Glenn Burnie: It was so often called "The Wood," but that was a false name. An incomplete name, save, of course, that everyone in Myrkentown knew what was meant. Myrken Wood, itself, was mad up of mountains and rivers and lakes, and yes, of course, forests. The one so often considered "The Wood" however, was the one most closely connected to Myrkentown, the one on the other side of Silver Lake and the East Mavoiir River, the woods to the West, those to southwest specifically, as the Silver Mountains cut this forest in half. If the Broken Dagger was special for anything, it was not the adventures which had taken place there or the inclusive, welcoming staff. It wasn't the food or the drink or the song. No, it was the fact that the rickety, memory-haunted building was on the other side of the river, and therefore the only part of Myrkentown (for it was a part of Myrkentown stlll no matter what anyone said) so directly connected to the Wood.
Glenn Burnie was not staying at the Broken Dagger. He was an enemy of Fate or at least Fate was an enemy of him. It was one or the other but probably not both and he claimed the former more so than Fate likely claimed the latter. Regardless, he was not going to tempt it quite that much to stay at the Dagger. He stayed in town and, clad in his usual earth-tones of brown and more brown, no obvious weapon at his side, looking hardly older than when he left five or so years earlier, he walked past the Dagger. He glanced, but only for a moment, as he passed. The place had earned that much and more, more, perhaps being a large fire and only tears to put it out, but there was no time today. It was late afternoon, the sun already threatening to set, and Burnie was cleaned, rested, alert enough, and ready as he was going to be, which meant not ready at all, not that he would allow himself an inkling of understanding of that.
He walked, then, past the stables and to the very edge of the woods, one foot in and one foot out. "Believe what you may, I am not arrogant enough to summon you. I am, however, just arrogant enough to think that you knew I was on my way to see you."
Arrogance aside, you did not have to summon what was already coming on its own.
Catch: There is no suddenness. There is a long moment of waiting, for words must travel. And there is that taste in the air, the bogginess in the soil that speaks of melting snow and sucking mud, roots seeking and searching, the pigweed and snowdrop and dandelion sending out tentative greenery. Glenn of all people would know this as a sensitive time; would he know, also, that allowances must made?
So, there is waiting.
He does not appear - puff! - magician-like, in smoke. He is silent as an elk, moving in a way that belies all bulk. There is a difference in him. Someone as observant as Glenn would know it right away as Catch maneuvers to have the trees at his back. He stands tall in his peasant's clothes, a confidence in his spine, shoulders thrown back and no longer hunched, seeming to add another foot or so to his already substantial height. But there is still a pink creep to his cheeks, a wild touch to his eyes, and the effect with flowers cascading in his long, curled hair, twined in the fabric of his cap, was one still bent to madness. There were touches of Fionn, here and there, in the flowers. And at first, he says nothing. He can't, really. Glenn is here before him. Catch has many memories, now, and there are few that are not tinged sour.
Glenn Burnie: There is waiting, but not stillness. Never that. Oh, there could be the illusion of it, but Glenn Burnie did not stop. He could not stop. If he tried, if he planted his feet, if he planted his thoughts and emptied them, something within him would jerk him forth, would drag him this way and that, a thousand ideas, a thousand notions, a thousand arguments, and so, so many conclusions. So, he waited but he was not still. Nor once Catch did arrive, did he speak. The larger man would know how hard this was for Glenn, to hold his tongue as the two of them took each other in, but he managed it.
Then, finally, with sharp, focused eyes as all of the disquiet within Glenn Burnie rushed forth from the back of his mind to his front, all congealing upon his tongue. "I missed you, but not for as long as I think you missed me."
Catch: There is a stump, nearby. And after he hears this, and after another long and awkward moment of silence, Catch seeks out this stump to sit. His legs may be tired; he may require the brace; he may feel that they need to be more equal. It is a remarkably human gesture, regardless, one he would never have taken Before; his hands, his scarred hands, clasp loosely together between his knees. "Explain?"
It is a question, words, finally, finally. Mild, at least. How many times have they been mild?
Glenn Burnie: Just like one could not rightfully ask Glenn to shut off his mind, one could not ask him to stop the conduit between that mind and the rest of the world; his gaze stayed upon Catch as he sat, took in every motion, tried to parse every possible hidden meaning within it. "I wrote you a letter. That started so much of this."
He took a breath. Catch had wrapped his large, powerful hands around Burnie at one point or another. Even then, the former governor had not ceased his speaking. Short sentences? They were likely deliberate, another sign of control. He had been about to veer off course, but then didn't Fionnuala have that effect on people?
