Even if Daisy isn't looking his way, unfortunately, Jon's eyes are trained to her all the while; the bit of a staring problem isn't even something caused by the Eye, he's truly just always been like this. He does take a drink while he listens, though, and listen attentively he does.
It sounds like, all things considered, she didn't fare with her own reunion much better than he had with Martin. At least Martin didn't wind up moving in shortly after?
"...Do you plan on explaining to her the, ah." Jon weighs his words for a moment, scrunching his nose a bit. There's no polite way to put what happened, no matter how he tries to angle it. "...Last encounter? I can't imagine you'd be in any rush to. It's not going to be a pleasant conversation." A beat, and he gives her an uncertain look, practically saying 'As your friend, I find this questionable' without having to utter a single word. "And you said she's... living with you now? I'm surprised that's not--- I don't know. Complicating things?"
Daisy meets his look with one of her own that's possibly a little defensive. "Not like it's that different from the Archives. You saw— ugh, no you didn't."
It's getting far too easy to forget that Jon didn't live through those extra months at home, these days.
"I came out of that coffin. And went right to living in that basement with the rest of you. No breathing room. Just you, me, Basira and Melanie cooped up together. Doesn't feel that different. At least this time she's not— I dunno, handling me like a china doll."
They haven't really talked about all that baggage either, Jon, can you tell.
"...and I'm. Not sure about telling her. Not like I have the full story. Not sure how much good 'yeah, you did kill me, but the world's still doomed' is gonna do." Then, almost a mumble: "...and. It's not— not like I'm proud of making her do it. You know?"
Defensiveness recognized immediately, Jon raises his own hands defensively for a short moment, before settling them back on the wooden table. It's times like these that, even with as much as he knows, he wishes he had that context. Perhaps he's had an easier time of it, not going through the same horrible things she has, but it certainly doesn't help him understand how all the pieces fall together any easier.
(Nor does it give him any clue as to just how deep this undiscussed baggage goes, but at least Daisy gets that much peace from it.)
"...No, I wouldn't imagine you would be," Jon agrees uneasily. "But isn't it only a matter of time before it comes up? I know I'm not exactly a fine one to talk, considering. ...Though, I suppose there's not really any of us that know any better about any of it than you do, much less anyone who'd go telling her about it."
He certainly isn't, of course. He's got enough difficult conversations he's busy having with loved ones and acquaintances alike, this one's on Daisy.
"Kept the apocalypse from you for six months," she says with a shrug and a tone that awkwardly straddles her attempted dismissiveness and the truth of how much that fact does not help. It is, in fact, a lesson to be learned on how she should not be doing this again, but it does also show she's capable of it. "'sira still doesn't even know my real first case. Or about Calvin. Or..."
Beat. "I'm very good at keeping mum."
Yeah this doesn't sound like a good thing, does it.
Jon opens his mouth. Closes it. Furrows his brows. Opens it again, and closes it one more time. Really, truly looks like he's picking his words.
He can't find a way to put this gently. He can't even figure out how to put it bluntly, either, try as he might. He does, however, when he runs through his options, look exasperated.
"...Right. Well, I'm sure you know better than I do exactly how much does or doesn't need to be said to her."
Daisy presses her lips together and makes a low, grumbling mmmm noise, before huffing and taking a pointed swig from her glass as she swipes the air with a hand. "Mrrr— shut up."
She puts her glass back down and slumps in her chair, rocking it back on the rear legs. "I know— I know we're a mess. Alright? Always have been. But after the Buried— I couldn't be the me she was used to. Heard her asking you if I'd got replaced, once. Spent months fighting the same fights. But I still— we're still us. Just. Figuring out what that looks like, now."
That really doesn't clear things up. Ugh, she hates trying to express complicated crap like this.
I could have told you that much, Jon barely restrains himself from saying. He is a beacon of self-restraint and patience. Especially in the wake of getting literally growled at.
"I'm sure you'll both figure it out," Jon finally relents after he's decided he's been sufficiently on her case. He picks up his own glass to take a short drink, letting out a breath as he sets it aside once more. "I haven't exactly got any advice, I'm not an especially grand example of open communication, but. I'm sure it just needs time, and what else have we got besides time these days?"
A curse, sure, but half the time, it seems like disaster prompts these conversations, anyways. What's a little trauma between people trying to figure their shit out together?
