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.
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."
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."
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."
He'd looked around when she'd started talking, attention snagged by sound alone. Then he really looks.
Not that she's Annora. He's not stupid. She's her, and Annora was Annora, and there's no blending of them in his eyes--not that he remembers Annora anyways, not properly, not anything more than a little, but--
"No," he says, quickly, the word falling out and landing, heavy, "I mean, it was them, you know it better'n anyone, if-- It wasn't--" No, stop. He sits a little straighter, trying to fit himself up into some shape that isn't a child, slumped shouldered, stupid and thick. And then he just says, "I know. Yeah."
And for a minute, that's enough. The two of them, sat together. Not that it makes it any better. But it makes a difference, still being here. Both of them. No matter what else came before. He goes on looking at her a moment, a little too hard. Not looking for anything, only-- looking.
"They say Rifters aren't-- I mean, that you're lot, you're-- demons, or dreams," he says, eventually. "Outside of Riftwatch, I mean."
Sympathy would have been unbearable. Indifference would have been unbearable. What he does - that awkward little shrug that she feels and hears rather than sees (because she can't look at him right now, certainly not) and the stumbling, miserable stutter, and the silence - That's nice. That's enough.
Of all the people to understand, and of all the people to understand her, how funny that it's a mage. She'd never have dreamed it back home. But here she is.
"That's what they say." She draws in a breath. "Might even be true. But it just makes it even more true that it matters what we do here, right?"
"Yeah. Well, I dunno if it's true," he says, sucking in a great breath of his own and holding it, cautiously. The Maker doesn't strike him down for having said it. No tears from Andraste fall out of the sky. And Kitty doesn't suddenly tear out of her skin and strip out to be a demon, leering at him for having fallen for her brilliant trick, you sympathized with me, you're done for, my son, so, that's--fine.
Matthias looks up at the sky and lets his breath out. Still, nothing happens, so he goes on.
"Demons're tricky and all, but. They'd still have to lie to say anything like--that. S'not a lie." He knows it. A feeling, like. "But it's mental, isn't it. You ending up here. Not because of what you've said, or anything, just. What else is out there? And what's the point of you being here? I don't mean that badly, like, only-- there has to be something to it, right?"
"D'you suppose?" she asks, rather dubiously. Now she looks round at him, now that they're on firmer ground - postulating and hypothesizing, that's the stuff she likes. "I mean, no good reason that Corypheus got free, is there, and no good reason that rifts open up. None that I can think of, anyways. And it's certainly not like we Rifters are some heroes sent by the Maker to undo the damage that's been done, even if the Maker were just enough to do that sort of thing - I mean, you've met us. We're more difficult than we are heroic."
Another shrug. "It'd be nice if there were some meaning to it. But really, I think it's that - things are weird, and we're part of the weirdness." A sigh. "Which is utterly dreadful, you know. To just be this...this - freak accident."
"Even heroes aren't heroic." Matthias shoves the fall of his fringe out of his face, curls that swoop down too low and fall into his eyes. He needs a haircut, is what he needs. Maybe later. It's not exactly an option, here and now.
Anyways.
"People're just people. If someone has a story told of them, then it's 'cause they've done something--but they're still only a person, really. That's got to be kept in mind or you'll end up frustrated. So your lots s'no different. But it's like--" He leans forward on the log that he's sat on, with a gleam to his eye. This is something that he's thought of. Something that he's heard, before. "People only become heroes afterward. Proper heroes, I mean. And it's only afterward that you can see how it all fit together. Maybe that's the same here. It seems like a freak accident, and all, but in a hundred years, it'll make sense. Like standing up close to a tapestry. All you see is the threads and the colors and all. You've got to go across the room to see the pattern of it. See what it's really about."
Kitty listens - and then, at the end, she laughs. It's not a cruel sound. Kitty, for all her faults, isn't someone who laughs cruelly. Honestly, she actually not really someone who laughs much at all - so there's a slightly awkward bark to it, a sound made by someone who has the general idea of amusement but has forgotten some of the details.
"That's actually a bit wise, you know." She cants a smile over at him - a little wry, but real. Warm, for all her usual defensive remove. "Better'n I expected from you."
Matthias can take teasing, and can give as good as he gets. He can weather laughter, though he prefers it to be with, and not at, no matter how good-natured and wry it is. Still reminds him of being expected to act a trick dog with mages older than him. A mascot, but one determined to elbow into the inner circle and speak for the kids, and put off the laughter.
