impure_tale

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The truth can be very entertaining, but better, my sweets, when it's given willingly.

[Private to Iago]

I doubt you are enjoying yourself as much as I am, so I have a proposal. Come to my cabin. We'll sit and talk -- or rather ask questions. I am affected -- I do not know if you are, but I have little reason to suppose you are not. So better to ride it out in a safe place, oui? And with all hope the flood shall have concluded by tomorrow.

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[He fills his goblet and hands it back to him, then serves one himself] I am not unaccustomed to the terrors that can come of written words reaching an unintended audience.

[Iago looked over to him after taking the wine.] You seem to do it so gleefully, though.

I do not mask my opinions of people, Iago. I do my best not to, at any rate. I wrote pornographies and they were placed in the hands of people who would not enjoy them. I cannot expect their reaction to be a positive one. But I also did not make them read it.

[He drank on his wine as the Marquis spoke and then shrugged.]

And yet they did.

I never wrote of anyone I cared for without telling them my intentions first. Madeleine, for instance. [Well. The less said on her, the better.] She understood they were only fictions.

What did you write about her? [He finished the wine and sat back, closing his eyes.]

I created a character inspired by her.

What did she say to it? [He searched around for Renate and then looked back to the Marquis.]

[Renate pushed her nose under his hand.]

She found it humorous. [A slow smile] She understood my work perhaps as it was meant to be read.

[Lazily, Iago scratched her behind her ears and just ran his fingers through her fur.]

At least she understood it. Judas read only three months of my entries and assumed those feelings carried over.

You were not writing fictions, Iago.

You were the one making the comparison. [He glanced to his empty goblet.] I don't normally allow this to happen, but if we're going to continue on this subject, I need to be a bit less sober.

You may ask me of anything you wish, Iago. [He refills him.] By all means, change the subject.

I don't want to. I don't care. I don't care about anything right now, Marquis, except getting out of this place as quickly as I can.

Then you have to care.

Then I suppose I'm stuck here for a while. [He was already starting to feel the two glasses of wine, so the third one was going to be a bit slower.]

You do care. You want not to, but you do. So you have a decision to make.

Which is what?

You must examine the things that you have made for yourself here. Including the relationship you built with Iago. You must think of how you felt -- and how hard both of you fought after coming back here to have what you had until Sylar involved himself. And you must decide whether you like yourself better as that man or the man you'll become if you choose to close yourself off again.

I don't want to be that man anymore, Marquis. He was weak and allowed himself to be hurt by Sylar and Judas.

There's no point to it now. I tried that, Marquis. I tried to be that way. But I'm not supposed to. I'm supposed to be just like this.

You cannot refuse happiness because you are afraid of pain, Iago. [He leaned forward] You are not weak. You are just a victim of the same manipulations you submitted persons to in your first life. You are only weak if you play into Sylar's hands. You are only weak if you give up.

A victim? A victim is weak. I knew that I could play them because they were weak. They had their attachments and I played those attachments against them. Because they were weak. I refuse to be like them.

Your manipulations led to you own death, Iago. You are your own victim. But you are a stronger man here than you ever were there. I have met a man on this ship with conviction. With integrity, and heart. And those are things the man you once were might have derided because he could never find those things in himself.

[Iago stopped listening and just shut down, drinking his wine nonchalantly, setting it down half empty.]

We're done here.

Why, Iago?

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