Fingers Stretch'd O'er Darken'd Hold

[Carnath-Emory]

Delight overshadows all else, and oh how it infects her. All the world holds its breath - or perhaps only she does, willingly lost to the sight of this creature's pleasure and smiling as if her face weren't sewn closed from ear to mouth.

What does hurt matter? What she witnesses is priceless, and there she stands as silent as if she weren't there at all. He takes his time with his examinations, this Catch - hours, minutes; the swordswoman is content with either, filling her eyes with the sight of a man grown utterly unconscious of his self, each breath drawing in the scent of rich soil and tiny hothouse blooms. It is the most peace that she has known in weeks, and long from now there will come days which demand sterner things of her, cold iron things - but she will carry this memory with her, and find those hours a little warmer than could otherwise have been.

"Have care with those," she's interjected at some point, when Catch's deliberations take him dangerously near to tiny, struggling blossoms; their pretty pastels have grown a little pale, and that is not uncommon within this space. Some of the greenery thrives; much of it does not, and this is nothing to do with the soil's quality and everything to do with a swordswoman who has inherited a garden she does not quite understand. Who has fretted about watering, worried about flooding, and failed absolutely to apply the consistency which so many of these plants require. An excess of dedication, a dearth of expertise; the results have been mixed at best. But still, the soil is rich and dark - see how darkly it dots his skin? And clearly it meets with Catch's approval, for he's filled his mouth as well as his pockets - but it says something of the swordswoman's temperament, perhaps, that what startles her at last is not his antics but his words.

Fingertips pause in their soft caress of a sapling's velvety leaves.

"Do you mean the steel - in my blood?" The glance which drops to that hand is almost self-conscious; it's returned towards Catch almost immediately, however, and when that hand lifts it's with palm upturned, a fine silvery sweat leaking from its pores. It was at considerable cost that she'd learned to do this slowly: to control the armour's emergence so that eyes may see how it eases from her flesh as a tide of tiny, glittering filaments, weaving gradually into something whole. "It's proper to say. Here, you may say exactly what you wish to. But how did you know of this? Is it also a thing which you taste?"

She has care not to drown the man in questions, has been careful with this from his first moments here - knowing very well how easily this might overwhelm were she to really begin at it. Oh, the flood of things which she has longed to ask! But she can still her lips for a time instead, and hunker down here amongst the greenery, a knee in the soil and one hand as well; it is a necessary anchor.

"I have known Glenn Burnie of long ago. For a time, he lived here in Darkenhold." A tilt of her chin encompasses glasshouse and walls and glittering stone. "And for many years he was my student." Her perilous, brilliant student, all for a map and for so much more besides. "How was it you came to know him?"

[catch]

Tell him to be careful, when his muddled, oft-confused eyes could see every bit of green, an indescribable feeling that was neither touch, nor smell, yet a strange combination of both that, somehow, translates itself through his eyes. They are on his spine, the inexpert bits of growing things, and you couldn't pull out your own spine. At least, Catch has never seen it done. Yet, even after her warning, Catch is more careful; he shows her how careful, patting the wrinkled leaves as if they were living beasts with exaggerated care, twisting his head to grin up at her, splaying the lips of that protruding muzzle to show that he listens, that he cares.

"You j-j-just have to listen to the singing, is all," he says,softly, and each each passing of a horny finger - could she tell? - the flowers seemed just a little more upright, a little less pale. It is not something he does, consciously. They rejoice, and he, in turn, listens to their whispered notes of that joy. She comes to crouch next to him, and he does not fear. His eyes find what they are looking for, in the pool of silver that trickles from the very pores, and they whisper to him, mock him, as the iron bars had chittered in the deep hole of the Gaol. They could not infest him, as they had. He does not strike. But he regards her with something suddenly like Sanity, or a trick, a semblance, only. But he is still, for once, and when he speaks, he does not stutter so badly.

"Yes. I heard th-them, up in the Hold. I didn't know if I wanted to come or not, but the d-dirt - it was important, you see? B-but you're not so bad. Just Heat, and Steel, and Iron Shoes is like that, so it's all right." Heat and Steel, strong as a forge. At least, to him. He could see many things, his broken mind working in ways that brains were not meant to work, yet even the superficial could bypass him completely. Ariane smelled strong. She was Steel.

Catch scrubs his nose with the back of his hand, slowly leaning back until he could settle his chin upon his upturned knees, his arms limp to him on either side; from here, he is comfortable. It is thanks to Glenn Burnie that he knows questions, knows how they work. Knows he must make himself comfortable. "He f-f-found me, when I came to the Dagger. I was broke worse. He helped, and g-gave me food, and th-things to do. And, and he asked lots of q-q-questions, only I didn't have the words to answer proper."