He pulled the story back away from her (and only the second sentence!), and towards where it needed to go. "I wrote Genevieve a letter as well. In hers, I explained everything. Everything. Rings. Underground. Rituals. What was lost. My behaviors. What was mended. Rhaena. I do not need to explain any of that to you, do I?" In some ways, Burnie was the wildest animal of them all, containing multitudes far, far more mundane than Catch's, than most people's even. Still, he pulled hard on the reins once more. This was difficult but it was also necessary. "During those years I was the most of myself, the least of myself, the worst of myself," but certainly not the best.
Catch: "I struggle with letters." He struggles with himself as he says it, and he believes that he hides it well. The pads of his fingers rub together, rub a phantom bit of parchment between the rough skin. "I can see them, now. I wasn't able to before. But they can change, can't they? From your mind to your lips, your lips to the pen, your pen to the paper. Then there is the time that it takes for the paper to get to where you want it to go."
Catch rubs his palms together, fitful. "So much can change. You changed, yes? That is what you're trying to say."
Glenn Burnie: "I try to anticipate." He said, this writer of so many letters. Of course, having Benedict helped but he could use Benedict only sparingly, primarily to one audience and only rarely, rarely to any other. "To get in front of the situation," his smile now was faint, but it was a smile nonetheless. "Sometimes, I fail. Sometimes, I make things worse. Often though, I think it is safe to say, I manage it."
There was a risk to every letter, of course, but there was risk to everything, every interaction, every time you put yourself out there and every time you did not. Change.
"I was broken. Broken that parts of me could not connect with one another or with anyone else. Broken so that parts of me flooded out into the world, a pulsing shining light that burned everyone around me. You saw it. You tried to help me. I think you would have destroyed Myrken to do it," but instead, instead he helped to destroy Rhaena Olwak instead, and what she became destroyed so much in turn.
Catch: Again, silence. Catch mulls over every angstrom of Glenn's words. Because that was Glenn Burnie. He was words, glittering and sharp or fluffed or furrowed, deep little lines to be placed on parchment, leaflets in a book. He was not memories, feelings, fleeting, to be trapped into dusty jars and set in neat little rows upon rickety shelves. He was grand and soaring libraries, little monks stolen or sold by desperate families, unhappy boy scribbling away.
"That is what I do," he says, soft. The tremor, the stammer, in his words is gone, but the faint lisp is there, the tenor lilt familiar. "Like a little toy top set upon an oak-nut city. But a top cannot really mourn, can it, Glenn Burnie?"
I can.
He lets that remain unsaid, settled heavy between them. He lets the early thrush and robin sing in the Wood, somewhere far above. "So. I have all my Jars together. And do you have all your Lights?"
Glenn Burnie: A toy top. An oak-nut city. It was, all at once, not in the least like Catch and absolutely like him. It wasn't that Burnie's smile, dim and steady as it was, faded. It was simply that the focus of his eyes overwhelmed it. His hand did rise to his own face, but it was a soft rub to the side of his cheek, a small pensive motion as he, once again, listened before he responded. "Whatever you are and whatever you were, no matter how inevitable it might be, it was never inanimate. You are no top."
For a time, though, Glenn Burnie had been unable to mourn. How lucky it was that he could again now, now that he had so, so much to mourn. "All." Three letters that encompassed everything there was. He shook his head softly, but did not repeat the word. He just let it hang out there.
"I doubt either of us will ever be complete again, but we are better than we were, far better, and we are better still when we are not alone."
Catch: "Mm." A noncommittal sound. And Catch, for all his relaxed stance, the gaiety of flowers in his curls, has not let down his guard. It is as if he expects Guiseppe to emerge at any moment; as if he expects Glenn to suddenly grow twenty feet, or to utter some command, or bring a tiny Gloria out from his shirt to spit Glass Words. There could be Golden Chains dripping from his fingers at any moment.
"I don't know about better. I'm not - better is an invention. Descriptive. I appear better to you. For the most part?" Catch shifts, leaning forward, a hand on his knee, his elbow on the other, his gaze suddenly intense. "I'm asking because you've been speaking to Fionn for awhile now. I'm sure you've grasped there are different... moralities. Not just Good or Bad."
Glenn Burnie: "Good or bad are inventions as well," What did he think would happen here? Burnie was not assaulting him with full predictability, but he was himself and some things were unavoidable. The fairy queen was mentioned, and there wasn't even a flinch out of that from Glenn, though if he had realized anything from his time with her, interacting with her, it was that perception was, truly, everything. "It's all us trying to understand the world around us, to make sense of it. There is utilitarianism, that is discerning what is best decision for the most people. The difficulty, of course, is who gets to decide what is best, and to a lesser degree how the notion of 'people' is defined."
