Even before finals week for the undergraduate school, Eleanor had floated the idea of Richard going with her abroad as a research assistant. He has an up-to-date passport. It's something she did not try and confirm with him until after they released Billy, after their talk in the park,
where 'if' became 'when', regarding Richard's initiation as a Euthanatos.
--
Since that night, the first time he actually slept over at her house while he studied, he's done so a few more times. The guest rooms have their own bathrooms, and there are weights in the room where her treadmill and yoga mat live. He's known for a long time now that she's vegetarian, so if he craves meat he has to run down to the nearby Safeway -- it's roughly six blocks away -- to get it for himself, but Eleanor has expressed no aversion to meat being eaten in her presence or kept in her house. That said, she is not a terrible cook, and whenever he's at her house in the evening she offers to make enough for both of them. So there's that.
He helped her clean up and close out her house before they left for Europe, too. Deferring subscriptions, having the Post Office hold her mail, getting the house ready to go still and quiet for two months. She talks to two of her neighbors, next door and across the street, giving them her contact information if they'll help her keep an eye on their place. She has no pets or plants to plan for. Richard helps her find someone to buy her car, since she plans on getting a new one when she comes back anyway.
The same grants that cover her travel expenses travel Richard's as well. There is even a small per diem. This is, as she has explained to Richard, only partly a 'research' assignment. It's something of a diplomatic affair, and just happens to be concurrent with a visit from some students and professors in International Business from DU. It has served them well in the past to have a lawyer close at hand for such trips. When asked why this undergrad and not a law student, it took some explaining, but most understood what a pain in the ass it is to travel with some suck-up. Richard will be a good travel companion. A relaxed one. And she's reasonably sure, given that he's a former Olympian, he has at least some experience with pleasant international relations.
--
Mid-June, they take a shuttle to DIA. It is, thankfully, a direct flight from there to Vienna, Austria. Business class gives them two seats together, both of which fold down fully. Richard, however, won't be as comfortable as Eleanor when it comes time to sleep on the twelve-hour flight; he can blame his parents for making him so very tall. She does choose to sleep, curled away from him on her side, blonde hair spilling out over the top of her flight blanket. She travels efficiently and pragmatically, though; she eats light and she gives herself time to freshen up before they land, braiding her hair down one side and changing in the bathroom into a fresh set of clothes, applying a bit of light makeup and brushing her teeth.
Which makes sense: as soon as they land they have a luncheon to attend with their host department, and dinner that night with the International Business group from the university as well. And then the beginning of work.
--
They've been in Vienna for a couple of weeks now. There is actually ample time for Richard to fill for himself when he is not actively assisting Eleanor with Real Work. There is plenty to see and do. It is almost painfully gorgeous this time of year.
One evening, after he's made it back to the tiny apartments they're staying in across the hall from each other in a tall, narrow building run by a grandmother and her granddaughter who live downstairs, Eleanor comes over and knocks on his door. She asks him if he'd like to go to a private party.
When she's inside, she explains: there will be many Awakened there, and their consors. not just Euthanatoi, though.
Her eyebrows lift. "Well? What do you say?"
RichardTheir lives grow entwined. They spend more and more of their time together. Not every waking moment, no -- but perhaps more significantly, they share more and more aspects of their lives. He sleeps in her guest room sometimes. They read and work and coexist often in the same space, even if they do not speak or otherwise interact. They meditate together at times, and separately at others.
They share meals. He tries her veggie omelettes (good!) and her zucchini burritos (awful.) and her sweet corn and goat cheese-stuffed peppers (good!) and her potato-rosemary-goatcheese pizzas (really good.) and sometimes, when they aren't studying, when they aren't working, when they aren't discussing Important Things and debating the Nature of the Universe,
when they're just lounging in front of the T.V. watching SNL or something, he snacks on hummus and pita and doesn't even really miss meat that much.
Which isn't to say he converts. Because he doesn't. Richard likes meat. He eats fairly healthy, mostly white meats and fish, lots of fish, but he has to have a little animal protein every day. Maybe not every meal, but: at least some ham with his breakfast, or maybe a fillet of salmon with his dinner. She doesn't judge him for it. He doesn't try to push his diet on her.
They coexist peacefully, for the most part. When the time comes, he helps her clean up and close out her house, sell her car. He helps her with the luggage on the way to the airport, and at the check-in counter the airport staff look at them with their fair hair and their dark eyebrows and wonder if they are siblings or cousins or coworkers or friends or what.
--
On the plane he sleeps most of the way. He is delighted with the business-class seats, and though he protested the expense on his behalf, he's gracious enough to accept with thanks in the end. He spends a few hours watching movies and enjoying the in-flight service. The seat is a little cramped for his ridiculous height, but he has lived half a lifetime at a lofty six-seven and flown across the globe multiple times on far lesser seats than these.
So: he sleeps. He sleeps soundly, sometimes turned toward Eleanor and sometimes away, the little airplane blanket increasingly tangled around his long limbs, lanky frame.
--
When they land in Vienna, it turns out Richard speaks passable German. He speaks excellent French. He speaks a little Dutch, he certainly speaks English, and he has a smattering of Italian. He is, he explains, an immigrant and a naturalized American: moved here at the age of four. Young enough that not a trace remains of his native accent.
They work. He works, and he works hard, and though he is not a natural at Eleanor's chosen profession, he does not disgrace her or himself. In his free time he visits museums, he buys standing-room-only tickets to the symphony, he strolls the streets and watches sunsets and he makes friends. Some nights his little room is quite lively, with music and voices and the clink of bottles.
Always, he invites Eleanor to his various activities, though she does not always, or perhaps even often, join.
--
And then, one evening. He is in his little room, and his door is open, and when she looks in he is sitting on the windowseat with the slide-up window pushed open. One leg dangles somewhat dangerously outside, though the other is planted firmly on the floor. He turns to look at her, smiling, and she
invites him to a party. A private party with the Awakened and their consors. Forgive his mind for conjuring images of baroque mansions and threatening masquerade orgies. He blinks it away.
"I've only got the one suit I brought," he says.
Eleanor YatesWhen they get to Austria and it turns out that Richard can converse in languages Eleanor has never bothered to learn more than a few absolutely-necessary phrases in, he becomes worth his considerable, muscle-dense weight in gold as a 'research assistant'. After that, a great deal of his time is spent translating, finding things that Eleanor needs faster than she could get them if she had to muddle through the language barriers.
Most of her encounters of a social nature are taken outside of the little apartments they've procured for the duration of their stay. She goes to dinner with various people she works with, both Americans and acquaintances from other fields, other nations. She does not bring anyone back there, even for drinks. Occasionally she goes with him to museums, to the symphony, but mostly when she joins him it is for those long walks at sunset or early in the morning. With no treadmill here, she goes for morning runs, sometimes evening runs. She does yoga in her room. She does not join him when he has new friends over; they are likely to be younger than her, and it would be awkward, since in these worlds, she is sort of his boss. But to be fair: half the time she isn't even there.
Eleanor often works late.
--
She shakes her head, smiling. "You don't have to wear a suit. Dress however you like." A beat of a pause. "Be yourself. Whatever version of yourself you feel like presenting." She nods across the hall. "I'll be getting ready. A car will be coming for us in about an hour. There won't be a full dinner but there will be plenty of food and drink, I am certain."
Richard"Okay," says Richard, pulling that precarious leg back in and standing up. The room is small. It is not actually low-ceilinged, but he makes it seem that way. Lowering his window until only a few inches of space remain, he adds, "I'll be ready by then."
As it turns out, he's ready well before the hour is up. He's waiting outside his room for her, leaning against the faded wallpaper in that narrow hall both their doors open out into. He is not wearing a suit. He is not wearing the usual shorts and t-shirts and flip-flops he's been slumming around Vienna in, either. He is wearing a grey sportcoat with a narrow lapel, though, and skinny-but-not-too-skinny jeans, and a v-necked longsleeve tee in a lovely shade of sky-blue.
