[The chaos of the Circle's implosion and all that occurred during it has had L laid up for the past few days. He hasn't seen Myr, knowing that there's much going on with his other Bonded, but they'd brushed up against one another fondly over the network post of an arrogant newcomer... and then gone cold, perhaps due to L's uncanny talent for pinching exposed nerves.
Provided they love you in good faith, of course.
Not everyone gets to be kind. Not everyone gets to love kindly, leaving L to do it his brusque and productive way. After giving it what feels like an appropriate amount of time to cool off (as if he's capable of measuring such things accurately), of course.
He's breathless by the time he makes it to Myr's cottage; though the walk is short, a habitual practitioner of blood magic probably isn't the best candidate to get his side slashed open by a marauding shade. He's still pale, slow and anemic, but he's here, and able, and it is time to set some neglected things right. Whether or not Myr is loved by others in good faith, there's no other way the faun seems able to love, at least from L's perspective. That shouldn't be condemned; that should be protected, and the man who grasps always for use and purpose has found a niche for the next span of time, however long it's needed.
When he knocks, it's a formality. He'll enter if bidden, or wait, if Myr has perhaps grown more wary about who he lets in, and when, and why. Their Bond, at least, is a tether to hold onto, some hint as to who is haunting the doorstep.]
[Ordinarily, Myr would be up to get the door; ordinarily, he'd have been on his hooves to do so the instant he felt L's end of their Bond near his cottage with intent.
But today is not an ordinary one, and he simply isn't feeling much like moving. Or doing much of anything but trying, fruitlessly, to sleep and let the world pass him by. Oh--he's been going through the necessary motions of daily life, enough to keep body and soul together, to maintain his hives and keep Crookytail fed lest she start eating the furniture. Enough, barely, to convince people he doesn't need anyone worrying about him--he's just exhausted and shaken as they all have been by the Circle's collapse, and still recovering from injuries taken freeing Viren.
He even has himself halfway convinced: This is just a species of battle-shock and soon enough, he'd be back in his right mind. Soon enough his mood would stabilize. Until then, he just had to keep moving...
He had meant to go over to apologize to L sooner than this. He'd meant to do a lot of things sooner than this, like reaching out to the people he'd gotten kidnapped and making proper amends for his mistakes. But just like soon enough,sooner than hasn't seemed to materialize and so it's fallen to L to come seek him out and apologize for something Myr knows he really shouldn't have recoiled from. Shouldn't have hurt another person with his own injuries.
Shouldn't have done so much that was already, irrevocably done and gone beyond changing.
The door is, as he said, unlocked. Another thing he shouldn't be doing, when a Naga might exploit that weakness to crawl through it at any time, but caring about that is hard. Caring about a lot of things is hard right now: Exactly how hard's readily apparent when L walks through the door. The Faun's curled up in a chair in the sitting room, bundled up in one of his garish quilts in the middle of a lone, wan sunbeam through the windows.
It catches in the hair coming loose in a cloud from his ordinarily tidy braid.]
[The latch gives, and L steps inside, taking stock of his surroundings. Crookytail is there to nudge her velvety nose against his hand, and the normally orderly home is... still orderly, just perhaps a bit less so than usual. L notices a chair in a spot Myr usually keeps clear to avoid stumbling, and he steps over to move it. He might feel see-through, since losing so much blood, but he still casts a visible shadow, still has the strength to move a chair.
As he does so, he glances toward the sitting room's doorway, notices the quilt that's managed to tangle a faun up in it.]
I thought I should apologize.
[Regardless of who's at fault, Myr usually takes this step first. L figures it's his turn. Besides, there is one way he's fallen notably short in their Bond; he hasn't yet done what he'd promised he would.]
Let me set things right... finally. I'm sorry you've had to wait this long for me to learn.
[Pulling away that hypnosis, if needed. Going after the culprit, but later. For now, the focus belongs on the one who needs a gentler and subtler touch.]
[Myr's ears twitch at the sound of the chair being moved. He thinks he knows which one that is, and that he'd left it out of place, and it provokes a twist of guilt along with the gratitude to hear L reposition it.]
You didn't know, [he says, quietly, to the apology.] That it would hurt that much; I didn't know. It wasn't your fault.
[A pause ensues, and he huddles down further in the quilt. Very little of his pain recently was L's fault and it's selfish and awful of him to flinch from those tiny pieces that are, hurting them both. But he can't seem to help it, any more than someone could help recoiling from a hot stove.
Quieter, still,] It's forgiven. And--you--needn't be sorry about that. You had larger things occupying your time.
[Saving people. Some of them people Myr's own foolishness had imperiled. Though even in his current mood that level of self-pity--in the face of the Bonded who's come back to him with every intent of helping him--evokes a frisson of self-despite, and he pushes himself to sit up a little taller.
Manages somehow to find a smile and lift his ears a little.] But I am glad you're here--though I don't know--I'm sure this will pass, now that Circle's dealt with and everyone's back safe.
[Which sounds like he's undermining L's efforts, doesn't it? Stupid, stupid. He cringes a little at himself and pushes on,] But I will sleep easier, [he hasn't been sleeping much at all,] to know there's nothing else clouding my mind.
[He didn't know; maybe he should have. It's strange when dynamics shift this way, perhaps; he's wanted Myr to see him differently for awhile, but is it bothering his Bonded to have to rely on him? Does it feel, perhaps, like a new low bar?]
Different things. Not larger.
[Time had pressed them, what was at stake had momentarily shifted, but Myr was always a priority. Naga or no, hypnotism or no, unwise hospitality or no. L owes a lot to Myr's generosity towards unsavory types far more obvious than Jin Guangyao.]
