If it came to that, yes. [Yes, obviously, in an instant. Now that he's said it it doesn't sound as absurd to say, to admit that he would absolutely go to bat for Viktor, if necessary. Violence and necromancers are not strangers, far from it, and so it stands to reason that the willingness to get into actual fights for him is, hm—
Messy, and extreme, but in the deep-seated way of the Nine Houses, so intrinsically linking devotion and violence. So he can say if it came to that with the slightest hint of a crooked grin, like it's almost a joke, and beyond that he can simply let it be what it is: being, hm, personally invested. He thinks of Viktor's admission outside The Red, about showing him what the Sixth couldn't, and resolves that, yes— here is a person he would go to great lengths to protect.]
I— hmm. [He makes a face; how does he articulate that he wants, actually, to be subjected to it? That the depths of how much he cares for Viktor don't stop just above the silent tether still sitting half-formed across from them. He doesn't know; he says,] I wish you would have said something.
[—and that's that on that, more or less. Viktor leans into his hand - kind of hard to be subtle about that one, bud - and Palamedes splays his fingers out accommodatingly, palm flat and fingertips high enough to reach the ends of his hair. This he thinks about for a long couple seconds, then remembers to focus.]
Some more than others, [he offers; he can look back at his own life and put a pin in each moment where one of those lines should be drawn, but that doesn't mean he's immune to thinking about things he'd have liked to accomplish before, or whatever else.]
I think if we're supposed to be guilty for ever thinking like that, you ought to lock me up as soon as possible. Let me keep my books.
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Messy, and extreme, but in the deep-seated way of the Nine Houses, so intrinsically linking devotion and violence. So he can say if it came to that with the slightest hint of a crooked grin, like it's almost a joke, and beyond that he can simply let it be what it is: being, hm, personally invested. He thinks of Viktor's admission outside The Red, about showing him what the Sixth couldn't, and resolves that, yes— here is a person he would go to great lengths to protect.]
I— hmm. [He makes a face; how does he articulate that he wants, actually, to be subjected to it? That the depths of how much he cares for Viktor don't stop just above the silent tether still sitting half-formed across from them. He doesn't know; he says,] I wish you would have said something.
[—and that's that on that, more or less. Viktor leans into his hand - kind of hard to be subtle about that one, bud - and Palamedes splays his fingers out accommodatingly, palm flat and fingertips high enough to reach the ends of his hair. This he thinks about for a long couple seconds, then remembers to focus.]
Some more than others, [he offers; he can look back at his own life and put a pin in each moment where one of those lines should be drawn, but that doesn't mean he's immune to thinking about things he'd have liked to accomplish before, or whatever else.]
I think if we're supposed to be guilty for ever thinking like that, you ought to lock me up as soon as possible. Let me keep my books.