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 Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2025 1:29 pm
Ah. It would be kinder to let him have his delusions, maybe. If he were older she might have told him that she knew exactly how much power she had, and furthermore made it clear that she knew more about power and its many intricacies than he likely ever would. If there was a motif to her life it was power and all the ways in which it could be bent and taken and given.
She almost let it go. But she couldn't.
“I wouldn't have taken it,†she said bluntly. “I do have power, and that power isn't resolving a cosmic stalemate, and it's never going to be. It was clawing a life I wanted out of what I was given. I didn't need God to make me awaken into something special. I already was. I made myself that way. I guess it's good, that I saved two or three lives. And since I have the means to do it, I'll keep doing it when I can. But given the option, I'd rather have saved my own. Think less of me if you like,†she added with a shrug. “I know a lot about power and a lot about knights -†more than he could ever imagine on both counts, “- and I know that knights often do a lot worse with the power that they have, even if some do a lot better. We can't all be Galahad, and who would want to be? But even Galahad was running godly errands for the glory of a man who raped his sister and tried to murder his wife. If that's the sort of people who have great and cosmic power - and I think it is - I'll swear fealty to no one but myself. I don't want that kind of glory or that kind of power.â€
She found herself, without knowing entirely why, thinking of Gouvernail with a sick pang. Another one who couldn't even save his own life, literally or figuratively, and whose life she could not now save. He had sacrificed every bit of himself to the Garde. She would not repeat his error - was in fact even more determined to avoid it, given his own apparent fear that she would do exactly that.
“If that's more cynical than how you think about the world then don't look for a mentor in me,†she finished, with a smile that was almost but not quite apologetic, as if benevolently forgiving him for the sin of misjudging her. “I'll let you down, and what's worse is I won't feel bad about it. But I'm glad I could answer some of your questions. Hopefully the next person you run into can answer them better and more fully.†It was, very gently, a hint that she would prefer not to be asked any more.
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Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2025 2:26 pm
"I don't get what Galahad has to do with anything, unless he's one of us," Blarney pointed out, crossing his arms tightly across his chest, "in which case, that's super messed up, about his sister and wife, and someone should call the police about that."
It was a weak attempt at a joke, and Blarney was back looking at the stars.
The part of him that was Mason wanted to argue with her. He wanted to, essentially, throw a hissyfit. He was a 17-year-old boy, with big emotions, and he wanted to snap at her. But she didn't care, and what's more, it was humiliating to feel that way when he was like this, like however upset Mason was, Blarney--or at least Blarney-the-station--was supposed to be better than that.
So he swallowed it.
"What if it's not? Or...what if it is more cynical than how I think about the world, but I think maybe there's a good reason--or at least a reason--for why you feel and think that way?" Blarney sighed. "I don't know why or how you think you'll 'let me down'," he said, using the air quotes, "but if you won't feel bad about it, then what do you have to lose? You're the only person like me I've met. Maybe tomorrow I'll run across someone who thinks the exact same way I do about all this stuff and I'll have my own little echo chamber of peace and harmony. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and realize you're right to be mad that all this is happening and I'll hang up my stick for good. Or maybe not. I dunno. But--like you said, we go right in the deep end and they don't even give us floaties." To prove his point, he swung his stick, incredibly uselessly.
"I don't know if the other side gets an orientation or not. But I know that there's two kinds of people in the world - the kind that says 'I suffered, so you should suffer too', and the kind that says 'I suffered, but you shouldn't have to'. I really want to be the second kind."
The question hung unspoken as he looked at her: which type of person are you?
Blarney sighed, resigned. He'd screwed this up already, somehow, and that did not bode well for his dreams of a community of Knights that built itself and each other up into the strongest, best version of itself. What if all Earth Knights--or all any Knights--hated him? What if he annoyed all of them how he annoyed Miss Garde?