You will. You'll sleep like you haven't in weeks.
[He agrees, pulling up a chair, stepping out of his boots so he can sit in a way he's more comfortable without sullying Myr's upholstery. He uses his foot to gently nudge Crookytail away from one of the steel-toed shoes, which she has started to draw into her mouthparts.]
I can clear it, like I have before, if he's gotten to you again. This time, though... I think that I can also guard you against it. Like rubbing some soap on the surface of glass to keep it from fogging... and if there's anything damaged or that you've come to doubt, we're Bonded, and I know you well enough that it should be an easy fix.
It is strange to have his own rhetoric mirrored back at him, to be treated with the solicitous care that he uses for others. Not because he didn't expect L capable of it; L had always had the capacity, as far as Myr was concerned, but simply wanted for practice. Nor was it anything to do with the quality of the man he found himself relying on, since he'd be the first to fight for his Witch's honor.
No, the strangeness is simply because Myr knows those are the words he'd use to someone in his position and yet he cannot use them on himself--nor forgive, nor console, his own wounded heart the same way he would L's were their positions reversed. The thought troubles his expression as he turns his face toward the sound of a chair being pulled up, and reaches a hesitant hand toward L from within his patchwork cocoon.
Doesn't actually lay hold on his Witch with his usual boldness, simply holds a hand out while trying to convince himself it would not go amiss if he did set it on L's leg.
L has not and will not reject him. But that's head-knowledge, not heart-knowledge.]
He hasn't, [he says, with unwonted vehemence,] gotten to me again. He--slithered by a few days ago and I turned him out; I want nothing to do with him. [Ah, fury, the first outward-directed emotion he's felt with any clarity in days. It should shame him, and it will, once the moment's passed.]
I've no idea whether he'll stay warned off, though; I'll take whatever protection you're offering.
[As for the rest of the help on offer... He hasn't words for what's been damaged or what he's come to doubt.
(Too busy pretending it will all heal on his own, that the guilt and the nightmares aren't getting worse rather than better.)]
[L sits forward attentively, canting his head, considering the faun's reaction. He should be reassured; L himself is feeling quite confident, but... no, something else is amiss. It would have to be; he's never seen Myr this way, in spite of the wide spectrum of unguarded emotion he has seen from his Bonded.
He's about to gently say that Myr could well not know if Jin Guangyao had gotten to him again, but he continues, and it actually does sound like the case.]
I see... I'm glad. And he will stay warned off.
[There's a touch of frost to L's voice, hinting that he'll see to it. It thaws and gentles in his next words as he reaches out to press the heel of his hand against Myr's temple.]
Think to your last meeting anyway, if you would.
[Already, he can tell that it should be simple. Wisps of hypnosis, if that, so little that he might have simply failed to sweep up these shavings last time. He'll remedy that here and now, and be quick and clean about it.]
He'd best, [Myr mutters, and sighs, and leans into the touch with a depth of need that troubles a remote part of him.
It's growing harder and harder to keep up the internal fiction.]
He showed up--midafternoon. Evening, maybe? Two...two days ago, I think. [Late morning and three days ago. His hold on time is sometimes tenuous even when he's at his best; now...] Damned cold for him to be out. Acted as if he wanted to check up on me with how the cult had fallen apart, then turned to justifying himself when I told him I'd have none of it.
[Anger flares bright in the Bond over a layer of remembered fear. Now that Myr knew what the prior visits were about, merely thinking about how close he'd come is cause for horror.] Claimed the cult had controlled him, too; I told him not to come back without proof. From you, if he wanted a diviner's services for it.
[Speaking this through is...an odd strain, as his reflex is to damp what he's feeling. But doing that might obscure what L's seeking, and so Myr struggles to keep the Bond completely patent. Enough so that fragments of remembered conversation swirl through, ephemeral and unindexed, with the fury Myr had felt at the Naga's imposition. At his gall, to persist and persist in invading Myr's territory after his welcome was revoked.
L's strategy works, besides: What traces of Jin Guangyao's meddling remain--old and faded now--are clear as white thread on red cloth, easy to pluck up.]
[L's waiting hand is steady; the clearest and most productive mind is an unemotional one, and while he has his share of desire and darkness, he's always been uncommonly good at walling off, partitioning, producing. If Myr could see his eyes, he might be struck by how they stare, focused, into a middle distance that doesn't seem to have anything to do with their purpose.
Of course, it has everything to do with their purpose. It remains unshaken and stern in the face of Myr's anger; it's not, after all, directed at L. There's no reason to flinch.]
He's got nothing. I might despise him... but I would not misrepresent that truth if it was really a part of him. He knows that.
[He could be looking for a reliable way to trick a diviner, but... ah. That's all to be dealt with another time, and L is encouraged by initial, surface probing into Myr's thoughts. His hurt and disgust and the strain aside, he is, in the end, reliably Myr.]
He's probably afraid, and... he really should be.
[L sounds quite pleased about this. Some of his darkness slips past its partition for just a moment, but he gets it in check again, promptly.]
There's good news... you seem OK. I don't think you're under thrall of his influence on even a moderate level.
[...but. That means, indeed, that this is all Myr.]
Can you try to clear your mind? I realize that's easier said than done, but... if you're having difficulty, it helps, sometimes, to imagine a featureless expanse. A desert, or...
[A moor, a tundra, a dark patch of sky. Why does something still seem wrong?]
