[Journal excerpt]
Tuesday December 4th, 2012
I wanted to say to him, “come back to bed,” but there was a hostage to interrogate, a mute girl the others brought back while we were busy with the bait and trap. I’d have liked to have gone with him to watch. To ask her whether she knew Masra was dead, and to say to her “Was he your brother?” But that place is not the quiet one it used to be, and though Evander may be welcome there, for some people I’m a sore spot, like a hole in the gum where a tooth has been uprooted. Better not to rouse the pack.
But Masra is dead, and I want to write that over and over. The way I did with Zion.
I’m not bothered about the bullet he ricocheted back into my arm. I’m not really even bothered by the head-fuck of his psionic abilities. It bothered me that he was able to hurt Evander, because in that ill advised, possessive way I have, I consider him mine. As surely as I feel the same about Gem and Bjorn, and all the fools stretching back a decade who’ve found ways to insinuate themselves beneath my skin and found in me a friend. I’ve known him a fraction of the time, but he’s there with them.
He’s damaged goods. He’s been through the kind of shit that leaves deep, deep cracks. People shatter with those kind of fissures. They give up. Not him though. He keeps those pieces together like it’s easy, like it’s a waste of time to do anything but keep right on living. The lack of self-worth, that’s not something I’m going to sit persuading him to see reason about. He’s already started to figure out we don’t agree, that my continued attention is worth more than platitudes. I don’t have to fix this one, because he’s strong enough, man enough to do it himself. I just have the pleasure of watching.
Bjorn isn’t exactly pleased about it. Maybe it would have been polite of me to tell him I like his kinsman, check that he was okay with it, but it would have seemed too much like rubbing his face in it. “I never let you, but I let him.” Childish. Maybe he thought it was like Dominic, because the damned pirate wrote to him and ran his inky mouth. “You told him to keep his hands off so I fucked him,” would have been equally as juvenile though. I didn’t want him mistakenly thinking it was the same case with Evander. Nothing more than a way to punish him for making his choices.
I think things are all right between us now, with everything out in the open. He doesn’t expect things to last though, seems to think things with Evander and I will run their course. I haven’t told Evander. I think he’d be angry.
I asked him to the Governor’s Ball. He didn’t say no.
- M
Insights (Volume I)
Moderator: Mesteno
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[OOC Note: This is another journal entry. At this point, he'd given Evander permission to read his journal, and thus it takes on more of a letter format.]
Friday February 1st, 2013
Do you remember when you found me passed out in the snow, back in December? You thought I’d been attacked, and I had in a way. I never went into detail about what’d happened, but I was trying to save a friend. And I failed. You’ve met this friend, Cooper. I’ve known him near a decade, and I didn’t really know anything beyond his name on the day that he saved my life. I was chasing someone in the sewers, much to the disapproval of my friends at Bess’ place, and the tunnel was rigged with traps. I stumbled straight through one of them, and that would have been it, if Cooper hadn’t been pursuing, hauling my sorry ass out of the way of the explosion.
Over the years I’ve returned the favour, and I’ve lost count of the times he’s made it worth my while. That’s why I thought he was more than deserving when on this occasion, saving him might have required the exchange of myself. It wasn’t what I’d intended when I travelled out to the Umbra. It was only supposed to be negotiation, persuasion, threats if need be, but when none of these seemed to work, and I had nothing left to barter with, I had no trouble deciding that if it was necessary, there were few people more worthy than Cooper. Turns out, some men’s souls aren’t worth as much as others though, and if I had more of an ego, I might be insulted that the most valuable thing I have is worth pittance compared to another’s.
When I resorted to threats, I was attacked, cast out, and then there you were. But you hadn’t come for a social call. You’d come to offer your company, thinking I might need the support. You hoped I’d already heard about her. Riley.
How David managed to keep her illness a secret for so long I don’t know, but you and I had been out of the city when the obituary was printed. You had the unenviable task of delivering the news of Riley’s death, and to hear it, so quickly after failing to save Cooper - well I can’t even begin to explain how it felt. It doesn’t matter that grieving isn’t a new thing to me, I’ll never get used to it, and after Sally, Gem, Lola, Bjorn, I still haven’t worked out a way to cope that doesn’t involve snapping. Falling into the arms of Mother Marnier. You kept my head above water that evening though, and I know it would have been so much easier for you to leave me to it.
But that’s not all I have to thank you for.
It’s more than the obvious things. The potential head-fuck that you were willing to risk just to celebrate my birthday. The day you gave me out in the wilds. The discomfort of a suit for a pair of evenings spent on formal dates (you look better out of them too, but I still had to remember to breathe both times, you handsome bastard.)
No, I have to thank you for giving me a chance. Because after her you didn’t have to. The things I’ve seen, the things we’ve discovered since, they’d be enough to make any man swear off giving people opportunity. I wouldn’t blame you, especially after what I had to tell you about the bond, if you wanted to wash your hands of it all and mistrusted anyone that wanted you. You’re strong though, in ways I can’t imagine being, and sometimes I think that when I gave up, and couldn’t bear to see you stricken by the news any longer, and put my arms around you, you allowed it for my sake. You didn’t need it, but I did. Because Christ I wanted you to know I was there for you even if unnecessarily.
I will not stand by and allow the Lorosos of this world to try and beat obedience into you without there being repercussions. I will not let these ‘fated’ things come to pass without really getting in the fucking way, and you can shut your damn mouth about me staying out of anything where you’re risked. I didn’t call you mine for nothing, Evander Adriel Antony.
Yes, I am getting brave, aren’t I?
- M
Friday February 1st, 2013
Do you remember when you found me passed out in the snow, back in December? You thought I’d been attacked, and I had in a way. I never went into detail about what’d happened, but I was trying to save a friend. And I failed. You’ve met this friend, Cooper. I’ve known him near a decade, and I didn’t really know anything beyond his name on the day that he saved my life. I was chasing someone in the sewers, much to the disapproval of my friends at Bess’ place, and the tunnel was rigged with traps. I stumbled straight through one of them, and that would have been it, if Cooper hadn’t been pursuing, hauling my sorry ass out of the way of the explosion.
Over the years I’ve returned the favour, and I’ve lost count of the times he’s made it worth my while. That’s why I thought he was more than deserving when on this occasion, saving him might have required the exchange of myself. It wasn’t what I’d intended when I travelled out to the Umbra. It was only supposed to be negotiation, persuasion, threats if need be, but when none of these seemed to work, and I had nothing left to barter with, I had no trouble deciding that if it was necessary, there were few people more worthy than Cooper. Turns out, some men’s souls aren’t worth as much as others though, and if I had more of an ego, I might be insulted that the most valuable thing I have is worth pittance compared to another’s.
When I resorted to threats, I was attacked, cast out, and then there you were. But you hadn’t come for a social call. You’d come to offer your company, thinking I might need the support. You hoped I’d already heard about her. Riley.
How David managed to keep her illness a secret for so long I don’t know, but you and I had been out of the city when the obituary was printed. You had the unenviable task of delivering the news of Riley’s death, and to hear it, so quickly after failing to save Cooper - well I can’t even begin to explain how it felt. It doesn’t matter that grieving isn’t a new thing to me, I’ll never get used to it, and after Sally, Gem, Lola, Bjorn, I still haven’t worked out a way to cope that doesn’t involve snapping. Falling into the arms of Mother Marnier. You kept my head above water that evening though, and I know it would have been so much easier for you to leave me to it.
But that’s not all I have to thank you for.
It’s more than the obvious things. The potential head-fuck that you were willing to risk just to celebrate my birthday. The day you gave me out in the wilds. The discomfort of a suit for a pair of evenings spent on formal dates (you look better out of them too, but I still had to remember to breathe both times, you handsome bastard.)
No, I have to thank you for giving me a chance. Because after her you didn’t have to. The things I’ve seen, the things we’ve discovered since, they’d be enough to make any man swear off giving people opportunity. I wouldn’t blame you, especially after what I had to tell you about the bond, if you wanted to wash your hands of it all and mistrusted anyone that wanted you. You’re strong though, in ways I can’t imagine being, and sometimes I think that when I gave up, and couldn’t bear to see you stricken by the news any longer, and put my arms around you, you allowed it for my sake. You didn’t need it, but I did. Because Christ I wanted you to know I was there for you even if unnecessarily.
I will not stand by and allow the Lorosos of this world to try and beat obedience into you without there being repercussions. I will not let these ‘fated’ things come to pass without really getting in the fucking way, and you can shut your damn mouth about me staying out of anything where you’re risked. I didn’t call you mine for nothing, Evander Adriel Antony.
Yes, I am getting brave, aren’t I?
- M
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[Journal excerpt]
Tuesday March 26th, 2013
So did I scare you off? I can’t help but wonder. And I can’t promise that this time around will be an easier read, because a lot has happened between then and now, and it’s not always easy to remain aloof. In fact it’s never easy. So let’s skip the preamble and get straight to the meat of the matter.
It all starts off with Loroso, the man who called you his ‘Dog’.
Nicknames like that, we all get them in our business. For years, other ‘families’ referred to me as Francesco’s Bulldog (it was supposed to be a joke I guess - you’d hear them asking if his sight was going) but send a man out to do the messy work often enough, and have him keep coming back in one piece, and they quit it with the whippet jokes. With Loroso though, hearing it from him, it seemed less like some derogatory term for a hired butcher and more like possession. You were something prized, a secret that was all his, but we, you, didn’t know that until we had him on the table down in the morgue.
I’m not sure how it happens with a man like you. How someone so street smart and self-reliant can be continually deceived. Why any of them thought you’d be a safe target. But Niamh did it, for years and years. Franz and Isobel did it, even sharing a home with you as they did so. Loroso is just another on the list of names of men and women who kept you bound to them by lies. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t criticise. But it’s a pattern I mean to see ended. Removing Loroso, and knowing that his greed would leave you without repercussions against your clan for you to feel guilty about, this pleased me a great deal.
The messy night which came before it did not. The personal injury is forgettable. I’m accustomed to cracked bones and stab wounds, but I’m so used to working alone that I forget how to operate with a partner. I’d like to say we work well together, you and I. A dark compliment to one another’s abilities. But there’s a flaw in our pairing, isn’t there? It shows like an ink stain on a fresh sheet of paper, and they see it, I think. They use it.
