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 Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 9:09 pm
He sat down again, sighed, and picked up another quill.
He was just fine. His vision was blurring but he was just...fine.
And perhaps he'd have to reconsider that, two months later.
It was a lucky thing the mage was, for now, left to his own devices, plotting lessons that would eventually be taught, setting up and planning experiments for students he would, eventually, be teaching.
Or perhaps it wasn't so lucky.
In just the past few days Dante Araquenosse had broken three vials, spilled three different potions--the stains would never come out now--and had, essentially, cut himself off from even his crows. The brothers were apparently growing bored with his simply feeding them and were spending their time with the students now.
In all other words, he was a complete and utter wreck.
...This was what he'd wanted. To be left alone. To never, ever come face to face with this again.
So why....
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Dante jolted, nearly spilling all of his wine over the front of his shirt. And he hid it all away--tucked in the frayed corners of his mind, called up the arrogance that had got him this far in the first place (good or ill? He wasn't sure), and tried to make his drawn, pale face look regal.
"Come in."
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 9:48 pm
Irame opened the door, and peeked her head through, and then came into the room entirely. She had wanted to make sure that Dante wasn’t in too bad a mood before she came in to talk to him. Or at least more of a bad mood than he had seemed to be lately.
Irame knew that she wasn’t the smartest person in the world (that was probably Dante), nor was she the most influenceal, or the best fighter, but one thing that she thought that she had at least reasonable skill in was picking up others moods. Not that it required much more than a glance at Dante to tell that he was miserable.
“Greetings, Dante.” She said as she smiled and bowed her head to the other Elf. “I hope that I have not come at an inappropriate time, and if you whish for me to leave while you finish your drink I will. I simply thought that I should come and talk to you.” She didn’t clarify what it was that she wanted to talk to him about. She technically meant to do one of the check ins that she had to. Where she would tell all the spells that she had used and why she had done them, but she wasn’t going to tell him that unless he asked. If he didn’t ask… well then all the better for her.
“Are you alright?” She asked as she came over to the desk. “You do not look well, pale, perhaps.” She thought that he still looked stately and noble, but he really did also look… He did not look like he had before. She had worried that he was getting sick at first, but after 2 months she had realized that it was something else.
What else she wasn’t sure but she was sure that it was there. Well reasonably sure.
“As I have said before, if something is wrong I would love to be of whatever assistance I may.”
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:07 pm
Dante found his hands shaking. Slightly. No. He slowly curved his fingers and willed his heart to slow a bit.
"...I...am fine," he said slowly. He believed himself.
Almost.
"Can I interest you in a drink, Irame?" he asked, standing and walking over to the cupboard. First thing he had learned after the fiasco with (tyrius) his former lover; divert the attention away from yourself. Be casual, calm and nonchalant. And if they're as ignorant as they act they'll take it like a hook and sinker.
Too bad Irame was not one of those individuals, he though, then blocked the idea as he knelt down and rummaged through the bottles of alcohol. He noted (somewhat disdainfully) that almost all of them were now half-empty.
"Most of them are just strawberry, but...."
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 10:47 pm
“Thank you for the offer, but I am not very thirsty.” Irame said as she walked over, near to where Dante was. “If you whish to finish your drink, however…” She trailed off, but tilted her head towards the cup. She didn’t mind if Dante drank, she even wondered if it would be a good idea to try to get him to drink more. She couldn’t recall a time when Dante hadn’t been the controlled and tight lipped advisor that he always was, but there had to be other times. Surely Dante wasn’t as controlled and unemotional as she seemed to remember him being.
“If you do not mind my question, may I ask once more if something is wrong with you? I do not mean to be nosey, but feel that I am not being the sister that I should if I allowed you to continue to act so… strangely without at least trying to help.” Quite frankly she wanted to shake him and ask him what was wrong. Ask why he wasn’t acting like normal anymore, why someone who she could always count on to be the same was suddenly so much different.
Politeness kept her from doing it, but that didn’t mean that she would be polite and let the issue drop. Not this time. Especially not when she was covering for her own reason for being there with trying to find out this problem with Dante.
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Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 11:08 pm
Dante's hands flexed, frustrated, eyes shutting tightly. This was his sister. This wasn't someone he wanted to smack...wasn't someone he wanted to....
"...I have made a terrible mistake," was all he said, and let a hand drop.
And he sat there a moment, eyes shut, something unfamiliar and warm and salty forming behind his eyelids and lashes, figure slumped. And in that moment he realized how utterly pathetic, how utterly DEPRAVED, he truly was.
"I have done something...unforgivable to an innocent man."
