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19. Chantilly
[Infirmary spam]
[For the first few days after the Valentine's flood, he spends a lot of time in the Infirmary, takes double shifts, cleans everything, even if they never use it. He finally gets the side panel of the medpod from David off and investigates it thoroughly. He keeps an eye on Bush, although he keeps his distance when the Captain has other visitors.
He moves like he's had a chunk taken out of him, the normal smooth elegance of death not erased but turned to teetering, elliptical, askew. Instead of lounging when he sits, he simply succumbs to it, and he does not smile.]
[General spam]
[He doesn't allow himself to hide away. He still goes to breakfast - though he doesn't really need to eat more often than that, so he doesn't. He goes to the library to return books of poetry, half-finished. He goes to the engine room to report for his additional punishment work. He doesn't linger anywhere, he just - goes. Keeps going.]
[Private to Barbara]
[There's a long period of silence before he speaks, particularly for someone who thinks as quickly and moves as decisively as the Emperor does. His jaw works, once or twice, like he actually has to work up the nerve to say the works in his head. He still has the same haggard cast to him from their last talk, shadows around his eyes that are human and vulnerable, the opposite of clear lightness in death. He may not be quite as obvious about it, but he's just as heartbroken as Zane is.]
Could I. Stay with you, for a little while?
[For the first few days after the Valentine's flood, he spends a lot of time in the Infirmary, takes double shifts, cleans everything, even if they never use it. He finally gets the side panel of the medpod from David off and investigates it thoroughly. He keeps an eye on Bush, although he keeps his distance when the Captain has other visitors.
He moves like he's had a chunk taken out of him, the normal smooth elegance of death not erased but turned to teetering, elliptical, askew. Instead of lounging when he sits, he simply succumbs to it, and he does not smile.]
[General spam]
[He doesn't allow himself to hide away. He still goes to breakfast - though he doesn't really need to eat more often than that, so he doesn't. He goes to the library to return books of poetry, half-finished. He goes to the engine room to report for his additional punishment work. He doesn't linger anywhere, he just - goes. Keeps going.]
[Private to Barbara]
[There's a long period of silence before he speaks, particularly for someone who thinks as quickly and moves as decisively as the Emperor does. His jaw works, once or twice, like he actually has to work up the nerve to say the works in his head. He still has the same haggard cast to him from their last talk, shadows around his eyes that are human and vulnerable, the opposite of clear lightness in death. He may not be quite as obvious about it, but he's just as heartbroken as Zane is.]
Could I. Stay with you, for a little while?
Spam
He knows he hasn't brought it all about-- won't take all that responsibility-- but is sure he's hastened it, perhaps tipped the scales, and he is miserably sorry. He doesn't have much of a smile for the Emperor; it's a look of worry and a touch on the shoulder.]
Majesty. Are you -- ought I stay a while longer? I'm no surgeon but I could keep myself out from underfoot.
Spam
[Somewhere in the soft places between observation and objection; wry warmth like a thin shawl around the weariness of his mouth, quietly grateful and appalled and not surprised at Bush's solicitude.]
Re: Spam
You aren't well, Majesty-- you may be almost dead but most days you don't show it.
no subject
Life is suffering, as the Buddha says. I'm not a shadow yet.
And I'll be in here less once you're gone.
no subject
[He puts his hands on the Emperor's shoulders, and then raises them up to gently frame his face. He is slow but sure in this new intimacy, wistful-- if only it were a happier time he would be all blushing smiles.]
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He needs you more, now. He hasn't done this before.
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Majesty.
[It is a sigh, more than a request to be acknowledged. He presses a careful kiss to the Emperor's cheek.]
no subject
[As does he, he doesn't say, though the little kiss stings and soothes at once.]
I doubt I could have made any more cutting an example of my brutality.
no subject
Don't be too solitary. It's no good for you.
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Yes, Captain.
[Dryly, contrite and amused over muffled mournfulness that comes out something in the vicinity of wistful. Between Zane and Sylvanas, nearly half of his close circle is gone. He checks her door every day; at least it hasn't reverted yet. He mostly - mostly - hopes it does, but he cannot help a seed of selfishness. At least he has an extra cat to contend with until the matter is settled. There's Morgana. There's Babs. He isn't sure where he stands with Iris, anymore.]
no subject
You'll join me for dinner next week.
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[The sort of smile that cannot overcome sadness, and isn't really trying - but then the words echo in his mind, and he thinks of Zane offering his skin, of the poem still painted across his back, the horse's heart pieced by the spike he left back in, because Aslan was prescient enough to leave space for it, and he crumbles. He steps back like he can't get air, turns away, scrubs a hand over his face, mutters hafanzlah moy roughly into his palm. In his mother's pious Ebran: god save me. He hasn't invoked any deity in earnest other than himself since he was alive.]
Hafanzlah moy, I wish I could cry.
[Anger too, formless, without any target but his own limitations, because anger is easier than the rest of his heartbreak.]