A pause, then. brief. Catch blinks once, slowly, as if he must physically think to do it. "Wh-when he came back form the maggot-holes, he. Wasn't so kind. I m-m-mean," the addled man blurts, concerned, for she must not get the wrong idea. "I m-mean, he's d-d-done so much for me, even wh-when. When I'd get all outside my head. But he f-felt empty. Feels. I th-though maggots had got in him, so I cut him open to see." It had not gone well; for once, Glenn had struggled far more than Catch had thought, even after the addled man explained what he was doing. And then the Wormwoman Agnie had come, and it all went to pieces. Catch rubs his long fingers into the earth, to rid himself of blood that was no longer there.

"He's n-not so f-f-full of questions. He's nuh, n-not much full of anything, now."

[Carnath-Emory]

Catch demonstrates his care - and it is an exaggeration of exactly what he'd done just moments ago, so that a swordswoman realises her mistake almost immediately. Her brow's subtle frown is not for him, and perhaps he will realise this when she leans - just so, to lift one of those delicate blooms with careful fingertips. Her hands are not made for this. Long-fingered and narrow of bone and worn coarse here and there with tell-tale callus; these are hands made for killing, and here these two crouch surrounded by things which long only to live. But these hands can move gently when they must, and in time they become a cautious imitation of Catch's motions. Their touch effects very little here at all, but the same cannot be said of his - and on realising her eyes cannot choose where to look, cannot decide between strengthening petals or this tall man's face -

"Thank you." It is almost a whisper; it is undiluted pleasure. And: "I cannot hear their song as you do," the woman murmurs when she's settled back onto her heels. "I wish that I could." And she has been so careful with her questions, so careful to restrain curiosity in deference to necessity, but still her mouth tremors a moment with things unspoken until she can confine herself to the practical again. Like the demonstrating of what even now is beginning to recede from her flesh, withdrawing through its very pores until nothing remains but pale skin and old scars. "I cannot give this to Glenn Burnie." Even the Ashfiend's most torturous attempts at that had utterly failed. "Even if I could, I think it might not be good for him - you know? He is not made for steel. He is for better things." A moment's quiet then, because her eyes have found his features again but what they discover in his gaze is something new, something quieted. "I'm glad that you've chosen to come here." Because this is the moment for it, and it is essential; her eyes are so steady in their watch. "I'm not so bad. But the others here are better."

Just that, and not a single word more - and nevermind that so many strain to be given voice. Because of a sudden Catch has so much to say, and all of it is essential; all of it addresses things which she has feared, things which she has heard implied between the words of others. And what better place for such talk than here? In warmth and humid sunshine and dappling shade, and all around them the scent of fragile beauty. He speaks and the woman listens, with eyes intent upon his own and only the softest indrawn breath when he describes a particular altercation. But she has already swallowed back that tiny shock, and in the wake of it all she is so quiet - with a hand slightly lifted from her knees, only to indicate that she has not forgotten him; that she must think.

"Glenn Burnie," she slowly begins, "was always very good with questions." So that lessons had stretched from minutes into hours, and nothing had fallen outside the scope of those conversations. Nothing at all. "But you must not cut him open, Catch. Not even to see what has gone into him. It hurts him. If he must be cut open, you should take him to the Rememdium. Do you know it? There is a man - Brennan; he can do this cutting in a way that does not hurt." And surely they've told Catch this already, except that - this is Myrken, after all, and in the wake of an eviscerated governor perhaps they hadn't dared tell Catch anything at all. So she has made this quiet caution, and only after it does she add:

"Did you see maggots? My friend Cinnabar says something like this: that he finds Glenn Burnie - changed; quieter. That he seems less... there - "

And the swordswoman pauses over again, turning a quiet frown down towards her knees so that Catch will know he's not its source. It gnaws at the back of her thoughts: that she is approaching this from the wrong direction, that she is circling something without quite seeing it. That an answer lurks just beyond her fingertips - and all because she does not know where to reach. The mouth works silently for a moment; tiny motions. And:

"When you put people back together - do you mean like - this?" A brush of fingertips to the stitches near her mouth's corner; the rest of that wound is carefully hid and will remain so. "Or do you put back together what is inside?"