[Something still is wrong, because when L intimates (from Leviathan's back) that Jin Guangyao should be afraid, Myr only turns his head further into his Witch's hand with an etiolated relief. No horror, though some dim part of him registers that he should feel horror--if not for the Naga's sake then for L's. No satisfaction, though, no moment of vicious retributive sentiment that he has to wrestle back into its place because he does not have the luxury of hating that way, because better is demanded of him.
Just washed-gray relief. Someone else is dealing with this. (How little energy he has to sustain anger for longer than a moment.)]
Good, [he does manage, and the reflexive,] Thank you. You do good work.
[Work he should be able and willing to engage with, though as L asks him to clear his mind, he frowns.] It isn't? Sorry, let me...
[A desert is his first and natal inclination. Hasmal's desert--the churning dunes stretching endlessly away from the Circle tower toward the horizon. It isn't truly featureless to one intimately familiar with its moods: There are the sinuous dunes with scrub brush growing in their lee, and there the tracks of a hunting phoenix or a wandering tortoise, and there a brush-wren gathering twigs for her nest. There the wind cleaves a slide of sand from the face of a dune, and something wet and gleaming and flesh-red is thus revealed, and--
Myr starts against L's hand, pulse and breathing suddenly quickening. No, try again.
Imagine a desert beneath the midnight sky when the moons are new, everything silvered with starlight, including the eyes that blink in the troughs of the dunes--]
[Unfortunately, Myr's relief is palpable. It's positive reinforcement, tossing a silver fish in the direction of something ravenously hungry.
He nods; yes, he does do good work. He can always prove that more is possible, especially now that he seems to have found his niche, the way that is best and most appropriate to demonstrate affection for his Bonded. A competitive one-upsman like him will find a way to top the last effort, even if he's the only one vying for this particular, odd and nearly professional niche.
Deeper, then.
They've reached the point where, paradoxically, he can't see clearly with his eyes still open. They slide shut, and in a waking dream that could only be this immersive between two Bonded and a diviner's touch, he can feel the cool sand molding to the contours of his bare feet, see the moonlight bathing the dunes in bluish light. They could almost be snow...
He takes a step, and his foot sinks, to the ankle, into what feels firm at first, then gives and pops, taking on the texture of gelatin as it pools, and bleeds.
He glances down. Before he'd taken his step, the sand might have peered back.]
Myr...
[Stepping here has created a vacuum. Extracting himself from the squelching grip is taking a moment.]
[They've dreamed together often enough that it's become a comfort to Myr, but this--this is palpably, startlingly different. The Faun hasn't placed his own position in his mind's eye and isn't apparent in the scene at first. The landscape itself is oddly realized--sharp as cut crystal in some places, especially where L directs his gaze, and vaguely smeared like gelatin over glass in others.
The eyes and the bleeding flesh are all too palpable.]
Linden, I...
[He wants suddenly to duck away from this, pull his quilt up around his pinned ears and hide. To be known this way when he's in the depths of his own despair and uselessness is agonizing.
A little frustrated noise escapes him, a near-sob. The landscape in his head ripples and twists to afford a high crenelated wall dividing the dudes, and beyond it a vague sketch of Hasmal's Circle tower. Myr's memory device, made apparent, and here at last is the Faun himself at the wall's base. He's even more disheveled here, stained with blood and dust and an uncertainty about his face that's both eyes and scars.]
I--I do, I've done nothing but think these past few days--I'm, I--
[His imagined self sheds the quilt and throws it over another cluster of eyes that's emerged from the dunes.]
--don't know where all this has come from.
[Not precisely true. But the whole truth is something he can't face head-on for fear of forgetting it, except last time he had forgotten so L had accused him of lying--]
[When L had said "featureless expanse," this is admittedly far from what he'd meant. Even without the unpleasantness currently gripping his foot, there's too much going on, too much sharpness, too much clarity. This isn't a place for notions and revelations to sift through the sand when bidden, rising to be examined and then left otherwise undisturbed. This is a place where much is preconceived, much is changed and challenging.
Maybe these changes are recent. Maybe they've been here far longer, always buried from view by more superficial things like Jin Guangyao's hypnosis. He's sure he's only seeing it now because of the hypnosis, and in spite of some internal sense of fairness and justice, L blames Jin Guangyao, the same way one might blame a smear of turpentine stripping away a coat of paint to reveal rot and mold beneath.
He could repaint it, but never look at it the same way, knowing what's under the fresh coat.
L hears Myr's voice as he grasps his ankle with both hands. In dreams, he appears as he almost always did back home: barefoot, clad in a pair of loose jeans and a white t-shirt that's perhaps a couple of sizes too small, exposing bony wrists and collarbones past a stretched-out collar. Soft cotton; a simple uniform. It's easy to bend and move in, and as he braces and drives in his other heel, and pulls, the release is sudden. He nearly overbalances and has to stagger to remain upright and regain his footing; once he has, he surveys the pooling wound, the several red footprints his escape left dotting the pale sand in an uneven pattern.
He steps back further as the landscape shifts and twists so he can better see what is resembling, less and less, a featureless expanse. A wall, a tower, if only half-formed and finished, and then, finally, he sees Myr emerge in the oddness he's unlocked.]
...it's OK.
[Frustrating, even infuriating... but not on Myr's account. L's settled on a target for his blame, and his focus is legendarily laser-hot. Concentrated, and so Myr won't suffer the brunt of it. Myr is safe, or... at least, he will be, when L has dealt with messes and threats. He promised; this is what he is capable of offering one who has given him so much.
L and Myr strike more of a physical contrast than they usually do. In his mind's eye, L's shirt is solid, pristine, whiter than the dunes in the moonlight. His skin is slightly translucent; it's possible to see the dim outlines of the dunes through the parts of him his clothes leave exposed, but there's not a mark on him. Even the scars ringing each of his fingers has vanished, but Myr...
