[P] they kept him alive so that he could be lonely

[Ruth]

☼  RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN  ☼
רות

"AND MY MOTHER / SOBBED EACH DAY AT FIRST; HER SWEET FRIEND / GONE AIMLESSLY CAUSTIC. AND FEAR / opens the body the way of a fist / through teeth. the chicken wire / one morning blown open, mouth / of strewn feathers and jagged space. Probably coyotes / in the coop, but his tenderling body / was never found, and we who know / the way of once-gentle boys think maybe / he ripped a hole in leaving and just left."

I would kill my brother, if it were the kindest thing I could do for him.

I would make it quick – I would snap his neck, or I would slit his throat, or I’d inject him with something that would put him into a sleep that he would never wake from. It wouldn’t hurt, and I would make sure that he wouldn’t suffer. If it were the kinder thing to do – if it were the kindest thing to do -, I would kill my brother.

I don’t think that I would feel any remorse for it, either.

I spend most of my days around the dying, in emergency care or the hospice ward. (It is because dying does not trouble me quite like it should.) I see patients, sometimes, and I know that they are not being kept alive for their own sake. I know that they are suffering, and I know that they are too far gone to recover through any means short of divine intervention. (Of course, their friends and family always hope for divine intervention. Sometimes the patients do, too, but most of the time they don’t – and that just means they’ll deteriorate more quickly.) I know that they are suffering, and I know that they can’t be saved, and I know that they are being kept alive for the sake of the people who love them, not for themselves.

I have professional ethics, of course. I watch them slip away slowly, like sand from the hourglass, until the inevitable overtakes them. I do my best for them, in the time that they have, and I try to shake the feeling that I am being cruel with my complacency.

I don’t doubt that my siblings could kill each other, sometimes.

I doubt that any of them but me could do it quick. (Even Corradh, and he spills blood for sport.)

When I go looking for my brother, the party is already over. The halls look ghastly; the guests have left them a mess that the servants are already struggling to clean up. (My siblings will want them pristine by the morning.) The lights have gone dim, and the entertainers have already left – the painters fled out to the desert, the living statues to the city streets. My hair is unbound, and all the pink flowers that adorned it at the start of the evening have fallen out.

As I stalk the halls, I see one or two littering the floor, crumpled and blackened beneath the hooves of passers-by. They were expensive, I think, to end up so utterly wasted. (But, then, most lovely things are wasted on me.) Ishak is on my heels like a shadow, sweat-slick and watchful. I don’t know where my brother is, but I doubt that he has moved far from the hall where he spent most of the party. (He is practically a statue himself, nowadays.)

I sidestep broken glass, a fallen and half-concave vase. I try not to pay attention to the chagrined expression of a maid in the corner, tasked with cleaning a particularly grotesque stain.

When I step into the hall, which was one inhabited by just as many living statues as inanimate ones, I find that he is still there. I nod the servants out of the room, and Ishak, though I am sure that he will linger on the other side of the door. (It is probably for the best – it isn’t as though I keep anything from Ishak, and he will prevent anyone else from listening in on our conversation.)

It feels strange, hiding in my own home. Still – Adonai is sick, and not through natural means, and I can never be sure of who is listening.

I look at Adonai without flinching. I should probably feel horrible, seeing him so utterly deteriorated, nauseous, but I don’t feel anything at all. The only thing that I think is that he will be dead soon – that he is dying. I’m not sure if he can be salvaged. I know that the most talented medics from most of the courts have been gathered, at one point or another, to examine my brother, and I know that they have found no cure for what ails him. I am not so sure that I am the most talented of medics, or the most practiced, or the most valuable; I simply possess a unique set of skills.

(And – an ugly insight. And – certain, ugly suspicions.)

I would prefer to salvage him. I would prefer, at least, to have the chance to.

“Adonai,” I say, softly, without bothering with pleasantries (there would be no point), “would you like me to take a look at you?”

---

@Adonai || ruth, starting this thread: yeah I'd commit an ethical violation if I thought it was ethical, and what about it || erin slaughter, "all the gentle boys grow spurs"

[Adonai]

all words of comfort can not take away my doubt / i've decided if it kills me i'll find out what you're about

This night has sharpened my malevolence like a whetstone to a dull blade.

The reason is damning and simple: for a single night, I had nearly managed to forget myself. The knowledge of my impending death had only fluttered occasionally into my head in serene lungfuls, instead of clamping around my throat like manacles that would never loosen. I could breathe. I could laugh. I could drink until my head stopped aching and toast to the moon and stars that I was born a prince among men with the luxury of being, at one point, beloved.