He looks casual and continental, his sunstreaked hair falling ever so lazily into those remarkable blue eyes. He looks good. When he sees his Acarya he straightens up off the wall. Breaks into that summery grin of his.
"All right," he says. "Let's go party with the movers and the shakers of the world."
Eleanor YatesThe apartments are little studios, everything in one small box: a kitchenette, a bed, a tiny closet of a bathroom. Eleanor is smiling as he pulls his leg in, gives him a nod, and goes across her own room, closing the door behind her. She takes longer than he does to get ready, though not by much. She should have told him to knock when he was ready, because she seems a bit startled when she opens the door and finds him just standing in the hall.
Eleanor dresses well but simply, plainly, and but for her resonance and her general appearance she can be easily forgotten. She steps out of her apartment in a dress that must be quite costly, dove-gray with a sheer and nearly-nonexistent overlay with a pattern of shadowy ribbons across it. The front is extraordinarily low-cut, with a mystery of folds that hold her together, conceal and reveal at once. Her heels are not terribly high, but made of thin, thin straps of white leather, almost invisible. Resting on her sternum is the pendant she always has, though normally covered by her clothing: the large, teardrop-shaped labradorite in vintage setting on vintage chain. She has used it every single time she has performed magic under the sphere of Entropy that Richard has seen. It is the only jewelry she has on. Around her shoulders there is a light shawl, a blue pashmina that is winter-pale in color. Her hair is unbound, is as it often is, as though she puts no thought at all into it -- which she might not; Richard has not seen Eleanor ever fussing with her hair, despite having so much of it.
"You look very nice, Richard," she tells him, with a small nod. And a small smile.
She heads down the stairs ahead of him, carrying a small white purse, enjoying to herself the naming of magi as the movers and shakers of the world. That is what they are. Once upon a time, they agreed upon the laws of physics, and made it belief, and made it reality. They are a long way from such power in today's world, but still: there are people at this party who can literally stop time in its tracks.
--
The car outside is black and nondescript, but luxurious. Eleanor gets in ahead of Richard, saying a quiet good evening to the uniformed driver, and they are off.
Richard"So do you," he answers, which is more than just lip service: she does look very nice. He's a little surprised by the dress, the coordinating shoes and purse; he's a little pleased, also, that without even trying they've managed to almost match.
They go downstairs together. He doesn't offer her his arm because theirs is not that sort of relationship and he makes no pretense that it is. There is a car waiting for them. Richard feels a small beat of apprehension -- it is, after all, a strange unmarked car that will whisk them off to some unknown place -- but he trusts Eleanor, and he does not hesitate to get in.
The door shuts. The ceiling light goes dark. Their driver wears a uniform, and seems to know exactly where he's going. Richard leans back and buckles in, watching the streets go by for a while before turning to Eleanor.
"So, why the party?"
Eleanor Yates"Someone's apprentice achieved something and her mentor is throwing a celebration in her honor," she says with a shrug, leaning back in the seat. "They were going to do it last weekend, but that was Litha and Solstice and so on, and a good two-thirds of the guest list wouldn't have made it."
As they pull into the main flow of traffic, she looks at Richard. "It's an excuse to get together, in a way. Vienna is a rather popular destination for the Awakened. And it's summer." That alone can be good reason to party.
"There will be a lot of people there," Eleanor tells him, "and it's possible that some of them will make you uncomfortable in one way or another. So a word of advice: when in doubt, just excuse yourself and come find me. Remember how I showed you?"
He nods; he says yes. Something. She smiles thinly.
"Drop my name if you think you should or that it would help. Be yourself and be honest with others, but most of all, be honest with yourself. There will be guests and members of the host who well and truly consider it their duty to make sure you have a good time, and I trust you." Even if, just from her words now, it's obvious she also worries for him a bit. She wouldn't be much of a mentor if she didn't, but there it is.
Richard"Oh, well then," Richard cuts a grin toward Eleanor, "remind me to demand a black-tie event when I pass your course next semester."
Because, apparently, he was going to take her course. Not just audit, but take it -- even if it is graduate-level, even if it isn't anything remotely related to his own, mathematically-inclined, physics-heavy major.
He listens, then, as she offers some advice. There is a nod when she asks: he does remember how she showed him. She smiles. It is thin, as her smiles often are. She is a thin, wintry personality -- it has nothing to do with the fact that she is blonde and paleskinned and rather slender; everything to do with her own benthic, drowning magic. She goes on. He is smiling again, a secret little smile hiding in the corners of his mobile, expressive mouth.
"Thanks for the tips," he says. "Don't worry for me, Acarya. I can handle myself. And I'll come find you if things get weird."
Eleanor YatesShe snorts. Shakes her head, smirking.
He tells her not to worry. Eleanor looks aside to him, as though to say please. "I just told you I trust you," she reminds him, coolly. She, at least, has no intention of admitting her worry for him.
--
The car eventually pulls onto a road lined with distant, well-landed estates hidden by copious trees, private drives. They approach the gate of one where a set of guards check the driver, look into the back. One of them does, anyway; the other stands aside, his hands open to the sky, as the air turns thick with white noise. That drops. The windows go up. The gates are opened, and the car drives down a long, winding path towards an enormous mansion. The party is already well in its swing, and may have been going on a full day already; it spills out onto terraces, it has nearly every window lit up. There are fountains going. A woman in a broomstick skirt and a bandeau top and dreadlocks is running shrieking across the lawn, chasing a young man in -- actually, shorts and t-shirt and flip-flops -- who is holding what looks like a leather-bound diary over his head.
On those terraces, though, there are people in black tie, white tie, evening gowns, cocktail dresses, all black, all leather, barely anything, and at least a few people who are entirely nude. One of them is sitting on the edge of the fountain, feet in the water, while someone else paints them. Paints them, literally: the paint is going directly onto their skin.
The car pulls to a stop in front of the house's temple-like front steps. Two valets come to each side, opening a door for both Eleanor and Richard. Immediately, when the car is pulling away and the valets are excusing themselves for the next car, they are confronted with waitresses offering them champagne. Eleanor is also handed, on that same tray, a black envelope. Richard gets no envelope. He gets a redhaired woman with large, freckled breasts and a pair of denim cut-offs and tattoos up her arms of tiny swallows turning into enormous raptors, wrists to shoulders, offering him a truffle.
She is holding it up to his lips, laughing, cooing at him in German. From what he can gather, she's telling him to have some chocolate. It will make him feel unglaublich. She is also laughing about how tall he is. Eleanor, a few feet away, looks over at Richard as she sips her champagne, smirking.
RichardWell then. It seems Richard's vague imaginings of cult orgies may not be terribly off the mark after all. As they roll through those gates into the lap of insanity, Richard's mouth drops open just a little.
The grounds themselves are magnificent. The gates and their guardians are imposing; the drive takes an eternity. The facade of the house is something out of a period film. Those sprawling steps, those pillars, those columns. The party -- well; that's something out of mythology, too.
It turns out Richard he wouldn't have been out of place in t-shirt, shorts and flipflops. He wouldn't have been out of place in a suit, either. Or in black tie. White tie and tails. He wouldn't, it appears, have been out of place entirely nude. He wouldn't be out of place no matter what he wore or thought or did, it seems,
and in that there's a certain freedom. Also, a certain logic. They are, after all, the movers and the shakers. The ones who, once upon a time, made all the rules and broke them all again.
The car rolls to a stop. Richard closes his mouth and the door is swept open and he climbs out, one hand flicking the button on his sport coat closed. Waitresses descend. He takes a flute of champagne. Eleanor gets a black envelope, which Richard tips his head at curiously, and then
he has an arm full of voluptuous redhead, a truffle all but pressed to his lips. He darts a glance at Eleanor, but she's just smirking at him while she sips her champagne, and so he decides well what the hell and opens his mouth.
And it turns out she's right. The chocolate does taste unglaublich. Or wait, did she say feel? She's laughing her way to the next car, the next guests, and Richard is regrouping with Eleanor as he swipes chocolate dust off the corner of his mouth with his thumb.