That was the moment where Burnie went from being poised to actually relaxed. His shoulders drooped just a little, his smile becoming easier. "Common terms are important. Better, in your case, is more lucid, able to access more of your memories and to think more easily. Better, in my case, however, is being reconnected to my emotions, to be able to question myself and my views. Better can be different for each of us. At the same time," too many words, but there was too much to say and there was no helping it. "while you knew me whole, I've never known you whole before, so it's hard to say how you appear to me. That is, I can only theorize what the 'most part' might be."
Catch: There is a small tug at the corner of his lips. "I asked on purpose, and I'm beginning to feel like I shouldn't have. But I wanted to see what you would do. What you would say. Getting involved with words with you, Glenn Burnie, is a mistake I won't make at all. So." But there was an answer in there, of sorts. Catch watches him with the same intensity, the same wariness, of a wolf at the end of a crossbow bolt. "So. What now?"
Glenn Burnie: "I did more than I wanted to," No one could chastise Glenn Burnie except for, perhaps, Glenn Burnie himself. His smile, then, was wry but it was still a smile nonetheless. He didn't seem particularly threatened. Catch had manhandled him before, tossed him across a room, lifted him up, struck him in front of all of Myrken. Moreover, Catch had seen Glenn beaten and battered, seen him at death's door more than once. Whatever he feared, it wasn't pain. It wasn't that. There was no cringing. There was no pitter-patter of his heart. There was no horror. "I'm still me, Catch, with all of the faults weaved in. I don't claim otherwise. They were unchecked before; now they are not. That's the only difference."
He gave no further explanation on what checked them. Either he assumed that Catch knew or he would make Catch ask. There was no discernible sign from Glenn which it was.
"I suppose we decide things between us. What do we want? What do we plan? We obviously are about one another. Shall we be friends still? Better friends than we were before." Then, finally, he flinched, not in the sense that he recoiled, but that his absolute stare moved past Catch, up past his left shoulder into the woods. "What she would say, of course, would be this: what lines do we not cross? What can we not endure? Do you miss her too?"
Catch: "People are -" A small silence squeezed in. Catch is full of these carefully curated comments. The same, but different. Here, he was searching for words, as he had been before. But once those words had been found, he did not surge ahead, stumbling over them, flinging them ahead, desperate to find what most pleased in an effort to stave off punishment or displeasure. He exhales a heavy breath through the nose. "That was all you. I knew it. Know it. Even - well. Was Giuseppe you, too?" Carefully, as if the name itself would summon the man. And the hatred wrung from the letters. If indeed he were summoned, then the Black Man would not guarantee to live long.
Catch's hand slips from his knee, and he leans forward, one smooth motion sending him to his feet. "Well. What do you want? And what have you planned?" Catch cants his head. and he leans towards Glenn - close, closer, far too close - close enough that there is a blast of breath, sour and sweet, rotten flowers - and there is something like pity in his eyes, but strangely pitiless. "Let it go, Glenn. From someone who's tried to hold on, let it go."
Glenn Burnie: Burnie's smile diminished. That was how it was going to go then? He invoked Ariane and, in return, Catch would invoke Giuseppe? Petty. Few things were sacred to Glenn Burnie, but that was perhaps one. Still, he answered, though a bit more curtly than before. "We fed each other, he and I. He did not want what he thought he wanted, but it helped me that he refused to admit it to himself."
It had been years since he had spoken to anyone about the man in black. "In the end, our partnership could not and did not survive my recovery. Shortly after you killed him, he betrayed me, and thus Golben and everything else," because yes, Catch, if Burnie had not been betrayed, he could have well stopped Rhaena, as he had stopped so many things before Her. Again, Burnie did not recoil. He stood firm. More than that... In the face of the sour smell, he leaned in, forehead to forehead, and not the first time at that. His voice was almost whimsical, certainly amused, though most likely at himself as much as anything else. "I spent all of yesterday without it. You deserve better than that. Isn't there a better way to do this? We show our cards at the same time. On three? Something like that?"
Catch: "Why are you feeling threatened right now, Glenn?" There is genuine confusion in his soft, quiet voice. For him, this feels nice. Glenn is close. He smells like books, old and new; there is an undertone of Fionn that both excites and enrages. But he can move past that. Fionn is her own creature. Who she chooses to engage is her own choice. They are brow to ruined brow, and Catch turns his head to find the crook of Glenn's neck, and intimate and animal search of these scents. For this moment, he is not a human, no matter his appearance. This closeness was good. What advice he has given was good, because he could gaze down such long memories. He could look ahead.
