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 Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2016 2:20 pm
"Who's Themiscara?" Celsus asked, and though the handshake received was firm, his own was still a little hesitant, his fingers trembling. He let go and wrapped them around the Chronos pendant dangling from his neck, absently sliding them over the metal.
He bowed his head, the shame thickening his voice as he said, "I have just felt...for quite some time that I am not meant for this job."
Which he'd said before, but it was painful, a constant ache in his chest, Celsus easing out a breath. "I thought...I thought I was doing the right thing, and yet all I do is make mistakes, inconvenience people. My attempts at doing anything helpful have resulted in only suffering."
His voice dropped, barely above a whisper.
"There is very little that I can do."
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:51 am
"Mars knight, like me. Tough, has a broken length of chain to wield, black hair..." He gave a vague sketch of her, trying to detail it in the air with his hands, somewhat ineffectively. Damn this was difficult though, and he supposed he should have been surprised. Not everything got solved with a handshake and an introduction, but he wondered about the details. "Ok... um." He fumbled for questions, trying to think where to start. "What... made you think you were just inconveniencing people? What happened, exactly?" He thought about launching into a bit about how not all knights need walk the same path. Hvergelmer had certainly laid her own, stone by stone, far different from his, but since so many saw her at places like Olympus, it seemed redundant to bring it up. Besides, he apparently used to have confidence. Something had changed.
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:28 pm
"I'm afraid I haven't met many Mars knights," said Celsus truthfully. "Several Chronos, like myself, a few Saturn, some Cosmos and Earth. I think, possibly, other than in groups, you're the first Mars knight to have crossed my paths."
His fingers twisted around the pendant again, the pints of the sigil digging into his palm rather painfully. He felt, not for the first time, a surge of anxiety, an unpleasant sensation in his stomach that he was probably inconveniencing Kairatos; that he was taking up his time with meaningless, pointless drivel about a life that could not be changed.
Celsus glanced away, red faced in his shame.
"I used to be ...at least, I thought I knew what to do, how to be a knight. It's been so long, after all."
His voice grew lower. He felt as though he were going in circles.
"I keep thinking as though I can solve these problems, and yet I can't. I can't solve anything, and I just get in the way and let people down, yet again."
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2016 1:40 pm
"OK here's my problem with this argument." Kairatos raised a hand to stop Celsus. "You keep saying you've failed... but I haven't heard a thing about HOW exactly you've failed. I mean are you tying a gift bow on civilians and handing them to the negaverse? Are you telling them to go to the repeated slaughter fests that they keep turning every attempt to be social into? What are these puzzles you're trying to solve, exactly?" It was easy to blame yourself, but he was hearing vagueries, self chastisement for no reason he could understood. "I mean hell, I have a goddamn burning bull for a summon, and even I can't always go it alone. And I'm definitely not the best puzzle solver. I'm the guy who figures that the best way to solve any knot, not just the Gordian one, is to chop it in half. We need the thinkers, even if they don't always get it right the first time. Especially now, we need people who can try and out think the other side, even if they don't always get it right..."
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2016 11:20 pm
Celsus winced. "No," he said, his voice shaking. "No, I haven't - done any of that, but I haven't - I haven't been there for any of them, I haven't helped them at all, and they keep - they keep leaving, they keep disappearing, and I couldn't do a think to stop them - "
He dragged in a ragged breath, the tremor in his hands rising. Celsus closed his eyes, feeling the depths of his despair surrounding him, choking out his vision.
"It was a mistake," he said quietly. "I wasn't meant to be a knight."
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 4:44 am
Well... they were getting closer to the problem, but he still felt like the root of it wasn't... wasn't dug up yet. "Who keeps leaving?" He pressed, as gently as possible. People came and went, he hadn't heard from some people in ages, some of them he missed, some of them he didn't. Some of them were just gone forever.
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Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2016 11:57 pm
Celsus stared dismally at his hands, shaking in the dark.
"Everyone," he said softly. "All of the knights, they're almost all gone. The princess is gone, my captain is gone, my brother - " His voice broke on the edge of it, and Celsus curled his fingers against his palm, hunching over.
"They all leave, in the end."
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Posted: Mon Jan 11, 2016 10:55 am
This was where Kairatos had slightly more trouble understanding the pain, and he wished he did... "...Haven't met mine..." He admitted. "Met a few other Mars Knights but there's not many of us and we don't really work as a unit. Themi and I work together a lot but then we're living under the same roof. She'd have a harder time ditching me." He gave the other man a wry smile at the slightly sour joke. He thought about Iris, about the time he'd thought about offering to stand in as her knight, since none had ever appeared for her, and the unpleasant revelation that she looked down on knights. It made it harder on some levels to regret never having met Mars. You couldn't be an strange disappointment to someone you'd never met. "But I'm sorry you're loosing them. Many of us have kind of... drifted into our own alliances, but then, we didn't really come with a whole team set up... and I can't speak to what happened to them...or why they'd lay down their weapons. Only that it's hard, and,,, it's not on you. Especially not a damn royal."
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