"Interesting," he says. "I have to say, this was not the sort of party I expected you to take me to."
Eleanor YatesRichard takes the truffle laced with god-knows-what into his mouth. It tastes fantastic, dark and rich and bittersweet and he could eat a thousand of them before that flavor got old. Something bursts in his mind a few moments after he's swallowed it and the girl has run off, throwing herself onto the back of a woman wearing a tuxedo and tails, a woman who looks just a little too much like Marlene Dietrich returned to life.
They did something to it. As he's walking over to Eleanor, saying Interesting, I have to say, he hears his own words coming out of his mouth like birdsong. Eleanor seems to understand him perfectly, though. She shrugs. "It's not my desire to shelter you," she says, but it sounds like it is coming from far, far away.
His mind is exploding. It's tomorrow morning and he's lying on his back in dew-soaked grass and those birds really are singing. There's a young woman -- not the redhead, not one of the painted nudes, someone he doesn't recognize here at the beginning of the night -- laying on her back next to him, head on his arm, wearing his jacket and nothing else. Eleanor is far away but he can still hear her saying to him last night:
"Movers and shakers of the world," she whispers, sounding pained somehow, almost sad, maybe it's just urgency: "what did you think you meant by that? You spoke the truth without knowing it." Then, gasping: "What do you think will happen to the world if we stop moving it?"
He hears her laughing, and he is in the middle of the party, holding a bright-orange something in a martini glass, talking to someone older than him, bald, who is dressed not in a black suit but in an academic robe that is littered with miniscule pin-prick gold stars that seem like they come from the sky above and not any loom of this earth. Eleanor is laughing somewhere out there and this bald man is telling him that the Euthanatoi know nothing about adaptation, about Change, they are stuck in Death; his face is red, there is someone standing six yards away glaring at him, someone whose anger feels like it is right there next to Richard, right inside of his skin, searing him.
It is last night, Eleanor hasn't mentioned the party at all but he remembers her talking to someone downstairs as he was on his way up to order some food for both of them while they did some late-evening studying. That person handed her a black envelope. He barely even noticed it then, it made no dent, it made no difference, it doesn't have meaning until now, which is also Then, and he may speak to her but nothing comes out. He is himself, speeding through the rest of that evening: the takeout, the talking, the studying, the yawning, going to bed, waking up, working walking running eating breakfast lunch and now it is Now again and he is
standing up those temple stairs, leaning half on Eleanor and half on a pillar, his skin hot and his hairline sweaty, the taste of chocolate still in his mouth. No glass of champagne in his hand; Eleanor isn't carrying hers anymore either. She is watching his eyes, as though to make sure he's not about to vomit.
"Richard," she says, and it sounds not like birdsong but like a branch cracking under the ice, and then again, sounding like waves: "Richard," and a third time, more like herself, closer now, and she's smiling at him, so he must be okay.
"Richard. That looks like it must have been pretty strong." But that's all she says. She doesn't ask him if he's all right. If that truffle was truly going to hurt him, well.
There's a chance that redhead would be called to account. Before a Chela of the Chakravanti.
RichardIt is
tomorrow morning and it is last night and it is ten minutes from now and it is five hours from now and there's a girl, there's a man, there's a woman, there's his Acarya laughing, which isn't a sound completely unknown but still a rare thing, and then,
then,
then time snaps like a rubberband and he's back in the Now. What his mind perceives as the now, anyway, though even the Sleepers know what the malleable concept that is. Time and space and the movement through each. All that. There's Eleanor, she's under his arm supporting him and his other shoulder is against a pillar and her face comes back into sight. She's smiling.
He gasps a breath. He realizes he's been holding it for some time. He blinks hard, shutting his eyes tight and pulling them open again, shaking his head clear, dropping his arm from her shoulders to roll his back against the pillar. He gets his feet under himself.
"That..." he's at a loss for words. "Wow. That... actually, that was sort of incredible."
Eleanor YatesShe is still smiling. She even laughs, a different tenor and duration than the one he heard Then. "Do you want another? I think the salted ones are the ones that are dosed. Or the ones with the cinnamon dust. You can probably find someone to tell you what is what." Eleanor smirks. "I admit some curiosity about the key lime. But I think I'll stick with champagne for now."
When he's good to stand, she slips out from under his arm, adjusting her pashmina. Someone has walked over with a lovely, angular bottle of water for Richard, as though they were requested. Or maybe they're just that good, that attentive.
She is staying close though, her hand on his arm. She has no other advice for him. Don't shame me. Follow your gut. Don't do anything you regret. Some of these things she simply would never say; others, she knows she doesn't need to.
Richard"I think I'm good for now," Richard says with a smirk of his own. His feet feel a little more steady. He stands straight; pushes his hair back off his brow. "Whoo. If you want to try one, I promise I won't let you sail into orbit."
Water is brought to him. Water is accepted gratefully with a smile and a nod. He discovers he's thirstier than he expects and he drinks greedily, bubbles rising up through the artfully designed bottle. When he lowers it he screws the cap back on, his eyes casting over the lawn to see if he can catch sight of that redhaired purveyor of crazy chocolates. He can. There she is: plying her wares on a new carful of partiers. Young mages, some of them looking as though they, like Richard, had never been to a decadent magical party before, delighted by all they see. He laughs and turns away from the lawn, nodding at the door.
"Should we go in? What was in that envelope?"
Eleanor YatesThat makes her laugh again, lightly. Her hand leaves his arm then, as he straightens. She nods, too, turning to inside.
He asks about the envelope. She sighs. "An invitation to something else. We can discuss it another time."
RichardThe corners of his mouth quirk up. "Do all mage invitations arrive in black envelopes?"
He straightens. Her hand leaves his arm. They turn toward the door -- and now, with a faintly jaunty air, he offers his arm to her after all. Because they are almost a match in his coat, her dress. Because it's a party. And because
when he tripped through time itself,
she stayed close and make sure he didn't faceplant into that marble fountain on the lawn. And also requested water for him.
Eleanor"That depends on how pretentious the mage sending them wants to be," Eleanor says, dry as a bleached bone. She walks with him toward the doors, shaking her head slightly as he offers his arm but taking it all the same. He's in a delightful mood.
Inside, there is an array of people across the spectrum of what you might imagine a mage to be. There is at least one person in a jumpsuit that looks like a cross between an Abba costume and an astronaut's suit, wearing a pair of bug-eyed goggles. There are robes that sweep the ground. When Richard lifts his eyes at one point he sees a fucking panther slinking down the stairs, a panther who on the lower floor flows suddenly up into the body of a young black man with a shaved head, wearing a black-on-black tuxedo. There are animals held close to bodies, animals in cages -- one of which is floating behind its owner's head -- and at least one talking hat.
But the majority, once the awe and shock wears off, are simply dressed in cocktail attire, much like he and Eleanor are. There are new flutes of champagne to drink from, and banquet tables here and there covered with fruit and canapes and artfully designed bites. Eleanor starts pointing people out to him discreetly, but he's starting to notice: the majority of people hanging out in the kitchen are Verbena. Hermetics have taken over the library and are smoking cigars and pipes and putting up wards against smelling other people's cigars and pipes. There are Etherites in the gallery, Hollow Ones and Virtual Adepts rare and awkward and not interacting with many people, Dreamspeakers on the roof and out on the front lawn, Choiristers sitting around an empty formal dining table in hot debate. There is mingling, of course, and lots of it: for one thing, the Cultists are everywhere and no single mage can be stereotyped entirely by tradition.
But she is guiding him gradually towards the place where she knows they will find other Euthanatoi. They are in a solarium near the back of the house, a dual-leveled structure of glass that looks up at the stars and out at the back lawn. Some sit on the ground and some on chairs, couches. Many stand. One is a thin, leather-skinned Indian man wearing the garb of a true ascetic. He is silent, listening to everyone else. There is a young woman dressed in black leather, idly flipping a switchblade around like a nervous habit. When Eleanor walks in, a ghoulish-looking man in a navy suit rises immediately, walking over, grinning at her.