He stood, slowly, and walked over to his desk, eyes cloudy and, perhaps for the first time, sad. His hands ran over the dog-eared, wrinkled sheets with a familiar red-headed man's picture on them. He'd let Irame surmise their meaning for herself, he decided, as an image of a character called Lady Macbeth sprung into his mind.
For one terrifying moment, he wondered if he, too, would be fated to never wash away that spot of blood.
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:56 am
(This reply sucks but I had to do it with my siblings all over me so don’t look at it too critically please.)
Irame drew away as Dante raised his hand. She didn’t think that he would hit her, but she wasn’t sure. With the way that he had been acting she wasn’t completely sure what he would do. She didn’t want him doing something that he would regret, so she quickly, but tried to make it unobtrusive as well, back up out of his reach. She didn’t say it, but somewhere she thought ‘If you dare to slap me, Dante, I will make you regret it.’ The though was barely even conscious, and she brushed it away without even thinking about it.
She didn’t say anything as Dante spoke and couldn’t think of anything to say as it seemed that tears formed in his eyes. She had never seen Dante cry. He was always the strong and emotionless one that knew what to do. The stoic one with all the answers but none of the emotions. At the sight of his distress all the thoughts of her deception left her mind as she worried for her brother.
“Dante… Oh Dante. This is what has been wrong for so long. Why did you not say anything before?” She asked worriedly. “It would not have been a problem. I would have been more than glad to help you however I could.”
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 4:36 pm
(Don't worry about it. 3nodding )
Dante turned his back to the incriminating papers, hiding his eyes in his hands, refusing to face his sister.
"Because it is my fault that this happened in the first place. Because this is what I brought upon myself."
He turned back, glanced over his shoulder at the documents, and laughed. "I treated Larine as though he were a scumbag. As though I've never made any mistakes in my life--particularly with that individual. I cast him away from me. I...I blackmailed him.
"I told him never to speak to me again or...or he would regret it. I would ensure that he lost his job here. He annoyed me. He...I loathed him." A pause, then a rueful chuckle. "Or maybe I never did. Maybe that was just a part of him I....."
He sighed. "At any rate...it's gone from me now. He's got that Alexis woman."
And she's made him happier than I ever could.
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 8:08 pm
“It does not matter if it is your fault that this has happened. In fact if it is your fault then you can remedy it all the easier!” Irame said rushing around to look at Dante. “Tell him that you are sorry, give him whatever it is that you are blackmailing him with, tell him that he is important to you and that the lack of him is what has cause this pain in you.” She took his hands in hers and looked up at him.
“If he cares for you then… Then it will mean much, at the very least.” She looked down at Dantes hands. Hands that looked much like hers, thin, pale, Elven. Not the hands of a person who was an invulnerable to hurt or emotion. She mulled over what she would say next for a moment as she didn’t know exaclt how she would say what she thought.
“I… I don’t think that Greg and Alexis are involved in the way that you think.” She knew the way that people who were in love looked at each other, the way that they stole touches and glances, and she didn’t think that Alex and Greg were like that. She didn’t know and could be wrong, obviously, but she had her opinions. “I think that you could still try to talk to him. And if you do not try then you will never know.”
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 9:43 pm
Dante shook his head. He heard his sister, heard the reason and the logic he'd so praised in his students and colleagues alike in her words. And for a fleeting moment, he was proud to call himself her brother. Greg didn't matter at that point. His sister--the balance of emotion and reason he heard in her voice--that was enough to bring the first smallest upward twitch of his lips to his mouth that he'd had in awhile.
And then it faded. "I can't," he said, and bowed his head, his hair glinting mutely, sadly in the dying firelight. "That would mean...."
That would mean confronting my mistake, he knew. Acknowledging that he'd been a jackass. Telling...telling that part of his story. About that man.
And his pride wouldn't allow him to go that far. Not now.
"I heard...rumors. Javelin tittering to...one of the teachers like an old schoolgirl about some sort of kiss. Or bodily contact. That is how humans show romantic affection for one another, yes?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:38 pm
Irame started to think that she might have done something when the smile graced her brothers lips. She thougth that maybe she had managed to dispel the doubts that surrounded him and maybe she had managed to cheer him up enough. The smile was fleeting and it left his face quickly, with him looking even more unsure and depressed than before.
Irame wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying he would have to do if he said that he was sorry, but she knew about all the things that had happened to Dante, and she knew how infrequently he was wrong. She didn’t connect the two things directly with his hesitancy to do so, but she understood that telling Greg would be hard.
“That would mean that afterwards you would be happy. Happy that you had done it, and happy with your life, and is that not what we want?” She paused for a moment as she thought about Dante’s second point. She was not completely sure of what humans shows of affection were, but she assumed that it was much like that of Elves.
