impure_tale | 235 [Video]

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235 [Video]

Well, that was rather unexpected.

My apologies for my sudden absence, especially so close on the heels of the last. [An uncomfortable clearing of his throat.] So tell me, dear neighbors: What excitements have I gone and missed?

[Something off-camera catches his eye and he perks up.]

Other than a new assignment, apparently!

[He picks up the file, and upon reading a couple lines looks positively tickled.]

Loki Laufeyson. It appears we need to have a little chat soon, and you have my deepest apologies for my initial absence. We shall have to begin in earnest to rectify this. In the meantime, however!

Admiral, please see to it that a fully updated copy of my file be delivered to Monsieur Laufeyson as soon as possible.

As for everyone else, my dearest friends and loves, I'll be out and about soon to greet you in person. I feel we must all have a visit lest I pop out of existence again and miss the opportunity.

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I died in asylum before I came here. The Abbe du Coulmier was a friend, once, but more importantly the one in charge of patient treatment there. Certain events took place that ended our friendship and, apparently, his career, leaving him a patient himself.

I would not be silenced. I would not be broken. After my passing he paid the price.

And ended as an inmate himself?

In his first life and the next. He disappeared from the Barge without making any progress, and it's one crime for which I have never forgiven myself, even though I was not his Warden.

Edited 2014-02-18 03:23 (UTC)

That's the folly of an inmate. Yeh only learn of your destructive path once it's pointed out.

Yes. That tends to be the case.

As it is, the rest have mostly been port circumstances, being what they were. The worst things tended to be what I survived.

And what finally pushed yeh to graduate after two years?

Seeing my Warden be just as enormous a jackass as I ever was in my youth, oddly enough.

[What is this, laughing twice in one conversation? It's the coming apocalypse]

Aye, they're wont to do that.

[He grins.]

James Kirk is nothing if not an expert at such things.

Wouldn't know him. Didn't.

Must've been near to a god to redeem you.

As a Warden, I prefer to think that we help people to redeem themselves, and I feel much the same way about my own graduation.

That's a crock and you know it, marquis.

[Says the ungraduated inmate]

My warden does far more'n his fair share of the work.

I never said they didn't work. People are many and varied and a pain in the arse, especially when they're wrong. Guiding is hard work; make no mistake.

You have to know the person you are working with, make some attempt to earn their trust or somehow protect them even without it. You must be the first to forgive. You must see them well enough to know where boundaries must be placed, what bridges to cross and which to burn.

However, in the end you cannot make a person absorb a lesson. You cannot force them to see the good in what limitations you've placed on them. You can't make them see right and wrong for themselves rather than just what you decide they are. All of that is their own work.

[He scowls deeply, knowing the marquis is at least correct where it concerns his own warden. Bush did have an entirely too forgiving way about him. Did Jones trust him? Well...yes, he supposed he did]

Yeh make it sound like a parent to a child.

[Not that Jones ever had children, or had particularly attentive parents]

[For whatever reason that stings a little, and it shows on his face. He thinks of Iago.]

Considering I myself was considerably less than an ideal parent in life, I balk somewhat at the notion.

[This comes as a significant surprise to Jones, who frowns]

I didn't know yeh were a father.

Two sons and a daughter, all grown.

Couldn't say I ever felt the urge. Irritating things.

I'm never without the urge. That children on occasion come of it is unavoidable at times.

[A dry look back. Srsly, sir? Srsly?]

Spend a few months at sea with only men around yeh. That'd cure the urge quick enough.

If they are well-endowed I carry few complaints.

Aye, they are that. And covered head to toe in barnacles.

[Obviously said in jest.] Well that ought to make things interesting, at least.

[A throaty laugh. Jones isn't sure whether to be amused or disgusted]

Painful, more like.

It is only by way of pain that some may arrive at pleasure. [He thinks on that a moment.] My. It's been years since I've said that, I think.