All I know is tossing him to a seedy back alley- [He snaps his mouth shut, realizing his admission a hair too late, but only pauses for a short second. No taking it back so he might as well finish the swing.] -brothel definitely doesn't look like trying.
[After all, there's no way Myr didn't know what happened to his bonded that night. Maybe he didn't know Niles had seen it, but it was easy to guess. Now feigning ignorance about it wasn't an option though.]
[He knows that when taking cheap shots, turn about is fair play. Since Myr can't see him, (now or ever), he doesn't feel the need to muffle his wince. He wasn't expecting that blow to actually touch a nerve.]
I wasn't holding his arms down. [The principle elements of what happened to him and Linden were parallel, but not the same.] Besides, it's not my job to protect him.
[The anger in his voice hasn't waned. He's not smug, he's not gloating. He's agreeing that it shouldn't have happened, and relieving himself of that responsibility in the same breath.]
[Leaving the note was a petty, unnecessary gesture, and although he definitely doesn't regret it, trying to pretend it was justified action that Linden deserved would be ridiculous, wouldn't it. So instead he digs into the second point.]
And what opportunity, exactly, are you imagining I had? Mello was no illusion I could just wave away.
No--he's a man, who could be distracted or misled, [or killed, though Myr knows better than to voice that one even if it's the unworthy feeling he's been carrying with him for months.
Distracted? Tch, then what? Do you think Linden would have run? He was determined not to resist. Any action that left Mello breathing would just have ended with the room in flames, and both of them too drunk to find the exit.
And my venom isn't instant.
[So yes, he'd had the thought too. Truth be told would have followed through if a line had been crossed. Specifically the line that Linden himself had drawn at 'lasting physical damage'. Bruises and bleeding were one thing, but if Mello had choked him out much longer...they would be having a very different conversation.]
He recognizes the difficulty of the situation--he's thought, and thought, and thought over what he could have done, if he'd obeyed his instinct to come running (and the day would yet come, he's sure, when he would)--but he would still have done something.
You say it's impossible and I'm the one who's supposed to protect him, who hasn't sight or venom either?
--But he doesn't say that. It's self-pitying and would give too much to someone he still--despite his own fury--rather weren't an enemy and nevertheless is.]
I think, [slowly,] if it had been anyone but Linden you'd've found a way around those impossibilities.
Probably. [Said casually, unconcerned. Myr can't see his shrug, but it's not hard to imagine.] Then again, I wouldn't have been peering through the window [Crouching beside the bed, ready to strike.] at anyone else's piss poor judgement calls.
[Then, quietly.]
Do you really want to know the details that stayed my hand? The situation is not as you are imagining it.
[Probably. That's some kind of relief, but the addendum, the pointed little reminder that Niles had watched all of it even so makes him sick all over again to hear it.
He'd intimated as much. [Myr's feelings on the matter are complex, though he's careful to keep it from his tone.]
They spoke about that?
[It explained a great deal about the whys of what had happened, if L had said as much to Mello's face. Maker protect them all from the younger Witch's jealousy.]
They did. Mello threw a little tantrum when he found out, Linden shut him down, then fell for the brat's sulking and gave him a time and a place to take what he wanted.
[Anger rises in his words, he may not have any sympathy for Linden, but Mello clearly infuriates him all the same.]
He set up the meeting. They were both piss drunk. Linden cooperated with him, submitted to him, told him what he wanted to hear. And when that wasn't enough and Mello got violent, he finally started chasing his own pleasure just as eagerly.
[A noise escapes from between Myr's teeth--a little, dying-animal sort of keen. There's a juddering, clattering sound of beads on antler bone as he shakes his head, as if the image Niles invokes (the recollected feelings of what had happened through their Bond; pain and the desperate terror of suffocation and something else, equally desperate--) could be that easily dismissed.
I suspect, in fact, there was no world where I could have said no.]
You'd blame him for that, [he says, tone tight with the effort of self-control.] You'd excuse your own inaction because, what, trapped and suffering, he did anything to make it less awful?
No, I respect him in that. [It's an automatic, snapped reaction, something that slips from his gut into his mouth without ever having been a thought. It was an unconscious admission, but now that it hung in the air he couldn't deny the truth in it. He lets out a short frustrated growl.]
I understand that in a way I really don't think you do. He chose to be there, he set the stage, and he was determined to see it through. He refuses to see himself as a victim, and that's the lie he needed to survive that night. I didn't intend to break it unless it was absolutely necessary.
There is a whole world, here, beneath Niles' words--a whole world that is well beyond Myr's experience, sheltered child of the Circle that he is. He does not doubt its grim reality; only, his grasp on it is fleeting, his understanding of it so poor he is liable to do more harm than good if he were to speak on it. That uneasy knowledge makes him want to turn away--
But he remembers L's analogy to Mello's suffering, sacrificed god and that pleading feeling through their Bond: Don't take this from me because I cannot live otherwise.