But his sincerity is still his downfall, a soft spot to press a finger to and make him flinch. He flinches now, at first--and color flushes his face, spreads from the ears down, and makes him feel hot all over. Stupid. It's not that she thinks him stupid, she clears that up a moment later--holding back the true compliment, couching it with wryness--so that's good, but. Still. Matthias scowls, a little, and scrubs at his face with his shirtsleeve, like he can wipe off his embarrassment, and the redness that is making his cheeks practically glow.
"Oh," he says, sarcastically, his one shield against the horror that he's feeling, "thanks ever so. Glad I proved myself. Look, it's not," but what is it not; he swallows the words and looks into the fire. "I didn't mean it like wisdom. Or like--something you'd not thought of before. I don't want to lecture, I'm only saying. Heard it from someone else anyways." --all of it trailed off by the end, falling to muttering.
"Doesn't make it not wise," she returns. She looks up after - it's a little too dark out there to catch the redness of his face, but there's something endearingly recognizable about the way he rubs his nose and the way he mumbles that she actually wants to be gentler with him.
"And it's good. It's nice. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. They're good ones, you know."
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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."
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"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."
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"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."
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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."
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"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."
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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."
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"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."
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"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?"
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"All right," he says, finally, "so what were your parents like, then?"
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"Cowards," is her only reply.
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"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."
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"'Cause they sent you to the Circle?" she hazards.
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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."
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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."
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"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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Not that she's Annora. He's not stupid. She's her, and Annora was Annora, and there's no blending of them in his eyes--not that he remembers Annora anyways, not properly, not anything more than a little, but--
"No," he says, quickly, the word falling out and landing, heavy, "I mean, it was them, you know it better'n anyone, if-- It wasn't--" No, stop. He sits a little straighter, trying to fit himself up into some shape that isn't a child, slumped shouldered, stupid and thick. And then he just says, "I know. Yeah."
And for a minute, that's enough. The two of them, sat together. Not that it makes it any better. But it makes a difference, still being here. Both of them. No matter what else came before. He goes on looking at her a moment, a little too hard. Not looking for anything, only-- looking.
"They say Rifters aren't-- I mean, that you're lot, you're-- demons, or dreams," he says, eventually. "Outside of Riftwatch, I mean."
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Of all the people to understand, and of all the people to understand her, how funny that it's a mage. She'd never have dreamed it back home. But here she is.
"That's what they say." She draws in a breath. "Might even be true. But it just makes it even more true that it matters what we do here, right?"
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Matthias looks up at the sky and lets his breath out. Still, nothing happens, so he goes on.
"Demons're tricky and all, but. They'd still have to lie to say anything like--that. S'not a lie." He knows it. A feeling, like. "But it's mental, isn't it. You ending up here. Not because of what you've said, or anything, just. What else is out there? And what's the point of you being here? I don't mean that badly, like, only-- there has to be something to it, right?"
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Another shrug. "It'd be nice if there were some meaning to it. But really, I think it's that - things are weird, and we're part of the weirdness." A sigh. "Which is utterly dreadful, you know. To just be this...this - freak accident."
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Anyways.
"People're just people. If someone has a story told of them, then it's 'cause they've done something--but they're still only a person, really. That's got to be kept in mind or you'll end up frustrated. So your lots s'no different. But it's like--" He leans forward on the log that he's sat on, with a gleam to his eye. This is something that he's thought of. Something that he's heard, before. "People only become heroes afterward. Proper heroes, I mean. And it's only afterward that you can see how it all fit together. Maybe that's the same here. It seems like a freak accident, and all, but in a hundred years, it'll make sense. Like standing up close to a tapestry. All you see is the threads and the colors and all. You've got to go across the room to see the pattern of it. See what it's really about."
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"That's actually a bit wise, you know." She cants a smile over at him - a little wry, but real. Warm, for all her usual defensive remove. "Better'n I expected from you."
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But his sincerity is still his downfall, a soft spot to press a finger to and make him flinch. He flinches now, at first--and color flushes his face, spreads from the ears down, and makes him feel hot all over. Stupid. It's not that she thinks him stupid, she clears that up a moment later--holding back the true compliment, couching it with wryness--so that's good, but. Still. Matthias scowls, a little, and scrubs at his face with his shirtsleeve, like he can wipe off his embarrassment, and the redness that is making his cheeks practically glow.
"Oh," he says, sarcastically, his one shield against the horror that he's feeling, "thanks ever so. Glad I proved myself. Look, it's not," but what is it not; he swallows the words and looks into the fire. "I didn't mean it like wisdom. Or like--something you'd not thought of before. I don't want to lecture, I'm only saying. Heard it from someone else anyways." --all of it trailed off by the end, falling to muttering.
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"And it's good. It's nice. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. They're good ones, you know."
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