[Partway up the corridor, Nikos stops. Marks the movement he'd thought he had seen. Waits, until he sees it again. He doesn't reach for his dagger. His arm tightens, unremarkably. He walks forward a few more paces, comes more fully into view.
It is light, he realizes, a moment later. Too faint, too shivery to be any flame. And, now he sees it: Kostos, and with a sigh, Nikos picks up his pace. Because he might as well.
He's wearing a dark cloak, and as he gets closer, he shifts his arm so the package he's carrying stays well beneath it. There's a faint smell of wine to him, as usual. If he'd not had so much to drink he might have concealed the package a little sooner. As it is, it might go unnoticed.
Then again, Kostos is an irritating shit.
Nikos walks right past his brother, and the tiny light. Shoves open his door and goes into his small room and immediately starts banging around in there, taking off his cloak, chucking it on the bed with the package wrapped within, fumbling to light a candle and get wine and, you know, things. Things people do in their room. He pointedly does not talk first.
[ Because they're brothers, Kostos steps through it.
Because that only counts for so much, in their case, he doesn't do more than that. Doesn't invite himself to sit. Doesn't touch anything. He stands just inside the doorway for few seconds, watching Nikos move around his space with as much reserved interest as if he were watching some unfamiliar cultural ritual, before he reaches back to shut the door. ]
I need you to do something for me.
[ The wisp has followed him in. It takes the visitor watching an unfamiliar ritual thing even further, zooming ahead to look (eyelessly; it's a ball of light) Nikos in the face with a brring noise that, to people who speak brr, is distinctly baffled. There Are Two.
If Kostos notices that his seriousness is being undermined by the spirit—and he does, his eyebrows twitch—he refuses to acknowledge it. ]
[Nikos keeps his back deliberately turned, so he is not facing Kostos. The sound of wine pouring doesn't drown out the sound of the door closing. He turns around, wine in hand, one arm crossed and pinned against his side with his elbow. It's a very defensive stance, even if he's leaning against the low table up against the wall.
Leaves him perfectly open for the wisp to get right in his face, too. Nikos frowns, much more openly than his brother. He twitches his head, either to banish the wisp the way he would banish an annoying dog, or to try to throw it off.]
Must not be very important. [Trying, gamely, to ignore the inquisitive little light but still wearing that frown, Nikos takes a drink of his wine and then gestures, with the cup. Go on.] What is it. Make a good enough case and I'll consider.
Edited (who am i with this grammar) Date: 2018-05-29 02:02 pm (UTC)
[ While the wisp attempts to look inside Nikos' ear to see what fascinating things might live there, Kostos takes his time unfolding his arms and uncurling his first from around the small package inside it. Vial sized, to be precise, and wrapped in paper that isn't entirely thick enough to hide the way the blood inside is glowing. ]
Keep this.
[ He isn't very good at asking for favors. However he actually means it, it sounds more like an order. ]
And don't tell anyone, unless it becomes—
[ Necessary. To make sure he's brought in, or put down, or whatever else. It isn't very important, or at least not very hard, but there's no one else to ask. His friends would tell him to destroy it. His enemies would use it before the point he agrees it would be necessary. But Nikos is family, and Nikos also has an arm covered in shatter-patterned scars. Kostos closes his mouth and works his jaw for a moment, then decides not to finish the sentence at all and holds the package out, straight-armed and crisp as a military salute. ]
[The stupid wisp ruins Nikos' blasé attitude before Kostos finishes the unveiling. It's a quick reveal, but quicker still is the duration of Nikos' patience. He can see the light out of the corner of his eye, maddening and distracting, hovering way too close for him to be able to suffer it.
With a scowl, he waves his hand. Quick, tight, trying to remain surreptitious about it so Kostos doesn't call him out. It doesn't work. He tries it again, with a little more force, and by then Kostos is holding something out to him, ordering him to--]
What, [Nikos says, first, and then, almost automatically,] No.
[--Because he was born to refuse Kostos, has been refusing Kostos unequivocally for their entire shared lives, and Kostos has been doing the same to him, when he wasn't holding something over Nikos' head. Or vice-versa. The roles could reverse just as easily.
He puts together a moment later what it is that he is being charged with. All that talk over the crystals on phylacteries has put it firmly in mind, and Nikos has a decent understanding of what is involved, and what is at stake--and, more importantly, what he is being asked, what he would have charge of. he has more of an opinion than not. If asked, he'd give a route and expected response: basic freedom should be a guarantee. The defense would quickly crumble, and Nikos' true belligerent feelings would be exposed. He does believe in freedom. He believes in his personal connections more.
He lifts his chin. Meets Kostos' eye. Tries, gamely, to ignore the stupid fucking wisp hovering still too close to him.]
