genessia | Who Are You to Wave Your Finger?

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Who Are You to Wave Your Finger?

Who: Szelhamos and Amberdrake
What: I DON'T FEEL BAD ABOUT BEING AN ASSHOLE AND TO PROVE IT I'M GOING TO TALK TO A THERAPIST ABOUT HOW RIGHT I AM.
When: Early evening
Where: Drake's office in Attleton
Warnings: May edge into territories of past abuse/trauma. Will update warnings properly if this happens.

A good full day spent stewing. A full day, since Tannusen had snapped at him.

Unjustly so, hissed the old, familiar voice that dictated most of his thoughts these days. The line of thought he was sure always kept him neat and sane.

It isn't even his world. It's his own mistake for picking that human out of all the others here.
It isn't as if he was chosen just to spite him. He's over sensitive. Insane. A lunatic, none of this should be a surprise to me.

And yet that same voice was being quietly contested. A long forgotten one, long jammed into the background-

If it didn't matter, it wouldn't hurt. He knew that. So many other cuts like this he could laugh off,
wave away. How many times had he been insulted now before this point? By someone who actually mattered,
no less. By someone who had a real point and purpose to him. Someone who had a real impact on his life.
It shouldn't matter. The opinion of one love sick, desperate idiot shouldn't be enough to rattle him.

Coward. That one had hurt.

Levanael.

He'd activated the sphere then. Talked to it clearly, he remembered how chatty he-

... How chatty Levanael was. Never could shut his mouth for a moment. It shouldn't hurt. None of this should hurt. He shouldn't have felt anything at that stupid comment about the sphere to begin with, it was just another stupid little dig to get him going. If he'd kept his hand closer to him, he could have waved that off too and yet... He'd let something, no matter how minor, slip out.

You don't know me.

The spider paced about the main hall of his fortress, the gentle pleas from Midge to sit down, to eat or sleep or read falling on deaf ears. For once, the insects words were not making any headway at all, not even considered. It did nothing to soothe that open lesion in his mind that Tannusen had so easily scraped open with just a few stupid, insane words.

He had to talk to someone, someone who he knew would not offer petty condolences and agree with him, for once. He needed-

... He needed to talk. Just talk.

And that was how dear Drake ended up with a familiar face in his office, hair still unbound, falling around his back and shoulders, wings tightly pulled to his body. He didn't even have the time or consideration to hide them this time, using one to wave away the sweet smelling smoke he'd arrived in.

"We're going to talk."

Yep. That's how this is starting.

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Oh good, this again. Except even in the second before Amberdrake would have made some quip about charging the man, he notices that the stranger isn't exactly... high, this time.

No, distress is pouring off him like water.

"Very well," he sets aside the mending he was working on, folding his hands in his lap. Calm, always so calm, the very air around him seems permeated with it -- is permeated with it. A very low-level projection, not enough to impede a person's will, but enough to smooth the sharp edges just a little bit, for most.

For most, but the depths of Szel's distress was a bit hard to neatly smooth. It didn't stop him from moving in uncomfortably close though, feeling the assumed attempt to soothe his nerves.

Even if it didn't actually work, it was quite close to a smoker fumbling for a cigarette.

"Everyone has a reason for what they do. Nothing in life is done without reason, even the most far gone lunatic has his own motives for his actions, even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else.

The perception of good and evil is entirely subjective-

And I do not command fate itself. The situation I'm about to explain is beyond my personal control-"

You didn't have to hurt anyone to begin with

"It was a fluke and nothing more."

The Empathic kestra'chern could ramp it up, but not without cause, a request, or both.

"Sit down, if you like," Amberdrake offered, patting the other side of the couch that he was, himself, seated on. This one didn't have a back, and it was a little bit pulled away from the wall. Useful for wings, it was.

He moved his mending out of the way, strings of tiny beads clicking together and fabric whispering softly.

He did sit down.

For a moment.

"I-" Don't tell the whole fucking story.

"... There has been an injustice, in my own world. A great injustice, leveled against me."

If it had a just cause, was it really injustice?

"I sought to right this, to even the score." Revenge, of course.

"The tool of which as it seems, ended up here. This was not my plan, nor his, and he is unaware of his place in the original plan. It was not-" Not intended.

"He was not supposed to-"

That sounded bad too.

"... If he had never arrived here, then no one else-" WHY DOES HE CARE ABOUT HURTING ANYONE ELSE. There's a frustrated snarl, and he's up again, pacing, the temperature in the room slowly beginning to climb.