I’ve heard in legend over the years of the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of men who were encouraged in their relations with one another that they might more fiercely guard each others’ backs in battle. But how did they continue to fight when they saw their lovers fall? How would they have coped, if they were snatched away and used for leverage? When that whore shot you, I was so ready to crack that the place could have been burning down, and I’d never have noticed. It was a dead man’s rattle in your throat. It was worse than the mess Masra made of you. I felt like a liability in those moments, and it’s probably bad of me to admit that when the tables were turned, I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one flawed in this way.
I’m not used to being tortured. It’s been rare that anyone’s managed to catch me, so I’ll admit, I was a little worried I’d be just as weak as the subjects I take apart in the morgue. But when we were taken by the Yu’lahn after the interception in old town turned bad, it was always going to be one or the other. I was glad it was me. Shut up. I didn’t want to be the one that cracked because I couldn’t cope with hearing it, seeing it. And I hoped you wouldn’t. That’s some crazy shit, huh? I didn’t want you to care enough to talk to them. But that was selfish of me too, because I didn’t want you stuck feeling guilty.
And I didn’t want to feel guilty either, for being touched that you did. Sometimes, I hope you never get to fucking read this.
When I woke up and you were gone, I got a little crazy. I can blame that on the fever, right? I can blame it on that torturer coming back to work on me a little more. I’ll blame it on anything I damn well like to your face, but here, I’ll say it plain. You were gone and nothing else mattered. It was like being back in Loroso’s place all over again, watching you dying, only this time I couldn’t see you, and I was fucking terrified.
The thing is, it won’t keep me from doing it again. The risk of being used against one another will always be there, but I’m not willing to sit back passively and hope for the best. You’re stuck with me, for as long as you want me, and if some day you decide you don’t anymore I think…you might just be the first one I’d fight to keep.
I’ve given you so much cannon fodder here, I have to fire a few parting shots your way. I need to bolster my pride a little, you know? So I just thought I’d say, even though you had the translation all wrong, I still loved it when you tried to tell me I was amazing in my native tongue. And I kind of loved it too, when you were jealous of the hooker at Sean’s place. And I liked it a whole lot when you called me yours, even if it was after running away from Cooper like you were a little girl getting challenged to kiss a frog. Don’t even try to argue, you were out that door so damn fast there was a smoke trail. I liked it when you stayed at mine when the snows came hard, and all the nasty things I got to do to you until you begged me not to tease anymore.
I needed that, after seeing Dominic touch you. I don’t think I’ve ever been so damn jealous. If Bjorn and Ivanya don’t kill him, I will.
On a final note, I’m in your tent, in your furs, playing with your stuff. You’re out stuck in the cold up a tree somewhere. I hope that makes you think twice about playing hero again.
- M
Tuesday March 26th, 2013
So did I scare you off? I can’t help but wonder. And I can’t promise that this time around will be an easier read, because a lot has happened between then and now, and it’s not always easy to remain aloof. In fact it’s never easy. So let’s skip the preamble and get straight to the meat of the matter.
It all starts off with Loroso, the man who called you his ‘Dog’.
Nicknames like that, we all get them in our business. For years, other ‘families’ referred to me as Francesco’s Bulldog (it was supposed to be a joke I guess - you’d hear them asking if his sight was going) but send a man out to do the messy work often enough, and have him keep coming back in one piece, and they quit it with the whippet jokes. With Loroso though, hearing it from him, it seemed less like some derogatory term for a hired butcher and more like possession. You were something prized, a secret that was all his, but we, you, didn’t know that until we had him on the table down in the morgue.
I’m not sure how it happens with a man like you. How someone so street smart and self-reliant can be continually deceived. Why any of them thought you’d be a safe target. But Niamh did it, for years and years. Franz and Isobel did it, even sharing a home with you as they did so. Loroso is just another on the list of names of men and women who kept you bound to them by lies. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t criticise. But it’s a pattern I mean to see ended. Removing Loroso, and knowing that his greed would leave you without repercussions against your clan for you to feel guilty about, this pleased me a great deal.
The messy night which came before it did not. The personal injury is forgettable. I’m accustomed to cracked bones and stab wounds, but I’m so used to working alone that I forget how to operate with a partner. I’d like to say we work well together, you and I. A dark compliment to one another’s abilities. But there’s a flaw in our pairing, isn’t there? It shows like an ink stain on a fresh sheet of paper, and they see it, I think. They use it.
I’ve heard in legend over the years of the Sacred Band of Thebes, an army of men who were encouraged in their relations with one another that they might more fiercely guard each others’ backs in battle. But how did they continue to fight when they saw their lovers fall? How would they have coped, if they were snatched away and used for leverage? When that whore shot you, I was so ready to crack that the place could have been burning down, and I’d never have noticed. It was a dead man’s rattle in your throat. It was worse than the mess Masra made of you. I felt like a liability in those moments, and it’s probably bad of me to admit that when the tables were turned, I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one flawed in this way.
I’m not used to being tortured. It’s been rare that anyone’s managed to catch me, so I’ll admit, I was a little worried I’d be just as weak as the subjects I take apart in the morgue. But when we were taken by the Yu’lahn after the interception in old town turned bad, it was always going to be one or the other. I was glad it was me. Shut up. I didn’t want to be the one that cracked because I couldn’t cope with hearing it, seeing it. And I hoped you wouldn’t. That’s some crazy shit, huh? I didn’t want you to care enough to talk to them. But that was selfish of me too, because I didn’t want you stuck feeling guilty.
And I didn’t want to feel guilty either, for being touched that you did. Sometimes, I hope you never get to fucking read this.
When I woke up and you were gone, I got a little crazy. I can blame that on the fever, right? I can blame it on that torturer coming back to work on me a little more. I’ll blame it on anything I damn well like to your face, but here, I’ll say it plain. You were gone and nothing else mattered. It was like being back in Loroso’s place all over again, watching you dying, only this time I couldn’t see you, and I was fucking terrified.
The thing is, it won’t keep me from doing it again. The risk of being used against one another will always be there, but I’m not willing to sit back passively and hope for the best. You’re stuck with me, for as long as you want me, and if some day you decide you don’t anymore I think…you might just be the first one I’d fight to keep.
I’ve given you so much cannon fodder here, I have to fire a few parting shots your way. I need to bolster my pride a little, you know? So I just thought I’d say, even though you had the translation all wrong, I still loved it when you tried to tell me I was amazing in my native tongue. And I kind of loved it too, when you were jealous of the hooker at Sean’s place. And I liked it a whole lot when you called me yours, even if it was after running away from Cooper like you were a little girl getting challenged to kiss a frog. Don’t even try to argue, you were out that door so damn fast there was a smoke trail. I liked it when you stayed at mine when the snows came hard, and all the nasty things I got to do to you until you begged me not to tease anymore.
I needed that, after seeing Dominic touch you. I don’t think I’ve ever been so damn jealous. If Bjorn and Ivanya don’t kill him, I will.
On a final note, I’m in your tent, in your furs, playing with your stuff. You’re out stuck in the cold up a tree somewhere. I hope that makes you think twice about playing hero again.
- M
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[Journal excerpt]
Thursday August 15th, 2013
This is Hell, and we don’t talk about it. Not really.
We plan like it’s another mission. We get ourselves armoured and raise the defences. We walk boldly through the city gathering the provisions we’d need for battle and we train. You teach. I learn. I sit hours into the night reading from the notes I make, and I stumble over the words you’ve given me like a child; repetition, frustration, getting it all fucking wrong. I keep the compass you gave me upon my person at all times like it’s the only thing that’ll keep me breathing without going a little crazy, and I want to claw the anxiety out from under my skin until it all bleeds away and I can sleep.
Instead I watch you. Sometimes I don’t even bother to make it subtle.
It’s a fucking charade, pretending I think it will be anyone else they come for. Not after what that seer told you at the festival in the market square all those months ago. And now Ciramina has come to add fuel to the flames of my fear with her talk of storms and a return to Vhamere.
I put on a brave face most of the time, though I didn’t that first night you told me. I wanted to do nothing more than run away from the possibility of a repeat occurrence. I had lost another lover to places unknown, never to be seen again, and the repetition seemed all too apparent. Gem’s unscheduled interruption gave me an unexpected outlet for the violence, for the painful need to inflict my hurt on someone else. If she hadn’t been there, with the Watch on her tail, it could so easily have been you instead.
All this preparation is me striving to deny that repetition.
Last time, I was utterly ineffectual, unprepared, lost. This time I have direction. I have allies, and if someone takes you from me, I will fuck them up. I will not stop until I have you back. I will track you like a bloodhound and reclaim you.
I do not tell you this with words, but I let you know when we rut in the hours after the lessons. Like I need the physical outlet after sitting still for so long making so little headway. I know my tongue seizes up, that it won’t cooperate in the whole vulgar cycle of verbal abuse we usually enjoy, but it’s not for lack of enthusiasm. I’m just scared that all of this will come out, and I don’t want to seem weak. I don’t want you thinking that you were wrong to tell me, or that you should try and talk me out of going. I will fucking break your handsome nose if you dare.
I don’t want this to be over.
You said that to me in the marketplace the morning after you told me about Ciramina‘s vision, and I felt as guilty as I did elated. Not because I’d ever considered telling you we were done, but because my lack of contact had led you to believe that was going to be the inevitable outcome. You poor deluded fuck.
Don’t you realise how good you got me? Am I so unreadable that you don’t understand how essential you are to me? Just because we don’t whisper sweet nothings and speak about futures holed up together someplace, just because we don’t wear rings or matching ink, just because I haven’t left a single scar on you to mark you as mine - it doesn’t mean I’m not intent upon keeping you. I don’t need a permanent bond like the one you had with Niamh, or the one that Bjorn and Ivanya share. I don’t need any of that alchemy.
It’s not over, Evander Antony, and it won’t be, because I will come for you. Don’t you fucking doubt it.
- M
Thursday August 15th, 2013
This is Hell, and we don’t talk about it. Not really.
We plan like it’s another mission. We get ourselves armoured and raise the defences. We walk boldly through the city gathering the provisions we’d need for battle and we train. You teach. I learn. I sit hours into the night reading from the notes I make, and I stumble over the words you’ve given me like a child; repetition, frustration, getting it all fucking wrong. I keep the compass you gave me upon my person at all times like it’s the only thing that’ll keep me breathing without going a little crazy, and I want to claw the anxiety out from under my skin until it all bleeds away and I can sleep.
