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16. Siamese
[Public]
In your opinion, when does an object lesson become so on point that the example in question begins to lose all credibility? Or to put it another way - when does the merely relevant become obviously contrived, when everything we are subjected to is the product of artifice to begin with?
[Spam for anyone likely to come by his cabin; if you want to be in on it, you are, etc.]
[It's been a very, very long time since he had to tend his own garden. Even the barge's facsimile is largely self-maintaining, but he finds himself restless with it. He needs more flowers, for hive of bees the whimsical reasons. So he's digging up some of the stranger and more picturesque plants, the bioluminescent ferns and the elaborately geometric succulents. All his plants are hardy things, designed and bred for resilience - no death touches his realm but what he allows, or so the catechism goes - so he has to pry up every centimeter of the root systems, has to kneel down and get his hands dirty. The blisters on his hands will fade fast, but in the meantime he savors the sting. It feels good to be killing things, even if it's only his plants.]
[Private to Hannibal]
How did you fare in London?
[Private to Sylvanas]
We were wondering if you'd be willing to look after our cats for a few days. Melchior and Lirath already get on.
[And the teacup persian kitten he got for Christmas is too much of a narcissistic fluffball to cause trouble.]
[Private to David 8]
How frequently does the barge make you human? Or anything that thinks dramatically differently from your normal idiom.
[It's not that he thinks David doesn't deserve politeness. He just thinks, given David's nature, that it's more polite not to waste his time with pleasantries.]
[Private to Bruce Banner]
I might need. A few days leave.
[He's not sure he trusts himself with patients, right now.]
[Private to Barbara Gordon.]
Anastasia was there.
In your opinion, when does an object lesson become so on point that the example in question begins to lose all credibility? Or to put it another way - when does the merely relevant become obviously contrived, when everything we are subjected to is the product of artifice to begin with?
[Spam for anyone likely to come by his cabin; if you want to be in on it, you are, etc.]
[It's been a very, very long time since he had to tend his own garden. Even the barge's facsimile is largely self-maintaining, but he finds himself restless with it. He needs more flowers, for hive of bees the whimsical reasons. So he's digging up some of the stranger and more picturesque plants, the bioluminescent ferns and the elaborately geometric succulents. All his plants are hardy things, designed and bred for resilience - no death touches his realm but what he allows, or so the catechism goes - so he has to pry up every centimeter of the root systems, has to kneel down and get his hands dirty. The blisters on his hands will fade fast, but in the meantime he savors the sting. It feels good to be killing things, even if it's only his plants.]
[Private to Hannibal]
How did you fare in London?
[Private to Sylvanas]
We were wondering if you'd be willing to look after our cats for a few days. Melchior and Lirath already get on.
[And the teacup persian kitten he got for Christmas is too much of a narcissistic fluffball to cause trouble.]
[Private to David 8]
How frequently does the barge make you human? Or anything that thinks dramatically differently from your normal idiom.
[It's not that he thinks David doesn't deserve politeness. He just thinks, given David's nature, that it's more polite not to waste his time with pleasantries.]
[Private to Bruce Banner]
I might need. A few days leave.
[He's not sure he trusts himself with patients, right now.]
[Private to Barbara Gordon.]
Anastasia was there.
[Private]
Briefly.]
You were a handsome child. [Wanna talk about it 8)]
[Private]
We already knew that.
[Private]
You suggested we take tea, some time ago. I'll come by.
If the offer is still on the table.
[Private]
But yes, please do.
[Private]
[And he will be prompt without being early, because coming off eager would hardly be appropriate.]
[Private]
[Certainly not. There is a pleasure to making him wait, although of course the garden really is unsuitable for hosting. He could have simply called tomorrow instead, but. Hannibal prefers to be the hunter. Now that the offer is made, he can let the man come to him.
The next day, at noon, the door opens the moment before Hannibal knocks. The Emperor does not rise; he is seated cross-legged inside, at what looks like an abstract block of red marble on the grass, in the center of looping green paths, surrounded by newly planted flowers. The buds of a saffron crocus lean toward his elbow.]
[Private]
Beautiful. [Simplicity along does it justice, and Hannibal approaches the red marble, pausing a few feet from the Emperor to give him a polite smile.]
Thank you for having me.
[Private]
You're welcome.
[The double meaning of the phrase in English suits the moment. Not the it's nothing of so many languages. He sets down the teakettle precisely on the tabletop, raps the edge of it with two fingernails, and varicolored elements in the stone flash faintly once. He could have done it via synesthesia cortex implant, with no visible sign of the command he does not explain, turning off the heat. But he allows it to be seen. The tea steams. He makes a permissive gesture.]
Please, sit.
[Private]
This is impressive. [His hand hovers over the stone, feeling for heat. It is a technology beyond his ken. He doesn't like things to remain that way.]
no subject
It's convenient. We're grateful for small mercies, these days.
no subject
You brought up London Below, yesterday. I failed to ask how you feel you fared. [As a little emotion forcing shit. But that would be rude.]
no subject
Very...strangely. We managed ourself differently. But we were more our own master there than we are here, or at least it seemed that way.
[A memory to hold on to, that.]
no subject
Was it the freedom to come and go as you pleased, or something other?
no subject
A larger place to run about in, certainly. No warden to grant permission or withhold parts of my own being. No responsibilities, which was more staggeringly alien than feeding on human minds, to be honest. Even as a prisoner we've managed to accrete duties.
We were a capricious thing. We indulged our whims...lightly. Not something any conscientious ruler can afford.
no subject
You were not yourself. [It could be heard as an excuse, a hand extended with an offer to wipe away the conversation they had Below.
It's neither excuse nor offer. Hannibal cants his head.[
Did you enjoy such indulgences?
no subject
[Yavru was him, built out of what he is and what he was very long ago and maybe from a few fragments of his sister, but it's all a part of him now. He doesn't expect Hannibal to waive the boy's crimes, and also doesn't want him to. It was a moment of power, no matter how idly exercised at the time, and he claims it for his own.]
We didn't think on it. Children rarely do.
no subject
What did you think, when you handed me your parting gift?
[No accusation, no bitter anger, there is only the calm curiosity of a man unaffected. Everything else is hidden.]
no subject
Actions have consequences.
[Lightly enunciated, sure. His eyes open again.]
It wasn't a moment of resentment or disappointment. But we think perhaps it might have been, if we had experienced emotions there, and that may have...hmm, sublimated into his natural casual cruelty. You denied him something, so for a moment he denied you. He had little sense of proportion.
And there was also an element of playing with fire, as boys will. You might have alerted the market, and had him torn apart. But he saw you as a fellow predator too, and too proud to name yourself anything else to bring it down on him.
no subject
Do you consider yourself one now? [He can see the yes, as he can see the no: all men who place themselves above, beyond, better than others are predators in their way. And yet a ruler must be above even that, to be just and effective.
And of course, predators do not often offer up their skin and organs to another.]
no subject
[He isn't any of those things any more. But.]
Everybody needs a doctor.
no subject
From time to time. Yet I think if you wanted to mend all man's ills, you would not still be here.
no subject
So many of them are in man's blood.
[And consequently require some less than hippocratic measures. He means this both on the symbolic level and the literal one, the impulse to anarchy and destruction as well as the genetic deficits wrought on his people by their greedy and short-sighted ancestors. So many things which require correcting.]
no subject
[The smile stays level. He understands the Emperor's meanings, finds them wanting. He is a man in which the impulse to anarchy and destruction has become something more, greater, and he would not see it corrected.]
no subject
[He has a parasite in his spine. It is oddly reminiscent.]