[ with weyland in nyc ]

[tragic_mask]

They step through the door, and find themselves on the cracked sidewalk outside of a lively bar. A sign glows: "Blue Owl."

It's nighttime, but the city still glows with all kinds of light, and shakes with the noise of honking, shouting, music, the clinking of glasses, all blending together into the cacophony and symphony of the city.

Melpomene looks around. "Well, we're back... Right where I started."

Comments

[mechanicalswans]

"I like to stay busy, and there's not always enough commissions to keep me busy," he says quietly. "And sometimes I want to make people suffer, for not realizing how precious what they have is. For having what I wish I had, and wasting it. I had quite a talk with the devil one day, about that sort of thing."

[tragic_mask]

"Do you think suffering causes them to learn their lesson?" She feels something edging into her voice.

"I've found that pain defeats most humans; makes them useless and cowardly."

[mechanicalswans]

"If you look at the how and not also the what, yes," he says, and takes a drag on the cigarette. "My people are very different--I have the seas of winter in my veins. My grandmother's people drowned sailors for sport, and to make the survivors more grateful for their lives. You cannot make a sword without putting it in the fire, and you cannot make a man truly appreciate the beauty of life until he fears for his life."

There's a bit of hollowness in his tone, all the same.

[tragic_mask]

"A philosophy I know many share," she says. "One that's better than no reason at all, at least."

[mechanicalswans]

"I try to have a reason for the things I do," he says quietly. "They may not always make sense to other people, but they do to me. But you see why I aspire to the ordinary--ordinary people have not had to do these things."

[tragic_mask]

"Ah, but I know for a fact that everyone feels terrible guilt for something. Even the most ordinary."

[mechanicalswans]

"I don't feel guilt for the things I've done," he says. "That's the strangest thing. There's regret, and wishing it hadn't had to be that way, but not guilt. I can think of only one thing I've ever felt guilt for, and even that was mostly regret."

[tragic_mask]

"Maybe because you see all of your actions as justified?" she suggests. "Guilt comes from doing things without a reason. Or when the reason doesn't seem to be enough."

[mechanicalswans]

"Exactly," he says, after a moment. "Or if you realize after the fact that you should have done something differently, that you didn't think it through completely before acting and were not prepared for the results."

He glances up at her. "Do you ever feel guilty?"

[tragic_mask]

"I have, in the past... before I was myself, as I am now. But lately I have felt nothing except what I was designed to feel. Sorrow and gravity."

[mechanicalswans]

"You feel nothing but that, with regard to your work, or nothing but that at all?" he asks, and takes another drag on the cigarette.

[tragic_mask]

"In regard to my work. But I don't think about much else." Not strictly a lie.

[mechanicalswans]

"We'll have to change that," he murmurs, "for both of us, for a little while. Have you ever tried not doing your work? Is it possible for you? Or does it find you, even as you try to avoid it?"

[tragic_mask]

"It's hard to shut it out."

[mechanicalswans]

"And if you are in Milliways, or someone else's world?" he asks. "There, I cannot resist, but I know there is a forge there for me to use. Here, I am pleasantly distracted by other things, though I haven't been here that long."

[tragic_mask]

She nods. "In Milliways, it's much easier to forget, given that I cannot see thoughts there. If I think hard enough, I can see people as people rather than tools."

[mechanicalswans]

"Do you have to try to see thoughts, or do you just... see them, as part of the appearance of the person?" he asks. "Do you see mine, for instance?"

[tragic_mask]

"I make an effort not to, when I don't have a reason to," she murmurs, looking down and not really answering.

"In any case, it's not individual thoughts I see, really... More the grand, sweeping stories of emotion. I could never be a psychic, naming your card or number, unless there was some memory attached to it."

[mechanicalswans]

"In that case, I'm afraid I would make a very dull subject," he says. "My patterns are strong but predictable, and my memories aren't exactly secret. Do you use that to find the people you inspire, or to find stories to give to other people?"

[tragic_mask]

"Both. Either." She shrugs. "That depends on the person."

[mechanicalswans]

"How do you go about your work?" he asks. "If there are trade secrets, that's fine, I don't need to know that, but I am curious what your average day is like, when you are working on someone."

[tragic_mask]

"Not a secret," she says. "Just... hard to explain. Is it conceited to believe that you'd have to experience it to understand?"

[mechanicalswans]

"The mark of a master," he says. "You would have an understanding of the nuances and possibilities that someone who is not in that line of work would not understand, and it would be very hard to explain. I could try to explain to you the subtle difference in color between metal that is ready to be worked and that which is too hot or too cold, but I doubt it would mean much to you--like that?"

[tragic_mask]

"Quite," she says, and leans back.

[mechanicalswans]

He settles back against the couch, watching her.

"So here we are," he says quietly, putting his cigarette out between two of his fingers and folding it neatly back into whatever strange portal he'd pulled it from in the first place. "You really don't get tired, do you?"