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[Between Kaworu's clutching grip on one hand and the hilt of the knife in the other, Paul binds himself down to the moment. He breathes steady and slow, stepping closer to Kaworu as he taps the backs of his knuckles in simple four beat time.

Atreides, heavy as the ring on his left hand. He awaits his instructions with steady-set shoulders.]

I'm here.

[A murmur as much for his own ears as Kaworu's.]

[Iskierka writes with monomaniacal focus, now with one pen, now with the other. What emerges is braided, confused, the Omen's best attempt to process two never-sent letters into a single text for the two young men who weigh heavy on her Sleeper's mind.]

Tabris, Kaworu, welcomed and well-loved, friend, commander, fellow-Disciple of Pthumerians and Old Ones and gods beyond,

Or, to the Paul I imagine I would write this to, if I had a hope of a letter escaping Hell. (Not Navia, but the hell of endless torment desperate monolaters imagine us damned to, rather than the one we got,)

Hail and well met, o thou construct of memory and conjecture. I am sorry I am sorry I'm not there when you return from the ocean. I am sorry, I must (imagine I can) write you this letter proclaiming my own demise, at least so far as the Waking World is concerned. How are you? I imagine, also, I wasn't more watchful in the month before Leviathan arrived. I fear I asked you to be careful without giving an example of what careful meant as a balm to my own grief--being corrupted enough to grieve--that you and Trench survived the beast and it is dead. I imagine it's returned the souls of those it devoured, and the last of them have flopped their way back onto the beach by now. I imagine that Kaworu (Tabris, little bird,) was with them. It's a father's duty to teach his children when to run and how to hide from what hunts them; I failed you in that. If I get back from where I've found myself, I will give you those lessons. They're better demonstrated than explained.

To imagine otherwise, imagine Better explained than demonstrated is Sleepers aren't imperishable after all, is to give myself that many fewer reasons to want to return. If that's possible; [Iskierka starts to write a name and then scribbles over it violently] did escape. It's the return I question--I don't doubt her determination to rescue me but I doubt the possibility. (Don't tell her that. Or I can imagine you not telling her. Easy enough.)

Something I quaver even now to explain to even knowing this is an all an exercise to keep myself sane and won't go beyond my own skull

It comes down to the coin. I must suppose, should I never return to the Waking World, the coin will not make a reappearance. It is a terrible thing to have been part of a god (a Monarch), and to no longer be one. If I do, perhaps it will be waiting there for me, somewhere I put it down and misplaced it, and will never slip my fingers again. It is a lonely thing and an isolating thing. If you are the first to find it, it deserves a better resting place than a pocket or coin purse. It is terrible to see your god die and know all avenues of return are choked off. In hindsight, it did its job well. Not its fault it was sent to warn a blind man. Not its choice to be another victim of the inevitable. And my god did not even want me except as a tool, and I don't want to return (except when I do). (Did you call it? Did you call it? Was it lying? What would it say to survive? What could it?)

Nor yours. I didn't (won't) release you from your promise then even if there was no keeping it and you would break yourself over that. Whatever you feel now: It is natural. It is expected. I say: Don't break yourself over that. How much we are responsible for those feelings or what we should do with them I still don't know. The situation was impossible by the time you got to it, let alone when I arrived. Every world contains as many impossibilities as possibilities--the Waking World, yours, mine--and you will meet many more than this in the future. Two final words of caution:

(What is a pillar of the world but impossibility piled on impossibility? What am I stuck in but an impossibility, a didn't-happen, where St. Sacrifice wasn't as we knew them or never lived to give up the Throne?) There is a black-eyed man who is much larger on the inside than he appears on the outside. He is another black god (like Leviathan). If you have not met him: Good. If you have: Avoid him if you can. If you can't, if he is kind to you, don't refuse his help (you can't refuse a Throne-gift anyway, anymore than you can reject gravity), but think in the back of your mind about the men who raised you. The mercy of Trench, whatever its horrors, is we can make up for every impossibility given enough time.

