myironeyes | A Crab Dressed like a Dementor, Pack Lunches, and Pie

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A Crab Dressed like a Dementor, Pack Lunches, and Pie

[Private to Ned.]

I need help.

[Spam for Kelsier]

[He gave Kelsier time to hide, because - well, he's not a complete hypocrite. But he's knocking on Kel's door now, and he's just as willing to pick the lock as he was on the other barge.]

[Private to Alpha]

I can't see anything on the communicator screens, so I don't know what your room looks like. But if you have not yet acquired a replacement for your recessed pit, I could make a fabric hammock.

They're...easier to move around than solid furniture, if you change your mind about what you want where.

[Spam for Nathan, backdated to several days after the mirror even but before White Flag - 5th or 6th?]

[He knocks only once. He has cherry-raspberry pie.]

[Open Spam all over the barge, from a few days after the mirror event through White Flag, particularly relevant to Jean, Cassel, Alex, Zane, and Ryan, because you guys now have a pointy extra shadow.]

[Several months of memories of being used as a brutal nightmare of a weapon have made Marsh even more skittish, if possible, than he was when he first board the barge. He skulks and lurks and generally keeps to the corners of the regrettably well-lit corridors. He ducks into empty cabins when people pass in the halls, and he collects food at odd times. It is, however, less absent than his usual hermitage, because he's actively stalking a few people at a distance whenever they emerge from hiding.]

[OOC: feel free to run into him while he's watching out for someone else, or if you want to say your character was chopped to pieces once or a dozen times by mind controlled!Marsh in the mirror event, he might feel obligated to quasi-discretely check on them too. Just let me know!]

[Open Spam, CES]

[It's pitch dark, except for the small area illuminated by the light spilling in through the open door; Marsh doesn't need light. The CES gave him the rebellion's cave systems today, and although there are torches stashed here in there in the tunnels, Marsh doesn't need them. The rock is solid, cool but not cold, and he's tucked just around a bend, holding still. Letting himself be still. He isn't sure himself if it's comforting or just stalling, but at least it is familiar.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You haven't been in the kitchens. Much. Recently.

[Subtle, Marsh.]

I'm not part of the kitchen staff.

[It's true; technically the Piemaker was never signed on for the job. That never stopped him using the kitchens anyway, even if he did need to be let in by the people with the keys]

You said, when we met, that it was a respectable craft. Sewing.

My mother taught me. I didn't...forget that. But I let other things obscure it.

[Maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe it was inevitable, with his world the way it was. But he's glad Ned said what he did, glad that he has re-attained something of his old comfort with it, instead of merely using it as something to take up his hands and his time that does not result in bloodshed.

This is why he wouldn't want just anyone else to help him, even if nearly anyone on the ship could have done it.]

[The Piemaker quietly watches Marsh work, staring across the colors, his mind a hazy, impenetrable fog]

What other things?

It was something I did when I -

[couldn't?]

- didn't care enough to fight anymore.

[Mash feels guilty no matter what he does.]

But now it's. Nice.

Is it peaceful?

Yes.

[One of a very few things, for Marsh, that always feels peaceful, going neat and even, stitch by stitch.]

[He nods, preferring to silently sit and observe the zen-like motion of Marsh's hands]

Who is it for?

This will be for Vin.

[He nods at the direction of the hawthorn flower.]

She likes those best.

[Good stalker best creep friend.]

Do you like her? Vin?

I admire her.

I never got the chance to know her well.

[Perhaps that is different, now.]

Well...she's here, now.

Are you going to get to know her here?

Yes.

[She wants to - reestablish something.]

I almost killed her, and then she saved the world. Made it better. It's...hard to know where to begin.

But she likes flowers, and dancing.

[So. A dress.]

What do you give someone who's saved the world?

Yes.

[Precisely the trouble.]

I always get...obsessed with giving the perfect gift for someone. So much to the point that it causes anxiety-induced acid reflux and I end up going with gift cards at the eleventh hour.

You can't use gift cards on the Barge.

[He doesn't really understand. It's not something former street urchins worry about: if you get a gift, you're happy, damnit. But he does remember the knot of conflicted shame, when Kelsier started to succeed as a thief, the looming amorphous knowledge that nothing Marsh made for him could be good enough, fine enough.]

Life is hard enough without trying to get things perfect.

Life deserves a few small perfect things.

Yes.

[This will be perfect, he thinks. He hopes.]

But you don't have to manage it every time. Nobody does.

I have to.

At least until Alpha graduates. And then I can rest.

[He thinks, for a moment, of cave-ins, thinks this is what it must feel like to get pinned under a few tons of rock, this crushing inability to breathe, or move his hands, which have gone still where he was marking dashed lines on a section of fabric with a charcoal pencil.

Then I can rest. When the work is done. Ned doesn't - he thinks - mean quite the same things by it that Marsh does, but it hardly matters.]

I understand.

[Pressed out of him like oil, like a threadbare prayer flag fluttering on his sigh when he finally lets his breath out.]

[To the Piemaker, simple utterances of the truth were his daily bread and butter. He parlayed in odd, rambling metaphors, but in this case the resting part of the metaphor was wholly accurate.

He was constantly giving pieces of himself to others. Secrets and truths and most had accepted the gifts with grace and diplomacy. Others had not. And soon the Piemaker worried that he had given too much away and there was no longer a him that made up who he was. Worrying about himself was, perhaps, selfish. Especially when he had an inmate to think about.

But what would come first? Alpha's graduation or the Piemaker's collapse?]

Do you think you can give away too much of yourself so that it feels as though there was never a you to begin with?

[He resumes marking the fabric.]

Yes.

[There's no philosophy to him. He has done that, felt that. Marsh poured so much of himself into Kelsier; when his brother died the first time it felt remarkably like having limbs cleaved off, even if they'd barely spoken the year before. He'd loved Mare, lost her twice over too, given the rest of himself to a rebellion that barely eked out its own existence, let alone made a difference. His voice is raspy and gentle.]

It's not true. It's not anything like having what makes you up actually taken away. You're still there. Just - hurting so much it feels that way, and it is terrible. I was completely useless for nearly two years, when I broke.

It's not selfish, to take care of yourself. You can't help anyone else if you don't.

[Something Marsh learned nearly too late and is still a terrible hypocrite about. But inquisitors are built to take a lot of damage; he tells himself he is nowhere near that point, for all that he's only here because Sazed forced the issue, for all that the barge is kinder than the way he was pushing himself before.]

[The Piemaker sets his hands out in front of him, observing them. It's been weeks - a month and several weeks - since he last touched fruit or flour. But it still sticks to him, no matter how many times he washes his hands. He'll always smell like pie, and his hands will always be big and gentle and worn. There's no changing who he is, not at the heart of himself.]

When Chuck and I decided together that I would be the one to come here, we agreed that no matter what, I would put my inmate before myself in all things. It's getting harder and harder to do.

Do you think I'm close to breaking?

I don't know. The mind is strange. But you sound like a man struggling terribly.

[He puts aside the charcoal and picks up a small pair of scissors, snipping neatly. Very quietly,]

I told you, when we met, that sometimes we didn't have enough food as children. If there was only enough for one, usually I'd give it to Kel. I tried to - protect him from the worst of it, when I could. Protect him from knowing how desperate we were, sometimes.

But there were days, if I didn't eat, then I wouldn't have the strength to work. And the next day there would be no food for anyone. I hated myself so much, for that. For not being better, somehow. But he turned out alright in the end.

Putting someone else first doesn't mean putting yourself aside. Not entirely. It can't.

Edited 2013-11-21 15:47 (UTC)

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