It's a dry joke even for all that it is not, in fact, a joke. Time and trauma, the two tenets of their lives these days. She knows she'll have to face down this shadow one way or another but she didn't get into this mess by knowing how to do so. No, she got into this mess by skipping right from words to sex and ignoring all the sensible steps in between.
"Just— just don't want to waste more time." Not when it still sometimes feels like she's living on borrowed time, even now.
A pause. This kind of vulnerability is starting to fray her already rough edges and so she swerves wildly into another kind entirely:
Jon doesn't press the matter any harder, content to leave it with a solemn nod. What else is there to say? He's certain, one way or another, they'll sort it out--- even with whatever mess that entails.
Any unspoken contemplation stays that way when she hits him out of left field with the news about Calvin.
For a second, all he can do is gawk at her. There's too many questions to try to ask at once: the coffin was here? Someone else found out that he felt that fear, and didn't have to pull it out of him? Daisy was able to do something like that, and found it in herself to approach the coffin at all, much less throw someone into it?
He tries to pick a question, sputtering for a moment, before failing to get out more than a single, baffled word.
"Made a deal." She doesn't dare so much as say Eligos's name here in the O&I, but she figures the subtext will be loud enough. Betrayal is his domain, after all. "All I had to do was look Calvin in the eye when I agreed. And then... in he went."
Her voice is almost too even, betraying her conflicted feelings in the controlled lack of them.
"Apparently you found out he was just as scared of it as me."
He hears it, loud and clear, even if the name goes unsaid. Jon had spoken with Mortanne, during a ritual to bring about a dream, and knew that the center was a working of Eligos in general, but such a great length for a single betrayal is a surprise.
Jon presses his lips into a thin line, and the conflict is written all over his face, try as he might to furrow his brows and push it aside with thoughtfulness. He's quiet for a moment.
When he does speak, it's tentative, yet level. A contemplative push for that same evenness.
"I... did find that out, yes. I'd spoken with him," Jon remarks, shifting to lean his elbows against the table. "He didn't have anything of use to say about the incident, so I... picked at any thread I could find, I suppose. Just to come out of it with something to show for it beside a headache."
A beat. Perhaps, in his own bitterness, and his desperation for vindication in his own wrongdoings, he's putting that same justification on Daisy's. He doesn't dwell on it too deeply, at least not yet. Instead, he simply gives a slow, short nod, before letting out a quiet, derisive huff of a laugh.
"Couldn't have been a more lovely person to send to the Buried." He pauses, before he continues, more serious, doing what he can to snuff out that edge of uncertainty. "And... now, none of the royals could see fit to let him wreak havoc here, right? He's soundly out of reach."
"No one comes out of there. No one but us." Which isn't exactly an answer, but there's a firmness behind it anyway. She's not naive enough to truly trust the demon of betrayal to keep his word, but what she does believe in is the nature of the Fears to be what they are. One may have come when called upon by Eligos, but it will not bow down to him and let him take back what is rightfully its.
No. The Buried will not relinquish Calvin Benchley, not now it has him. Not without a fight.
"I shouldn't—" mm, "it's not— it's probably not... good. Doing that. I know that. But he wouldn't. Stop. Calling me Alice. Even when he was begging. He couldn't shut up and— and understand. He didn't understand."
"...No. No, I don't think he ever would have." Stopped calling her Alice? Understood? One was a symptom of the other, of course. Maybe it wasn't the nature of what he was anymore--- perhaps it was just a symptom of who he was always meant to be. If one couldn't manage it while staring down an inescapable eternity of what they fear most, they were doomed.
What a weight on the conscience that must be, to have done such a thing. The Buried somehow still manages to get its due.
"The way I see it," Jon tries to reason, half to Daisy and half to himself. "Is that, if demons could bring him to the Visitor's Centre, they could have brought him anywhere else. Who knows what could have happened?"
He shifts a bit, uneasy. He offers a small shrug and a frown.
"I know that doesn't make having done remotely any easier, though. I'm sorry. But... for whatever it's worth, I think it needed to be done."
"...yeah. Yeah." Until he says it, the idea of the demons sending Calvin not back to his many graves, dead as he ever was, but to somewhere else to wreak more havoc never crossed her mind as a justification. Dead or Buried, it makes so little difference in terms of the harm he could do—but left alive and free, wherever that may be, that would be different. "You're— right. He was dangerous. Always was. If they'd used him somehow— people would've got hurt."
