xavier_institute_logs | A Belated Delivery and Perhaps a Chat (CLOSED)

Alric paused a moment at that, glancing off slightly as he contemplated briefly before answering in a deliberate tone as though choosing his words carefully.

"I suppose the best I can explain it is... that, at home, I am expected to be a leader. It's something for which I've been raised and educated, and have, until now, lacked only hands-on experience."

He smiled a touch ironically. He's outwardly at peace with the matter, although how much of that is practiced self-control is of course hard to gauge without at least an empath on hand.

"And one of my first ventures in leadership, here, resulted in my colleague being rather terribly out of sorts. It would be a disservice on my part to deny you responsibility for your actions, of course, but it was... not the sort of effect a worthy leader ought to have. That was a failure on my part, as well. And having lived with a... temper, and a natural talent for causing harm, I know all too well the..."

He trails off a moment, changing tack slightly; he doesn't need to use particularly evocative language with Tiamaris, after all.

"...that is... how very unpleasant it can be for one's control to slip. Whatever you may have done, I'm confident you suffered more from it than I did, and by all rights I should have handled it better."

He listened while Alric spoke, absorbing the words, but perhaps not enterily as they were intended. And some part of his attention did stray enough for him to note that Alric... Spoke like a book. Like one of the ones Tiamaris would read over and over again. Something bout it... The mix of word choice and cadence...

Tiamaris had never thought to try reading anything out loud. He hadn't read aloud since he was five and had to prove to his uncle that he actually could read the words on the page; now he wondered of he had been missing out...

When Alric finished speaking, Tiamaris gave one of his almost unreadable shrugs. "You had no way to know that I'm a monster," he said simply.

Alric shook his head at that answer.

"I can only dream of what experiences might have lead you to say such a thing, but if you'll forgive me, I must say that I fail to see its truth or its use to you or anyone else. You, like all of us here, have certain... abilities which set us apart, yes; those abilities can, at times, be destructive, yes; and you have difficulty controlling them, at times, fair enough. But if that is the definition of a monster, then it seems to me it is a far weaker word, and a far less damning one, than it seems to be in common use."

He pauses a moment, rhetorically, to let that sink in.

"If you are a monster, and the expression has any real meaning besides expressing a desire to denigrate your humanity, then I, too, am a monster. So far as I've seen, the differences between you and I, Tiamaris, are cosmetic or merely matters of degree. So. If you call yourself a monster merely to be disparaging toward yourself, I kindly ask that you consider how it reflects upon the rest of us who share in a measure of your plight."

He listened, and he chose his words carefully. It was not an easy thing to talk about, but he felt that at this point it... had to be understood. For some reason the thought that his words might insult, might hurt, this other person felt... wrong. Off. Bad. For some reason he didn't want to hurt him. Not his usual feeling of not wanting to hurt anyone but something more immediate, more specific, and harder to understand.

So he didn't speak at first, and when he finally did, his eyes were a dull red, and his words carefully spoken, carefully chosen. These were not words he wanted to say, but words the other needed to understand, to understand why he and Tiamaris were not alike, why Timaris was a monster, while the other was a man. The dragon... was a manifestation of the monster. Not the core of it. That was a good way to start, he decided.

"That I can turn into... that..." he said slowly. "These abilities, as you call them... That is not what makes me a monster. I as a monster before they developed. The dragon is simply the outer manifestation of the monster."

Then the words he really did not wish to ever say, the thing he hated thinking of... and here.... here there had been moments where it had not been shoved in his face every waking moment. Here he could have almost pretended to forget. He took a breath and then said very softly.

"I killed my mother. Long before I had any abilities of this sort."

Alric was clearly somewhat taken aback at that revelation--although he didn't recoil in horror as Tiamaris might have expected. He did scowl, but rather than a look of disgust, it was one more of intense contemplation, or perhaps confusion. He was quiet for a few seconds before speaking.

"Tiamaris. ...I hate to ask that you discuss at length something so obviously--and understandably--troubling... but I'm afraid such a statement demands clarification."

He shook his head slightly.

"You say 'long before,' but neither of us is old enough to have had much meaningful agency long before our abilities manifested. Even if yours only appeared the day before you arrived here. Further, I submit that the man who commits the sort of act you attribute to yourself and who is indeed a monster does not, as a rule, describe himself as a monster."

Alric turned partially to lean his hip against the desk on which he'd set down the parcel, crossing his arms.

"I can't, of course, force you to speak about it... and I regret dwelling on a painful subject, of course, but I cannot in good conscience simply drop the matter, hearing the way you speak about yourself."