[catch]

There is no other place to talk of such things. Perhaps, in the Wood, but the words could hang in the tree's branches, could disturb the dumb, happy beasts that dwell there, and so could not sing. There is the Broken Dagger, with it's smell of worn wood and warm pies, but then there are so many people, and the subtle underlay of years of old, rotted blood. Here is grand enough, and Catch inclines his head, slightly, at her Thank Yous; knowing what he has done, on some level, but only because the plants like him because he will listen. Of course they would grow all the better. They were friends.

"He's p-p-put back together. I said," he says, but there is a patience there that had not been there before, a serene comfort that this place brings. He can almost pretend that he's whole. He can think better, where there is singing. "... I said, it's wh-what I c-c-can do. Almost, almost as g-good as chopping wood." The Rememdium; Catch grimaces, and his serenity tremors with his lips, eyes turning away to bury themselves into his upturned knees. He doesn't explain. It is a silly fear, but one that persists. "... th-th-th-the Rememberum," he miss-says, voice muffled by what had once been gayly-colored cloth, "is wh-wh-where th-they p-put the mad ones." That is all. He will not take Ser Glenn there.

That said, he peeks, daring only a single, blue eye; it shakes, it quivers and jumps, as if seized by some palsy, possessed with a mind of it's own; focused, but not focusing, wandering from the woman's face to other, less visible places. "A little," he admits to the maggots. "I saw a little, b-b-but the Wormwoman Agnie st-stopped it." Would she know her, too, the way she knew Ser Glenn, and now Ser Cinnabar? Ariane knew much, and Catch feels a small twinge if despair, knowing he will be left behind once more in threads of pasts. He could not remember Ariane, but, perhaps, she remembers him? He couldn't know.

He watches, careful. If there are emotions he knows, it is anger, and it is upset. It is if he says or does something wrong, and he will be struck for it; he needs not fear such a striking, yet long habit has caused him to lean a little away, ready to spring. To retaliate in a way he had not been able to before. He had meant it, what he told Cinnabar, that he would not have hands on him again. Now that he had the strength to resist it. He does not think she will, and she does not. She only asks, and at her motion, Catch peers at the stitched edge of a wound, his nose wrinkling.

"No," he says, finally. "I j. I j-j-just put it all in my head, and it comes out, p-p-put together." Pride, there. He means it, when he says it is something he can do. "No worms n-n-needed. If it's t-t-truly upsetting, I c-c-could put the dirt in his mouth instead?" It is a question; she, better than he, could think of a proper way to go about fixing Glenn.

[Carnath-Emory]

They have reached a point at which even a swordswoman prone to arrogance must concede that she's ill-equipped for this conversation. For its furthest reaches, at least, where she finds herself crippled by a lack of experience and a very real fear for her student. Cut him open, after all, and she has swung back and forth between two understandings of the phrase; put back together, and a woman who wants to take this in a very literal sense does not dare to at all, the penalties for a misunderstanding being so ... permanent. What she requires is a plainly-spoken history of these matters - from Calomel, perhaps, when she makes the journey to his homestead; from Kerrak, very likely, who she journeys to within hours. And until then...

Until then, it is enough that they sit alike here, when she's dropped her chin down onto her knees; enough to concede her mistake with a small tilt of the head, and add a moment after add: "I'm sorry," as if she were a woman for whom apology comes easily as breathing. "When there is a thing that I must put back together - " a touch of fingertips to the stitches he's already seen " - that is where I must visit." The Rememberum. As good a way of saying it as any. "But I do not like to." Had very nearly died there, five years earlier; her memories of its corridors will always be bloodstained. "It is only for need."

They are quiet for a time, then. She will have it no other way, for Catch has buried his face against his knees and the sight of this hulking man's fear is piercing. It is a fear he manages in his own ways, and she will not meddle with - not for questions and answers, not for anything at all; has flattened palms against damp soil when it seems as if one might reach a touch towards him. Which would be as much a mistake with Catch as it would have been with Iosedde years ago - who would only tolerate even approach if it were slow and clear and cautious. No: she is glad to silently watch, and to welcome his emergence with quiet eyes and the very edge of a smile. And when he finds words: "What does this mean? 'Wormwoman'?"

Sometimes we ask a question fearing we already know the answer...

But look at this: how he's caught her off-guard with that sudden point of pride; No worms needed, the man says, and there's a curl of her hand to smother this sudden, helpless grin. "That is so very good. But you should know that dirt in the mouth will also upset - although not so much as dirt in the belly, I think. Glenn Burnie does not like to taste dirt, you know?" With a nod of her chin towards the tiny specks of soil still clinging near his lips. "Tell me something," and she is tugging carefully at her collar; at scarf and necklaces and all, until the edge of bandages can be seen. Fingertips are careful with this, gingerly peeling back cotton until Catch is afforded a glimpse of torn skin, angrily swollen. "Is this something which you can put back together? And does it cause you hurt to do that?"

