[Lycka follows fast at Paul's back, close in case she needs to push or drag him through. He manages, and they emerge together with Paul's waking.
L's fingers curl; he realizes he was holding his breath, and releases the small amount of air his lungs were holding. He'd felt that moment of suspension, too, and while he'd believed that Paul would come back, would have bet on those odds, he also knows that it could have gone very badly if even one small part of this had been out of alignment.
The plan was sound; the language was sound, his skills were sound. This is something to be celebrated, on those merits alone.
What it all means might be a different matter.]
Yes; I'm sound and stable. It "felt...?"
[If their success this time was due to being over-prepared, he doesn't want to be underprepared when the event all this foretells actually comes to pass.
His palm is closed on his own memento of the sensation he'd had access to: a perfectly round burn blister.]
If this portends your exposure to a venomous neurotoxin, something can be done to guard against it, surely.
Muscular. More like an octopus, or something else with suckers.
[Paul pushes himself up on his elbows with only a slight shakiness, swallowing a dry mouth. He has a slightly abashed air of accomplishment to him, and a pervasive sense of distracting relief as he lets his head fall back and looks up at the sliver of moonlight above them.]
I was right. [He closes his eyes, reinforcing the structure of his memory to capture the vision.] I didn't want to say it, if I was wrong, but I was right. It's a shapeshifter, we knew that, but I wondered - it's prescient, Lazarus. It sees the future, and that's how it adapts. I'll have to see how far it can look, next time.
I couldn't have done that without you. Thank you.
[Before the dream, Paul's acceptance of help had a certain sense of concession to it, an allowance he was making for Lazarus. His thanks here lack it. There is a tender new shoot of emotion under them instead, a sort of wondering, bewildered trust.]
Could you pass me my notebook? It's in my bag. [A minor pause.] I needed it to hit me, to know. I won't do that when I'm awake.
[That, though, comes in the tones of someone who has been rebuked about this sort of thing before.]
[L's mind, its own large hadron collider, speeds along with those revelations and all the myriad implications. Is being right the triumph they want it to be? Was he actually right to help with this and enable it?
He nods at Paul's thanks, picking up on the softer note that was formerly absent. It's something he recognizes, though he's heard it very seldom in his life. At least, not directed towards him.
However seldom he inspires tenderness, people who deal with him come to know his value. Not many others could remain cool under pressure and pick up a magical language overnight, after all.]
If it's prescient... is it fair to say that it has at least as good an idea of what's coming as you do?
[He goes to fetch the notebook, careful to avoid the blister on his hand, handing it over to Paul.]
You might not be able to choose whether or not you're hit.
[Paul levers himself further upright, ending up with uncharacteristically curved posture around his notebook when he sets it in his lap. He does frown, slightly, at Lazarus's cautious grasp, but addressing that will have to briefly wait.
Part of him wants to reply lightly, teasingly. To make a small joke of the concern, and to diffuse it that way. But that's a technique that worked for practicing on training dummies, never anything like this.
When he started to do things like this, there had been no tension to diffuse. It was a necessity. There was no time left for coddling. He has told himself this, and it's been true, and it's true here. So why does Lazarus do it? (A question that might as well be: why did he come back?)
First things first: the practical question.]
Even if it does, it shouldn't matter. Being able to see something isn't the same as being able to prevent it from happening, is it? Symmetrical knowledge means it would know what was coming, but that doesn't give it the flexibility we have in our countermoves.
And I know. I've fought before. [His little smile is gone (a flash of a knife, of sand, of citrus and blood), and they're likely both better off for it.] But I'll try not to be. I'm not interested in playing martyr.
[He produces a pencil from up his sleeve (his wrist holster finds more use as storage for stationary than the knife in it, these days) and begins to sketch a half-glimpsed horizon. Sophia returns to his side, and he lowers his free arm to let her run up his shoulder, his face drawn closed in thought.]
You're not, are you? Interested in that. [He keeps his eyes focused on his work.] If you need anything for your hand, the kit is on the third shelf by the entrance.
[Lycka returns to L's side, seeming more languid than usual. It's as though the dream and flying alongside another has left her something like jet-lagged, but she nudges his bony elbow, offers a tongue in a light caress. He reaches out to stroke it softly with his uninjured hand.
At the question, there's a flickering barb in his thoughts, a callback to something else before Trench. Maybe it went unnoticed; maybe telepathy goes both ways. Maybe it's just the tenseness around his eyes.]
No one who doesn't have many screws loose should want that.
[He retrieves the kit, pulling free gauze, salve, a scalpel to drain the blister.]
[Paul continues sketching, his voice quiet, neutral. He finds himself adding the swords, two uneven pillars erupting from the sand, their lines stark.]
I'd rather not find out.
[He flips the page, the horizon not quite finished (he'll come back to it to fill out the details; he'll start it fresh on another page; later, later, either way) and begins another sketch, this one of possible molecular shapes, while the sensation of the toxin is still fresh. He doesn't want to look at Lazarus, suddenly, an avoidance as much of what he might see as of shame.]
Would you be able to wear gloves, or would that interfere with the spell?
[He should have asked. He should have thought about this possibility. There's so much to remember, and he should be able to, and he keeps falling short.]
[He repeats the vague qualifier, as though he's giving a nail a couple more passes with a hammer to ensure it's secure.
Paul doesn't really need to know that L died horribly before arriving in Trench, enmeshed in a fight he believed in, throwing away a valuable piece to ensure an eventual checkmate years down the line. Not now; not today.]
That being said... I'd rather you didn't, either.
[Gingerly tapping some salve on his deflated blister and somewhat carelessly looping and tying a piece of gauze over it, he returns to glance curiously at Paul's molecular sketch.]
Gloves shouldn't disrupt or dampen any part of the spell. In truth... it's just the one thing I overlooked. It won't be the case, next time.
[As long as neither of them say it out loud, then Paul doesn't have to know. He doesn't have to examine what he suspects, or think about what it might say about him that he seems to seek out the company of ghosts.
More unearned mercy.]