"My first act in this world," he said, eyes a dull dark red, "was to comit the evil of killing my mother, and by that act, I turned my father into an evil man." He pushed his hands against his face, feeling anger and self lothing rise in him. The latter was safe, was his life. The anger made himself a threat to all who were around him.

"I have always known I was a monster," he said quietly. A simple truth, one ha had long since learned to accept. It was why he never could blame his father for the pains of his childhood.

He knew he deserved it. Deservered worse.

Alric was quiet a moment--then sighed, raising a hand to press to his forehead. He'd had an inkling this might have been what Tiamaris meant, but to think he'd taken the idea so far...

"...forgive me for... interjecting my interpretation, but... setting the rest aside, for the moment, it sounds as though you're saying your mother died in childbirth. Is that correct?"

He nodded, eyes still a dark dull red, his face otherwise impassive. "My father told me that I was so evil that her body could not handle it, and bringing me into the world destroyed her," he said softly. "She was a good woman, and my evil killed her," he said, looking away.

Alric let out a breath, shaking his head slowly, the hand pressed to his forehead clenching into a fist.

"...I certainly have faith that she was a good woman, Tiamaris."

He paused again, obviously somewhat tense.

"......but to literally accuse a newborn infant of-..."

He trailed off, paused again, and shook his head once more, speaking more slowly when he continued, his tone deliberate and formal.

"...I... do not wish to speak ill of your family. It would be a disservice to you to test your patience, and it would be... crass... on my part, as it is not really my place. So. I ask that you forgive me when I must say, as your colleague and your friend and a person of conscience that to hold you responsible is either madness or wickedness, though I know not which. But certainly none for which you can be held responsible."

"I murdered a good woman," he said softly. "I killed her. If you take a life, you should be held responsible." He sat down and closed his eyes. "I earned everything that came after, and worse. I do not deserve to be here. I have killed people. I am here to try and control that so it does not happen again. Because I am too much a coward to end myself." His voice was quiet but even as he spoke. This was not self pity. To him this was truth. It was more truth to him than the color of his eyes or the look of his face. This was what he knew of himself. This was what he knew to be true.

"...at the risk of stoking your ire..."

Alric stared at Tiamaris for a long few seconds.

"Is every infant whose mother dies in childbirth to be regarded as a murderer, by your reasoning? Consider, for a moment, a newborn infant's frailty, lack of a concept of right and wrong--lack even of a concept of its ability to affect its environment, or the lives of those around it. If such a child can be held responsible for murder, then should not everyone who causes a death, even unwillingly, unwittingly, and indirectly, be at least as condemned? Indeed, if an event over which you had as little control as your own birth is to be held against you, we had best condemn all recipients of organs--after all, there surely is someone farther down the list, and by receiving a transplant before someone else, each of those recipients may well cause the death of the one who goes without. Shall we say that seeking an organ transplant is tantamount to attempted murder, then, and deny all such requests--but then in causing the deaths of those denied their transplants, I suppose everyone throughout society becomes complicit."

He crossed his arms. He spoke even and coolly, but with a degree of tension in his voice.

"If that sounds preposterous to you, as I can only pray that it does, then I hope you begin to see the utter impossibility of what you seem to suggest. To the contrary. I would suggest, if you would pardon my overstepping once again, that the only evil I have heard in this tragic story is the evil that whispered continually to a child that he was to blame for the mournful complications accompanying his birth."

As Alric spoke, the words made less and less sense. The words slammed at him like blows, until he felt the tone of voice, felt the weight of the memories they stirred viscerally.

He had been stupid to think that things were different here. Could be different anywhere. He was stupid.

Once again that was being hammered home, as it had been every day of his life until he fled the barrel of his father's shotgun.

What he thought was wrong. What he knew was wrong. What he felt was wrong. He was not allowed to have these thoughts, these feelings. He was wrong.

And the one person he had started to think, in the whole world, might actually like him... was like his father.

His eyes darkened and darkened until the red was almost black. He swallowed hard and fled for the closet. He climbed in and closed the door, curling into a ball on the floor of the closet, clutching his knees tightly.

The closet was always the closest thing he had to a safe space.

He couldn't cry any more. Ever since the mutation... the tears, the shuddering sobs, the shaking breaths that rocked his frame.... they never came. Which meant there was no physical release for the pain. It just built and built. He pressed his mouth into his knee to stop himself from keening.

Noise always made his father angrier. He didn't have a right to sound when his father was like this.

He killed his mother. He didn't have a right to anything. Anything.

