FAQ with Skewers Sadface McGee [video, open]

[myironeyes]

[Marsh is centered in the camera's view, the wall behind him plain, rough-hewn grey stone. The light flickers a little, as though not produced by an electronic source, glinting dully against his spikes. His voice is quiet and raspy, but the words are clearly enunciated.]

I am Marsh. I am a warden aboard this vessel.

If you have heard stories of Inquisitors from the others from my world - they are true. But they are not true of me anymore.

If you have not, simply know that I do not wish to hurt anyone.

[His mouth twists faintly, and he reaches up to tap one fingernail against the blunt surface of the left spike.]

Yes, they're real. Yes, they hurt. No, there's nothing to be done about it.

[Since that seems to be what everyone wants to know first. The message ends.]



[Spam, Kelsier's room, backdated to wibbly time after the power swap event]

[Marsh sits in a chair beside Kelsier's bed, burning tin and bronze at a steady clip, compounding wakefulness as he does so, hunched over a plain grey shirt, diligently mending the seams.]

Comments

[strangehistorian]

On rare occasions, floods will make everyone believe that they are a version of themselves living in another universe. The Barge will also change to correspond with this reality.

Spam

[deadly_ned]

They're always there. Even during the daytime.

Spam

[myironeyes]

What do they look like?

[He wonders if they're different from the ones Mare could see. So much else is different.]

Spam

[deadly_ned]

From this far away? Bright little fireflies.

[routemistress]

[By this time, Iris has abandoned any attempt to veil her curiosity under courtesy or gentleness; she's watching Marsh now like a dog watches the progression of food from plate to mouth, and the effort to stop her hand casually-on-purposely brushing his over the game board has started to be wearing.

She waits until several of the tequila shots are gone, till he's balancing a tricky piece on the construction of the trap.]

...I'm gettin' an idea of 'ow you see, I think. Marsh, sweetheart, what's been done to you? This isn't like Zane. I'm not even touching you and I can feel it shakin' the air. 'Ow are you even functioning around that?

[myironeyes]

[He frowns, but it's more a moue of figuring out what he means to say through the tequila than any actual displeasure. If she knows to compare him to Zane, then she actually has some idea already.]

It is like Zane. Just...more. The effects are cummalutive. Cummutalive.

I have more spikes.

[He doesn't really have an answer to the other question. He functions because he must.]

[routemistress]

[She didn't, in fact, ever find out about Zane's spike; she only meant that Zane didn't ring in her mental ears the way Marsh does. It doesn't surprise her to learn it, though, and she files it away silently in her mind.]

...They're like... channels for summat? A focus for your power, or what? Look, I can - I'm not a telepath. Not exactly. But I am a bit... can I 'ave your 'and? I don't want to do owt. I just want to see.

[myironeyes]

[He hunches up a little at 'I am a bit,' like a scared child, the tequila both lessening the intensity of his reaction and making him forget to hide it.]

Channels. Doors. Hooks.

[It's hard to explain. Or, it's simple, but brutal, and he doesn't want to. He bites the inside of his cheek, and the taste of blood is still far too familiar.]

Just to see. Promise?

[routemistress]

Aye, I promise, love. You'll see.

[Iris reaches across the game board, and lays her hand lightly on top of his. If he lets her, if he doesn't pull away, this is when he can see her through her other senses. There's no probing, no intrusion; she's just there around him like a scented cloud of compassionate, amused curiosity.]

Show me?

[She is, in fact, capable of digging deeper, of pulling truth out of a person; she just isn't trying to. She brushes her awareness only lightly over the surface of his thoughts, backing her words with an unspoken plea to let her share his troubles.]

[surrenders]

[She could ask herself the same question and get the exact answer he just gave, so doesn't push it.]

Good an answer in itself.

[myironeyes]

[He shudders, very slightly, but doesn't pull away; he hasn't let himself himself be touched in years, and for years before that it was always accompanied by violence - usually his.

The edges of his mind crumble despite the lack of pressure, like a rusted fence with large snaggle-edged gaps. He doesn't remember most of the original event, which is a mercy. It's in scattered snapshots he couldn't hold back if he tried: Marsh, still a man, quietly terrified he'd been found out, scribbling down one last message to Kelsier and his rebellion just in case by flickering candlelight. The bang of the door, barely a moment for visceral horror, the deepest fears of his childhood finally come home to roost. Impossibly strong hands grabbing him by the arms and ankles, another body, squirming and stinking with terror through on top of him.

Then a sheer blank, where his mind refuses to recall the spikes hammered through living mens' hearts into his eye sockets, nine more into different organs in his torso. His memory resumes with the revels, Inquisitors gleefully apart the bodies of the doomed mistings whose powers had been roughly stitched into his spirit by the metal piercing their mutual flesh.