[ The straight line of his arm doesn't bend, when Nikos says no, but it does angle further downward—not in defeat, but in preparation for a prolonged struggle. Energy conservation. So his arm doesn't get sore while he convinces Nikos to definitely do this definitely correct and necessary thing. As if Kostos is really going to have the patience to spend that much time trying. ]
I have something to do with you.
[ Something. Maybe not much of something. Shared blood, shared face, shared childhood until, and then not all that much after. It might not be particularly fair of him to ask this, or to ask anything. But in his experience fair has had minimal correlation to correct or necessary.
The wisp—having previously swirled around Nikos' batting hand like a fish under water—begins making an attempt to slide up his sleeve, and that's as much indignity as Kostos is willing to subject him to, only partly because he doesn't have any particular desire to be the recipient of mental impressions of what's beneath his brother's clothes. Looking isn't necessary to make it stop, but he breaks off their stubborn-face staring competition to glance at it out of unsubtle habit, while he thinks no in its general direction, and it backs off to a more respectful distance. Six whole inches. The shimmery humming sound continues. ]
I can't send it to Mother and Father.
[ —because that's the only other logical possibility here. ]
Why not, [Nikos snaps back. Kostos may have saved him from investigation from the wisp, but he is in no way going to show gratefulness for that small mercy. He folds his arms over his chest instead, trapping close the ends of his sleeves.] The house in Antiva would be the perfect place for it. Stored safely away, where you never have to see it.
[Because, you know. He never sees their parents. And neither does Nikos, really, but in comparison to Kostos, he has been a dutiful son. Which is sad. And not entirely Kostos' fault, if Nikos were inclined to be honest, but he isn't, who fucking cares about honesty. It is a fact, and facts are weapons right now. THis one is unlikely to hurt Kostos too badly. Perhaps it will be enough to draw blood.]
I don't want it. I don't want--
[There aren't words, for what he doesn't want about this. It's more like an inexpressible sludge. Rotten, tangled up, something bloated and dead in a net. Phylacteries can control and contain a mage. The lack of control and containment is what rent that gaping hole, the until. Nikos should take the phylactery. He should do what Kostos asks. Instead he is thinking very deliberately about kicking him in the hand. Hard enough that he might drop the bloody phylactery.]
If I wanted you taken out, I'd do it myself. I wouldn't use-- that. A tool of fucking containment.
[ Flat, with doubt not in Nikos' emotional ability to kill his own brother, not in his physical ability to kill nearly anyone else, just in his ability to singlehandedly kill a—a whatever Kostos would be, if he needed killing. What kind of abomination. He could guess.
But he lowers his arm further, bends it, tightens his fist around the vial, begins to think it isn't worth the trouble. He can't send it to Antiva (like a well-landed elbow in beneath the lowest rib) because he would have to take it himself, look their parents in the eyes, accept the gifts, accept the hands on his face, and ask them to be ready to choose.
And he doesn't trust them to. Not really. Last time they acted too late.
But he isn't going to beg. He holds out his hand toward the wisp, which lingers stubbornly near Nikos for a few seconds before drifting back to Kostos. ]
Maybe you should be training Templars. They could use the help.
Oh, fuck off. [Nikos all ready to be angry, so it's easy for those words to be a snarl.] That doesn't even make sense, you idiot. What is you think I'd be doing for the fucking Templars. An outdated order of-- stodgy moronic, followers, upholding old traditions, using their dubious power to subdue and cow--
[He cuts off with an irritated noise and turns away to set his wine down, heavily. No words even for what he thinks of Templars. Words aren't his strong suit anyways. Nikos consumes words, stores them up, deploys them like knives when he's clear-headed enough to do so, but right now--
Maker's balls. Could he even say why he's as angry as he is? No. Nothing he wants to try to articulate or put into words, emotions he doesn't want to dredge up from the depths he keeps them in. It is easier to get angry, to glare at Kostos and his stupid fucking vial and the responsibility he is asking Nikos to hold for him. I have something to do with you--well, since when, Nikos wants to bite back, since when, because he hasn't seen Kostos in years, because looking at him makes him feel sick, sometimes, and not because of blame. The urge to scratch at his scar doesn't rise, not with Kostos. Maybe because he's forced it down. Schooled himself, in carriage rides. Chastised himself, when nerves made his fingers twitch. Be my friend in every letter he wrote, between the boring lines about tutors, about the weather, please come home, and instead he signed his name and dripped wax on the envelope and pretended he didn't give a shit when it went unanswered.
And then it didn't matter anymore. Twenty years ago, Nikos would have taken his brother's phylactery. He would have felt honored. It would have felt like something. A gesture, a promise, a trust. It doesn't matter anymore.]