“I would assume so. But do we not show affection to children and siblings through much the same way? If I hugged you no one would think it strange. They would simply think it a way to show love of family. And remember mother and Vindakil? Even after they had agreed that there was nothing other than slight affection between they were very open with their touches and shows of affection. I do not know if humans are like that, but they are very similar in other areas so I do not see why they would differ greatly here.”
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 10:56 pm
Dante shook his head. "It's...different with humans," Dante said, gesturing with his hands. "I mean...look at Rui and Wei," he explained. "The two of them are brothers, if not by blood than by a bond made of stronger stuff than we suspect. Yet they don't do much more than hug sometimes.
"Humans...are different. Humans kiss one another on the lips when they are in love--" he flinched as a similar memory flared up, "--in addition to the displays of affection that naneth and Lord Vindakil show to one another."
He shook his head, a haunted, sad look coming back into his eyes, and he stood, crossing over to another side of the room, near the empty roosts that even his three stalwart companions had abandoned. "Perhaps that's right. But what if I am wrong? What if I've let this grow so out of h--" his mouth stopped moving, his brow creased. He tried again. "What if this has grown out of control? What if I get spurned, Irame?"
He hoped she hadn't caught his slip-up--the little thread of pride that stubbornly refused to let his heart go and let him be happy.
Anin curse me....
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Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2008 11:52 pm
“Well maybe it is different for all humans.” Irame said, wondering what Dante was talking about. She had heard about the kiss that Dante was talking about, or at least she assumed so. The thing that caught her off guard was that, as far as she knew, the kiss had been on the cheek. Surely he could not say that if someone kissed another on the cheek it was love. She kissed her children’s cheeks all the time, and yet loved them only as children.
“And what if you do not?” She replied curtly, watching as Dante walked away from her. She knew that it was much easier to say such things than to actually do them. Had she now known Lithirius’s answer to her offer of love she did not know if she would have had the strength to ask him “What if he accepts your offer? You will never know unless you go and ask. And you will not ask if you continue to hide in here.
“And toren, do you really whish to spend the rest of your life like this? You all but hide here, and it is obvious to anyone with eyes that you are unhappy. At least if you talk to him you will know and will be able to continue on.”
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Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 9:11 am
"And if he says no, Irame? If he drives my sin back into my face, even if I am truly sorry? You know that I don't like taking risks unless I know there's a good chance of my getting the result I want."
...But what result is it that you want, Dante? he asked himself.
He dismissed the thought with a wave of the hand. "Perhaps. Maybe you're right. But I don't know if this alleged kiss happened on the lips or the mouth. If it was on the lips, then there's no hope for me. I KNOW that that particular spot is seen as romantic in human relationships. If not...well, I might have a chance."
He didn't understand why he was trying to babble his way out of potential happiness, hand coming to rest upon the mantle as his other hand came up to rub his eyes. He was slightly tired, he had a headache, and the fact he was talking about something he wasn't really sure he wanted to was bearing down upon him.
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Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 6:29 pm
Irame was more than a little put off by her brothers pessimistic. Normally he would have manipulated the situation well enough that there was only the slimmest chance for anything but what he wanted. The thought that he might not get what he wanted was foreign to him. Apparently when he faced something so alien and something where he might not get the outcome that he wanted he became exceedingly pessimistic and cautious.
The caution she was used to, but this pessimistic light, the idea that everything that he did would end up wrong, and everything that he said would be spurned, was new. It was strange and she didn’t like it. She wanted to make him understand that he had a chance and that he wouldn’t be able to find out unless he asked. The only problem was she didn’t think that he would listen.
“You have nothing to loose Dante. The worst that could happen is you continue on like you are now and the best is that you could be much happier. If he says no then you can continue on as you are, only knowing that he is happy. That what you have done has not caused him pain. Then again he could say yes, and think about how happy you would be if that was the case.
“Please Dante, I think that this might be one of the few things that I have more experience in than you. I know that it is scary to think about telling someone something so personal, but what could happen afterwards is worth it. Having someone love you is wonderful, and it is worth all the risk and all the anxiety that you go through before it.”
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Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 6:17 am
Dante almost whirled around violently, settling instead for glaring at his little sister with his profile.
Pessimism, whether or not his little sister wanted to acknowledge it, was foreign to him when it came to matters of the heart. He'd already decided, ages ago, that the reason that that person had hurt him was because he was unworthy of something...tangible. Pure. Like what his sister had.
It was easy for her to say. And he knew he was being cruel when he thought that--considering what his sister had gone through in her, for them, short life--but honestly, people LOVED his sister. Feared her, perhaps first, and perhaps more than they loved her, but Irame had that sort of quiet light about her that demanded both respect and affection.
Dante...was just a grumpy adviser.
But for his sister's sake....
"....Would it make you happy if I said I would...think about it?"
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