It’s not real. You’re not real. You can’t be.
All he wants to say is, ghosts never die. His articulate politeness refuses to broach the words; instead they haunt him, as they always do, and that great and terrible cracking seems tremendous inside him.
Lyr closes his eyes, for just a moment; a hairsbreadth, too quick to really even see… and in the pause he remembers:
The great falling of glacial ice from the edge of the world—the way it created a swell that rocked their ship from hundreds of metres away. He had watched and listened and felt a kinship with that broken piece of ice and with a world that felt sharp enough to cut the edge of him, to open up a hole that had all the light left in his soul spilling out and—
That image remains with him. Ice the size of a mountain falling, crashing, entering the sea—the end of the world.
The end of the world. Standing on the precipice, on the edge o fa wooden ship, knowing he had made it to where he said he would.
And Frasier beside him.
Frasier’s thick breath at the nape of his neck, whispering:
this is the land where the gods sleep.
Another ghost; how does he tell her that’s all he is? The man she had once held so close to heart is dead, dead dead.
He drops his head and says, “Let’s discuss this in your room.” Lyr stands in the open corridor and the vulnerability of it strikes him. He presses past her, pretending not to see the hot rush of tears threatening the edges of her eyes. Pretending the feel of her soft feathers brushing his side as his passes does not ignite something volatile, something electric.
Once within the safety of her barracks room, he turns to face her a second time. Lyr forces himself to hold her gaze. He counts off in his mind, one, two, three, an acceptable amount of eye contact, before glancing away again. He struggles like this for a few breaths before settling, to say:
“I had to leave you.”
At first that is all Lyr will offer her. At first he intends to say nothing more. The explanation he owes her is too complicated, and besides… there is that monster rubbing against his tongue, enticing him to say things that are not exactly true, and anyways, perhaps its better that way, perhaps the truth is too much as it often is…
Finally, Lyr adds:
“It was not my choice.” He speaks with clipped, halting words. They leave little room for argument, and express a militant kind of practicality. “I was told to go, and I was not always truthful about the crew I was apart of—there were… there were contracts I could not break.” Now he holds her eyes. Now he does not count. No, the muscles in his face have tightened like granite; those expressive eyes turn as hard, as uncompromising, as garnet.
“I am sorry leaving hurt you.” Not, I’m sorry I left. Not, I’m sorry I hurt you.
Frasier haunts him, Frasier reminds him:
Blood spilled in brotherhood is blood owed. And you owe me everything and because of that, I own you. Call it heretic, call it demonic, the only gods on this ship belong to me.
A pact. Dark magic.
Ambition. The pursuit of… godhood, immortality, forever. He blinks; his tongue feels heavy. He says, nearly wistfully,
“I wish I could have stayed.” But even as he says it the impracticality of it is too large, too impossible; Lyr knows it, and he knows everything they had been had been a lie. What he means: I wish there was a part of me that hadn't wanted to know...
The trailing thoughts are all a distraction. Seeing her face-to-face, seeing her not as he remembered in his dreams and memories... it evokes something raw within him, something raw as a wound. She had been his safe haven. Softness, in a hard world.
And what is that, if not an illusion? He examines the barracks with a critical eye and says with a critical tongue,
“I did not know you planned to become a soldier, Euphrosyne.” That sets an aching within him, too, and it feels as if another tremendous piece of ice has fallen within him and sent the seas of his self rippling. He supposes at least it means no man will ever take advantage of her kindness again and... and... and,
even as he thinks it
he knows that is the exact reason he is there.
"Speech." || @Euphrosyne
i know i am damned for the pyre
no matter how bright you glow when you call for me