Myr looks somewhat worse for wear, in spite of having his eyes. That's new and different; L dislikes it intensely.]
You're tired.
[You don't have to be here, he thinks, because of the two of them, one is distressed to gaze upon monsters. The other is not only untroubled, but practically hypnotically drawn toward the gruesome, the twisted, and the haunted. How else to strike a monster true, but to look directly at it without blinking or flinching?
He reaches for the dropped quilt, offering it silently to Myr once more. The dune stares on in cluster formation.]
[It is a symptom of how Myr's mind works that he carries whole ecosystems within it; that his idea of an expanse is vibrant with life, detail, change.
He can quiet in prayer or when he's working. Or could; lately, it's become more difficult, and that too is one of the things keeping him sleepless and--yes, tired.
L looks too-real and unreal all at the same time, in the way spirits do. It draws the eye uncomfortably, though it's a better place for Myr to rest his inward gaze than whatever's going on beneath the dunes. It means he cannot help but note how his Witch's leg is red to the calf, nor the gaping hole where an eye had been--
Don't look at that.
He'll look at the quilt instead, as L offers it back to him; he'll soundlessly take it and wrap it around his shoulders once more.]
I'm tired, [he echoes, at last, and then laughs without any humor.] Amatus, I'm exhausted.
[In a way it's good they've been separated because every time he's tried to sleep these last few days he's tossed and turned to no avail--or woken screaming from the nightmares.]
What should I do? [Please, tell him. Take the burden of deciding from off his shoulders.]
[It's one of the things L not only likes, but admires about Myr, feeling deep affection for his tendency to consider the way life catalyzes and interacts with other life. It's perpetual and lovely, from the outside; even, at times, when the context itself is a strange or uncomfortable one.
He doesn't fully let go of the quilt until it's fully around Myr's shoulders and secured by the faun's hand, where L's lingers for a moment before drawing away.]
I know... I know.
[Said in a different tone, it could sound flippant and dismissive, but his words are soft, somber. Myr is tired; he can sense it, bone-deep, in a way that natural empathy rarely affords him insight into the plights of others.]
So rest. Right here... envision your staff, and give it to me, and you'll be safe while I work, OK?
[The sand, after all, is enough of an expanse that he has ample space to work. He's so talented with runes, and maybe more so, on one of the rare occasions that Myr can actually witness him etching.]
[Touch soothes, and Myr is so inclined to lean into it that a sigh can't help but escape him when L pulls his hand away. He almost wants to beg his Witch to put aside everything else he's come here for and simply sit with him a while, but--this is important work, and mere cuddling isn't going to fix any of what's gone wrong with Myr.
At least L isn't asking anything difficult of him to carry on with it. He lifts his chin in acknowledgment of the request and reaches back as if to draw his staff from its usual place on his back, and does through the logic of dreams.]
Here, [he says, proffering it. Once L's taken it from him he takes a step back toward his solid wall, putting his back to it and sliding down to sit on the sand. It is a profoundly defeated posture--but there's at least a little glimmer of interest, of hope, in the Faun's eyes as he waits to see what L will do.]
[L's inclination to lean back is existent. Like so much of what he wishes for, it feels taboo, like something he was audacious to even desire. Sitting with Myr awhile is for others, those kinder, gentler, and nobler. L leaves the quilt and takes the staff; L will focus, and consider, and slowly, the unnecessary weight will fall away, and he'll be left with his perfect, elegant runes.
He steps away, starts slowly, gaining confidence as he goes and realizes the ease and beauty of etching in sand. The desert is vast, but at the very least, it's assured that when L traces symbols around any cluster of red-rimmed eyes, they will close, if not vanish outright.
His skill is not yet perfect. He's not a witch with the benefit of a lifetime to study one discipline, but he's whip-smart, actually brilliant. There's hope for people like him, in their particular situation. He can still be worthy of something, in spite of what he brings to the table paltry and underwhelming. There's some kind of productive recourse even if he lacks and languishes, and is no kind of man.
The lines are steady, precise, and careful. No one could find an error in these runes, traced under Myr's moonlight. No one could call them selfish, or aggrieved, or deadened. They're for Myr, offered the way a man incapable of loving might present them.]
[As a student of Creation magic, Myr himself had spent long hours practicing at drawing glyphs. It is an exacting form of spellcraft, and not one he was immediately suited for, given his propensity for enthusiasm over rigor. But he had become proficient in time, and so it's with a fellow-mage's eyes he watches L set out his runes. The forms and arrays are alien, but the particular nuances of placing them have a universal appeal. In this context, illuminated by the stars and writing upon the sand with sure grace, L is breathtaking.
Even the acute distress of seeing the eyes pop open beneath the sand is muted by L's motions; they are a focus and distraction Myr gladly devours with the deer's sharp eyesight. He does not know what spell it is L's casting--he knows only a handful of runes, and those only by touch--but even now his head's begun to feel a little clearer, the intrusive onus of his thoughts less burdensome.
Exhausted as he is, even that little bit of reprieve is enough to push him toward sleep. His eyes flutter and his chin dips toward his chest--only for him to jerk alert a moment later. This is a rare opportunity L is giving him and he wants (wants in excess of what meager emotions he has lately) to see it through.]
[L's eyes are drawn skyward, more often than not. The touch of rain, glance of starlight and yawning silence of questions unanswered all come from that source, home to comfort and yearning alike.