Besides, you wouldn't have left him even if I had let you go, would you? Don't leave Paul alone with himself. If I know him at all, he may try to be alone in the way the responsible always make ourselves alone, in a crowd but apart from it. (The same thing you're always chastising humans for.)

Look after him. He needs you. Look after him. He needs you.

With love, In faith,
Merlinus Old Man

[She draws a shaky rendition of Illarion's sigil at the bottom to close the letter(s). Laying the pens aside, she turns her eyes back on her audience and warbles softly.

Message received?]

[[ the letters can be read separately here. ]]

Edited (slight continuity correction) 2022-03-05 05:49 (UTC)

[Kaworu returns the soft beats before his hand goes still as he continues to read. His entire body goes so rigid that one could snap him in half with little force. The knife between his ribs pushes harder, deeper, tearing through soft flesh until suddenly it feels like his chest is collapsing, tearing, twisting around that pain wedged so deeply.

He's barely even read more than a few sentences.

There's not enough air in the room. He tries to inhale and the pain constricts his lungs. He desperately tries to breathe in but there's nothing there. Just emptiness and that twisting pain. Or maybe there's too air. The air is too heavy, it clogs his throat and burns when he tries to inhale like smog. He can't breathe this. He can't breathe at all.

The room closes in around him, like there's nothing there but him and those letters on the page. The word "love" haunting like a specter as blackness blurs the edges of his visions. He even forgets Paul is there beside him. The weight of everything the letter stirs is impossible for him to hold. He feels like he's crumbling inwards or maybe just spilling out everywhere until there's nothing left of him at all.

Kaworu drops to his knees like a sinner praying before god, then onto his hands, the wood floor cold where his skin makes contact. He curls up, his forehead resting on his hands balled up together into a single fist.

("I didn't know you could pass out from breathing too hard." He'd once made that off hand remark to Shinji Ikari, as he walked out of the infirmary, put-out by the affair and little else.)]

[Paul couldn't keep his promise once. An impossibility, the letter calls it (it's too much, and you're not enough), absorbed, processed, and decoded in instants, his mind too well-trained to give him the grace of incomprehension. He can't keep it now, as Kaworu crumples to the ground, Paul following him to his knees a fraction of a second later, slower, more controlled.

He can't protect him from this. All he can do is reach for Kaworu across that awful gulf of grief and curl over him, pressing his forehead against a slender shoulderblade as one hand flattens over Kaworu's back, the other bracing against the floor.]

Take a deep breath through your nose. Let it out through your mouth slowly. Like this.

[Words that echo in more than one way; with shuddering ghosts, and the gentle wisdom of another lost friend. Paul demonstrates, close enough to Kaworu that his expanding lungs brush his ribs against the other boy's. He is a rock, he is an anchor, he is a steady, fixed point.

(Stark light arcs under his skin, flitting along the delicate networks of capillaries around his eyes, in the tips of his fingers.)]

[Iskierka cocks her head to one side, watching this reaction to what she's written. She is (too small, not enough) not quick to process without her Sleeper present; she is part of a soul that has been ripped to pieces and gutted of its sensibility of itself.

There is a feeling that should be here. The Omen struggles to wrap herself around it, to fit it inside a chest too narrow for it.

She takes mincing steps to the edge of the desk. She drops off it in a flicker of feather and scale, landing beside the two stricken boys.

Careful, considering, she stretches up, reaching to rest a hand on one pale head and one dark. She is not very much but she is, also, here.]

[While Paul glows brighter, for a few moments Kaworu seems to be fading. It's as though his already pale skin has become translucent and revealed that within him is nothing but glowing and swirling light. Pure light trapped inside a tiny human form and it's all fading into nothing.

Paul's hand on his back and forehead on his shoulder steadies him. Reminds him that he is here, anchors him back to the edge of the land and the sea, not letting him be lost to either one. He twists his fingers in the other boy's shirt as he tries to mimic the breathing instructions like he's never done it before. He can feel the percussion of a heart beat against his ribs when his has almost gone entirely still. Vaguely, he thinks if can anchor himself, he'll hold on tight to Paul, then he can't be pulled away either. If neither lets go, neither can be lost.

