by Glenn » Tue Aug 14, 2018 5:20 am
Her smile was fond. It had been a word he'd used with some regularity since her arrival, more so than he had in a very long time. It was hardly a carnal word. It wasn't entirely neighborly either. Here, she didn't speak it and he didn't respond to it, but it was a nice, if pained smile she showed him. He enjoyed both aspects of it, because that was exactly the sort of aggravating person Glenn would be in any condition at all.
"I can hold my breath for quite a while." Generally, he was no braggart. Instead of outwardly boasting like many men did, he was much more apt to try to contort reality itself to spout his praises. Currently, however, he was not at his best, whatever she might think, and that slipped through. "I try not to think about it," which was an odd addendum, and a highly unbelievable one, for when did he not think about anything? There were limits though, and it was all too easy to attribute every little thing to the preternatural if one wasn't careful.
Just as he was, right now, more apt to brag, he was more susceptible to flattery. When she called him the very worst threat to her resolve ever born, no small thing given her (increasingly understandable) penchant for literal speaking and her relatively long life, his gaze bore down upon her all the more. When she touched her own forehead, he swallowed and the world momentarily spun. He was nothing if not a creature of balance however, and his feet were planted well enough that it did not take him along on the journey, not far at least.
It all meant that he was distracted enough to be surprised when she was quite suddenly upon him. It had just been walking a few steps, though, not a shift in perception. That was his guess at least, but he felt surprisingly good about it. His mind was so diverted with the distinction that he let her place her hands upon him without resistance. Eventually, his mouth caught up to the rest of them, first with the slightest of frowns, and then with some quick, fevered words. It was not used to lagging behind. "You'd make what you'd make and lose so much that you value in the process," thankfully this was rote, Burnie's usual argument about the good and the bad being tied together and about how gods mucking about gave him some sort of important moral high ground. "You'd lose everything that makes me worthwhile and gain," and wasn't that the rarest thing? Glenn Burnie running out of words.
His brain had caught back up in the relay, bypassing the mouth, all while running backwards stare at the two of them and the situation as a whole. "You've spent a year corresponding with me and two long days seeing me inside and out. I imagine you have an entirely complete sense of exactly what you might make." Here he would shut his eyes, would breathe through his nose one long, well-preserved breath. When he exhaled, it was with a tiny chuckle. "That's fair then. I think you'd lose some of the surprise I provide, at least when I'm not entirely predictable, but it's fair and I both concede the point and appreciate your restraint," not that he could do much else with his primary argument gutted.
That was all too honest, but then everything was right now. The brain could discern accurate from inaccurate, but it was letting all other manner of thing pass. Burnie was not a liar, not at all, but he was terribly skilled at holding back complete truths more often than not. That skill, it seemed, had been abandoned, if not in the carriage the day before, then somewhere in the depths of time immemorial with an abdicating queen who hunted a unicorn.
It meant when she asked a direct question, or called in a promised story, there was little to do but to tell her. "I meant in a letter," he'd try to defer, but there was no helping it. "I'll tell you though." And he would, but she had more to say and he listened for once. Why? Because he knew that if and when he spoke, she'd have the whole of it.
It wasn't until she was squeezing his shoulder that he looked first to her own shoulder (and she'd allow him that, wouldn't she?), and then to her eyes. To his eventual credit, his gaze was straight and direct, even as he was partially lost in the effort of summoning up memories. "Actions have consequences. You know that. Sometimes they're the ones we expect. Sometimes they're not. In the Dream, we all had jewels attached, here." He rubbed at his collarbone, though it was no longer exposed. "When we died, the jewels exploded. If our partners died, we died as well. I was matched with Agnieszka. We were the second last pair to die. These were not normal dreams. When I woke up, it was with a wound." Short, simple sentences to try to contain the surreal.
"The wound became a scar. The scar became a tool, a focus. A touchstone." He could not hide from her, but more than that, he could not hide from himself. "This was ten years ago. I was young. I wasn't rational. I wasn't well. I was scared and hurt. Then, in the midst of all of that, Sarayn took Rhaena's hand. I became consumed with revenge." It had been useful that he had spoken about much of this already. With his emotions so unleashed, maudlin grief might have otherwise overtaken him here. Instead, he was keeping his composure. "I had to be stronger, quicker, able to handle a drow. I trained with Jirai. She cut me, battered me, poisoned me, day in, day out. I became what I needed to be over time, but it meant relying on certain means to sustain myself through her daily torture, to see myself healed. I lost a friend over it, but I found those means, unnatural ones. I abused them out of necessity and after enough time under this regimen, I woke up to find the scar gone. That meant that one day I woke up without being sure I woke up at all."
Glenn Burnie was a stubborn, willful, determined being, but it took almost all he had not to look away from her then and there; composure had its limits. "You can imagine what followed," he all but whispered instead. "Every morning I woke up with no scar. Every morning I gave myself a new one to ensure I was awake. Eventually Ariane returned and convinced me to stop." That admission should have been easier than the one about irrational, but functional self-mutilation. It was not, but he was able to rush through it at least. "I stopped training with Jirai, found a different way to defer her murderous impulses. For myself, for my sanity's sake, I chose a tattoo instead," one that was obviously gone now. "It did not survive all of my interactions with Catch. I think, now, that Golben was likely the end of it, but after that," and Rhaena's death, "it no longer mattered."
That was a testament to her, wasn't it? Or at least to her shoulder. Things mattered again when he spoke to her. He left that unsaid though. "I'll allow you concerns." Allowing was one thing. He couldn't stop himself from what came next. That was something else entirely. "I grew a tolerance during that year, both to the means I was utilizing and to a certain poison of Jirai's. A taste of both day after day, to build my body and mind up to endure them. That's what I need here. I may be deluding myself, but I think I'm not. I'll find some careful way to expose myself and by the time I arrive in Myrken, whatever's happened to me that possesses permanence will remain so, but that'll be the end of it. I'll solve your problem of temptation," or drive himself mad in the process.