"You're the one who brought Her up." Soft, almost a growl in the way it rumbles through the chest. A tickle in the ear. Then Catch is straightening, stretching, and when he is not hunched or subservient, he fair towers. "I'm not being obtuse, Glenn Burnie. My answer really depends on your answer. Alright, then. What do you want me to do? What are your plans for me?" Still standing far too close for human ease, yet perfectly at ease, Catch spreads his broad hands. "What can I do for you?"
Glenn Burnie: When was Glenn Burnie not threatened by anything that was natural and most of things that were not. He was not tense. Yes, there was defiance in his leaning in towards Catch, but there was familiarity as well. He had missed this as well, had missed everything about Catch, about every unveiling of him, the mysteries and the realities, the simplicities and the complexities. Frustrating and welcome, kind and terrible, greedy and giving.
"Invoked. She'd hate that." Yet he still smiled because she'd both hate it and accept it nonetheless. He missed Catch. He missed Her more. It was okay. He did too. "Patience and care. I do not use you. I know the cost. It is a line I do not cross. You are not to be used. Not by me. Not by Finn. Not by anyone. You are no creature, no tool, no weapon. I would protect you from that and I would protect Myrken from that." An absence of something. Would that then be an absence of everything? What if Catch wanted something after all of this time?
"Let's work through what needs to be worked through, you and I. And Fionn too. Whoever else you'd like. Let this to be not the last talk but instead the first."
Then he paused, just for a moment, eyes shutting, the laugh pleasant and wry not making it past his stomach. "Answers. Some answers would be nice after all this time."
Catch: "Ah." Declarations. A Glenn Burnie specialty.
Catch walks past him, towards the Dagger, just a few paces; if he closes his eyes, as he does, he can imagine perfectly the lines of the Lake, every building, every stone - where they were, where they will be, where they had been niggled free by hard and desperate hands, where they had been laid by skilled ones. The name of every drop of blood that had been spilled on them. These things did not overwhelm him as they once had. He takes a deep, deep breath, letting the blossoms in his hair, the Intoxication of Spring, clear his mind by Infesting it with the longing to run. Run away from Glenn, and worry, and - Glenn would understand, wouldn't he? Because that was a very Catch thing to do.
"The problem is that I might want to be used. I'm cursed with Sociality, Glenn. In my state, why do you think I sought out Myrken?" He turns, then, to look at Glenn, his eyes deep pools; he gestures at the stump that he had been sitting on. "I was born without a name at a time I cannot place. My Mother was something I cannot describe, but I believe the Drow worship her in the Shape she is now. My other Mother was a - I suppose a Druid is the closest thing. Witch is another."
Glenn Burnie: Burnie let Catch pass. There was a level of control in pressing his head against the larger man's. It had been his choice, not Catch's, a response to a choice that Catch himself had made. If he was crushed because of it, at least it had been Glenn that had driven that. He would embrace a destruction of his own making over a salvation he had no hand in. That was the final, fatal conceit of Glenn Burnie. Yet here he was, still standing. Catch had claimed that Burnie felt threatened, but he only tensed up, finally, when the Drow's worship was mentioned. That ritual all those years ago head been a very specific thing with very unspecific effects. Some of it still stuck with him even today. The memories, both of what he did to get into that room in the first place, and then what had happened to him within, certainly did and always would.
When he sank, however, it was not because of that. Now he'd put his head in his head and was laughing softly into it, a soft laugh, an exhausted laugh, an almost mad laugh. "Two mothers." A half dozen contradictions that he could never work out, contradictions that drove him to distraction, that created a hundred now obviously ridiculous theories, all untangled themselves within his mind. For a moment, he couldn't even look at Catch without laughter creeping up but he swallowed it down, wiped at his cheek, and mounted his best attempt at a steady look once more. "Go on. We'll come back to sociality in a bit."
Catch: He doesn't miss it. He may not be looking at Glenn, but there is much he can smell. But he'll say nothing, for now; answers are what Glenn Burnie wants.
"I destroyed my first town when I was..." He struggles, as always, with the time. His eyes are closed to visualize it. It is bright, and bloody. "... small. Men came and killed the women. Men do that a lot. They don't like it when Women will not bend to them. They took me to a village, a town. They said I must not speak to animals anymore, that I must not run in the Woods, and I must wear clothes and make small steps and not dance under the Stars. And then a man came. A Wolf. He taught me many things. He taught me Writing, but not your writing; he taught me Maths, but not your maths. It was more that I already knew it. I just needed to be shown. I just had to remember. I liked to imagine he was my Father. I know that he was, now. He is -"
There are not Words. There are never words.
Catch brings up his scarred hand, fingers squeezing tight. "I'll have to bring him in here. He was the Wolf. Do you remember? When I couldn't think of other words."