"He was not supposed to find that man here. An outsider, someone who was not intended to ever be in his life, or appear anywhere near him, had everything gone the way it was supposed to, no one else save for those responsible for this injustice would have been effected!

All who have wronged me would have suffered, and no one else!" Except everyone on earth. But according to Szel now, no one was innocent there.

"And he approaches me, and places blame upon me, as if I've personally attacked him!" Except that wasn't quite it. Because if he'd actually just attacked Tannusen himself, instead of damning Cassian, this would certainly not have gotten to this point.

"I am not to blame for his hardships!" Who, Szel? Tannusen or Cassian?

"It was not supposed to be for him!"

It wasn't a very clear explanation, but Amberdrake was both a patient and intelligent man. He listened calmly, hands folding together again in his lap.

"So... this all boils down to some form of revenge that gained more collateral damage than you expected."

Calm, so calm.

"This 'tool' of yours, is he someone who hurt you?"

No.

He couldn't even... say it either. There was no real way to spin it in a way that wouldn't sound terrible.

You shouldn't even care. Why would you care? He's a gnat.

There was no answer though, even as he struggled to yank the cold facade back up when it really had never been there to begin with.

Silence, huh?

"So, then... 'no'," Amberdrake said softly. "And I assume by the use of the distancing word 'tool', that this man would also suffer."

A creak sounded as his grip tensed around the golden spider atop his staff, but the silence lingered on, painfully so.

Indeed, that was the plan. He had not cared when he enacted it.

In fact, he had not cared for two thousand years, happily taunting and teasing Cassian every chance he could get at home. The priest still viewed him as mostly an annoyance, but he was sure that wouldn't last long.

Not anymore.

It hadn't meant anything before.

Before, when he hadn't had to deal with someone who actually... No one gave a shit about the man, he wasn't even supposed to be alive. No one was supposed to care about or like him.

It was an accident.

There's no such thing as an accident.

The wings flared sharply, the heat soared higher as the demon tried to keep from outright unraveling in this office.

Amberdrake sighed again, this time deeper.

"And now your 'tool' is here, and he's made a friend."

Or more than a friend?

Friends could certainly be angry on behalf of one another. The bit about 'hardships', though, that made him wonder a little bit. Friendships could be as strong as any other relationship, but something about this... surely the 'tool' had made a friend before.

And the stranger... he was acting like this was an unexpected development, something abnormal.

"What is your name?" That question was asked gently, because he hadn't caught it the last time. The verbal equivalent, especially in that tone, of offering a hand.

No, he wouldn't be an echo chamber, wouldn't try to tell the man he was justified. But that didn't mean he would be cruel. It didn't mean he couldn't be kind.

More than a friend, much more. He'd sussed that out pretty quickly, before he'd even started diving into Tannusen's mind. That was what had made it all the sweeter at the time. Indulging with Tannusen, knowing he had no idea what the connection was.

Short sighted.

He didn't know it would hurt.

He wished he did, if he'd kept his distance nothing would be wrong. He wouldn't-

There would have been no injury on his part. Just another enraged man who hated him who he didn't give a shit about. Some new fly to pick out of the web and eat.

"Szelhamos." The name came quick, barked. It was not just an answer, it almost sounded like an order. THAT was his name.

That was always his name.

It was never different.

"Szelhamos," Amberdrake repeated, just as gently as he'd asked for it. Much like the Faerie Szel was thinking about, Drake's pronunciation was flawless. Not a musician, but someone who spoke far too many languages to be clumsy.

"So this 'tool' of yours would suffer, although he has never harmed you. And now there is another involved, who rails against you for that same man's suffering."

That seemed like a good summary, to him. "Am I missing anything?"

No.

No he wasn't missing anything, that's what made it worse. If he'd fudged it, maybe, the truth would sting less. It wouldn't really be the truth anymore though. It was hard to deviate from it, really.

He didn't deserve it

"There is not a man, woman or child on the planet who can claim to be a complete innocent. Even if I had not interfered-"

He would have been dead at birth and spared any torture

His mouth clicked shut again, his brain running a mile a minute. Why did he even come here if he was just going to argue anyway?

If I wanted sense-

"No one is innocent."

"That's true," Amberdrake folded one leg over the other at the knee, his hands atop it. "Have you ever seen war, Szelhamos? Have you experienced it?"

"I participated in it." He wasn't saying he was innocent either. He wasn't, he knew that much, this much he could admit. Even if he couldn't bring himself to admit that his fall had been his own doing, he knew what had happened since then could not entirely be written off as 'necessary'.

"And was a casualty in it."

