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knowmyplace

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From:

deuceoftears

I should have made him suffer more.

[A kind of selfishness Jedao indulges, even in his own mind, very very rarely.]

Can I bring you two anything?

From:

knowmyplace

No. We are well looked after.

[And Iago is still so raw about people seeing him so weak and ill.]

How did he suffer?

From:

deuceoftears

Despair. Despair borne of arrogance and fear.

He was absolutely certain that if he could not escape by his own strength, and if he had been told he would be released, it could only be because his enemies wished to use him, to find or poison his family.

He failed to destroy the ship. I trapped him, and when he realized he was helpless to fight back against me, he tore his own heart apart inside his chest.

From:

knowmyplace

I wish I could have seen it.

That sounds perfectly fitting.

I very nearly got away, to get help, but I had lost too much blood.

From:

deuceoftears

I dumped his corpse in zero but recommended that Reno not revive him until the end of the flood.

Next time I'll request it myself so he can wriggle on the hook or bash himself against the bars or suffers whatever other pits he feels compelled to fling himself into.

From:

knowmyplace

Sometimes the words you say are so beautiful that they sing to me in my dreams.

Were you yourself?

From:

deuceoftears

I thought I was. Certainly I wasn't the stupid wretch you met in the wardrobe.

I think for a lot of the flood, I was a version of myself that did certain things differently early on, but it didn't really change much at all. It's...a little bit humbling.

From:

knowmyplace

I was worried he'd snap my neck and think nothing of it if I said the wrong thing.

I was only one other version and I came to the same conclusion.

Humbling is the word I was searching for and couldn't find.]

From:

deuceoftears

You were right to worry.

Thank you for being smart about it.

From:

knowmyplace

I suppose you can see through it now.

I consider getting out of it unscathed a success.

From:

deuceoftears

He could too, a little. But he hated me so much it gave him blind spots. And you kept your cool.

It made it so that he couldn't do something outrageous without feeling like a child throwing a tantrum, instead of a careless monster dispatching an irritant.

[And his pride hadn't let him.]

From:

knowmyplace

Which is exactly what he was doing. He was so - angry with you. That you had what he couldn't.

I

I wasn't so noticeably changed. Most people didn't catch a difference. And yet, I had everything I ever wanted. The promotion I sought. The title. A spotless reputation. The General's attention. A wife. A son on the way. But it didn't matter. None of it did. I was still discontent and miserable. Only I had no reason for it.

From:

deuceoftears

That I had what he'd given up on. That I proved it wasn't impossible after all.

Just because you won the game doesn't mean you had anyone worth playing with.

From:

knowmyplace

Will I? Away from here?

From:

deuceoftears

Oh, yes.

You were trapped in one scrap of a country with no respect for your sharp fox's heart, like a tiger trapped in a cage barely its own length. You were made to dance among the stars, my darling. You were meant for a world where gathering power will mean not merely victory over this rival or that, but that you will win the chance put your hand to the great tiller of time, and change a thousand thousand thousand lives.

[And it would be easy, to make them worse; Iago has learned the joy of the greater challenge. Jedao, even knowing that it is not principle or compassion which drives him, still trusts him to go there, to continue and not to destroy Jedao's own life's work.]

Edited Date: 2025-11-11 05:17 pm (UTC)

From:

knowmyplace

I still don't think I can comprehend of that scale.

I think it is fear that holds me back now.

[Iago is arrogant enough to have confidence in the way he moves forward. He still is driven by personal gains, personal pleasure, and the only thing stopping him is Mikodez, but - he can see the end of that nearing. As he approaches his year long anniversary of the Barge, he knows that he can graduate eventually. With enough work.]

From:

deuceoftears

Most people can't and it kind of sucks if you can, frankly. That's not the important part.

What are you afraid of?

From:

knowmyplace

Of what it means to be successful.

From:

deuceoftears

The pressure? The consequences? Who you will be, if you're different?

If you're not?

From:

knowmyplace

Yes.

What if I am simply broken, Jedao? What if I have this and I am still miserable because of what I am?

From:

deuceoftears

The bad thing about caring for other people is that it's extremely difficult and inconvenient, and a lot of people twist themselves up with reasons why it's okay to hurt people anyway to get around it, which generally goes poorly for them and everyone else.

But the nice thing about caring about other people is that it's easy to do things that feel like they matter.

When you take up my work, healing that world, it won't matter to you because you care about any of those thousand thousand thousand people particularly. But it will matter to you, that you are achieving things that have not been achieved in over a thousand years, that your cleverness and determination have changed the unimaginable shape of the world.

You have never been satisfied with destruction, because you know in your heart that it is easy, and you have an ego that hungers for true greatness. When the world turns under your hand, and you chose to make it better, when you meet that challenge, you will finally have a victory worthy of you.

From:

knowmyplace

There was once a flood, months ago, when I was the child of a trickster god and I could make anyone believe anything I said. It was magic, of a sort.

And, even then, I was bored. I was so bored that I wanted to throw myself off of the ship because it came so easy to me.

I think you're right.

I think I'd like to try and make things better and take that challenge instead.

But I don't know if you want me taking on your work. You've done so much already.

From:

deuceoftears

I do.

I have since the day you told me you wanted to go there. Since I let myself imagine it.

I couldn't

I couldn't leave them suffering in Kujen's winch, because it was an unbearable atrocity, and I cared more reflexively than breathing about every heretic's scream. And I left the place in a hideous, precarious shambles, the brutal old ways broken and new ones not yet built. But I couldn't stay, either. I couldn't give my whole heart and my maybe-endless life to a world that would always hate me. I'm too soft for it.

It is a pure gift, a miraculous relief to me, to know I can trust the next steps of that tumultuous future to you.

You have always wanted people to revere you, and they will; you will have the skill and the tools to make that happen. But you will only really be happy when you know that they should. And when the barge pronounces you ready to go on, it will be partly because you understand that about yourself, deeply and surely enough to resist the temptations of shortcuts. Your hunger is a force I can trust, more surely than any fallible heroism.

I am so terribly grateful for you to be exactly who are.

From:

knowmyplace

[He's quiet for a long time. He doesn't respond, mulling over what has essentially become a love letter to him.]

It isn't fair to you or me that you write these things when I feel as if death might swallow me again and again and I would beg for the privilege. When I cannot form the proper grateful words to convey how much they mean to me.

I came to this place and spent so long fighting against the reputation that was given to me. I don't know what to do with people who know that I can and should do better in a way that doesn't feel like giving up who I am.

Thank you.

From:

deuceoftears

I have never promised to be fair. And I do not need you to have the proper words.

Rest. And try to let go of your fear. Has Mikodez taught you what it means, that I am Crowned With Eyes?