Yet already the drink is wearing off. Yet already the halls are clearing to marble emptiness. Yet already the dawn is coming gentle and sly, painting the line of my throat an ominous red as I stand by the ceiling-high windows and glance hollowly, corpse-like, out.

Our lands, viewed from this height, are magnificent. Glitzy shades of dawn lace the bare magnolia trees in silk and gossamer. The sleepy heads of the morning gardeners rise and fall between the hedges like dark herons. The grove of eucalyptus marking the ends of our estate are dewy and lush, leading one to assume that behind their leafy heads hide rolling blue forests instead of dunes and dunes of teryr-concealing sand.

It is an illusion that holds until you descend. And today—I will not descend.

I turn, my back enveloped in a red like blood, and stride wearily down an empty hall. As I go along, I kick at a trail of petals leading out to the statue hall that are all turning black at the edges. Squinting, I try to remember who it was I'd seen wearing them.

It is a testament to her status in the house that not once do I think of Ruth.

When my dark, stoic sister finds me amongst the statues, I don't rise to greet her. I know that Ruth is the last of us to take offence at such things and suddenly, even without her talking, I am overwhelmed by a swell of guilt. I will never be Miriam; I will never be as close, as gracious, to my siblings as she is. Had Ruth cried at our parents' funeral? Is this not a question I ought to know the answer to? Miriam had wept. I hadn't. And Corradh? And Hagar?

And Pilate?

I am sick of myself and I am sick of being sick. I don't stir when Ruth approaches. My back is leaned heavily against the angel wing of a De Clare and half of me wants for the wing to snap; the other half wants for it to shatter, and for the pieces to pierce me in the throat.

"Adonai." I release my breath slowly. That assassin of hers is not following at her heels like a hound and this only manages to intrigue me for a bare moment before I close my eyes again and offer a quiet hum in response. "Would you like me to take a look at you?"

I stir, then, and I cannot help it: I tilt my head back and I laugh. "Dear Ruth. Your manners are, as always, impeccable." There is an almost gleeful madness to my voice and when I loll my head around to find her hollow gaze staring back, my cheek presses fever-hot to the marble and my eyes can't quite focus.

"Well, I am here," I say, my tone faintly caustic. "Look at me, and tell me what you see."

Ruth is the only competent doctor I know of in all of Solterra. She is not offended by my lack of a greeting but more so, I gather, by the fact that she has never once been consulted about my condition. If I were not feeling so hideous, if my head would cease to thrum and my heart cease to stutter, I would confide to her that I am not the one in control of who sees to me.

I would confide to her that I am not the one in control of anything in this gods-damned house and even less—of myself.

I would confide to you, dear Ruth, that you come seeking for the truth from the wrong brother.

« r » | @Ruth | just the -shook emoji- everywhere

[Ruth]

☼  RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN  ☼
רות

"AND MY MOTHER / SOBBED EACH DAY AT FIRST; HER SWEET FRIEND / GONE AIMLESSLY CAUSTIC. AND FEAR / opens the body the way of a fist / through teeth. the chicken wire / one morning blown open, mouth / of strewn feathers and jagged space. Probably coyotes / in the coop, but his tenderling body / was never found, and we who know / the way of once-gentle boys think maybe / he ripped a hole in leaving and just left."

He barely stirs, when I walk into the room, but, when I speak, my brother is a statue given life.

He laughs, and, much as I would prefer to ignore it, it makes him sound insane. Dear Ruth. Your manners are, as always, impeccable. I don’t tell him that sounds like something Pilate would say, but I think it. His eyes are glossy and bright on me, but, in spite of his burst of enthusiasm, he is quick to wilt back against one of the marble statues, and, though he is quiet for too long, when he speaks again, there is a hint of something distinctly unpleasant evident in his tone.

Well, I am here. Look at me, and tell me what you see.

Apparently, Adonai is feeling irritable. I arch my brow at him, very slightly, but otherwise I am expressionless, even as I stride closer to him, each step of my hooves against the marble almost painfully loud in the silence of the party’s wake. I walk close enough to make out each detail of his skin, the cloudy blue of his eyes, his waning physique; I walk close enough to smell alcohol on his breath, however faint.

