deercountry | will you witness me in a pit of fire

[The efforts being made on the opposing sides of this table are two very different kinds of restraint. They are, whatever furtive, itching feelings Paul has about them, a good start. He inclines his head to Lazarus in the slightest of nods, unwinches his shoulders by a degree; he glances at Teacher when he murmurs thanks, and the faint furrowing of his brow fades.

It's useful to have a barometer on hand.]

I wouldn't say eccentric. Not in context. [He curls his hands around his yet-unraised mug.] Gideon isn't, at least. She was one of the first friends I made here. I don't know what she saw in me.

[Gently self-deprecating, he shrugs, looking down into his cup. He still doesn't know what she sees in him, sometimes, but that doesn't matter. She's one of the people this is for, like Harrowhark, like Kaworu (and Paul doesn't think of sitting at this table rubbing his numb back and reminding him to keep eating, one wavering spoonful at a time under dulled red eyes).]

Am I happy here?

[He runs a thumb under the rim of his cup, the question a quiet one, inwardly directed.]

I'm safe here. [He says it like he believes it; belief, like anything else, being a matter of practice.] I'm not sure I'm happy anywhere. I'm trying to be. Does that answer your question?

[L watches the Emperor flatly as he fairly preens out his airy... what? It's not a dismissal, but it's distantly condescending. An eccentric bunch, he says, as though to imply that it's expected for one on the outside to misunderstand motives based on odd mannerisms or appearance. Even one like L... but what Tisketkenchak-Folgraboto might not know is that L was born on the outside, has spent his life peering in from the outside. The outside is his element, and in that way, nothing is odd to him. Only harbingers, indicative, part of a sequence that has one inevitable answer.

His eyes flick to Paul when he speaks. Paul will not be collateral damage in that sequence, or the end inevitable result of its unfolding. He can't see the future as some Palebloods can, but perhaps he never needed to. He understands the odds; he understands what it's not too late for at any point in the sequence, and that, in short, is why he is here.

That's why he sits across from a man who would be captain, teacher and God, and a boy who would die or kill for the guidance of a father to shape his chaos into something powerful and glorious.

His exhale catches on the half-breath he was holding when Paul answers him.]

It does... yes. Thank you.

[You still perceive reality as I do. We can proceed productively.

He addresses the Emperor next, with a question that is nosy, but not inappropriate as an innocently curious houseguest. L is not ever innocent in his curiosity, but that's the pretense they've all accepted, along with the amiability of the Emperor to host tea with a surly and strange scarecrow he does not like much at all.]

How many reside here? Five, at least, counting Paul, yourself, Kaworu, Gideon and Harrowhark...

[He's careful to name the Emperor second, after his priority. This is extremely intentional.]

[ I'm not sure I'm happy anywhere, says Paul, and there is a slight sad tilt to his Teacher's mouth. There is unquestioning recognition in it: he knows that truth like a mark of tribe. That's the real shared trait of the First. They are powerful, and brilliant, and not a single one of them happy.

They try for it together, though. With each other. There's a rare camaraderie to that. ]

Just the five.

[ Lazarus names him second, sure, but he shows no recognition of the slight. It's a humorously minor one. The King Undying has had vastly worse meetings than this one, with vastly more on the line.

Except not one of those problems at his table had been bold enough to inspect his deepest sanctum or card their fingers through his hair. He sips his tea, and is patient. ]

But you never know who might wash up. I'm glad to see the house with a little more life in it.

[ Like an act of violence, he winks. (It's funny because of the skeletons.) ]

[Teacher takes the question and the slight well, all things considered. Better than Paul does, staring across the table at Lazarus with muted shock ringing his widened pupils.

Paul had understood that things between these particular teachers of his were not friendly. He understood there had been friction. But he had assumed, without knowing the assumption he had been making, that Lazarus was acting with a sense of self-preservation. But that plausibly innocent question may as well be so much chum scattered in choppy waters, may as well be the flashing sweep of a cape. It's a tactic Paul recognizes, one he's used, the attempt to draw someone out into a revealing reaction, and if this is Lazarus on his most restrained behavior - it requires some recalculation on Paul's part.]

No monsters in the underground, or mad relatives in the attic.

[The reassurance is deliberately brittle. He refrains from asking if Lazarus is looking for a place to stay only out of concern he might say yes, just to see what happens.]

Not even any prisoners in a dungeon, though I'm sure I could make the utility room serve that purpose, if necessary.

[Almost imperceptibly, there's a narrowing at the edge of one of L's eyes. It's the phantom mirroring of that vaguely malevolent wink, as though he is participating in this kinesthetically to better recount and dissect it later. He's doing that a lot, actually, traces and echoes of the Emperor's own mannerisms and movements showing up in him, grooving it into his memory impeccably.

