milliways_bar | (no subject)

Ruin and Bane walk along the water's edge, the emaciated coyote bounding after his master.

His eyes fall on Charlie, another player in the game, and he approaches.

"Comfortable, Charlie?" he asks, eyes flashing like molten silver.

"Very, thank you."

Charlie glances up at the man and the coyote, raising an eyebrow at both, for different reasons. "Do I know you?"

"No, but I know you."

He smirks.

"You and Teja and Jason."

That makes Charlie pause a moment and put the book down.

"Well that limits who you might be. Can I have your name, then? And how you know us all?"

"You may call me Ruin, and I know you because I know everyone."

He walks a little closer, Bane remaining seated behind him.

"You all walk the paths of the multiverse, and those paths happen to be something I and my siblings are intimately familiar with."

"Oh, you're him, then. I've heard of you, the tarot cards. I also hear you've been telling tales on me," he says with a bit of a smile. It isn't amused in the least.

"Care to give me a reasonable explanation of why?"

"Mmm. Telling tales would imply I am lying."

Ruin's voice drops a fraction.

"However, your raping Jason is hardly a lie, is it?"

"Hardly," he agrees with a carefully neutral expression. "But what happened between Jason and I is already past, and we have an understanding about it."

He does look up at Ruin for a moment with a raised eyebrow. "So why did you, who have no need to be telling people these things, tell them?"

"Ah, but the past is not something that can be buried and forgotten. It tends to rot in the brain of those who are proud and already hurting. Your understanding is quite limited."

Ruin crosses his arms and looks out over the bay.

"I told Teja because it caused pain for Jason. It forces Jason to face things he would rather not. Change must happen, one way or the other, for Jason sits in my keeping. He can go no lower than ruin, and it is time for him to pull himself out of the shithole he's dug." He snorts. "Well, is digging. What happened between the two of you is of use in furthering that agenda: getting him the hell out of my reach."

"I would greatly appreciate you not telling anyone any more of my life story," he says with a slightly cold snip in his voice. "Or repeating what you've already told as it's nowhere near any of your business."

"Everything is my business."

Ruin grins.

"Besides, the ones I needed to know know, so there is no need to tell anyone else. The game, though, is far from over, for either the wolf or the little king. The tarot are ideas of change, Charlie." He affects a cheerful tone to his voice. "I would think you'd welcome change in your friends' lives! Even if it means a slight embarrassment for you."

"My life is not," he repeats. "Stay out of it. My life, and the lives of my lover and friends are not a game."

He sits up and looks at Ruin seriously. "Let me make two things abundantly clear to you. First is that you may of course do what you feel you must; the second is that when you cross my line in the sand and hurt Jason or Teja, I will hurt you."

Ruin likes the courage the mortal displays.

"You can hurt me all you like, Charlie. It doesn't change the path. It doesn't change what will and must happen."

"Is that giving me permission?" he asks with a smile. "I choose my own path."

"That is the point. You choose. You choose to move forward. Jason and Teja do not."

Ruin becomes serious.

"They are stuck. It's my job to unstick them, as unpleasant as that job oftentimes is."

"I didn't say what I choose," Charlie answers, just as evasively as Ruin does. "I don't care what you do to anyone else, but stay away from Teja and Jason."

"Regretfully, Charlie, I can't. I have a much higher stake in this than mere change, and to abandon the course now would be... unwise."

And, for a brief instant, it might actually look like he does regret it.

Charlie catches that. It's faint and he's not sure if it was affected or not, but it was there.

"Why can't you? It's not your path, and not your choice."

Ruin shifts on his feet.

"It's not as simple as just walking away," he says. "There is so much at stake."

Now there is a rawness to his gaze that he tries to stifle, but he doesn't know how well that went.

Charlie just raises an eyebrow at the look in Ruin's eyes, folding his legs up and gesturing at the other side of the hammock.

"So sit and tell me why not. What is there at stake that you're not telling me?"

"If I tell you, you will tell them, and they can't know."

It's just like when he told Mary Anne about Gorlim.

"The reward has to be earned, no matter how hard they have to work. There are things Jason needs to work through, and a trial is the only way he's going to come to the crisis point, the breaking edge, and can then make the choice that's necessary."

Ruin, though, does sit next to Charlie, and it's disconcerting in a way. He's not ever been invited to sit with someone unless they were family.

"Change is not just for the sentients, but for the ideas, too," he finishes.

"I don't tell those two everything. The majority of my job is keeping secrets, I know what not to tell people."

He does shift a minute, thinking through something obviously not too uplifting. "I can respect there being things to work out on your own, even though I will likely not appreciate what he has to go through."

Pause. "I don't want you to hurt Teja."

Ruin speaks honestly.

"I don't want to hurt Teja."

It's just part of his job that he do so.

"Sometimes, sentients become lost in themselves. They can no longer see how to move forward. Teja can't move forward right now, but he will." He glances at Charlie. "And he will be better for it. He will be able to love you more fully, but there are shames and memories he allows to bind his heart and hands, and he's allowed them to for too long now."

"I know of some of them," he says carefully. He's well aware that Teja hasn't told him everything, and there's the possibility he never will.

"What can I do to help him?" he asks with a quiet sigh. This isn't easy for him to accept and he isn't sure he wants to. He isn't sure he's going to accept Ruin's ideas, whether or not he's supposed to be powerful or not.

"As my sister would say, glue the mirror back together when it shatters."

He sighs, scritching behind Bane's ear when the coyote comes to nudge his knee.

"It's a trial, and it is his choice how he walks away from this. I cannot make anyone do anything. I can only present them with the choices. It is their will, their desire, that shapes the path and the outcome."