A soft featherlight touch on his head nearly sends him back spiraling, drowning, but he keeps breathing along with Paul. Shaky, weak, miserable breathes.]

Is this what love is? Is it supposed to hurt like this? Why do humans seek it out if it turns into this?

Edited 2022-03-05 15:09 (UTC)

[As Kaworu breathes, Paul rubs his back in slow concentric circles, firm containing pressure. The brush of feathers on his hair is a distant sensation, more than nothing and less than enough. Cold fractures in his chest, sends bitter splinters into his blood.]

We can't help ourselves.

[Most of the time, the choir that has stolen Paul's voice is harmonized to imperfectly imitate what it consumed. It's not so now. These are older voices, deeper and rasping, their long-dead languages flowing over his tongue like the frigid, mournful waters of the River of the dead.]

We seek out what we know will destroy us. We know it hurts, it will hurt, and we bare our throats to our conqueror. To be human is an awful thing. I'm sorry that we made you one. I'm sorry we didn't know better.

[The braided current of Paul's words flows over Iskierka as water over a mute and uncomprehending stone. Kaworu's anguish is easier to comprehend but not easy and if the Omen were capable of despair over her own deficits, she would.

She pats them both, light as the beating of a moth's wing. She whistles a note that echoes but doesn't mimic how Kaworu intones hurt and another for Paul's hurts. A sliding three-note trill captures the beat of I'm sorry, and then she withdraws in a flutter to perch on the desk again.

Insofar as she means anything, she didn't mean to hurt anyone.]

[The notes are like alcohol on a wound. They sting, a burning sensation at the core of him that makes him flinch and twist. Then it soothes slightly. The very beginnings of a scab starting to form.

Kaworu realizes his face is wet. Tears. The first time he cried, his sorrow wasn't his own. It was something alien and invasive. Now it all belongs to him. He has to carry it now. Paul has to carry it too. They can't discard it or hide the scars that form. It's the nature of being human.

He exhales shakily into Paul's chest, feeling the heat of his own breath and warmth of Paul's gentle weight. There's something satisfying about Paul's apology for humanity, like someone understands Kaworu's misery for the first time. But also something fundamentally wrong about it coming from the boy who once said he was fine with barriers between hearts because it allowed him to ruffle the hair of an unexpecting victim. He doesn't know what to make of it, a conflict between the part of him that wants to be understood and the parts of him that cares for the essence of what makes another themselves.

He pulls closer.]

Do humans have tears so that others share in their sorrow?

[Paul adjusts himself to curve close around Kaworu, gathering him up in an embrace (not thinking of a blood-slick sea and empty eyes) that settles the shorter boy's head against Paul's shoulder in a ever-more familiar pattern. He draws both of them up from the floor as he does so, sitting back on his heels and resting Kaworu's slight weight against himself.

He looks over Kaworu's head at the alien bird, forlorn and lost as the angel-turned-human whose back he begins to stroke in long, soothing passes. He gives her a slight nod, as solemn as the one he gave Merlinus when he first swore to care for Kaworu. The vow stands.]

Yes.

[Paul says, gently, his own eyes still only shining with light, not moisture. He can smell Kaworu's tears, this close, their faint mimicry of sun-warmed tide pools.]

So that we can see each other's hurts. And they're good for you, too. Like draining infection from a wound.

[Stress-secreted hormones leeched out through the lacrimal glands, the physiological release of heaving lungs and wrung out sorrow. Crying is a vulnerability, but it's also a gift, a blessing to be shared only with those you most trust.

(The rain still doesn't come.)]

But sometimes we don't want to tell others what we feel.

[He mumbles out the protest as if he could demand his body stop the tears right now. They're hot on his face and his skin feels blistered and sore where they've flowed. He tastes salt in his mouth and it stirs unpleasant memories. He moves easily as Paul adjusts, not fighting, but leaning into where Paul settles him.