"Counsel," he calls her, and she smirks, but permits him to make pretenses at hug, at cheek-kisses that she does not return. "So glad you could come. We were just discussing your home country's Wall Street," he says, his English very good but accented slightly by Dutch.
Eleanor huffs a breath. "That hardly sounds like pleasant party conversation." Then, shifting her champagne, she indicates Richard. "This is my student, Richard. Richard, this is Peter van Houten, an old acquaintance and friend of our host."
"'Friend' is being generous," Peter says, a bit stiffly.
"So is 'host'," Eleanor counters. "I haven't seen Lechner yet tonight."
"She's around, somewhere," says van Houten with a shrug, looking over -- and up, a bit -- at Richard. "Student, eh? And what does she teach you?"
RichardRichard's eyes flick momentarily to Eleanor. He doesn't know who this person is, this Peter van Houten; or more precisely, he doesn't quite know if he is to be trusted. All he knows is that he hugged and cheek-kissed Eleanor, who neither hugged nor cheek-kissed him back.
Still; they don't appear to be mortal enemies. And so Richard, who is actually rather astute and careful beneath that summery, easygoing mien, who wants to do well and not shame his Acarya, allows himself to answer. If a touch guardedly.
"All sorts of things," he says easily. "She's actually my professor at school, too. That's how I met her."
EleanorHis suit is ill-fitting, but that is because he perhaps bought it when he was heavier. He has a face that you don't want to see smile, for fear that the smile will only grow and grow, elongating his features, stretching out to reveal row upon row of teeth. But that, maybe,
is just lingering effects from the chocolate Richard ate when he first got here.
"Oh?" says Peter, looking from Richard to Eleanor and back. "An aspiring lawyer, then?"
RichardHe doesn't like that smile. He doesn't like this man, which he realizes is a gut reaction, and perhaps unfair. Still: that accepted and not returned hug/kiss. The way she introduced him,
acquaintance,
friend of their host. Not of her.
"No," replies Richard. He's still smiling, but the smile is a little bit fixed-in-place, frozen. His answer, likewise: not quite genuine, a little bit evasive. "Just expanding my horizons." And he cuts another glance at Eleanor. For a cue, perhaps; some hint he can glean.
EleanorPeter is going to learn more about him. Peter is leaning in, metaphorically if not physically, and Eleanor at that point has enough.
She reaches under her arm where she's stowed it, and flicks the unopened black envelope back to Peter, drawing his attention from the student, the aspirant, the whatever Richard is. "Tell Iago," she says quietly, "that I'm flattered, but my fate lies elsewhere."
At that point, Peter has forgotten entirely about Richard. He frowns at the envelope, frowns at Eleanor, and opens his mouth, but she cuts him off as sharply as any student: "This isn't a negotiation." Eleanor isn't angry. She hasn't raised her voice. She just watches Peter, still holding that envelope out to him, her features smooth. Despite their quiet little triangle of conversation, a few people have glanced over, noticing them, and after waiting a few more seconds, Eleanor turns the envelope and tucks it into Peter's lapel. "Try to just enjoy the party, van Houten," she tells him quietly, and perhaps even earnestly.
She reaches over, putting her hand on Richard's elbow. "Come on. I want you to sit with Baba-ji."
The man on the floor, who does not appear to be meditating, nor speaking with anyone, the man whose leathery skin hangs on a nearly-starved figure. He smiles when Eleanor walks over with Richard, giving a little nod. She smiles back at him, patting Richard's arm. "Sit for a while. You can find me later if you need me, okay?"
RichardSo his instincts are right. That's gratifying, at least -- if mystifying. Richard watches Eleanor produce the envelope. Watches her hold it out to Peter; watches the way the other man reacts. The nuances of expression. The shifts and ripples. When Eleanor's hand comes to his elbow, he doesn't resist. He gives Peter another brief, polite smile, and then turns to follow his mentor away.
She leads him to Baba-ji. Leather-skinned man with emaciated bones. Richard is reminded of ascetics, mystics. Fuckin' Gandhi. He slows his steps just a little, though, buys himself the time to quirk an eyebrow Eleanor's way.
"What was that about?" he asks. And: "Will you tell me about it later?"
Eleanor"That," Eleanor says cryptically, "was irony in action."
She nods, though, when he asks if she'll explain it to him later. She will. She doesn't lie to Richard; if she doesn't want to tell him something, she generally tells him that she's not telling him. But she does want him to sit down with this ascetic, this purified man who does not do anything but smile and nod.
RichardIrony in action, she calls it. It makes little to no sense to him, but it's all right. She nods: she'll explain it later. He trusts her. He trusts she'll keep her word.
"All right," he says, and then they are there, standing before Baba-ji, this man with the quiet and quietly welcoming smile.
"Hey," Richard says, popping a squat -- then planting on large palm on the ground to fold himself into cross-legs. "I'm Richard. Eleanor is my Acarya. She wanted me to meet you."
EleanorBaba-ji just nods, smiling, at Richard's introduction. He is much shorter than Richard, and sitting down he still has to look up to meet the young man's eyes. It's hard to tell Baba-ji's age. His eyes are dark and yet luminous, small but expansive. He has a bushy white mustache but no beard, and he does not move his hands from his knees. There is an elasticity to the air around him that merges and flips back and forth with utter stillness and solidity; he seems at once as though he may be made out of rubber, then made out of oak.
He says nothing, nodding and smiling as though to indicate yes, yes, but no words. Eleanor's hand on Richard's arm moves to his shoulder, and then slides away, as he sits with the man who she will later tell Richard is a Master; he is one of the most powerful magi in the country. He is nothing short of a guru, free from any Western mockery of the term.
But while Richard sits with him, he makes no demands. He performs no magic. He sits, and sometimes people walk by and smile at him or nod to him; others ignore him. Many are discomfited by his silent sitting, his endless smiling. A young man in clothes not much unlike Richard's comes in and lays a small flower plucked from outside on Baba-ji's homespun mat; Baba-ji just smiles, nods, looking generally pleased. It could be dementia. He does not reach for the flower. When, later, a middle-aged white woman in a white suit comes in to the sunroom, she stands imperiously over Baba-ji and Richard both, taking no notice of the young would-be Euthanatos. She simply says, crisply:
"All right. We talked it over. The boundaries will remain as they are."
She turns on her heel and walks out, furious but restrained, her anger the sort of cold that leaves a burn mark on your skin. Baba-ji just smiled, nodding, his lips spread in a thin but happy line.
Most of the time, he watches Richard. Unflinchingly, unsearchingly. He just meets the young man's eyes and keeps them there. He is not probing. He is not analyzing. He is seeing, seeing without affecting, as though he can somehow undo -- on an atomic scale, if not a human one -- the tendency to change something by observing it. He does not attempt to communicate with Richard, and after a while, it becomes clear that he does not need to. They have been communicating. Existing in this place at once is communication, communion, union. They do not need to focus on their breathing. They do not need to utter om, or at least:
Baba-ji does not. They are all a part of him, like his mat is a part of him, like that tender flower was a part of him when it was plucked from the earth and when it began to die on his mat before him. The bones in the ground and the souls in the air are part of him, and move through him, as he is part of them, and moves through them, beyond this mat, this sunroom, this party, this life. He always has been with them, and they with him. They, and all those that come after.
--
Eleanor's hand is cool on his shoulder. "Baba-ji is tired," she whispers, and Richard may discover then that the old Indian man is sleeping where he sits, unmoving, his eyes closed but his smile still in place, still achingly delighted with the universe and his primordial oneness with it. "You wore him out," she adds, and
he would not be entirely mistaken if he heard a note of fondness, or maybe even pride, right there.
RichardIt is hard to say how long Richard sits there, in the presence of a Master. He was not told Baba-ji was such, of course. Eleanor would not do that: perhaps to keep him from nervousness, perhaps to see how he would react. But Richard at least suspects. On some level, he can feel it. The immensity of Baba-ji's mind, the gentle inexorable potency of his will.
