holyposition | IC Inbox

What? Why? What happened? I've been visiting Louis, did something happen?

Embry's back. It turned into a fight.

I'm glad that he's not dead, obviously.

It's just complicated. I need to clear my head.

Oh, Tim. I'm so sorry. Yeah, you can come here. Of course you can. Luffy and the crew are in and out of the other room, but Quentin's side is usually just me and him.

That's a lot of people.

Did you leave your own room behind already?

Safety in numbers. Or something. After the first deaths, yeah. Which feels like years ago, now. Would you rather stay there?

[ The more people, the more likely one is a wolf. It's not over until the house says it's over. ]

Not alone. But not with people in and out all the time.

It's fine, I'm not gonna ask you to move. There's other people I can stay with.

We should be done soon. We have to be. I don't want you to be alone either, Tim. I really don't mind staying with you in my room for a little.

I have to go right now.

It's okay. Aemond has a spare room, I can go there.

[The loooooongest pause.]

Aemond. Okay.

It's not like that.

But just say it. I know he's...a handful.

Well, I know THAT. He's not exactly your type. Yes. Several handfuls. Armed and dangerous handfuls.

He won't hurt me. We're sworn brothers, somehow.

[

]

Can I come see you?

I’m in the chapel. But I don’t know how holy it can still be.

As holy as anywhere else, I guess? I'll be there in ten.

That's not comforting.

ok

[ He'll be counting prayers on a rosary in the front pew for the foreseeable future, more stressed now than on the morning after his near-murder. ]

[It takes Koby a little while, the perpetual migraine grown into something else, something like a throbbing, aching weight in his temples, his chest, everywhere he's used to feeling the easy, effortless flow of magic. Like it's blocked, like he's being walled off from it.

He ignores it, lets his feet fall noisily enough on the chapel floor to announce his presence. Hands in his pockets, he looks up at the window, the cross, the altar for a long, long moment.]

...you're right. It feels different now.

[ The footsteps behind him make his entire body tense as he whips around, his hands gripping the beads in his hand like he'll need them to defend himself, until he spots Koby. Just Koby. It's fine, if it's Koby.

Tim sniffles and wipes the tears from his eyes and cheeks with his sleeve, uselessly. He's not hiding it. He'll never be able to hide anything ever again, he thinks, all his limited capacity for underhandedness blown on this game and Hawk's secrets. ]

I would ask Father Keane if it's still sacrilege to burn it down if I build a new one, but. [ He's gone. Killed in this room. How sick is it, that he's grateful not to have scrubbed his blood out of the floorboards like he did Embry's? ] Maybe it doesn't matter. I don't think He's listening here.

Edited 2024-10-23 02:26 (UTC)

[Koby pauses a moment, holds up his hands, like -- what, like Tim is some sort of easily-spooked forest creature? Maybe. Maybe. He looks awful; exhausted and shivery and red-eyed from weeks and weeks of crying. Not in the chapel yet, though -- maybe that'll make a good change of pace?

But then Tim sniffles, and Koby's chest aches, thinking of him in the hallway, asking to stay the first time, thinking of the weeks that had followed, when the hardest thing facing them was sorting out how to exist here, how to love someone without constantly stumbling over and over it. That's still an issue, but it's so muddied now, so many secrets, so many deaths, so much pain. Koby almost wishes for the nights with a bottle of wine and Tim ranting about Hawk's ineffability, his exasperating qualities, met with flat recountings of the more absurd things the Straw Hats had gotten up to in the village.

And now: this. Here. The chapel, clean and scrubbed, but still tainted. Koby sits on the pew, folds his hands in his lap, bitten-down nails and ragged cuticles.]

I think it sounds nice. Cleansing by fire. Like lockdown again. [Koby glances over, scoots a little closer to Tim, not too close just -- in case. Just.] You could make something your own, not the Balfours. Not this house's.

