terriblepurpose | Deer Country Contact

[He's given it time; he's let it simmer. He's assured Harrow they're still friends, he's sent Gideon his relief and his forgiveness, even fielded Anna's crumbling emotional state in the midst of still being a little personally offended she threatened to murder him, and etc.

Holes patched. Bones set. He's repeated so many times that simply painting over the ugly parts of life, of themselves, of each other serves nothing at all; there's solace in a beautiful fresco, but not when the plaster is dust underneath.

He waits, then, until he can stop looking at his omni like a paintbrush and instead like an olive branch, and then he sends Paul a message:]

Hi, Paul.

I don't know what you're up to, [He types these days and tap-tap-taps it back out, because it's been longer than that, he figures,] so don't worry about getting back to me in any kind of specific window.

When you're just yourself again, let me know.

[The black crush of the first few days is gone from Paul by the time he can bring himself to open the message, whose instructions he abides by. The thought of not doing so barely has time to form before he dismisses it.

He's been making the rules he sets for himself simple, having followed such complicated old ones to this end. One of them, etched in bright, towering letters, is doing what he's asked, as it's asked, without interpretation. Palamedes wants to know when he's himself again, and Paul strives to think of nothing more than that.]

Hello, Palamedes. It's Paul. Just me.

[He has to start somewhere.]

[Ah, there he is. Allegedly. Palamedes doesn't quash the glimmer of surprise that pops up alongside Paul's credentials on his omni; almost every part of him anticipated no kind of acknowledgement for... much longer, considering.

But there's Paul, so alright.]

There you are.

There was a festival at the Sanctuary a week ago. I saved some of the sweets; Gideon was excited about them being 'shaped food'. They're frozen now.

[Because they are mochi and he had to ask what one does with mochi to have it keep, but never mind that detail.]

If you'd like some.

[Palamedes doesn't care for dramatics, in Paul's experience. This curtails some of the things he might answer with, but not as many as it once might have. He's tired of them, too.]

I saw. It was a good idea.

[Does he say that he hopes Palamedes enjoyed himself, or would it be grotesque?]

And I would like that. How have you been?

Busy.

[Much as he was pushed into not doing anything for a time, in Viktor's grand quest to manage Everybody's corruption-- he's still managed to be busy. And he still leaves it at that, but:]

The fireworks made a reappearance to great success, too.

I'll bring the box. Where can I meet you?

[Paul smiles, faintly and despite himself, at busy.]

I'm glad.

[About fireworks, about busyness, about both. He draws a knee up to his chest before he answers the question.]

Archives? By the old blackboard, if you can find it.

[God, but he hates the Archives. He'll go, but he'll offend Never Mind a much as he can, during.]

I've a gift for finding blackboards, don't worry.

I'll meet you there.

[And he will, with a little paper box of mochi that will, admittedly, not be very frozen anymore once he gets there.]

[Paul has spent less time than he used to there lately. He flitted in and out in search of certain volumes before the journey out to sea, but he hasn't been back since they came to shore.

When Palamedes arrives Paul is sitting with his legs crossed in an aging, slumped chair, folding a piece of paper into a dragonfly. He's wearing soft blacks, divested of the rigid formal clothing he would have worn for a meeting like this, once.

When he looks up from his folding his eyes are green and nervous, his hair an overgrown mess. There are thin pale pink patches on his lower lip where he's worried at the skin, but he doesn't bite it now. The blackboard behind him is empty. ]

Hello.

[He flips the paper in his fingers, working a seam along the tail.]

You look well.

[Palamedes arrives at the Archives and thinks, again, that he hates it here. The blackboard isn't hard to find, and he doesn't interrogate the flash of surprise he feels when he sees Paul just sitting there, folding something. What should he have expected? Some manner of disaster?

No; there's just Paul, rumpled and tragic. Palamedes is holding a simple paper box, in which are half a dozen saved mochi paw prints separated neatly by squares of wax paper (not a preparation by Palamedes, who knows nothing about mochi at all). He sets the box down on a stack of books nearby Paul's chair and goes to get a chair of his own, which he laboriously pushes over and slouches into.