I should have thought of it. [He tilts his notebook when he notices Lazarus' gaze, letting him get a better look.] These are just possibilities, based on onset and effect.
[The drawings resemble 21st century biochemistry the way a spaceship resembles a car: recognizably for the same purpose, but at different points of development and scope. Next to branching lines connecting dotted circles, there are radial notations in a cypher-shorthand, giving the sketches an appearance almost like constellations.]
I was born on an ocean world, did I tell you that? We have a type of snail that produces a toxin like this - these are references to antivenom formulations. [He taps the paper, lightly, an almost nervous gesture.] We'll want to stockpile.
[Then, veering back to dark waters:] I'm sorry I keep doing that to you.
[If he's "not really a person", it stands to a kind of disquieting reason that L does think of himself as more of a ghost. It even explains why his presence among the living seems, to him, like a very temporary and tentative thing, audacious, borrowed or stolen.
The living have things to do, though, important tasks and priorities, and so just staying away isn't an option while he has rare and uniquely useful skills and knowledge.
He takes in the drawings' details, compares it to his own working knowledge of chemistry. The significant differences aren't so great; the similarities are enough to draw useful comparisons.]
You hadn't mentioned it, and I probably wouldn't have assumed... but being able to apply this prior knowledge is invaluable. We could synthesize something an antivenom enough, I'm sure, even if blood magic needs to fill in the gaps. We'll want to consider whether it's to be a protective dose, or a cure in the case of exposure... there are benefits and drawbacks to each, of course.
[He shakes his head, dismissing the apology.]
You haven't done anything to me. If I was going to overlook something, believe that any other part of this process would have been catastrophic. This is only inconvenient.
[Paul looks up, the pencil held lightly in his hand, tip just above the page. He looks at Lazarus the way he might look at a shell, or a leaf, an incisive, memorizing observation.]
That's how it starts. Injuries into inconveniences, self-dismissal. [He straightens himself, draws his shoulders back into socket, his voice firm.] People aren't means. They're ends. I'm not going to treat you as anything less, no matter what you tell me, and you're not going to make me try.
[It's a directness that comes more naturally than he expects it to, with someone who, for all his help, is still so much an unknown. It's a commitment to a position that Paul knows as a vulnerability that could be exploited: that there is a limit to what he's willing to do to people.
[Shabby creature that he is, it's not a way L is used to being looked at. Being overlooked, just like the gloves he should have worn, is what he's more comfortable with. The letter on the screen needs no introduction when he does need to be seen; the voice scrambler is safe, when he needs to be heard.
Did, and was.
He nods, attentive and respectful, as though he hasn't sacrificed lives in the service of an end. Not really a person, after all, and he's sure there are things he could tell Paul that would prove it.
He just doesn't want to, yet. Feeling like a person is turning out to be addictive.]
I guess I didn't even realize I was doing that. Truly... next time, I won't overlook the gloves, and you don't need to worry about it again.
[That's true for the gloves, specifically. On a broader level, old habits die so very hard... and that includes a desire to test and confirm implied limits. Does Paul truly have one?]
[The quick ease of the agreement is not meant as a rebuke, or at least, Paul doesn't believe that it is. It still feels like one, like an error rebuffed, and Paul wants to flinch at it. He wants to have resentment burn on the back of his neck, he wants to know the twisting of shame in his stomach, he wants to bite his tongue and taste his own disappointment in himself. Don't let me hurt you is a pathological demand, a morally bereft order, and yet there he is, inflicting it again, and again, but not putting down the blade.
All that he feels in the hollows where these things should be is frigid, pressured numbness. The functional state that he has existed in whenever he's been alone, and most of the time when he is not, interrupted only by flickers of feeling he seems to more remember than experience.
He flips the page of the notebook and returns to work, now jotting down the features of the leviathan he was able to perceive in the new light of his eyes, some of the projections of its roiling, chaotic shape. His expression is drawn, slightly tired. His hands do not shake. His spine doesn't bend.]
Then it's settled. [It is; it's settled that he is going to 'worry', as if that's the word.] You're right about the antivenoms. A prophylactic application might be advisable for several things.
There were no words this time. But the basic structure - beach, ocean, beach - that repeated. Do you have any thoughts on what that might mean?
[L is one of those unfortunate people whose reassurances can sound like rebukes; the opposite has also been known to be true. It's what happens when someone grows obsessed with finding his own pulse, and overcompensates by saying the words that any other living person would surely say, to great and correct and successful effect.
How much of that does Paul understand? Is the real reason L haunts these obligations so happily purely because he found Paul's pulse and mistook it for his own?]
I'll consider some ways to ensure efficacy without overdosing, as well as the time frame for maximum effect.
[Probably completely safely and sanely.
He nods, dark eyes taking on a focused but faraway look as he considers.]
A pattern is almost always significant. If I were inclined to be optimistic, I'd say that it could represent a terminal cycle. A departure from safety, and then a return to safety.
[But L is never truly inclined to be optimistic. He wishes he could mean that and put his faith behind it, but he continues.]
It could also be a rut. Something that's never completed that you can't move on from. A sort of prison fixation.
[And a fatalistic one; doom waits in the water, and it also waits on land.]
It's conjecture. Don't let it influence the way you think too much.
[The truth is, Paul recognizes a deflection in the form of agreement when he hears one, because it's a thing he does himself. Saying what people want to hear in a way that doesn't quite bind you to it is an art, and what he hears, refracted through his own understanding and assumptions, is that Lazarus will continue to do what he thinks is necessary - he'll just incorporate gloves.
It means that his odds of successfully hiding anything from the telepathic puzzle solver are dropping to the same nil he has for hiding things from himself.]
It may be an anchoring effect from you. Your mind stabilizing the structure of what mine perceives. Whether it's a cycle or a rut, that's more than I've had to work with. We've had.
[He notes these thoughts down underneath the hulking tracings of the leviathan, like an invocation against it. Since he's trying to avoid doing further harm, he doesn't add like an always locked room?, and hopes the thought isn't overly loud. (He'll take what reassurances he can give himself; Lazarus said he always solves the puzzle.)]