Catch does not face Glenn, but he unfurls his hand to tap his skull. "I'd had him before. Locked away. But I can talk about that later. These stories, these answers, they're very long. And I think this time I'll just kill him. So. The other boys, they were boasting, and I wanted to boast, too. That's what boys did, isn't it? Boast? I showed them some Numbers. I showed them how I Sang. And that village tore itself to pieces."
Glenn Burnie: He had expected many things. He had expected lucidity. He had expected danger. He had expected greediness and jealous. He had expected fury, even fear. He had expected love. He had every reason to expect these things. Catch was More. That much he knew. He was more, but he was still Catch, and Glenn Burnie knew Catch. So long as he was still himself, and he was.
What he had not expected was answers. That was not about Catch at all. It was about Glenn Burnie and the Mystery of Catch. Bits and pieces, a tapestry gathered over the span of a decade. He had so much of this but never the ability to put it together. Now, he was inwardly reeling, writhing. Part of him loathed every second of this while the rest hungered for it like nothing else. Why had he asked so directly instead of just asking for the clues that would have tied it all together? Why had he not simply asked for the means to do it himself?
Burnie took a long breath, clenched his fists, and exhaled, letting his hands open, calm again. Ten years. Ten years and a hundred and he was no child, no boy in a body a few years older than it seemed. Not anymore. He was Glenn Burnie and after all of this, he could find the humility to accept what was giving, what he, fool that he might be, had the temerity to simply dare ask.
"Thank you." He manages that instead, for this was not about him and if he could manage nothing else, he could make sure that it did not become about him. And while that was the story, it was not yet the core of it. "The first golden village tore itself to pieces, but still, you were whole."
Catch: For a long time, Catch is quiet, and Glenn's words flow over and through and past until they dissipate through the grass, the wakening insects, the quiet breeze and gentle rustle and movement of Life. There are little pinpricks, here and there, of expected Dying. Tore itself to pieces. Again, words failed. How could he describe what happened? It was so calm, coming from Glenn. So gentle, coming from himself.
"Others came and took us away. The boys that - survived. I don't think the others really knew what happened. The ones that still had... sanity." Catch gentled. He skirted. He carefully picked his words because others would not do, or because there simply were no words. "There was a man who was much like you, at the next place. He teased out the story. Put pieces together. I think he really did want to be very Good, at first. But I was still Small, and he was very Large. He encouraged things I did not want to do. I did not want to Sing any more, or do any more Numbers. But he got me to show him some things. And he figured out that some things just happened, whether I did them or not. I didn't have to participate. I just had to be there."
Silence. Then:
"I'm telling you this part because I wasn't happy, there. I was deeply unhappy, and I thought, 'this is why everything keeps going wrong'. But it doesn't matter if I'm happy or not. It just goes wrong, so I can skip ahead to where it happened, if you'd like."
Glenn Burnie: In some ways it was a relief. Catch had always been More. In some ways he had always been Other as well, something Other than human. Glenn knew that. He had tried to impose the norms of society upon him, both at his best and at his worst; there was no denying that. He had come back with a different goal: completion, restoration, oneness only to find that he was already too late. Still, to hear this story from this perspective, it was a relief. Whatever Catch had been, whatever he was not, he was relatable. Glenn could empathize. To say it justified his efforts would be a lie, but it made the best of them something far, far other than monstrous. He had learned to live with the worst of what he did, fully understanding the reasons behind them. If the best of what he did had been so false, however, there would be very little place left for him to go. "We have time. I am back. We are friends. I've lost so much and you've lost so much, but we have each other and we have other things in common as well. Other people. Of the few we have remaining."
These were the words that were so easy for Glenn Burnie, so easy for him to say and so easy for him to mean. It was so hard for so many, and so many things along these lines that were so easy were so hard for him. What a strange thing, that. "We'll break bread. We'll share moments. We'll create memories. There will be time for every tale you want to tell so long as we make that time, for I wish to hear them all. For now, let us skip ahead as you said."
Catch: "Mm." A noncommittal noise full of meaning. Perhaps, now, it was agreement, accompanied by a dip in Catch's head, a settling of his chin on his chest. "I hope you know what you're asking."
It is, despite the absence of a lilt, almost a child-like question. Catch-like, those large hands fist the front of his shirt, and for the first time his shoulders lose their confident rigidity. For a moment, he is Catch - a Grand Catch - twisting the fabric of his clothing, his eyes unfocused and Elsewhere. Because Glenn Burnie has asked him for something that is Terrible. That is Difficult to give. With an animal growl and a shake of his head that unsettles the flowers Catch leaps forward, striding to and fro like a caged thing.