Hurled from heaven into the bowels of hell.

"Well then, you know that war consumes everyone, no matter how innocent... or not. Young, old, combatants and noncombatants. The very space it is waged in."

He had a point, and it wasn't a pleasant one, but the kestra'chern didn't flinch from it.

"I cannot fathom having experienced that..." Amberdrake sounded sad. Not apologetic, but sad. "And then wanting to inflict it on others."

See, that didn't get a good response.

With a thunderous flap of those wings, he freezes, a few stray feathers shaking free of them.

"You have no idea what my reasoning is. Why I did it, why it must happen! You cannot possibly conceive my situation!"

What would he have ever known? Human as he was? Incapable of understanding something of this depth, knowing the full magnitude of what happened.

"My reasons are my own, I don't need to rationalize them to you!"

Bells and beads all clacked and jangled at the flap, but Amberdrake remained as calm as ever. This was no different, to him, than speaking to an angered gryphon. A gryphon could take his head off in one snap of a beak, like breaking a twig. One bash of a powerful wing could shatter bone.

The kestra'chern remained as unflinching and steady as ever.

"Then why did you come here?"

It seemed to Amberdrake that Szel wanted to rationalize what he'd done, somehow, despite knowing there was no true rationalizing it.

"In attempting your revenge on those who have done you wrong, you have in turn become the one inflicting pain on those who have done nothing to you."

A sad, slight shake of his head.

"How quickly we become that which we hate."

Why did he? Some form of self punishment then? Better than sitting in the fortress, slipping back into an old memory again, replaying every motion, word and sensation in his mind and losing another few hours to that burning need to turn it all over in his head.

Again and again and again.

He wanted someone to talk to about this. Someone that he knew wouldn't just mindlessly agree. Maybe on some level, he'd hoped that if he told someone who was not Midge, and got an agreement, it would validate it. He wasn't wrong.

He was never wrong.

But he'd known it wasn't going to end that way, the moment he set foot in here. He didn't need to read the ending of this in some book to know that.

"They are all equally to blame, the sins of his creators falls upon him! If they didn't wish for their creations to suffer they'd not have written it to be! There is no such thing as an accident, no one suffers unless they were supposed to!"

"If that is the case," Amberdrake sighed, "then what is the point of revenge? There is no score to settle, no pain to avenge if the victim is meant to suffer."

The kestra'chern shut his eyes for a moment, saddened by this entire line of discussion. But this was his job, this was his purpose. An infected wound needed to be lanced and drained before it could ever heal.

"If they cannot blame the one who hurts them, then you cannot blame those who hurt you."

Which would make Szel's actions all the more terrible. Because what was there to even avenge? They'd been collateral damage in... nothing?

Amberdrake didn't buy that line of reasoning for a second. Not a single, solitary second.

No one deserved to be hurt.

No one.

"None of us are innocent, you say. No one is free of blame. Which path is the truth, I wonder? You cannot have both."

"The point is not revenge!" It was, but-

"It is to do away with a flawed system! What grand plan is it, to lie to your children, claim that they will be loved and safe, that there is a place and purpose for them, and then reveal their place is-"

Buried in hell.

Screaming for mercy.

Broken and bleeding, pushed to the brink and then past it until there was nothing left.

"The system of my world is crippled! Broken. There is no repairing it, it must be wiped entirely clean, salted and burned. There is no longer any chance of it ever becoming anything more than a mistake, a flawed and monstrous experiment!"

Amberdrake just watched him for a moment, thoughtful and sad.

"By that logic, no world is worthy of existence. There is nothing fair in life, there is no universe free of pain, war, or hatred."

It was too much, for many.

Amberdrake had watched so many give up, so many die. So many leave to never come back... gone, by their own hand.

But he'd also helped just as many. So many broken hearts, so many horrible stories. Children sold into slavery by parents, beaten and raped by those who should have protected them; cared for them.

None were ever the same.

Many of his worst cases, those who hadn't taken their own lives in privacy, or flung themselves at the enemy with an abandon that came of no longer wanting to feel...

More than a few had become kestra'chern, like him.

No one could understand suffering who had not themselves suffered.

And he's so caught up with emotion now, the next words fly from him like a lance.

"Then they will all burn! What good is a loving creator who cannot even be bothered to protect his own children!?"

His first children, no less.

The sound of grinding was growing, rusty, broken clock gears trying to turn properly, slowed to a near halt by corrosion.

"And then expect them to accept their place in the fire and not once turn their hand against him? To punish them when they seek redemption and retribution? Why fashion such a lie that there exists a place where no one needs to suffer? What could be gained from instilling false hope?