[catch]

What a thing she asks. And, every time, it surprised Catch. Could you fix this? Could you put this back together? He knew why they did not put themselves together, yet the knowledge and the knowing are separate things. An older boy who can easily climb this tree cannot help his frustrations as the younger, smaller boys struggle. His head is lifted, just so, from his knees, and he is quiet, for he is thinking, and such thinking requires quiet. There is a lot she has presented, in so few words, that he must consider, and foremost is that ugly, welting red, his addled mind picking out the bits of Iron that show through, the skeleton of silvered steel.

Before he could answer, he must act. "Your iron wuh, w-w-won't hurt me, will it?" he asks, yet even as the feared trembles it's way past his lips, he is moving, shifting his bulk with arms along, and in just a moment Ariane might find him close, so close, a touch that both have prevented, have gone out of their way to avoid, now made inevitable. Like a king, Catch tilts his head to her, the ruined, pitted edge of his skull brought, in agonizing slowness, to rest upon her shoulder, giving her every chance to flee - yet, she has asked for this. And such is Catch's impression of her that he does not react with suspicion, does not quote oft-lectured words from Cinnabar and Glenn and Elliot. About strangers, and how they might use. He hums, tuneless, to himself for a time. Getting things in order. Anticipating. Then, with a bass thrum that echos through his body, he finally lets loose the other Questions that festered in him.

"F-f-full of worms. I saw. They wear her like a skin, you see. I th-thought Ser Glenn was like th-that, maybe, with the maggots. But his bones are all th-there. Her bones are in the earth, and th-there's j-just worms, now. They d-d-don't look so fine, but Ser Glenn keeps them close." And as he sings, and speaks, there is nothing. A tickling, perhaps. A slow, creeping ease of pain. It is not so rapid, perhaps, but the wound may be a wound a few weeks older, the pain like a bruise.

"Worms are like m-m-maggots, too, clean, except wh-when th-th-they're wrong. She is angry I know she's wrong, I th-think." Should he speak so freely? He hesitates, as if he has said something terrible rude; she may see, if she is watching, the slightest flush of pink rise to his cheeks, and he pulls away a fraction of a skin's depth. "... I'm sorry. I d. I d-d-don't mean to gossip," he mutters, an apologetic stutter as fingers curl and twist the fabric front of his worn shirt. She has asked, yes, but that did not give him free reign to speak so.

"How do I get the dirt into Ser Glenn?" he asks, pressing forth again. Putting the Emory back together.

[Carnath-Emory]

What a thing she asks. This woman who imagines herself a weapon, and with very good reason. Who is a tool put to very precise and specific use for the most of her short life, and that she wears fewer scars than most swords might is less a testament to her skills than to the talents of certain extraordinary Myrken residents, and their insistence that a weapon live. That wound is torn into skin far younger than the woman's five and twenty years, skin which at its edges collides with flesh far younger yet; she is a patchwork of old healings, and so many of them unwilling. Doesn't her jaw still ache with the memory of Starr's fist? When he'd knocked her down to the ground and held her there, ignoring a weapon's screaming, furious horror of the sorcery their friend intended...

What a thing she asks. And how poorly she asks it. And all unsuspecting, so that: "The iron will not hurt you," she's blindly reassured, uncertain of his caution's source but willing to soothe it regardless. "It is only armour; it knows only to protect." So that an Ashfiend's best torments had agitated it into a seething mess - but coaxed not a single strand of it into leaving her flesh, despite all his desperate urgings. "It is quiet now. It does not fear you - "

The breath catches still in her throat.

And how the neck stiffens even as she forces calmness throughout her senses, for his motion is abrupt and his proximity is unavoidable, and a swordswoman is torn between her own shock and a very real fear of wounding him with it. But his head is looming towards her shoulder, and the body would have itself extricated from this with a sudden, furious jerk of motion if she allowed it; it is with held breath and the jaw clenched against a shout that she begins to ease slowly back from him. One half-inch and then another, and so very gently as the mouth manages to shape: "But what are you doing - "

Her answer arrives not in the soft hum of his voice, but the eruption of dark colour in her skin, and perhaps Catch will see this as well: a network of dark runes inked into her flesh, spreading from the wound's edges as if drawn there by some invisible hand. Even as his presence seeps into her flesh, even as the slow, constant agony of torn muscle begins to fade they have ascended the line of her throat, crested the edge of her narrow jawline, and by then, she's realised. By then she's learned the exact measure of her mistake:

"No." As quietly as she can manage it; as steadily. What is a weapon's worth, if it cannot swallow back its alarm? "No. You need not do this. You need not put it together. It was a question, Catch; it was only a question, and I did not speak it well." The heart threatens to race, the breath to become so light in her lungs; by her side a hand clenches into soil, clenches there so that it will not stupidly hit. "Catch -

Can you stop this, now that it has begun?"