Instead I watch you. Sometimes I don’t even bother to make it subtle.
It’s a fucking charade, pretending I think it will be anyone else they come for. Not after what that seer told you at the festival in the market square all those months ago. And now Ciramina has come to add fuel to the flames of my fear with her talk of storms and a return to Vhamere.
I put on a brave face most of the time, though I didn’t that first night you told me. I wanted to do nothing more than run away from the possibility of a repeat occurrence. I had lost another lover to places unknown, never to be seen again, and the repetition seemed all too apparent. Gem’s unscheduled interruption gave me an unexpected outlet for the violence, for the painful need to inflict my hurt on someone else. If she hadn’t been there, with the Watch on her tail, it could so easily have been you instead.
All this preparation is me striving to deny that repetition.
Last time, I was utterly ineffectual, unprepared, lost. This time I have direction. I have allies, and if someone takes you from me, I will fuck them up. I will not stop until I have you back. I will track you like a bloodhound and reclaim you.
I do not tell you this with words, but I let you know when we rut in the hours after the lessons. Like I need the physical outlet after sitting still for so long making so little headway. I know my tongue seizes up, that it won’t cooperate in the whole vulgar cycle of verbal abuse we usually enjoy, but it’s not for lack of enthusiasm. I’m just scared that all of this will come out, and I don’t want to seem weak. I don’t want you thinking that you were wrong to tell me, or that you should try and talk me out of going. I will fucking break your handsome nose if you dare.
I don’t want this to be over.
You said that to me in the marketplace the morning after you told me about Ciramina‘s vision, and I felt as guilty as I did elated. Not because I’d ever considered telling you we were done, but because my lack of contact had led you to believe that was going to be the inevitable outcome. You poor deluded fuck.
Don’t you realise how good you got me? Am I so unreadable that you don’t understand how essential you are to me? Just because we don’t whisper sweet nothings and speak about futures holed up together someplace, just because we don’t wear rings or matching ink, just because I haven’t left a single scar on you to mark you as mine - it doesn’t mean I’m not intent upon keeping you. I don’t need a permanent bond like the one you had with Niamh, or the one that Bjorn and Ivanya share. I don’t need any of that alchemy.
It’s not over, Evander Antony, and it won’t be, because I will come for you. Don’t you fucking doubt it.
- M
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[Journal excerpt]
Sunday October 6th, 2013
I think Bjorn was right; it’s the waiting that’s the hardest part, because until it happens, it feels like I’m stuck in purgatory, unable to act to move on and yet with all the doors behind me wedged firmly shut.
It was good of him to come over, even if I’m fully aware he had ulterior motives. I’m the wild card, the one they can’t control effectively, and I guess they must have decided between them that I needed talking to in case my involvement put everyone else at risk. It’s been a point of contention between us before, my impatience. They talk and talk as if we have all the time in the world, whilst I feel every second tick past and know we can’t afford the cost, for each one is priceless. Each one could mean a life saved or a life lost, and this one, I will not permit them to take chances with.
I try and make sure we are as prepared as we can be, planning for every eventuality (doing it now will save time on the other side) but it’s difficult because our intel is so lacking. It’s the collective knowledge born of dreams and fading memories, of men and women who were contained so well by those than ruled them that my questions are more often met with shaken heads and apologies than they are with anything I can use. Bjorn sketches faces and annotates with facts he can recall of each; dangerous people these, council members and their lackeys, lords who jostle for favour. He has a wall in the basement where he pins it all up, and I make copies of the details, writing it all out over and over for the others, because I don’t dare to ask if I can get them copied in the city just in case some of the details get lost. This way it’s drilled into my head, anyway. I recall it from memory. I know the faces almost as well as he does by now, I think.
Ivanya and I sit and practice our Vhamerian out behind the manor house several times a week, and we can hold a respectable conversation now. I have a wider vocabulary than he does, but being around Bjorn, Ghita and Hector has given him a favourable accent, and so I’ve taken to demanding that Evander talks to me in his native tongue, and drops the slang from our conversations in common so I can get the hang of the word order they might use in his homeland. He’s patient with me, because he understands now how scared I am.
After Bjorn visited, I was a mess. It wasn’t his fault, and he handled it in a way that didn’t leave me feeling ashamed. I’m grateful for that, and for how as soon as I asked that he take me to Evander, he took me with no questions asked. Kept me talking on the ride over, confiding things I’ve never told anyone, not even Evander or Vadriel. Things I know I should tell them but cannot just now. Not when there are things so much more pressing. I told him about Sedecla, about the necromancy, about Aoife’s involvement in the return of blocked memories. I told him about the English, and the flesh golem at the dam, and all manner of things that happened while I was with Tanziel - things Tanziel was never even privy to at the time, because he didn’t seem to want that part of me.
It was difficult to confess to these things. I keep them so well locked up, and to begin with Bjorn was so quiet that I regretted the first little admission. Regretted it until he came right out and told me how he’d been frightened to speak up in case I felt badgered and denied him again. I didn’t even have time to worry over whether I’d said too much, to worry what he might think of me, because when we reached his property, I didn’t have time for anything beyond getting to Evander.
I can’t remember the things I said to him. Only that I communicated I was terrified, and that he was asking me what I needed him to do, what I needed from him, and that he didn’t treat me as if I was weak for breaking down in front of him, or holding on too tight. I remember that afterwards, he’d broken enough bones I couldn’t even grasp him properly, that the pain was cathartic enough that the panic had subsided, but then his demons came out to play, just for a little while.
Niamh used to play games with him. Invite him to be brutal and then cry monster in the aftermath, only to laugh at him when his guilt took hold. It’s not the first time I’ve demanded that he not compare us, that I am nothing like her, but I didn’t rage at him for it. A year might have come and gone since we first fucked, but I don’t expect him to find his feet in this messed up relationship we have without any stumbling. Like I’ve said before, he’s damaged goods, but I’m not going to try and shoulder his weight for him like a crutch, because that would be insulting. It’s not support he needs - he‘s strong already, stronger by far than anyone else I know, it’s just the right kind of encouragement.
Be yourself and that’s enough for me.
There was a festival on the border Bjorn shared with the Alfar commune the other night. Just an excuse for everyone to feast and drink and be together without it being the serious business of one of these ‘moots’ as the Alfar call it. They’ve all been working hard out there, trying to get the land ploughed, the crops sown and the first buildings up in preparation for winter.
On the days that I’m not busy at Yvgeny’s (helping him prep another batch of potent anti-shield pristes draughts) or securing supplies I mean to take with me, or just spending as much time with Evander as I can, I’m out there helping the Alfar. I like them. I want to see them do well. I try and find ways to help them adapt to life here that won’t take them too far from their traditions, which will allow them to remain self sufficient, and sometimes it’s a lot of experimentation and hard work, but usually the results are rewarding enough that all the time spent trying to figure it out is worth it.
In their homeland, they were able to summon flame from fuel that didn’t consume it, so there was never any need to hack down trees, no black smoke - they were able to bring very little material with them, and so the twins and I experimented with making charcoal, a process which took far longer than we expected but which yielded more than we’d dare hope for. It means that Faendal has enough fuel to heat up the iron ore in the bloomery furnace I found plans for and helped construct with Ivanya, and as a result, they have metal to work with, without needing to purchase it in the city.
They’ve a need for livestock too, and inadvertently they’ve helped me out there. At the shelter there are always ex battery hens being brought in, or farm stock left to get in a bad way - animals people have thought would make good pets only to realise they didn’t belong ten floors up in apartments with no company for hours a day. As a result, they now have a small brood of hens, and though it took time to get them into decent laying condition over the months (throw in the moults and the stress of the move to add to the delay) they actually started producing eggs. I managed to rehome a small herd of highland cattle to them too, so now their cold stores have milk and cheese. I figured they’d need something to go with all the mead Leif has been making with Vignar and Asger - those beehives really took off, though now that the weather has gotten frosty, they’ve had all they’ll get for the year. The Alfar are ambitious, and I think the Vhamerians made right choice in offering them alliance.
There was no segregation amongst them at the festival - Faendal and Dianthe seem as besotted a couple as I’ve ever seen, Joshua and Kyrie are thick as thieves with Eorlund and even Sven, who was all arrogance and dismissive of the warriors seems to have found his place, sharing knowledge with Ghita. I was actually drunk enough to set aside my worries for a little while, until the whole event came to a standstill when one of these fucked up anomalies people have been experiencing in the city opened up right there where everyone was dancing, and took Hector.
The whole messy thing didn’t last longer than a handful of minutes - ten, maybe fifteen - but it was enough to leave Bjorn’s people horrified, and for Evander to be traumatised to a state I’ve never seen him in before. Where the Hector we knew had been, another stood in his place, and he was a maimed, broken head-case, telling us that it was Bjorn who would be taken, that everyone died in the future he’d come from but for himself, Evander and me. That the plans we’ve been arranging all go wrong.
As fast as it happened, it was reversed when he stepped back into the opening, and the Hector who belongs with us was returned. But that was enough time for the damage to have been done. Evander was distraught seeing Hector reduced to that, unsure how to deal with it and only getting more anxious as the minutes passed. I can’t blame him. This is a man he’s lived with, been friends with for longer than I’ve been alive, and there he was begging that should the same version of events happen, that we let him die. That the future was so horrific he did not want to live within it.
I didn’t handle things very well. Evander left to find some target for his frustrations, and I followed with no idea of what to do. He commanded that I not get in his way, that I remain behind him, that I not look at him. He meant to do someone harm, take life, drink and fuck me afterwards. He declared these things as if he expected argument from me, and he didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to discuss his feelings or what had happened. So I didn’t try. One thing I did know, was that trying to get him to expose those vulnerabilities so I could heal them with talking was not on the cards. His strength lies in his ability to cope, and it was failing him. I watched his control disintegrate without doing a thing to prevent it, and he didn’t make it to the city in time to use his fists. He snapped long before then, and put his fists to a tree.
