contact part deux

[bouchonne]

if this were modern times byerly would probably make you listen to total eclipse of the heart before you were able to leave a message

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[cozen]

Sometimes it is.

[ He would like to say it will be fine, Benedict is fine—but he has a personal policy against telling Byerly lies. ]

And this was not something anyone imagined we needed to watch for.

[bouchonne]

Maker.

[ He presses his eyes shut. He draws Whiskey's leash in close to him. Then - ]

I hope it was quick. I hope he did not...linger. Trapped. Expecting us to come save him.

[cozen]

[ There's nothing to say to that that isn't horrible, one way or another, so Bastien doesn't try. The ferry is nearby, but a minute or two off yet, so Bastien shifts Rat Red further out of the way to move closer without squishing her. He has to lift onto his toes to even begin to be able to pull Byerly's face into his shoulder. ]

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly is awkward in his grip. The angles are strange, with the little terrier in the way, with Bastien still laden with their things. But he's heartfelt. His fingers dig in. He presses his face against Bastien's warm shoulder. ]

Maker, he didn't deserve this.

[cozen]

No, [ Bastien agrees into his neck. ] He was a good man. He had tried very hard and come very far. And he knew that you cared about him. If he had time to hope we would come for him, he had to know the whole time you would do everything you could.

[bouchonne]

Maker. I was so proud of myself, helping to pull you out of that situation at Halamshiral. And all the while, Artemaeus was -

[ The ferry is approaching. Byerly pulls himself up straight. ]

It’s just all so - ignoble. For him to have gone through everything he went through, only to lose to a demon.

[cozen]

[ Bastien doesn't smile, exactly, but he does get more affectionate around the eyes. His hero—Byerly should be proud. Bastien is grateful. This doesn't erase that.

He has to let go of Byerly to get into the ferry. To put Rat Red on the floor for a moment, to help hoist Whiskey in while she does very little to assist. If he'd been in less of a hurry he'd have asked Franz or Percy to come stay in the house with her instead.

But it's manageable, and by the time they've settled onto a bench, Bastien's had time to think: ] It could have been very noble. He might have put up a magnificent fight. He might have done something to sabotage the imitation—maybe that is why we could tell something was a bit wrong at all.

[bouchonne]

[ That idea brings some solace to Byerly. Solace, in this case, brings pain with it, enough that he needs to take up Rat Red in his hands and pretend to be very invested in inspecting her, so that she might lick his face with enough energy that any and all tears are cleaned up before they have time to fall.

It's a few minutes of sailing before he's pulled himself together. He lowers Rat Red down to his lap again. ]

Had you - forgiven him?

[cozen]

[ While Byerly inspects the puppy and definitely doesn't cry, Bastien stays quiet, watching the waves, a hand on By's knee as casually as if it were his own.

He doesn't look away from the water to answer the question. ]

There wasn't anything to forgive,

[ feels stubborn now in a way it didn't the last time he tried to make that argument, that Benedict was just being Benedict and all Bastien could do was live with it.

Better: ]

I was not angry anymore.

[bouchonne]

Mm.

[ He leans against Bastien. ]

What changed? Why did you - stop being angry?

[cozen]

Time.

[ Not really. Or not entirely. He's had time to think about it now. There are people he wouldn't burden with any further explanation, ever, and especially not under circumstances like these. But he glances at Byerly, whose face is damp—from Rat Red's tongue, of course, and nothing else—and decides filling some silence might be a favor.

It's awfully personal to be saying in front of the ferryman, though, so he trades Trade for Orlesian. ]

I should not have been angry with him to begin with. I think I was angrier with him than with anyone only because he came the closest—he was halfway there, you know? More than halfway. What I wanted, it was for someone to feel the shape of it. Of your absence. To miss you with me. The specifics of you, not this bullshit sorry for your loss. He could have done that.

But I am selfish, and I wanted someone to see me, too. What it meant for me to lose you. And that was,

[ elusive. But feeling seen usually is, for everyone all the time, and when people tried—Fifi, Ellie—he shrank away from it like a stray dog confused by a kind hand. ]

It meant something to him to lose you, too, though, and I wasn't there for him either. And if someone had said everything I say now that I wish someone would have said, I would probably have been angry anyway. I don't know.

[ There. Some silence filled. Over the course of it he's wrapped his arm around Byerly's waist, and having done his best to choppily explain what he wished someone might have done for him, he also does his best to do it: ]

Tell me what you— [ there is no pause for him to put thought into keeping the tense optimistic, but it does take some ] —like about him. How you started to like him at all.

[bouchonne]

[ It is appreciated. It’s also difficult. For a moment, after the question is asked, Byerly doesn’t have a good answer, and panic makes his stomach sour. What if he can’t come up with anything? What a piss-poor man he will be, if he can’t even eulogize the lad appropriately. What a monster he will seem, if he is so extravagant in his grief but can’t come up with the reasons that he’s grieving.

But he reminds himself that he doesn’t need a good answer. This is Bastien, after all. He can speak poorly, and Bastien will understand him. And by the time he’s called upon to speak of poor dead Benedict, he’ll have had time to make his words a little prettier. ]

He’s a nasty little thing. That’s what I liked. When I first helped him, it was out of pity - I thought that his imprisonment had broken him. I thought that it was wrong to keep a broken creature in prison. But he certainly found his spine again.

[ A hesitation, then - ]

But there’s no cruelty to him. I’m sure you’ve noticed that. I think that’s another thing I like. He grew up among the serpents of the Magisterium, and yet there’s not a bit of calculation in him. He’s reckless and impulsive and completely without control. Every bit of kindness and unkindness is spontaneous. Genuine.

[cozen]

[ Bastien's jaw has found Byerly's shoulder by now, perched there like a heavy bird, so maybe he'll feel the shifting muscles of a mournful little smile. That sounds about right. And it sounds about right, too, for Byerly to love him for it, when his unruly heart beats the same way behind all his effort to contain it. ]

Do you remember,

[ cautiously, hoping it's a funny memory now, four years later, that might inspire fondness more than embarrassment, ]

when he invited you to that party without telling you it was only a little garden gathering, so you showed up on your fine hat?

[bouchonne]

Ugh.

[ It summons both. But resentful embarrassment can cut through a bit of the sorrow, at least. ]

A small gathering, featuring him and myself and Colin, with whom I was on - bad terms. It was excruciating.

[cozen]

[ Bastien's laugh is muted, silent, just a stutter in his exhale. ]

Every year we can honor his memory by inviting one person to a very uncomfortable lunch.

[ This isn't fair to Benedict, of course, who was much more than the occasional social slip. And whose body hasn't even been found. But the thought he might still be alive, somehow, is so improbable— ]

I'm so sorry, Byerly. We could ask Alexandrie to... She could paint him from memory, I'm sure, and get that smirk of his just right.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly closes his eyes. He leans his weight more heavily against Bastien. ]

I think the thing that feels cruellest is - He had come a long way. And he could have gone even further. To capture him as he is seems like a disservice.