, and no less anxious.]
S-sorry. I...
[Could he teleport? He doesn't have the coordination or the focus for it, so... no.]
I shouldn't have touched you.
[His wisp of a touch, but they both know what that can mean at the delicate fingertips of a diviner. Even so, he shouldn't touch Myr, should he? It's not for him, not where his assigned niche permits him to go.
Myr should leave, he realizes. Myr should go. He can make that happen if he's enough of a callous monster, can't he? No, he can't kick Crookytail, but...something else? Something petty and terrible and irredeemable, to balance the equation?]
Go. Now, go...
[It benefits both of them. Maybe it's enough.]
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Myr lets go finger-by-finger as his Witch pulls away from him, sitting further back in something that's nearly a slump. The flash of fury is gone as quickly as it materialized--it is hard for him to maintain that--and leaves only a hollow shell that disintegrates as L's tone turns sharp.
He recognizes this pattern: They have done this before, when L feels unworthiness and insecurity rising to choke him. The Bond pushes at him to leave with the same inexorable force the moons have over his mood and thoughts, the force that bids him to not resist or suffer worse for it.
But getting up and walking away requires an action and he cannot find it in himself to move.]
And if I leave you, where do I go? [It's Myr's turn to sound lost--to sound abandoned. Yes, he has his other Bonded for comfort, but L is his only Witch. L's the one he entrusted his sanity to, who promised him that he'd fix things, that he is fixable even when Myr believed otherwise.
But L would also have him live party to a lie until that lie destroyed itself.] What do I do?
I trust you. You promised you'd help.
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A rhythmic chant reverberates in his skull, when Myr asks where he goes after this.
Anywhere, but here. Anywhere, but--
He grips the sleeve of his jacket in his clenched fist, which doesn't actually close all that tightly.]
Go?
[Softer, pleading.]
I'll figure something out.
[I have a plan, I have a design, I have a list of other witches, because who does he think he is? At the present moment, he has no clear ideas, just knows that he will do and say anything to get Myr out that door. And why not today, when everything has gone to hell, anyway? Why not burn it all to the ground, now that fire incarnate himself has returned to Aefenglom.
He glances at the prone, soft, vulnerable wormipede. No; he still can't do it. He still can't quite go that far or that unconscionably ruthless.]
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[The question's small and despairing. Myr still hasn't found it in himself to get up, though he has begun to take hold of his presence in the Bond and pull it back in. It seems so clear to him that whatever this is he's become in the wake of Jin Guangyao's meddling, it's too much for L to bear (and who would be surprised at that, if even Myr finds himself unbearable to be around).]
Please say you'll do something for whatever it is you've taken, [he adds, after a moment; he can feel it dragging at L's limbs, even now. It frightens him, as so much of this does, though the fear seems distant and receding as everything now is.]
--Crookytail, come. [She leaves off a study of whether L's lap might be safe to return to and creeps over to her Faun, nudging her head under his hand.]
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