In retrospect, I know that the damage he caused himself could have been healed later, and that I could have let him crush every bone in his hands if it’d helped him. But his panic was spiking, and having been victim of that too frequently of late, I figured it might be kinder if he just wasn’t awake to feel it. That way he wouldn’t have to suffer it, wouldn’t need to be ashamed of me seeing it. So I hit him in the head with a branch, and that was that.
He didn’t pass out, but he wasn’t far off, and he was stunned enough that his thoughts seemed to have slipped from the track they’d been travelling at breakneck speed as if they’d derailed. In some strange, messed up way, it worked. Shock has its benefits I suppose.
I’m not fool enough in any way to think that I fixed him. What it did do, was let him gather the thoughts that’d been terrifying him so he could talk, that it became safe to be touched again, and he let me pick the splinters from his shredded knuckles and from his scalp as we spoke. We know that thanks to Hector telling us of the errors we made in his reality, we won’t be making the same mistakes. That we can adjust our plans accordingly. But I think it finally hit Evander about what Ciramina said. That there would be loss.
Bjorn won’t be taken. I’m sure of this, because he means to stay on his land now where the wards keep it secure. Evander remains the prime target, and it hurts him to know that no matter what he does, he will fail in some respect, because someone will die, and though in Ciramina’s calculations it will be worth it, how does a man like my lover weigh the life of his friends, his clansmen? How can he say that any reward would be worth the losing of even one of them?
He wants me to mark him before he is taken. Give him some scar that he can remember me by, and though I’ve refrained from giving him even a single such mark because I have so readily marked all my other lovers, I will do this for him. I’ll do it because, after more than a year of sharing his life and his bed, I can say I’m falling for him and not be terrified. Love? It’s a big word. But I know that’s where this is headed. That its inevitable. At some point, something will happen and I’ll just know and everyone will probably fucking know, and he‘ll probably know most of all. What started with lust and infatuation and possessiveness has developed in this whole other direction, and I’m glad of it. And I’m glad too, because I’m not alone there.
Sat under that tree, with Evander’s scalp split by my concerned attempts to knock him out, he told me he wants to be the one to say it first. And that he doesn’t want me to worry if I can’t say it back. He doesn’t want it to be like it was with Niamh, where she was the first to say it, and his reply was not what she wanted. I didn’t mind the comparison this time around. I was too busy recalling how I’d said nearly those same words to another man, two years ago. That now Evander was saying them to me, and I sure as Hell wasn’t going to go vanishing before he had chance to say those three fucking words and mean it.
And so that’s why I cannot let him go without doing everything, risking everything to get him back.
- M
Sunday October 6th, 2013
I think Bjorn was right; it’s the waiting that’s the hardest part, because until it happens, it feels like I’m stuck in purgatory, unable to act to move on and yet with all the doors behind me wedged firmly shut.
It was good of him to come over, even if I’m fully aware he had ulterior motives. I’m the wild card, the one they can’t control effectively, and I guess they must have decided between them that I needed talking to in case my involvement put everyone else at risk. It’s been a point of contention between us before, my impatience. They talk and talk as if we have all the time in the world, whilst I feel every second tick past and know we can’t afford the cost, for each one is priceless. Each one could mean a life saved or a life lost, and this one, I will not permit them to take chances with.
I try and make sure we are as prepared as we can be, planning for every eventuality (doing it now will save time on the other side) but it’s difficult because our intel is so lacking. It’s the collective knowledge born of dreams and fading memories, of men and women who were contained so well by those than ruled them that my questions are more often met with shaken heads and apologies than they are with anything I can use. Bjorn sketches faces and annotates with facts he can recall of each; dangerous people these, council members and their lackeys, lords who jostle for favour. He has a wall in the basement where he pins it all up, and I make copies of the details, writing it all out over and over for the others, because I don’t dare to ask if I can get them copied in the city just in case some of the details get lost. This way it’s drilled into my head, anyway. I recall it from memory. I know the faces almost as well as he does by now, I think.
Ivanya and I sit and practice our Vhamerian out behind the manor house several times a week, and we can hold a respectable conversation now. I have a wider vocabulary than he does, but being around Bjorn, Ghita and Hector has given him a favourable accent, and so I’ve taken to demanding that Evander talks to me in his native tongue, and drops the slang from our conversations in common so I can get the hang of the word order they might use in his homeland. He’s patient with me, because he understands now how scared I am.
After Bjorn visited, I was a mess. It wasn’t his fault, and he handled it in a way that didn’t leave me feeling ashamed. I’m grateful for that, and for how as soon as I asked that he take me to Evander, he took me with no questions asked. Kept me talking on the ride over, confiding things I’ve never told anyone, not even Evander or Vadriel. Things I know I should tell them but cannot just now. Not when there are things so much more pressing. I told him about Sedecla, about the necromancy, about Aoife’s involvement in the return of blocked memories. I told him about the English, and the flesh golem at the dam, and all manner of things that happened while I was with Tanziel - things Tanziel was never even privy to at the time, because he didn’t seem to want that part of me.
It was difficult to confess to these things. I keep them so well locked up, and to begin with Bjorn was so quiet that I regretted the first little admission. Regretted it until he came right out and told me how he’d been frightened to speak up in case I felt badgered and denied him again. I didn’t even have time to worry over whether I’d said too much, to worry what he might think of me, because when we reached his property, I didn’t have time for anything beyond getting to Evander.
I can’t remember the things I said to him. Only that I communicated I was terrified, and that he was asking me what I needed him to do, what I needed from him, and that he didn’t treat me as if I was weak for breaking down in front of him, or holding on too tight. I remember that afterwards, he’d broken enough bones I couldn’t even grasp him properly, that the pain was cathartic enough that the panic had subsided, but then his demons came out to play, just for a little while.
Niamh used to play games with him. Invite him to be brutal and then cry monster in the aftermath, only to laugh at him when his guilt took hold. It’s not the first time I’ve demanded that he not compare us, that I am nothing like her, but I didn’t rage at him for it. A year might have come and gone since we first fucked, but I don’t expect him to find his feet in this messed up relationship we have without any stumbling. Like I’ve said before, he’s damaged goods, but I’m not going to try and shoulder his weight for him like a crutch, because that would be insulting. It’s not support he needs - he‘s strong already, stronger by far than anyone else I know, it’s just the right kind of encouragement.
Be yourself and that’s enough for me.
There was a festival on the border Bjorn shared with the Alfar commune the other night. Just an excuse for everyone to feast and drink and be together without it being the serious business of one of these ‘moots’ as the Alfar call it. They’ve all been working hard out there, trying to get the land ploughed, the crops sown and the first buildings up in preparation for winter.
On the days that I’m not busy at Yvgeny’s (helping him prep another batch of potent anti-shield pristes draughts) or securing supplies I mean to take with me, or just spending as much time with Evander as I can, I’m out there helping the Alfar. I like them. I want to see them do well. I try and find ways to help them adapt to life here that won’t take them too far from their traditions, which will allow them to remain self sufficient, and sometimes it’s a lot of experimentation and hard work, but usually the results are rewarding enough that all the time spent trying to figure it out is worth it.
In their homeland, they were able to summon flame from fuel that didn’t consume it, so there was never any need to hack down trees, no black smoke - they were able to bring very little material with them, and so the twins and I experimented with making charcoal, a process which took far longer than we expected but which yielded more than we’d dare hope for. It means that Faendal has enough fuel to heat up the iron ore in the bloomery furnace I found plans for and helped construct with Ivanya, and as a result, they have metal to work with, without needing to purchase it in the city.
They’ve a need for livestock too, and inadvertently they’ve helped me out there. At the shelter there are always ex battery hens being brought in, or farm stock left to get in a bad way - animals people have thought would make good pets only to realise they didn’t belong ten floors up in apartments with no company for hours a day. As a result, they now have a small brood of hens, and though it took time to get them into decent laying condition over the months (throw in the moults and the stress of the move to add to the delay) they actually started producing eggs. I managed to rehome a small herd of highland cattle to them too, so now their cold stores have milk and cheese. I figured they’d need something to go with all the mead Leif has been making with Vignar and Asger - those beehives really took off, though now that the weather has gotten frosty, they’ve had all they’ll get for the year. The Alfar are ambitious, and I think the Vhamerians made right choice in offering them alliance.
There was no segregation amongst them at the festival - Faendal and Dianthe seem as besotted a couple as I’ve ever seen, Joshua and Kyrie are thick as thieves with Eorlund and even Sven, who was all arrogance and dismissive of the warriors seems to have found his place, sharing knowledge with Ghita. I was actually drunk enough to set aside my worries for a little while, until the whole event came to a standstill when one of these fucked up anomalies people have been experiencing in the city opened up right there where everyone was dancing, and took Hector.
The whole messy thing didn’t last longer than a handful of minutes - ten, maybe fifteen - but it was enough to leave Bjorn’s people horrified, and for Evander to be traumatised to a state I’ve never seen him in before. Where the Hector we knew had been, another stood in his place, and he was a maimed, broken head-case, telling us that it was Bjorn who would be taken, that everyone died in the future he’d come from but for himself, Evander and me. That the plans we’ve been arranging all go wrong.
As fast as it happened, it was reversed when he stepped back into the opening, and the Hector who belongs with us was returned. But that was enough time for the damage to have been done. Evander was distraught seeing Hector reduced to that, unsure how to deal with it and only getting more anxious as the minutes passed. I can’t blame him. This is a man he’s lived with, been friends with for longer than I’ve been alive, and there he was begging that should the same version of events happen, that we let him die. That the future was so horrific he did not want to live within it.
I didn’t handle things very well. Evander left to find some target for his frustrations, and I followed with no idea of what to do. He commanded that I not get in his way, that I remain behind him, that I not look at him. He meant to do someone harm, take life, drink and fuck me afterwards. He declared these things as if he expected argument from me, and he didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to discuss his feelings or what had happened. So I didn’t try. One thing I did know, was that trying to get him to expose those vulnerabilities so I could heal them with talking was not on the cards. His strength lies in his ability to cope, and it was failing him. I watched his control disintegrate without doing a thing to prevent it, and he didn’t make it to the city in time to use his fists. He snapped long before then, and put his fists to a tree.
In retrospect, I know that the damage he caused himself could have been healed later, and that I could have let him crush every bone in his hands if it’d helped him. But his panic was spiking, and having been victim of that too frequently of late, I figured it might be kinder if he just wasn’t awake to feel it. That way he wouldn’t have to suffer it, wouldn’t need to be ashamed of me seeing it. So I hit him in the head with a branch, and that was that.