His earthly form, and the one that appears in dreams, isn't capable of flight, and cannot vanish into vapor even if his edges seem uncertain, wispy, and translucent. Grounded, with narrow shoulders hunched according to the laws of a forward-curved spine, L seems made instead to look at the earth, the details in the dirt and dust that others might miss. He's good at it, of course, both discerning and creating; as the staff moves in the sand, what he knows, and owns, it comes together in meticulous and graceful characters. They're combined uniquely and elegantly, and though blood would make them stronger, Myr can watch, here, and it's therefore out of the question.
Just more care, and time, and precision will have to make up for it.
He writes until Myr is asleep, and then after, until every eye is closed. They are still present, as well as the wounds and flesh, but they seem softer and soothed as though spread in balm. It's beyond his current skill to heal, or cover completely, but he believes that won't always be the case. He's always studying, always working, always growing, even if his form is lopsided and stunted in places. He has some faith that his infinite potential in one narrow arena can help Myr, even if all the rest has never enamored anyone.]
[Eventually, the time comes when Myr cannot fight the creeping exhaustion any longer--even for all the novelty and awe of watching L at his craft. He struggles for it like a child trying to sit vigil the night before Satinalia, knowing that even though sleep will hasten morning's arrival, there's a certain magic in sitting up to greet the dawn.
But he will not, tonight, for the first time in many nights; as L promised, he'll sleep better than he has in weeks. His imagined-self's own eyes slide closed as the desert quiets and its colors fade in their intensity. (All but the eyes, reliably and startlingly green; they remain vivid until L shuts the last of them.)
In the waking world, the Faun relaxes, still leaning into the hand on his temple, his hand fallen to rest on his Bonded's knee and his expression--at last--one of slack peace. The sunbeam he'd been sitting in fades with the evening's onset, leaving the cottage in a dim gloom that seems, now, more restful than dismal.]
[L had promised his Bonded sleep, and the satisfaction of delivering feels well-earned when he lays the staff down beside the dream representation of his slumbering Bonded, then opens his eyes to where, in the soft glow of a setting sun and wrapped in a quilt, Myr is breathing softly in his chair, still wrapped in his quilt and with a hand on one of L's bony knees.
He reaches out cautiously to rest one of his atop Myr's knuckles, and he lingers for twenty minutes or so while realizing that he can't stay, not fully or truly. Like the fading golden hour outside, he, too, should depart while he is still wanted and welcome.
Telekinetically, he draws two plump throw pillows over, propping one under Myr's head and using the other as a placeholder once he's extricated from his own chair.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faithlikeaseed) wrote2019-08-01 12:00 am
Sometime between the 16th and the 20th
Provided they love you in good faith, of course.
Not everyone gets to be kind. Not everyone gets to love kindly, leaving L to do it his brusque and productive way. After giving it what feels like an appropriate amount of time to cool off (as if he's capable of measuring such things accurately), of course.
He's breathless by the time he makes it to Myr's cottage; though the walk is short, a habitual practitioner of blood magic probably isn't the best candidate to get his side slashed open by a marauding shade. He's still pale, slow and anemic, but he's here, and able, and it is time to set some neglected things right. Whether or not Myr is loved by others in good faith, there's no other way the faun seems able to love, at least from L's perspective. That shouldn't be condemned; that should be protected, and the man who grasps always for use and purpose has found a niche for the next span of time, however long it's needed.
When he knocks, it's a formality. He'll enter if bidden, or wait, if Myr has perhaps grown more wary about who he lets in, and when, and why. Their Bond, at least, is a tether to hold onto, some hint as to who is haunting the doorstep.]
no subject
[Ordinarily, Myr would be up to get the door; ordinarily, he'd have been on his hooves to do so the instant he felt L's end of their Bond near his cottage with intent.
But today is not an ordinary one, and he simply isn't feeling much like moving. Or doing much of anything but trying, fruitlessly, to sleep and let the world pass him by. Oh--he's been going through the necessary motions of daily life, enough to keep body and soul together, to maintain his hives and keep Crookytail fed lest she start eating the furniture. Enough, barely, to convince people he doesn't need anyone worrying about him--he's just exhausted and shaken as they all have been by the Circle's collapse, and still recovering from injuries taken freeing Viren.
He even has himself halfway convinced: This is just a species of battle-shock and soon enough, he'd be back in his right mind. Soon enough his mood would stabilize. Until then, he just had to keep moving...
He had meant to go over to apologize to L sooner than this. He'd meant to do a lot of things sooner than this, like reaching out to the people he'd gotten kidnapped and making proper amends for his mistakes. But just like soon enough, sooner than hasn't seemed to materialize and so it's fallen to L to come seek him out and apologize for something Myr knows he really shouldn't have recoiled from. Shouldn't have hurt another person with his own injuries.
Shouldn't have done so much that was already, irrevocably done and gone beyond changing.
The door is, as he said, unlocked. Another thing he shouldn't be doing, when a Naga might exploit that weakness to crawl through it at any time, but caring about that is hard. Caring about a lot of things is hard right now: Exactly how hard's readily apparent when L walks through the door. The Faun's curled up in a chair in the sitting room, bundled up in one of his garish quilts in the middle of a lone, wan sunbeam through the windows.
It catches in the hair coming loose in a cloud from his ordinarily tidy braid.]
no subject
As he does so, he glances toward the sitting room's doorway, notices the quilt that's managed to tangle a faun up in it.]
I thought I should apologize.
[Regardless of who's at fault, Myr usually takes this step first. L figures it's his turn. Besides, there is one way he's fallen notably short in their Bond; he hasn't yet done what he'd promised he would.]
Let me set things right... finally. I'm sorry you've had to wait this long for me to learn.