He glances back at Paul, the movement in his eyes alone. He doesn't change the position of his head, which is still faced and centered diagonally, toward the man sitting beside his Bonded.]

What's in the closets, I wonder?

[He takes a handful of blueberries, only to fuss and nudge them around his tilted placemat. Not a single one makes it to his mouth, which is set in an attempt at playfulness that looks just a bit manic and twisted.

Paul's right to be worried. L gets higher on this, dancing close and feeling rushing heat, than he could ever manage to on any drug.]

Edited 2022-04-11 20:39 (UTC)

[If they were on the same side of the table, united against a common adversary, Paul imagines he would witness Lazarus' unfolding stratagem here with unfettered admiration, and depending on the adversary, less concern. It's the off-kilter brilliance that captured his respect in the first place, fanned into a consuming, purposeful blaze.

But he thinks he would still remember the shuddering vulnerability of Lazarus' nerves as Paul sought to calm them one cool grey ripple at a time, watching Lazarus stain the tips of his fingers blue in a way that makes Paul's stomach twist. At least he can distinguish the sensation from true premonition.]

Towels.

[He says it almost like a joke, rotating his cup slightly in his palms with a slanted twist on his own mouth.]

Spare blankets. A bucket, if you want to see it. Do you want to know what's in the cupboards next?

[ Paul rankles, rises to his defense with the taut attention of a man trying to keep something precarious from collapse. Lazarus only seems to lean in; Lazarus only seems to thrill at the recognition of an audience. He rolls a blueberry between the tips of his pale fingers, and John considers that fidgeting energy.

They've played this game already, with Lazarus poking for reactions, testing the line. If John was gentle with him then, with the memory of leaves in his hair and the memory of a planet under his feet, it is nothing to be gentle with him now. ]

I think it'd be off-brand if there weren't a few skeletons.

[ For Lazarus's every press and jab, God is implacably pleasant, and Paul winds tighter and tighter. ]

In with the towels, you know. Cozy place for them to rest.

[There are components to this, gears and interlocking parts that a watchmaker's mindset is beneficial for studying. Even one small shift can change its functionality or break it into pieces, and L is the unusual man who is too captivated with the precise way things break to be overly concerned with preventing that fate to begin with.

It turns out that it's a very hard way to live, without much security or safety. While he used to outsource all of that, his habits and his tastes have been slow to adapt.

The hungry heart still wants the closest thing it's found to happiness, right along with all the pain and loss that sing it in.

You're going to be no help with this, are you, Paul? That's why you need me; that's why I'm here.]

They're secured adequately, I hope. It'd be a shame if they were to fallout.

Edited 2022-04-12 21:24 (UTC)

[ It's a pun.

It's a weaponized jab, a thinly-veiled threat, blackmail. And it's an apocalypse pun.

Paul won't get the joke; Paul, he can only assume, doesn't know about the dream. Lazarus wouldn't lean into this conversation like a dog after blood, otherwise. No one else has spent even a moment in God's mind, sifting through memory and metaphor for his worst and oldest sins. Still: Paul doesn't need context to catch the flicker across God's face, a break so fine no one outside this table would see it as significant.

It is to him what a proper flinch would be to a younger man: a quirk of the eyebrows, something startled in his eyes. It is an echo of the face he makes when he is genuinely astonished someone had the nerve. But there hadn't been a smile to that look, not ever. This time, his lips twitch.

God raises his cup of tea to hide it. Point to Lazarus, then. ]

A shame indeed.

[ Paul does not know about the dream, the bomb, the poisoning ash. But Lazarus has planned his blackmail badly. Lazarus does not know what Paul has done and will do; what Paul is; that, told he is taking tea with a destroyer of worlds, Paul might close those terrible blue-lit eyes and say I know. Might say He's teaching me how to survive it.

John has made a good study of that. John can look a man in the eyes as he is accused of apocalypse, set down his tea, and say: ]

But we're not much afraid of skeletons, here. If you ask me, they're... dead useful.

[ He flashes that same we're-all-friends-here smile and picks up a crumpet. ]

Thanks again for setting this up, Paul. Looks great.

[The shot isn't aimed at him, and that's why, if Paul thinks about it in the correct frame of mind, there's something objectively a little bit funny about the way that the fully articulated flinch that Teacher refrains from ends up housed in him. His tea sloshes just below the rim of his cup as he draws his hands towards himself in the tow of his rigid shoulders, a lancing flicker of worse color in his too-volatile eyes.

The accusation is opaque. It could mean any number of things, an encoded reference to something between them that neither of them has seen fit to mention to Paul. God knows (and that is funny, joylessly so) there are enough secrets in the skeletons alone to hold over this House. The alignment with one of his sensitivities is coincidental.