It occurs to him that perhaps the Old Man asked Paul to look after him. And how that must seem like heavy task to bear in the absence of someone else. Kaworu leans back slightly to rub some of the tears from his eyes and then up to look at Paul with his radiant eyes. They're beautiful but there's something dark behind them and his expression is worn, even as he provides gentle explanations.

Kaworu reaches up gently and places his hand on Paul's face, rubbing a thumb gently outside of the corner of his eye, where tears would fall. "Look after him, he needs you" the Old Man requested and so he shall. His own task from the Old Man. He'll protect Paul, even from Teacher for whatever reason, so that when the time comes Paul can cry too.

Gently, he tugs Paul's head down so he can press their foreheads together. A promise, even though it's one that Paul doesn't know he's made.]

If only we could choose it. When to start healing wounds.

[Iskierka meets Paul's eyes as he looks at her (so small, against an impossibility) and returns the nod. This is an echo of something she witnessed; the continued fulfillment of a promise is easy to comprehend.

So is the change in Kaworu's demeanor. Had she despaired, had she capacity, she would have hope now (an emblem in effigy of the Pthumerian she halfway resembles, the one to whom her Sleeper owed patronage).

She picks up the pen again, turning the page. Waits, until Paul's attention shifts back to the younger boy he supports--then begins to write anew.

This message is shorter.]

This may be the first time I've started dictating this or the second-to-last. I have not numbered my starts. What will matter (matters) is how it's finished.

(So much to observe. So much to memorize if I can. The magnitude of what she's proposed--thirteen targets and the Throne in two days--and the enormity of it-- The dead are made for what's impossible for the living but there were always more of us.

We won't have the time for a proper briefing. Have the luxury. Best I memorize as much as I can. Condense. Concentrate.)

Queen and Throne. (And twelve beside Her.) Thirteen targets and who knows how many rescuers. Easier to leave me for lost. But if they won't--leaving them unprepared is as good as killing them.

(Argonaut, Polaris, do you still hear me? Don't inspire them to foolishness. But if you must, give me clarity to guide them. Give me some way to reach them.)

Then, to begin: The first thing you must understand about Nephele is the Throne----

[She runs out of words in a smear of ink.

Connection lost.]

Edited 2022-03-07 00:09 (UTC)

If only.

[Paul submits to Kaworu's cautious, gentle touch with a smile like a narrow, bloodless wound. The light pressure on the sides of his orbital ridges reminds him of how he soothed Kaworu's allergy-swollen sinuses, and the reflective effort to drain Paul's clogged tear ducts draws a deep, wordless sorrow out of the cold nothing in his chest.

The bird's resumed transcription pulls Paul's focus away from Kaworu, albeit with reluctance. He doesn't want to turn from this soft, futile effort yet, the faint wash of pale hope that maybe, if he lets Kaworu's fingers linger, they'll work the alchemy that Paul can't-

But the continued fact of her presence means that there may be a way to yet heal Kaworu's wounds at a time of his choosing. The words in the abruptly finished letter - that Sophia retrieves, emerging from his sleeve to bound up to the desk, so that Paul doesn't have to leave Kaworu behind - say as much.

Somehow, Paul isn't surprised. What else was Merlinus doing when he was lost, except trying to find his way back to Kaworu? (One way, or another.) He holds the letter up so Kaworu may read it too, shifting slightly to wrap his arm around Kaworu's shoulder.]

...there must be a way to find him. [For the benefit of Kaworu's tear-blurred eyes and thoughts.] That's what this means. A way to find him, and to bring him back. The Old Man wouldn't have sent you a message like that otherwise.

[He wouldn't have given Kaworu false hope, even to give a final farewell.]

[Paul's turn leaves Kaworu feeling rather undone. Like there's more things to say, more things to do, but he simply didn't know them. So all he can do is live with the tugging desire to give more, and do more.

So instead, he uses his thumb and forefinger to firmly wipe the tears from his cheeks and eyes so he can read the letter. This time, he follows the tug.]

Us. He sent us a message. It was addressed to us both.

[Paul is clever. Therefore, it's something he's chosen not to see. So Kaworu will help him see it anyway. It's what Paul would want.

