sarcastass: (Face plus fist)
'Szelhamos' ([personal profile] sarcastass) wrote in [community profile] genessia2017-04-22 12:31 am

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.
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (rip out the wings of a butterfly)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 05:00 am (UTC)(link)
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.
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (this endless mercy mile)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 05:20 am (UTC)(link)
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.
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (nothing's what it seems to be)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 05:37 am (UTC)(link)
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?"
amberdrake: 2nd book's cover art of Drake (I seize the moment)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 05:47 am (UTC)(link)
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."
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (heaven ablaze in our eyes)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 06:04 am (UTC)(link)
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.
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (I follow the stars to my abode)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 06:26 am (UTC)(link)
"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?"
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (rip out the wings of a butterfly)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 06:31 am (UTC)(link)
"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?"
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (I follow the stars to my abode)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 06:40 am (UTC)(link)
"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."
amberdrake: 2nd book's cover art of Drake (I seize the moment)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 07:04 am (UTC)(link)
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."
amberdrake: (cause when I’m standing here in the dark)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 07:30 am (UTC)(link)
"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."
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (I follow the stars to my abode)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 07:53 am (UTC)(link)
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.
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (rip out the wings of a butterfly)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 08:24 am (UTC)(link)
"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.
amberdrake: Drake's lotus tattoo's lines (imagine there's no heaven)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-22 08:40 am (UTC)(link)
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.
amberdrake: Umid Yuldashev (rip out the wings of a butterfly)

[personal profile] amberdrake 2017-04-23 08:05 am (UTC)(link)
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."