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Well, that sounds...fake. Stan used to take the piss like that sometimes, too, make shit up and see what he could fool Kitty into believing and have quite a laugh when he tricked her. Though, to be fair, this kid seems actually rather sincere. Is it just that he's a good actor? Or...

Oh. She's thrown out of her train of thought by the suddenness of that last question.

"Why'd I - " That's quite a lengthy answer, and one she's not really ready to jump into yet. So instead, all she offers is a cautious, cagy, "Thought I'd be useful." Then: "Why'd you decide to come along?"

"'Cause I'm a mage." Easy answer, for him. Matthias shrugs, a lift and fall of his shoulders. "And it was to do with mages, and mage stuff. Seems important to have mages along with for it. And anyone that wants to go out in the world and act like a bastard ought to know that they can't get away with it. It's something I care about. All of it."

Simple and true. Which means, for once, it's nothing that Matthias feels self-conscious about admitting. Passion can get him worked up, make him say things with such firmness and conviction that he goes too far, overshares, says too much, spends the rest of the day wanting to fall into a hole. This one's easy by comparison.

He tosses another twig into the fire. "You weren't not useful," he says, to Kitty, "so I s'ppose you managed what you came for all right."

That earns Matthias a look. "Of course I wasn't not useful," she sniffs. "You lot were, and are, absolutely lucky to have a bit of my time, because I'm very good at what I do, and you're welcome."

Another slap at her arm. This time, a darker smear shows that she got the little bastard.

"Anyway," she says, arrogance ebbing away, "I've known plenty of mages who don't mind bastards if the bastards are their own. Plenty of people like that in general."

He grins a little at that look, but holds his hands up in surrender. Fair play, that. It was a bit cruel to pretend like she'd counted for nothing. And he's not so arrogant that he thinks mages are automatically better than everyone. They're not worse either, mind; he'd not absorbed all that shame that loads of other people carry about with them. But all the same.

"Right, but all that means is you've known bastards, and bastardy mages. People who're worth knowing and hanging about with, they're not about to start behaving like tits just 'cause they get a moment of freedom to act in. So it's not a fair comparison, is it."

"People turn into bastards when they get power, though," she replies with a shrug. "Doesn't even always matter how much power. Could just be a little bit. But when they find they can control people, they start turning into wretched monsters. Even if they had the potential to be worth something."

She flicks her hair from her eyes, and turns a look on the kid, honestly rather curious how he'll respond to that.

His response is first, a wrinkled nose. And then his expression starts to sour, tinting first toward disbelief.

"If they're bound to be bastards in the first place, yeah. A kind of destiny, like."

But Kitty shakes her head, leaning slightly forward. "Anyone can become one, I think," she says. "If they've got power. Where I'm from - the ma...The people in charge, there's nothing special about them, really. They're chosen when they're just kids to be the ones in charge, and they're not chosen 'cause they're bastards already, it's just...because. And they all turn into 'em. Anyone can be awful, if they're taught to be."

"Well, yeah, but that's teaching, right. So if you're surrounded by bastards, learning to be a bastard...." Irritated at this logic puzzle, Matthias scratches at his cheek. "I mean, I wouldn't become one. I know that. Even if someone came around and made me a viscount or bloody duke of the mages or something, I wouldn't. So there's something that makes a difference."

"I might."

She sets her hands out, palms-up, on her knees, and looks at Matthias. Her face is achingly, tensely sincere.

"If I were in the wrong circumstances. Or even now, if I got too wrapped up in things and forgot what matters. It's so easy to do. You let your anger take over, and you tell yourself, I've been mistreated, I can do anything. I mean, that's one of the worst parts, I think, that it's sometimes even easier to turn into a bastard if you've really gone through horrible, dreadful things. When you're subjected to - to violence, and abuse, you learn those patterns, don't you. And when people hate you, you learn to hate. It's so, so easy to do, to forget yourself, to forget what matters. I know that it could happen to me."

That catches Matthias off-guard. The sincerity, first, that is--open, bland, matter-of-fact. He sits back from it, lest he find it catching. He himself is made of sincerity, bright and sparkling. He wishes he wasn't. And seeing it up close is startling, though not half as startling of what she goes on to say--

"You wouldn't," he blurts out, before he can stop himself.

This isn't the sort of fireside talks he's used to. With the other mages, it had been different. Even in mud and sadness and pain, there'd not be anyone saying such things. They went through dreadful things. And they were different for it, yeah, but not like this--

"I mean, you're saying all of that. So you'd know. You'd catch yourself out. Only some really stupid'd be able to say I might go bad, watch out, and then just-- go bad. You're a loony if you think that's true."