I want to see how far we can take that. [He matches Lazarus' thoughtfulness in tone, as if speaking of a problem situated well outside of himself.] Where I come from, there are people who use psychogenic drugs to enhance their mental acuity and perception. They're not available here, but I think I've identified some potential substitutions. After a few more cycles, I'd like to try adding those to the process. Will that impact things on your side?
[It's grimly amusing, like a private sort of joke, for L to hear that his mind has a stabilizing effect on anything. His forte, generally, is taking things apart after they're dead, putting together something else. Puzzles, after all, are inanimate and unfeeling things with no need and no pain.
He nods, ever committed to whatever it takes, focusing with laser precision to avoid the sensation that, like a stray beam of light in a hall of mirrors, something is glancing on him and seeing him in a startling and uncomfortable way.]
It's the case where I'm from, as well, although...
[A wry chuckle; even this mirthless sound, like all of L's iterations of laughter, sounds a little unnatural.]
I don't know how accurate the testimonies are. In my experience, mental acuity and perception are best judged in an unaltered state. That being said...
[Careful, careful, inching forward like something creeping out of its cave after a long time inside. L's relationship with drugs is a disciplined one, but this is in large part because he suspects he might like them a little too much, should he broaden his familiarity. The kinds that can either impart oblivion, or force the soul back inside the body along with all its sensation and awareness, would be especially tempting.]
I don't believe there would be an adverse effect... but I don't actually know, and I have no reason to think that my guess would be educated in this regard. Since what we're doing is fairly unique and experimental in practice, I don't even know what asking around would yield.
[That's an interesting retreat and advance of thought, and Paul looks up at Lazarus through the hanging veil of his (too long) hair at that off-kilter chuckle.]
There are mentat conditioning techniques I could teach you. They allow for greater mental acuity in altered or stressed states.
[It's strange to him that Lazarus, so clearly intelligent, has an apparently non-neutral reaction to the use of a tool. There's a general prudishness about many things he's always taken for granted here, and though Lazarus didn't express disapproval or disgust, it's still unexpected. He's sure some of his surprise seeped into his voice.
But he has to remember these are people of ancient history, pre-spice. Besides, it's given him an idea of the kind of repayment he might be able to offer his new teacher.]
I was partially trained. I won't be able to do the deep work, but I think you have potential - especially if you can pick up on my patterning through your ability.
[He sounds interested, in an affected polite way that whispers of having tried it, and so much else, and he'd been promised that it would work.
He realizes that it's perhaps noticeably tainted, along with the tone that came before. The honesty of Palebloods does not spare other Palebloods, seemingly, but even his own honesty is rarely straightforward. It takes detours and blind turns just like a frightened child lost in a dense forest, because if he's dropped too many breadcrumbs and made himself too easy for the monsters to find, he won't last long, out here.]
Please don't misunderstand. I'm not against trying the substances. In fact, I think that we should, if only to find out what will happen. While I lack the definite knowledge of how your consumption could affect me secondhand... I'm not unfamiliar with some drugs, firsthand, and know generally what to expect.
[He realizes that his apparent reticence and following explanation could lead one to believe that he'd also had experience with addiction, which adds an undesirable layer, but is it better than admitting that he's more afraid of discovering a safe and warm place that he can't ever truly stay?]
[Paul stops sketching as Lazarus speaks, his head lifting to observe him with a suppressed smile that still sparks a light of anticipation in his eyes. The faintly dismissive civility leaves him unaffected. He doesn't intend to tease, or be condescending, so he's careful about inflecting his tone with respectful informativeness when he says:]
No. Not like meditation. [He also refrains from adding you're not an infant.] But you've had training, haven't you? You must have.
[That's a question halfway directed at himself. Paul closes his sketchbook for the moment, sets it aside with the pencil, and inches closer to Lazarus with a look of particularly adolescent cockiness.]
What types of drugs? I'd assume stimulants, some regularly?
[There are those who overindulge in the use of drugs for non-productive ends. Paul is aware of the concept, and the way it often expresses most in those who experiences material or personal wants that go unmet. He doesn't overlap it with Lazarus, or even begin to think of his response in that context.]
How old are you? Closest approximation of lived biological time.
[L's reaction presupposed a level of condescension; Paul assuages it with gentle amusement, because apparently, they both think that meditation is basic. Child's play, not for those brilliant and only occasionally tormented.]
I've studied some techniques. They're better for dissociating, though... in situations where you might find yourself tortured for information, or subjected to physical or emotional pain.
[L is good at leaving his body, to an extent that is both impressive and deeply troubling.
He blinks; he supposes he shouldn't really be surprised anymore by Paul's rather comprehensive knowledge on unexpected subjects.]
You'd assume correctly. Stimulants, because I needed to stay awake several nights in a row often, but also tranquilizers, sometimes, when that became unsustainable. Other things... to eliminate difficulty or distractions of a physical nature.
[A pause, because his age sounds a little unbelievable, looks a little unbelievable now that he's in his real skin and not the straighter and handsomer version of himself he'd shed into. He answers Paul's question honestly, if with some bewildered distance. Those years slipped somewhere, lacking typical milestones. It's left him looking uncannily like a teenager and feeling faded and ancient.]
I turned twenty-five in October. You're... what, sixteen? Seventeen?
[Just a little older than Mello, and all the others who were lined up to compete for his job when he kicked it. Just a little younger than the man who stood over him, once he did.]
At the risk of sounding like I'm encouraging the pursuit of mediocrity... sometimes it is alright to stop at "enough." Better, paradoxically.
Nearly seventeen. [An answer Paul doesn't give much thought to, too fixated on looking for something in Lazarus' eyes, the set of his bones.] You're not entirely out of the developmental window, and you have a foundation.
[The rest of it he's nodded along to, showing no flicker of surprise or concern at any of it - not the concept of preparing for being tortured, not the use of a wide array of self-prescribed pharmacology, and not even at the concept of 'enough'. (A thing Paul believes he understands, but the thing about understanding limits is that they're contingent on what the person setting them believes they should be.)
Instead, Paul's reaction is one of deepened respect, and a growing excitement that is slowly resurrecting his improved mood from earlier.]