Why don't you just wreck it. Isn't that what half this shit was about? Destroy it. Drop it off a cliff, give it to your friends, let them figure out how to put you down in some humane way if you-- Why not that?
[ That's a good question that Kostos would prefer not to answer, to which end he spends a few seconds—two, four, six, and Thedas doesn't have enough clocks for there to be a ticking sound, but there is the wisp's shimmery hum, like a more charming fly, to be noticeably louder in the silence—flexing his hand near-imperceptibly around the wrapped phylactery. He clocks in around eleven seconds, total. ]
They don't understand.
[ He could say wrecking it was what half this shit was about. They would drop it off a cliff for him, or shout at him until he did—or they would keep it, but they would wait too long, when they wouldn't have the right to. He could say Nikos would have the right to hesitate, if he wanted to. He's the one with the scars. He could say he's dug a moat without a bridge, twenty years wide, and he knows neither who it's meant to protect anymore or how to get across it.
All of that would sound stupid. He folds his arms, and the vial disappears into his armpit. ]
But I don't want to inconvenience you. I'm sure space in your sock drawer is fucking precious, so—
[ So. The wisp is hovering around his head now instead, looking inside his ears, insistently brring over the resemblance. Kostos endures it without moving, because he doesn't need to move to know what it's going on about, and to assign much more complexity and judgment to it than it's actually capable of: ]
[Irritated that the wisp is interrupting this argument, Nikos waves his hand, trying to distract or dislodge it without looking at it. He's looking at his brother instead, stood across from him. Like looking in a more perfect mirror.]
It thinks that? [Maybe the wisp does think that. But damned if that's not Kostos also trying to be a bitch in the same breath.] I'm not going to.
[That he directs at the wisp, with an off-side glare--and, because he feels stupid talking to a glowing ball of light, he accompanies it with another wave of his hand, if necessary.
They were never friends. Allies, at best. United through necessity, after careful negotiation, pacts, bribes. Likely to turn on each other for a better ally, or sometimes just for the chance to see the other in trouble. But it was something. And then it was gone.]
You came all the way here thinking you were going to instruct me to take it, and I'd just fall into line? Framed as a question, but it doesn't matter, it's obedience, lest I be banished. [That old childhood threat, firstborn son to secondborn son.] Good one, Kos. So what, then. If I don't take it, and you're not giving it to your friends, and you're not destroying it. Then what happens to it now.
[ Kostos hates to say I don’t know almost as much as I was wrong, so he doesn’t. ]
If it isn’t your concern, then it isn’t your concern, [ a pause; a vengeful addition of, ] Nik.
[ Maybe he’ll give it back to the Chantry, quietly, when no one who would judge him is looking. That would be the Loyalist thing to do. But there are loyalties that supersede, and if the Chantry can find him, it can find whoever he’s with.
Maybe he’ll destroy it. Maybe. Nikos told him to, however offhand and angry, and maybe that ought to be good enough. If anyone left in the world can give him permission. Not forgiveness—Kostos never wanted it, because he never wanted for it, never felt like he'd earned the blameless patience and clockwork visits. If their mother had refused to come at first, if his father had stormed out of the room, if Nikos had hit him. If it hadn't felt like an agreement they'd come to, when he wasn't there to hear what they really felt. Maybe then he would have wanted it.
He unfolds one arm to rub his mouth with the knuckles of his empty hand, glaring at Nikos' unshaven face. It was Nikos' face alone before it was his own, when they were small and the mirrors were high. Friends or not, it took a while for him to stop seeing his reflection—a little off, even then, never quite the same degree of dark mischief around the eyes—and missing his brother.
But that was decades ago. ]
Are you really refusing because I didn’t ask nicely enough? [ Incredulous. But a genuine question, too. ] Do you need me to say please?
[The nickname had slipped out inadvertently, not intended as a weapon. Kostos, true to form, turns it against him. Nikos, true to form, feels the pinch of anger in his chest, that he was outwitted, that he'd missed the opportunity for a strike. Always one step behind. Age five, age fifteen, age thirty, it doesn't matter. This pisses him off.]
Depends. Would you deign to say please? [He tips his head, expectant sarcasm.] I do feel honored that you're talking to me at all. It's so much more pleasant than chasing around a glimpse of you in profile from the other end of a long table in some shit Circle library. I used to pretend that was a game.
[--Which sounds more pathetic than it is. In truth, it made Nikos angry. Once Nikos told Marisol that she could befriend her reflection, and she'd spent the morning staring into a pool of water in the garden, talking to herself. She'd had fun with it. So it hadn't been satisfying, or as funny as he'd remembered it being, when it was a trick he and Kostos had played on Keto. And that's what visiting Kostos had felt like. Nikos at one end of a table and his brother at the other. And every time he moved, to try to get in Kostos' line of sight, Kostos would look away. Very grim, very blasé. Nikos left bitemarks on the windowsill of the carriage. He'd chew at it in frustration all the way home.]