She looks at him steadily, eyes bright, jaw set with determination. Kitty Jones has learned to lie to survive, but she is not a liar by inclination; on the contrary, she is impossibly, radiantly honest. And it shows, at times - like now, when she watches Matthias as he speaks, her expression solemn and fierce and, with every muscle of her face, engaged.

"Maybe," she says. Her voice is neither mollified nor defensive. Nor is it exactly thoughtful, because the word thoughtful implies a sort of calm dreaminess - Kitty crackles with energy, has never once in her life been calm or dreamy. "Or maybe not. Have you never had the experience where you were cruel to someone, and thought to yourself - I'm being awful, and yet you were cruel and awful anyway? Everyone's got control over themselves - I'd never argue that - but there are also these impulses that we've got when we let ourselves stop thinking."

With a shake of her head - "So that's why we've got to never stop thinking. Because we can control ourselves, if we're always watchful and always careful and keep focused on what's right. And never let our worse instincts take over. If we always work."

Shaking his head, Matthias looks back at the fire. At least the fire makes a kind of sense. It isn't asking anything of him. But of course he can think of a time he was cruel and awful--everyone can--and that's precisely her point, and that's not something he wants to go too close to, as thoughts go. It's too near to how it's always felt. Right on the edge of tipping into disaster. An Abomination, like a grenade gone off at the wrong moment, taking everything out with it. An uncontrolled power--well, that's him, all right. That's who he was before, who they all were. Point him at it and let him loose, and clean up the carnage later.

But even that's different. This would be things that matter. Not just battles, and wars, but the parts that come after, the parts that always seemed far away. Circles or no Circles? Never seemed like they'd get there. Sometimes it still doesn't. Being at the Gallows is some dream that he'll wake from eventually, when Corypheus is gone. And then it will be back at it.

"Look, but I've been--you know. On the shit end of things. So I would know better. I have to." He makes himself look around at Kitty again, even though he knows all his emotions are sprawled over his face. And she's there, just looking back at him, all bright and earnest and hard. "'Cause I could lose it. Just--go off. 'Cause I have got power, right? I'm a mage. I'm not always good at it, but I am, and-- I've used magic to fight with, and kill with, and all of it, and I'll do it again for the war and the freedom of mages and all, but-- I wouldn't do anything to torture anyone. I know I wouldn't. No matter what happens to me, I wouldn't do that. And that's the big one, isn't it. Like--no matter what else, I'd never become that. Because I know all about it. And that's not an impulse, that's--something darker. Something worse. I dunno what it is, but--it's worse."

She watches him as he talks. Meeting her eyes when she's like this is uncomfortable - her gaze is so intent, and so keen, and so unblinking. She has the air of someone who's evaluating, judging - But there's no unkindness in it, at least. There's no disapproval. For once, Kitty's manner is utterly and completely without any harshness.

"It's exhausting." She says that simply. "To fall into cruelty and wretchedness is beyond easy. Where I'm from, mages are in charge, and they do torture us and kill us and hurt us 'cause so many years ago, commoners were in charge, and they were dreadful. It's always a cycle there. Mages, then commoners, then back again."

She pushes the hair from her face. "It's such awful work, to not give into hatred." But. "But I know that you can do it."

"Yeah I can do it," Matthias says, hotly, "don't-- Look, I was going to do it already. All right? Before--this."

He waves a hand between them, a gesture that encompasses the whole of this talk that has turned far too serious. There's a churning of emotion in him that he doesn't know what to do with, and she can sit there looking all keen and sharp while he feels like a wet wool robe worn inside out, all too-small and itchy and hot, like under-the-skin hot.

"'Cause--well, I dunno. 'Cause what happens. Where you're from, mages are in charge now, but they weren't before--so some day they won't be again, and it'll go back to them getting shat on while everyone else is a bastard to them? I never said it ought to be that way. Some people are just bastards. You can't say they're not."

"Maybe," she says with a shrug. "I think it's more likely that they've - Well, that they've learned to be that way, you know? That someone taught them all about how they ought to be hateful and cruel and awful.

"Which isn't to say that you ought to spend your time trying to make them better, either," she amends. "That's stupid. Everyone's got to take responsibility for their own wickedness. I mean, we do, don't we?" She gestures between the two of them. "We could be bastards, really, after everything. But we're not."

Matthias nods, a cautious agreement. He wants to be included in that gesture, of course. They really aren't bastards. Certainly he isn't. And if he isn't, then she mustn't be, either. He can tell.

"I'd never," he says, firmly. "Waste time on that, I mean. You really think it's something learned? Swear I've met bastardy babies before. And how is it that rich folks are nearly all bastards? They have everything. What have they got to be bastards about? What would've taught 'em?"