[Pulling away that hypnosis, if needed. Going after the culprit, but later. For now, the focus belongs on the one who needs a gentler and subtler touch.]
no subject
You didn't know, [he says, quietly, to the apology.] That it would hurt that much; I didn't know. It wasn't your fault.
[A pause ensues, and he huddles down further in the quilt. Very little of his pain recently was L's fault and it's selfish and awful of him to flinch from those tiny pieces that are, hurting them both. But he can't seem to help it, any more than someone could help recoiling from a hot stove.
Quieter, still,] It's forgiven. And--you--needn't be sorry about that. You had larger things occupying your time.
[Saving people. Some of them people Myr's own foolishness had imperiled. Though even in his current mood that level of self-pity--in the face of the Bonded who's come back to him with every intent of helping him--evokes a frisson of self-despite, and he pushes himself to sit up a little taller.
Manages somehow to find a smile and lift his ears a little.] But I am glad you're here--though I don't know--I'm sure this will pass, now that Circle's dealt with and everyone's back safe.
[Which sounds like he's undermining L's efforts, doesn't it? Stupid, stupid. He cringes a little at himself and pushes on,] But I will sleep easier, [he hasn't been sleeping much at all,] to know there's nothing else clouding my mind.
no subject
Different things. Not larger.
[Time had pressed them, what was at stake had momentarily shifted, but Myr was always a priority. Naga or no, hypnotism or no, unwise hospitality or no. L owes a lot to Myr's generosity towards unsavory types far more obvious than Jin Guangyao.]
You will. You'll sleep like you haven't in weeks.
[He agrees, pulling up a chair, stepping out of his boots so he can sit in a way he's more comfortable without sullying Myr's upholstery. He uses his foot to gently nudge Crookytail away from one of the steel-toed shoes, which she has started to draw into her mouthparts.]
I can clear it, like I have before, if he's gotten to you again. This time, though... I think that I can also guard you against it. Like rubbing some soap on the surface of glass to keep it from fogging... and if there's anything damaged or that you've come to doubt, we're Bonded, and I know you well enough that it should be an easy fix.
no subject
It is strange to have his own rhetoric mirrored back at him, to be treated with the solicitous care that he uses for others. Not because he didn't expect L capable of it; L had always had the capacity, as far as Myr was concerned, but simply wanted for practice. Nor was it anything to do with the quality of the man he found himself relying on, since he'd be the first to fight for his Witch's honor.
No, the strangeness is simply because Myr knows those are the words he'd use to someone in his position and yet he cannot use them on himself--nor forgive, nor console, his own wounded heart the same way he would L's were their positions reversed. The thought troubles his expression as he turns his face toward the sound of a chair being pulled up, and reaches a hesitant hand toward L from within his patchwork cocoon.
Doesn't actually lay hold on his Witch with his usual boldness, simply holds a hand out while trying to convince himself it would not go amiss if he did set it on L's leg.
L has not and will not reject him. But that's head-knowledge, not heart-knowledge.]
He hasn't, [he says, with unwonted vehemence,] gotten to me again. He--slithered by a few days ago and I turned him out; I want nothing to do with him. [Ah, fury, the first outward-directed emotion he's felt with any clarity in days. It should shame him, and it will, once the moment's passed.]
I've no idea whether he'll stay warned off, though; I'll take whatever protection you're offering.
[As for the rest of the help on offer... He hasn't words for what's been damaged or what he's come to doubt.
(Too busy pretending it will all heal on his own, that the guilt and the nightmares aren't getting worse rather than better.)]
no subject
He's about to gently say that Myr could well not know if Jin Guangyao had gotten to him again, but he continues, and it actually does sound like the case.]
I see... I'm glad. And he will stay warned off.
[There's a touch of frost to L's voice, hinting that he'll see to it. It thaws and gentles in his next words as he reaches out to press the heel of his hand against Myr's temple.]
Think to your last meeting anyway, if you would.
[Already, he can tell that it should be simple. Wisps of hypnosis, if that, so little that he might have simply failed to sweep up these shavings last time. He'll remedy that here and now, and be quick and clean about it.]
no subject
It's growing harder and harder to keep up the internal fiction.]
He showed up--midafternoon. Evening, maybe? Two...two days ago, I think. [Late morning and three days ago. His hold on time is sometimes tenuous even when he's at his best; now...] Damned cold for him to be out. Acted as if he wanted to check up on me with how the cult had fallen apart, then turned to justifying himself when I told him I'd have none of it.
[Anger flares bright in the Bond over a layer of remembered fear. Now that Myr knew what the prior visits were about, merely thinking about how close he'd come is cause for horror.] Claimed the cult had controlled him, too; I told him not to come back without proof. From you, if he wanted a diviner's services for it.
[Speaking this through is...an odd strain, as his reflex is to damp what he's feeling. But doing that might obscure what L's seeking, and so Myr struggles to keep the Bond completely patent. Enough so that fragments of remembered conversation swirl through, ephemeral and unindexed, with the fury Myr had felt at the Naga's imposition. At his gall, to persist and persist in invading Myr's territory after his welcome was revoked.
L's strategy works, besides: What traces of Jin Guangyao's meddling remain--old and faded now--are clear as white thread on red cloth, easy to pluck up.]
no subject
Of course, it has everything to do with their purpose. It remains unshaken and stern in the face of Myr's anger; it's not, after all, directed at L. There's no reason to flinch.]
He's got nothing. I might despise him... but I would not misrepresent that truth if it was really a part of him. He knows that.
