milliways_bar | (no subject)

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ruin

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It's been a week. Really. A really boring, difficult, long week.

Hence the Charlie sitting in a very comfortable hammock near the Caribbean inlet. Watching the waves, when he's not reading his book. It's a relaxing idea, the sitting-and-watching-nothing idea.

Charlie sees how people can enjoy this.

[tiny tag: Charlie Monroe]
[OOC: part of the 'Duet for Claws and Swords' plot; open forever.]

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"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."

Charlie sighs lightly. He isn't happy with this, at all.

"I can't be happy with just sitting by and watching him hurt. It's not something that's going to happen, though I understand it would probably be easier for you if I did. I love Teja, and Jason is a close friend of mine." He watches the coyote come up, but doesn't reach out to touch him.

"Are you hurting?" he doesn't specify how; it's easier to get an answer if he doesn't, he knows.

Ruin's eyes fly up, stare at Charlie.

"Am I what?"

Charlie keeps his eyes level on Ruin carefully.

"You look unhappy. Are you hurting?"

"I'm Ruin, Charlie. I wasn't always ruin, either, so yeah, there's some not so pleasant patches decorating my otherwise black heart."

It sounds forced.

Because it is.

"So I've been told," he says. "But you didn't answer my question. Are you hurting, now?"

This would have been easier if Ruin had come to him for this purpose, but he didn't. "I'm not here to judge you."

He snorts.

"It's going to be difficult to hate me if you know me," he warns.

Ruin is not accustomed to talking about himself, which was why he'd hostilely told Teja the brief bits of his past as he had.

"I don't hate you. I'll admit I had every intention of doing so, given Teja was upset after he said you'd talked to him..." he pauses a minute.

"But I find myself wanting to know you, and help you if I can."

"Help me?"

Ruin's brow furrows.

"Why on earth would you want to do that?"

"I have no idea myself, in all honesty," he smiles. "But I do. The question now is if you'll let me."

"I think I'm beyond help."

Bane noses at Charlie's leg this time.

"Anything you and I say, it goes no further than where we are." He pauses, frowning a moment. "What do you want to know?"

"No one is beyond help," he says carefully, reaching out to the coyote when his leg is nosed.

"I won't push you to tell me what you don't want to, but I would like to know everything you feel comfortable telling me."

Bane licks Charlie's hand.

"I don't usually talk to anyone about myself other than my wife and family."

He wouldn't even know how to begin.

Charlie smiles a little, nearly giving a laugh. "Then talk to me like I'm one of them," he says, gently petting Bane's head. "Nothing you say will go beyond here and now."

"We talk about business. Except me and Legs. We tend to intersperse business with sex."

Ruin gives Bane a nudge, and the coyote grins up at both of them.

"I do things I don't much like. I do things I'm ashamed of because it's my job. I remember who I was, and I know who I was wouldn't be happy with who he's become. I am viciously protective of my family."

"Well two of those things are good," Charlie says, nodding. "I can understand not being happy with your job, and still having to do it anyway. Why do you have to do this job, do you know?"

He wants to ask who Legs is, but that will wait till later.

"Because the job is what I am. It's what I embody. I can no more ignore it than cease breathing," he says. "At the time I became Ruin, it was pretty much death or this. This seemed a lot better suited to me than being dead."