heisrisen | 16. Siamese

Entry tags:

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[Bush is deeply affected-- he clenches and unclenches the hand that has not been resting against the Emperor's back. He has to clear his throat, twice, before he manages-]

Entirely welcome. With all my heart, Majesty.

[With all his big pounding heart; he can hear it in his chest. Everything means more with these men he has thrown his lot in with. Everything is more real and has more import. It makes him a little giddy, and a little close to tears. He resolves, now, to be silent and strong, to be leant on. Because he isn't at all sure he can bear to feel anything more-- he is full up.]

[He nuzzles Bush's neck. There's no other word for it, affectionate and feline and entirely unselfconscious, his cool smile brushing warm skin, the hard edges of his occipital bones and the soft crush of his eyelashes pressing moment to moment. He is a tactile creature, when he allows himself to be.

He feels, sometimes, like the nature of the barge and the nature of his soul are wrapped around his ribcage, criss-crossed, like iron bands, insult and injustice and dread bearing slowly and inexorably tighter. They have not been removed; his ultimate fate is little altered. But they feel wedged a little looser, for now.]

Not alive.

Or an appropriately parallel facsimile thereof.

Will you punish us for insolence?

[This is not sarcastic; if the question is a challenge, it is a sincere one. She has chosen to give him an order; it matters if she will enforce it.

It is also a flat refusal to respond to the rest of her reply; this suits him.]

Lovely.

[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.]

Edited 2014-01-28 05:08 (UTC)

[He does not miss the significance of Mandrake. He wonders what she can do with it, that persecuted women of his own historical earth could not.]

Some of them. Heartsease?

[She can do a thousand things the women of his historical earth could not, good and bad. Drawing breath to describe it, Morgana pauses and turns toward the nearest waterway. Her eyes glow, and water rises to form modern pansies, colorless but shaded appropriately.]

[The scents and sights are indeed lovely, and Hannibal pauses just after stepping inside to let his eyes wander the room. Smaller than it seems, he's certain, but grand all the same. When his eyes close, he inhales, picking out particular scents - fresh soil, individual flowers.]

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.

[Oh Adelaide, such a little princess.

Sylvanas nods simply, in acknowledgement. She'll take the answer for exactly what it is. They were both too much alike, even in their distress, to misread each other's meaning, to take offense when none is meant. It's a small relief to still have that, someone she could speak directly with and not have to over explain herself just for clarity. With Beatrix gone, he's the only one left that she has that with. It's something she values deeply. It's why she hadn't even tried to push him away. She needs what he gives her too much.]

Perhaps another time, if it still serves us.

[Her eyes cast down to the cats at their feet. How simple life could be. They sat there, friendly and without worries, while those that loved them stood there and talked of pain and madness. It was rather enviable.]

How long will you need?

As I said. A few days.

[Nothing will be solved, in that time, but he will find his balance again, between clutching his rage as a shield against hollowness and buckling beneath it.]

I'll collect them in three, unless we arrange something different before then.

[There are bees, bumbling along, terribly excited by the new bounty, seemingly uninterested in anything else.]

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.

[It delights him beyond the loveliness of magic, the joy he normally takes in skill. If this were his true garden, there would be a fountain, eternally and impossibly churned in loops and arcs by gravity generators; the hovering liquid sculpture is a keen reminder, and a transient gift. And, the little flowers themselves -]

My mother called them glazkis. There were a few wild strains, in the valleys.

[And another nod.]

I will keep them protected until then.

[She would need to stay on this side of a new death toll for three days. The Emperor wanted this kept from Zane, and that meant not drawing more attention than her new warden was already giving her. That was fine. She could manage three days.]

Of course not. [She knows, really, it's not the right tack to take; she's just irritated.]

But I shouldn't have to command respect from you.

I see.

I'm sorry you were discomforted.

[She understands in a moment he means the "royal we" (she reads chin, a word literally only the Emperor would use back home), so doesn't try to argue it.]

Then in your case, he was clumsy.

They grow well. [Morgana smiles a little to see that delight; it inspires a gentle weightlessness in her, the same way that healing occasionally does. Using her magic for something other than violence and desolation is still a precious thing - particularly when it's outside the infirmary.

So her eyes glow again, and more water rises, a field of poppies populating in the air.]

I see them sometimes, in the CES.

[There is a brief hesitation - Hannibal is loathe to dirty the seat of his pants on the grass, and does not look forward to painstakingly removing the stain grass often leaves - but he is more interested in playing this scene out with the Emperor. He sits carefully, folding his frame onto the grass with a grace that is unsurprising, even given his height. Given his posture, one would think he never had a lanky youth, no awkward time of getting used to his own limbs.]

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.]

Thank you.

[There's weight in it, more breath than necessary, lets the rawness of his gratitude show. It's a small thing, compared to all their burdens, but it's a measure of honesty - of weakness - he would give to very few.]

...it was tautological. That's why I dislike it.

[There's something satisfying about this, winnowing it down in his attempts to explain, pinning it. It puts him at a farther distance, the surgeon, the academician. He eases.]

I was happy because I decided to be. I liked things because I made myself happy while they were happening. And I did that because I'd did it before, because I'd decided it was something I should like, or seem to like. I don't even know who I was playing the role for, half the time.

But not yours?

[His expression pinches, briefly, as close as he comes to an acknowledgement before he moves on, though he does address the original point. Sort of.]

We aren't interested in his opinion or his perspective, however blatantly or circuitously conveyed. This isn't just petulance, it's...a matter of credibility. We know nothing about him beyond our own abduction, for which he had no right, and that he's either a liar, a sadist, a very poor driver, or some combination of the three.

I feel like he's trying to tell me something about her. And yes, I'm angry, because I may not have always understood my sister, but I damn well knew her better than a faceless stranger who chooses to play games with my death. Not three weeks ago, the barge made contact with. Several people's homeworlds. Some of them at different times. There was an opportunity for her to speak for herself, and she didn't. It seems a little farfetched, doesn't it. That that should be the one thing beyond his control. That I should just take his heavy-handed allegorical word for it.

I don't. I can't. And it's insulting to be forced to live through the attempts.

[There's none lingering, not from the surface itself, despite the brief time elapsed. Only the tea kettle provides any convection in the nearby air. It still isn't impressive, not to him; it's basic, compared to quite a lot of delicate genetic horticulture and nanocircuitry even in this truncated version of his garden. But boasting about it would be rude.]

It's convenient. We're grateful for small mercies, these days.

Not to be found in abundance, here. [He settles his hands in his lap, settles his attention on the Emperor.]

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.]

They do. It was thin soil, on our birth planet, and rusty. But life finds a way.

[He admires the poppy field, cups a hand over her shoulder, strokes down her arm. He likes touch, a cat who is either aloof or pressed constantly at one's calves.]

We know so little about what you can do.

[Quiet, and the reproach in it is reflective. He is so eager to share, to teach, and sometimes he doesn't listen enough.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Page 8 of 12

16. Siamese

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

[Private]

[spam]

[spam]

[Private]

[Spam]

[Spam]

[Private]

[spam]

[Spam]

no subject

private

private

[spam]

[Private]

[Spam]

private

private

no subject

no subject

no subject

[spam]