Because I was an idiot. [If he says it first, no one can insult him.] Will you choke, if you say please? As long as you don't die, I can stand to watch you choke. A little.
[ At least Nikos doesn’t want him to die. That’s something. It’s not enough of something that Kostos doesn’t spend a few seconds glaring across the room at his brother, sullen focus unwavering even when the wisp drifts between them. But it is enough—not the fact that Nikos doesn’t want him to die, but the fact he said so, in the midst of all that—that he doesn’t turn and storm off to find something to kick and something different to drink.
Later he’ll think about the expanse of the table in the Circle, Nikos at nine, the space he and Keto left for him to occupy alone in that enormous house, and then he’ll probably open a bottle.
Now, he doesn’t choke. Quite. He grits his teeth, jaw flexing, and unfolds his arms, and looks at the bundle in his hands, and says it quickly: ]
Please.
[ The fabric of the universe doesn’t unravel. Kostos takes a breath and a half step forward, just one foot. ]
Nikos. Do whatever you want with it, I don’t— [ —care, but he does, intensely. ] No one else has the right.
[Like tricking Marisol, this please is dissatisfying. Or at least not as satisfying as Nikos would have wanted. His heartbeat is weirdly loud in his head, and he can feel his pulse in his fingertips, and he wants very badly to scratch at his right arm, that compulsive urge that he has never quite managed to put aside.
Instead he clenches his hands into fists. The deep-down feeling spirals on, in his chest. He glares at Kostos. Not at the bundle, or the wisp, or anything else in this stupid fucking room in stupid fucking Kirkwall.]
I didn't ask for it. [It comes out more sullen than earnest, stilted by how his jaw feels tight like a bear trap. But so what.] The-- right. I didn't ask.
[The responsibility. The obligation. It would all have been easier, maybe, if Nikos had grown up hating his brother, but he didn't. Couldn't. Fighting like wild dogs wasn't the same as hate.
He makes himself look, finally, at the bundle in Kostos' hands. A thing that could obliterate his brother.
Brusque, abrupt, wordless, he holds out his hand.]
He doesn't spend time deciding before pressing the wrapped phylactery into Nikos' hand, his own darting forward and back without hesitation or lingering. Possible eagerness to be rid of it and possible concern Nikos might change his mind if Kostos opens his mouth and says the wrong thing are equally plausible explanations, but for the record it's the latter slightly more than the former.
That taken care of, he returns to the problem of what he's supposed to say to that. ] I know, [ isn't enough. But I'm sorry is out of the question, when he's already spit out a please, no matter how true it is and has been for the majority of their lives. So is neither did I, because it doesn't matter what Kostos asked for anymore than it matters whether or not a man asked for the plague. It's still fucking shitty to ask someone healthy to come around to do the dishes.
And thank you is just stupid. The last time he said thank you to Nikos was at one of those long Circle tables, distantly, picking at the edges of paper around a gift he never opened, and not really to Nikos so much as the whole set of Averesches he was avoiding looking at. The first time might have been when he asked him to knock out his front baby teeth so they could keep pace, keep confusing the tutor, and then it was mainly for the fun of fumbling the th sound through his new gap. ]
—I owe you.
[ Also stupid, insufficient, doubtful Nikos will ever need anything from him enough to ask, but it's said, so that's that. To prove it—or to make an inadequate little step in that direction, at least—he gestures, and the wisp and its hum disappear, like a fistful of sediment released back into a river. ]
[The phylactery doesn't feel like anything. Almost weightless. Whatever Nikos expected, this isn't it. Was he making it bigger, weightier, because of the way Kostos was acting about it? Or because of what he knows of phylacteries?--societally, socially, religiously, out of hearsay and books alike, thanks to all those years of private education.
Nikos turns away and puts the wrapped package down on the table, next to his jug of wine. With his back to Kostos, he uses his index finger to push the phylactery closer to the stack of books, keeping it away from the edge. It still looks small and rather stupid.]
They make these too important. [--instead of saying anything about what he is or isn't owed.] Everyone. You, the Circles, the Templars. They make these too important. Just because a man has a weapon that could--level a city-- but no one makes a phylactery for a king to keep him in line. He has an army. He could do fucking anything. They don't care.
[He picks up his cup of wine and drains the last of it. Picks up the jug and pours out, again.]
It's red, [he says, to Kostos, without looking at him.] Almost fitting.
