17. Nebelung

[heisrisen]

[Private to Sylvanas]

You mentioned an exchange.



[Private to Davy Jones]

Do you consider yourself Lady Windrunner's friend?



[Spam for Iris.]

[He can, when occasion calls for it, be very, very sneaky. Not strictly breathing helps. When she wakes the day after her return, she finds a worn abalone button - one of Yavru's inexplicable treasures - on her bedside table and a note on her chart about the effects of bloodloss on a bicardial system.]

Eat iron & hydrate!

[Beyond that, he makes himself scarce. He's still not back on his regular shifts in the infirmary, and he doesn't go to the lab, or the greenhouse, or make himself otherwise publicly available. If she tries his room, there are good odds he's hiding out in Morgana's room, or Sylvanas's, or in the most secluded recesses of the library.]



[Private to Hornblower]

...among other things, Captain Bush has mentioned you excel in mathematics.



[Private to Hannibal]

If we were planting a few herbs, would you have requests?

Comments

[heisrisen]

[There's guilt in his eyes, immediately, though he swallows and blinks it away. Another reason, maybe, he'd been so unwilling to say no out loud and outright. He doesn't want to think about that, either. He hasn't felt guilty for much in a very long time.]

Nothing.

[The tiniest bit sulky. But it's true, that he isn't mad at her at all. He just doesn't like the state of himself, and he doesn't want her to see.]

[routemistress]

[And now she only looks worried, because Iris literally doesn't know how to help someone without touching them. Her dogs gather close to her, thrusting their heads under her hands, whether to offer or seek reassurance probably none of the three could tell.]

Sweetheart. What can I do? That isn't pissing off and leaving you alone.

[Okay, she'll do that too if she has to, but not very willingly.]

[heisrisen]

I don't know.

[He draws his knees up to his chest, sits like that, curled, holding them, chin perched and peering over. It makes him look younger even as he feels old. He feels so tired, and brittle, burning from the inside out and chipping away at his edges. He isn't careless and hollow, anymore, but he still has a black hole inside him.]

[routemistress]

[She doesn't either; his young, hunched posture makes Iris itch to hug him, and he's vetoed that already, so she gets up and paces, unquiet.]

You do know I love you no matter what. Don't you?

[She's half-expecting him to lash out at that: it's formless, useless, anodyne, and while it also happens to be perfectly true, Iris knows that doesn't make it useful.

But she hopes it might bring out something that can be.]

[heisrisen]

[He doesn't lash out, but he does frown, looks at her more intently, drawn out of himself a little. He looks at her the way he looks at lab results that don't make sense, focused and disconcerted and slightly offended on behalf of the way things ought to work, but warily curious instead of angry. Maybe it's not worth being excited about. Maybe there was an algebra error.]

Why?

[routemistress]

You're as old as I am. I'm not used to thinking of you young. It's a first. But I loved you before that. It just... brought one aspect of it into focus.

[That's not an answer, just an observation, and because he, too, is a scientist she tries again.]

A son of mine might've been very like you. Actually, me ...I call 'im brother. Hilary. 'E is very like you. Younger. Not so deep. But the bones of it are there - that understanding.

You think like I do. We see value in similar things, you and me. Zane's only one example. My phoenix.

...and none of that's a reason. Call 'em a bunch of contributing factors. What am I missing, love?

[heisrisen]

Let's imagine. Another similarity.

Let's imagine I take to confinement about as well as you do, and I'm just better at hiding it.

[Prickly, because he feels vulnerable, because it is so revealing to say, even sideways.]

[routemistress]

[She winces at that; it's a raw place for her, regardless of the Emperor, and she looks away briefly before she sits, quietly, and meets his eyes again.]

That. Aye. My love. I don't touch on that often, 'cause whisking you - any of you - out of 'ere is a thing I literally can't do.

[She doesn't add that she probably wouldn't if she could, that in her observed experience people who arrive here do so for good reasons. That staying the course is worth it.

She believes it; but that doesn't make it less of a patronising thing to say, and Iris wouldn't patronise this man for the world, or ever be forgiven if she did.]

...that's 'ard for me to swallow too. If a lot less than someone on the sharp end of it. Asking you to 'ave faith that we'll get you out - Babs and Zane and the Captain and me - no. I won't ask that of you either. It's not fair. None of it's fair and I'm sorry for that.

[heisrisen]

I don't have faith. It's why I needed to become my own god.