He didn’t pass out, but he wasn’t far off, and he was stunned enough that his thoughts seemed to have slipped from the track they’d been travelling at breakneck speed as if they’d derailed. In some strange, messed up way, it worked. Shock has its benefits I suppose.
I’m not fool enough in any way to think that I fixed him. What it did do, was let him gather the thoughts that’d been terrifying him so he could talk, that it became safe to be touched again, and he let me pick the splinters from his shredded knuckles and from his scalp as we spoke. We know that thanks to Hector telling us of the errors we made in his reality, we won’t be making the same mistakes. That we can adjust our plans accordingly. But I think it finally hit Evander about what Ciramina said. That there would be loss.
Bjorn won’t be taken. I’m sure of this, because he means to stay on his land now where the wards keep it secure. Evander remains the prime target, and it hurts him to know that no matter what he does, he will fail in some respect, because someone will die, and though in Ciramina’s calculations it will be worth it, how does a man like my lover weigh the life of his friends, his clansmen? How can he say that any reward would be worth the losing of even one of them?
He wants me to mark him before he is taken. Give him some scar that he can remember me by, and though I’ve refrained from giving him even a single such mark because I have so readily marked all my other lovers, I will do this for him. I’ll do it because, after more than a year of sharing his life and his bed, I can say I’m falling for him and not be terrified. Love? It’s a big word. But I know that’s where this is headed. That its inevitable. At some point, something will happen and I’ll just know and everyone will probably fucking know, and he‘ll probably know most of all. What started with lust and infatuation and possessiveness has developed in this whole other direction, and I’m glad of it. And I’m glad too, because I’m not alone there.
Sat under that tree, with Evander’s scalp split by my concerned attempts to knock him out, he told me he wants to be the one to say it first. And that he doesn’t want me to worry if I can’t say it back. He doesn’t want it to be like it was with Niamh, where she was the first to say it, and his reply was not what she wanted. I didn’t mind the comparison this time around. I was too busy recalling how I’d said nearly those same words to another man, two years ago. That now Evander was saying them to me, and I sure as Hell wasn’t going to go vanishing before he had chance to say those three fucking words and mean it.
And so that’s why I cannot let him go without doing everything, risking everything to get him back.
- M
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[OOC: Long gap between posts here because Mesteno was off-world in 'Vhamere' playing soldier, and thus no journal writing.]
Monday May 05, 2014
It’d take too long to relate everything that’s happened in the last seven or eight months. I could fill pages with the horror of what happened when, as I’d been dreading, Evander was snatched from Rhy’Din and taken back to Vhamére to stand trial. I could spend hours detailing every moment worthy of being recorded, and yet so much happened out there that I’d never do it justice. Suffice it to say that not all of those who went through the gate to reclaim him came back. The sacrifices Ciramina warned Bjorn of came to be, and those losses are still felt keenly. I can’t be dishonest though. I’d do it all again, in precisely the same ways, if I were given the choice, because my heart is satisfied with the outcome. We saved Evander, and Bjorn has accomplished what was so desperately needed in his homeland.
And now we’re back here, and nothing seems quite right.
War changes men; it’s a nightmare on some days, exhilarating on others, and you learn to see people in whole new lights. Every moment of it feels like living though, rather than just existing, and to be removed from that and rooted back in a society which, whilst not ‘safe’ in conventional terms is not a constant struggle, is like a knock to the head. Sensory deprivation, almost. This is the part I’m supposed to be glad of. It’s what you go out to fight for in the first place. Instead I’m just not content.
I felt this in some measure after last year’s mess with the Alfar and the Yu’lahn. My solitary way of existing after having spent so much time with those warriors seemed somehow lacking, and it was then that I began to visit. It wasn’t a conscious effort to become clan, or to belong anywhere, but to work for some higher cause than my own felt worthwhile. I can understand now, why a lone wolf like Evander puts so much importance in being one of the Christos clan, and found it difficult to break away for all those years that they depended on him.
He’d only been by himself for a few months before my paranoia had him moving into Sanctuary instead, in order that I could play guard dog. It might not have happened at all if warning hadn’t come from the mouth of a festival fortune teller, and in vision to our méivoln bonded friends that he would be taken. That was a sacrifice he made for me, a lack of independence which I, guiltily, found myself enjoying. I like his company. I like waking up to him, and falling asleep skin to skin. Now there’s no cause for him to live with me, and at last he has a place of his own. I’m glad for him. Less so for myself.
I’ll feel better knowing that he experiences it. I don’t want the guilt of hobbling him. And if he prefers living alone to living with me, I know I can accept it. I have with others. I am not dependent. Sanctuary won’t be the same though, and I know it. It’ll change from being a place I enjoyed returning to because I knew I might find him there, to being a roof and walls again. Somewhere to keep things out of the rain. A safe spot to rest. Living will happen elsewhere.
Living will be in the hours I spend in the forbidden ruins of the temple district, hunting. Or it’ll be with the Alfar, teaching and being taught, being a part of something even if only for a small part of the day. It’ll be after nightfall when the streets come alive with the city’s dark undercurrent and I start searching again, to try and fill in the blanks and unravel my own mysteries instead of abandoning them like a coward to focus on other peoples’. Most of all it’ll be in whatever time Evander has to spare for me though, whether that’s trying to best one another in a spar, fucking whenever the mood takes us, or just being. His company, whether quiet or raucous, is more desirable to me than anything else.
We spent the weekend celebrating Beltane, watching the crowning and this symbolic lighting of fires thing they do; I’m never quite sure of the reasons. Fertility and spring maybe. It’s a rare opportunity to see him amongst Masgad. Where once he’d have been disapproving of each and every one of them, he seems to have relaxed a little, and I’m not blind to the fact that it is often towards those I deem friend that he has relaxed his avoidant attitudes. He has spoken with my brother, and briefly with an unexpected visit to the inn from Eden. He seems accepting of Vera, and I’m intrigued by the friendly acquaintance he’s made of Peaches. I could tell he hoped for her to win the crowning, and that he would root for anyone surprised me. I don’t know her well, but I can find no fault in her either. Hell, I find myself liking her without even having shared a deep conversation.
Things have gone less well elsewhere, but I can’t be entirely surprised. Of all the people I wish Evander had bonded well with, it is Gem, yet misunderstanding has driven a wedge there, and I’ve no means to fix it, for I’ll not ask either of them to back down. Cianan he detests, and whilst the drow’s history with Gem (the details of which I’ve never been clear on) has never given he and I much cause to talk, we had been on better footing in recent months, in part due to mutual interest in Cooper‘s welfare. Evander was convinced his intentions towards me are less than pure though, and I overheard him in conversation with Ivanya one day confessing how he was sure everyone either disapproved of him or wanted more from me than was appropriate. I’ve done what I can to reassure him otherwise, and to convince him that Cianan’s interests lie in the fairer sex, but time will convince him better than I’m able, and in the meantime I’ll do my best to keep things civil. Just as I’ll do my best to keep persuading him to steer clear of Aoife.
On a final note, I let him say it first. It was worth holding my tongue.
- M
Monday May 05, 2014
It’d take too long to relate everything that’s happened in the last seven or eight months. I could fill pages with the horror of what happened when, as I’d been dreading, Evander was snatched from Rhy’Din and taken back to Vhamére to stand trial. I could spend hours detailing every moment worthy of being recorded, and yet so much happened out there that I’d never do it justice. Suffice it to say that not all of those who went through the gate to reclaim him came back. The sacrifices Ciramina warned Bjorn of came to be, and those losses are still felt keenly. I can’t be dishonest though. I’d do it all again, in precisely the same ways, if I were given the choice, because my heart is satisfied with the outcome. We saved Evander, and Bjorn has accomplished what was so desperately needed in his homeland.
And now we’re back here, and nothing seems quite right.
War changes men; it’s a nightmare on some days, exhilarating on others, and you learn to see people in whole new lights. Every moment of it feels like living though, rather than just existing, and to be removed from that and rooted back in a society which, whilst not ‘safe’ in conventional terms is not a constant struggle, is like a knock to the head. Sensory deprivation, almost. This is the part I’m supposed to be glad of. It’s what you go out to fight for in the first place. Instead I’m just not content.
I felt this in some measure after last year’s mess with the Alfar and the Yu’lahn. My solitary way of existing after having spent so much time with those warriors seemed somehow lacking, and it was then that I began to visit. It wasn’t a conscious effort to become clan, or to belong anywhere, but to work for some higher cause than my own felt worthwhile. I can understand now, why a lone wolf like Evander puts so much importance in being one of the Christos clan, and found it difficult to break away for all those years that they depended on him.
He’d only been by himself for a few months before my paranoia had him moving into Sanctuary instead, in order that I could play guard dog. It might not have happened at all if warning hadn’t come from the mouth of a festival fortune teller, and in vision to our méivoln bonded friends that he would be taken. That was a sacrifice he made for me, a lack of independence which I, guiltily, found myself enjoying. I like his company. I like waking up to him, and falling asleep skin to skin. Now there’s no cause for him to live with me, and at last he has a place of his own. I’m glad for him. Less so for myself.
I’ll feel better knowing that he experiences it. I don’t want the guilt of hobbling him. And if he prefers living alone to living with me, I know I can accept it. I have with others. I am not dependent. Sanctuary won’t be the same though, and I know it. It’ll change from being a place I enjoyed returning to because I knew I might find him there, to being a roof and walls again. Somewhere to keep things out of the rain. A safe spot to rest. Living will happen elsewhere.
Living will be in the hours I spend in the forbidden ruins of the temple district, hunting. Or it’ll be with the Alfar, teaching and being taught, being a part of something even if only for a small part of the day. It’ll be after nightfall when the streets come alive with the city’s dark undercurrent and I start searching again, to try and fill in the blanks and unravel my own mysteries instead of abandoning them like a coward to focus on other peoples’. Most of all it’ll be in whatever time Evander has to spare for me though, whether that’s trying to best one another in a spar, fucking whenever the mood takes us, or just being. His company, whether quiet or raucous, is more desirable to me than anything else.