[Like blood. Get it? It's his turn to push something on Kostos. And he turns right around and does, with the jug still in his hand, without couching the offer with words. The cup of wine that he was just drinking from, and it was dirty when he started drinking from it, so it's doubly dirty now. He holds it out to his brother all the same.]
[ It isn't the same. But Kostos can't say that it isn't the same, because the reason why—if a king woke in the middle of the night and ordered his army to slaughter his family, they would send him back to bed—is, if not an open wound, at least a favored ankle, liable to twist again under pressure.
He can't say it, but his brow furrows and his head tilts in obvious disagreeableness, all before the dirty cup is offered, at which point the furrow deepens. He's put worse in this mouth, by far. But it feels like a detente, when they haven't discussed terms, and that's—
He takes the cup, but he tips it toward Nikos first, in warning. ]
Do not try to recruit me. [ Without much feeling. He doesn't think Nikos would; he isn't sure how much he would really object to the ideas Nikos and his friends advocate, anymore, if pressed past the point of disagreeing out of habit. ] But do keep comparing me to a king. I like that part.
[With an equal lack of feeling, Nikos advises,] Fuck off.
[Dirty cup is better than jug, which is what Nikos uses as his cup: a swig, directly from the mouth. There isn't much left to it, a knowledge that scratches at Nikos somewhere below even the prickly tense feeling under the scar and skin of his right arm.
He meets Kostos' eye anyways, his gaze even and unimpressed.]
I wouldn't want you anyways. Questionable loyalties and a fucking awful lot of debt.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2018-05-12 12:03 am (UTC)It is light, he realizes, a moment later. Too faint, too shivery to be any flame. And, now he sees it: Kostos, and with a sigh, Nikos picks up his pace. Because he might as well.
He's wearing a dark cloak, and as he gets closer, he shifts his arm so the package he's carrying stays well beneath it. There's a faint smell of wine to him, as usual. If he'd not had so much to drink he might have concealed the package a little sooner. As it is, it might go unnoticed.
Then again, Kostos is an irritating shit.
Nikos walks right past his brother, and the tiny light. Shoves open his door and goes into his small room and immediately starts banging around in there, taking off his cloak, chucking it on the bed with the package wrapped within, fumbling to light a candle and get wine and, you know, things. Things people do in their room. He pointedly does not talk first.
He does leave the door open.]
no subject
Date: 2018-05-28 05:17 am (UTC)Because that only counts for so much, in their case, he doesn't do more than that. Doesn't invite himself to sit. Doesn't touch anything. He stands just inside the doorway for few seconds, watching Nikos move around his space with as much reserved interest as if he were watching some unfamiliar cultural ritual, before he reaches back to shut the door. ]
I need you to do something for me.
[ The wisp has followed him in. It takes the visitor watching an unfamiliar ritual thing even further, zooming ahead to look (eyelessly; it's a ball of light) Nikos in the face with a brring noise that, to people who speak brr, is distinctly baffled. There Are Two.
If Kostos notices that his seriousness is being undermined by the spirit—and he does, his eyebrows twitch—he refuses to acknowledge it. ]
no subject
Date: 2018-05-29 02:02 pm (UTC)[Nikos keeps his back deliberately turned, so he is not facing Kostos. The sound of wine pouring doesn't drown out the sound of the door closing. He turns around, wine in hand, one arm crossed and pinned against his side with his elbow. It's a very defensive stance, even if he's leaning against the low table up against the wall.
Leaves him perfectly open for the wisp to get right in his face, too. Nikos frowns, much more openly than his brother. He twitches his head, either to banish the wisp the way he would banish an annoying dog, or to try to throw it off.]
Must not be very important. [Trying, gamely, to ignore the inquisitive little light but still wearing that frown, Nikos takes a drink of his wine and then gestures, with the cup. Go on.] What is it. Make a good enough case and I'll consider.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-31 08:59 pm (UTC)Keep this.
[ He isn't very good at asking for favors. However he actually means it, it sounds more like an order. ]
And don't tell anyone, unless it becomes—
[ Necessary. To make sure he's brought in, or put down, or whatever else. It isn't very important, or at least not very hard, but there's no one else to ask. His friends would tell him to destroy it. His enemies would use it before the point he agrees it would be necessary. But Nikos is family, and Nikos also has an arm covered in shatter-patterned scars. Kostos closes his mouth and works his jaw for a moment, then decides not to finish the sentence at all and holds the package out, straight-armed and crisp as a military salute. ]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-05 03:57 am (UTC)With a scowl, he waves his hand. Quick, tight, trying to remain surreptitious about it so Kostos doesn't call him out. It doesn't work. He tries it again, with a little more force, and by then Kostos is holding something out to him, ordering him to--]
What, [Nikos says, first, and then, almost automatically,] No.