[catch]

No. She has no answers for him, only questions. She eases away when she should lean. She says, "No, Catch," when she should say Yes. His own words trail into that thrum, and his ruined head draws back, but his eyes are not for her, but the spread of black, of Writings. Writings, writings, terrible Writings wrought in skin. They are not the mirror of the silver scars that ruin his hands. These seem more elegant, less utilitarian. Beautiful. They mar her steel.

It is not Catch before her, then, but an inscrutable, silent Thing, a madman, one who's mismatched eyes burn with a Sanity that could not be grasped. "Why is th-this?" he asks, all the sing-song gone from his voice, a silver mist held between his teeth. He does not draw back, but he, also, does not lower his head, does not touch. He is hurt. The Writing glares at him, like an angry bruise, and he can hear their hisses roaring in his ears. "Am I not wonderful? You, y-y-you, I think you, you're wonderful. Why not me? Why not?"

Can he stop it? Certainly. It is stopped now, just as she has wished, but Catch is beside himself, out of himself. He sputters, fragmentary words and noises of an emotion he could not feel or control, rejection. It was like the way he had felt when the Dreamlady spoke of mating with Kals. No one has ever asked him to stop that which he does so well. No one has ever reacted as if he were a wicked, vile thing.

This moment, it is dangerous. Catch's shoulders fill the room, and his rage crackles around him, turning what green, growing things there were into sour, yellow wails of snuffed, delicate green. For a moment, she will See, a glimpse of what a few others have seen; flickering, sickly color, the rabble of sound and color and vengeance and murder made flesh. For a heart's beat, there is an Understanding that few minds could grasp with any sanity. She, who has looked into so many terrors, can be one of them.

Then it is only Catch, mad, poor Catch, dangerously overlarge for a child's mind, but not so deadly, and he, without a word, but with a dearth of sniffles and angry tears, he lurches to his feet, and darts into the pathetic greens, meaning to hide from the sudden cruelty of the Iron Heat. His bulk does not allow him; he remains pathetically obvious, especially as he makes so much noise as he does his best not to cry.

"I huh-h-hope you die, then!" he says in petty anguish, unaware of what he has almost done, what still whispers in echos around him, manifest in the multi-silver streaks that curl from his mouth with each shaking breath. There is a moment's pause, where all he does is jab angry fists into his eyes, and scrub at his runny nose with the hem of his shirt. Finally, more contrite, still so unaware: "I'm sorry I t-t-turned you black," he whispers.

[Carnath-Emory]

Terrible writings. Terrible and beautiful. As they must be, for these are the work of a huntsman whose essence is equilibrium, an artist whose thousand knives had been many hours about the carving of pattern into flesh. And bone. And spirit, she'd sometimes imagined, this weapon which had demanded that obliteration. They mar her steel, these marks; they sometimes harness it. They are a testament and an absolution.

Is he shuddering in this space they share? But in this tenuous moment she experiences him through the filter of her own old fear; through the haze of a hundred warring impulses, knowing all too well how clouded her perceptions must be. He does not touch, and nor does she - not when the hands yearn to clench into fists that hit, not when the hands long to soothe, to comfort. His flesh might not shudder but his self surely does, and to touch at all would be jarring, destructive. She does not touch; she hardly speaks. These are soundless things which her lips shape, these are reassurances which her heart would shout if her mouth could find the words for them, and it cannot. Has managed his name - once, twice, and so quietly that it's surely lost in the haze of his pain. She has leaned back so very slightly, into an angle that will have her looking up towards his half-hid features -

The moment rings with sudden dangers.

She is breathless before the storm of it, before a creature who fills all the world with his self and radiates furious tension like a heatwave. Like static and slow fire, and she will not cower before this because it is not in her nature to kneel; she will not turn her eyes from it because it is always in her nature to seek. What she has found is draining her world of all its life, and she sucks in breath as if there might be none to had; breathes barely a sound as the iron explodes from her flesh in a jarring, agonising rush, molten and bristling. And hardly realises it, for she is an armoured thing kneeling in the midst of a tempest and knowledge floods over her like a tide.