[He could be looking for a reliable way to trick a diviner, but... ah. That's all to be dealt with another time, and L is encouraged by initial, surface probing into Myr's thoughts. His hurt and disgust and the strain aside, he is, in the end, reliably Myr.]
He's probably afraid, and... he really should be.
[L sounds quite pleased about this. Some of his darkness slips past its partition for just a moment, but he gets it in check again, promptly.]
There's good news... you seem OK. I don't think you're under thrall of his influence on even a moderate level.
[...but. That means, indeed, that this is all Myr.]
Can you try to clear your mind? I realize that's easier said than done, but... if you're having difficulty, it helps, sometimes, to imagine a featureless expanse. A desert, or...
[A moor, a tundra, a dark patch of sky. Why does something still seem wrong?]
no subject
Just washed-gray relief. Someone else is dealing with this. (How little energy he has to sustain anger for longer than a moment.)]
Good, [he does manage, and the reflexive,] Thank you. You do good work.
[Work he should be able and willing to engage with, though as L asks him to clear his mind, he frowns.] It isn't? Sorry, let me...
[A desert is his first and natal inclination. Hasmal's desert--the churning dunes stretching endlessly away from the Circle tower toward the horizon. It isn't truly featureless to one intimately familiar with its moods: There are the sinuous dunes with scrub brush growing in their lee, and there the tracks of a hunting phoenix or a wandering tortoise, and there a brush-wren gathering twigs for her nest. There the wind cleaves a slide of sand from the face of a dune, and something wet and gleaming and flesh-red is thus revealed, and--
Myr starts against L's hand, pulse and breathing suddenly quickening. No, try again.
Imagine a desert beneath the midnight sky when the moons are new, everything silvered with starlight, including the eyes that blink in the troughs of the dunes--]
no subject
He nods; yes, he does do good work. He can always prove that more is possible, especially now that he seems to have found his niche, the way that is best and most appropriate to demonstrate affection for his Bonded. A competitive one-upsman like him will find a way to top the last effort, even if he's the only one vying for this particular, odd and nearly professional niche.
Deeper, then.
They've reached the point where, paradoxically, he can't see clearly with his eyes still open. They slide shut, and in a waking dream that could only be this immersive between two Bonded and a diviner's touch, he can feel the cool sand molding to the contours of his bare feet, see the moonlight bathing the dunes in bluish light. They could almost be snow...
He takes a step, and his foot sinks, to the ankle, into what feels firm at first, then gives and pops, taking on the texture of gelatin as it pools, and bleeds.
He glances down. Before he'd taken his step, the sand might have peered back.]
Myr...
[Stepping here has created a vacuum. Extracting himself from the squelching grip is taking a moment.]
You... have a lot on your mind.
no subject
The eyes and the bleeding flesh are all too palpable.]
Linden, I...
[He wants suddenly to duck away from this, pull his quilt up around his pinned ears and hide. To be known this way when he's in the depths of his own despair and uselessness is agonizing.
A little frustrated noise escapes him, a near-sob. The landscape in his head ripples and twists to afford a high crenelated wall dividing the dudes, and beyond it a vague sketch of Hasmal's Circle tower. Myr's memory device, made apparent, and here at last is the Faun himself at the wall's base. He's even more disheveled here, stained with blood and dust and an uncertainty about his face that's both eyes and scars.]
I--I do, I've done nothing but think these past few days--I'm, I--
[His imagined self sheds the quilt and throws it over another cluster of eyes that's emerged from the dunes.]
--don't know where all this has come from.
[Not precisely true. But the whole truth is something he can't face head-on for fear of forgetting it, except last time he had forgotten so L had accused him of lying--]
no subject
Maybe these changes are recent. Maybe they've been here far longer, always buried from view by more superficial things like Jin Guangyao's hypnosis. He's sure he's only seeing it now because of the hypnosis, and in spite of some internal sense of fairness and justice, L blames Jin Guangyao, the same way one might blame a smear of turpentine stripping away a coat of paint to reveal rot and mold beneath.
He could repaint it, but never look at it the same way, knowing what's under the fresh coat.
L hears Myr's voice as he grasps his ankle with both hands. In dreams, he appears as he almost always did back home: barefoot, clad in a pair of loose jeans and a white t-shirt that's perhaps a couple of sizes too small, exposing bony wrists and collarbones past a stretched-out collar. Soft cotton; a simple uniform. It's easy to bend and move in, and as he braces and drives in his other heel, and pulls, the release is sudden. He nearly overbalances and has to stagger to remain upright and regain his footing; once he has, he surveys the pooling wound, the several red footprints his escape left dotting the pale sand in an uneven pattern.
He steps back further as the landscape shifts and twists so he can better see what is resembling, less and less, a featureless expanse. A wall, a tower, if only half-formed and finished, and then, finally, he sees Myr emerge in the oddness he's unlocked.]
...it's OK.
[Frustrating, even infuriating... but not on Myr's account. L's settled on a target for his blame, and his focus is legendarily laser-hot. Concentrated, and so Myr won't suffer the brunt of it. Myr is safe, or... at least, he will be, when L has dealt with messes and threats. He promised; this is what he is capable of offering one who has given him so much.
L and Myr strike more of a physical contrast than they usually do. In his mind's eye, L's shirt is solid, pristine, whiter than the dunes in the moonlight. His skin is slightly translucent; it's possible to see the dim outlines of the dunes through the parts of him his clothes leave exposed, but there's not a mark on him. Even the scars ringing each of his fingers has vanished, but Myr...
Myr looks somewhat worse for wear, in spite of having his eyes. That's new and different; L dislikes it intensely.]
You're tired.