[--Because he was born to refuse Kostos, has been refusing Kostos unequivocally for their entire shared lives, and Kostos has been doing the same to him, when he wasn't holding something over Nikos' head. Or vice-versa. The roles could reverse just as easily.
He puts together a moment later what it is that he is being charged with. All that talk over the crystals on phylacteries has put it firmly in mind, and Nikos has a decent understanding of what is involved, and what is at stake--and, more importantly, what he is being asked, what he would have charge of. he has more of an opinion than not. If asked, he'd give a route and expected response: basic freedom should be a guarantee. The defense would quickly crumble, and Nikos' true belligerent feelings would be exposed. He does believe in freedom. He believes in his personal connections more.
He lifts his chin. Meets Kostos' eye. Tries, gamely, to ignore the stupid fucking wisp hovering still too close to him.]
It's got nothing to do with me.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-09 08:52 am (UTC)I have something to do with you.
[ Something. Maybe not much of something. Shared blood, shared face, shared childhood until, and then not all that much after. It might not be particularly fair of him to ask this, or to ask anything. But in his experience fair has had minimal correlation to correct or necessary.
The wisp—having previously swirled around Nikos' batting hand like a fish under water—begins making an attempt to slide up his sleeve, and that's as much indignity as Kostos is willing to subject him to, only partly because he doesn't have any particular desire to be the recipient of mental impressions of what's beneath his brother's clothes. Looking isn't necessary to make it stop, but he breaks off their stubborn-face staring competition to glance at it out of unsubtle habit, while he thinks no in its general direction, and it backs off to a more respectful distance. Six whole inches. The shimmery humming sound continues. ]
I can't send it to Mother and Father.
[ —because that's the only other logical possibility here. ]
no subject
Date: 2018-06-11 02:57 pm (UTC)[Because, you know. He never sees their parents. And neither does Nikos, really, but in comparison to Kostos, he has been a dutiful son. Which is sad. And not entirely Kostos' fault, if Nikos were inclined to be honest, but he isn't, who fucking cares about honesty. It is a fact, and facts are weapons right now. THis one is unlikely to hurt Kostos too badly. Perhaps it will be enough to draw blood.]
I don't want it. I don't want--
[There aren't words, for what he doesn't want about this. It's more like an inexpressible sludge. Rotten, tangled up, something bloated and dead in a net. Phylacteries can control and contain a mage. The lack of control and containment is what rent that gaping hole, the until. Nikos should take the phylactery. He should do what Kostos asks. Instead he is thinking very deliberately about kicking him in the hand. Hard enough that he might drop the bloody phylactery.]
If I wanted you taken out, I'd do it myself. I wouldn't use-- that. A tool of fucking containment.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-13 07:08 am (UTC)[ Flat, with doubt not in Nikos' emotional ability to kill his own brother, not in his physical ability to kill nearly anyone else, just in his ability to singlehandedly kill a—a whatever Kostos would be, if he needed killing. What kind of abomination. He could guess.
But he lowers his arm further, bends it, tightens his fist around the vial, begins to think it isn't worth the trouble. He can't send it to Antiva (like a well-landed elbow in beneath the lowest rib) because he would have to take it himself, look their parents in the eyes, accept the gifts, accept the hands on his face, and ask them to be ready to choose.
And he doesn't trust them to. Not really. Last time they acted too late.
But he isn't going to beg. He holds out his hand toward the wisp, which lingers stubbornly near Nikos for a few seconds before drifting back to Kostos. ]
Maybe you should be training Templars. They could use the help.
no subject
Date: 2018-06-14 09:49 pm (UTC)[He cuts off with an irritated noise and turns away to set his wine down, heavily. No words even for what he thinks of Templars. Words aren't his strong suit anyways. Nikos consumes words, stores them up, deploys them like knives when he's clear-headed enough to do so, but right now--
Maker's balls. Could he even say why he's as angry as he is? No. Nothing he wants to try to articulate or put into words, emotions he doesn't want to dredge up from the depths he keeps them in. It is easier to get angry, to glare at Kostos and his stupid fucking vial and the responsibility he is asking Nikos to hold for him. I have something to do with you--well, since when, Nikos wants to bite back, since when, because he hasn't seen Kostos in years, because looking at him makes him feel sick, sometimes, and not because of blame. The urge to scratch at his scar doesn't rise, not with Kostos. Maybe because he's forced it down. Schooled himself, in carriage rides. Chastised himself, when nerves made his fingers twitch. Be my friend in every letter he wrote, between the boring lines about tutors, about the weather, please come home, and instead he signed his name and dripped wax on the envelope and pretended he didn't give a shit when it went unanswered.