"But what have they done to you," she's breathed; softly, so softly -

And it is gone. With a crash of motion it is gone, and the armour's snapped back beneath her skin even as the man buries himself amidst distant, ragged foliage. He is just a Catch again; she is just flesh again, the sort that will slacken a little now that he's half-hid himself away. His retreat has freed her to let the shoulders slump and the breath come freely; to settle palms upon her knees and keep them there until they've lost their tremor. I hope you die, he's called at her, and it hits her like a slap - but she's laughing a moment after it, and softly now, as she shifts to sit more comfortably in the dirt.

"Catch." The voice is steady, now; easier by far, and shaped as much by her smile as anything else. "Catch, you've done nothing wrong. The fault was mine; I am not so good with words, yes?" He'd said so. She'd said so, too. "The black was not your fault." And why, why does it trouble him so? Oh, the explanations she should have demanded of that huntsman three years and more ago! But by that point, of course, she'd been too far gone to ask him anything at all.

"See?" And she will not approach him, but lifts her palms in demonstration nonetheless: thin, pale skin; a weapon's old scars. "It is already gone." And all the while her blood sings, sings, with blistering exhilaration.

[catch]

The Iron had come, though she has said it would not hurt, and it has gone, along with the black Writings that writhed, like living things. Did they contain, like his own? Did they enhance, like Niall's? For once, Catch has questions, and for once, they are not silly. He will hide, though Ariane assures him. He has never experienced hurt while putting things back together, not even when he had dragged Suede's broken brains back into a coherent whole. And how much of Myrken had thanked him for that kindness? More, perhaps, for putting Rhaena's hand back where it should be. Finally, the snuffing and sniffing would cease, and there is the barest peek of mismatched eyes through the foliage - eyes that shone with tears, but little else, empty as they had been.

"You've n-n-not rotted?" he asks, disbelieving. Not because it is her, or that he distrusts her, though now, he is far more wary, as he should have been if he listened to Cinnabar and Elliot more often. He, simply, cannot trust his own eyes, and even now he wonders if he has truly caused the Rot, the Writing, or if it is something his foolish eyes have been tricked into seeing, into believing. He cannot even be certain that he has heard her right - 'what has been done' - but seeing her there, pale and smooth and perfect, with no Marks or Writings, or even iron, upon her, his trembling lips betray.

"They c-c-c-cut open my head, and wrapped it in wires. They f-f-filled it, with bees and stars and the Fat Man and the Wolf, and then rolled it in honey to stick it all t-t-together, and. And p-p-put it back wrong." He says all this without self-pity, simple, remorseless, and factual, despite the ridiculous images he conveys. It is a way to explain, without having to delve too deeply into the worm-paths that house the memory, the loss. "How. How d-d-did." And he hesitates, stops. His feet scuffle in the dirt, and his head is thrust a little further from the protective leaves, muzzle set in resolution. "D-d-did they c-c-cut you open to, to lay the steel on your b-b-bones?"

[Carnath-Emory]

She should never have asked. Not here - in this moment; not like that, clumsily questioning a creature of which she has only the slightest understanding. A woman might list the horrors which could have resulted of that error and find herself occupied for hours; must be fiercely grateful, instead, that the limb remains intact at all. If her phrasing had been worse - if she'd somehow asked him to remove the wound and he'd taken her to mean the arm....

It is a lesson learned long ago and recently shunned; it is a lesson which stings.

"I have not rotted." That much, at least, she can safely say - and hope that it serves as reassurance. With the hands yet extended to him, from this very long remove, elbows balanced upon knees and steadily enough now that the moment is less fraught. But instead of a closer inspection, what Catch offers her is the answer she'd never anticipated, to a question that had torn from her lips before she could catch it back again. It hushes her for a time, as it must, and if the imagery is ridiculous one would not know it from her features; these are solemn eyes, pale and considering, and the mouth set flat and narrow below. For while the details are nothing which she can decipher, the essence of it all is so clear: that something was done; that it was done deliberately; that Catch is aware of this.

The mind searches silently for words, and finds none. The gaze would drop to hide its sorrow, but there is a question in kind - and it is nothing that she can decline.