Here is not a master who flexes his will at every opportunity. Here is not a master who brandishes his power, who flaunts it, who uses it to drive those around him to their knees. Perhaps, in a sense, no one who lays true claim to the title of Master does so. Perhaps such short-sightedness, such selfishness, such self-centeredness and arrogance precludes the very breadth-of-mind necessary for such an exalted rank.
No matter. The point: Richard senses it. Perhaps he should be intimidated by it, but he is not. It is easy to sit with Baba-ji. It is easy to simply exist there, calm on the floor, relaxed. He does not assume a lotus position, or anything of the sort. He never has in meditation, and this is not quite meditation.
This is just sitting. This is just ... hanging out, in its purest, deepest sense. He sits. After a time he grows tired of sitting crosslegged and he stretches those lanky legs out, rests his weight back on his arms and his hands. He watches people move around him,
watches as that woman in white interrupts, imperious, and walks away again. Watches as a young man makes an offering.
Watches as people circulate around them. Some give Baba-ji a wide berth. Some alter their paths so as to come closer, if only to share a smile and a nod. Some are scarcely aware of him, more engrossed in their own conversations, their own interactions, their own activities.
Up the stairs, a pair of somber-looking men are arguing heatedly over something that would scarcely matter to anyone else. In the next room, a game of cards is getting interesting as people run out of money to lose and start shedding jewelry, car keys, clothing. Over in the corner a group of young mages are flaunting their skills. They are young, they are headstrong, they are talented and they know it; the flower of their generation, the pride of their teachers and mentors and Houses and Traditions. They are showing off for each other under the guise of teaching each other, pulling fire from the air, changing flowers to doves and back again, dividing themselves into two, reuniting.
It's like stage magic, in a way, but it is not. It's the real thing, and here in the presence of so many Awakened, the rigidity of reality is less so. It's a heady, intoxicating thing, to be loosed briefly from the chains of watchers, witnesses, so many Sleepers gawking and staring and disbelieving that the very air crystallizes around you, the very fabric of reality grows stiff and rigid and unbending.
Richard watches these things. He lets the party move around him. His attention always comes back to Baba-ji, who sits endlessly smiling, who cannot help, it seems, but be endlessly delighted by everything, everything, all of it.
Until Richard finds that he is smiling, too. Until he, too, allows it all to move not merely around him, but through him.
--
He looks up. Eleanor whispers that Baba-ji is tired, and she is right: Baba-ji is sleeping now. He is smiling, but his eyes are closed, and he is not meditating but asleep. Richard wore him out, she adds, and he laughs, a touch disbelievingly.
"Really? I didn't think I'd have the depth." He pushes a hand against the floor and rises, as quietly as he can.
"I was watching them," he says, nodding at the young mages -- separated out now in pairs and trios, several of them clearly headed toward let's get out of heres and wanna go someplace else and get to know each other a little better?s. "They're very good."
Eleanor"Baba-ji was an old man before you or I were born," she says quietly, giving him a hand if he wants to use it as leverage to get up. "Your energy is like a child saying why a hundred times."
Her eyes lift, following him, as he rises. "Of course," Eleanor goes on, her pashmina now looped over her elbows, arms bare, "he would rather fall asleep than stop answering you."
--
As they move aside a bit, and Richard says he was watching some of the young mages, Eleanor looks over and up at them as well. Her brows stitch. She looks back to him. "Many of them have power they haven't begun to reckon with. Not all of them understand the damage they can do to the universe, to others, to themselves." There's a pause: a moment to forbid him, to warn him, but after a moment, all she says is this:
"Be careful, if you hang out with them. And don't take any shit."
RichardThat -- the stitch of her brow, the lay of her opinion, and the way she doesn't forbid him, doesn't warn him, simply tells him: be careful. don't take any shit. -- all of that, together, pulls a grin across Richard's face. A sudden wave of gratitude and fondness for his Acarya rolls uncomplicatedly over him. He reaches over on impulse, wraps a long lean arm around her shoulders, gives her a squeezing side-hug.
That's a rare thing. Might be the first time ever. They are, or at least he is, usually quite aware of who they are to each other in the Sleeper world. There are certain unwritten lines he does not cross at home, in Denver, but --
they are not in Denver. They are amongst their own. That is not the same thing as being amongst friends, but: this at least, he thinks, becomes acceptable.
"Don't worry," he says, smiling. "I wasn't going to hang out with them. For one thing, I don't think I can keep up with them, and they'll think they're too cool to hang out with a beginner like me. For another, I don't think I want to hang out with people who might think being good at something makes them better than other people.
"It was fun watching them, though. And it was ... nice, sitting with your friend." He does not hesitate over that title: friend. Peter is not a friend, he is quite sure. He is equally sure that Baba-ji is. "Was he also Euthanatos?"
EleanorEleanor is not the sort to seek out frequent touch. She doesn't pat Richard or hug him often. She doesn't feel an ache of empathy whenever someone else is sad and reach out to them physically. The truth is, though it is not a truth Richard has any reason to ever know, Eleanor almost never craves touch herself. But when she was having that bad day earlier this year, so bad that she couldn't even drag herself out of bed, much less face the world, she sank into his offer of an embrace without hesitation. Just because she does not need it or want it often does not mean she never needs, never wants.
Richard is a far more physical person, and she knew this when she took him on. She knew it from his athletic background at first, and his demeanor, and later from seeing him with others more in his peer group. She even wondered, with his bounding energy, if meditation would be of use to him, but she was delighted and proud to discover that even though it is certainly work, he does just as well there as anywhere else in his studies.
She is, in fact, delighted with him and proud of him. She is even fond of him, and trusts him, and none of those things are small feats because Eleanor is not given easily to things like delight, pride, fondness, or trust. Eleanor has every reason in the world to eschew any of these things entirely. But put simply, she likes Richard. She enjoys having him as her student. She thinks he knows that the little smirk on her face that looks bemused when he squeezes her is not an expression of annoyance or mere tolerance. It is acceptable. It doesn't cross her mind to reject it.
"I think you are correct," she tells him, of his assessment of the hip young show-offs. She does not mention that at this party, and in much of Awakened society, he will constantly find himself around people who think that being Awakened makes them better than others. She's not sure they're entirely wrong about that, but it's not the sort of 'better' that Richard means right now.
"Baba-ji is," Eleanor also tells him, nodding, as they make their way out of the sunroom. "Normally he is in Calcutta. The seat of the Tradition is there. One day, after you are initiated and if you are able, you should go there."
RichardRichard does, in fact, intuit that Eleanor is quite different from him. That she is not the sort to openly express emotion. Not the sort, either, to express emotion via touch and physicality. She is reserved, his Acarya, and low-key. It's not that she's secretive or frigid. She's simply a little subtler than he is. She smirks where he grins. Her voice is soft, even gentle, where his is open and -- not loud or noisy, no, but: unfettered. She doesn't hug to express affection or pride or delight.
She... well; it's hard to say what exactly she does. But he has known her for the greater part of a year now, and he is starting to know her well. He knows -- because she has told him once, and because she shows him in countless, subtle ways -- that she is proud of him. And that she likes him. And that she enjoys having him as a student.
Sometimes he thinks -- he hopes -- teaching him gives her a little more purpose as well. An anchor to this life, this iteration of her own personal Wheel. Nothing that could replace Henrik, of course; but something. He would like it if that were true.
--
"I should," he agrees, "and I will. I have to admit, even having been your apprentice this long, I didn't expect a man like Baba-ji to be a Wheel-Turner. He's ... I don't know. His presence was so peaceful. That doesn't surprise me in retrospect, but at the time, I didn't expect him."
EleanorRichard's hope is not, at least for now, misplaced. She has her work, her students more mundane, she has family. These things are not without meaning or purpose, but there is something deeper here, because they are Awakened. And also because he trusts her. That is somehow as powerful as her love for her family and theirs for her. She is his teacher, and he trusts her to be there, and to teach her. Something about that does fetter her, anchor her, is -- if we get down to brass tacks -- a reason to get up in the morning.
