Lulu the Lugubrious Voodoo Doll, now with free ball of cheeping dryer lint

[myironeyes]

[Open spam in the greenhouse.]

[It's a peculiar sight, even moreso than Marsh on his own. The man with spikes for eyes is carrying a very small, ugly, excitable cockatiel chick, carefully transferring her from one flowerbed to the next, letting her waddle intrepidly through the greenery, meticulously watching over her and snatching her gently away from any drop-offs or sinister-looking creeper vines while frowning in terse disapproval.]

[Private to Zane]

I'd like to teach you the fast way to kill an Inquisitor.

[It's neither an instruction nor a question; it's a preference. He knows Zane is struggling with his own relationship with violence right now. Zane could refuse, if he wants to.]

Just in case.


[Private to Barbara]

What is your opinion on mercy killing?


[Private to Erik]

How are you getting along with Kelsier?


[Private separately to Ned and Lua]

If you had to trust someone on this ship to kill you, who would it be?


[Private to Ryan Hardy]

I am your warden. I am still not a metaphor for anything.

We should meet.

Comments

[myironeyes]

[After another lull of rabbit observation,]

I'm going to need to show you the rest of the spikes.

[Marsh: not good at segues.]

[godsays]

[Zane looks back to him, calm enough. Not as calm as he wants to be.]

How many?

[myironeyes]

Nineteen.

There's just one you'd need to pull.

[But they're kind of all clustered together in the vital organ/torso area]

[godsays]

[Nineteen. It's far too many, and Zane wonders, again, if Marsh should just have them healed. ]

Show me.

[myironeyes]

[He wordlessly unfastens the cloak and pulls off the tunic beneath it, folding them each loosely. He's left in simple black pants, much thinner without the shapeless volume of the cloak, and absolutely riddled with spikes, of different sizes and metals and angles. There's a neat pattern marching down between his ribs, two by two, but others interrupt it, and more rest haphazardly in his abdomen. It's nineteen just in his trunk, for a total of twenty-one. He turns, twists an arm behind himself to rest his fingertips on the linchpin spike in the center of his back.]

It's this one.

[godsays]

[He doesn't reach out to touch, doesn't let sympathy make its way into his eyes. This isn't a conversation that should leave them bonded - this is a conversation that is necessary. Zane understands how easily he was pushed, and that it took all of him to resist. With that influence multiplied, he wouldn't have had a chance.

He takes in the spikes as dispassionately as he can, but his hand clenches into a fist.]

May I? Muscle memory. [If he feels it by touch, the placement of it, he'll be able to find it in the middle of a fight.]

[myironeyes]

[Unlike everyone else who has pushed their way into Zane's presence in the last few days, Marsh is not entirely confident Zane won't just kill him on impulse. But if it happens, this is more important than a death toll. His hand falls.]

Yes.

[godsays]

[He's not sure if the clench of this is wrong in his chest is an effect from the spike or just his own emotion, but he pushes through it. Rests his palm on that particular spike, memorizing the feel of it, and his fingers skim over the nearby ones. This part of the pattern...

He lingers a second or two too long, and then flinches away like he was burned.]

I'll remember.

[myironeyes]

[Marsh nods curtly, shucking his shirt back on quickly and whirling the cloak around him. He feels better when it's settled, like Zane was touching his bones instead of metal, like he has his skin back on. He wants to laugh for a moment, bleakly, at how attached he is to something so outwardly emblematic of an Inquisitor. But the symbols of evil are preferable to the raw reality of it, he supposes.]

Both eyespikes or decapitation will also suffice, but that's the quickest way.

[godsays]

[He looks away, while Marsh dresses himself again.] Both? Not just one?

[myironeyes]

It has to be both.

[godsays]

I'll remember.

[myironeyes]

Thank you.