“Fine,” I say, flatly. “Your symptoms are aggressively general, but not when taken together. Some of these I know; some of these I'll guess, on the basis of what I think must ail you. Partial paralysis; almost full, when you first fell sick. Impairment of speech, at least at first. And, I’m going to guess – heart palpations. Feverishness?” His brow is surely beaded with sweat. I can see it from here. “Wasting. Headaches? General weakness. Numbness; perhaps not constant? Failures of memory and vision. Delusions. Loss of speech. Erratic or compulsive behavior or thoughts. Paranoia? Confusion – difficulty thinking straight.” I pause, for a moment, fixing him with an even, deliberate stare. “Irritability.”

With a shrug of my shoulders, I stride back and forth around Adonai and the statue that he is leaned up against, examining him from each and every angle. “There are plenty of things that you could associate with some of the symptoms. Periodic paralysis would make very little sense on you, and it would not explain most of your symptoms. I suppose it could be some other genetic issue, but most genetic conditions would have appeared when you were younger, and I doubt you would have recovered from any of them; a prion disease would have certainly killed you.” I pause, for a moment, with a considering tilt of my head, and my tone turns thoughtful, before it grows dismissive again. “Now, it could have very plausibly been the result of a protozoan parasite, but I like to hope that someone would have caught that, by now, and feverishness would be very unusual for it besides. It just doesn’t quite match.”

I stop, finally, and stand directly in front of my brother, looking him dead in the eyes. “This is hardly a mystery. You’ve been poisoned.” The notion of poison has been rejected already, I know; but not on the basis of any scientific evidence, so I care very little. “Almost certainly by something neurotoxic, given your symptoms. Heavy metals, or certain fish, or a few plants, or certain poisonous snakes…. I’m not sure how much your poisoner knew about neurotoxins, but I do wonder if they knew that you can recover from them, in certain cases. Sometimes – sometimes even fully.” I don’t want to get his hopes up too high. That is rare, and this was surely a targeted attack. (You don’t often accidentally suffer from extensive exposure to neurotoxins.) However, given Adonai’s near-miraculous recovery from his initial exposure, I am willing to believe that he can recover further, much as he looks like death wherever he goes.

I look away from Adonai and, almost unconsciously, I begin to pace again.

“The court threw out poisoning. They were wrong. I can only assume that they weren’t very clever, and that your other doctors haven’t been, either –they’ve probably bent themselves over backwards to come up with some alternative explanation.” I’ve wondered, at times, how much we were paying them. (Certainly too much.) It’s probably not worth considering; I’ve never paid too much attention to our financial matters anyways. Regardless, the assumptions that the poisoning must have been gradual and that the gradual poisoning was implausible besides were wholly ridiculous. “I suppose it could have been something done slowly; like the way that someone generally uses arsenic. I think that the court’s assumption about that might be wrong, though. Slow poisoning isn’t an implausible method of assassination, but it’s subtle – it has gradual impacts. They don’t generally happen overnight. Either you were being slowly poisoned and the poisoner gave you a particularly aggressive dose the night before you fell sick, or – and I think this is more likely - they poisoned you once and used something strong, probably in a dose meant to be lethal.” I pause, shaking my head. “Perhaps they poisoned you in slighter doses for some time before that, attempted to weaken your immune system…it would have been a clever way to throw any authorities off their trail. Who would be so subtle for so long, only to do something so extreme?” My gaze slowly drifts back to Adonai, where it lingers, running his frame again. “I can’t say for sure why you’ve improved, or survived. Perhaps they were using a more obscure type of poison, or they dosed it incorrectly; perhaps you were simply particularly healthy, and you fought through it. Perhaps it was simply luck.”

I lick the taste of salt and a thin coat of sweat off my lips, considering.

“The doctors keep saying that you are recovering. You might be now – I can’t say for sure. I think you might have been poisoned after the initial incident, with something more mundane, perhaps in smaller doses. It’s hard to be certain, since I have not personally been monitoring your condition,” I say, “but you recovered impressively regardless, given that you were paralyzed, mute, and barely capable of basic function. I find it strange that you are still so weak, and that I see so little of you.”

Perhaps that is the most troubling part of it. Not the poison – we’re nobility. I think that Ishak can attest to how frequently we come into contact with it, or, at the very least, the threat of it. No, it is the way that my brother has simply disappeared, the way that this is the first time I think that I’ve seen him in weeks (possibly longer), when I should probably be seeing him daily. I know that they let him out of his room, at least. I still never seem to catch more than a passing glance of him.

All of us have been treating him like the living dead. I don't feel guilty; but I know, at least, that I should.