I'd like to show you something. Do you...here, contact might help. [He offers his hand, wrist upturned, and pulls back his sleeve to expose his pulse point.] This is a training exercise for the nervous system. Try to see if you can follow the pattern with your abilities.
[He should temper expectations, he knows that, but - he has an intuition about this.]
[L wouldn't have ever guessed that he'd draw a strange sort of comfort from being told by someone roughly 60% his age that he had growing left to do, but here they are. I ruined myself, and let others help, he might as well have said, I may have ruined others... but here they are.
He desperately wants to not ruin Paul. People instinctively seem to know that he is a ruiner, so they treat him the way he deserves, with caution and revulsion. L thought Paul would have realized, by now, but maybe he was intentionally and selfishly poor at communicating it. Isn't it nicer, after all, to have potential and promise, and to be told so?
His haunted eyes are wide and uncertain for a moment, but L recognizes fundamentally that he could live his whole life in Trench inside the glowing walls of this sanctuary, dreaming in a soft cocoon. It would be a lot like the life he'd led before, but if he wants more out of this new life, as well as connections worth having with others? He's poorly equipped for it, as things stand, and recognizes it.
He reaches forward, fine narrow bones catching the rippling shadows of the glowing chamber as he gingerly initiates contact, touching the heartbeat he might have mistaken for his own.
His eyes slide closed, and it could be his own... except it isn't. His is somewhere else, out of synch with his mind and his breath. His body exists and survives, scrabbling through with no rhythm or harmony beneath a mind that is detached and truly above it all.
It's a terrifying several moments and he has to actively fight the urge to break away and peel the skin away from his shoulders and ribs in tattered, bloody rags. He'd willfully let the knowledge stay hidden for a long time, but when he opens his eyes, it lives behind them, new and uneasy and repulsed.]
Let me try again... it caught me off balance, at first. Listening like that...
[An understatement. He still wants to shred his skin with his fingernails, and it's a testament to his willpower that he's managing not to.]
[Paul doesn't need a reciprocal sensitivity to Lazarus' thoughts to notice his raw, visceral agitation. It's natural human empathy that draws up an answering flutter of anxiety in him as he watches Lazarus struggle to manage the connection. He has the impulse to end it then, retract, provide the immediate relief of cessation -
- and then he releases the impulse, lets it drift from him on the ebb of his breath. The anxiety follows, then the attachment to judgment. He visualizes a sequence of ripples, clear water on a shoreline of polished grey stones, and the deep-set autonomic responses of his body unfold at the brush of his awareness of them.]
You are listening. There's nothing to try.
[His eyes seem only half-focused, but Lazarus will know better. Paul's focus has turned inward, a clear and non-judgmental observation of the slowing rhythm of his heart, of the pulsed, sequential relaxation beginning around that organ and radiating outward. Where Lazarus strains at the edges of his nerves, Paul settles into himself like sand drifting to stillness in water, and this is the gravity he offers to Lazarus in turn, a drawing out and down of tension.]
'My mind controls my reality.' Internalize the thought.
[He reiterates it internally himself, and the sequence of ripples repeats itself, the conditioning encoded in it unfolding for Lazarus' observation.]
[Asked with the tense trepidation of someone who knows where to close away pain, until he's closed in with it. Complicating matters, it isn't pain in the classical sense; it doesn't hurt, rather he feels the blood in his veins, the air moving through his lungs like the thrust and ebb of a tide. Polished grey stones.
His mind controls his mind, those agitated thoughts insist. Everything else is there to be combatted and if he fails, and accepts, then he will in fact be peaceful and still and silent, as he was, under that polished grey stone forever.
Still, he listens. Heartbeat, breath, strong and even tools there's no reason he can't master. Gravity is a limit, it's true, but he tries to visualize a hand to hold, instead of a restricting chain or a crushing weight pinning him down. A string on a balloon; a cushion of gentle sand, sinking under the weight of a being that has a place in the world, and not just a chalk outline left behind.
The waves gentle and still, gradually imitating the contained spread of rounded ripples in a still and tranquil pool. The grey stones all have names and dates on them, utterly incomprehensible, while still being recognizable for what they're supposed to be.
Murstg Catarkeric, 1943-7384
Figr Torcvaei 8845-9421
Hvareain Ysavea 5500-1817
Wcahnr Creabieal 6390-1446
Bka Mawynrp 7157-2071
He wants to scrub them out. There are so many and they're all nonsense, all interchangeable, all clutter and redundant and eroded by time. His mind controls reality, he thinks insistently, like a mantra in a language he doesn't understand but wants to invoke. His mind; his reality, his control. His effort, shaky and fledgling as it is. L is diligent and takes the exercise seriously; it's also a sharp-edged challenge to sit calmly and quietly and listen to what he's grown so adept at tuning out, understanding even better why he wanted to.
He feels his pulse and the blood under his skin; he hears the life pulling in and out of his body, a soul escaping, being tugged and anchored back with each inhalation.
It's exhausting, to be so aware of such matters. The ripples seem to whisper messages, other things he's tuned out habitually. New hunger, old heartbreak, the constant ache of bones, the inability to see his own face clearly when he tries to glimpse it in the water's surface.
He sees Paul, though, because the center of his being has never been a person, who is L. It's always been a goal, a purpose, a case to work on and complete.
Lycka nudges her head very insistently into his lap, under his arms and palms. His fingers curl against her in shock before tightening for a secure hold on a lifeline.
The world, the mind, and the body (and perhaps even the soul) are hopelessly disconnected for him. It's plain to him, and probably to Paul, but...]
Thank you; I didn't realize it was like this.
[And he hates it, sitting with himself all alone and seeing the cracks and broken things. But he can hear that he's alive, and it shocks him how much that's something he needs desperately.]
[There are many complicated explanations Paul tends to build around his choices. He never does anything for a singular reason, in his own mind; he considers the rippling effects of his actions down their chain of possible outcomes and the benefits - or disadvantages - they accrue to him.