[You don't have to be here, he thinks, because of the two of them, one is distressed to gaze upon monsters. The other is not only untroubled, but practically hypnotically drawn toward the gruesome, the twisted, and the haunted. How else to strike a monster true, but to look directly at it without blinking or flinching?
He reaches for the dropped quilt, offering it silently to Myr once more. The dune stares on in cluster formation.]
no subject
He can quiet in prayer or when he's working. Or could; lately, it's become more difficult, and that too is one of the things keeping him sleepless and--yes, tired.
L looks too-real and unreal all at the same time, in the way spirits do. It draws the eye uncomfortably, though it's a better place for Myr to rest his inward gaze than whatever's going on beneath the dunes. It means he cannot help but note how his Witch's leg is red to the calf, nor the gaping hole where an eye had been--
Don't look at that.
He'll look at the quilt instead, as L offers it back to him; he'll soundlessly take it and wrap it around his shoulders once more.]
I'm tired, [he echoes, at last, and then laughs without any humor.] Amatus, I'm exhausted.
[In a way it's good they've been separated because every time he's tried to sleep these last few days he's tossed and turned to no avail--or woken screaming from the nightmares.]
What should I do? [Please, tell him. Take the burden of deciding from off his shoulders.]
no subject
He doesn't fully let go of the quilt until it's fully around Myr's shoulders and secured by the faun's hand, where L's lingers for a moment before drawing away.]
I know... I know.
[Said in a different tone, it could sound flippant and dismissive, but his words are soft, somber. Myr is tired; he can sense it, bone-deep, in a way that natural empathy rarely affords him insight into the plights of others.]
So rest. Right here... envision your staff, and give it to me, and you'll be safe while I work, OK?
[The sand, after all, is enough of an expanse that he has ample space to work. He's so talented with runes, and maybe more so, on one of the rare occasions that Myr can actually witness him etching.]
no subject
At least L isn't asking anything difficult of him to carry on with it. He lifts his chin in acknowledgment of the request and reaches back as if to draw his staff from its usual place on his back, and does through the logic of dreams.]
Here, [he says, proffering it. Once L's taken it from him he takes a step back toward his solid wall, putting his back to it and sliding down to sit on the sand. It is a profoundly defeated posture--but there's at least a little glimmer of interest, of hope, in the Faun's eyes as he waits to see what L will do.]
no subject
He steps away, starts slowly, gaining confidence as he goes and realizes the ease and beauty of etching in sand. The desert is vast, but at the very least, it's assured that when L traces symbols around any cluster of red-rimmed eyes, they will close, if not vanish outright.
His skill is not yet perfect. He's not a witch with the benefit of a lifetime to study one discipline, but he's whip-smart, actually brilliant. There's hope for people like him, in their particular situation. He can still be worthy of something, in spite of what he brings to the table paltry and underwhelming. There's some kind of productive recourse even if he lacks and languishes, and is no kind of man.
The lines are steady, precise, and careful. No one could find an error in these runes, traced under Myr's moonlight. No one could call them selfish, or aggrieved, or deadened. They're for Myr, offered the way a man incapable of loving might present them.]
no subject
Even the acute distress of seeing the eyes pop open beneath the sand is muted by L's motions; they are a focus and distraction Myr gladly devours with the deer's sharp eyesight. He does not know what spell it is L's casting--he knows only a handful of runes, and those only by touch--but even now his head's begun to feel a little clearer, the intrusive onus of his thoughts less burdensome.
Exhausted as he is, even that little bit of reprieve is enough to push him toward sleep. His eyes flutter and his chin dips toward his chest--only for him to jerk alert a moment later. This is a rare opportunity L is giving him and he wants (wants in excess of what meager emotions he has lately) to see it through.]
no subject
His earthly form, and the one that appears in dreams, isn't capable of flight, and cannot vanish into vapor even if his edges seem uncertain, wispy, and translucent. Grounded, with narrow shoulders hunched according to the laws of a forward-curved spine, L seems made instead to look at the earth, the details in the dirt and dust that others might miss. He's good at it, of course, both discerning and creating; as the staff moves in the sand, what he knows, and owns, it comes together in meticulous and graceful characters. They're combined uniquely and elegantly, and though blood would make them stronger, Myr can watch, here, and it's therefore out of the question.
Just more care, and time, and precision will have to make up for it.
He writes until Myr is asleep, and then after, until every eye is closed. They are still present, as well as the wounds and flesh, but they seem softer and soothed as though spread in balm. It's beyond his current skill to heal, or cover completely, but he believes that won't always be the case. He's always studying, always working, always growing, even if his form is lopsided and stunted in places. He has some faith that his infinite potential in one narrow arena can help Myr, even if all the rest has never enamored anyone.]
no subject
But he will not, tonight, for the first time in many nights; as L promised, he'll sleep better than he has in weeks. His imagined-self's own eyes slide closed as the desert quiets and its colors fade in their intensity. (All but the eyes, reliably and startlingly green; they remain vivid until L shuts the last of them.)
In the waking world, the Faun relaxes, still leaning into the hand on his temple, his hand fallen to rest on his Bonded's knee and his expression--at last--one of slack peace. The sunbeam he'd been sitting in fades with the evening's onset, leaving the cottage in a dim gloom that seems, now, more restful than dismal.]
no subject
He reaches out cautiously to rest one of his atop Myr's knuckles, and he lingers for twenty minutes or so while realizing that he can't stay, not fully or truly. Like the fading golden hour outside, he, too, should depart while he is still wanted and welcome.
Telekinetically, he draws two plump throw pillows over, propping one under Myr's head and using the other as a placeholder once he's extricated from his own chair.]