A pile of pulled linchpin spikes: their secret weakness, Marsh's triumph over the Lord Ruler's monsters, Vin striking down the tyrant himself. And long tumbling years of chaos, the terrible pressure of Ruin poured into his mind, until he was merely its hand, its love of destruction subsuming even Marsh's own thoughts.]

[routemistress]

[She'd been expecting bad, but she hadn't been expecting this; the weight of Marsh's guilt, grief and horror is a gutpunch so solid that Iris' breathing stops, her gorge rises and she has to clench her fingers on his not to drop the contact as though it were hot metal.

And then, out of that brief space of breathless, restless, horror, Iris regathers herself. There's a large part of her mind that's cool, utterly divorced from emotion or empathy, and it's this she draws on now, setting her own boundaries lightly around the outside of Marsh's crumbling ones.

It's not till this is in place that she breathes again, slowly and ragged, and the soft scent of her compassion steals back into his perception; Marsh would probably not recognise the scent of lily-of-the-valley, but if he ever smells one in future he'll know it.]

...Oh, love. You can't keep walking around like that. You can't.

[myironeyes]

I can. I have.

[And he will. It's not something he thinks of as a choice - except in the nebulous sense of someday letting himself die. But not soon. He has work to do.]

[routemistress]

[She still has hold of his hand, and now the lily scent grows sharper; mint and elderflowers and lemon.]

That's not exactly what I meant, sweetheart. Well. It is. That's not a good thing to 'ave found meself touching.

Think on this, though: you come 'ere to walk someone else through sorting their life out. 'Ow good a job d'you think you can do of that when you're walking round full of 'oles like this, eh?

[She doesn't even mean the literal holes; she means the leaks in his mental defenses.]

...Some of our inmates? They're not nice people. There's some that'll take whatever weakness they can find and turn you inside out by it. When I see someone flogging their soul with iron spikes out of guilt, Marsh love, I want to make it better; but 'ave you thought what you'll do if you get paired with someone who'll see it as an opportunity? A way to use you?

[myironeyes]

I'll handle that when it happens.

[Blunt, stalwart.]

Inmates have powers at the discretion of their wardens, yes? If they try to use me that way, I won't permit them. If you simply mean emotional manipulation...it won't work. I've been forced enough not to budge for less.

[And for all his raw pain, this is true. More quietly,]

There's only one person on board who can hurt me worse than I already have been. And he isn't an inmate.

[routemistress]

[Iris' immediate first thought is that's hardly fair on the inmate, suppressing their power for the holes in your defenses. She catches it without saying it aloud, although Marsh might still taste it before it's tucked away.

She strokes his hand, still gently distressed at the amount of pain he's made himself accept as normal, and sighs.]

...All right. It's not like you don't know 'ow to 'andle yourself. I do think you're making it 'arder than it needs, mind.

[She smiles brightly, picks up two more of the tequila shots and hands one to Marsh.]

Keep calm and carry on, eh? Your go.

[myironeyes]

[He does get the faint gist of the thought, and his reflexive response is a little bubble of fondness; it's not fair makes him think inevitably of Kelsier when he was young, all messy gold hair and big eyes, forever trying to get his way. They'd just have to learn to be responsible about it, he thinks, a particular tenor of brotherly sternness that feels as natural as breathing.]

Yes. That sounds - right.

[He doesn't recognize the phrase, but he likes it, moving his hand to roll the die only after hers is finally withdrawn.]

[onlysurvivor]

[Kelsier nods in response, looking down and poking at his food.] My death there would have trapped me in that world.

[Now is a terrible time to remember the creature that looked like Marsh lying dead.]

[myironeyes]

[This is not a possibility he really knows how to cope with. He's had years to acclimate himself to the idea of Kelsier dying, and it never really worked. Kelsier trapped at the mercy of something even like Ruin - no. Unable to come up with anything useful to say, he falls back on old patterns.]

You aren't allowed to die anymore. I forbid it.

[It's not as though any of his other prohibitions were any more effective.]

[onlysurvivor]

[That startles him and he almost points out all the things he's been forbidden to do that he's done but no, dying isn't something he wants to do again. ]

... I suppose that's reasonable but this is me we're talking about.

[myironeyes]

Don't remind me.

[It's so incredibly dour that it almost comes out the other side smiling. Almost.]

[Private]

[unknownsoldier]

Was it a mission?

[Private]

[myironeyes]

I suppose you could call it that.

What do you mean when you say it?

[Because he can hear the weight on the word, and it isn't a formal one, for him.]

[onlysurvivor]

[Well, Kelsier is gonna chuckle a little anyway.] I can promise not to inspire any new religions, at least.

[myironeyes]

[Dryly,]

I suppose I'll take what I can get.