"Lothaine," he says. "It was after Lothaine, and that was when I tried - actively - to control this - this Thing that I have. I held nothing back. I taught them the Numbers, and I taught them how to Sing. And for a very, very long time, it worked. It worked. I stayed in the Woods, and they stayed in their Golden Cities, and we came together when it was needed, and -"
Catch seemed to realize, now, that he was rambling, that he was spitting out words as he had used to and he stops, chest heaving and eyes bright and burning, his jaw so tight that, surely, his teeth must be splitting. "... and when it all went wrong, it - I ran. I ran very, very far away. It ruined me. Broke me. I ran to the smallest village I could find, because even then, I couldn't entirely run away. I knew, from experience, if the place was small then the effect was small. And I thought I could just - stay a little, and then move away before things became too bad. That seemed like a good plan. It was a good plan, wasn't it?"
The closer he came to it, the more unhinged he became; he trembled, and he jerked, and he was not the confident, Lordly thing, but he was the old Catch.
Glenn Burnie: Mm. Ahead of them was the Butcher, was the sundering. Ahead of them was the greatest pain He had ever known in a lifetime of lifetimes. He would do this because Glenn Burnie asked it of him. What would it gain them? Understanding? Yes, that, but what did Glenn not yet understand? The cause, perhaps, but not the effect. The problem before them was immense, and wiser men than he (if one is not to believe in Progress, maybe) had failed disastrously. He needed every bit of information. He did not need it today.
"Stop." One word, no, for it was more than a word. It was a motion. Burnie had taken to his feet, had placed a hand up upon Catch's arm. Let him then have a sign of faith, of trust, that the words he spoke were meaningful words. He would deny himself this thing he wanted so very badly. "There will be another day. It doesn't all have to be now. There will be another day for the smaller stories and there'll be another day for this. Answer me one more question today, just one," and then, for there was a then, but he left it hanging for now.
"What were you called by your mothers? What were you called by the Wolf? What were you called by that wise man? What were you called in Lothaine? What were you called before it happened? Did they all call you the same or did they call you different? Which did you prefer the most?" Because one question for Glenn Burnie was never, ever so simply contained.
Catch: Stop. His first instinct is to tear away, and Glenn could see it in the way Catch tenses, the way his hand already comes up, fingers seeking to grab that offending grip, tear it away (tear it off, rip the flesh and bone so that it will never happen again again again). His flesh is hot under the cloth, his fingers like a brand. For a long moment they can stand there, quiet except for the subtle hiss of Catch's breath through flaring nostrils, as if it physically pained him to have Glenn so near, to have them touch.
"... please," is all he says, and he is there, if back to the overly stiff and formal self that he had presented when they had first come to the edge of the Wood. He would drop his grip, and wait for Glenn to do the same. A list of names.
"I have no name, Glenn, that can be spoken. The Wolf knew this, as did the Witch-women, including my mother. In the town I was known as Madeburg, and it was thus the wise one knew me. In Lothaine they named me Telpse Vana. Where it... happened, I named myself Guericke. I used many different names on many different roads. Some meant more to me than others. Catch is... a good one."
Glenn Burnie: As it became obvious that Burnie's touch was not causing any sort of respite or comfort for Catch, he would withdraw, would withdraw all the way back to the stump. As he did, the question and the answer that followed came. There was, perhaps somewhere in there, a hint of recognition. Didn't it just make sense that in all of his research, not just of Catch but of Lothaine and other places on the continent that he might hear a hint of one of them? Or maybe it was something else.
"Alright, Catch." He would say finally, the first time that he consciously called him that today. "When I know more, we can figure out more of what to do. Right now, I think what's most important is that your restoration is not disrupted, that you're safe and comfortable as you work through this, and we work through this."
He slumped forward a bit, for his mind was churning, connecting dots still, pulling together bits of information that had been all but lost to him through one trauma or another, a glimpse here and a glance there and a word said in passing by Catch at a key moment eight years before or... or other things. "Do you have any questions for me or should we move on to the next thing?"
Catch: "You were sold." Glenn said a lot of things. Restoration. Catch's fingers, rattled by what they had almost done, rattled by skirting dark, blood-soaked memories, tapped in nervous patterns on his breastbone. He cannot look at Glenn when asking this. "What... happened? Did you only write books? Did you only make maps? Did they want you for - other things?"
Glenn Burnie: That Catch had a question at all was a surprise. That he had a question about something so far back, something that didn't involve him, or at least that didn't involve the here and now of Myrken. All of that was a surprise too.
"Most people don't want to know too much about." He noted, not quite smiling, not quite frowning, not quite neutral. In this moment, there were far more things that he was not than things that he was. "No maps until after I ran away. I taught myself afterwards. I wasn't good enough to do it professionally in Razasan. I'm known in certain circles there for making Myrken quality maps."
