[IC/OOC] Fade Rift Inbox & Contact

[faithlikeaseed]

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[faithlikeaseed]

"...Oh, Maker."

Circles being what they are, the idea of a friend who was a danger to himself isn't so foreign, either. (Something's eating at him more than usual, he'd said to a Senior Enchanter, when asked about missed appointments and dropped obligations. I'm concerned-- that it might go beyond overwork and skipped meals and lost sleep. Should he have kept silent? he asks himself now, with perfect hindsight. What would have been the better ending?) Myr gives up on standing at last, slumping into the chair with his arms folded over the back of it.

He's at a loss for what to say once he's settled himself; it isn't so simple as "she was wrong" or "you were"--it never is. "I'd think," he finally ventures, "--and this is without knowing Ser Coupe so well as you do," and again that hesitation where he'd use Simon's title reflexively and keeps himself from it, "that if she'd truly intended only that you were to snitch on him, she's got cause to be upset that you didn't. But if she'd meant you to have his best interests in mind--someone who's been the subject of so much attention in the Inquisition lately deserves some shred of privacy, even if it means the rest of us will worry a little more about him."

A pause, as he stops to think over that, trying to drag his thoughts into order--away from an older breach of trust, an older failure. "If she truly wanted to ensure his safety above anything else," he continues at length, picking the words up and placing them down slowly, "she could put him in a cell and make you stand guard over him, without you having to make any difficult decisions that would get you crossways with her. That she hadn't says to me she does want you using your head--but she's had a nasty shock over something to do with him, and she's taking it out on you, because she can't, on him."

How easy a thing it was to do--how easily strong emotion one shouldn't feel about a soft and wounded target could get redirected onto somebody who seemed sturdier, with broader shoulders to bear the lash. (How often he'd lashed out like that at whoever got too close in those first few months, because he couldn't sharpen his tongue on Ser Jarom or Casimir.)

"Which isn't to justify it. But it might--Maker's bones." And he laughs at himself, raw and bitter. "I was about to say 'it might make it easier to bear,' but you put so much faith in her and she's done this to you. I couldn't be charitable about that--I wasn't, for years."

Still isn't, quite, if he's being absolutely truthful with himself, but he's trying.

[paladingus]

"Maybe that's what she assumed I'd do on my own," he mutters. "Lock him in a cell and stand guard, like I do all day anyway. Maker forbid anyone give me a task that requires a brain."

But Myr's right, no matter how much he'd rather wallow in self-pity, and he can put the pieces together at that suggestion--that bar brawl; how had she put it? 'Scraping him off the floor of a cell, beat to the void and back?'--and realize exactly why she might want to take out her frustrations on a bigger, more theoretically durable punching bag.

It still doesn't change what she'd said, nor the outcome. It doesn't make it any easier to bear. And it doesn't make his faith feel any less brutally wasted. Anyone else might get a bitter, snarled what would you know, but--

--not here. Not now. Even if Myr genuinely wouldn't know, Simon would be gentler with his friend, but this is an issue that must be so close and painfully personal that Simon feels almost as if he ought to apologize.

"Is that why you don't call yourself a knight-enchanter?" he asks, careful and quiet.

[faithlikeaseed]

It's the logical question to ask, after an opening like that. It's logical--but no one's ever had to ask it of Myr, because everyone around him knew. Word spread fast in a Circle; rumor had wings, even more so among a population cut to a third by rebellion and runaways, forced to draw in on itself for survival. He takes a sharp breath in before he can catch himself--but that's the only indication of emotion that gets away from him.

His answer is equally careful: "After I was blinded, my mentor declared I would be more a liability than an asset in battle. She decided--and I agreed--to cease my training."

It had been a matter of months. He'd been near enough to full-trained to stand the line with Hasmal's templars when the uprising began--hoping beyond hope even then that a violent solution wouldn't be necessary. (Thank the Maker he'd never had to learn whether he could raise blade or spell against one of his Circlemates. But for the rest--)

"I didn’t argue with her decision; she was right. But she'd have nothing to do with me after." There were reasons for that, he'd told himself. She'd other apprentices to rush through their training--to relieve their templars in guarding what remained of the Circle--and they'd all been stretched so thin with the needs of survival it was a miracle she'd found time to instruct anyone at all.

Yet it didn't explain her conspicuous avoidance--how she'd be polite with him and no more whenever he'd cause to speak to her. It didn't explain the chill in the voice that had once instructed him in duty and chivalry and tactics, the loss of the woman who'd had more hand in shaping him than his own mother--

(And then one night she'd gone with any apprentice who'd follow her--and not a word of farewell to him.)

He shakes his head, once, and shoves the thought away. "So. I don't claim the title I never earned--she'd be disappointed in me, I think, for clinging to it. But," and here he manages a smile, wry and painful all at once, "powerful as her disappointment is it's not like she can discipline me now; she gave all that up when she left."

[paladingus]

"No, she can't."

The strength of his own outburst surprises him, the force in his tone, the indignation--stronger than indignation, the offense on Myr's behalf. It comes without warning, that seething how could she that could so easily be projection rather than sympathy, could so easily be calling images of Wren's face to mind, and yet--isn't. Yes, Myr's reticence all makes sense now, every bit of it, but why should it have to? Why should this have happened to him, when Simon's seen him fight?

"She didn't give it up when she left; she gave it up when she was wrong about you and never even gave you a chance to show her. Blind or not, you can knock a templar twice your size on his arse when you're hardly even trying. It doesn't stop you. You're here, aren't you? It hasn't stopped you. She--"

Maybe he's getting ahead of himself here, pouring this out without thinking of what it implies about him, but there's nothing that eats at Simon now like perceived injustice, and Myr being cast aside without so much as a chance to demonstrate his worth--how could anyone?

"She owed you better than that. You don't owe her the benefit of the doubt in turn."

Especially not if she went and abandoned you right after, he would say, if he fully realized that's what Myr meant by that. As if Simon's ever been one to talk about abandonment of duty. If Myr were harmed by it, he'd account it an even higher sin.