deercountry | September & October Catch-All

Entry tags:

September & October Catch-All

Who: Vyng

spiritwalks and YOU
What: Catch-All for September + October. See comments for prompts!
When: Various
Where: Various

Note: Style veers wildly between prose and brackets. Just choose whatever style feels good when responding, and I'll match it ♥

Content Warnings: Listed in subject lines when applicable

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[It's so...mythical. Like an origin story you'd find buried in an ancient library, except this guy speaks as passionately as somebody who was an actor in this tale. Still, equating mortals to children that elves are morally obligated to take care of? Vyng grimaces at that.

But if that's what Illarion grew up hearing about these Iron Elves, and proudly wore it as part of his identity, then...it's not like he'd have any reason to think differently. Doubly so, if he's a full-blooded elf.]

That's...quite a story. Takes a certain kind of person to willingly sacrifice their mortality in exchange for something bigger than themselves.

[To Vyng's credit, he keeps his tone neutral. Diplomatic. He's the last person to hold the past over another person. Besides, sacrifice is a concept that resonates with both of them. Now is the time to focus on commonalities between people who wash up on the shore — including elves. The whole town hinges on mutual cooperation and understanding.]

What are you going to do here, then? You can still die, but...you're technically free from any oaths or obligations from back home, right?

[Even better, Illarion had lived the myth--at least part of it. The splits that had riven a united elvenkind into deep and high, iron and wood and ice, were all well before his time, but the iron elves' decision to become both more and less than once they'd been was one he'd had a voice in.

Which is why he grimaces, in turn, and shakes his head at Vyng's praise.]

My Prince was that sort of person. I was young and very stupid and like all of us, did not know what we would be giving up. I did know we had to do something, and thought it would be a very fine thing to have more than two children before I died in some war, and that with larger families I would have to go to fewer funerals where we burned an entire line.

[Noble aspirations, noble oaths, but feet of clay, even so. Much as Illarion tells the best and brightest version of their story, he's also had centuries to think about how much of its momentous arcs were built out of tiny, day-to-day decisions on tiny, day-to-day worries.

These musings he lays as an offering, unprompted, before his companion's discomfort.]

Technically, I have already died once, [surprise undead! And he says it with such rueful humor,] so being mortal is no longer a worry of mine. Even so, I have heard we Sleepers come back from death eventually?

[It makes mortality even less of a concern.] So one thing I will not do: Worry about us all being killed.

As for my oaths--I was already released from the old ones, dying how I did, but keeping a form of them is--comforting, to me. For most of us, who are in my order--the Knights Pariah. We serve the living of Nephele; I can do as much here in Trench, once I have learned more of this world.

[And then--] A question for you, before we go on: You did not like something about my story. What does it make you think of?

["Young and stupid" can mean lots of things. Easier to manipulate, prone to being a little shit, lacking life experience to appreciate what you've got...or all of the above. Either way, it sounds like Illarion knows he still had some growing to do.]

That's how the Dream was. But people who came back weren't exactly unscathed — there's a kid who sacrificed his leg to save his friend from the worst parts of it. A little too soon to say we're on easy street, you know?

You seem to be handling the whole 'I-died' thing pretty well, though.

[Better than Vyng himself did, well before Trench or the Dream. But he keeps that thought to himself.

Then Illarion asks that question, and Vyng promptly looks at the sand, the water, the sky. Anywhere that isn't his companion, like a nervous animal who feels cornered. Normally Vyng is the one uncovering other people's unspoken baggage...sometimes with delicate fingers, sometimes with a sledgehammer. It depends on the situation.

He's not sure how to feel about being on the receiving end of such an astute observation. ]

Oh yeah? [Not a flat-out denial. But Vyng's knee-jerk reaction is to get cagey about it. He recognizes the pattern as soon as the words come out of his mouth. But old habits die hard.] What makes you say I didn't like it?

Mm. Maybe so; and maybe I am callous--forgive me--because coming back alive at all seems a very great gift. Death was once forever, on Nephele.

[Not any longer. But that came with its own problems; which see, in his very person.

Undeath is certainly not preferable to being permanently dead, however useful it might be.]

But it is so, that there are worse things than dying. And, [he gives a brief, huffing laugh,] I do not know I have any choice, in how I handle it. If I had not been up and doing right out of my grave, I would have been put back in it.