For a long moment he stares at his boots (yellow! he wears real colors now!) in silence, before finally sitting up and leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair. Alright. Okay. Paul.]

What are you making?

[Paul notices the boots. They're hard not to. Something tips in his stomach at them, this unobserved change. He remembers the rumple of Palamedes' grey formal poncho, all the way back in the depth of winter.]

It's an ornithopter.

[He sets it next to the box, where it still looks like a dragonfly made of creamy white paper, the best that he could muster up with his depleting resources. He nudges it towards Palamedes diffidently, his eyes shaded away, and then takes up the box to settle in his lap. He touches the lip of lid, doesn't yet lift it.]

Flying machine from back home.

[He'd had one in the middle of the table he'd set up in front of this blackboard. It had hung from the central spar of his tent on the beach where they waited for the Leviathan. He folded one in his room in the house he used to live in, and it's likely still in the drawer where he left it.]

I tried making these for that baking competition. [Mochi, not ornithopters.] I dropped them. I don't know if you were watching that.

[We had 'origami' at the festival, these would have been a nice addition, Palamedes thinks, in silence. He needn't belabor the festival; nobody from that house came, and he doesn't begrudge them that, and he doesn't need to know the reasons. But they did have origami at the festival, which he thinks of as he sits up straighter and reaches to pick up the paper machine.

(He almost remembers the shape of it from the tent on the beach, but remembering those days is to dip into the icy depths of grief, and so he usually resolves not to. He resolves not to now, balancing the paper craft on his palm.)]

I wasn't.

[Idly, with a glance; there was so much food he didn't want to eat there he was consumed by not making eye contact with too many participants, just in case.

But. When it comes to paying more attention, well. One must wonder if it would have helped at all.]

Maybe I should have been.

[Paul could speak for no one but himself, but in his case, he didn't go to the festival because he didn't think the festivities would benefit from his intrusion after the storm. It's not even close to the greatest thing he'd lost in the aftermath of his actions, and it's stupid, he thinks, to have been sorry about missing it. He was sorry anyway.

He flips open the top of the box and looks at the defrosted mochi, intricately patterned and crafted, and his stomach does a clenching somersault.]

It was fun. [He says it with a tremor, despite himself.] I'm sure the festival was, too.

[His tone turns softer as he plucks a mochi from the nestling paper, his sideways glance to see the ornithoper in Palamedes' hand barely noticeable.]

Do you remember when you told me that people aren't responsible for other people's choices?

[They'd been talking about the Emperor, in the sunken heart of the Pale Sanctuary, Paul certain he'd brought ruination down on all of their heads. It had been a long time ago. It had been barely any time at all.]

[Palamedes frowns, setting the ornithopter back down and leaning his elbow on the arm of the chair. That conversation he remembers, from a different time.]

Oh, rest assured, that's still true. If you want to wallow in how poignant it is that you remembered that and still took the others' choice away from them, you can do it after I leave.

[And he will, if he must, get up and leave. He's heard more than enough hemming and hawing about Choices from the Emperor to want to hear it again now, from Paul.

But maybe that's being less than generous.]

I'm not going to tell you that you're awful. I'm not going to hand you an easy out, either. You made choices; they were bad. They were wrong, and they were wrong before all of your people got upset over them.

[It's as he'd said before, in the clearing: justification is a slippery slope. He shrugs, because he'd like to think Paul knows these things already, and all he's doing now is putting into the world facts that have already been understood. Ideally.]

But somebody did fail you along the way; I believe that. Maybe that was all of us, you included— but it's too late now.

[Paul knows that taking on the burden of consequence is not an easy thing. It's one of the lessons his father sought to teach him, reinforced by all his tutors, even the one who led him this far. Great power, as God said, comes with great responsibility.

But he still flinches, a little, when Palamedes talks about leaving. It's a minor crumple, shoulders curling in only slightly, and he disciplines himself back to calm almost as it happens. The accusation is a fair one - especially considering who he's been listening to, lately.]