There was no shame in that, though. It had been part of his identity, once upon a time, yes, but he had long grown past that. He put a hand to his left eye, covering it, and rubbed up and down slowly, as if pushing away something: memories, exhaustion, embarrassment as ridiculous as that would be. "Don't tell people here, though. That's a secret."
It also wasn't an answer to Catch's question. "They controlled a territory the size of one of our province. They did so entirely through money. A religion of money. They worshiped gold. Supply and demand. What people needed, what people wanted, what people would give up for it, what they would do for it. All driven by a army of slaves born and raised to have no loyalty and no ties but to them. Had I stayed there and not run away, I would have been a faceless banker."
He paused, thinking through exactly what Catch had been saying. "There was discipline. Chastity. For me, maybe not others. I was never idle enough to be snatched up, I suppose. I spent all my time when I was not being trained in the libraries. I suppose this is why no one ever asks much about it. I couldn't bear not living but I was in little danger of not being alive."
Catch: There is a small, scant relaxation of his shoulders, a release of tensions that he did not even knew that he had held.
What do you want, Glenn? Catch's tongue is already working around the question, flexing against his teeth, his throat swelling with it. When I was nothing, reduced to a Worm, I swung wildly and immediately with my fists. Unhelpful. But now, now I can help, Glenn Burnie. I can help you much better. I can go back to that Monastery, that repository of Gold and Book-making and Slaves, and I can put out the eyes of everything with flesh in that place and make them crawl. I can bring you back there and all the Books would be yours, and all the Gold and the Flesh would be yours. And wouldn't it be better for Myrken? Wouldn't -
"I understand," is what Catch says, words easily reshaped in his slow, lilting way. "I've had spaces like that. The time with the - you called him a Wise Man, and I suppose that will do - that was a time like that. That places was rooms of boys copying tomes. And when the boys grew up, it was men copying tomes." Catch runs his thumb across his knuckles, and the action seems soothing - he seems more thoughtful, now, than fretful. "Another was when I was on the ship to Jernoah. That was a very bad time."
Glenn Burnie: When I was your age, Gloria Wynsee, and I had been in Myrken and elsewhere for a few years, I wanted nothing more than to go home and burn the place down. It was not a place of gross injustice, not relatively, you understand, for there is so much injustice everywhere, but it was my injustice and that makes a difference... Were someone else to burn the whole thing down, I wouldn't shed a tear, but it shan't be me lighting the flame. Were you want to do it to your homeland, I wouldn't try to dissuade you.
Burnie listened. He had not expected this. In fact, every bit of it, every winding path that was hidden behind trees or hills or the horizon, each one distracted from their eventual destination. Fionn had told him that he would need all of his wits or cunning or some such and he had told her that he would need all of his kindness; the latter, as opposed to the former, had taken them this far.
"Of all the things and all the times, when were you happiest? Was it Lothaine before it all went bad?"
But he had not expected a dialogue. Even as Catch asked his last question, he had not expected a dialogue. He had so rarely ever had one with the larger man. The fact that he was able to peer back with such lucidity to these specific incidents and times opened a thousand doors previously closed.
Catch: Catch sets out a hand, and it is a blind and trusting gesture; he does not even need to look to know that there is a tree, there, and he finds his support. He looks, finally, at Glenn; and even now he cannot quite look at him. It is a good attempt, and perhaps it could fool many people. He almost, almost, could meet someone's eyes. But it goes past, it goes through. It sees a wistful ghost.
"Of course there were times I was happy. There are many times I am happy now, here, in Myrken. There were times I was very happy in Jernoah. Times I was happy in Lothaine. My happiest time is just like anyone's, I suppose. When I was a small boy, able to run through the Wood, with no cares and no memories, singing to the Stars with no constraints."
Glenn Burnie: Burnie's stare remains as it always was, consuming. Perhaps it was no-longer all consuming. If Catch's came up shallow, dodged past, dove under, Burnie's bore through, seized and jumped straight down and in. He couldn't turn it off, no more than Catch could currently turn it on. If there were any ghosts, he was the last person in the world that would have the sensitivity to see them, even as he saw so much else.
"I have none of that. I was never in real danger, but I have no memories like that. Always cares. Never ignorance enough to be anything peaceful, except for maybe a fool. To make foolish decisions," which was the chapter Catch mercifully did not ask about, that Glenn would not offer freely. He'd come to have different opinions about it now, about the root of it, and there was a Fairy Queen and all the research that went with her to blame for that. Still, he rarely looked back to it, even compared to the first ten years of his life
"For me, it was that first year here. The Ashfiend was bearing down upon us. People were dying, but Cinnabar had just taken charge. Savoy could still play the intellectual hero. I could dash about in the margins, learning, caring, sneaking a held hand with Rhaena, badgering Ariane until she taught me everything I wanted to know about blades and Myrken both, getting bruised and battered but feeling at home. I wasn't responsible for anything yet, let alone everything, but I was part of all of it. That's what I can never have again. It all had a cost and it quickly became more than I could afford, more than any human could."