We spent the weekend celebrating Beltane, watching the crowning and this symbolic lighting of fires thing they do; I’m never quite sure of the reasons. Fertility and spring maybe. It’s a rare opportunity to see him amongst Masgad. Where once he’d have been disapproving of each and every one of them, he seems to have relaxed a little, and I’m not blind to the fact that it is often towards those I deem friend that he has relaxed his avoidant attitudes. He has spoken with my brother, and briefly with an unexpected visit to the inn from Eden. He seems accepting of Vera, and I’m intrigued by the friendly acquaintance he’s made of Peaches. I could tell he hoped for her to win the crowning, and that he would root for anyone surprised me. I don’t know her well, but I can find no fault in her either. Hell, I find myself liking her without even having shared a deep conversation.
Things have gone less well elsewhere, but I can’t be entirely surprised. Of all the people I wish Evander had bonded well with, it is Gem, yet misunderstanding has driven a wedge there, and I’ve no means to fix it, for I’ll not ask either of them to back down. Cianan he detests, and whilst the drow’s history with Gem (the details of which I’ve never been clear on) has never given he and I much cause to talk, we had been on better footing in recent months, in part due to mutual interest in Cooper‘s welfare. Evander was convinced his intentions towards me are less than pure though, and I overheard him in conversation with Ivanya one day confessing how he was sure everyone either disapproved of him or wanted more from me than was appropriate. I’ve done what I can to reassure him otherwise, and to convince him that Cianan’s interests lie in the fairer sex, but time will convince him better than I’m able, and in the meantime I’ll do my best to keep things civil. Just as I’ll do my best to keep persuading him to steer clear of Aoife.
On a final note, I let him say it first. It was worth holding my tongue.
- M
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[Journal excerpt]
Sunday June 22nd, 2014
Salvador came to me at Sanctuary one afternoon.
That’s significant enough I believe it needs to sit up there at the top on its own, because in all the years I’ve known him, I can count the number of times he’s been to my home on one hand. It also let me know before he even opened his mouth to speak that something was wrong. I am not usually his first port of call in a storm. Nor was I, it turned out, this time, but he needed someone to tell him what to do. That was what he wanted from me.
Sin is gone, and it has been years since my brother has seen him. He’s turned over every stone and found not a trace, and we can’t even turn to Mother in this case. After all, kindred leave no bodies for the Linewalker to collect. Once upon a time, the thought that Sin might be dead would’ve wrecked me, but it’s strange what absence can do. Time can render such savage changes I’m not sure if he were to come back that he’d know me, or I him. I couldn’t reach out to him as I once did. But there is a sadness in me, a dragging hollow when I remember what was. I think it might be mourning for that, and for how we let it fade. For Salvador it’s so much worse though, and in the end I told him to leave the home he shared with Sinjin, to leave it as a monument, but not to go back.
He seemed content with that. He’s done precisely as I advised and sunk his teeth into a new project, a new home. The focus helps, his enthusiasm is inspiring, and if you saw him out and about, you wouldn’t think for a moment that he’d spent the last two years searching for a lost lover. He hides it well, the pain, but it shows in flashes, in lapses of control, and no amount of lovers is going to fill the gap. Not to begin with, anyway.
One might.
Salvador and Rei, my brother and my Godson. Really, even for Rhy’Din it feels messy, but there’s a lot of history there, and despite my apprehension over the match, part of me feels like it was on the cards. I don’t know Rei nearly as well as I should, don’t know how he’ll cope with Salvador’s polygamous tendencies, but Sal and I talked when I visited him at his new place and it’s plain its already serious. Gem even said as much to me last night at the inn.
Speaking of last night, this was the first time in over a month that Evander and Gem have spoken, and it could’ve turned out far worse than it did. Wasn’t all smiles and forgiveness, wasn’t all bosom buddies and instant connection, but there’s a tentative peace now, something to build on, and I feel like I can breathe again. I want Evander to understand her significance to me, and I desperately want Gem to see all that’s so right in him. To see past the harsh exterior and to recognise the loyalty, the fierce protectiveness, and everything else that makes me feel right in ways no one else has.
Evander came back to me.
That’s significant enough to warrant segregation too. I suffered through a month of his independence without complaint, and then folded the moment he confessed he was miserable. I’d thought he might choose to return to his clan, to carve out a space for himself on the land they share with the Alfar, but he chose me. Someone chose to live with me. Someone who means everything to me. Did I do something good, karma?
There’s more to say. Cooper’s return (according to Ivanya, he assaulted some woman and made accusations of arson) brings mixed feelings, because I’ve had no word from him but can’t bring myself to be anything but grateful. Gem’s involvement with an Unseelie fey named Jack is ringing alarm bells, and yet it’s her choice, and to warn her off might as well be reverse psychology. I pray she’s learned the hard way where men are concerned, and that her intuition keeps her safe.
In the meantime I play observer. I work in the temple district, I search, cautiously, and perhaps in a week or two, there’ll be a piano in my front room.
- M
Sunday June 22nd, 2014
Salvador came to me at Sanctuary one afternoon.
That’s significant enough I believe it needs to sit up there at the top on its own, because in all the years I’ve known him, I can count the number of times he’s been to my home on one hand. It also let me know before he even opened his mouth to speak that something was wrong. I am not usually his first port of call in a storm. Nor was I, it turned out, this time, but he needed someone to tell him what to do. That was what he wanted from me.
Sin is gone, and it has been years since my brother has seen him. He’s turned over every stone and found not a trace, and we can’t even turn to Mother in this case. After all, kindred leave no bodies for the Linewalker to collect. Once upon a time, the thought that Sin might be dead would’ve wrecked me, but it’s strange what absence can do. Time can render such savage changes I’m not sure if he were to come back that he’d know me, or I him. I couldn’t reach out to him as I once did. But there is a sadness in me, a dragging hollow when I remember what was. I think it might be mourning for that, and for how we let it fade. For Salvador it’s so much worse though, and in the end I told him to leave the home he shared with Sinjin, to leave it as a monument, but not to go back.
He seemed content with that. He’s done precisely as I advised and sunk his teeth into a new project, a new home. The focus helps, his enthusiasm is inspiring, and if you saw him out and about, you wouldn’t think for a moment that he’d spent the last two years searching for a lost lover. He hides it well, the pain, but it shows in flashes, in lapses of control, and no amount of lovers is going to fill the gap. Not to begin with, anyway.
One might.
Salvador and Rei, my brother and my Godson. Really, even for Rhy’Din it feels messy, but there’s a lot of history there, and despite my apprehension over the match, part of me feels like it was on the cards. I don’t know Rei nearly as well as I should, don’t know how he’ll cope with Salvador’s polygamous tendencies, but Sal and I talked when I visited him at his new place and it’s plain its already serious. Gem even said as much to me last night at the inn.
Speaking of last night, this was the first time in over a month that Evander and Gem have spoken, and it could’ve turned out far worse than it did. Wasn’t all smiles and forgiveness, wasn’t all bosom buddies and instant connection, but there’s a tentative peace now, something to build on, and I feel like I can breathe again. I want Evander to understand her significance to me, and I desperately want Gem to see all that’s so right in him. To see past the harsh exterior and to recognise the loyalty, the fierce protectiveness, and everything else that makes me feel right in ways no one else has.
Evander came back to me.
That’s significant enough to warrant segregation too. I suffered through a month of his independence without complaint, and then folded the moment he confessed he was miserable. I’d thought he might choose to return to his clan, to carve out a space for himself on the land they share with the Alfar, but he chose me. Someone chose to live with me. Someone who means everything to me. Did I do something good, karma?
There’s more to say. Cooper’s return (according to Ivanya, he assaulted some woman and made accusations of arson) brings mixed feelings, because I’ve had no word from him but can’t bring myself to be anything but grateful. Gem’s involvement with an Unseelie fey named Jack is ringing alarm bells, and yet it’s her choice, and to warn her off might as well be reverse psychology. I pray she’s learned the hard way where men are concerned, and that her intuition keeps her safe.
In the meantime I play observer. I work in the temple district, I search, cautiously, and perhaps in a week or two, there’ll be a piano in my front room.
- M
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[Journal excerpt]
Monday August 4th, 2014
In Bjorn’s homeland, we were attacked. Evander’s father lay on the other side of the northern mountains, and we’d been sent as envoys to secure his support and reinforce the rebel militia. It was cold, and when I say cold I mean ice in your eyelashes cold. You do not keep your bits out to piss any longer than necessary cold, unless you want ‘em snapping off ‘cause they froze. There wasn’t much in the way of living things, and out of sympathy, we’d released our messenger bird so it wouldn’t die in its cage.
Then there came a point where the land was empty. Everything had abandoned this particular stretch as if it was cursed.
It attacked from the air to begin with, breathing vapour on the trees we were riding through that we could feel, even from a distance, was the kind of cold that was gonna kill us. So we rode hard, trying to find some way to shake it and in the end we were flushed out into the open where there was no hiding, right at the foot of the mountains.
I’d never fought a dragon before. Run away from one, sure as Hell, and fought bigger things (like titans) at the side of an army, but this was a challenge, and for a while, we were warm trying to take the fucking down. We work well together, Evander and I, and when it could’ve wound up real grim, our injuries were superficial, and the dragon wound up dead. The death was exhilarating. There was so much more of it, such weight and strength to what snapped free of the flesh, the intelligence so alien, and before I knew it I was wide open to it. Soaking it up, breathing it in like air.
It made human life seem paltry. I felt infused in a way I haven’t since.
I’ve always been cautious of proceeding further with my necromancy. I’ve achieved everything I need to with it, and further down the road lies risk. I don’t want to turn into what I’ve seen others become. I don’t want to let it rule me. I’ve seen Niamh corrupted (albeit under very different circumstances) and I’ve seen Sedecla, still surviving some several thousand years after the bible’s reckonings, able to achieve feats which were unthinkable. Already I’ve changed to the point that Vadriel cannot heal me without hurting me any more (a sure sign some deity or other is frowning on me) and I cannot forget the words of the guardian, who made me forfeit my abilities in exchange for safe passage because he did not trust my control at the time.
The problem is, the longer I spend in the temple district working, the greater the temptation becomes to further my skills. It gets tedious performing the same tasks, and I itch for more. I feel cramped.
