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Through some freak of scheduling that day Lysander found himself on duty in a different part of the labs than Roswell. This didn't bode well at all for the success of the task. He'd been given the duty of cleaning up one of the rooms. Mercifully he had spotted a familiar name on the list and rather than beginning his task, he sat on one of the tables instead.

When Merric arrived his expression lit up. "How are you at cleaning?" he asked.

"Because today you get to show me how well you can do it!" he said brightly, making a grand gesture at the room as a whole. He'd at least come dressed more plainly than usual, his shirt loosened informally at the collar. He seemed in a good mood anyway. "Because I'm pretty useless and Roswell isn't here!"

"It's always so nice to have someone competent. Today we get to clean up an actual lab, you have experience!" He'd seen a few labs in his time, mostly belonging to his family but as a general rule the people there all very much preferred it if he didn't touch anything and immediately gave up explaining things when he reverted to the blank flat look he typically did when people veered into difficult subjects.

Lysander gave Merric a distant sort of look, like a horse might give someone who asked it if it understood calculus. "Cleaning supplies." he repeated, as if saying it out loud would make them somehow appear. "Err." Roswell certainly had some, he usually materialised in a pair of gloves with a bucket of supplies but Lysander didn't usually question where they actually came from. There were probably cupboards for that sort of thing, staffed by janitors and other nocturnal cleaning creatures. It wasn't the world for Lysander.

"I think its mostly cleaning, but no one is going to stop you if you want to mess with things, I won't tell anyone for one thing, I don't even know who you are supposed to tell."

He shrugged. "I'm sure whatever you do, you will do very well."

Lysander watched Merric work with the avid and guilt free interest of someone who was used to doing a lot of observing other people working hard. "Probably." he said helpfully. "People must get them from somewhere, and since they have us trainees doing all their dirty work while not paying us a single bean in return, they probably like, have a little storage area."

He watched the other man look through cupboards and seemed to deign fit to slide open a drawer in the desk he was sitting on. All that was in it a box of pipettes, he didn't know what they were for. "Could you clean something with these?" he asked vaguely.

"And er. Yes I've been fine, it just felt as unreal as everything else in this place, like an unfinished quest line more than anything else. The truth ring was unpleasant and fake. It didn't work, obviously, though for the sake of my vanity I'm going to take your comments on me as honest and true."

He adjusted his glasses and looked him over. "But my comments were not true, exaggerated by the magic of the thing."

He decadently lay back on the tabletop, letting one long leg dangle off the side to the floor. "Oh it was almost as awful as being here."

Lysander sighed. "I don't know why they put me in this group or whatever. Tree. I mean, I like trees, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of very strong feelings about nature as a whole and our place in it. But I've not see anything at all to do with nature here, it's all so unnatural in fact." He wasn't really a man of science, science took a certain level of mental effort that he wasn't willing to exert most of the time, usually when people talked he zoned out and let Roswell tell him the parts that were actually important. On his own he had to listen and constantly felt like he was giving away too much about himself. "It's really confusing, on the whole. I don't understand what they stand to gain from us, unless somewhere out there is a ransom to my family for my safe return."

After all if there was something many of the people he found friendly and real in this place had in common they were either very rich or very smart.

"It was definitely fake. There's no such thing as a truth ring and if there was I would have said other things out of it, I know for a fact. It's an approximation or something like it."

He sighed. "Mm, yes. He is. I had a lot of applications, but on that day in that place, something about him really stood out to me. He's something special. Has a brother too, you know, a twin. I sometimes wonder what it'd be like to have two personal assistants, or if that would be too greedy."

"If I was to guess it's probably Norse. Pagan history fascinates me and if I was to assume its to do with Yggdrasil most likely." It was one of those few things like horses that seemed to hold his attention. "Bit of an insult to use here though anyway, I've not seen much knowledge here since I got here, just a lot of enslavement." He sighed. "Yggdrasil was a doorway to worlds though, maybe they are just mocking us poor captive saps."

"And yeah they seem to have a lot of strange artifacts and things here and to genuinely believe in their function. I'm not used to that either honestly. I mean, I believe in the power of magick but it is supposed to be earned, supposed to be specific, not to be disrespected as a... party trick." He looked a little grim about that. " The only issue I have with telling myself it is all a trick or manipulation is that it would mean Roswell humiliated me on purpose which I don't think he'd do." He sighed. "I don't know what to think of anything."

He didn't move to help but did smile brightly at the supplies and Merric

"And about his brother, not identical." He said. "And they are very different people that is for certain, though sometimes you can see the similarities. Fred's always been polite to me. I don't think they get along though, some sort of history. From er, before he worked for me. I tried not to ask.

Lysander liked Merric more and more the longer the other man didn't try to make him do anything. He was used to people whining and nagging at him as if his existence was somehow a problem. It put him a little more at ease. "Yep. They are definitely toying with us, and I'm not going to stand for it, it's why we need allies against this and a plan to get off the island."

Roswell was certainly complicated but the idea of even a single crack in the other man's loyalty was distressing to the extreme. "I'm not sure." he said. "He never mentions himself to anyone, myself included. Anything I know I found out through my own investigations. But I need to trust him, I don't do well being suspicious of people. It just upsets me."

He plucked one of the pipettes out of the drawer and gave it a little squeeze, casting a slightly languid look at Merric. "What was your brother like?" he asked. "I have a brother and a sister. My brother is boring and my sister is kiiiind of a b***h."

"Great, you seem the kind of man I can count on." And he meant it, Lysander felt like he was a good judge of character and trusted people who felt like truly good people. Merric seemed like one of them, and in the year which hadn't been a year at all they'd gotten to know one another a little better. The haze of the dream had lost the details but he knew the other man had been loyal and true.

"The younger ones are always the ones you need to look out for." he said a little wistfully. "I suppose in my family I was the rebel. Clive is the one my father said he'd give the company to. He's my younger brother. I was always too weird for my father." He smirked "Il ne m'a pas aimé"

Stretching he gave Merric an upside down look from the table. "Family are generally a bit taxing. I bet you are the better sibling. Just takes someone to notice that you are."