And now I'm just -

[This. A prisoner, a dead man.]

[routemistress]

I've never 'ad faith in gods. I do 'ave faith in you. In all the people I love.

I wonder if you never 'ad to grow that faith. If you always preempted it. Became the one to 'ave faith in.

[heisrisen]

Yes.

[It's that simple, in some ways. His parents were probably better people than anyone else's on the whole barge, but that didn't mean he ever felt like he could rely on them. Which wasn't their fault - it was the world they all lived in. So he changed world.]

I can trust people. But it's not the same thing.

[routemistress]

No. No, it's really not.

[Her dogs have drawn closer to her, pressing against her knees, and she keeps speaking without letting herself think.]

You're going to 'ave to learn it, my love. Not sure you'll get through this without it. And I don't mean me. I'm very unreliable.

[heisrisen]

How am I supposed to learn faith surrounded by people who can't give me what I need?

[Harsh and dry and just - brittle, cracking slightly, pained. It feels like a rigged game, and he can't rewrite this one, and if he chooses not to play he'll only hurt the people he loves more.]

[routemistress]

[That's exactly how, she thinks, and doesn't say it: it sounds too easy, one of those platitudes whose truth only comes clear after you live it. Let yourself fall and let us catch you.]

Tell me what you need.

[heisrisen]

I need out. I need - I need my people to be safe, and strong because the Rix are never, ever going to stop, and I went and made myself the fucking lynchpin, didn't I?

[routemistress]

You weren't a bad one. I've checked.

[Things Iris doesn't say - and doesn't this conversation hold a lot of them? This is why empires are a bad idea.]

My love. Don't ask me 'ow 'cause I don't know yet. But we will bloody stop 'em. A deal if nowt else. Time's still on your side, you know; even if she is treating you like a bitch lately.

[heisrisen]

[It's half true, and some part of him needs to hear it - but then again, everywhere that wasn't his Empire has fallen to the Rix already, or is in alliance, under their influence, ready to fall. The Rix have a longer perspective than anyone, and he's the only one who comes close. But even he can't actually plan for forever, and it kills him. It always has, a little bit. When he named himself a god, it wasn't just a boast: it was aspirational.]

Time.

[He laughs, softly. It's mocking, and none of the contempt in it is for her. He feels weak, the way he's unraveling here, and he despises himself for it.]

You'd think that would be the one thing I could handle.

[routemistress]

'Ey.

[It's a sharp sound, intended to jerk ...not his leash, but the leash of that specific flavour of bitter introspection.]

This is me you're talking to, lovey. No one knows better 'ow unhandleable Time really is. People that only get a sliver of it, they think it looks better from this angle. You and me - us gods and monsters - know better.

We'll still win. Your monsters're craftier than theirs.

[heisrisen]

[He doesn't believe it. Not quite. That would require faith. But it is...palliative, to hear her say it, to watch her believe it. He smiles, very small, a half-curl on one side, warm and wistful-fond over his aches.]

Thank you, Iris.

[routemistress]

[She badly, wistfully wishes it were enough; but it's not, after all, nothing.]


...so can I 'ave that hug now? I missed you.

[heisrisen]

Caveat emptor.

[Dryly, barbed surrender. Which is to say - he's still a mess, he's still an ugly, bloody, fraying mess on the inside. But she's going to see it anyway, somehow or other. His little half-smile doesn't fade, and he opens his arms.]

[routemistress]

Don't be daft.

[She drapes herself over his back and shoulders, dropping a kiss on the top of his head, and holds him, head against her bosom, in a conscious echo of the way she enfolded his small-boy self into her arms.

She doesn't try to look deeply. She can't entirely miss the unstrung state of him, but it alters Iris' emotions hardly at all, only a metallic tang of concern overlaying the honey-rich warmth of her love.]

I 'ad such a good time. Oh, but I missed you. My loves.

[heisrisen]

[He shudders, very faintly, lets his nervousness and his pride slip away like leaves on a glassy cold river, keeps the rest like a handful of gravel digging into his palm: frustration and confusion and old grief stirred up again, strident and chipped, a grody film of hopelessness, weariness, affection, gratitude, resentment and yearning all clacking together. It's a good thing he can juggle. The thought makes him laugh, a small creaky broken-up sound, and he clutches the back of her shirt and presses his face harder against her, occipital bone digging into the jut of her clavicle, as though he could hide himself there. Only a week and change, half of that his fault. He missed her too.]