No. I don't think it's poignant. [He says, quietly.] That's good, though. You should keep that.

[He puts the mochi back into the box; he doesn't feel like eating, with the hard, hot ball of guilt in his throat.]

I meant it's not your fault. If anyone failed me, it wasn't you. You warned me. I should have listened. [He shakes his head, swallowing.] But that's- wallowing. It doesn't matter.

But I wanted you to know.

[There's a moment, when Paul says it's not poignant, that Palamedes almost wonders if he should bother to believe him. Surely Paul would not lie to him, not right now, in this conversation— surely not. It's a sickly, creeping feeling, like ink spilling across paper, and he acknowledges it and moves it pointedly aside.

He won't deny the fact that this whole... this has shaken his trust in a handful of people, but he doesn't have to mire in it. Paul says it's not poignant; fine. Paul says it's not his fault; fine.

He says,] Alright.

[He does not say, I shouldn't have had to warn you at all. Unproductive.]

Now what will you do?

[There's a part of Paul that might have sought a meaning in what happened that skewed towards the poetic, the symbolic. Something about cycles, or the inevitability of fate, or echoes. That capacity still exists inside of him.

But most of what Paul thinks of what happened, in a numb, accepting way, is that he had managed to weave himself into a constructed blindness while convincing himself he could see clearly, and shame is sometimes an excellent corrective to grand internal narratives, especially if not resisted.

Or: he was stupid, and he was stupid on purpose, which is worse, and it hurt people, which is what matters.]

I'll try to fix it. [He runs his fingertips together, a little waterfall of touch.] I'm helping with the rituals to calm the sea. Apologizing, to the people who want to hear it. Cleaning up my mess.

I don't know what else to do. That seemed like somewhere to start.

I am sorry. That still doesn't mean you have to forgive me, but - you know that, I think. I don't expect you to.

That's a bandage.

[It's not accusatory, it simply is: that is a bandage, maybe even a balm, but notably, it is only a start. Palamedes' gaze drops to the ornithopter again, and he slouches some in his seat. Paul understands the bandage-quality of his own plan— that is a different kind of start, about a different kind of problem.

Palamedes doesn't much care for the sea throwing a fit like a toddler and so has no interest in the appeasement, but he'll keep that one to himself. What's one more mysterious ritual, really. The bandage, then.]

It gets you back to zero, I suppose. Then what? [He holds up a hand, briefly.] Don't factor my approval in, or anyone else's. I don't think that's your goal. So, what happens after zero?

[Which is a more roundabout, less dismissive way of repeating what he'd told Anna to do: get her house in order. He dares to think Anna might be at least an iota more anchored than Paul, despite everything, so. Zero, and he doesn't leave Paul here to brood.]

[There's reprieve in the slight unsetting of Paul's shoulders when Palamedes forestalls navigation of the factor of approval. He ventures a sideways glance, a little nod, and he keeps the rush of gratitude veiled, but not completely hidden.]

I want... [He worries a spot on the inside of his cheek with his tongue.] I want to be better. I want what I do next to be better than what I've done so far. So I learn how to do that.

[No try appended there, which is as much hope as commitment - but what are most commitments, if not a kind of wish? He has fixed himself to a cause that may be futile, but he has to try, and he's never tried to do anything with less than utmost sincerity. It's one of his problems.]

That's the part I'm still working on. [He admits, with a peeled shaving of shame.] I don't know. I should have started there. But it has to be different. I have to be. So I don't know, yet.

...if you have any ideas, [a soft question, shaded to quiet] if that's not cheating. I'd listen.

[Want to be better is good, Palamedes thinks; vague, and shaky, and precarious, but good. He himself wants Paul to succeed in this new goal of his, if only for Paul's sake; there are things that can't be undone, but after a point, miring in them is the same as simply stopping.

So: wanting to be better. He glances at Paul, eyebrows raised. After a moment he concedes, gently:]

No, I don't think that's cheating. But I can't lay out a twelve-step program for you, or anything like that.