So the reasoning behind offering this lesson to Lazarus is an eminently practical one. Lazarus is his partner in an important work, one that requires optimal performance on both their parts. Supplying an incentive that Lazarus can't get from anyone or anywhere else anchors him to Paul's best interests by way of his own self-interests. It's a simple equation he's well-versed in.
But there's also this: when Paul met Lazarus, he thought he recognized the terrible demands of a mind that ignites like a chemical fire and burns, and burns, and burns.]
You're doing well. [He encourages, gently, and just as gently, he leans over and touches Lazarus' wrist in a mirroring circle.] It's an iterative process. It'll be easier next time.
Are you all right? You should eat something. It helps.
[L stares at Paul like someone who isn't sure where on Maslow's hierarchy of needs this particular boon falls. His has always been top-heavy, everything else following, and the result is a man who places his higher purpose above esteem, love and belonging, safety, and his most basic physical needs.
It's a missing piece; he's figured that much out so far, and after getting by for so long with its absence, there's a new existential ache now that he hopes isn't a harbinger of some other absence that's load-bearing, and suddenly direly needed.]
Yes, I'm alright.
[Just like someone who has no reason to believe there's a tumor until they've seen the x-ray, only to then inhabit the strange reality of nothing actually having changed between not seeing and seeing, except for awareness.
He watches Paul's hand over the protruding, sharp bone of his wrist, connecting the sight to something far less typical for him. He's been touch-starved from infancy, trained by experience to think of intentional touching in any context as for other humans.
He wants to like the strange warmth and connection of it; he's also very afraid of liking it enough to miss it when the fluke dissipates.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Lycka bumping against a particularly smooth and reflective portion of bloodstone, whistling low and plaintively, seeming to seek contact with a creature that moves and looks like her even if the illusion is understood.]
Could you--
[Keep touching his wrist? Stop touching his wrist? They're conflicting and cancel each other out. Fortunately, he has another request to sweep in and fill the void.]
Tell me why you learned this. Either it was customary, or necessity.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
L's fingers curl; he realizes he was holding his breath, and releases the small amount of air his lungs were holding. He'd felt that moment of suspension, too, and while he'd believed that Paul would come back, would have bet on those odds, he also knows that it could have gone very badly if even one small part of this had been out of alignment.
The plan was sound; the language was sound, his skills were sound. This is something to be celebrated, on those merits alone.
What it all means might be a different matter.]
Yes; I'm sound and stable. It "felt...?"
[If their success this time was due to being over-prepared, he doesn't want to be underprepared when the event all this foretells actually comes to pass.
His palm is closed on his own memento of the sensation he'd had access to: a perfectly round burn blister.]
If this portends your exposure to a venomous neurotoxin, something can be done to guard against it, surely.
no subject
[Paul pushes himself up on his elbows with only a slight shakiness, swallowing a dry mouth. He has a slightly abashed air of accomplishment to him, and a pervasive sense of distracting relief as he lets his head fall back and looks up at the sliver of moonlight above them.]
I was right. [He closes his eyes, reinforcing the structure of his memory to capture the vision.] I didn't want to say it, if I was wrong, but I was right. It's a shapeshifter, we knew that, but I wondered - it's prescient, Lazarus. It sees the future, and that's how it adapts. I'll have to see how far it can look, next time.
I couldn't have done that without you. Thank you.
[Before the dream, Paul's acceptance of help had a certain sense of concession to it, an allowance he was making for Lazarus. His thanks here lack it. There is a tender new shoot of emotion under them instead, a sort of wondering, bewildered trust.]
Could you pass me my notebook? It's in my bag. [A minor pause.] I needed it to hit me, to know. I won't do that when I'm awake.
[That, though, comes in the tones of someone who has been rebuked about this sort of thing before.]
no subject
He nods at Paul's thanks, picking up on the softer note that was formerly absent. It's something he recognizes, though he's heard it very seldom in his life. At least, not directed towards him.
However seldom he inspires tenderness, people who deal with him come to know his value. Not many others could remain cool under pressure and pick up a magical language overnight, after all.]
If it's prescient... is it fair to say that it has at least as good an idea of what's coming as you do?
[He goes to fetch the notebook, careful to avoid the blister on his hand, handing it over to Paul.]
You might not be able to choose whether or not you're hit.
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Part of him wants to reply lightly, teasingly. To make a small joke of the concern, and to diffuse it that way. But that's a technique that worked for practicing on training dummies, never anything like this.
When he started to do things like this, there had been no tension to diffuse. It was a necessity. There was no time left for coddling. He has told himself this, and it's been true, and it's true here. So why does Lazarus do it? (A question that might as well be: why did he come back?)
First things first: the practical question.]
Even if it does, it shouldn't matter. Being able to see something isn't the same as being able to prevent it from happening, is it? Symmetrical knowledge means it would know what was coming, but that doesn't give it the flexibility we have in our countermoves.
And I know. I've fought before. [His little smile is gone (a flash of a knife, of sand, of citrus and blood), and they're likely both better off for it.] But I'll try not to be. I'm not interested in playing martyr.
[He produces a pencil from up his sleeve (his wrist holster finds more use as storage for stationary than the knife in it, these days) and begins to sketch a half-glimpsed horizon. Sophia returns to his side, and he lowers his free arm to let her run up his shoulder, his face drawn closed in thought.]
You're not, are you? Interested in that. [He keeps his eyes focused on his work.] If you need anything for your hand, the kit is on the third shelf by the entrance.
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At the question, there's a flickering barb in his thoughts, a callback to something else before Trench. Maybe it went unnoticed; maybe telepathy goes both ways. Maybe it's just the tenseness around his eyes.]
No one who doesn't have many screws loose should want that.
[He retrieves the kit, pulling free gauze, salve, a scalpel to drain the blister.]
...worth it, though. Sometimes.
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[Paul continues sketching, his voice quiet, neutral. He finds himself adding the swords, two uneven pillars erupting from the sand, their lines stark.]
I'd rather not find out.