That day he came to see what was up with her, she also learned that his trust in her does not require perfection, unflappability, inhumanity. His trust will not so easily be turned into a demand, an obligation, one more thing to exhaust her before she ever opens her eyes. There are days when she can get up, and does, but cannot converse much, teach much. And those days he learns by osmosis, watching her do yoga, meditating alongside her, reading in her study. She is still useful to him, even when she can't stand to talk to other human beings more than necessary because even forming the words tires her out, makes her sad.
She's not sad today. Today is a good day. She is reserved and subtle but this is a good time. This is pretty good.
--
"Baba-ji's wisdom is that he does not fix himself in one place on the Wheel. He lets himself become the rolling rim, each spoke, the center. Each turn, and each part, is a different experience, but they are all equal. And there is a great deal of peace in being one with all those experiences, everything from ecstatic, illuminated joy to starving, squalid agony. Baba-ji, I think, turns the Wheel in part by being the Wheel, and turning with it.
"Which we all will, in time," Eleanor adds, her voice hard to hear for a moment as they walk back into the throng of the party. She looks around, looks up the staircase at a dark-haired woman dressed in a plain black dress, her eyes resting their briefly, then looking back to Richard. "To experience the turning of the Wheel the way he does, without his current incarnation dying, is why he is a paramaguru."
She removes her arm from his, pressing her palm on his arm for a moment rather than squeezing. "I am going to go mingle. Be careful with the chocolates."
RichardRichard exhales a laugh at that. "Thanks for the forewarning," he replies, wry, as they disentangle arms. "I'll see you around."
--
They go their separate ways, then. They see each other from time to time. It's not hard to keep track of where Richard is; he is, after all, so very tall, so golden of hair and skin, so white-toothed and grinning and laughing. She sees him sometimes: he's talking animatedly in French with a group of young men his age. He's taking a break against a wall, his eyes following those who pass him by with casual interest. He's lounging on an overstuffed couch with a glass of something-amber, sipping as he converses -- now in Dutch -- with a pretty dark-haired girl who would probably be a foot shorter than him if they were standing.
He's coming down from the gallery, laughing, looking flush-cheeked and a little inebriated, telling her you have to go see this guy's collection as a flock of newfound friends drag him toward the south wing where the heated pool is. He's hanging out by the pool, drinking a colorful drink, stripped down to his boxer-briefs because of course no one told him to pack his speedos. He's out on the lawn playing a midnight game of ultimate,
he's up on the rooftop, how did he even get there, there are rowdy young people taking turns leaping off onto an enormous trampoline that's almost certainly under some sort of enchantment; he's not jumping but he is watching, and laughing, and calling encouragements as friend after new friend takes the plunge,
he's disappearing sometime around four in the morning, and the last anyone sees of him is his lanky self disappearing down a hall into the guest wing, pulled along by the hand and then by the thin lapels of his sport coat; that pretty dark-haired girl laughing as the door slams shut.
--
It's six in the morning. He's on the lawn. He has no idea how he got there but he's seen this before, a drugged glimpse of one possible future. He wonders briefly -- his mind wanders down those convoluted corridors of theory and time and paradox -- he wonders if by seeing that future he unconsciously conspired to make it happen; if, like the spin of an electron or the speed of a particle, the very act of observation fixes a possibility in place. The thought flickers in his mind and then he lets it go, like a rainbow trout caught flashing and twisting, and released. Too early for such things. He'll debate it later with his Acarya.
He opens his eyes again. Dawn has broken; there's a sheet of ragged clouds over the sky, all lit up orange and yellow and gold. There's a girl sleeping on his arm wearing his jacket, he has no idea where his socks are, or his phone. There are people wandering around with trash bags picking up the excesses of last night. He sits up and the girl doesn't stir, she murmurs and rolls over the other way. His hair has dried stiff with chlorine from the pool; sticks up funny. He draws his knees up a little and rubs his face, scrunches up his face into his hands, drops his hands and looks blearily about.
EleanorRichard does, in fact, see Eleanor around. He sees her walking up the stairs away from him to talk to the witch in black, the one toying with some pendant hanging down her front. Later he sees her past the crown of dark hair of the Dutch girl he's talking to; she's standing with several people in their late twenties and early thirties, and more than a few of them have a strange vibe, a dark and uncomfortable and cold and sepulchural feeling that makes it very unsettling that Eleanor is talking to them. He sees her on her way up to the gallery, and she smiles at him, telling him with amusement:
I have.
before she gives his forearm a squeeze and they pass on by each other, parallel but going in opposite directions. He actually does see her while he's down by the pool, glancing his way as she and a couple of others, the black-clad witch among them, go down into the cellar. He sees her through a window in one of the libraries, hand tucking aside the curtain while he plays frisbee, her hand wrapped around a mug of something steaming.
Not everyone stays all night. Plenty of cars leave the estate long before Richard finds himself up on the roof. From there, looking past the people who are bounding down onto the trampoline acting like utter animals with their magic, he sees her walking across the lawn, her heels danging from hooked fingers, her bare feet in the grass. She is alone then, her hair and skin and dress very pale in the darkness, and then he realizes she's not alone: the woman in the black, nearly shapeless dress is walking over to her, talking to her, reaching up and putting her hand on Eleanor's face. The woman with the thick black hair and the venom-green eyes who does not feel like death or graveyards like many of the others Eleanor has spent time with tonight but feels like wet earth in springtime, brushing soil aside to find the new green shoots reaching upward to the sun. Someone yelps as they go over the edge of the roof; Richard's attention is pulled away.
Eleanor does not see him around four in the morning when that pretty girl he was speaking Dutch to pulls him into a guest room. Nor does she see him when somehow, for some reason, he and that girl end up on the lawn instead, or see him when he covers the girl with his jacket like a blanket.
But around six in the morning, dawn breaking, she does see him. As he's waking up, pushing himself up, he becomes aware of a thin shadow nearby. Eleanor is standing there, not particularly rumpled from the last ten hours or so, wearing her heels again, wrapped in her pashmina, only this time it is wrapped entirely around her shoulders and covering her front, keeping her much warmer against the morning's chill. Her hair is always long and a little loose and unconcerned, so it is not as though she had some fancy updo to fall over the course of the night. He has no socks or phone, but Eleanor has her pendant, her bag, everything she had before.
In her free hand, she holds a to-go tray with three cups in it. Richard's phone is in the fourth pocket along with some packets of sugar and powdered creamer. Servants are, in fact, picking up. More people have left. He looks like a bit of a mess, and Eleanor is smiling faintly.
"We should see her back to wherever she's staying," Eleanor says quietly, regarding the so-far nameless young woman. "I'll get a car pulled around while you wake her up," she adds. With that she bends her knees, lowering herself to set the tray on the ground beside Richard, phone and all. She plucks the third cup from the tray, rises, and unless Richard holds her up, she heads over to the main drive to have a car readied for their departure.
RichardBleary, rumpled; smudges under his eyes, socks gone. He becomes aware of Eleanor as he's scrubbing wakefulness back into his eyes. He looks up; she's silhouetted against that dawn sky, thin and put-together and ready to go. He's briefly, deliriously reminded of holy figures. Mary Virgins and Mary Whores; Hindi goddesses with their thousands of hands.
She has coffee. He smiles, grateful, and reaches up for one.
"Hi," he says. Croaks, sort of: you try partying all night and maintaining a mellifluous voice. She nods at his new friend. He looks at her; a touch of sheepishness, but not much. "This is Ilse."
She goes to get the car. He -- wakes his friend, and gives her one of the cups of coffee. They help each other find what they can of their clothing. By the time the car comes they are waiting at the curb, Ilse yawning over her coffee, Richard drinking the last of his.
Eleanor"That's a lovely name," Eleanor says softly, still with that mild smile. There is perhaps a flicker of her fondness or her approval then: he knows the girl's name. It's a little sad that she didn't expect it, but then: Eleanor doesn't always learn people's names if she doesn't expect to see them again. Ask plenty of L1s.