/thwap! spam
She tracks him to the library, and she waits in the hall outside. She knows, by this time, that he's actively avoiding her again and she means to give him no chance to: Iris can stop her own breathing and heartbeats if she needs to, at least for long enough to wait in ambush.
She steps out in front of him, her face as dark and stern as a thunderhead, and doesn't wait for social niceties. She just lashes out with an uppercut to the jaw.]
no subject
no subject
No.
[Quiet, calm but not dull. He pushes off from the wall and reaches for her other wrist - not slowly, but not fast either. If she lets him take it, he presses her palm to the side of his neck. He's feeling a lot of things, keen and distant, like the shapes of mountains: jagged guilty foothills, sorrow looming like Denali, casting its shadow over everything. The foreground is mostly grim pragmatism, I deserved that, and a little sick, mostly buried dread. He is not attempting, particularly, to share or convince her of anything. He's not baring himself for sympathy. The contact is simply a necessary tool for what follows. Factually, bluntly,]
You have to give me a high adrenaline response right before, if you want it to hurt.
no subject
No what? But she doesn't say it aloud, only lets him show her what he's plainly trying to. Nor does she speak as she gathers him into her arms under the shadowed hills.]
Oh, you magnificent silly bastard. What are we going to do with you, eh?
no subject
Nothing about this is silly.
[Bitter, raw. The only objection he can find.]
no subject
Bush phrased it as an order, and Aslan understand it as such. He means to come, then and not until then. It's the date and the boundary Bush set, and he is as entitled to a week without seeing his murderer as he is to Aslan's touching his hair.
Of course, the barge is very rarely concerned with what he intends.]
Private
Seeing him like this - lost, miserable, vulnerable - tugs and twists her heart, but she doesn't let it show. She doesn't want him to think she pities him.]
Of course.
Private
I don't want to lose the garden. But everything reminds me of him.
[Quiet, looking away. He's ashamed of this weakness too, a little.]
Private
Could I maintain it for you?
Private
[Tend your own garden.]
I just can't - live here. Right now.
Private
Bring whatever you need.
Private
[He breathes it out, heavy and real. That he ignores Morgana's standing invitation is his own business - in any case, Barbara has more room.]
Private
Private
I can be.
no subject
She strokes his back, kisses the top of his head.]
It's idiotic, my darling, but it'll be all right.
[A truthful impulse makes her add:]
...eventually. I love you so much, you daft bastard. What are you going to do about it?
no subject
...I don't know if I can fix this, Iris.
[Tired and aching and real, and if that does not mean quite the same things as I don't know what to do, he is still very truly dejected, truly lost.]
no subject
She sighs, and smooths his hair with her fingers.]
Darling. You were a doctor before you were ever a god. What is it heals most wounds?
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I became a doctor because that platitude is incorrect. Time kills. Always.
Most people just don't last long enough to notice.
[She knows that perfectly well, he suspects.]
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Daft lad. That's not what I meant. Life heals. Living things know the shape they're meant to be. They don't stop striving at it - you included, you silly sod. Throwing themselves into time's teeth like it can't touch 'em. Do you think love's not a living thing?
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I've never believed there was one shape things were meant to be in. And if there were, I doubt it would apply here. Love isn't enough to fix this, Iris.
I need to be better. And I know it, and I hate it, and I'm getting worse instead, because I cannot breathe here.
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[She strokes his hair again, plants her next kiss on his forehead.]
You're right. As far as it goes. let me think out loud a bit 'ere, my darling. I don't 'ave all the answers either; but a different set of questions might 'elp. Even if the answer to 'em's all no.
You've lost the knack for changing, too. That's a bad plan even for immortals. It makes the forced changes 'urt a lot more. 'Ave you considered trying what Mark and Sylvanas did?
no subject
You mean when he made her human.
[His voice is tight and cold. Not angry with her for suggestion it, but he rebels, reflexively, viscerally, at the thought, anger on behalf of his friend's indignity flaring and holding as something brighter and stronger, fiercely principled and gravelly with small, rough, pragmatic dimensions of politics at the same time. If he gives up the symbiant, that's it, that's true surrender. If he is not Risen, then he can never be the Emperor again. Most of him has conceded that already - but not all, not yet, not quite. Precarious.]
We're blocking the hallway.
[Quietly observed. He pulls out of her grip, but gradually, not hurriedly, takes the walk back into the library to compose himself, unclench his hands. He finds a study room, private enough to fall apart in a little, closer than his room and less raw, curls up on a little couch with enough room two.]
no subject
It's a suggestion. An altered perspective by choice for a change. Could shake summat loose.
[He's bigger than she is, but she curls herself around his back, protective and loving. It's that exact surrender, she thinks, that he needs; he won't get anywhere while he's still trying to keep a foot on both banks of the river.
But she knows, too, how frightening it is for someone not accustomed to living their life neckdeep in the rapids. So she holds him, and doesn't press.]
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...maybe I could ask Babs to turn me into an elf.
[Archly. He isn't light-hearted enough to laugh, not close, but a dry, incisive joke he can do. It would certainly be a different perspective.]
Private
And if you break it, you build a new one.