[He flips the page, the horizon not quite finished (he'll come back to it to fill out the details; he'll start it fresh on another page; later, later, either way) and begins another sketch, this one of possible molecular shapes, while the sensation of the toxin is still fresh. He doesn't want to look at Lazarus, suddenly, an avoidance as much of what he might see as of shame.]
Would you be able to wear gloves, or would that interfere with the spell?
[He should have asked. He should have thought about this possibility. There's so much to remember, and he should be able to, and he keeps falling short.]
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[He repeats the vague qualifier, as though he's giving a nail a couple more passes with a hammer to ensure it's secure.
Paul doesn't really need to know that L died horribly before arriving in Trench, enmeshed in a fight he believed in, throwing away a valuable piece to ensure an eventual checkmate years down the line. Not now; not today.]
That being said... I'd rather you didn't, either.
[Gingerly tapping some salve on his deflated blister and somewhat carelessly looping and tying a piece of gauze over it, he returns to glance curiously at Paul's molecular sketch.]
Gloves shouldn't disrupt or dampen any part of the spell. In truth... it's just the one thing I overlooked. It won't be the case, next time.
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More unearned mercy.]
I should have thought of it. [He tilts his notebook when he notices Lazarus' gaze, letting him get a better look.] These are just possibilities, based on onset and effect.
[The drawings resemble 21st century biochemistry the way a spaceship resembles a car: recognizably for the same purpose, but at different points of development and scope. Next to branching lines connecting dotted circles, there are radial notations in a cypher-shorthand, giving the sketches an appearance almost like constellations.]
I was born on an ocean world, did I tell you that? We have a type of snail that produces a toxin like this - these are references to antivenom formulations. [He taps the paper, lightly, an almost nervous gesture.] We'll want to stockpile.
[Then, veering back to dark waters:] I'm sorry I keep doing that to you.
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The living have things to do, though, important tasks and priorities, and so just staying away isn't an option while he has rare and uniquely useful skills and knowledge.
He takes in the drawings' details, compares it to his own working knowledge of chemistry. The significant differences aren't so great; the similarities are enough to draw useful comparisons.]
You hadn't mentioned it, and I probably wouldn't have assumed... but being able to apply this prior knowledge is invaluable. We could synthesize something an antivenom enough, I'm sure, even if blood magic needs to fill in the gaps. We'll want to consider whether it's to be a protective dose, or a cure in the case of exposure... there are benefits and drawbacks to each, of course.
[He shakes his head, dismissing the apology.]
You haven't done anything to me. If I was going to overlook something, believe that any other part of this process would have been catastrophic. This is only inconvenient.
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[Paul looks up, the pencil held lightly in his hand, tip just above the page. He looks at Lazarus the way he might look at a shell, or a leaf, an incisive, memorizing observation.]
That's how it starts. Injuries into inconveniences, self-dismissal. [He straightens himself, draws his shoulders back into socket, his voice firm.] People aren't means. They're ends. I'm not going to treat you as anything less, no matter what you tell me, and you're not going to make me try.
[It's a directness that comes more naturally than he expects it to, with someone who, for all his help, is still so much an unknown. It's a commitment to a position that Paul knows as a vulnerability that could be exploited: that there is a limit to what he's willing to do to people.
(Or, at least, he wants there to be.)]
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Did, and was.
He nods, attentive and respectful, as though he hasn't sacrificed lives in the service of an end. Not really a person, after all, and he's sure there are things he could tell Paul that would prove it.
He just doesn't want to, yet. Feeling like a person is turning out to be addictive.]
I guess I didn't even realize I was doing that. Truly... next time, I won't overlook the gloves, and you don't need to worry about it again.
[That's true for the gloves, specifically. On a broader level, old habits die so very hard... and that includes a desire to test and confirm implied limits. Does Paul truly have one?]
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All that he feels in the hollows where these things should be is frigid, pressured numbness. The functional state that he has existed in whenever he's been alone, and most of the time when he is not, interrupted only by flickers of feeling he seems to more remember than experience.
He flips the page of the notebook and returns to work, now jotting down the features of the leviathan he was able to perceive in the new light of his eyes, some of the projections of its roiling, chaotic shape. His expression is drawn, slightly tired. His hands do not shake. His spine doesn't bend.]
Then it's settled. [It is; it's settled that he is going to 'worry', as if that's the word.] You're right about the antivenoms. A prophylactic application might be advisable for several things.
There were no words this time. But the basic structure - beach, ocean, beach - that repeated. Do you have any thoughts on what that might mean?
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How much of that does Paul understand? Is the real reason L haunts these obligations so happily purely because he found Paul's pulse and mistook it for his own?]
I'll consider some ways to ensure efficacy without overdosing, as well as the time frame for maximum effect.
[Probably completely safely and sanely.
He nods, dark eyes taking on a focused but faraway look as he considers.]
A pattern is almost always significant. If I were inclined to be optimistic, I'd say that it could represent a terminal cycle. A departure from safety, and then a return to safety.
[But L is never truly inclined to be optimistic. He wishes he could mean that and put his faith behind it, but he continues.]
It could also be a rut. Something that's never completed that you can't move on from. A sort of prison fixation.
[And a fatalistic one; doom waits in the water, and it also waits on land.]
It's conjecture. Don't let it influence the way you think too much.
cw: discussion of hallucinogenic drug use
It means that his odds of successfully hiding anything from the telepathic puzzle solver are dropping to the same nil he has for hiding things from himself.]
It may be an anchoring effect from you. Your mind stabilizing the structure of what mine perceives. Whether it's a cycle or a rut, that's more than I've had to work with. We've had.
[He notes these thoughts down underneath the hulking tracings of the leviathan, like an invocation against it. Since he's trying to avoid doing further harm, he doesn't add like an always locked room?, and hopes the thought isn't overly loud. (He'll take what reassurances he can give himself; Lazarus said he always solves the puzzle.)]
I want to see how far we can take that. [He matches Lazarus' thoughtfulness in tone, as if speaking of a problem situated well outside of himself.] Where I come from, there are people who use psychogenic drugs to enhance their mental acuity and perception. They're not available here, but I think I've identified some potential substitutions. After a few more cycles, I'd like to try adding those to the process. Will that impact things on your side?
cw: discussion of hallucinogenic drug use
He nods, ever committed to whatever it takes, focusing with laser precision to avoid the sensation that, like a stray beam of light in a hall of mirrors, something is glancing on him and seeing him in a startling and uncomfortable way.]