His tone is bleak:] It is a lie that will lead him back there, or worse.
[Niles' voice has a strained, mixed tone. Myr has some kind of power, doesn't he? Managing to reach in and yank on the few thin strands of guilt clinging to his core. He has to forget about Linden if he wants to appeal to that urge and focus on his much easier to accept rage at Mello himself.]
The absolute bastard treated him tenderly after. [He lets the disgust in his voice carry his final, almost shameful, admission.] He would have had Linden limping back to him before the end of the week if I hadn't gotten rid of the rotten, greedy, manipulative invitation he left behind.
[He didn't bring this up as an excuse, or a bid for gratitude. He brought it up to show Myr the urgency here. To turn him towards seeing Mello as the more immediate threat.]
[L had not spoken of any of this--it stood to reason; he hadn't been conscious for any of it--but a part of Myr is yet unsurprised that it happened. Mello has some ideas of courtship and propriety, but they are distorted, wrong, in much the same way so many of L's ideas of the world are. For many of the same reasons.
He wishes he did not know that, wishes he could be purely and simply furious at anyone involved in this, Mello especially.
Truth restrains him.]
Thank you for that. [Niles likely did not tell him to win his thanks, he knows; he has the dim sense he is being prodded about in all of this, pushed toward a conclusion the Chimera wants. Yet he will not let that change him, nor his earnestness.]
Though if you mean show him the real sort of demon he's bedded-- [He can't find the words to finish the sentence; a frustrated snort will do.] He knows.
[Niles huffs again, playing up a little indignation.]
So Mello doesn't accidentally kill him first.
[So Mello's not the one guarding him.]
I'm not planning a lethal assault, and I'm not going to be in a reckless, drunken, jealous stupor bent on owning him. You'll get your boy back from me, you won't from Mello.
[The logic's irrefutable, if Niles can be trusted at his word. (If.) Mello might kill L; Niles would not; better to spend effort warding the fatal threat. Myr is one easily persuaded by logic and reason, and yet--]
Fuck you,
[He spits--because, under everything, Myr's also still the boy who would fight anyone who hurt his loved ones, be they larger or smaller, mage or not. It had taken the trifold expectations of duty, of chivalry, of the Maker's word to tame that boy's ire at the world, and now he finds those expectations sharpened and turned against him as he's backed inevitably into a corner.
Niles wants L alive and in steady health for whatever it is he plans. Mello wants L alive and conformed to the shape he'd carved out for his idol. (And if not that--broken, eradicated, in no one else's hands.) Every step of progress he made with his Bonded--getting L to eat, to care for himself, to spin the slenderest bridges across the emotional gaps between him and the rest of mankind--played to one or the other. Every reversal likewise--every night of drugged oblivion, every well-considered impulse to self-immolate in Mello's flames.
It hurts. But there is no world where he can stop, no option to not throw himself on the thorns again and again to fulfill the bounds of his promises to L.
Trapped.]
Kill him yourself as a favor to both of us if you're so concerned that you get to Linden first.
[You know I've already put myself in his path. Why remind me how that helps you.]
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faithlikeaseed) wrote2019-08-01 12:00 am
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[And oh, how deeply that knowledge cuts Myr and makes him bleed.]
Pretending otherwise would be stupid and irresponsible.
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Have you even been trying though?
[The incident with Mello is strong in his memory.]
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Would it only look to you like trying if I did lock him in my basement?
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[After all, there's no way Myr didn't know what happened to his bonded that night. Maybe he didn't know Niles had seen it, but it was easy to guess. Now feigning ignorance about it wasn't an option though.]
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(He should have been there. He should have intervened. Niles isn't wrong on that.)]
And watching M rape him without intervening doesn't look like you've principles about what to do in such cases.
[At least he doesn't sound exactly as furious as he feels about that. Only mostly.]
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I wasn't holding his arms down. [The principle elements of what happened to him and Linden were parallel, but not the same.] Besides, it's not my job to protect him.
[The anger in his voice hasn't waned. He's not smug, he's not gloating. He's agreeing that it shouldn't have happened, and relieving himself of that responsibility in the same breath.]
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[Myr's tone is brittle.]
To make sure he knew you'd the same opportunity he fucked up--and passed on it.
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And what opportunity, exactly, are you imagining I had? Mello was no illusion I could just wave away.
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It would be easier. It would be so much easier.
And wrong.]
Something you've shown yourself expert at.
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Distracted? Tch, then what? Do you think Linden would have run? He was determined not to resist. Any action that left Mello breathing would just have ended with the room in flames, and both of them too drunk to find the exit.
And my venom isn't instant.
[So yes, he'd had the thought too. Truth be told would have followed through if a line had been crossed. Specifically the line that Linden himself had drawn at 'lasting physical damage'. Bruises and bleeding were one thing, but if Mello had choked him out much longer...they would be having a very different conversation.]