I’m cautious of telling Evander, in case he worries I’ll end up corrupted like her. Thankfully, he’s about the one thing serving to keep me from tackling anything more advanced, simply because so much of my time spent outside of working is tangled around him.
It feels foolish to ever have worried that living together might not work. That he might want his space, or feel smothered. There’s not often a moment we aren’t locked together, and when we aren’t, it’s probably what I’m thinking about. Trying to figure out how to jump him in the next room because sometimes, the weight difference requires the advantage of surprise for me to surpass it and actually pin him down. It’s tricky. My past relationships, I’ve always been the one having it my way. That worked fine with Michael, and Drew, and though Tanziel seemed to like a turn now and then, he knew my preferences and acquiesced more often than not, until in the end he complained I was not gentle often enough. Sam too, was more inclined to be beneath me. Evander’s entirely different.
Evander fights me for it, and somehow that makes me less inclined to mind, if he’s earned it.
Of course there’s other news. Rei and Salvador seem to be inseparable. Rei has taken to coming to Sanctuary several times a week in order to learn Latin, I can only assume so that he understands when Sal and I use the language to converse. He’s not the quickest student I’ve ever had, but he puts in the time, and that means a lot to a frustrated teacher (who usually keeps the lessons outside because the house needs cleaning up for various unmentionable reasons).
Gem seems to have developed really strong feelings for the fae I mentioned the last time I wrote, and while I suspect he still resents me for my early protectiveness of her, I’m happy for her so long as she doesn’t end up heartbroken.
And then there’s Dair, who I never expected to see again, and whom I doubt ever wanted to run into me, either. I’ve only seen him the once, so I expect he’s avoiding the hours I usually visit the inn where we came across one another. He seems to be doing okay. I’d even go so far as to say well, but he didn’t want me to mention him being back to Vadriel, and that prickled some. I always liked the guy, even if he was coarse and abrasive and probably didn’t think all that much of me since I wasn’t always kind to him. But Vadriel is good as a father to me, and my loyalty was sorely tested.
Turns out I didn’t need to say anything. Vadriel already knew, and between the two of them I’m bewildered. I’m taking Vadriel up to the settlement one evening this week after sundown, to meet with the Alfar Godsmen, perhaps to get acquainted with Bjorn’s clan. It struck me that if I take him to the white sapling they planted over their buried Mother, the dead might come talk to him. Maybe they’d like some messages. Maybe she’ll even wake to speak to them. And I think it’d be good for him to get out.
It’ll make a change to drop him in somewhere for help, instead of leading waifs and strays to his doorstep.
- M
Monday August 4th, 2014
In Bjorn’s homeland, we were attacked. Evander’s father lay on the other side of the northern mountains, and we’d been sent as envoys to secure his support and reinforce the rebel militia. It was cold, and when I say cold I mean ice in your eyelashes cold. You do not keep your bits out to piss any longer than necessary cold, unless you want ‘em snapping off ‘cause they froze. There wasn’t much in the way of living things, and out of sympathy, we’d released our messenger bird so it wouldn’t die in its cage.
Then there came a point where the land was empty. Everything had abandoned this particular stretch as if it was cursed.
It attacked from the air to begin with, breathing vapour on the trees we were riding through that we could feel, even from a distance, was the kind of cold that was gonna kill us. So we rode hard, trying to find some way to shake it and in the end we were flushed out into the open where there was no hiding, right at the foot of the mountains.
I’d never fought a dragon before. Run away from one, sure as Hell, and fought bigger things (like titans) at the side of an army, but this was a challenge, and for a while, we were warm trying to take the fucking down. We work well together, Evander and I, and when it could’ve wound up real grim, our injuries were superficial, and the dragon wound up dead. The death was exhilarating. There was so much more of it, such weight and strength to what snapped free of the flesh, the intelligence so alien, and before I knew it I was wide open to it. Soaking it up, breathing it in like air.
It made human life seem paltry. I felt infused in a way I haven’t since.
I’ve always been cautious of proceeding further with my necromancy. I’ve achieved everything I need to with it, and further down the road lies risk. I don’t want to turn into what I’ve seen others become. I don’t want to let it rule me. I’ve seen Niamh corrupted (albeit under very different circumstances) and I’ve seen Sedecla, still surviving some several thousand years after the bible’s reckonings, able to achieve feats which were unthinkable. Already I’ve changed to the point that Vadriel cannot heal me without hurting me any more (a sure sign some deity or other is frowning on me) and I cannot forget the words of the guardian, who made me forfeit my abilities in exchange for safe passage because he did not trust my control at the time.
The problem is, the longer I spend in the temple district working, the greater the temptation becomes to further my skills. It gets tedious performing the same tasks, and I itch for more. I feel cramped.
I’m cautious of telling Evander, in case he worries I’ll end up corrupted like her. Thankfully, he’s about the one thing serving to keep me from tackling anything more advanced, simply because so much of my time spent outside of working is tangled around him.
It feels foolish to ever have worried that living together might not work. That he might want his space, or feel smothered. There’s not often a moment we aren’t locked together, and when we aren’t, it’s probably what I’m thinking about. Trying to figure out how to jump him in the next room because sometimes, the weight difference requires the advantage of surprise for me to surpass it and actually pin him down. It’s tricky. My past relationships, I’ve always been the one having it my way. That worked fine with Michael, and Drew, and though Tanziel seemed to like a turn now and then, he knew my preferences and acquiesced more often than not, until in the end he complained I was not gentle often enough. Sam too, was more inclined to be beneath me. Evander’s entirely different.
Evander fights me for it, and somehow that makes me less inclined to mind, if he’s earned it.
Of course there’s other news. Rei and Salvador seem to be inseparable. Rei has taken to coming to Sanctuary several times a week in order to learn Latin, I can only assume so that he understands when Sal and I use the language to converse. He’s not the quickest student I’ve ever had, but he puts in the time, and that means a lot to a frustrated teacher (who usually keeps the lessons outside because the house needs cleaning up for various unmentionable reasons).
Gem seems to have developed really strong feelings for the fae I mentioned the last time I wrote, and while I suspect he still resents me for my early protectiveness of her, I’m happy for her so long as she doesn’t end up heartbroken.
And then there’s Dair, who I never expected to see again, and whom I doubt ever wanted to run into me, either. I’ve only seen him the once, so I expect he’s avoiding the hours I usually visit the inn where we came across one another. He seems to be doing okay. I’d even go so far as to say well, but he didn’t want me to mention him being back to Vadriel, and that prickled some. I always liked the guy, even if he was coarse and abrasive and probably didn’t think all that much of me since I wasn’t always kind to him. But Vadriel is good as a father to me, and my loyalty was sorely tested.
Turns out I didn’t need to say anything. Vadriel already knew, and between the two of them I’m bewildered. I’m taking Vadriel up to the settlement one evening this week after sundown, to meet with the Alfar Godsmen, perhaps to get acquainted with Bjorn’s clan. It struck me that if I take him to the white sapling they planted over their buried Mother, the dead might come talk to him. Maybe they’d like some messages. Maybe she’ll even wake to speak to them. And I think it’d be good for him to get out.
It’ll make a change to drop him in somewhere for help, instead of leading waifs and strays to his doorstep.
- M
Re: Insights (Volume I)
[Journal excerpt]
Sunday October 12th, 2014
This time last year, Rhy’Din and all the connections I had to it were cut off; I’d left with the Christos clan to retrieve Evander. I stayed longer away longer than was needed to accomplish that, and the whole season was swallowed up in war. I thought of nothing I was missing back here, never once had time to be thankful for the mercy of autumn losing her grasp on me. What was worse? Sleeping under the snow, exhausted and under constant threat? Or having no sleep whatsoever, and feeling like a livewire despite it?
I suspect it’s worse this year becauseof that severance; I’d gone a week without more than semi-drowsing before last night. Last night, I bled, and bled until there were sparks in my vision and the world dimmed, and what wasn’t in Evander’s mouth, or clotting up his throat, ran red into the drains. With hindsight, I shouldn’t have wasted it, but who has chance to think clearly when they’re suffering insomnia?
Today my head is clearer, and the world doesn’t feel like some smudged fever-dream. I have some balance back, and sex is less a remedy for my suffering and back to sex for the sake of it.
I spoke with Cassandra yesterday, and asked her how she fared with it. Perhaps better than I, and certainly better than Salvador, who will always feel it more keenly due to blood. I haven’t seen Cass in years, and almost didn’t believe it was her, but I shouldn’t be surprised considering I always felt she was the most grounded of our trio. She’d seen Salvador and Rei. Neither of us are keen to be too deeply involved in the situation.
It’s a fucking mess.
Sinjin returned (Tohias - is he Tohias anymore?) and my brother’s obsession with Rei, that love they’d declared for one another so early, somehow seems to have been smudged to near insignificance as a result. I doubt this was Sin’s intention. If anything, fate had a hand in the timing of his return, and my advice to my brother of months ago proved wrong. Move on could not have been a worse direction to give him.
Still, I can’t feel guilt for what has happened between Sal and Rei too heavily. I never told them to become so deeply involved, would never have, and I know if I’d cautioned them more than I did, they would have gone against it anyway. They’re young, and as Cass so eloquently put it, they were not thinking with their heads.
I can’t decide whether my brother’s handling of the situation and his attitude towards Rei is a subconscious attempt to repulse him and foster discontent between them, or whether it’s truly because they’re a bad match, but when he told me they’d parted ways, I couldn’t see so much as an ounce of regret. I could not see that this was a man who’d loved another. Only a boy who refused to recognise there had been anything real between them, anything worth saving. Perhaps it all seemed insignificant compared to having Sin back.
More than likely, Sal and Rei just didn’t know one another as well as they thought. Rei wanted Sal without realising he would never be what he wanted, just the same as Tanziel wanted me to begin with, and realised I would never change to become what he hoped for, or what he’d deceived himself into thinking I was. It’s a common mistake. Sal won’t change anymore than I would. There’s no point in declaring love and forever if you don’t know a man well enough, no matter how overwhelming those initial feelings are.