She departs, and a little while later, Richard and Ilse join her. Eleanor greets Ilse as best she can with the girl's not-terrible but not-fluent English, and apologizes for not knowing any Dutch. Eleanor sips her tea, and the black car pulls up. Eleanor sits up front with the driver, and either Ilse or Richard manage to get him directions to the house of the friend or mentor or something where Ilse is staying. After they drop her off it's not far back to their apartment.
Eleanor tips the driver, who tries and fails to refuse, and then it's just the two of them, heading into the door. In the downstairs kitchen their landlord is taking bread out of the oven; Eleanor is human, and drawn by the scent, standing and then sitting around the table while their landlord/housekeeper feeds them thick slices of that fresh bread with creamy butter and jam and large red-gold apples. This isn't a bed and breakfast, per se, but sometimes the woman is in a pleasant mood and she is easily charmed by Richard, who reminds her of one of her nephews. So then there are slices of cheese and slices of ham seared for them while they eat at her table. Eleanor asks for breakfast to be put on their bills, before they walk upstairs.
RichardOn the way back, there is none of that awkwardness that one might imagine accompanies a drive-of-shame. It's not a drive of shame at all, in fact. There's an easy quietness in the air, the sort of wound-down ease and comfort that comes between new friends after a long night out. They talk a little. Ilse has passable English, and Eleanor has no Dutch at all, but Richard has plenty of both and so sometimes he translates between the two, and sometimes he just listens. After they drop Ilse off, he waves goodbye to her through the window and then slides into the center of the backseat, leaning his elbows on the shoulders of the front seats to talk to Eleanor all the way back home. Or what passes for home, anyway.
Richard likes their apartment. He likes that really it's someone's house, and that the guests here are polite enough to respect that. He likes that sometimes they get fed by the friendly landlord, and that the food is hearty and homemade and without pretension or affectation. He is prodigiously hungry after a night like that, devouring apples and bread with butter and jam, then bread with ham and cheese.
The food is put on their bill. They go back upstairs, Richard crunching on a second apple as they do. She is a step ahead and a step up, but their heads are just about level. His hand slides along the banister; his steps are sort of lazy-heavy, tromping up the squeaking stairs.
"So," he says, "what was that whole thing with van Houten about?"
EleanorEveryone is tired. Eleanor may look put-together, but she got barely more sleep than Richard. At least upon waking she didn't feel like she couldn't get up. She even smiles, see? But she's tired, and she's quiet, and she listens while Richard talks on the way back to their apartments. But thankfully, he waits until they are alone to ask her about van Houten.
Eleanor glances at him, glances past him, and says nothing. She walks the rest of the way upstairs, goes to unlock her door, and nods her head inside to indicate that Richard should follow.
--
He has been in here before. It is a mirror of his, essentially, just as spare. Eleanor's curtains are open, her window closed. Her bed has a different-colored blanket, a different rug. There is a kettle on the stove, a box of tea sitting on the counter. It smells different in here, because it is a woman in her thirties and not a man in his twenties occupying this small space.
When the door is closed, Eleanor sets her clutch down on a little table, moving to sit down on the edge of her bed, leaving the armchair near the window for Richard. "Do you remember me telling you about the different sects of Euthanatoi? Natatapas, Madzimbahwe, Aided, and so on?" When he acknowledges, she continues: "There are also the Vrati, the Oathbound. No one begins life as a Euthanatos within their numbers; recruits are chosen. One is the Albireo, inter-traditional diplomats and travelers. Another are the Chakramuni, sages of the Wheel, who track incarnations of mages, keeping the chronology of souls.
"There is also the Golden Chalice." Eleanor pauses there, taking a breath. "They are assassins who deal with a variety of threats. They are split into the Alpha Protocol and the Omega Protocol; one to attempt to deal with these tasks subtly, such as the alchemically-enchanted chalices from which the name of the group comes, and one to handle assassinations when subtlety is a lost cause.
"Henrik and I were both members of the Golden Chalice, when he was alive. He worked with the Alpha Protocol. I worked with the Omega Protocol. After he died, and after my own magic was knocked back, I left the Golden Chalice. The head of the group, through various means -- van Houten is one of those means -- appears to want me to join them again. And I am not inclined to do so."
RichardTheir views are different too. She has a view of the Danube -- albeit a view between taller buildings, and over the rooftops of lower ones -- and he has a view of the city. Entering her room, he goes to that window, looking out over the morning-bedazzled river.
She begins to speak. He turns, sitting on the windowsill, nodding when she asks if he remembers. He almost always nods. He almost always remembers. There is that to be said for him: he is intelligent, capable of excellent recall. He does not waste her time or effort as a professor, or as an Acarya.
When she is finished, he thinks a moment. Then, quite simply: "Why not?"
EleanorThe answer is simple, too. Eleanor shakes her head. "I don't want to be an assassin anymore," she tells him quietly.
RichardIt reminds him, briefly and poignantly, of how she once told him that she rarely does that sort of work for the Tradition nowadays. And though she doesn't say it or allude to it, he thinks also of what she told him about Henrik, and how Henrik died, and what she did to the man that killed him.
She doesn't want to be an assassin anymore, she says. There's a certain sadness in his eyes; something like understanding.
"I don't blame you," he says quietly. "And for what it's worth, even if you were good at what you used to do, I think you should have the right to decide how you want to turn the Wheel yourself. Is van Houten going to cause trouble for you?"
EleanorEleanor is quiet for a little while after that. She thinks, then takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "No. They aren't corrupt. They are persistent. Van Houten is annoying, but he'll pass the message along. I may have to push back a few more times. And I may need to explain to them that I think my fate lies with the Chakramuni one day."
She looks away, out of the direction of the sunlight, for a long moment, then back to Richard. "I am a little surprised that you are not more bothered to know that I used to be a flat-out assassin."
RichardNot corrupt. Just persistent. And annoying. Some subtle tension in Richard eases at that, and it's a tension that has, in truth, run a low baseline in him since he met van Houten last night.
"Well, if it comes to it," he says, "you know I've got your back, don't you? To the best of my limited abilities, anyway."
A shrug, then; easy, laconic, gallic. "I'm not... comfortable with actively ushering people on myself. Not yet, anyway. But I don't disapprove of it. I understand that it is fundamentally necessary sometimes. I even respect people who can take on that duty, because I can't, and because someone has to."
His mouth quirks, a grin. "Did you expect that I'd... I don't know, run away screaming?"
Eleanor"I know you do," she tells him, and leaves it at that. She is not worried about van Houten, or Iago, or the Golden Chalice. They will let go. The Euthanatos, more than most, know the importance of letting go.
"From things you've said, and just from watching you, it doesn't seem your path lies in giving death, even a Good Death, to many people," she says quietly, for one must generally be quiet when discussing such things. "And," Eleanor goes on gently, "I know that some of that is not just destiny, not just inexperience, but aversion. Even if you understand that it's sometimes necessary.
"I didn't expect you to scream. But I wonder if you understand that with the Golden Chalice, I killed many people without knowing for certain if it was... fundamentally necessary. I would be lying if I said I never doubted. I still regret not asking more questions. Being less trusting."
She closes her eyes a moment, breathing in deep, exhaling slowly, opening them again to meet his. "There is always room for doubt. And always the promise of reincarnation." She is quiet a moment. "I am talking myself in circles, Richard."
RichardStill sitting on the windowsill, long arms folding across lean chest, Richard grins at Eleanor. "It's okay," he says, playful, "I talk myself in circles all the time.
"And for what it's worth," growing serious, then, "I can't tell you that everything you did with the Golden Chalice was right. I don't have that knowledge and I don't have the right to pass judgment like that. But I think it means something that you recognize that maybe everything you did wasn't right. I think it means something that you questioned what you did, and that you're trying to avoid putting yourself in that position again.
"All that said though, even if you did one day decide to rejoin the Chalice -- or even if you did one day devote yourself to doing something that I'm not comfortable with myself -- it wouldn't change my esteem for you. I trust you, Acarya. I trust you to make the wisest choices you can."