I'm not a monster! I am not some short sighted, selfish, cowardly villain! Surrounded by people who claim they can see, I feel as if I may be the only one among any of you with eyes!"

"I don't have an answer to that," Amberdrake sighed, "the Star-Eyed is not like that. We are taught to help one another, and to make of life what we can."

Fate, where he's from, is not fixed. The Goddess of his people demands only that those who want her help first help themselves. That if they call on her for aid, they be willing to pay a great price; they must have exhausted their other options, and be ready to do anything for the assistance.

Pain and suffering and horror still exists in abundance on Velgarth, but the Kaled'a'in have no concept of heaven, no carrot being dangled before them.

"Relying on the milk of the kindness of your peers is pointless. When you fail to right yourself, or to follow in the path you've been given, to meet expectations, when you fall short, your cup will go dry, and you will be abandoned for someone who can just as easily replace you.

There is no point in nurturing a soul that fails to meet the given standard. To fall short is to damn yourself to abandonment."

That reminded him so strongly of his own past, of his family and their expectations of him.

"I know," and he did. Quiet, soft, but not an ounce of guile. No deception. "It falls on us to either pick ourselves back up and continue, or... to give up. I've known many who did the former, and too many who did the latter. Like tending to the fallen in battle; some will make it, seemingly no matter the wounds. Others will die beneath your hands even as you hold them together and stitch."

Spoken, all of it, with experience.

I know he said.

He couldn't fathom the pain of it, just the barest human fraction. There was no way he'd understand it, not to the level Szel had.

Certainly not to the full extent, certainly not. Trying to gather himself back up again, rebuild those weakened and crumbling walls that Tannusen had almost too easily chipped away at.

"There is no way to escape what has been decided for you, and if it is your fate to be a cog, a knife or kindling, then you either accept it, or you destroy that system."

Now pulling himself back together.

It was a mistake to come here.

"It is either your destruction, or everyone elses. Which would matter more to you?"

Every kestra'chern made that choice nearly every day, Amberdrake especially. Not as literally as Szel meant, but still... nearly every day. To re-open their own wounds, to keep themselves fresh, their pain fresh, in order to help others with their own.

The Healer, called a martyr by more than one person who knew him well, always chose to help others.

Every time.

He wouldn't try to explain that, however. There was no point to it. No, he just continued his point.

"There is no middle ground? To survive, to better yourself, to make it to a position where you could help others do the same... if you so chose to. That's picking yourself up and continuing forward. That's fighting. That's beating the system, Szelhamos, if what the system wanted from you was lesser."

Perseverance, bucking the odds.

"But hurting other people who never did you any harm, that is something different. Revenge does little but make the one seeking it into the next monster, because there is no revenge that doesn't come with collateral damage. You say it's revenge, and then you say it's purely about a broken system -- and you want to wipe out existence. Is this a suicide pact that everyone who has never hurt you has also signed off on?"

A soft, soft sigh.

"I'm stating things that you already know, of course, but that is often a part of my job, to be the one to say it out loud. If you weren't aware, on some level, of what this is... you wouldn't be so upset that one of those people you're passing the pain onto has called you on it. You are expecting your 'tool' and his friend to accept their place in the fire, to be kindling. And this time, it's a fire that you've set."

As he'd said earlier; how quickly we become that which we hate.

"But I don't think you would have come here, if you didn't already know this," Amberdrake added, just as calmly as ever. "Now, we're about to start going in a circle. And while I will sit here and let you vent if you need to, and even make tea if you would like some, my opinion is that you should simply come back after you've had some time to think about what we've discussed."

There... really wasn't much he could say to that, was there? Drake had him at this point, even as he himself began to veer wildly off course.

Kindling for a fire, that was what he'd been expected to be. Not a cog or a weapon, just something tossed into a blaze to keep the world turning, a forgettable, meager sacrifice that no one would remember after a few years save for the briefest flash of pity.

And with Cassian, it would not even have been that. There'd have been no one left to even remember him, no heaven or hell or earth at all.

Another crack, this time as bone threatened to give when he gripped the cane.

The last word wasn't really a word inasmuch as a snarl, blackened feathers shaking free of his wings before he vanished in a far more acrid, chemical smelling plume of smoke, leaving coal dust colored plumage on the floor that would slowly crumble into so much stardust.

... This was far, far from the last meeting.

He knew that already, even as he swore he'd not be trying this again.

... He knew himself better than that.

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Who Are You to Wave Your Finger?

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