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He recognizes the difficulty of the situation--he's thought, and thought, and thought over what he could have done, if he'd obeyed his instinct to come running (and the day would yet come, he's sure, when he would)--but he would still have done something.
You say it's impossible and I'm the one who's supposed to protect him, who hasn't sight or venom either?
--But he doesn't say that. It's self-pitying and would give too much to someone he still--despite his own fury--rather weren't an enemy and nevertheless is.]
I think, [slowly,] if it had been anyone but Linden you'd've found a way around those impossibilities.
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[Then, quietly.]
Do you really want to know the details that stayed my hand? The situation is not as you are imagining it.
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It makes him clipped, chilly.]
Tell me.
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They met in the morning at a cafe. Did you know he's looking for a third bond, specifically a witch?
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He'd intimated as much. [Myr's feelings on the matter are complex, though he's careful to keep it from his tone.]
They spoke about that?
[It explained a great deal about the whys of what had happened, if L had said as much to Mello's face. Maker protect them all from the younger Witch's jealousy.]
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[Anger rises in his words, he may not have any sympathy for Linden, but Mello clearly infuriates him all the same.]
He set up the meeting. They were both piss drunk. Linden cooperated with him, submitted to him, told him what he wanted to hear. And when that wasn't enough and Mello got violent, he finally started chasing his own pleasure just as eagerly.
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I suspect, in fact, there was no world where I could have said no.]
You'd blame him for that, [he says, tone tight with the effort of self-control.] You'd excuse your own inaction because, what, trapped and suffering, he did anything to make it less awful?
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I understand that in a way I really don't think you do. He chose to be there, he set the stage, and he was determined to see it through. He refuses to see himself as a victim, and that's the lie he needed to survive that night. I didn't intend to break it unless it was absolutely necessary.
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There is a whole world, here, beneath Niles' words--a whole world that is well beyond Myr's experience, sheltered child of the Circle that he is. He does not doubt its grim reality; only, his grasp on it is fleeting, his understanding of it so poor he is liable to do more harm than good if he were to speak on it. That uneasy knowledge makes him want to turn away--
But he remembers L's analogy to Mello's suffering, sacrificed god and that pleading feeling through their Bond: Don't take this from me because I cannot live otherwise.
His tone is bleak:] It is a lie that will lead him back there, or worse.
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[Niles' voice has a strained, mixed tone. Myr has some kind of power, doesn't he? Managing to reach in and yank on the few thin strands of guilt clinging to his core. He has to forget about Linden if he wants to appeal to that urge and focus on his much easier to accept rage at Mello himself.]
The absolute bastard treated him tenderly after. [He lets the disgust in his voice carry his final, almost shameful, admission.] He would have had Linden limping back to him before the end of the week if I hadn't gotten rid of the rotten, greedy, manipulative invitation he left behind.
[He didn't bring this up as an excuse, or a bid for gratitude. He brought it up to show Myr the urgency here. To turn him towards seeing Mello as the more immediate threat.]
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He wishes he did not know that, wishes he could be purely and simply furious at anyone involved in this, Mello especially.
Truth restrains him.]
Thank you for that. [Niles likely did not tell him to win his thanks, he knows; he has the dim sense he is being prodded about in all of this, pushed toward a conclusion the Chimera wants. Yet he will not let that change him, nor his earnestness.]
Though if you mean show him the real sort of demon he's bedded-- [He can't find the words to finish the sentence; a frustrated snort will do.] He knows.
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[Show him he doesn't deserve this kind of treatment, just in time to get more of it in another form.]
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So he'll be in a proper state of mind for what you plan to do to him?
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So Mello doesn't accidentally kill him first.
[So Mello's not the one guarding him.]
I'm not planning a lethal assault, and I'm not going to be in a reckless, drunken, jealous stupor bent on owning him. You'll get your boy back from me, you won't from Mello.
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Fuck you,
[He spits--because, under everything, Myr's also still the boy who would fight anyone who hurt his loved ones, be they larger or smaller, mage or not. It had taken the trifold expectations of duty, of chivalry, of the Maker's word to tame that boy's ire at the world, and now he finds those expectations sharpened and turned against him as he's backed inevitably into a corner.
Niles wants L alive and in steady health for whatever it is he plans. Mello wants L alive and conformed to the shape he'd carved out for his idol. (And if not that--broken, eradicated, in no one else's hands.) Every step of progress he made with his Bonded--getting L to eat, to care for himself, to spin the slenderest bridges across the emotional gaps between him and the rest of mankind--played to one or the other. Every reversal likewise--every night of drugged oblivion, every well-considered impulse to self-immolate in Mello's flames.
It hurts. But there is no world where he can stop, no option to not throw himself on the thorns again and again to fulfill the bounds of his promises to L.
Trapped.]
Kill him yourself as a favor to both of us if you're so concerned that you get to Linden first.
[You know I've already put myself in his path. Why remind me how that helps you.]
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