"They did not cut me open; it was not done to me, but in accident. We were to guard a place - with armour and sword, you know? We stood outside its walls; there was a sound; the sky burned, everything broke - even the ground beneath our feet. I fell. After, when I woke, the sword was by my hand and the armour was gone; I did not understand until a very much later." It is not a difficult thing to describe; she is years removed from that old anger, that old, worn outrage. But after a moment's quiet, she lifts her eyes again; regards his very small approach, and adds:

"They did cut me open to place the black on my bones. Or into my flesh, perhaps; I do not understand much of it. Only that their knives were many; that the process was long; that after it, everything had changed." And it is so strange to hear it spoken like this; spoken at all, this thing which she has not described even for her sister, even for her architect. And yet the moment demanded, and there was no thing sufficient but this.

[catch]

"Ah," is all Catch says, and he looks so wise, surrounded by greenery, so wise and so understanding. How much he truly understands, he does not know. But he knows this suffering. He knows it, put upon him, and perhaps - perhaps - he can stretch, can meet those outstretched fingers halfway, and know that this one done on another. True sympathy, and not learned. True pity without being piteous, without secretly wondering 'why must I pity?'. He can be cruel, in this way, but for now he really does understand. He settles into the earth once more, and though he does not meet her hands, his own, long arms reach forth, and settle his palms against the loamy ground. So she may see his scars, tattoos that had once been black, until Lamai had touched his mind. There are many things about this that he does not know, or cannot guess at. But he senses, somehow, that this is something that is not to be shared, for he himself did not share it, not often. It was too distressing. She, too, must be distressed, at the cruelty of the nebulous They, who Catch sees as the same as his, and would not be persuaded otherwise. There is only one They.

"It's n-n-not good, that b-black. It's f-f-frightful. And I'm sorry, th-They g-got their hands on you." He is sorry, he finds, and that alone is cause for him to pause, to mull over that feeling as he rocks back on his heels. He, with his pockets full of dirt, intent on - somehow - getting it into Glenn Burnie. He feels, suddenly, sorry. "Th-that must have come f-f-from my head, the fire, and the. The breaking. I used to go into it, and all the b-b-bad would come out. I'm... ss-ssorry f-for that, too." He is contrite, he is wilted. He believes, firm in his heart, that he has caused this trouble for her, when it is anything but; that whatever had put the steel in her bones, he was somehow the cause, and this led Them to her, to do what they will.

[Carnath-Emory]

Can he do this? Make this small, significant gesture: a motion which does not require him to move much at all, so that he may keep to the safety of his wilted refuge. When the soft, small sound of his hurt gives way to words she does not speak at all, and when he dares this almost-approach she scarcely moves - except to lean so slightly, so slowly, to really look at last upon what marks those broad hands. Sunlight catches against the silver sometimes, or perhaps her eyes only imagine that; sunlight ignites tiny sparks of light, fierce against flesh and clinging dirt, and what they illuminate is something very different from the writing hidden back beneath her skin. Questions threaten, and these she will restrain until a different moment, a different day; this is not the time to press him. Not now, when he is only beginning to return to himself, from a flex of motion and being and all its raw fury...

But here are words which must stir her from this watching, because he has mistaken her - and perhaps inevitably. His voice is gone rich with a sorrow she does not deserve, and the woman's lips hesitate upon the verge of so many different explanations, all of them essential because he has misunderstood a process and it could be so easily described.

Kill a man; kill a dozen. Men and women both: break bones, tear skin; nail them to doors for their neighbours to see. Do it again, do it again: know them for villains, that there's no other way; love every minute. Beat that woman's face until your fingers slip with blood: look long into her dying eyes; look into her soul and freeze beneath its innocence, the terrible burning knowledge that this was a mistake and as her heart sheds forgiveness all over your world -

Kill her anyway, then kill yourself too.
The swordswoman is not capable of deceit. But she can restrain a confession. There have been too many things offered into the space between them already; there have been too many words and ideas and terrible recollections, and she will not compound her errors by straining him further, by saying very simply of that black, that rot, that death: I asked for this. She will not risk harming him with things that can be set aside for now, and if this is cowardice - so be it. What she can do is explain the rest, resolve this other misconception, for:

"It did not come from your head, Catch." Quietly, now; the mouth moves and the rest of her does not at all. "Not the fire; not the breaking. It was a very long ago, and far from here." E'strielle, sunlit and glittering; sandstone and dusty tile. "It was only a building, a tall tower where men practiced their magicking unrestrained." And to think they'd laughed about it, those guards; joked about what little might come of the wandering curiosity of old, overpaid men. "It went wrongly, that day; the fault was theirs - never yours."