Alric stared after Tiamaris as he abruptly turned away, climbed in his closet, and shut the door--and for a long several seconds afterward.

He'd really thought, for a little while, that he might actually be getting through to the fellow--he's listened quietly, at least, rather than openly scoffing or with the mockery of attentiveness he'd have reasonably expected from his brother. That had seemed luck such a good sign. But perhaps the subject had struck a little too close to home: Alric knew very well the kind of harm unreasoning rejection and resentment could cause, especially to a child, and he had far more anger than forgiveness for those who exhibited such behavior.

The sort of person who turns that resentment on children--on his own child--that was Alric's definition of a monster, not whatever Tiamaris had internalized, and to see such a victim so intent on accepting his tormentor's accusations...

It shouldn't have been a surprise, perhaps. Whenever he let his guard down, got emotionally invested, sloppy-... a leader of men, indeed. His brother would surely be gleeful, seeing this mess, for a dozen reasons.

Alric paced a moment longer to collect himself before cautiously approaching the closet. He didn't knock, but rather, cleared his throat, to draw Tiamaris' attention with the least jarring sound he could.

"...I apologize for speaking so....... fervently. It is not my place to... tell you how to feel about your family. I can only say that.. it seems to me that you have been done a great, lasting injustice... and it is perhaps a character flaw that I cannot simply turn away from that. ......however. ...as I seem to be doing more.. harm than good, here, I will go, if you wish."

It was a long time before there was an answer. The words made so little sense that he couldn't figure them out at first. He had to keep replying them in his head. Again. Again. Again.

The part that kept getting stuck was the apology. It... didn't fit with everything else, with the way his world had shifted under him. He didn't know what to do with that, how to handle that.

And so it was a good long while before her finally opened the door the smallest crack, and peered out, his dark eyes so close to the ground that he looks much younger than he was. The small voice added to the illusion. It would clearly show what he had been like as a kid, even with the mask like face.

"Did... are you going to hit me now?" he asked in a small weak whisper. He didn't know what to think, he didn't know what he wanted, he didn't quite dare to really want anything. He had started to want... to want what he had read in books, what he had been told was not for him... but now... Now he wasn't sure what the world was... he just knew that Alric was angry now... maybe hated him the way his father did...

And he wasn't sure what to do with that....

Alric waited quietly--he owed that much, at least--pondering his next steps. Whatever failings he had, he was determined at least to do better, even if it wasn't good enough, and one critical feature of good leadership was to know one's limits. He would definitely need to get help from someone more capable than himself--advice, at the very least, although it was probably best, the way things were going, if he removed himself from the picture entirely.

He glanced over once again, when Tiamaris peeked out of the closet, his expression pensive, but relatively calm. Not angry, at any rate. It took him a couple seconds to even process that question without responding incredulously, although he did look a little puzzled, and then exasperated, at it. He raised a hand, but merely rubbed his forehead.

"...I-... ...no, of course not. I have no intention to hit you or otherwise harm you at all. Quite the contrary, actually, I would like to help, if I can... although I fear I've consistently done more harm than good."

"Wa.... want to help me...?" he asked quietly, confused. He was confused, so.... very confused, by all this. "But... you were so mad at me, so angry..."

He risked standing up a bit more, though he still clung to the frame of the door, looking out at him. He was still unsure, still confused. He wasn't used to people wanting to help. And this back and forth, wanting to help, then being mad then wanting to help...

"I don't understand," he admitted quietly. He watched him carefully, trying to figure out what was going on, what was expected of him, what he should do...

Alric let out a breath, shaking his head slowly.

"...no. I am... frustrated, that I've... mishandled speaking to you so gravely, at our.. failures of communication. If I am angry, that is expressly reserved for your father, for the treatment to which you were subjected, the injustices on which you were raised. You-.."

He pauses a moment, glancing off with a scowl and something of an intense look, his tension growing as he speaks--but this time, deliberately directing it away from Tiamaris.

"...there were those who resented and hated me as a child, as well, for things that were just as much outside my control as the circumstances of your birth were outside of your control. ......I, however, had the advantage of a father who protected me from them, as best he could, and... a step-mother who treated me as her own, where another might have seen a weakness of which she could take advantage. My anger is for the people who have tormented my family out of their resentment and fear of me, and for the man who should have protected you from scorn, not bathed you in it from birth."

He paused again to collect himself. He'd always had a fiery temper, intense and lionhearted, and only with great difficulty had learned caution and restraint.

"...I apologize for my... outbursts, but in some ways, your story strikes close to home, as the saying goes."