It's the case where I'm from, as well, although...
[A wry chuckle; even this mirthless sound, like all of L's iterations of laughter, sounds a little unnatural.]
I don't know how accurate the testimonies are. In my experience, mental acuity and perception are best judged in an unaltered state. That being said...
[Careful, careful, inching forward like something creeping out of its cave after a long time inside. L's relationship with drugs is a disciplined one, but this is in large part because he suspects he might like them a little too much, should he broaden his familiarity. The kinds that can either impart oblivion, or force the soul back inside the body along with all its sensation and awareness, would be especially tempting.]
I don't believe there would be an adverse effect... but I don't actually know, and I have no reason to think that my guess would be educated in this regard. Since what we're doing is fairly unique and experimental in practice, I don't even know what asking around would yield.
cw: discussion of hallucinogenic drug use
There are mentat conditioning techniques I could teach you. They allow for greater mental acuity in altered or stressed states.
[It's strange to him that Lazarus, so clearly intelligent, has an apparently non-neutral reaction to the use of a tool. There's a general prudishness about many things he's always taken for granted here, and though Lazarus didn't express disapproval or disgust, it's still unexpected. He's sure some of his surprise seeped into his voice.
But he has to remember these are people of ancient history, pre-spice. Besides, it's given him an idea of the kind of repayment he might be able to offer his new teacher.]
I was partially trained. I won't be able to do the deep work, but I think you have potential - especially if you can pick up on my patterning through your ability.
cw: discussion of hallucinogenic drug use etc
[He sounds interested, in an affected polite way that whispers of having tried it, and so much else, and he'd been promised that it would work.
He realizes that it's perhaps noticeably tainted, along with the tone that came before. The honesty of Palebloods does not spare other Palebloods, seemingly, but even his own honesty is rarely straightforward. It takes detours and blind turns just like a frightened child lost in a dense forest, because if he's dropped too many breadcrumbs and made himself too easy for the monsters to find, he won't last long, out here.]
Please don't misunderstand. I'm not against trying the substances. In fact, I think that we should, if only to find out what will happen. While I lack the definite knowledge of how your consumption could affect me secondhand... I'm not unfamiliar with some drugs, firsthand, and know generally what to expect.
[He realizes that his apparent reticence and following explanation could lead one to believe that he'd also had experience with addiction, which adds an undesirable layer, but is it better than admitting that he's more afraid of discovering a safe and warm place that he can't ever truly stay?]
cw: discussion of hallucinogenic drug use etc
No. Not like meditation. [He also refrains from adding you're not an infant.] But you've had training, haven't you? You must have.
[That's a question halfway directed at himself. Paul closes his sketchbook for the moment, sets it aside with the pencil, and inches closer to Lazarus with a look of particularly adolescent cockiness.]
What types of drugs? I'd assume stimulants, some regularly?
[There are those who overindulge in the use of drugs for non-productive ends. Paul is aware of the concept, and the way it often expresses most in those who experiences material or personal wants that go unmet. He doesn't overlap it with Lazarus, or even begin to think of his response in that context.]
How old are you? Closest approximation of lived biological time.
cw: discussion of hallucinogenic drug use etc
I've studied some techniques. They're better for dissociating, though... in situations where you might find yourself tortured for information, or subjected to physical or emotional pain.
[L is good at leaving his body, to an extent that is both impressive and deeply troubling.
He blinks; he supposes he shouldn't really be surprised anymore by Paul's rather comprehensive knowledge on unexpected subjects.]
You'd assume correctly. Stimulants, because I needed to stay awake several nights in a row often, but also tranquilizers, sometimes, when that became unsustainable. Other things... to eliminate difficulty or distractions of a physical nature.
[A pause, because his age sounds a little unbelievable, looks a little unbelievable now that he's in his real skin and not the straighter and handsomer version of himself he'd shed into. He answers Paul's question honestly, if with some bewildered distance. Those years slipped somewhere, lacking typical milestones. It's left him looking uncannily like a teenager and feeling faded and ancient.]
I turned twenty-five in October. You're... what, sixteen? Seventeen?
[Just a little older than Mello, and all the others who were lined up to compete for his job when he kicked it. Just a little younger than the man who stood over him, once he did.]
At the risk of sounding like I'm encouraging the pursuit of mediocrity... sometimes it is alright to stop at "enough." Better, paradoxically.
cw: basically the worst case DARE scenario
[The rest of it he's nodded along to, showing no flicker of surprise or concern at any of it - not the concept of preparing for being tortured, not the use of a wide array of self-prescribed pharmacology, and not even at the concept of 'enough'. (A thing Paul believes he understands, but the thing about understanding limits is that they're contingent on what the person setting them believes they should be.)
Instead, Paul's reaction is one of deepened respect, and a growing excitement that is slowly resurrecting his improved mood from earlier.]
I'd like to show you something. Do you...here, contact might help. [He offers his hand, wrist upturned, and pulls back his sleeve to expose his pulse point.] This is a training exercise for the nervous system. Try to see if you can follow the pattern with your abilities.
[He should temper expectations, he knows that, but - he has an intuition about this.]
cw: basically the worst case DARE scenario lmao
He desperately wants to not ruin Paul. People instinctively seem to know that he is a ruiner, so they treat him the way he deserves, with caution and revulsion. L thought Paul would have realized, by now, but maybe he was intentionally and selfishly poor at communicating it. Isn't it nicer, after all, to have potential and promise, and to be told so?
His haunted eyes are wide and uncertain for a moment, but L recognizes fundamentally that he could live his whole life in Trench inside the glowing walls of this sanctuary, dreaming in a soft cocoon. It would be a lot like the life he'd led before, but if he wants more out of this new life, as well as connections worth having with others? He's poorly equipped for it, as things stand, and recognizes it.
