lordofthering | IC SUGGESTION BOX

He spoke to you about... my leaving labour, didn't he?

[Foster's assumption isn't that Psi sucks at passing messages. His assumption is that he sucks at communication... let alone doing anything else, ever.

Or possibly that Psi lied to him.]

Edited 2018-04-30 04:12 (UTC)

He told me you wanted to. I told him that if you wanted that to happen, you would have to talk to me directly, and give me a damn good reason why.

[Foster has openly accepted that he's irredeemable and stupid and incompetent, nasty, worthless garbage, but that is not what the Psionic said at all, in any words.

What Psi said was several flavours of the Ringmaster not 'understanding' him, or having denounced his behaviour in some way, or just hating the way he talks.

The last one is what forces him to pause longest. He's known that has been extra aware of it since the last time she acknowledged his existence--since she'd condemned his spell. And it's for that reason he'd come into this having worked out his words in advance.

Words that were meant for a very different conversation.

Now, suddenly, he's being tested in a way he was unprepared for--and he is neither equipped for it nor happy to suddenly be here.]

....

I want to do more for you.

[That... was an attempt.]

[Personally, the Ringmaster would have been happy to put off this conversation until later, if he needed time to get himself in order. She can't help but comment on this one immediately, though.]

I'm aware of that. You've told me several times.

But that seems to be more about what you want to do than what would be actually helpful or desired. I'm sure you haven't forgotten what removed you from the acquisitions team in the first place... you broke our trust. Mine, and the rest of the carnival's.

I can appreciate that you've been trying to put your best foot forward, in recent months. Yet, something so dire is not so easily forgotten. The marks you leave on other people last longer than might be convenient for you.

Time is finite.

[He doesn't have time--he doesn't have the right to convenience, or inconvenience, because everything, when it comes down to it, is always too early or too late.]

I... I talk to people, I do for them whatever they want from me, but it doesn't matter. It's just maintaining more nothing, and it's not enough, because nothing will be changed by passive existence.

[Is he bitter? A little. But it's not like failure is new.

His thoughts, his words are getting confused again--frustration, desperation, something else scrambling his mind up to keep them from coming out right, but he doesn't know how else to say it.

He has to stop. But where does he find the place to stop--]

I don't know what would be helpful or desired. No one wants anything from me except the Psionic, even you.

And I do what he wants--

But I don't want his guilt.

Edited 2018-04-30 05:55 (UTC)

[Foster's problem really seems to come down to the fact that he talks too damn much. Even if he says a number of relatively sensible things, it's always weighed down by something irritating. In the Ringmaster's experience, the more concise he is, the more flattering it is to his intentions.]

You have got to be joking. It's been... what? Less than a year? It would have to be. That's not a long time, even by human perception.

[Foster is totally silent for a good... minute, at least.

It's a weird span of time for him. His entire body runs hot and something like static rolls in like a fog over his thoughts, but he doesn't feel anything except nausea, and a weird, vast emptiness.

It's like being completely overwhelmed and completely emptied out all at once.]

.............

No. I suppose it isn't.

[He doesn't know what to do any more. What is he supposed to say?]

......

[What could he possibly say that would mean anything--when nothing he says means anything, when the only thing he has to say is nothing, means nothing, what is he supposed to say?]

I just.... don't want to run out of it.

[He's losing his mind, he feels like. Desperation is not a new feeling, but like this--like he's bargaining not with an implacable force, with the Void, but with a power more directly invested in words. But in the end, he's still just begging to feel like it isn't worthless. Being alive and dying and everything in between.

And in the end, it's--]

Please.

What do you actually want, Foster?

Not in the short term. Not whatever will sate whatever recent irritations you might be having.

What do you want in the long term? What is your desired end result? You say you don't want to waste your life, so what would make it not be wasted were you to die tomorrow?

[The question catches him entirely off guard. It's very dear to him, though--a question he has to live with every second, has to answer or evade every second, every picosecond, every microscopic instant that he continues to exist.

It's also a question he never actually expected to be asked aloud.]

Something to die for.

What I can die in devotion to, then I can live in devotion to.

[He pauses, trying to organise what is, by its nature, a very disorganised idea.]

Death, dying used to be my purpose, my... devotion.

That may have been the wrong answer, but my purpose existed with or without me. As long as I saw it coming, I couldn't fail. I... could have been happy with that.

[He was happy with that, actually. Even when he failed, it was a temporary experience; he knew he would eventually succeed.]

But once I understood your purpose there, the manor was... also exciting in that way.

[So:]

That's why I want to receive your purpose, to feel that terrible excitement of living.

[But it sucks, serving a master or purpose you can fail--at least when you're as good at fucking things up as he is.]

Mmm.

If I died tomorrow.... I'd want to die trying to find the creation of wood and rot to bring back to you.

Dying is easy. It happens to everyone, eventually.

[She's not specifically offended, at least. This is informative, even if she thinks it's ridiculous.]

There are plenty of exciting ways to die, at that. There's nothing impressive about going into something planning to die. To go in hoping to live, knowing that death is a possibility... that's what takes grit.

[He's... more surprised by what she doesn't say than what she does. He was expecting 'no,' or at least more disparagement. Which would have been justified, of course! He was more honest than he should have been, truly. That's a lofty dream for what is inherently and self-evidentally raw and rotted garbage.

Though if nothing else, rot is an element with which he is intimately familiar.]

I'll leave grit to heroes.

[Then he laughs: his laugh isn't totally unkind, but it's too loud to be exactly nice.

But his purpose isn't in his possessing any virtues, like intelligence, or bravery. He's used for what he knows he is: cheap, convenient, and disposable.]

Mmmm.

[.... grit.

Is that what she calls it?

Well. He won't deny there's a certain power to that kind of conviction--assuming it is conviction.]

But I take it I'm not going to die tomorrow.

[He sounds moderately disappointed about that.]

...... and there's no way I'll be allowed out from under the Psiionic?

Edited 2018-05-02 07:29 (UTC)

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