ways_infirmary | (no subject)

'I would stay with you....'

The 'but' in that sentence remains unspoken.

'You are safe, here.'

And you do not want my protection, and all that comes with it.

"If I'm not here," next time he thinks of her, because he is right, "then I'll have been allowed to go back to my room."

Rae will assume he knows where that is. Even if she's safe where she is, she would feel better with the solid awareness of wards around her. Sunshine is not at her best right now, and won't be, for a while.

'Mmm, yes. That is best.' He knows exactly where she sleeps. 'You are strong, and I have...'

He almost said the word 'business'. But no, that would be a lie, and he has no desire to lie to her.

'I am leaving for a few days time.'

The words are spoken almost as a guilty confession.

Rae could almost hear the word 'business' coming as he spoke, and then he chose not to use it. He is leaving for some purpose he would have used 'business' to cover.

Curiosity as to the whys and what fors wars with the desire not to know those same things, because - though she trusts him in the context of her, here, right now, out there is another matter - she knows something of him, and has seen something of his ways. Some of the things he might politely term 'business.'

And if it is something that he chooses not to shroud that way, that he confesses, guiltily, him...

Sunshine gazes into his eyes, unsure what to say, what to ask. Whether or not she should, at all.

'There is a man,' he starts, and the frustration boils to the surface, knitting his brow.

'He thinks he is dead, Rae. Is convinced that he has fallen from Grace, and that I am some devil sent to torment him.' That his actions may have brought that judgement on himself completely escapes him.

'He is a stubborn fool, and I am taking him back to Wallachia. A retreat of sorts.'

Even if he has to hogtie the man and drag him, he will see this through to the end.

Sunshine listens, and watches.

"I've met him. Javert, right?" she says, musing and muddled with painkillers, but solemn. This isn't a matter to take lightly. "He and I had... a discussion on kindness, and the righteousness of suffering."

His argument had not made sense to her.

"What are you hoping to accomplish by taking him to Wallachia? What sort of kindness do you think he would accept, and to what end?"

'I do not know.'

His head falls, and he clutches her hand, his thumb stroking the softness of her skin.

'I think he would not know kindness if it bit his nose off. And I think kindness might be meaningless. The most I might hope for is for him to find -- purpose, again.'

"No kindness is meaningless," she murmurs. It is the most important thing, she feels as the baker of Charlie's Coffeehouse in Old Town, New Arcadia, one can offer. And it means the most to offer kindness to those who have most forgotten it. What little she heard of Javert's world, it sounded like a place of institutionalized cruelty, through the law, or the church, or whatever authority the people had created and set above themselves. But cruelty is a human thing, just as kindness is. A world is no more cruel than it is kind.

"What purpose would you give him?"

He shakes his head, and sighs again.

'I cannot give him a purpose. I can only hope to show him that he needs one. The purpose, he must choose for himself.'

He could easily break his mind, and make him into a servant, like Renfield. But that would be a cruelty even he could not stomach. For as pigheaded as Javert is, the Prince finds him beautiful in his own way.

He shifts next to her, gently, and moves to lay his head across her. He takes her hand and lays it on his head.

His eyes are turned away from hers.

'I would make of him -- a friend.'

He doesn't even know if that's possible, but he knows that it means too much not to try.

Her heartbeat is loud, even to her, but she does not pull away.

"There are a lot of people in the universe who've known cruelty, both causing it and receiving it," she says, her fingers threading lightly through his hair. Rae can't even say for sure what he means when he says 'friend.'

"Why would you choose him?"

'I don't know,' he whispers, and his eyes clench shut.

He misses Elizaveta so much. He misses his wife, his friend, his lover. He misses having someone to share space with, someone that didn't want anything from him but what he has to offer by drawing breath.

'His reason defies all logic, Rae. He torments me as surely as I torment him.'

He thinks, casting back through centuries, trying to find something to explain his fascination.

A tiny dry laugh escapes his lips. Why did he not see if before?

'He reminds me -- of Radu.'

The name is utterly unfamiliar to her, but it's clear it means much to him.

"Would you tell me about him?"

He laughs a little, under his breath, a bitter dry sound.

'Who? Javert? Or Radu?'

Her fingers move lightly through his dark hair.

"Of Radu. You've not spoken of him before, to me."

He hums in quiet contentment at the simple touch.

'He was my brother. We were given to the Sultan as hostages of the Court when we were ten. He bent to their will, while I would not.'

Her fingers do not still, but continue to move in their slow, gentle way.

"What happened to him?"

His fist clenches in the sheets.

'I killed him. In battle, his sword raised against my own, but nonetheless, I struck him down.'

He sighs.

'And I do not regret it. He would have slain me, had I not. But he was my brother.'

God is a bastard, in Vlad's eyes.

(Our circumstance requires one of us to be the end of the other.)

"There is nothing... wrong, in killing someone who would have killed you, had you not killed them first," Rae murmurs. Two years ago, she would not have been able to say that with any certainty. She knows more of war, now. "One's... I don't know what to call it, one's drive to survive... requires it. One shouldn't have to regret fighting for survival, but that doesn't mean there isn't horror to it."

She knows that, too.

"And you see something of your brother in Javert," Rae murmurs, drifting her fingers through his dark hair.

He laughs, a bitter sound.

'I do. He is stubborn. Proud. Refuses to see reason. And -- is there not something worthy in that? The ability to stand fast, even when -- '

He swallows, and presses his face against her.

'Even when all else falls around you.'

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight,
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay.

Sunshine swallows, and nods. Even if he doesn't see it, the thought is there and she knows he hears it.

Trying single-handedly to hold back a flood? Refusing to give in, and refusing to back down, despite the threat of annihilation?

Like either of them could deny the nobility in that. It's what they do, after all.

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Edited 2013-08-28 04:48 (UTC)

'Yes. Yes.'

He sits up gently, pulling her hand to his mouth and placing a kiss upon her palm.

'I knew you would understand.'

Sunshine watches him, and though her mind is dulled by the concussion and the pain medication, she is somewhat more aware in that moment of the scrapes on her knuckles and bruises on her wrist, the signs of her recent battle, than she was a moment previous.

"You hope to return a sense of purpose to Javert, whose pride and stubbornness reminds you of your brother," she murmurs. "Your brother whose sense of purpose necessitated that you kill him or be killed, for his purpose was diametrically opposed yours."

Why do this, she wants to ask. What need does he hope this will fulfill?

'Yes,' he breathes, studying her eyes.

'No. I don't know. I know his purpose is lost to him. I know -- '

His expression crumples, his eyes closed, his jaw set.

'I only know that I must do this.'

Sunshine moves her hand, gently resting her warm palm against his cheek, her fingertips brushing against the line of his jaw. "You must?"

"... I doubt you'd suffer anyone but yourself to decide what you must or must not do," she says, gentle, but ever-so-slightly dry. "You 'must' do this only because you decide so. There is nothing forcing this... turmoil in you but you."

He has the will to do what he wants. Whatever he sets his mind to. Saying he 'must' removes all sense of agency on his part; he becomes a passive participant in some situation beyond his control.

And if not in his, then whose?

'I cannot explain it, Rae.'

His eyes close, and his brow knits. It's as if the weight he bears is physical, grinding him down.

'He does not -- has never known love.' His voice trails off at that, but his eyes open, beseeching her. 'Can you imagine? Living a life without even the memory of it? Without understanding it at all?'

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