He reaches forward, fine narrow bones catching the rippling shadows of the glowing chamber as he gingerly initiates contact, touching the heartbeat he might have mistaken for his own.
His eyes slide closed, and it could be his own... except it isn't. His is somewhere else, out of synch with his mind and his breath. His body exists and survives, scrabbling through with no rhythm or harmony beneath a mind that is detached and truly above it all.
It's a terrifying several moments and he has to actively fight the urge to break away and peel the skin away from his shoulders and ribs in tattered, bloody rags. He'd willfully let the knowledge stay hidden for a long time, but when he opens his eyes, it lives behind them, new and uneasy and repulsed.]
Let me try again... it caught me off balance, at first. Listening like that...
[An understatement. He still wants to shred his skin with his fingernails, and it's a testament to his willpower that he's managing not to.]
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- and then he releases the impulse, lets it drift from him on the ebb of his breath. The anxiety follows, then the attachment to judgment. He visualizes a sequence of ripples, clear water on a shoreline of polished grey stones, and the deep-set autonomic responses of his body unfold at the brush of his awareness of them.]
You are listening. There's nothing to try.
[His eyes seem only half-focused, but Lazarus will know better. Paul's focus has turned inward, a clear and non-judgmental observation of the slowing rhythm of his heart, of the pulsed, sequential relaxation beginning around that organ and radiating outward. Where Lazarus strains at the edges of his nerves, Paul settles into himself like sand drifting to stillness in water, and this is the gravity he offers to Lazarus in turn, a drawing out and down of tension.]
'My mind controls my reality.' Internalize the thought.
[He reiterates it internally himself, and the sequence of ripples repeats itself, the conditioning encoded in it unfolding for Lazarus' observation.]
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[Asked with the tense trepidation of someone who knows where to close away pain, until he's closed in with it. Complicating matters, it isn't pain in the classical sense; it doesn't hurt, rather he feels the blood in his veins, the air moving through his lungs like the thrust and ebb of a tide. Polished grey stones.
His mind controls his mind, those agitated thoughts insist. Everything else is there to be combatted and if he fails, and accepts, then he will in fact be peaceful and still and silent, as he was, under that polished grey stone forever.
Still, he listens. Heartbeat, breath, strong and even tools there's no reason he can't master. Gravity is a limit, it's true, but he tries to visualize a hand to hold, instead of a restricting chain or a crushing weight pinning him down. A string on a balloon; a cushion of gentle sand, sinking under the weight of a being that has a place in the world, and not just a chalk outline left behind.
The waves gentle and still, gradually imitating the contained spread of rounded ripples in a still and tranquil pool. The grey stones all have names and dates on them, utterly incomprehensible, while still being recognizable for what they're supposed to be.
Murstg Catarkeric, 1943-7384
Figr Torcvaei 8845-9421
Hvareain Ysavea 5500-1817
Wcahnr Creabieal 6390-1446
Bka Mawynrp 7157-2071
He wants to scrub them out. There are so many and they're all nonsense, all interchangeable, all clutter and redundant and eroded by time. His mind controls reality, he thinks insistently, like a mantra in a language he doesn't understand but wants to invoke. His mind; his reality, his control. His effort, shaky and fledgling as it is. L is diligent and takes the exercise seriously; it's also a sharp-edged challenge to sit calmly and quietly and listen to what he's grown so adept at tuning out, understanding even better why he wanted to.
He feels his pulse and the blood under his skin; he hears the life pulling in and out of his body, a soul escaping, being tugged and anchored back with each inhalation.
It's exhausting, to be so aware of such matters. The ripples seem to whisper messages, other things he's tuned out habitually. New hunger, old heartbreak, the constant ache of bones, the inability to see his own face clearly when he tries to glimpse it in the water's surface.
He sees Paul, though, because the center of his being has never been a person, who is L. It's always been a goal, a purpose, a case to work on and complete.
Lycka nudges her head very insistently into his lap, under his arms and palms. His fingers curl against her in shock before tightening for a secure hold on a lifeline.
The world, the mind, and the body (and perhaps even the soul) are hopelessly disconnected for him. It's plain to him, and probably to Paul, but...]
Thank you; I didn't realize it was like this.
[And he hates it, sitting with himself all alone and seeing the cracks and broken things. But he can hear that he's alive, and it shocks him how much that's something he needs desperately.]
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So the reasoning behind offering this lesson to Lazarus is an eminently practical one. Lazarus is his partner in an important work, one that requires optimal performance on both their parts. Supplying an incentive that Lazarus can't get from anyone or anywhere else anchors him to Paul's best interests by way of his own self-interests. It's a simple equation he's well-versed in.
But there's also this: when Paul met Lazarus, he thought he recognized the terrible demands of a mind that ignites like a chemical fire and burns, and burns, and burns.]
You're doing well. [He encourages, gently, and just as gently, he leans over and touches Lazarus' wrist in a mirroring circle.] It's an iterative process. It'll be easier next time.
Are you all right? You should eat something. It helps.
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It's a missing piece; he's figured that much out so far, and after getting by for so long with its absence, there's a new existential ache now that he hopes isn't a harbinger of some other absence that's load-bearing, and suddenly direly needed.]
Yes, I'm alright.
[Just like someone who has no reason to believe there's a tumor until they've seen the x-ray, only to then inhabit the strange reality of nothing actually having changed between not seeing and seeing, except for awareness.
He watches Paul's hand over the protruding, sharp bone of his wrist, connecting the sight to something far less typical for him. He's been touch-starved from infancy, trained by experience to think of intentional touching in any context as for other humans.
He wants to like the strange warmth and connection of it; he's also very afraid of liking it enough to miss it when the fluke dissipates.
In his peripheral vision, he sees Lycka bumping against a particularly smooth and reflective portion of bloodstone, whistling low and plaintively, seeming to seek contact with a creature that moves and looks like her even if the illusion is understood.]
Could you--
[Keep touching his wrist? Stop touching his wrist? They're conflicting and cancel each other out. Fortunately, he has another request to sweep in and fill the void.]
Tell me why you learned this. Either it was customary, or necessity.
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