And then it didn't matter anymore. Twenty years ago, Nikos would have taken his brother's phylactery. He would have felt honored. It would have felt like something. A gesture, a promise, a trust. It doesn't matter anymore.]
Why don't you just wreck it. Isn't that what half this shit was about? Destroy it. Drop it off a cliff, give it to your friends, let them figure out how to put you down in some humane way if you-- Why not that?
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Date: 2018-06-22 03:52 am (UTC)They don't understand.
[ He could say wrecking it was what half this shit was about. They would drop it off a cliff for him, or shout at him until he did—or they would keep it, but they would wait too long, when they wouldn't have the right to. He could say Nikos would have the right to hesitate, if he wanted to. He's the one with the scars. He could say he's dug a moat without a bridge, twenty years wide, and he knows neither who it's meant to protect anymore or how to get across it.
All of that would sound stupid. He folds his arms, and the vial disappears into his armpit. ]
But I don't want to inconvenience you. I'm sure space in your sock drawer is fucking precious, so—
[ So. The wisp is hovering around his head now instead, looking inside his ears, insistently brring over the resemblance. Kostos endures it without moving, because he doesn't need to move to know what it's going on about, and to assign much more complexity and judgment to it than it's actually capable of: ]
It thinks you need to shave.
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Date: 2018-06-23 05:14 pm (UTC)It thinks that? [Maybe the wisp does think that. But damned if that's not Kostos also trying to be a bitch in the same breath.] I'm not going to.
[That he directs at the wisp, with an off-side glare--and, because he feels stupid talking to a glowing ball of light, he accompanies it with another wave of his hand, if necessary.
They were never friends. Allies, at best. United through necessity, after careful negotiation, pacts, bribes. Likely to turn on each other for a better ally, or sometimes just for the chance to see the other in trouble. But it was something. And then it was gone.]
You came all the way here thinking you were going to instruct me to take it, and I'd just fall into line? Framed as a question, but it doesn't matter, it's obedience, lest I be banished. [That old childhood threat, firstborn son to secondborn son.] Good one, Kos. So what, then. If I don't take it, and you're not giving it to your friends, and you're not destroying it. Then what happens to it now.
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Date: 2018-06-24 02:59 am (UTC)If it isn’t your concern, then it isn’t your concern, [ a pause; a vengeful addition of, ] Nik.
[ Maybe he’ll give it back to the Chantry, quietly, when no one who would judge him is looking. That would be the Loyalist thing to do. But there are loyalties that supersede, and if the Chantry can find him, it can find whoever he’s with.
Maybe he’ll destroy it. Maybe. Nikos told him to, however offhand and angry, and maybe that ought to be good enough. If anyone left in the world can give him permission. Not forgiveness—Kostos never wanted it, because he never wanted for it, never felt like he'd earned the blameless patience and clockwork visits. If their mother had refused to come at first, if his father had stormed out of the room, if Nikos had hit him. If it hadn't felt like an agreement they'd come to, when he wasn't there to hear what they really felt. Maybe then he would have wanted it.
He unfolds one arm to rub his mouth with the knuckles of his empty hand, glaring at Nikos' unshaven face. It was Nikos' face alone before it was his own, when they were small and the mirrors were high. Friends or not, it took a while for him to stop seeing his reflection—a little off, even then, never quite the same degree of dark mischief around the eyes—and missing his brother.
But that was decades ago. ]
Are you really refusing because I didn’t ask nicely enough? [ Incredulous. But a genuine question, too. ] Do you need me to say please?
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Date: 2018-06-25 04:15 pm (UTC)Depends. Would you deign to say please? [He tips his head, expectant sarcasm.] I do feel honored that you're talking to me at all. It's so much more pleasant than chasing around a glimpse of you in profile from the other end of a long table in some shit Circle library. I used to pretend that was a game.
[--Which sounds more pathetic than it is. In truth, it made Nikos angry. Once Nikos told Marisol that she could befriend her reflection, and she'd spent the morning staring into a pool of water in the garden, talking to herself. She'd had fun with it. So it hadn't been satisfying, or as funny as he'd remembered it being, when it was a trick he and Kostos had played on Keto. And that's what visiting Kostos had felt like. Nikos at one end of a table and his brother at the other. And every time he moved, to try to get in Kostos' line of sight, Kostos would look away. Very grim, very blasé. Nikos left bitemarks on the windowsill of the carriage. He'd chew at it in frustration all the way home.]
Because I was an idiot. [If he says it first, no one can insult him.] Will you choke, if you say please? As long as you don't die, I can stand to watch you choke. A little.
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Date: 2018-07-16 06:26 am (UTC)Later he’ll think about the expanse of the table in the Circle, Nikos at nine, the space he and Keto left for him to occupy alone in that enormous house, and then he’ll probably open a bottle.