And after a moment's breath, for no reason that this moment is so heavy: "Is your dirt alright?" All that motion, after all, all that rage. "If you like, we might fetch a basket for it."

[catch]

"All b-b-bad things come from my head." He will confess; he has no such restraint, he does not fear that others will know too much, will use what they know to manipulate and control and twist the glass knives into his brain. And what he confesses is a universal truth, at least for him, time and time again proving itself, from his initial, maddened rages, to the terrible Ball, and the Changing of Jared.

His hands are worn, rough things, broad palms tipped with surprisingly long, agile fingers, pitted and grooved with the Marks, which may be Art, in their own way, but art that offends the senses. Blunt, mathematical, they lay their precise lines in his skin, mathematical ramblings drawn out by methodical, mad genius. No, they are not as pretty, and they, too, had once been black. Catch tilts his head to watch his hands, and to brood on what explanation she has chosen to give to him, that he, in his ignorance, accepts easily, where another person may niggle and pick. Not quite true; he does not question, but he knows she is wrong. Somehow, he caused it, and when she asks about his dirt, he cannot help a small, desperate bit of laughter, tinged with the mania of his brief, terrible Becoming.

"A Glenn-sized basket." How often does he forget to say the 'Ser'? It is a part of Glenn, and the sudden familiarity wipes away his grin and his awkward chortles, and he is once more wet, wide-eyed solemness. He pulls his hands away, but only so he can check his pockets, pulling dirt free, along with bits, odds and ends, the sort of collection a boy might have; tiny skulls, feathers, shattered bird's eggs held together only by thin membrane, little, broken lead soldiers. It is all dumped out, and Catch runs his fingers through the loam he has collected in worry. "It sings t-t-true," he finally says, with not a little relief.

"D-d-do. Do you th-think Ser Glenn likes pies?" It is an innocent question, so innocent, free of the weight of what their back-and-forth has become heavy with. Coy and clever. So that she will not realize what he means, the addled man begins stuffing the collection of bits and dirt back into his pockets, maintaining his innocence easily, for he would not be able to make the connection, himself, and so thinks no one else would; he feels himself terribly clever.

[Carnath-Emory]

"No," she's contradicted him - immediately and without thinking, and knows it for a mistake not moments after it's passed her lips. That was no idle confession which he spoke. It was conviction, firmly-rooted and so central to his thinking that flat contradiction's likely to do more harm than good. "Good things come from you as well, mn? Even I know this, and I have only known you this very little time." And all the while, his hands flattened there between them; his hands and hers, and she must wish - not for the first time - that she had a better memory for shape and form. That she were a more literate thing, to remember the look of what is drawn there into his skin, all glittering filaments and markings that she cannot begin to understand; the moment requires an artist's mind.

But: "Thank you," she must murmur instead, as he shifts upon the dirt to be sure of his pockets. "For showing," and with a nod towards the hands he's turned to other purposes, and where Catch has become activity the swordswoman keeps to her stillness; some pained edge lingers upon his voice, his manner, and she will not risk agitating him over again. And isn't this as good a vantage point as any? To learn what a Catch has caught in his pockets, and at some point the head has ducked a little to smother its smile against her knee; at another, a hand's reached beneath russet scarves to do quick, soundless work to one of the pendants which tangle there. Feathers and bird's eggs; her sister would have delighted. "A very large basket it must be, then. Or else a several buckets - if you would rather that than your pockets. It is for you to choose, mn?" And after a time: "Tell me - if you wish. Why did Glenn Burnie bring you here, the first time?"

It is not a dangerous question. Neither is it an idle curiosity, but then hers seldom ever is. Still, as the hulking creature busies himself amongst his treasures she's leaning towards him - but so very slowly, the arm outstretched and the rest of her moving only so far as it must. Just enough to set another tiny feather onto the ground near his collection, near but not improperly close.

"I think almost everyone like pies," and she'll settle back onto her haunches now, shifting just a little to give some comfort to stinging legs. "Pies with fruits; even pies with meats," of which she does not partake, but still - it's possible to appreciate the art, from a distance. "I imagine Glenn Burnie quite - " But she pauses a moment, then, because it had seemed so charming; this hulking man with his pocketfuls of tiny treasures, with his little toys so that for a moment she'd been thinking of mud pies -

And this is how quickly a weapon can become helpless with laughter; like this, the soundlessly muffled against her knee but the thin shoulders shaking with it all the same, and this is the most she's smiled in weeks. "What kind," she's managed, a little breathless, "would you bake for him?" Knowing all too well, and quite delighted by it.