Catch: The fact that Glenn seemed to like danger, sought it, explained much. A happier time made with the Ashfiend, and with times uncertain. Catch's fingers ache with being made to clench so hard against words unsaid and emotions unexpressed, hidden safely behind his back, and he struggles to unlock them. "I don't like how there were - bad things before me. That there were bad things, here."
And could he make them stop? Could he keep them away? Rhaena had been so overt, so blunt. Catch simply had to Be. The flowers quickly grew, the livestock and the humans kindled in abundance, the crops were kind.
He did not know what else to say that was not promise or threat, so he said nothing, his not-stare meeting somewhere side Glenn's nose. Waiting.
Glenn Burnie: That's what Gloria said. He sought magic or power. Danger? Something to push himself against so he knew that he was alive? So that his mortality could be something other than his great shame in this world? Is that what Catch thought?
"They were bad. Before me." Glenn's eyes tinkled as he took what Catch had said and twisted it ever so. "When I arrived, they were caught in a cycle of their own. The meetinghouse had burned. No one remembered anything. They all had their eyes shut. So the same thing just happened again and again. They never learned."
He rolled, and there was no other word for it, a roll. It was a languid twisting of his body sideways, the sort of thing he couldn't manage anywhere but Myrken for here he was home and he treated the entire province like he owned the place. In the end, his back was against Catch's leg and his head was leaned back against his knee.
"Fine. Both of us. You bring the light and I use it to read to them. You make the soil rich and I'll find the seeds for them to plant. You keep the monsters from the people and I'll keep the people from being monsters. We could try it. You just be yourself. I'll be myself, and we'll see if it's different this time." So long as Catch hadn't flung him aside or scurried back, Burnie would shut his eyes. "It wouldn't be different, though, would it? Not even that? Even that's too much, isn't it?"
Catch: Here was Glenn. He was a heavy weight against his knee. Heavy, warm, full of blood. Catch could hear it, pushed in and out, rushing like waves. He could feel it, pumped through his heart. He could smell it. Glenn, Glenn Burnie, old books and dust, and faint maggot-holes since that day, the overbearing sugar-spun sweetness of Her.
Catch almost doesn't hear anything he says. The blood is a roar in his ears; the scent squeezes his brains. Like a vast tree in the wind he bends, shifts so carefully, as if Glenn were a skittish bird. Catch's eyes are shut, carefully closed, as he adjusts - knees in the loam, Glenn's head upon them, broad palms carefully placed on either side.
"... is this what you think?" Low, so low that it is hardly a breath, raw, aching. He is hunched, bent as he had once been, breath stirring Glenn's hair is he speaks.
Glenn Burnie: It had not been long at all since Catch asked Glenn why he felt threatened. Not long at all, and here they were. It was never simple with Glenn, never just calm and peaceful. Perhaps he was solace in a storm, but he also brought the storm. Wasn't that true with so many people, though? And not all of them brought solace. It wasn't enough though. It didn't even begin to be enough.
"I may feel differently when I hear the rest, Catch," His voice was thoughtful, studious. How could a voice be studious, truly? How could his voice be anything but. "That's how I figure everything out. Patterns. That's how I worked out what happened before I arrived. I found the pattern," in all things; he wanted to say that, those three words, but he didn't. He would have five years ago, would have with a playful grin ten years ago. Now, he just didn't, but he still wanted to.
Instead, he said something rather remarkable for him. "It's big, Catch. It's so big. Centuries and thousands dead before me. If we try something new and get it wrong, then at least you know it doesn't work, can try again in another hundred years, but I, we, this, it'll all be gone. If we do nothing, it'll happen anyway. We'll have to find a different way. We'll have to try something different," but there were a hundred possibilities, a hundred things to try, and they could only try one. It was enough to sweep even him under. It made him wistful, brought his eyes shut tight, calm as he was.
"You know the first thing I thought with her when she told me about the ganconner? That we had to fix her, solve her curse. I was wrong. That's not what I'm trying to do with you. To fix you. We're trying to find the best path. Together."
His eyes slowly opened, and with them came realization. The door had been opened for he had invoked the fairy queen. "She doesn't understand the weight of your history at all, does she? All she sees is the pain and the beauty. I think if she understood, she'd love you all the more for it, but it would be different. Autumn instead of Spring. Could you bear that? I don't think we can do this alone, though, Catch, and we can't do it with her unless she's able to understand."