Now, he doesn’t choke. Quite. He grits his teeth, jaw flexing, and unfolds his arms, and looks at the bundle in his hands, and says it quickly: ]
Please.
[ The fabric of the universe doesn’t unravel. Kostos takes a breath and a half step forward, just one foot. ]
Nikos. Do whatever you want with it, I don’t— [ —care, but he does, intensely. ] No one else has the right.
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Date: 2018-07-19 04:45 pm (UTC)Instead he clenches his hands into fists. The deep-down feeling spirals on, in his chest. He glares at Kostos. Not at the bundle, or the wisp, or anything else in this stupid fucking room in stupid fucking Kirkwall.]
I didn't ask for it. [It comes out more sullen than earnest, stilted by how his jaw feels tight like a bear trap. But so what.] The-- right. I didn't ask.
[The responsibility. The obligation. It would all have been easier, maybe, if Nikos had grown up hating his brother, but he didn't. Couldn't. Fighting like wild dogs wasn't the same as hate.
He makes himself look, finally, at the bundle in Kostos' hands. A thing that could obliterate his brother.
Brusque, abrupt, wordless, he holds out his hand.]
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Date: 2018-07-20 05:28 am (UTC)He doesn't spend time deciding before pressing the wrapped phylactery into Nikos' hand, his own darting forward and back without hesitation or lingering. Possible eagerness to be rid of it and possible concern Nikos might change his mind if Kostos opens his mouth and says the wrong thing are equally plausible explanations, but for the record it's the latter slightly more than the former.
That taken care of, he returns to the problem of what he's supposed to say to that. ] I know, [ isn't enough. But I'm sorry is out of the question, when he's already spit out a please, no matter how true it is and has been for the majority of their lives. So is neither did I, because it doesn't matter what Kostos asked for anymore than it matters whether or not a man asked for the plague. It's still fucking shitty to ask someone healthy to come around to do the dishes.
And thank you is just stupid. The last time he said thank you to Nikos was at one of those long Circle tables, distantly, picking at the edges of paper around a gift he never opened, and not really to Nikos so much as the whole set of Averesches he was avoiding looking at. The first time might have been when he asked him to knock out his front baby teeth so they could keep pace, keep confusing the tutor, and then it was mainly for the fun of fumbling the th sound through his new gap. ]
—I owe you.
[ Also stupid, insufficient, doubtful Nikos will ever need anything from him enough to ask, but it's said, so that's that. To prove it—or to make an inadequate little step in that direction, at least—he gestures, and the wisp and its hum disappear, like a fistful of sediment released back into a river. ]
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Date: 2018-07-23 09:48 pm (UTC)Nikos turns away and puts the wrapped package down on the table, next to his jug of wine. With his back to Kostos, he uses his index finger to push the phylactery closer to the stack of books, keeping it away from the edge. It still looks small and rather stupid.]
They make these too important. [--instead of saying anything about what he is or isn't owed.] Everyone. You, the Circles, the Templars. They make these too important. Just because a man has a weapon that could--level a city-- but no one makes a phylactery for a king to keep him in line. He has an army. He could do fucking anything. They don't care.
[He picks up his cup of wine and drains the last of it. Picks up the jug and pours out, again.]
It's red, [he says, to Kostos, without looking at him.] Almost fitting.
[Like blood. Get it? It's his turn to push something on Kostos. And he turns right around and does, with the jug still in his hand, without couching the offer with words. The cup of wine that he was just drinking from, and it was dirty when he started drinking from it, so it's doubly dirty now. He holds it out to his brother all the same.]
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Date: 2018-07-29 06:28 am (UTC)He can't say it, but his brow furrows and his head tilts in obvious disagreeableness, all before the dirty cup is offered, at which point the furrow deepens. He's put worse in this mouth, by far. But it feels like a detente, when they haven't discussed terms, and that's—
He takes the cup, but he tips it toward Nikos first, in warning. ]
Do not try to recruit me. [ Without much feeling. He doesn't think Nikos would; he isn't sure how much he would really object to the ideas Nikos and his friends advocate, anymore, if pressed past the point of disagreeing out of habit. ] But do keep comparing me to a king. I like that part.
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Date: 2018-08-07 06:07 pm (UTC)[Dirty cup is better than jug, which is what Nikos uses as his cup: a swig, directly from the mouth. There isn't much left to it, a knowledge that scratches at Nikos somewhere below even the prickly tense feeling under the scar and skin of his right arm.
He meets Kostos' eye anyways, his gaze even and unimpressed.]
I wouldn't want you anyways. Questionable loyalties and a fucking awful lot of debt.