Casimir Lyov (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aestivation) wrote2017-09-17 09:28 pm
aestivation) wrote2017-09-17 09:28 pm
OOC || Inbox
[ crystals, letters, private scenes ]
[ crystals, letters, private scenes ]
[ crystals, letters, private scenes ]
[ crystals, letters, private scenes ]
balloons are my phobia actually, that's really insensitive.
Why.
[ How might be interesting, the way what is left of a spider beneath a shoe may be interesting. He can resist the urge to ask. ]
So we can prepare, so we can...
[ He shrugs, which might convey whatever instead of what he fully intends: so they can know what to expect of him, what to look for if he might be dangerous; so they can see if there's a way to help or at least not make it worse. Or so he personally can be furious about how unnecessary it ever was, at all, to do this. ]
no wonder you prefer country to pop
[ Thinks he does, at least. Begins: ]
Unsanctioned research, [ That much he’s already told Thranduil. Has spoken little more of it, for all the new absence of orders. Six years lie behind the habit of silence, and so the words require a moment to compose. ] I was able to hide it, for a while. Not forever.
[ His thumb trails over the selection of spines, older books; a few bound in the familiar shape of Circle notations. This one can’t be from Nevarra City, something different in the design. He slides it free. ]
Myrobalan told them where to find me. I had a record — the transfer — the decision was quick.
[ He slips the journal onto the desk, gestures in offer. It lies there like a slug, whether or not Kostos moves to take it; the cramped writing inside grown progressively more terse, absent of conspicuous detail. One could never count on these things going unread. ]
i don't know whether to applaud or kill you
[ Myrobalan told them. It isn't that surprising, and it doesn't provoke that much anger, but it does make Kostos pause to think, to slot it into his understanding of the situation, before he reaches for the journal and flips through its pages. ]
What sort of unsanctioned research? [ And— ] The first time was not enough trouble?
no subject
[ bees, rather. sketches of those, of ants, of swallows and rats. without greater context, they only march and veer between the pages, the ink smeared with the blocky motions of motion.
with something else, too. the research vanishes, then meals, and the particulars of dreams. his roommate’s threatened some complaint; meetings are scheduled, and scratched out, and scheduled again. his student is reassigned. the light of a particular hallway occupies half a page. the chant: the first of the maker's children watched across the veil, and grew jealous of the life they could not feel, could not touch — ]
The Rift we saw could have been worse. You can sense them, call them, but you don’t understand it, [ his head tips aside, doesn’t blink. that’s insulting (dismissive of a mortalitasi's rigors) but kostos has always owned, innately, the mastery that others spend their lives at. that he’d spent his life at. ] The draw of an idea.
[ midway through the book, it stops. a week, two. a fresh sheet. when the print begins again each letter might well be a copy of the last. exacting, uniform. serene. ]
no subject
[ Angry—soft-spoken as always, but biting the words rough—but not at Casimir, now, as much as Casimir, then, with his ants and cramped letters, not learning any better, not leaving well enough alone. His first pass through is quick, skimming pages, but he flips back toward the middle when he's done, reads a page in its entirety, and touches the wing of a swallow.
He doesn't look up, despite the pricking feeling that he ought to. ]
Would you do it again? Do you think—
no subject
[ he watches — watches his forehead, rather, dipped to the page. the black side of power is risk: to examine kostos' gifts is to look (however obliquely) at an exchange in their position.
there'd been a sullen boy, once. a transfer. with affinities little-known, and even less interest in knowing them. casimir hadn't been the only one with a harrowing in doubt. ]
But I've been told I'm a poor judge. [ that can't be an attempt at humour. ] Would understanding make us safer? I could still justify this. I choose not to.
[ a hand laid to the page. he's not often so close; distance worn like a cloak about an unsettling indifference. ]
It strikes me that the capacity for choice runs not in one direction.
no subject
That is not—if we do this—we are doing everything right. We will not be able to say we can do better next time. If it goes wrong, if you wind up hurting someone, if.