But Paul doesn't like the way Lazarus says fall out as one word, the unexpected touch on a fissile nerve.]

Thank you, Teacher.

[He doesn't need to append that title, quietly apologetic, but he's unsettled, and it doesn't bring out his better nature.]

I left the skeletons in the closet for this. I thought they could use a rest. Don't you, Lazarus? [If they're trading in points, Paul can make his own.] We'll see how it turned out.

[There's a patchwork of motivations sitting here at this table. Paul wants to be good; L wants that for him, while maybe also redeeming himself a bit in the process in a way that only he's privy to, that only matters to him. It starts with not letting a mass murderer lead him, he thinks, and finds it disturbing that he even had to think about this at one point.

Most people surely take it for granted, that fraternization and allyship with mass-murderers isn't ideal, is in fact death to any sort of goodness in one's soul.

You mean well, Paul, but you won't get better. You won't be free; not like this. He reads between the lines of what Paul says, a wedge between the civil-not-civil words between L and the Emperor.

I see your borderline insanity, and raise you one "step the hell away while you still can." It's understandable. Paul's afraid, wouldn't anyone be, especially a child? It's why L is here, it's what he's here to do, and he is not afraid of a false god.

Has he found purpose after failure here, after all?]

Who would be afraid of the dead?

[Children. Small ones; little babies. Which none of them are, of course.]

It's the living that get me tense. The dead are well beyond that... past-tense, if you will.

[He still doesn't take his tea, but his fingertips are stained violet by this point. There's something gruesome about it, reminiscent, perhaps, of corpses and decay.]

It's my understanding that they're past fatigue, as well.

[I won't stop, regardless of how it turns out. That's how much I care, Paul.]

Edited 2022-04-13 22:34 (UTC)

[ God's smile cracks brighter and more open, at the skeleton joke. Say what you will about him, but he loves a good skeleton joke. Ten thousand years is a long time, and tired humor has looped around to funny again so many times the revolutions could make anyone dizzy.

He doesn't fuss about mixing metaphors. He doesn't dwell on the necrotic stain of purple in a young man's hands. It's still just blueberry juice; he hasn't had blueberries in a long, long time. God spreads compote on his crumpet, raises it in cheers to his self-declared enemy with the skeleton puns. ]

You're telling me. But Paul's got a point... sometimes it's better to let them be. I'd hate to beat a dead horse.

[ He can do this all day. Surely Paul will forgive him if he does this all day; with Lazarus all but playing with knives, and Paul with his shoulders scrunched halfway to his ears, and God gone sharp and halfway to laughing. ]

[There are parts of this interaction that Paul might have anticipated. The underlying tension was a given, after the still-horrifying relaying by Lazarus of some of their past conversations, in the context of what he knows about both of these men. That Teacher would slip into the distancing stance of polished affability was a near certainty. Lazarus meeting it with an edge fell into the realm of likelihood.

But the fact that the edge Lazarus has picked up and keeps using is matching wordplay - that, Paul wouldn't have credited as believable. That, he still barely believes, with a faintly hysterical twist at the corner of his mouth.

Past-tense winds him up like clockwork. Dead horse is a twitch in his jaw and a hitch of his shoulders between strangled silent near-laughter and a shrug.

The sensation that courses through him as he leans forward, dropping his voice a fraction of a note in false conspiracy, is difficult to describe in words that come easily to him. Gideon would know what fuck it looks like on sight.]

You wouldn't want to run them into the ground.

[L has much in common with the necromancers of the Emperor's world. Among them is his tendency to find weapons in unexpected places, right along with keys and files and crowbars. Words are some of the most versatile, provided one can narrow them down and choose the right ones from the ether of infinite possibilities.

It's a joy he would not be sure how to explain to someone who doesn't already understand it, as Tisketkenchak-Folgraboto does. Which is why it surprises him, to the point of silent shock, when Paul ceases to maintain his tensely pleasant facade, at least not in quite the same way. No longer a hopeful and largely powerless referee, he's joined the game himself, and L isn't sure if he's amused, angry, or very worried.

Is this an exercise in compelled empathy? A point-blank call for L to understand what it's like to see someone else playing with knives and edges in a space where they really should not?

He glances down at the slanted placemat and the pulverized blueberries between his fingers. The interruption hasn't spoiled any fun inherently, but it has shaken things into disquieting perspective. Perhaps that has.]

Speaking of running. I certainly wouldn't... but my watch would. Slow, as it would happen.

[He's not wearing a watch, and in fact has no other obligations today.]

It's not unusual for any man to wish he had more time... but as much as I love to play, this tea might meanwhile turn into supper.

[And he wouldn't eat then, either.]

will you witness me in a pit of fire | march catch-all

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