[ He might as well be. A frightened baby deer jumping at every broken twig and mild growl, wide-eyed and running on wobbling legs to any place that might offer him safety. He prays for the deer’s determination, to keep going until he finds it or the mouth of a predator finds him, but he remains still, save for his fingers nervously rubbing at his rosary beads, paralyzed from the lack of direction. There’s no place for him that hasn’t been tainted by this violence and its fallout.

This place, if nowhere else, is supposed to be safe. When he can count on nothing else, he can count on his faith, and on the church to be a pure and holy place to rest his head, to clear it, to screw it back on. When this chapel was broken, Tim had mended it. When it was neglected, he brought it back to life with hard work and glistening varnish, giving it his love on his hands and knees. When it was empty, he filled it, with people across faiths and universes, taking the mantle he’s nowhere near qualified for so that someone might feel affirmed by it, so that maybe, if their prayers were said in unison, they might be heard.

Tim’s devotion has gone unanswered, but for the memory of the pool of blood that was right beneath where Koby’s shoes press against the floorboards now. His haven, desecrated. Koby’s, crawling with people to bump about, startle, disbelieve him. Tim’s own rooms, and the hands that he’s called home since long before Saltburnt, caught up in the chaos and bloodied. A crime of passion.

What is this place good for, if not adding fuel to that fire? ]

Can I? Is that even possible? [ Breathing out carefully, shaky, as he moves closer. Koby is safe. Koby is safe. ] It corrupts everything.

[Even without his extra senses, Koby can feel Tim's grief, his pain, his fear. There's so much inside him, so much hurt and confusion and, over it all, the desperate need to do better, be better, to help people and build something in this unsafe, unpredictable place. Tim's a good person, and he's in a place full of people who are the opposite, or are somewhere in between, or are taken and twisted and treated like puppets to fulfill some great and terrible purpose.

Or maybe it's just for fun. Maybe all this pain, all this fear, all this violence is just because they (the house, the Balfours, whoever, whatever's in charge) were bored. Maybe the grief written across Tim's face is just to satisfy some cosmic passing fancy.

Koby doesn't know. He can't know. He's tried and tried and tried to figure it out and it eludes and it escapes him. All he knows is that Tim is a good person, and that he's Koby's friend, and he's suffering. So there's a weak attempt at a smile, a gentle hand slipped across the pew, finding Tim's, covering it lightly. Koby knows: the game isn't over, and there's no role or attack attempt that would solidify his innocence. There's still a wolf out there. But he's himself, in that moment, no puppeteering, no control from malevolent forces.]

Not you. Not me. It -- touches us, yeah, but. I'm still me. You're still you. It hasn't taken that away yet, right?

[ that’s a question he can’t answer right away, but he squeezes Koby’s hand while he thinks. It’s meant to be reassuring, he knows, but it’s just another minefield, a question from a philosophy class where Bob had been nervously biting his own lip across the room. Theseus' Paradox. How many pieces of a ship have to be replaced before it becomes another ship? How many parts of his soul have to be whittled and warped before it becomes a different one? ]

Hasn’t it? I’m not the same. I said I gave up Alia for the greater good, but when it’s time for me to really act I do it like a coward. I’ve been bartering with lives, lying to everyone because I’m afraid or Hawk tells me to – I lied about Embry, to you, to Alicent, to everyone. And I’ll keep doing it, just making compromises until there’s nothing whole still there.

[ Tim’s seen this before, from the next room over, watching the shadows through the bottom crack as they made their closed-door deals, organized their witch hunts with evidence that grew more and more absurd, promising to scratch each other’s backs as people died around them. Once, he believed that on the other side of that door, democracy was being saved. By the time he learned that it was nothing but rot, it was too late – for him, for Caroline, for Senator Smith, for everyone else who had their lives ruined or ended for the egos of a few powerful people.

It's disturbing enough to be on the inside of the room, driving these decisions. To be successful at it? That’s no victory. There's no pride in it. Whatever momentary satisfaction he got from putting Danny away has been ruined now. He'd just been setting him up to be killed. ]

I'm not a wolf, but my hands aren't clean. There are people dead, because of me.