He thought of his Wonder, all dead and alone, and he wished he could go back sooner than every few weeks. He kind of wanted to go and not come back.
But he couldn't.
"Look, Miss Garde. In the however many blocks we've been walking here, you've given me no less than five rules for staying alive. One of them was--you told me not to go out by myself. If you're passing me off to the next person, whoever that person might be, assuming I even ever run into another one of us ever again, what am I supposed to do in the meantime? I can't meet people like me if I don't go out like this. I can't go out like this if I'm alone. If you won't help me, who will?" He paused, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Or is that 'don't go out alone' thing just a thing people say, and not actually true?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2025 3:00 pm
She shrugged, too tired to get appropriately irritated and self righteous. She did not usually talk so much, but it was hard to avoid it, in the circumstances.
"They said it to me, but I kept going out alone anyway. You're your own master. I'm just telling you that it's an easier way to die than the alternative." She sighed, only halfway managing to stifle it. "Burn yourself out, resign, or set your shoulder to the plow and make yourself the next king of Earth. You could do any of it. That's on you, not me. I'm not being standoffish because I had to do it alone and want you to suffer, if that's what you're implying. I've had help. I just know this from experience I had way before the Code came knocking: If you try to hang who you want to be on the support and approval of other people you're going to fall down every time. Make your community and protect it as fiercely as you want to, but whatever and whoever you're trying to be, as a Knight or a man, you gotta be able to do that part alone even if you're lucky enough to not have to. I never had a thing in my life until I realized I had to be willing to piss other people off to get it."
She rolled a shoulder. "And one of the things I want is my peace, you know, as much as I'm allowed to have it. You really need me, you call me, I'll come running if I can. But I don't really trust anyone who's too eager to mold someone else into a protege, and I wouldn't trust myself if I was that person. I don't want you to have my worldview. I want you to have yours. And I may not want you to die, but I'll be ******** if I take on the responsibility of telling you how to live. Thats all I meant."
She had not gotten her tubes tied at twenty and dodged a career in education just to end up responsible for some kid's life path anyway.
"Get your ring fixed," she advised flatly. "Call up that cat friend of yours. And then you'll be able to use it to find patrol partners every day of the week, if you want them."
She refrained from adding that she herself did not exactly patrol, and limited her exertions to selfish enjoyment of her power or to responding to actual evident threats. If he wanted to be proactive, let him.
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Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2025 3:59 pm
It set his teeth on edge, but he added another point to his gospel:
6. Thou shalt not hang your worth on other people; only you can decide who you want to be.
"Fine," Blarney said. "I will." Blarney couldn't quite keep the edge out of his voice; talking with her was like talking to a discoball in a house of mirrors, and he felt tangled up in knots for trying to chase after her.
But...she had helped him, even if she was standoffish - she was allowed to be. Like she kept saying, they each had their own freedoms, and she hadn't done anything wrong or hurtful to him, not really. She hadn't been out-and-out mean to him--just expressed opinions that were much blunter and, yes, more cynical than he'd been expecting.
"I'll give you your peace, then," he said, the tone mostly gone from his voice by the time he spoke again. He turned and looked at her for a long minute, then gave her a little smile. "Thank you, Joyeuse Garde. I appreciate your advice, and your time. Please do the ring thing for me, too, if you ever need a pain-in-the-butt, overly-talkative, naive-as-a-newborn-lamb newbie for whatever reason. Or if you think of more stuff I should or shouldn't do." A soft chuckle escaped him and he gave her a slight bow, resisting the urge to kiss the back of her hand the way Khaz had kissed his when they first met - he never would have thought of it on his own, but she still looked so much like a regal queen of some kind that the image popped into its head all on its own.
"It was--I'm glad I met you," Blarney said. "And I hope there's not another end of the world event any time soon, but I hope I'll see you around sometime."
And then he left the way he'd come - leaping up to the nearest rooftop and running across its length before leaping onto the next one, and away into the deep of the night.
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