[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.]
[ 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.
[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.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 12:01 am (UTC)He really does. Put a kiss right in his beard for me.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 02:29 am (UTC)la dee da timelines schmimelines
Date: 2024-10-22 02:31 am (UTC)we on werewolf time
Date: 2024-10-22 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 02:55 am (UTC)I'm glad that he's not dead, obviously.
It's just complicated. I need to clear my head.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 03:23 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 03:33 am (UTC)Did you leave your own room behind already?
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 03:37 am (UTC)After the first deaths, yeah. Which feels like years ago, now. Would you rather stay there?
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 03:42 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 01:56 pm (UTC)I don't want you to be alone either, Tim. I really don't mind staying with you in my room for a little.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 02:13 pm (UTC)It's okay. Aemond has a spare room, I can go there.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 02:34 pm (UTC)Aemond.
Okay.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 02:48 pm (UTC)But just say it. I know he's...a handful.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 03:14 pm (UTC)Yes. Several handfuls. Armed and dangerous handfuls.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 03:54 pm (UTC)Can I come see you?
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 07:11 pm (UTC)I'll be there in ten.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-22 07:20 pm (UTC)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. ]
no subject
Date: 2024-10-23 01:08 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-23 02:25 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-23 03:25 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-23 03:49 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2024-10-24 03:49 am (UTC)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?
no subject
Date: 2024-10-24 03:56 pm (UTC)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.
cw: gore ig
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