[Tim says these things, all these aching, terrible things, but he curls his hand into Koby’s and that’s something. That’s a tether, an anchor, a line that’ll keep them both on earth (he hopes, he hopes). The turmoil on Tim’s face is above all familiar, that realization that nothing is simple, nothing is either wholly terrible or wholly pure, no matter how much they try. It’s all a snarled, tangled, painful web that keeps stretching out and out and out. Spider, Aemond had called Koby. Weak, useless, pathetic little coward, someone else had. Are those the only two options?]

I lied to you too. [Softer, reminding Tim, both hands covering the one he’s been given, scarred knuckles and callused palms.] Or – misled you, at least. I sat in your room and listened to you debate and I never mentioned that Usopp had seen anything. I told my crew about Alexei, about his world because I was afraid of him, and it hurt people who were innocent. I – named Louis, who’s been nothing but kind and wonderful to me, and I voted for him to be taken down to a prison where at least one person’s died.

[A long beat, a look downward at their joined hands, an audible swallow.] At home I was – in charge of cleaning up after executions. On the ship. I’d stand there and watch while Alvida beat someone’s head in. I’d listen to them beg and cry for their lives and I’d do nothing. Just – wait until they were just smears of blood on the deck. And then I’d mop it up and wait for the next one. [He inhales, leaning a little closer, pressing his shoulder to Tim’s, like he needs the support.] If you’re a coward, I’m a coward. If there’s blood on your hands, there’s so, so much more on mine.

[It’s out there, raw and aching and bleeding, and Koby’s head is swimming, throbbing from the strain of it, from the urge to bolt, to press the terrible terrible things he’d done back into the box in his head, pretend it’s not there. Pretend that story and all the other things he’d done or had done to him never happened. But he looks up, instead, teary-eyed and stricken and so, so tired.] Or – maybe we’re both just seeing how much we can live with. How much suffering we can cause, indirectly or not, and still keep getting up in the morning and trying to be good people.

I don’t know, Tim. I'm sorry.

[ He opens his mouth to make a frustrated snap – not at Koby, but at Hawk – because there’s no reason to worry about Louis down in the dungeon, is there? Not when the dungeon strangler is a friend of his, and he’s sitting pretty in Tim’s room guzzling down scotch after their latest fight about it.

But he says nothing, not to hide, but because he doesn’t want to interrupt Koby’s story, as gruesome as it is. It only makes him angrier. Is that why he’s been judged to suffer in this place? For not standing up to an entire crew of violent pirates with only a mop and bucket? It would be suicide, and that too is a sin. What was he supposed to do? ]

You’re not a coward. She would have just killed you, and then you never would have escaped, or made it here, or been any help to anyone. You survived.

[ As for the rest, he sighs. Says nothing. The goal should be to cause no suffering at all, but being in this manor and playing this game makes that impossible. Tim pulls his hand free from Koby’s to wrap around his shoulders instead, pulling him into his chest, while his other hand still anxiously rubs at his beads. ]

We’ll survive. And we’ll make things right once it’s over.

[It feels -- odd to have it out, like that. The knowledge of Koby's own participation (albeit by inaction) in two years of death and violence and carnage feels like a weight, like something he can't shrug off, no matter how he tries, like it'll follow him forever, clinging at his heels and hissing his name. He feels that shame now, thinks of his lofty attempts at being kind or strong or fair during this awful month, and how he'd done none of that on Alvida's ship. How he'd been too scared to breathe even a word of dissent.

Tim's arm lands warm and reassuring across his shoulders, and Koby turns in towards him, letting out a shuddery exhale as he does.] Then that's what we're doing now. Surviving. We can -- fix things when this is all over, you're right. [A stretch of peace, a break...it sounds pretty damn appealing right about now.]

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holyposition - 2024-11-05 16:32 (UTC) - Expand

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