It's all too easy to reshape her worldview to fit, like flexing an old muscle that despite deliberate misuse still clings to memory.
"He's dangerous, he's got personal ties to someone here, and they've used him once already. It's better this way," Jon agrees, and seals that one way neatly with a fully justified sticker. No reconsideration for Daisy about having done it, no dilemmas for him for having gotten the information into the world. All is as it should be. Everything is fine.
Well. Maybe not everything.
"...To tell you the truth, I--- had a similar experience. At the Centre. It was, ah." It's time for Jon to turn uneasy, for that guilt to seep back in, the two reflecting the discomfort and internal conflict back and forth like funhouse mirrors. "...It was a man there to represent a friend of mine, John Rambo. One of the farmers."
The words stick in his throat, the specifics of it difficult to will to Daisy, of all people. For his first act of inflicting violence with his brand of terror to be upon a sheriff committing unspeakable acts of brutality.
"He'd really--- fucked him over, and I couldn't get him to see it, no matter what sort of angles of it I pulled out of him," Jon forces the words, but skirts around the deeper nature of it all. "I don't know what came over me. I'd just--- I'd never been so angry, in all my life, and so--- desperate to get someone to hear themselves. So, I... I tore it from him, over and over."
Secrets and retelling of tales of wrongdoing until the lungs collapsed under their own weight, a perfect blend of Eye and Buried. The notion makes him feel no better about any of it.
Daisy listens quietly, does him the courtesy he's done her, watching him from the other side of the table and over the rim of her glass as she drinks. There's a flicker of undeniable surprise in her gaze, but judgement doesn't follow.
If he hadn't claimed this as a similar story she's not entirely sure she'd have put together the implication in his final words, but with all pieces together and the subtle taste on the air...
His agreement borders on panicked, but he reels it back in, carding a hand into his hair for a moment. A second later, and he settles on a long drink to be the best thing to do about it.
"...Martin didn't condone it, of course, but he didn't condemn it when I told him, either. I almost wish he had. And Mr. Rambo--- all but told me that he wasn't worried about it. I should still have reservations about having done it, and should be doing what I can to make sure it never happens again."
The but attached to the end of the sentiment hangs loudly in the air.
Daisy laughs grimly. "Probably not. I— I haven't even told anyone else about Calvin. So. Yeah."
They're each other's only port in this particular storm. There might be a couple others that wouldn't judge her for it, maybe even understand in the abstract, but this is different. They're different.
She sighs. "I get it, yeah. Lot of people I know I shouldn't've hurt that I still can't bring myself to regret hurting. Some people are... some people are like that. And— look, this is the first time you've done it. I don't think you're going to suddenly start suffocating people on mass. A sudden lust for murder isn't really your brand."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hadnoright) wrote2022-11-01 01:56 am
no subject
It sounds like, all things considered, she didn't fare with her own reunion much better than he had with Martin.
At least Martin didn't wind up moving in shortly after?"...Do you plan on explaining to her the, ah." Jon weighs his words for a moment, scrunching his nose a bit. There's no polite way to put what happened, no matter how he tries to angle it. "...Last encounter? I can't imagine you'd be in any rush to. It's not going to be a pleasant conversation." A beat, and he gives her an uncertain look, practically saying 'As your friend, I find this questionable' without having to utter a single word. "And you said she's... living with you now? I'm surprised that's not--- I don't know. Complicating things?"
no subject
Daisy meets his look with one of her own that's possibly a little defensive. "Not like it's that different from the Archives. You saw— ugh, no you didn't."
It's getting far too easy to forget that Jon didn't live through those extra months at home, these days.
"I came out of that coffin. And went right to living in that basement with the rest of you. No breathing room. Just you, me, Basira and Melanie cooped up together. Doesn't feel that different. At least this time she's not— I dunno, handling me like a china doll."
They haven't really talked about all that baggage either, Jon, can you tell.
"...and I'm. Not sure about telling her. Not like I have the full story. Not sure how much good 'yeah, you did kill me, but the world's still doomed' is gonna do." Then, almost a mumble: "...and. It's not— not like I'm proud of making her do it. You know?"
no subject
(Nor does it give him any clue as to just how deep this undiscussed baggage goes, but at least Daisy gets that much peace from it.)
"...No, I wouldn't imagine you would be," Jon agrees uneasily. "But isn't it only a matter of time before it comes up? I know I'm not exactly a fine one to talk, considering. ...Though, I suppose there's not really any of us that know any better about any of it than you do, much less anyone who'd go telling her about it."
