faderift | OPEN - You are broken and callow, cautious and safe

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OPEN - You are broken and callow, cautious and safe

WHO: Diabhall and YOU
WHAT: Catch-all - what Diabhall has been up to throughout October. The first layer of the stone mask seems to be eroding....
WHEN: Backdated to span the month of October. What is time, anyway?
WHERE: The Gallows offices and dining hall, a tavern in Kirkwall, and wherever else anyone wants him!
NOTES: Will edit with content warnings as I go - thread starters below. Please let me know if you want something custom for one of your characters!

Starters below!

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"Honestly," someone sighs out of seemingly nowhere, "much more of this and I will begin to think I should not be the only member of this division with eyes on them."

A gloved hand reaches out to steady the book Diabhall's nearly dropped while fetching it from the shelves-- and then just plucks it up. Emet-Selch casually examines the cover, but holds on to the tome for the moment, not bothering to hand it back over. "Are you even going to be capable of reading it right now, or will you be skimming the same pair of pages until something sinks in?"

It takes the usually-razor-sharp elf a moment to realize he is being spoken to - he turns to regard Emet-Selch with his customarily stony expression, but there is a faint edge to his tone not typically present. Irritation? No, couldn't be. Impatience, perhaps, but even that seems...peculiar, compared to how he has been since his arrival.

Of course, he had heard what was said about the man before him. How could he not have, being in the same division especially? But he does not flinch away, nor is his brusqueness related to any crimes in another time and place.

It is only because the man is holding the book he needs.

His opinions otherwise he keeps to himself, for now.

"I will be quite capable, thank you. And I'm not certain what you mean. There's hardly anything wrong with being devoted to the work, is there?"

But there is certainly something wrong with Diabhall himself, something he is refusing adamantly to acknowledge - eyes bloodshot so as to compete with the pink of his irises, dark circles obvious on his porcelain-pale skin.

"Well, of course there is."

Said as if it's the most obvious answer, before he adds, "...whenever one takes it too far. The quality of the work suffers, further increases the time spent upon it to redo what was poorly done... a wasteful thing, really."

If Diabhall were capable of anger, he may have bristled at this. His pride in his work being called into question, his efficiency.

But he isn't capable of anger, of course. Any edge that had traced his words vanishes as quickly as it had come on, the hand outstretched to take the book from the other man dropping to his side.

He's just tired.

"...Am I so obviously doing that poorly?" Spoken like a man who knows the truth already.

"To anyone with half a mind to pay attention-- which, in this division, could certainly go either way, but if you were counting on us all being too engrossed in our own work to notice... then I am afraid you are not so lucky."

A one-shouldered shrug accompanies that answer, and he glances down, looking through the book's pages himself. It's an idle effort, just something to occupy himself with.

"Don't tell me you aren't used to needing to maintain your own health. Or do-- I suppose it would be as good a reason as any other, if not a better one."

"No, truthfully, I was hardly trying to hide anything. It seems as though I'm falling into some old habits."

For a long moment, he does not respond to the latter half of what Emet has to say...but as he stands there, watching him flip pages, he heaves a low sigh. There is hesitance in his tone now. It makes his own voice sound alien to him, and he finds himself wanting to wince at it.

That's an issue of its own.

"I'm very used to it. Before I performed my emotional truncation ritual, I tended to bury myself in things to avoid...." Diabhall trails off, gaze wandering briefly away before landing back on the other man again.

"You can tell me no, if you would rather not sully your own mind with the concerns of another...but if you have a moment, perhaps talking it out a bit would help me organize my thoughts."

Well. There's a little curiosity there, at least, so even if it's not particularly motivated by simple empathy (perhaps more by just wanting to make sure he doesn't have to deal with an unconscious, overworked person later)-- he eventually closes the book, looking back up.

"You might start," he says, a brow arched, "with what, precisely, you mean by emotional truncation."

"Ah. Yes."

Taking a moment to rub at his eyes, he turns fully towards Emet, drawing a deep breath before launching into an explanation that he's clearly given more than once.

"About two hundred years ago, I performed a ritual to remove all but the necessary traces of emotion from my person. Only enough left for self-preservation. Simply cut it all out at the root. I have lived that way for a very long time."

His brows knit just a little closer together.

For a man who doesn't feel, he looks...haunted.

Setting aside the point that two centuries hardly counts as long, to him-- he's quiet for just a moment afterward, tone nearer to incredulity when he answers.

"And why in the world would you choose to exist in such a way?"

It's a purposeful choice, switching existing for living.

