milliways_bar | (no subject)

"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."

Raven laughs.

"Coyote often calls me batshit insane, so you may have something, there."

He tilts his head, still laughing softly.

"And you have a surprisingly good grasp of my nature from the little we have spoken. Logic does not serve you so poorly, I do not think."

"No, it serves me well," Holmes agrees. "It is the defining point of my character, I should say in fact." Without it, he would have little enough with which to recommend himself.

He draws in a breath, then lets it out with a puff of smoke.

"I would apologize for misjudging you, but that I had so little evidence with which to make any judgment at all," he says at length. Not that he's entertaining thoughts of going after Random just now, either. A breach of trust is still a breach, no matter to whom a secret has been told.

Raven shrugs.

"It is nothing. I am difficult to offend. There is no need for apology."

Then he laughs.

"We are very different creatures, you and I. Logic serves me but poorly."

"How so?" asks Holmes, eyes lighting, intrigued. "Can you possibly move more simply than straightforward, from one idea to the next?"

Such is the framework and machinery of his mind--all things should be reduced to the linear. Cause and effect.

"Not more simply, no. Only more easily. It is an odd thing, in truth."

Holmes makes a low sound in his throat, amused frustration. "Illogical, of course."

Very different creatures, indeed. And Random somewhere between the two of them, he supposes.

Raven grins.

"I have made it an art form."

"You have taken the benefit of millenia to develop it, indeed," Holmes replies with a narrow smirk. "To reach a perfect state of illogic," he adds, meditative. "Quite a contradiction in terms, but I do admire your dedication."

Raven shrugs.

"It is not the only thing I am dedicated to, certainly. I have unplumbed depths."

He laughs