"You're mad.... at my father?" he asked, even more confused. "Because... of me?" he asked, swallowing a bit.

He listened to the story, coming out enough to sit on the bed while Alric spoke. Finally he asked, softly, quietly, trying to see if he understood, "you're saying that... that you were angry because... we're so much the same....?" he asked softly.

He had never been like anyone else before. No one else had ever been mad for him... well... his uncle, but he had died when Tiamaris had been five... and he had so few memories of the man, mostly just his voice, his quiet words as he taught Tiamaris to read, told Tiamaris how much knowing how to read had meant to his mother.

He watched Alric carefully, his eyes sliding slowly closer to a dull bronze as he started to become more secure in the knowledge that he wasn't about to be hit.

Alric eased back to give Tiamaris some room, to make sure he didn't feel crowded. He rubbed his forehead a moment longer, then brushed his hair back, and slipped his hands into his pockets--he usually thought of exposed hands as the most reassuring posture, but perhaps reversing that would work better for Tiamaris, considering his particular concerns.

He listened, then nodded slightly.

"...yes. ...and... something like that, yes. Although I would..."

He smiled faintly, wryly, for a moment.

"...at least, I believe... I would feel that anger in response to anyone being so... grossly abused as you have been, whatever our similarities or differences. I have always felt acutely the importance of a clear sense of right and wrong--of a dedication to and passion for upholding justice. ...but I suppose that to see a... an echo of oneself in another person inspires a certain sense of... closeness."

He paused, glancing aside, toward the wrapped parcel sitting on the desk, then back to Tiamaris.

"...when I look at you, I do not see a 'monster,' as you say, but an angry, wounded young man, who, where I have enjoyed shelter and support, was burdened instead with still greater torments. I see also that you have considerable gifts, which I sincerely believe you could learn to use well... to help those who do not even have the good fortune of a place like this Institute to shelter them."

"You... you really think I could help people?" he asked softly, trying to process everything that had been said. It was a lot to take in, really but... something was settling inside him, stilling. It felt as though something brittle was beginning filled in, to be come something that might some day become strong.

He looked up at Alric, at this person who had gotten mad at how he had been treated... who said he wasn't a monster. Someone who thought he had value, who told him he could help people...

Who had loaned him two shirts, even after he had seen what had happened to his last shirt. The copper started a slow hesitant fade towards gold, in his eyes.

Alric sighed and smiled faintly, nodding.

"I believe that anyone who sincerely wishes to help people can find a way to do so... although it may entail hard work and the guidance of others."

He pauses a moment.

"...there have... certainly been times when I have needed every iota of support and guidance available to me, and there surely will be more such times. But I do believe that if you are committed to that objective, you will find a way, through whatever challenges and setbacks you may face. I hope you will come to see your abilities as a gift, if an occasionally inconvenient one."

He smiles a little more, glancing aside, perhaps a tough self-consciously.

"Perhaps I am slightly biased, of course... I confess, I've always been rather fond of the notion of dragons and the history of their symbolism since I was a child."

He listened quietly to everything that was said, and thought about it, before he could try and figure out how to respond.

Finally he said softly, "I... always liked dragons. In the books. I... I used to think that if I was ever as big and strong as a dragon, I wouldn't be afraid of anything..."

He looked down at his hands.

"And then... and then I was... but I was still scared. And... if I was wrong about that..."

She shook his head, eyes a miserable dull orange.

Alric grinned a little at Tiamaris' confession of that shared inclination.

"...as far as I am aware, Tiamaris, the only people who are truly never frightened are exceptionally foolish or afflicted with some manner of psychological or neurological pathology; at least, barring a mutation with the same effect, of course. Everyone is, at some time, frightened. And everyone, particularly as a child, has misconceptions about the world. These are challenges we face, not... irreparable character flaws, so long as we are willing to face them."

"I.... I am trying to be less scared," he said softly. "It isn't working very well...."

He looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry I got you so upset before," he said softly.

Alric raised a hand in a soothing gesture and shook his head, smiling reassuringly.

"You have faced terrible things, which I've had the good fortune to avoid. I can hardly fault you for the trauma you suffered at the hands of others... and while my... difficulties have been somewhat different in tenor, if I can help you find the means, the techniques, to cope with your own, I would be most pleased."

He glances aside a moment, then back to Tiamaris.

"...and... there is still that gift, if you're interested."

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Replying from iPad, appologies for brevity/errors

No problem, my own apologies for slowness as usual x.x

Re: No problem, my own apologies for slowness as usual x.x

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Posting from iPad, please excuse brevity/errors

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