[ If.
He could have continued. Pessimism, like anger and alcohol, loosens his tongue. But it also makes him forget for a moment and raise his chin, even heights leaving them eye to hollowed eye with the brand hovering just there, unavoidable at the edge of Kostos’ focus, and he stumbles into a pause.
The right thing to do is a difficult concept. The right thing for whom. How immediately. For how long. At what cost. But Kostos has been discarding what he should and shouldn’t do to in favor of what he can and can’t stand to let happen in front of him for a while now, and this isn’t about wanting to turn back. He beats the urge to look back down. ]
It will not only be your life. You will mean something for the rest of us.
[ He doesn’t mean it as cruelly as it might sound. Not quite. ]
no subject
doesn't need to ask, not searching kostos’ eyes for perhaps the first time in a year (in many more). a touch of light had split the ache in his head from center-skull to seam; a flood of awareness, responsibility.
unpleasant. and here they are, hurtling toward repetition. he shuts the book. ]
You could still find another.
[ skyhold must have prospects, lesser chances to take. there'd be no I'll feeling to overcome; he would but cease to examine the possibility, a path slipped into fade.
myrobalan would pose a difficulty. but myrobalan adapts. ]
What will you do, if the meaning isn’t what you'd hoped?
[ this bloody history doesn’t fall square upon his little shelf. there’s only so much that casimir can control for; a point where any assurances he’d offer lose shape. ]
no subject
Change it.
[ He'll ask the Maker's forgiveness later. ]
If you— [ That. Kostos gestures to the book. There was never a time he looked up to Casimir, not unequivocally; as a teenager (and adult, and ever) he was self-righteous in his self-loathing, a twisted arrogance toward anyone who didn't understand how horrible they were. But it was a cousin of jealousy. Enviable and stupid and brave, to follow interests where they lead, to crawl under the bed at night to have a look instead of keeping one's limbs away from the edges of the mattress. Nikos was usually the one to check, and to fake thumping and strangulation beneath the mattress.
But this isn't just a child's fear. There is something underneath, lurking. ]
You have to tell us. We have to handle it ourselves. You cannot make us find out the hard way.
no subject
[ there’s no telling whether it’s possible to go back.
if that were all this were, a decision to made and unmade, then agreement would be easy. he might later object, as he’d objected once before — but that wouldn’t matter long. this life has been peaceful, productive; knelt in the grass the thought had crossed his mind to miss it. dread only precedes relief.
they don’t know that it works like that. that a door stripped from hinges may be shut again. he nods; it’s not agreement. not yet. ]
You asked me whether I wanted this; I haven’t forgotten. I’ve chosen to honour my wishes.
[ pronouns are too imprecise for this. a slight pause, a hitch in vocabulary. ]
But I don’t want to die, Kostos. That must be heard as well. I must be. [ as he is now. not assurances, then, but an exchange: ] If I tell you, if I’m to be handled, you have to try.
[ surely someone in the inquisition has a brand. ]
no subject
But he nods anyway. ]
Whatever I can do.
[ Unless Casimir doesn’t want it anymore. Or maybe even if he does. Whether his opinion counts for more or less as he is now is a question they are all being mercifully spared from answering by his ongoing cooperation. Is he one person, inhibited, or one person, enhanced, or two people, split, sharing a body and a life, with two equally valid desires. If he had refused once the feelings faded—
It doesn’t matter now what they would have done then. ]
Thank you.
[ For honoring his wishes, his wishes. Whichever. Whatever. Kostos squares his shoulders and raises his chin. ]
That was all. I’ll.
[ Go. ]
no subject
[ It’s — not the right thing to say. It’s all that he can think to. The guidebooks don’t cover this, not filed between childhood friend and mutual risk.
Possibly he’d find something in Orlais. ]
If you require anything, [ There. Familiar ground. ] I'm here.
[ If not, perhaps, as he'd been in the woods. ]