Eleanor"You're supposed to," she counters. "You're a student."
He's playful; she is exhausted but amused by it. He is hard to bring down. It doesn't mean he isn't serious; just that he has a buoyancy that she appreciates. Is coming to rely on a bit. Maybe even needs, sometimes, to see that here, at least, she is not harming the world. She is nurturing it, by nurturing him.
"I'm not asking you to," she interjects as well, quietly, perhaps a bit firmly: it should not even enter his mind to try and convince her of the moral rightness or wrongness of things she did many years before, when he didn't know any of this existed. It's important to her that he understand that: no, he doesn't have the right, but more importantly to Eleanor, she does not have that need. That is not something she is looking for from him. Eleanor, whatever else is missing in her life, does not crave absolution. It is outside of her paradigm to seek such a thing from anyone.
What she does care about, though, is what he thinks of her, what he feels, how it affects his own learning, his trust in her, his consideration of the Euthanatoi overall. If this is not the path for him she will teach him even if he walks another one, as far as she can. But she has to listen to him to know.
She gives a small, tired smile. "And what of a Tradition that devotes itself to such things, permits them, facilitates them? Does that change anything?"
RichardIt is not rare for Eleanor to smile small smiles, or thin smiles. It is not rare, either, for her to look a bit tired. A bit worn out, worn down, worn thin. It's a rarer thing, though, when such weariness comes from partying all night, or at least -- socializing. It gladdens Richard's heart. His affection and fondness for his mentor runs as deep as her magic, and is not nearly so icy-cold.
"I think," he says after a moment's thought, "there are very few mages in any Tradition who can truthfully claim to agree wholeheartedly with every last one of their Tradition's common practices. That's part and parcel of free will, I think, and ultimately free will is what drives all of us, isn't it?
"I think what matters more is that I don't find myself at irreconcilable odds with the core teachings of the Tradition. And those core teachings aren't the same thing as those common practices -- those Good Deaths, those moments when a Death-Mage might reach out and turn the Wheel with his own hands. Far from it.
"One of the first things you ever taught me was the Chakra-Dharma. And that code spoke of the cycle of birth and decay and birth again. It spoke of austerity and compassion, unity and empathy. It spoke much of death, but nowhere did it speak of killing.
"I believe in the Wheel, Acarya." The thoughtfulness is something else now: a clear-eyed conviction; that trademark vigor of his bent to an idea, an ideal. "I believe in the art of Entropy. Not because it decays and disintegrates, but because it collapses possibilities into certainties, a chance into the absolute. It pushes the arrow of time forward. It turns the Wheel.
"And I believe in the necessity of the Wheel's turning. I even believe that it is sometimes necessary to do so with a bullet, or a knife, or a rope. Sometimes, someone just has to do it. Maybe someday I'll have to do it. Or maybe not. But either way -- I agree with the Chakra-Dharma. It rings true in me. In here," a fist clenched against his heart to show her, as she once showed him:
Here. Here is where it lives in me.
Eleanorbirth and decay and birth againausterity and compassionunity and empathy
Eleanor closes his eyes as he speaks of their code, their laws, their unifying principles, and sees something she has never explicitly shown him or told him:
nowhere did it speak of killing.
Her eyes open, watching as his fist clenches over his heart, a gesture she knows, understands, almost feels in herself as she watches him do it. There are many competing things in her, but she does not make them fight it out to see which will reign supreme. She lets them rise in her, storm in her, flow through her, because such intensity of emotion that is not purely pain is rare for her, and she knows to cherish it, because these things, like all things, will not last forever. Will, at the same time, go on and on and on, unfettered by individual human existence.
She has her hands on her lap, and turns them over, palms upward. After a moment, she lifts them over to him. And if he comes over, puts his hands in hers, she asks him:
"Richard, do you want to become a Euthanatos?"
Eleanor[UGH LINE BREAKS]
Eleanorbirth and decay and birth again
austerity and compassion
unity and empathy
Eleanor closes his eyes as he speaks of their code, their laws, their unifying principles, and sees something she has never explicitly shown him or told him:
nowhere did it speak of killing.
Her eyes open, watching as his fist clenches over his heart, a gesture she knows, understands, almost feels in herself as she watches him do it. There are many competing things in her, but she does not make them fight it out to see which will reign supreme. She lets them rise in her, storm in her, flow through her, because such intensity of emotion that is not purely pain is rare for her, and she knows to cherish it, because these things, like all things, will not last forever. Will, at the same time, go on and on and on, unfettered by individual human existence.
She has her hands on her lap, and turns them over, palms upward. After a moment, she lifts them over to him. And if he comes over, puts his hands in hers, she asks him:
"Richard, do you want to become a Euthanatos?"
RichardOf course he comes over: rising up off the windowsill in a easy burst of motion that so readily recalls those flashing dives into the pristine olympic blue. Of course he takes her hands, his broad palms and long fingers slipping into hers and engulfing hers at once.
He does not even hesitate. "Yes, Acarya," he says. "I do."
EleanorEleanor smiles. Not those small, thin smiles that often seem so tired, shadowed by sadness. It is still a closed-mouth smile but it is broader than most, brightening her face until you can almost see a resemblance between the two of them, as though all that was missing was not genetics but that lightness of spirit -- which Eleanor is starved for and Richard has enough of to share.
Her hands, though smaller, wrap around his from below.
"I am quite proud of you, Richard," she tells him. "I hope you know that."
RichardLet us be honest: he flushes a little, happily embarrassed by her praise. His hands squeeze hers. He does not resort to false modesty, though. He nods.
"I know," he says. "Thank you. For -- well. Everything."
EleanorThere's no right way to tell Richard, especially as sleep deprived as she is right now, that what he thanks her for now is nothing compared to what she should thank him for. There's no non-awkward way to explain to him how teaching him is well and truly a reason for her to get up in the morning. Teaching him, and watching him evolve, is something to live for that she can't easily dismiss. Yes, it's true that she's pragmatic and realistic and knows that Richard would learn and grow just fine on his own, that he might easily find another teacher, but that's not really the point. There are worlds of difference between continuing your own life to avoid making another suffer and continuing your own life because you find something worthy and joyful and important in it. The deeply depressed dismiss the importance of those things primarily because the part of them that is damaged is the part that feels joy, sees meaning. Sometimes, then, the only reason to go on living is just so you aren't a grenade going off in someone else's hand.
Eleanor does not suffer from depression. Despair is something else entirely. What she has lost can be regained, but she is afraid of what it would take to get there. She is afraid of losing it. She lost, she has survived, she knows this life now, but she, the one teaching Richard to embrace the unknown and accept the endings of things, is terribly afraid. Right now, she has two very compelling reasons to remain in this incarnation, this life: one is the simple joy and meaning of teaching Richard and watching him develop as a mage and -- soon -- a Euthanatos. The other, and the strongest, is that if she starts over now, she will not have the knowledge she has. The cycle of her life, her curse, has been temporarily knocked askew. She survived this time, not Henrik. She didn't die when she was supposed to. It means there's a chance that the rest could change, too. It means she might be able to break the cycle completely, break some curse laid on their three patterns.
It means nothing to turn the Wheel if she dies now, leaving her soul, her soulmate, and their nemesis locked forever in the same story, repeating throughout all human time. Somehow they stagnated into this; it is her duty as a Euthanatos and her singular passion as a human being to set them all free.
But some mornings that is a weight too heavy to bear, and she is bearing it alone, and few know what 'alone' means to someone who has had -- and lost -- what she had, what she lost. And on those mornings, sometimes, it is an appointment with Richard or a thought of his learning, the flickers of growth and happiness that gives her, that make her push herself up out of bed and keep going.
Richard thanks her, and she has no way of explaining it to him if she says: no, Richard. thank you.
She squeezes his hands back, in acknowledgement, in acceptance, in something. "We'll work out plans later tonight, or tomorrow," she tells him. "For now, I think I need some sleep."