[There hadn't been time to mourn himself. Or, really, freedom to.

But maybe they don't talk about that part right now.

Thankfully--though unsurprisingly--he's hit on an excellent way to take the conversational focus away from him. Excellent, and amusing, in a deeply sympathetic way; how often in the past had he gone through exactly that series of diversions when someone called him on an ill-hidden opinion?

(Finding it amusing is also a good way to ignore the little, savage, Unearthed impulse to run a vulnerability to the ground.)]

That you are doing this, [Illarion mimics Vyng's looking-around gesture, smothering his own amusement the while,] and before, the shape of your face from time-to-time when I was speaking. Very skeptical, like what I had said did not match what you have known all your life.

[He cocks his head to one side, looking--despite his best intentions--faintly predatory.]

I have guesses about what is wrong. But I will not make them, do you not give me leave.

[A kind of chivalry extended to a fellow too-perceptive meddler.]

Nothing to forgive, pal. I'm just saying...it's too soon to know for sure how death works here. And after the shit the Dream pulled? There are plenty of people with their own reasons for not wanting to find out.

[Vyng got yelled at for a similarly callous attitude, nearly a year ago. He can be a hypocrite, sure, but he's not going to get on somebody's case for saying they don't give a shit whether they die here or not — especially if it's true they just regenerate after some arbitrary amount of time. As long as they're not a dick about it, and don't treat other Sleepers like toys that can simply be repaired and sent on their way like nothing happened, people can go on believing whatever they want.

That comment about getting shoved back into his grave is interesting, though. Vyng's eyebrows furrow, as he tries to parse the full meaning. But he's already kind of agitated over having his feelings called out so bluntly, and it's hard for him to focus on connecting the dots beyond "this guy sure has a skin problem, he should probably be drinking more water".

He'll circle back around to that in a second. Once he's not on the defensive anymore.

Illarion wants to know what he didn't like about his story? Fine.]

More like some things matched a little too well. Your elves are birds and mine are mammals, sure. But mortals are like children to you? Because they have elves to thank for being alive? Do you have any idea how shitty that sounds?

["It doesn't matter," he tells himself. "None of this matters now." Vyng knows this, but that kind of paternalism (from an elf) still strikes a nerve.

Fucking elves, man.

Vyng pinches the bridge of his nose and lets out a quiet breath.]

...Look. There's nothing wrong with wanting to help people. But the way you spun that tale of yours — about how you wanted to have more kids so they could go die in wars — I get the feeling you're adding all this gold trimming to hide the uglier parts and make yourselves sound like big damn heroes.

I'm not buying it.

Ahhhh. [There were the teeth behind the observation; there was the root of the discomfort. It does not take precisely the form Illarion would have guessed at--mammalian elves, of all things, are the trivial strange detail that sticks out at him--but it is also nothing new to him. Elves were elves were elves, it seemed, whatever their ultimate heredity; and their critics had much the same things to say about their manifest flaws.

(If two worlds were sufficient evidence to go on that Generation had thought of elves the same way everywhere. It's enough points to draw a line through, at least, and see the direction it's headed and the rate of its decline.)

Even if he's an old hand at fielding that sort of criticism--and keeping blithe in the face of it--it doesn't sting any less in the initial moment. Because some of it's right, of course, which is why the feathers on his shoulders and crest are all on end. At least that's not visible to anyone else, shifted out as all his plumage is.

Keeping his tone and face level are much easier; always have been.]

First, [he holds up a finger,] you are not wholly wrong but I am issuing one correction: They are not alive because of us, only thinking, and our debt flows through that because we did not intend what we did to them by meddling. Perhaps they would suffer less if nature had taken its course and brought them to thought without our interference; who is to know? [But the mere thought they had caused more suffering--and, all right, a congenital inability to abandon creatures that struck them as pitiable and in need of their aid--kept a lot of elves oathbound.]

Second, you are very observant. [He grins to punctuate the compliment. The words aren't insincere, but that's also not a very comforting grin, since it puts all his sharp teeth on display.] That is, of course, the version we tell ourselves, because who--that wishes to keep living--is not the hero of her own tale, in her own home?

To the rest of the world, we shrikes are not heroes; we are the necessary monsters, the scourge of war and its horror, whom mortals seek when they feel they have no other recourse. We did not like all the uses to which we were put, you see; and we did not see the glory they did in the wars our children died in. To say nothing of the low regard they have for our cousins, the sparrows, who only wished to be left alone.

