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.]
[He's silent for a long moment. This is getting dangerous, he's inching towards giving away more information than he's receiving. But Myr's gotten off kilter here, but Niles is calming down. He needs Myr off his case, he needs Mello at least partially neutralized, and he needs L at arm's distance from both of them. Connor could be dealt with in other ways. He's had a plan for a long time, but now he's starting to get a date in mind.
He needs to tell Myr what he wants to hear.]
...You know I couldn't do it alone.
[The tone is heavy, weighed down with the suggestion of cooperation. But on the other end of the line, Niles is smiling.]
[Niles makes a noncommittal grunt. He does have Henry. But as far as he knows, no one else has any idea of his potential involvement and he wants to keep it that way. Bringing him in to deal with Mello not only puts his ace in the hole right next to an open flame, it exposes his one unknown advantage far too early.]
Are you not the enemy of my enemy? Isn't that close enough?
Consider Mello's also the enemy of my enemy. [Though there's something in Myr's tone that says he wishes, dearly, it weren't so.
Niles hadn't threatened, repeatedly, to kill him out of jealous pique. Niles--for all his other vices and shortcomings--wasn't entirely consumed by the Original Sin. Niles was decent, in his own way; cared, in his own way, for those who needed it most, where Mello was eaten up entirely by short-sighted selfishness.
But Niles wouldn't be swayed from what he intended for L and so, here they are.]
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faithlikeaseed) wrote2019-08-01 12:00 am
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
[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.]
no subject
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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He needs to tell Myr what he wants to hear.]
...You know I couldn't do it alone.
[The tone is heavy, weighed down with the suggestion of cooperation. But on the other end of the line, Niles is smiling.]
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But there are reasons Myr cannot hold the knife, not least among them what it may do to L, if Myr should kill his tormented successor.
(The sound of L's skull cracking as he hit the ground still rings in the Faun's ears.)
Breath in, breath out.]
Then you'll need to make some friends, won't you.
[That Mello might also stand in Niles' way... that hasn't escaped Myr, either.]
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Are you not the enemy of my enemy? Isn't that close enough?
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Niles hadn't threatened, repeatedly, to kill him out of jealous pique. Niles--for all his other vices and shortcomings--wasn't entirely consumed by the Original Sin. Niles was decent, in his own way; cared, in his own way, for those who needed it most, where Mello was eaten up entirely by short-sighted selfishness.
But Niles wouldn't be swayed from what he intended for L and so, here they are.]
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Tchk! There's orders of magnitude of difference here.
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I know. You're vastly to be preferred.
But you'll both hurt him. [So rather than choose the lesser of two evils, he's refusing to choose evil at all.
Maybe that's a kind of cowardice.]
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Well, consider it an open invitation to collaborate.
[Just in case he grows a spine at some point.]
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[Who knew. If Mello became a more imminent threat, it might be wise to take Niles up on the offer--
But for now Myr's drawn his line.]