Paul Atreides (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terriblepurpose) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-12-08 11:40 am
terriblepurpose) wrote in deercountry2022-12-08 11:40 am
terriblepurpose) wrote in deercountry2022-12-08 11:40 am
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(The drop from here is immense. The scale of this palace is outrageous compared to the city it hunkers over.)
"Arrakis?" Paul asks, like his own echo, facing back out towards the mountains that ring the polar region like guards against the desert. His knuckles pale as he leans into his hands, and there is something new to his expression, a high, wild strangeness.
"It's beautiful," he says, the words flowing out of him like water from a pitcher, "Everyone talks about how dangerous it is, and how rich...how the desert will kill you with one hand even as you try to pluck its treasures from the other. But no one warned me it would be beautiful. When the wind rises, bronze with spice...the whole world looks like a golden sea. And you've never seen stars like they see stars on Arrakis."
He doesn't speak of the palace or the city. They are such small things to a world.
"I would have loved this world." He falls into melancholy as readily as he flitted up into yearning, his gaze dropping down to the squat roofs below. "I would have raised it up, if I could have."
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The thought goes along well with Paul's description too. Daniel stares out into the distance, thinking about every word the boy is saying. Some parts of it fit in well with the idea of the place Paul comes from that Daniel has gained so far, honestly. A place that sounds hostile to the people living in it, much more so than anything in his own world.
What sticks out to him more than anything though are those last words.
They don't slip past the man.
"Is that what you'd want to do, Paul?" Another glance at the boy. "If you could do anything you wanted?"
It's not a suggestion, merely an open question. Daniel has realised there's always much to be found in the way Paul speaks - in the things he both says and doesn't say. Maybe that's why he's asking in the first place, filling up the space before Paul's father will arrive.
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"No." The rough stone underneath his palms bites into his skin from how hard he sets himself against it, his voice pressurized down to intent quiet. "It's not my world to raise up."
It's an unthinkable thing to say in the seat of Atreides' power, looking out over the world that was placed under their dominion, however treacherous the gift bestowed on them was. Paul's purpose is to be a ruler over a world, over an empire. To lift up with one hand and condemn with the other. He was born to it, the last link in an ancient chain of intent that led to him, and raised to it, moulded from before his first breath to inherit great power.
And he doesn't want to do it.
"If I could do anything I wanted," he says, with heat rising up his throat that has nothing to do with the atmosphere, "I'd give it back to the people it belongs to. The ones out in the desert, not the ones in the palace."
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It's interesting, he thinks. The way you can truly peel off layer after layer with Paul and continue to find new things - though Daniel supposes teens are often like that. Maybe it's Paul's world that makes it a little more obvious, since it makes the boy different from most kids Daniel is used to dealing with. It means he's figuring out Paul's world at the same time as he's trying to figure out the boy.
He doesn't dislike what he finds, though. No, this is an answer that fits in with the idea he's gotten from Paul. Despite some of the rougher moments he's seen from the other - like the fight at the dojo - he's gotten the impression that Paul is kind. The sort of boy who'd ask permission to go apologize to someone, who asks deep questions in order to truly listen to the answers he gets. The kind of boy you can say you trust, and he will prove you can.
The kind of boy who'd give a world back to whom it belongs to.
".. it's a good answer."
Daniel glances over his shoulder, like he doesn't want to interrupt in case Paul's father shows up, but then his gaze returns to the kid.
"Your father must be proud of you."
Despite him not having seen the interaction that's bound to follow - like it's a prediction. Daniel truly can't imagine anything else, anyway, if Paul's father is a good man. How could anyone raise a son like Paul and not be proud of him?
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"He was," Paul says, and it cuts him down the centre like he knows it will. He grinds the heels of his palms against the stone and wishes he could scrape them red and raw there, not even knowing why. It wouldn't help. Nothing helps. There are no words or gestures that staunch the wound in his heart left by a father who was proud of him.
"Lisan al-Gaib," calls a voice from the threshold, jaunty and warm, and Paul flinches like a body shot through. Boots ring out on the stone floor as the Duke Leto Atreides strides out to join them, his dark eyes fixed on his son, and Daniel goes unnoticed. It isn't that sort of memory, this time.
"That's what they call you, isn't it? Voice From The Outer World." As the duke approaches, he takes notice of Paul's troubled expression, and he sobers. "It troubles you."
"Legend is a pretty word for lie," Paul says, because he has to, because this was how it was, and how it will always have been.
"I think you're afraid it might be true." His father's voice is all the gentleness there was in the world. Paul doesn't want to drop his eyes. He does anyway.
"How can I make my way if my destiny was written before I was born?" The echo of the words are salt-ash in his mouth. His eyes burn with the sea.
His father comes to stand beside him. Paul can smell the cedar oil in his beard, the heavy tang of industrial smoke clinging to his clothes. He can hear him breathing, steady and at ease.
"If I tell you one day you'll find yourself on a mountaintop - what does that change? You still have to climb the mountain." A beat passes. "Destiny grants us nothing - and takes nothing away. We have to fight and bleed for the future we want. Because when all's said and done, there's only one way to find out if a prophecy is true." His father turns to him, and there is trust in his voice that nearly breaks Paul entirely, that could shatter him down to dust and send him soaring into the heated evening winds. "We earn it."
The noise Paul makes when he collides into his father's arms is soft and torn, too fragile for a sob. He buries his face heedlessly into his father's shoulder and clings to the back of his shirt with the shamelessness of a child. He does not care that there's anyone to see. He wouldn't care if the whole world was watching. He presses himself against a heartbeat that is long since stilled and thinks of nothing as his father cups the back of his head like he did when Paul was small enough to fall asleep on his shoulder.
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This feels like a little too much, and no matter how involuntary him showing up in this particular memory was, Daniel can't help but feel slightly like an intruder. Maybe it's because this is something he understands so well - it makes him think of Samantha, of Anthony, and his heart aches - or maybe it's because Paul's father is everything Daniel imagined him to be. At least that is a relief in its own way, knowing that Paul had an incredible and supportive father like this until he must have lost him, but it doesn't make Daniel's presence in this moment any easier.
It's when Paul crashes into his father's arms, practically shaking, that Daniel averts his gaze.
It isn't right to watch such a thing - a precious moment shared between a parent and a child. A moment that should just be theirs.
Daniel turns to lean on the balcony, staring off at the sand, rather than back at Paul and the duke. Discarding, for the moment, all thoughts and questions about prophecy and legends.
Instead he thinks of his children. He thinks of mister Miyagi. Knowing that Paul being able to cling to his father like this would be like Daniel meeting his teacher again in a memory - a chance that shouldn't be wasted, nor should it be interrupted by anyone who doesn't belong in that memory.