milliways_bar | (no subject)

Raven takes his hand, briefly.

"I am pleased to meet you, I think. I hope we prove well met."

"He's not upset with you, Raven. He's upset with me."

This said from between Random's arms, as he is now collapsed against the table, head down.

"For God's sake," Holmes mutters, with a glance flung at Random's limp form. "You knew it would out eventually." With a sigh, he turns back to Raven, giving him a leanly measuring gaze.

"I beg your pardon," he says at length, "that I cannot return that pleasure in full, just yet. Perhaps the situation may yet be salvaged."

"It may. I would know what I have done wrong, in your eyes, before we begin. If I may."

His eyes are a little cooler as he studies Holmes. And very old.

"My telling you about my concerns and feelings during his absence."

He looks up quickly at Holmes.

"And it's not a matter of 'outing.' It was one of the first things I told you yesterday. I admit my mistakes."

"You place me in the worst possible position," Holmes retorts, leaning back and crossing both arms over his chest.

Returning to Raven, he shakes his head, a tersely frustrated movement. "You have done nothing." An uneasy and uncomfortable admission, but is thoroughly out of his control, now.

"And neither have you." Raven's eyes are very gentle as he says this.

"And it is no business of mine, so."

He shrugs.

"I have to go."

He stands quickly.

"And I hope you two keep talking. Watching you try to undertand eachother would have been amusing."

"Damn it," Holmes mutters, letting him go. Better than another public scene, at least. Slim salvation though that might be.

He drags out another cigarette, lighting it with a sharp hiss from the match before meeting Raven's gaze again. The gentleness of those eyes might unnerve him at another moment.

"Can I trust nothing, and no one?" he says, voice low and clipped, the question rhetorical.

Raven tilts his head, still watching.

"That is rather a question of will, I think."

"Of course it is," Holmes replies, sighing and straightening up again. "But just as much a matter of logic, I should say." The cigarette helps, of course. His thoughts can once again resolve into a single, directed path.

He leans back, smoke trailing upward, and eyes Raven. "Would you trust a man who had once betrayed you?"

Raven merely looks at him a moment, eyes dark and wide and old and very sad.

"Yes. There would be nothing left for me, if I did not."

Pausing, he holds Raven's gaze. He might call this deduction, but it might be intuition--something less or something more. He would never admit such a thing.

"How old are you, sir?"

Raven tilts his head, and considers.

"Almost as old as the oldest universe, I should imagine. I have been to many worlds, so."

He shrugs.

"So." Just an echo. He pauses again, inhaling, exhaling a single ring of smoke.

He chuckles with just a touch of bitterness. "So. The only truth of the universe is repeated betrayal?"

Raven shakes his head, and laughs, very softly.

"Not so. The only truth in the universe is that everything changes, and changes again. Choice is a powerful thing, you see."

"Things do not change so much in one man's lifetime," Holmes insists. "Human nature resists it, logical or illogical." In every way, he has chosen unconventionally. Again, and again. "What is preferable, then? Security, or risk?" His own choice must be the latter--his own justice administered in the favor of the logical right.

Raven smiles.

"Where human nature resists, there lies my work."

He tilts his head, then, and studies Holmes intently.

"As to your last question, that is ever your choice. And it varies, with time and experience. But you knew that, already, I think."

"Of course." Holmes taps his cigarette against the edge of the ashtray, dismissive.

Sighing, he shakes his head, just once. Already he may have given up too much of himself, and the thought weighs uneasily. "No perfect equations for experience, I suppose," he mutters, dry. "Philosophy shall never be a forte of mine."

Raven shrugs.

"It is usually a waste of time, right enough. Though logic, in its own way, is also faulty."

Despite the failure of logic to explain love, to explain courage, to explain any deep emotion, that is a hypothesis with which Holmes cannot agree. "To say such a thing," he says, leaning back and tenting his fingers together, "is unjust enough. But you must prove the argument, sir. Give me your example."

It's a fine sort of challenge. No meaning in it, perhaps, or all meaning. Beauty is in detail.

"Explain me with logic, then."

He tilts his head.

For a moment, he thinks he might be able to manage such a thing. Should he have nine thousand years of his own to study the makings of life as a whole, from this place, with its inexplicable denizens of magic and mechanics, a universe of experience all its own.

"Damn you," he says at length, but rather fondly. "The game to you, then."

He chuckles wryly, shaking his head. "Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable...must be truth. But when the only possible solution denies any existance of a solution, what can it mean?"

Raven smiles, though there is an odd weight to it.

"It means you are alive, Holmes."

He tilts his head, then, and laughs.

"And also, perhaps, that you have met me."

Lips quirking, Holmes shakes his head again. "Not a particularly satisfactory response. But the only answer forthcoming, I suppose?"

He shrugs angular shoulders. "Although to borrow your expression, if I may, we are in fact well met. You are a frustrating creature, and a strangely sensible one nevertheless." He pauses to think a moment, then chuckles low in his throat.

"Or perhaps madness recognizes similar madness as good sense."