My brother will cope with all of this. Even knowing that Sin will leave again, he will cope. Rei will be cut deeper. There’s no one to love him, the way Sin loves my brother. But my door is always open to him, just as it is to Salvador, and I suspect they’re both very aware of that. As for Sin…
It was odd to see him again. There is no going back this time, no re-forging of bonds as we once did, and even though his reasons for being gone were pitiable, I couldn’t hate him. No more than I can hate him for being kindred. I felt a strange protectiveness, a sympathy I didn’t expect to feel, but I can offer him nothing more than my confidence if he wishes it. I would not give my life for his anymore as I once did, because I offer it undisputedly first and foremost to Evander, and to those people I call family. Yet Sin understood this. Sin, I think, has aged in the ways I have, evolved until there’s little of that old levity left to see. The clown rests in peace, and unearths his grave only to flash his smile in glimpses here and there. It gives me hope he’ll deal with his issues and come back safely. I also know that he knows how to handle Salvador, and that, for as long as he is around, is the best safety my brother can have.
Gem seems to have found that safety in a place I never thought she would. It seems she has entered into a strange, polygamous circle with the fae I mentioned in previous entries, and I suspect this to be the root cause of her reluctance to confide certain things to me. Does she think I would go and belittle her choices? I’m unsure. It troubles me to think she suspects I would judge her harshly. That she’s pregnant with the same fae’s child was another secret she said nothing of until recently, and yet knowing, I’ve realised that there are others she will turn to before me now. Others who she relies upon more heavily, and I can’t blame her for that.
Having a child, one who won’t be snatched away seems of the utmost importance to her. I think she’s wanted that for a very long time, and having a man of her own to partner her in its upbringing is relegated to a secondary importance. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it was entirely inessential. The child is everything. Having her ‘circle’ is a boon, but if it all fell apart, she would not.
I still don’t know if she’s aware that Kakabel is back in the city, or that he approached Rei at the inn, offering to talk. Offering that acquaintance they should’ve had almost a decade ago. I’l have to learn to bite my tongue about that bastard. My opinions should not colour Rei’s. It’s important he forms his own.
That doesn’t mean I don’t hope he hates his father though, because the man is a shit.
Vadriel would hate me for thinking of him that way, but I haven’t told him Kakabel is back, either. Vadriel, much to my surprise, seems to be doing everything in his power to claim some of his own life back, and though it’s only small-steps, I feel less as if I’m losing him, see more of the old disapproval in his eyes when I cause trouble, and the strength returning in the brief social interactions he engages in.
Weeks ago, I took him to the settlement to meet Bjorn and Ivanya’s people. I’m guilty of leaving him unattended amongst them, and taking advantage of a vacant stable to entertain Evander, but he provided them with a chance, an opportunity, and now they have the bit between their teeth and Ivanya’s head is full of ideas. Vadriel came away from the encounter feeling as if he’d failed, yet I think being forced into the situation proved to him that not everyone will treat him like a freak, and that even when the dead do clamour and crush and overwhelm, people like Isaiah exist. People who won’t flee and curse him.
I don’t know what happened between them, because neither will really speak of it, but perhaps there will be a friendship there one day. In the meantime, Vadriel slips out of his home after dark and has begun to visit the churches, and the charities he once worked alongside, to re-establish connections and prove to himself that he can manage without an escort.
I’m going to ask to borrow his vision, because I need to be able to interact with the Godsman’s sister without hurting her, so that she can guide us out to the burial place of Aela’s secret...cache or whatever it was. Either because I’m *** incompetent, or because autumn has withered my ability to think straight, I haven’t been able to find any other way to do it. Ivanya and I are going to ride out there in the next few days, and take Svana with us for safety’s sake. I haven’t told Evander yet, but I will. I have an intense dislike of being blind, and if we’re riding, I want to be sat in the saddle behind someone who’s not going to mind being crotch to backside with me for the better part of a day. Hell, he’d probably enjoy it.
- M
Sunday October 12th, 2014
This time last year, Rhy’Din and all the connections I had to it were cut off; I’d left with the Christos clan to retrieve Evander. I stayed longer away longer than was needed to accomplish that, and the whole season was swallowed up in war. I thought of nothing I was missing back here, never once had time to be thankful for the mercy of autumn losing her grasp on me. What was worse? Sleeping under the snow, exhausted and under constant threat? Or having no sleep whatsoever, and feeling like a livewire despite it?
I suspect it’s worse this year becauseof that severance; I’d gone a week without more than semi-drowsing before last night. Last night, I bled, and bled until there were sparks in my vision and the world dimmed, and what wasn’t in Evander’s mouth, or clotting up his throat, ran red into the drains. With hindsight, I shouldn’t have wasted it, but who has chance to think clearly when they’re suffering insomnia?
Today my head is clearer, and the world doesn’t feel like some smudged fever-dream. I have some balance back, and sex is less a remedy for my suffering and back to sex for the sake of it.
I spoke with Cassandra yesterday, and asked her how she fared with it. Perhaps better than I, and certainly better than Salvador, who will always feel it more keenly due to blood. I haven’t seen Cass in years, and almost didn’t believe it was her, but I shouldn’t be surprised considering I always felt she was the most grounded of our trio. She’d seen Salvador and Rei. Neither of us are keen to be too deeply involved in the situation.
It’s a fucking mess.
Sinjin returned (Tohias - is he Tohias anymore?) and my brother’s obsession with Rei, that love they’d declared for one another so early, somehow seems to have been smudged to near insignificance as a result. I doubt this was Sin’s intention. If anything, fate had a hand in the timing of his return, and my advice to my brother of months ago proved wrong. Move on could not have been a worse direction to give him.
Still, I can’t feel guilt for what has happened between Sal and Rei too heavily. I never told them to become so deeply involved, would never have, and I know if I’d cautioned them more than I did, they would have gone against it anyway. They’re young, and as Cass so eloquently put it, they were not thinking with their heads.
I can’t decide whether my brother’s handling of the situation and his attitude towards Rei is a subconscious attempt to repulse him and foster discontent between them, or whether it’s truly because they’re a bad match, but when he told me they’d parted ways, I couldn’t see so much as an ounce of regret. I could not see that this was a man who’d loved another. Only a boy who refused to recognise there had been anything real between them, anything worth saving. Perhaps it all seemed insignificant compared to having Sin back.
More than likely, Sal and Rei just didn’t know one another as well as they thought. Rei wanted Sal without realising he would never be what he wanted, just the same as Tanziel wanted me to begin with, and realised I would never change to become what he hoped for, or what he’d deceived himself into thinking I was. It’s a common mistake. Sal won’t change anymore than I would. There’s no point in declaring love and forever if you don’t know a man well enough, no matter how overwhelming those initial feelings are.
My brother will cope with all of this. Even knowing that Sin will leave again, he will cope. Rei will be cut deeper. There’s no one to love him, the way Sin loves my brother. But my door is always open to him, just as it is to Salvador, and I suspect they’re both very aware of that. As for Sin…
It was odd to see him again. There is no going back this time, no re-forging of bonds as we once did, and even though his reasons for being gone were pitiable, I couldn’t hate him. No more than I can hate him for being kindred. I felt a strange protectiveness, a sympathy I didn’t expect to feel, but I can offer him nothing more than my confidence if he wishes it. I would not give my life for his anymore as I once did, because I offer it undisputedly first and foremost to Evander, and to those people I call family. Yet Sin understood this. Sin, I think, has aged in the ways I have, evolved until there’s little of that old levity left to see. The clown rests in peace, and unearths his grave only to flash his smile in glimpses here and there. It gives me hope he’ll deal with his issues and come back safely. I also know that he knows how to handle Salvador, and that, for as long as he is around, is the best safety my brother can have.
Gem seems to have found that safety in a place I never thought she would. It seems she has entered into a strange, polygamous circle with the fae I mentioned in previous entries, and I suspect this to be the root cause of her reluctance to confide certain things to me. Does she think I would go and belittle her choices? I’m unsure. It troubles me to think she suspects I would judge her harshly. That she’s pregnant with the same fae’s child was another secret she said nothing of until recently, and yet knowing, I’ve realised that there are others she will turn to before me now. Others who she relies upon more heavily, and I can’t blame her for that.
Having a child, one who won’t be snatched away seems of the utmost importance to her. I think she’s wanted that for a very long time, and having a man of her own to partner her in its upbringing is relegated to a secondary importance. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if it was entirely inessential. The child is everything. Having her ‘circle’ is a boon, but if it all fell apart, she would not.
I still don’t know if she’s aware that Kakabel is back in the city, or that he approached Rei at the inn, offering to talk. Offering that acquaintance they should’ve had almost a decade ago. I’l have to learn to bite my tongue about that bastard. My opinions should not colour Rei’s. It’s important he forms his own.
That doesn’t mean I don’t hope he hates his father though, because the man is a shit.
Vadriel would hate me for thinking of him that way, but I haven’t told him Kakabel is back, either. Vadriel, much to my surprise, seems to be doing everything in his power to claim some of his own life back, and though it’s only small-steps, I feel less as if I’m losing him, see more of the old disapproval in his eyes when I cause trouble, and the strength returning in the brief social interactions he engages in.
Weeks ago, I took him to the settlement to meet Bjorn and Ivanya’s people. I’m guilty of leaving him unattended amongst them, and taking advantage of a vacant stable to entertain Evander, but he provided them with a chance, an opportunity, and now they have the bit between their teeth and Ivanya’s head is full of ideas. Vadriel came away from the encounter feeling as if he’d failed, yet I think being forced into the situation proved to him that not everyone will treat him like a freak, and that even when the dead do clamour and crush and overwhelm, people like Isaiah exist. People who won’t flee and curse him.
I don’t know what happened between them, because neither will really speak of it, but perhaps there will be a friendship there one day. In the meantime, Vadriel slips out of his home after dark and has begun to visit the churches, and the charities he once worked alongside, to re-establish connections and prove to himself that he can manage without an escort.
I’m going to ask to borrow his vision, because I need to be able to interact with the Godsman’s sister without hurting her, so that she can guide us out to the burial place of Aela’s secret...cache or whatever it was. Either because I’m *** incompetent, or because autumn has withered my ability to think straight, I haven’t been able to find any other way to do it. Ivanya and I are going to ride out there in the next few days, and take Svana with us for safety’s sake. I haven’t told Evander yet, but I will. I have an intense dislike of being blind, and if we’re riding, I want to be sat in the saddle behind someone who’s not going to mind being crotch to backside with me for the better part of a day. Hell, he’d probably enjoy it.
- M
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