It came very clear to us, after we paid our immortality, [and warped, and began to go mad, and terrified their allies into treating them as mere weapons to be held at arms' length, and not a people,] that war--which we took as a great and terrible and solemn thing--was much more casual a pursuit to them.

So. We did not break our oaths, but now they know very well what those oaths cost, and many of them hate us for that.

[Illarion's correction feels pedantic in the moment. Plenty of mortals would disagree with that distinction, he's pretty sure. To them, the act of thinking is evidence of true consciousness. "If I think, I must exist." But that's getting into the philosophical weeds, and Vyng doesn't have the appetite for it right now.

Strangely, the bearing of sharp teeth doesn't bother him. Animalistic traits like that serve to distance Illarion from the elves Vyng grew up around. He's willing to take the grin at face value.

The rest of his story — those faded, dingy parts that clash with the gilded narrative of heroes and noble sacrifice — gives Vyng pause, however. Now that Illarion isn't picking his body language apart anymore, the tension in his face smoothes over.]

Why would they hate you for giving up your immortality?

Oh, they do not hate us for that. [That shrikes were mortal was surely a comfort to many, back home on Nephele.] At first, they hated out of fear, because we are pillar-touched and bled strangeness into the world.

Now, they hate us because we did not let them hide from themselves what war is, or what it cost.

[Illarion's apparent humor vanishes like a popped soap bubble. He sits up a little straighter, his unfocused gaze trained somewhere over Vyng's right shoulder. There is something almost didactic (and detached) about his tone now.] We no longer came freely, to fight for anyone who begged us and whose cause seemed just. We contracted, and who could pay the prices we set for the injustice of what they wanted done, we served. Provided they agreed to our service, once they knew fully what we would do--with their enemies, and their treasure.

What we were pointed at, we destroyed, leaving nothing and no one for spoils or captives. [There's something ruinously masochistic about baring this to a stranger who wouldn't know him from Loneliness, in a world where his own continued existence might hinge on whether or not other Sleepers rejected him as a monster. It isn't even a fair telling; it compresses centuries of their lives into a single instant, and reduces the miring complexities of balancing contracts (and seeking juster resolutions short of warfare and backing those who served peace) into a brutal ultimatum.

But then, it is the unfair telling someone who hated them would give, and that is the grime beneath the gilding Vyng seems to wish to hear.

He can tally up the price and justice and diplomatic wisdom of all of that and still think: So be it.

(He deserves whatever's coming to him.)] What we were paid, we paid again to those whose lives were torn by the ruin we had made.

There is no weight of gold that will replace a mother or a father, a wife or a husband, sister or brother or child. But now any who paid us must consider that whatever orphans they make, these now have the means for vengeance.

It stopped many who would buy our services. It did not stop all.

So, to avoid breaking your oaths, you kept your clients from raking in wartime profits? And then you passed any coin you made onto your victims?

[Vyng tries to imagine committing himself to a cause like that. Honestly, he's made some awfully dumb decisions without considering the broader consequences of his actions. Like when he gave blood samples to a client with a, uh...history of tracking down and killing people who cross her. In hindsight, that was probably a bad career move for a mercenary to make.]

Well, you sure didn't call yourselves "shrikes" for nothing. [As he speaks, the agitation from before has largely melted away.] Fast, precise, brutal, nothing personal. Name definitely checks out.

[The detached tone isn't lost on Vyng. Illarion clearly isn't somebody who relishes in killing, that much is clear. Maybe it speaks to his own loathing of anything even remotely elven, that the "ugly" version of the story would somehow end up less offensive than the pristine one (that, he realizes, might help those who tell it sleep better at night). Admitting to any ugliness at all is a huge improvement in Vyng's book.]

If you wanted to dissuade people from hiring you so badly, how come you didn't turn any jobs down? Was it pride? Or were your oaths, like...magically binding somehow?

[A flicker of surprise crosses Illarion's face as the questions--and more importantly, the tone, and what little of Vyng's body language he can sense--register. He wasn't expecting continued curiosity, clearly, in the face of that explanation. He nods mutely; the other man has the right of how they operated.

(This is something learned about himself, too, and his own motives and where they've gotten snarled up over the years. He can think about it, or he can shelve it with a promise to think about later and then never dig it up. Second one's far more appealing.)