He rubs at his face with his heel of his palm, forcefully, trying to steal himself to endure the very idea of hope.]

He's told me about these things before. These places. And these words. They're from his home... but that can't be...

[How could the Old Man be at home? People who left could not be contacted and their omens vanished. The Old Man's omen was right there...]

[Paul is clever. Kaworu is relentless. The two of them make a good pair, Iskierka's Sleeper thought--thinks--and so the Omen reflects. She clacks her beak for emphasis, for attention, when Kaworu says both. Paul's message mattered as much, she knows that; Paul matters as much.

But exerting as much effort as she has, tiny fragment that she is, is fast wearing her thin. She writes one last shaking word on the fresh sheet Sophia's revealed--help--then drops the pen with a clatter and sticks her head beneath a wing.

The words would come again, pushing and insistent, puddling in her head until she could find places to put them. Til then, let her rest.]

I wouldn't say 'can't' about anything here.

[Every rule this place has set has been arbitrary, prone to exception. The evidence of this rule's exception is inconvertible, at least so far as this: Merlinus' Omen is here, writing messages that supposedly come from him. They contain instructions and sentiments that Merlinus would write.

(It could be another lie, but that's a possibility that Paul doesn't need to burden Kaworu with. And if it is a lie - if this is another game - Paul will

take care of it on his own.)]

He said that there was another person with him, didn't he? One who came back. If we can find her, we can ask her what she saw, and how she managed to return. He seemed to think that she would want to rescue him, so she may be an ally.

[This is a puzzle that can be solved. That's the impression his steady tone and slight, firm nod are meant to give, anyway. Determining the identity of this stranger, then working out the meaning of the thirteen (not the Pthumerians--too convenient, and not a task Merlinus would set his little bird) targets, then retrieving Merlinus from wherever he is reaching out from - these are things within their reach.

It's a simpler riddle than the pressing from Kaworu and the Omen to acknowledge a thing Paul hasn't even denied. He saw the message to him. He understood it. Merlinus knows what Paul did, and he's holding him to his vow. He's giving him an opportunity to make an attempt at repair. It's more mercy than Paul deserves, and of course he's grateful, but it would be selfish to tell that to either boy or bird.

And if he lies long enough about who he's protecting with his silence, maybe he'll start to believe it.]

I'm going to find her. I'm going to bring him back.

["It's not your fault."

That's what Paul had said after another day Kaworu spent waiting for the return of the Old Man at the beach. He'd waited until the chill in the air made his hands hurt and the lockjoint on his arms return. Truthfully, he hadn't felt it.

Yet, he can't shake the feeling that it is his fault. Paul, he thinks, is being delicate, trying to spare him from hard feelings after already enduring suffering. It's thoughtful, but Kaworu feels like the thought is starting to decay him from inside out. Like a wound that was spared salt but never cleaned.

But now, this is something he can do. An opportunity to purge that feeling, to fix what went wrong, and to do something for someone that's done much for him. Even if it was easier to pretend not to notice than to show appreciation. This is his will and he will act on it.]

We will.

[It's Paul's turn to say it, setting aside the letter so he can take Kaworu's hand and squeeze it too-tight, slender bones pressed together through fragile skin.

He knows the cadence of that determination, fierce and grief-stricken. He tells Kaworu it's not his fault because it's true; he tells Kaworu it's not his fault and knows it doesn't matter, because Kaworu accepts Merlinus' disappearance the way Paul has accepted it, which is to say not at all.]

It's going to be all right.

Yes. It will.

[When Paul takes his hand and squeezes it, he leans forward to bump his forehead against the other boy's.

Maybe he can't quite believe Paul when he says that what happened to the Old Man isn't Kaworu's fault, but he can believe this. He can believe there is something he can do to save the only father figure he's ever had and he can believe that, with Paul's help, they'll bring Illarion back. They fit well together. If someone can do it, it's the two of them.

He squeezes Paul's hand back, feeling the firmness of his fingers and the strength of his grip.]

We will.

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