26. LOL

[heisrisen]

[Public]

[The Emperor stands the hallway of Level One, awkwardly clutching a beehive shaped like a small griffon, with soot smudges on his face, dirt on his clothes, a few drowsy bees bumbling around him, and the door of his room, smoke billowing gently through the sliver of open door behind him.]

No need to be - alarmed.

[His breath catches wrong, and he coughs hard for a few seconds.]

Planned incineration. Perfectly contained.

If nobody claims the bees they're going to the greenhouse.



[Private to Barbara]

I'm going to need a new room.



[Spam - deliveries for Bush, Morgana, Hannibal, and Sylvanas.]

[Hours earlier, but not many- On the morning of the 10th, each of them will open their doors to find neatly potted plants. Bush recieves one elegant apple bonsai, less than two feet high. Morgana gets several pots of pansies, in different colors, arranged so as not to block the door, Sylvanas gets catnip, and Hannibal gets herbs - basil, sage, rosemary, and thyme.]

Comments

[heisrisen]

So I am.

I'll admit to some nostalgia over 'Your Majesty,' but it doesn't really matter any more. Call me whatever you want.

[walkingmeltdown]

You are Ms. Gordon's inmate, am I correct?

It's just a tad bit odd to me, trying to say 'The Emperor' in a conversational way. [Wry.] Do you truly not have a given name? A family name? Anything?

[heisrisen]

Yes, but it's private.

[His mouth curls with amusement at a sudden flicker of memory.]

Chris called me 'Emps' once. I've let some people use 'Risen'.

She's a good warden. You're from her city.

[walkingmeltdown]

I suppose I'll just have to consider the matter and come up with some form of address I can handle. Feel free to correct me if I say something you don't prefer in the future. [There's a sort of backhandness to this offer that is almost patronizing, but for what it's worth he's still mostly genuine about it.]

Different times, probably different universal variations, but yes. There's something about Gotham that seems to rather transcend realities, anyway.

[heisrisen]

Oh, spare me the parochial patriotism.

[Not particularly contemptuous - really, though. Spare him. Please.]

[walkingmeltdown]

Something that's particularly hard for you to swallow? [Arch curiosity.]

[heisrisen]

It's boring. And sort of tawdry.

Not the city itself, I'm sure it's actually fascinating and unlike quite anything else. But there are an endless myriad of uniquely fascinating cities. I've had diamond-paned cities that cover entire planets, and cities humming beneath a hundred miles of ice on the shores of magma oceans and cities floating in swaying archipelagoes on the stormwinds of gas giants. And there are other places and people and patterns that seem to crop up here in their own transcendent permutations. So the obsession is boring.

It's your city, of course, so you're entitled to feel that way. I'm just not really interested in entertaining the exceptionalism, if it's all the same to you.

[All of this is said quite mildly.]

[walkingmeltdown]

It's not anything about the physical parts of the city itself that speaks to me so strongly, though. It's...it's spirit, for lack of a better term. The kind of people it tends to breed. I think that's what - allegedly - makes us stand out.

[heisrisen]

[He laughs out loud, bright and easy.]

It doesn't make you stand out at all. You think the sort of people who live next to tides of molten rock don't develop a particular spirit? It's just harder to describe that part.

[walkingmeltdown]

Hence my use of the word 'allegedly'.

I'm proud to be from Gotham, and I do admit I feel some sort of a bond to others that come from there. But I wouldn't have any of this so-called 'obsessiveness' you allude to were it not for the fact that other people react and treat those of us from Gotham as if we're somehow a special breed.

[heisrisen]

It's part confirmation bias, part culture, I think. The barge has a taste for the spectacular, and that amplifies the idiosyncrasies.

[walkingmeltdown]

Well if we weren't unusual somehow, naturally we wouldn't be worth collecting.

That's what this place does, in essence. Keeps people in a jar. Occasionally shakes said jar up for fun.

[heisrisen]

Quite. Why do you think I tried to break it?

[walkingmeltdown]

How long have you been here?

[heisrisen]

One year, one month, and twenty-six days. Gregorian calendar.

[walkingmeltdown]

And yet you thought a takeover was a good idea.

[heisrisen]

It was a brilliant idea.

You weren't here to see how near I got to succeeding. I drove us so close my home planet was bleeding through the walls. My will against the admiral's as he tried to haul us back on course and the barge stood still.

If Morgana had broken the stalemate instead of Iris, none of us would be here.

[walkingmeltdown]

Just stranded on your world, I assume.

[But still. Huh. Backtracking to reanalyze, then.]

You're...acquainted with Lady Pendragon?

[heisrisen]

Iris had her bus. She could have ferried any refugees who actually wanted to go home.

I consider her family.

[walkingmeltdown]

Ah. [In response to both answers, actually.] I see. Well. I'm friends, suppose you could say, with both of them as well.

[heisrisen]

We're an incestuous little petri dish, aren't we? It's probably inevitable.

[walkingmeltdown]

Maybe so. But it's one thing to know all of the same people. It's another to have actual things in common.

[heisrisen]

Are you referring to something in particular?

[walkingmeltdown]

Well, for example. You and I are both inmates, which means we're not exactly here by choice, and presumably we wouldn't mind getting out of here.

[heisrisen]

It's a common sentiment.