He isn't left speechless for long, though, and gives a huffing little laugh at the appraisal of their name.]

We did not wish to lie to anyone, after all. It is much better if they cannot say we tricked them.

As for that... [As for the matter of turning jobs down... He tips his head down, as if he could stare at the sand beneath his toes, and rakes a hand through his braids in a universal gesture of discomfort.] There are many reasons. Pride is one, yes; a twisted kind, I think, to know we could do whatever we were called on to do.

Another is reputation--not so much that we cherished how we were thought of, [obviously not, given they'd taken on a role that basically guaranteed them animosity from every direction, however well they managed it,] as if we were seen as trustworthy in doing the worst jobs, then those wishing to commit greater horrors and thinking they could pay our prices, they would come to us. Sometimes, this meant we could avert a disaster, or blunt it. We were known best for war, but we had other methods. Often even the hateful were glad to be told they could have us for cheaper, if they followed our guidance to ending their wars.

[They had inserted themselves neatly into the entire engine of conflict for many nations under their jurisdiction, and they did have their triumphs. Sometimes.] Another is--we did want them to stop their wars, and find another way to live; we thought, if the consequences of war hit them all at once, and there were no spoils in it, they might be shocked to peace.

[Needless to say it hadn't worked.]

Even when it was clear that was not working, we could not change our course. It is not our oaths binding us by magic--it had been long and long since the Queen of Oaths yielded the Throne--as we became fixated. Somehow. I have not come up with an answer for how, only something trapped us. Something we had done to ourselves, that we could not even speak of.

["Something we had done to ourselves, that we could not even speak of." Ah. Those words resonate with Vyng on a deep level. He thinks he understands, even if their circumstances were vastly different.]

Sometimes you break yourself because you think it's for the greater good. But then it turns out you fucked everything else along the way. [Siiiiigh.] ...Man. I hate it when that happens.

[Said in a tone that's probably more suitable for talking about locking your keys inside the house, or having your power shut off because you forgot to pay your bills. But hey. Sometimes that heavy shit is just your life.]

Thanks for sharing. [Vyng tries to meet Illarion's gaze.] You didn't have to. I mean, I did lash out because I was projecting my own baggage onto you, so...

[Sometimes that heavy shit is just your life.

The casual tone's a better cure for Illarion's momentary funk than anything else could be, old soldier that he is. No one could ever wax too serious for too long in a barracks without being brought back down to earth. The shrike snorts in a sound that's not-quite-a-laugh but damned close.]

You have been through that one a time or two yourself, hm? The worst is that it is a mistake so easy to repeat.

[It took a certain personality to sacrifice itself on the altar of the world's benefit, and what do you know, they were also great at convincing themselves this time would be different.]

So, I could have walked, rather than try to turn the blow. [He lifts his head, smiling brief and sharp. And...not quite able to meet Vyng's gaze, though he's got the direction nearly correct.

He is definitely blind.] But it is better to come to an understanding, in so small a world, where we are like to run into each other again.

Perhaps sometime you will even tell me about how fucking awful your elves are. Or, we go back to talking about my favorite mammalian features.

[Vyng tilts his own head upward, and he gazes out into the gloomy sky above. You have been through that one a time or two yourself...]

Something like that, yeah.

[It's difficult enough unpacking that stuff alone. He's not going into details. Just like he doubts his companion wants to relive his own trauma. The lack of direct eye-contact isn't lost on Vyng. They both have their own battle scars, it seems.

Still, that last comment brings a sly smile to Vyng's lips. He shifts in the sand, so he can turn his full attention back to the other man.]

Mmm, I think you can guess which I'd prefer.

[A pause.]

...Would you like some tea, by the way?

[This guy seems dehydrated.]

[They did have far better things to talk about than old and ugly pasts.

Illarion echoes the other man's smile; he can't see it, but hearing it-- Ah, it's a heady thing to be desired. (As he remembers, anyway. The actual feeling is transient; slips through his grasp like fog. But maybe--)]

Yes, I think I can. Where did I leave off?

[Then he blinks, as in pleasant surprise.]

If you are offering, I would take a cup. It has been too long since last I had one.

[No one else in the Knights Pariah would bother and tea wasn't a solo drink.]

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September & October Catch-All

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