[It wouldn't be genuine to just check all the boxes and call it done, but also-] What's 'better,' to you? What kind of person is better Paul? I'd start there.

[Although that isn't enough, and while he could point out some of the already obvious faults in making a list of Good Person Traits, instead he says:]

I've been thinking about your imago. You said it was a transformation in reverse, when we come back from the worst thing we are. Respectfully, I disagree; it's a straight line.

[When they speak of apologies, of reaching zero again, of the people who'll listen, they speak of the interpersonal; for the deeply, fundamentally individual, they'll need the imago. There isn't any going back to try again when it comes to the self, Palamedes thinks, and it could be grim-- although.]

I mean to say, and don't take this as some greeting card platitude, because you know I hate those— What I'm trying to say is that this isn't the end of everything. The better Paul is just you; you're already in there somewhere. You can't hate this Paul too much.

[ The imago. All that keeps Paul from curling up on himself like a caterpillar is that final instruction, but his cheeks still flush an unusually uncontrolled pink as he devotes his energies to not hanging his head in self-indulgent rumination. He could - he has - worn a groove in himself shaped perfectly to his inward turned thoughts.

But not here. He is being invited to a threshold. He doesn't want to step away. ]

No.

[ He draws the back of his hand over his dry mouth, wiping nothing away. ]

I mean that you're right. I can't. It's not - productive. [ A pause, an adjustment. ] It's not helpful. It's...another kind of excuse, isn't it?

Telling yourself the only way forward is back. Or hating yourself so much that you can't allow the possibility of...

If I don't think there's a better version of myself, there won't be. You can't achieve what you can't imagine.

[ Platitudes, but he says them like they're new again to him. He understands them better, with the weight of what he failed to change in anyone else across his knit brow. ]

And no one else can do that for me.

Something like that.

[He could pick at the words for a while, if he felt like it; don't think of it as an all or nothing, as productive or not, as helpful or not— but he's getting a little tired of arguing about semantics with people.]

Maybe you'll keep the same people, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll agonize over it for weeks until it blindsides you on some idle afternoon that you've already gotten pretty far. I don't know; there aren't- magic beans for this.

[Or something. Whatever. He waves a hand, like, don't question the beans.]

In the meantime, you do still have to live in the world every day. Grueling but true.

[ Unlearning all or nothing thinking will come somewhere along the way, if he manages to keep himself balanced on the path. For now, this keeps him moving in the direction he wants to go, and if it's not magic beans, it's still something that grows.

(He wonders what kind of magic the beans are, to solve problems.)]

I don't think I'm good at that. [ Now his hands come together, a loose empty basket in his lap. ] Living in the world. But I'm good at practice.

[ So: he keeps doing it. It would be easy to hide, shut himself up in another ruin like the ones he used to secret himself away in - but for now, he's found. ]

So. There it is.

[ He uncurls. He leans back against the chair and looks at the ceiling, blowing a stray hair out of his eye. ]

...thank you. For talking to me about this. Even without the beans. [ It could be a bad time; it probably is; he hazards it anyway: ] They're not in the mochi?

I have no idea what's in the mochi, if I'm being honest. I didn't like them; they're chewy.

[But he doesn't broadly enjoy the experience of eating food, so please don't take that as endorsement of their overall quality; he hears they are excellent.

Probably no beans, though.]

I don't like beans, either, come to think of it. [palamedes.] But I am on your side. Still.

You're stubborn like that.

[ Or: it's a relief to here, unwinding the spring-coil set of his spine as he opens up the box of mochi again and selects one, now thoroughly thawed, to squish lightly between his fingers. ]

There's a sweet bean paste you might...probably not.

[ Prosaics. Talking about baking. These are the things you miss out on, attempting to forge a path through the wild dark towards half-glimpsed destiny. He bites delicately into the mochi, and if he had to say what it tastes like - it tastes like another chance, deserved or not. ]

I'm on yours, too. [ Quiet, without dramatics. ] They're good. Compliments to the baker.

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