The beat after the question is long, a slow inhalation and an equally slow exhalation. Steadying himself, perhaps, in his exhaustion...or just considering how best to respond. He has an answer, of course. One he's given over and over again. 'Emotion is the enemy of magic.'

But, for whatever reason, he hesitates to give the rote phrase.

"...I did what I had to do. Something nearly destroyed me, and had I let it get the better of me, my very soul would have been forfeit."

"And you lacked the fortitude to do so without going to such lengths."

Not accusatory. Neutral, as if simply stating a fact from a book-- clearly it must have been the case.

"One must wonder, then, what could have been so dire."

At this, Diabhall does not flinch, does not balk.

"That is correct, yes."

He has his pride, of course...but he feels no shame for what he has done. Not an ounce. It was necessary. He knows it was.

Emet's musing makes him set his jaw, however, if only for a moment.

"I lost...someone. Unexpectedly. And my patron wasn't about to grant me lenience for the grief."

"Grief which, I assume, you then ceased to feel."

Along with-- what else? For him to feel it was such a desperate situation, surely someone close. Platonic or otherwise, then surely it was... well, an obvious enough answer, he thinks.

He is not the most sympathetic of ears on this particular subject, however, tone remaining detached.

"And thus never were forced to learn how to handle through any means, owing to the lack of capability to experience such things again-- though I suppose the easy way is ever an option."

"Again, correct. On all counts."

The lack of sympathy doesn't particularly bother the elf. It isn't as if he has had a history of being sympathetic for anyone else, after all, and it's hardly the first time anyone has tried to pick apart his rationale.

"Save for one count, mind. I never had any easy way available to me. To put it plain - my magic came from being bound to a larger entity, a pact. Ending things while under pact would have spurred a fate much worse than death itself." His eyebrows furrow, just a fraction.

"Which brings me back to now. I have...concerns, about the ritual remaining intact. And my patron is hardly looking over my shoulder here. More than crashing down in another world, I have been upended by those two circumstances. I am trying to learn to bear with them."

"Wasn't there?"

Mild, but very clearly rhetorical. Running from one's emotions, as opposed to dealing with them, living with them-- he can't really consider it to be anything else besides taking the easy route.

"But if it does fail to remain intact-- well. If you could not handle it then, I doubt you would handle it now, so I suppose at least there will be some awareness of the liability... though it may do you some good in the end, regardless, particularly if you need not fear your patron.

Surely you realize you disregard the memory of whoever you've done this for, to exist in such a state."

Diabhall listens, expression still for all its exhaustion, appearing to take no issue with the way he is being spoken about. There is no shame, none at all. He is as he is, and he did what he did, and his only concern now is what to do with what is happening now.

At least, that's how he would like to be...but that last comment visibly needles him, something awfully like a flinch crossing his expression. He shakes his head as if to clear it before sliding his rosy gaze back to Emet-Selch again.

"I am aware. He would not have liked it. But I imagine he would have disliked my death more greatly."

He observes that shift in expression, idly. It would be easy to leave it alone. To choose not to push.

But how deep does it truly run, he wonders?

"Mayhap so," he says, with a shrug. "They do say none are truly gone until no one is left to remember them... but then one might question whether thinking of someone and feeling nothing at the memory is truly remembering them at all. Certainly it cannot be called mourning, nor love."

Another twitch crosses the tired mask of Diabhall's face - like something inside him twisted around in his chest at the word 'love.' There is dissonance, plain to see, between the placid expression and the twitch of Feeling something, anything at all, and it disquiets him.

He isn't acting. He isn't putting up a brave face. The hurt stabs in and then stays stuck in the wound, healed over amongst all the other pins and needles in his heart.

A broken machine who can't fix himself.

"Perhaps it can't. I have only the echoes of sentimentality left in me in the first place."

Hm. Enough to stir, it seems, but not to fully spark more of a reaction; Emet-Selch watches, he files that away, and once that moment has passed, he doesn't quite linger on it.

There's more he could likely do to try to pick the man apart, but honestly-- he's tired, on the whole. Given no reason for it, he isn't exactly motivated to do so, when the whole situation sparks distaste.

"Then I shall simply hope they had others to remember in your place," he says, with a wave of one hand. "They will have need of it."

Dimly, he aches at that statement, somewhere deep inside, but there is only the barest hint of it in his voice.

"He did. But not for a long time, now."

Diabhall breathes in, then out, a slow, shuddering thing as he tries to check in with himself. About what the point of this conversation is in the first place.

"From an outside perspective, Emet-Selch, are you...seeing reactions in me, as we have been talking?"

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OPEN - You are broken and callow, cautious and safe

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