“If I were the one in charge of your care, I’d make sure that anything that was served to you was served in silver. At least it would rule out arsenic. You need to be outside more often; if you aren’t exposed to enough sunlight, it can make you far more ill, and, if you are, it will help you improve. You should probably be outside of the manor more often, and not confined to specific parts of it. I suspect that your diet could be adjusted. You certainly shouldn’t be drinking-“ I stare at him pointedly. “-for now. Extensive physical therapy is necessary, too, of course, if you hope to recover any further movement; you probably need less bedrest and more structured movement and some amount of physical strain. You should also be socializing more often. Who do you see regularly, apart from your servants? You can move, and you aren’t infectious, and I’m sure that it does your mental state no good to keep you so isolated and so purposeless. Perhaps you need a job, or…something to do with that lyre. You should be busy, as much as you can be.” Patients do not thrive when they are left idling, particularly ones with mental ailments. Adonai’s, I’m sure, is as much a problem of the mind as of the body; it is a particularly vicious consequence of neurotoxins.

Here is where I pause and look back at Adonai.

“I know that our brother has put himself in charge of your care. Should I speak with him about your condition?”

My comment is a simple throwaway; a polite offer.

It doesn’t mean anything, of course.

---

@Adonai || ruth : fine would you like a whole entire essay with cited sources || erin slaughter, "all the gentle boys grow spurs"

[Adonai]

save me, i think i'm losing my mind / you said you'd come for me when the world swallowed me whole / well, this is war

Ruth speaks, and I do not hear her. There is water in my ear, sloshing behind my brain, flooding the atriums of my lungs. I know there is no water — no water in a desert — but my ear does not know; my brain thinks it is drowning; my lungs are relieved it is water instead of blood.

I wonder sorrowfully if it is the poison. Everything, after that night, I wonder if it is the poison. If I asked my sister I know she would give me the right answer. But she is talking to me now, and my ears are full of water.

She talks, and I know it is about the poison.

“Wasting. Headaches? General weakness.” I nod along like a boat on a storm-tossed sea; were I of worse constitution, I might even have laughed. “Delusions. Loss of speech. Erratic or compulsive behavior or thoughts. Paranoia?”

Laughed, and said, how well you know everything, Ruth. (My laugh-heavy tongue curls around these words but do not release them.) My water-heavy head rolls against the angel’s wing, cheek to marble, small bright droplets melting off from my heat. I roll my tongue; I try to scoop out the water with an iron bucket filled with holes.

Hand me a parchment filled with all the symptoms you know, Ruth, and I will look at you like a man of honor before dipping my quill into the inkpot to slash two black lines over everything. Like an X on the face of a treasure map.

Because it is everything. Because it is all of it. Because I am a particular breed of greedy (the kind that hides behind velvet curtains of selflessness) that when I suffer — even then, I must have it all. Even then, I must have everything.

(Like the way I took Mother away from you. Like the way I left only slivers of Miriam to love you. Like the way I would talk and talk and talk at dinners and parties and court, not knowing who I was impressing, not knowing why I wanted so badly to stop, not knowing how to leave room for doll-mouthed sisters and angel-winged brothers.

Not knowing. My crime is always not knowing.)

But my tongue feels like a dead rat in my mouth and my head is flooded full of water. The water is not real; the iron bucket is less real; and illness does not turn a man into a confessional. My words choke like funeral ash when they recede back into the ocean trapped in my lungs.

Ruth is bending her knees to peer into my eyes, and I remember that my sister is talking. I taste sugar on my tongue, think back to the confection that left it there. The tart, I recall, dully. I look up at Ruth now but don’t really see her; I try again.

I look up at Ruth now and the smile that comes hot and slow shouldn’t feel so much like pain. “I know that our brother has put himself in charge of your care. Should I speak with him about your condition?” she says.

“Ruth,” I say back, and the steadiness of my voice shocks me. “I want to know —" I lick my lips and remember that arsenic is tasteless. “I want to know that you understand what you have asked me.” My breath pinches, then, and when the cough I await does not come, I trudge on, my mouth like a bright red gash.

I look to the door; listen to the silence of a hall made for a hundred, occupied by two. Ruth does not need to give me an answer. It is spoken for her, by the emptiness of this hall.

“No. You knew. Is Ishak guarding the door?” I am still quick, despite the water (despite the poison). Quick like a prince with six successors behind him. “Do you see the lines drawn in the sand, sister?” My voice is soft, softer, softest.

“Don’t ask Pilate.” Our brother’s name echoes along the audience of statues. I lurch myself up to standing; I am a white tower, swaying over her.

“If you do, then he will know.” And the lines will be drawn, blood in the sand.

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