He certainly isn't, of course. He's got enough difficult conversations he's busy having with loved ones and acquaintances alike, this one's on Daisy.
no subject
"Kept the apocalypse from you for six months," she says with a shrug and a tone that awkwardly straddles her attempted dismissiveness and the truth of how much that fact does not help. It is, in fact, a lesson to be learned on how she should not be doing this again, but it does also show she's capable of it. "'sira still doesn't even know my real first case. Or about Calvin. Or..."
Beat. "I'm very good at keeping mum."
Yeah this doesn't sound like a good thing, does it.
no subject
He can't find a way to put this gently. He can't even figure out how to put it bluntly, either, try as he might. He does, however, when he runs through his options, look exasperated.
"...Right. Well, I'm sure you know better than I do exactly how much does or doesn't need to be said to her."
no subject
Daisy presses her lips together and makes a low, grumbling mmmm noise, before huffing and taking a pointed swig from her glass as she swipes the air with a hand. "Mrrr— shut up."
She puts her glass back down and slumps in her chair, rocking it back on the rear legs. "I know— I know we're a mess. Alright? Always have been. But after the Buried— I couldn't be the me she was used to. Heard her asking you if I'd got replaced, once. Spent months fighting the same fights. But I still— we're still us. Just. Figuring out what that looks like, now."
That really doesn't clear things up. Ugh, she hates trying to express complicated crap like this.
"Talking isn't something we're. Good at."
no subject
"I'm sure you'll both figure it out," Jon finally relents after he's decided he's been sufficiently on her case. He picks up his own glass to take a short drink, letting out a breath as he sets it aside once more. "I haven't exactly got any advice, I'm not an especially grand example of open communication, but. I'm sure it just needs time, and what else have we got besides time these days?"
A curse, sure, but half the time, it seems like disaster prompts these conversations, anyways. What's a little trauma between people trying to figure their shit out together?
no subject
"Mm. Trauma, mostly."
It's a dry joke even for all that it is not, in fact, a joke. Time and trauma, the two tenets of their lives these days. She knows she'll have to face down this shadow one way or another but she didn't get into this mess by knowing how to do so. No, she got into this mess by skipping right from words to sex and ignoring all the sensible steps in between.
"Just— just don't want to waste more time." Not when it still sometimes feels like she's living on borrowed time, even now.
A pause. This kind of vulnerability is starting to fray her already rough edges and so she swerves wildly into another kind entirely:
"I sent Calvin to the Buried."
no subject
Any unspoken contemplation stays that way when she hits him out of left field with the news about Calvin.
For a second, all he can do is gawk at her. There's too many questions to try to ask at once: the coffin was here? Someone else found out that he felt that fear, and didn't have to pull it out of him? Daisy was able to do something like that, and found it in herself to approach the coffin at all, much less throw someone into it?
He tries to pick a question, sputtering for a moment, before failing to get out more than a single, baffled word.
"How?"
no subject
"Made a deal." She doesn't dare so much as say Eligos's name here in the O&I, but she figures the subtext will be loud enough. Betrayal is his domain, after all. "All I had to do was look Calvin in the eye when I agreed. And then... in he went."
Her voice is almost too even, betraying her conflicted feelings in the controlled lack of them.
"Apparently you found out he was just as scared of it as me."
no subject
Jon presses his lips into a thin line, and the conflict is written all over his face, try as he might to furrow his brows and push it aside with thoughtfulness. He's quiet for a moment.
When he does speak, it's tentative, yet level. A contemplative push for that same evenness.
"I... did find that out, yes. I'd spoken with him," Jon remarks, shifting to lean his elbows against the table. "He didn't have anything of use to say about the incident, so I... picked at any thread I could find, I suppose. Just to come out of it with something to show for it beside a headache."
A beat. Perhaps, in his own bitterness, and his desperation for vindication in his own wrongdoings, he's putting that same justification on Daisy's. He doesn't dwell on it too deeply, at least not yet. Instead, he simply gives a slow, short nod, before letting out a quiet, derisive huff of a laugh.