"Whoever raised them," Kitty says with certainty. "I mean, think about it - How'd they get to be rich in the first place? Years ago, their grandparents or great-grandparents or whatever were dreadful and exploited others and took all their stuff for themselves. And then they passed down that lesson from generation to generation. When we're kids, we look at the adults around us to figure out how to act. And if every adult around you has only ever learned to be awful, then you haven't got any other way to copy."

Matthias settles into staring at the fire once more as he thinks about all of this. It's hard to wrap his mind around. Like, yeah, you see a freckled baby and then its parents come round and they've both got faces full of freckles--all right, that makes sense. It's visual, like. But being awful, and handing that down, and down, and down--

"All right," he says, finally, "so what were your parents like, then?"

That question catches her off-guard. And none too pleasantly. Her open, energetic face freezes, and slowly turns closed-off and hard; she presses her lips together, and turns her eyes away. Her fingers dig into the dirt, wriggling their way down.

"Cowards," is her only reply.

He nods, still staring at the fire. Of course he sees some of her reaction--the stiffening of her face, at least, the way it looks like she closes a window--all out of the corner of his eye. Weighs it up with the rest of her, and everything she's said.

"Mine as well," he says, eventually. There's a feeling like a rock in his chest, some little pebble wedged in his breastbone. He ignores it. "So it can't all be what you learn, can it. What you see around you. Or else there'd not be us."

Oh. That's not entirely the response she was expecting, but - She turns her gaze back to him, a little of the tension going out of her.

"'Cause they sent you to the Circle?" she hazards.

"It's not their fault. I think."

He picks up a twig but doesn't cast it immediately into the fire. Begins stripping the bark off of it with his thumbnail instead, slowly peeling it bare, exposing the flesh underneath that stands out stark like bone.

"'Course they were going to give me to the Circle. I was small. I barely remember it. But I know, even before--everything--" The stable, flames licking eagerly at the walls, a great plume of smoke against the blue of the sky. "They were cowards before, too. Keep your head down and don't make trouble. Stay where you are. Sell out anyone to keep yourself safe. And that's not me. I'd never."

"Why?" She leans forward, a prickle of recognition running up her spine. "What else was there? If it wasn't just giving you up."

There's a few secrets that Matthias keeps close. This one he's told before. Who didn't sit about a fire telling shit about their past? It was how you knew you could trust someone.

Still. Every time he says it, the words, the story, it loses something. Or that's the way it feels, anyways. Words that sap power out of something, take away life. If it's life that he can't really remember anyways, does it matter? It ought to. Anymore it all feels so far off, like it happened to someone else. Only seven years ago, but a hundred other things have taken the place of those memories, made them small in the face of war and battle and causes that meant something.

"My sister," he says, pulling down another strip of bark, "killed someone. Or they said she did anyways. She came home, to the village. She was hiding. S' what they told me later. And my parents had to give her up, so--" Another strip of bark; only the knots are still brown. "So they gave her up. But they didn't have to. I wasn't even ten years of age and I knew they didn't have to. Or maybe I knew that bit later, I dunno, I can't--sort it out, properly. Would have hanged for it, but she was killed before any of it got that far. Left out for the wolves and all--they had to do that as well--so I reckon she's some sort of wraith since they didn't burn her."

He pushes flakes of bark off of his knee, then flicks the bone-white twig into the fire. It catches, in a flash, burns up.

"S'ppose that's really massive. But there were half a hundred little things as well, I'm sure of it. Like--not giving to beggars 'cause who knows what they'll do with the coin. Keeping watch out for anyone they were told to, just 'cause they were told to by someone on a horse. Branding any sheep that came in the fold and not trying to sort out if they belonged or not."

She's quiet a long moment. Finally, she starts in - "My mum and dad - " And then immediately she shakes her head, because how unbearable is it? He tells his story, and then she starts in talking about herself and her parents. What does he care? Why would he care? It's all so stupid. Unless maybe it's not, unless sharing this story might make him feel a little less alone or...something...Kitty sits, and fidgets, and tries to figure out whether telling her story would make things better or worse, until finally she decides that she's started anyway and it'll just seem stupid and self-indulgent if she doesn't finish, so here she goes.

"My mum and dad did that to me, too. Wasn't killed for it, obviously - here I am - but."

Then she shrugs, one-shouldered, and tries desperately to think of some lesson to append onto the end of it, so that it's not just her whinging about her problems. Failing to find that, she offers the best thing she can think of - an awkward, uncertain, "Sorry. That they did that."

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