"Couldn't have been a more lovely person to send to the Buried." He pauses, before he continues, more serious, doing what he can to snuff out that edge of uncertainty. "And... now, none of the royals could see fit to let him wreak havoc here, right? He's soundly out of reach."
no subject
"No one comes out of there. No one but us." Which isn't exactly an answer, but there's a firmness behind it anyway. She's not naive enough to truly trust the demon of betrayal to keep his word, but what she does believe in is the nature of the Fears to be what they are. One may have come when called upon by Eligos, but it will not bow down to him and let him take back what is rightfully its.
No. The Buried will not relinquish Calvin Benchley, not now it has him. Not without a fight.
"I shouldn't—" mm, "it's not— it's probably not... good. Doing that. I know that. But he wouldn't. Stop. Calling me Alice. Even when he was begging. He couldn't shut up and— and understand. He didn't understand."
no subject
What a weight on the conscience that must be, to have done such a thing. The Buried somehow still manages to get its due.
"The way I see it," Jon tries to reason, half to Daisy and half to himself. "Is that, if demons could bring him to the Visitor's Centre, they could have brought him anywhere else. Who knows what could have happened?"
He shifts a bit, uneasy. He offers a small shrug and a frown.
"I know that doesn't make having done remotely any easier, though. I'm sorry. But... for whatever it's worth, I think it needed to be done."
no subject
"...yeah. Yeah." Until he says it, the idea of the demons sending Calvin not back to his many graves, dead as he ever was, but to somewhere else to wreak more havoc never crossed her mind as a justification. Dead or Buried, it makes so little difference in terms of the harm he could do—but left alive and free, wherever that may be, that would be different. "You're— right. He was dangerous. Always was. If they'd used him somehow— people would've got hurt."
It's all too easy to reshape her worldview to fit, like flexing an old muscle that despite deliberate misuse still clings to memory.
no subject
Well. Maybe not everything.
"...To tell you the truth, I--- had a similar experience. At the Centre. It was, ah." It's time for Jon to turn uneasy, for that guilt to seep back in, the two reflecting the discomfort and internal conflict back and forth like funhouse mirrors. "...It was a man there to represent a friend of mine, John Rambo. One of the farmers."
The words stick in his throat, the specifics of it difficult to will to Daisy, of all people. For his first act of inflicting violence with his brand of terror to be upon a sheriff committing unspeakable acts of brutality.
"He'd really--- fucked him over, and I couldn't get him to see it, no matter what sort of angles of it I pulled out of him," Jon forces the words, but skirts around the deeper nature of it all. "I don't know what came over me. I'd just--- I'd never been so angry, in all my life, and so--- desperate to get someone to hear themselves. So, I... I tore it from him, over and over."
Secrets and retelling of tales of wrongdoing until the lungs collapsed under their own weight, a perfect blend of Eye and Buried. The notion makes him feel no better about any of it.
no subject
Daisy listens quietly, does him the courtesy he's done her, watching him from the other side of the table and over the rim of her glass as she drinks. There's a flicker of undeniable surprise in her gaze, but judgement doesn't follow.
If he hadn't claimed this as a similar story she's not entirely sure she'd have put together the implication in his final words, but with all pieces together and the subtle taste on the air...
In a hushed tone, "You can do that? ...damn."
no subject
His agreement borders on panicked, but he reels it back in, carding a hand into his hair for a moment. A second later, and he settles on a long drink to be the best thing to do about it.
"...Martin didn't condone it, of course, but he didn't condemn it when I told him, either. I almost wish he had. And Mr. Rambo--- all but told me that he wasn't worried about it. I should still have reservations about having done it, and should be doing what I can to make sure it never happens again."
The but attached to the end of the sentiment hangs loudly in the air.
no subject
"But you don't really regret it either. Even if you wish you did."
Christ. Just look at the two of them. Messy as ever they were, still caught between the right thing to do and what feels right to do.
Daisy breathes out heavily and worries her lip between her teeth.
no subject
"...No. I don't," he admits. "And I don't know I know much of anyone besides you who could understand as much."
no subject
Daisy laughs grimly. "Probably not. I— I haven't even told anyone else about Calvin. So. Yeah."
They're each other's only port in this particular storm. There might be a couple others that wouldn't judge her for it, maybe even understand in the abstract, but this is different. They're different.
She sighs. "I get it, yeah. Lot of people I know I shouldn't've hurt that I still can't bring myself to regret hurting. Some people are... some people are like that. And— look, this is the first time you've done it. I don't think you're going to suddenly start suffocating people on mass. A sudden lust for murder isn't really your brand."