Agonizing over the Small Things

[Glenn]

It was literally one of the strangest moments Glenn Burnie had experienced since arriving in myrken. It had been a small, quiet thing, a calm in the storm that had been a very horrific week. He had been sitting there, breakfasting with his teacher, with Ariane Emory, speaking of heavy things indeed. In the midst of this, it merely dawned upon him.

There was common ground. Of course there was. He and Agnieszka Kaczmarek had certain things in common. He'd been an idiot not to see it, but then, he hadn't REALLY seen it, not in any way that had mattered. It had taken an examination of a man with almost nothing in common with her, of Sylvius Duquesne for Glenn to realize it.

But he HAD realized it and that is why he found himself, after his training with Ariane yet before lunchtime, perhaps, here at a certain hill, which overlooked a certain field where a certain captain was overseeing the martial training of Myrken Wood's last line of defense. Hm. She had delegated the actual training to members of the New Myrken Army apparently. He hadn't known that. It was interesting, even topical.

Regardless, he would not be sneaking up on her. She had the higher ground as he walked up the hill. The mapmaker and government employee would stand out in his dark clothing, very professional, fairly expesnive, and nealy purchased in response to the slowly warming weather. There was no reason not to call out to her. "Agnie! Took me a while to find you. I know your working but do you have time to take a walk with me? I just want to talk for a few minutes."

[channe]

Agnieszka has simply been tasked with the organization of the Militia; no longer encompassing Myrkentown alone, there would be branches in rebuilt Foggy Bottom, in Furt, in the small cotswolds beyond the forest, and she can't possibly train them all herself. Instead, she's hired others -- a few from the Army she's known for a while, competent former Straka and Brotherhood men, some of the Myrken trainers who worked for Kerrak who chose not to continue on when the Brotherhood left town.

And there are other things Agnieszka Kaczmarek needs to do, Militia things that require -- other kinds of attention.

Also, Myrkentown is a prize for any army, and thus Agnieszka chooses to exert her command by, as she told Dominik the other night, 'not screwing it the hell up herself.'

She slides off the stone she's sitting on as Glenn approaches. She is dressed in militia colors, in a militia armband. She listens, and puts away something she's been writing in a bag, and then shrugs. "Sure. What's the matter?"

[Glenn]

Well, finding her had actually been the easy part. There was a morbid sort of curiosity which caused his neck to strain slightly. He was trying to get a glimse of whatever she had been writing. It wasn't for the sake of nosiness so much as the fact that he found he spelling absolutely charming. It might be his very favorite thing about her.

He hadn't quite worked out the rest of it yet. And that meant he was ALREADY scratching at the back of his neck. See, he wasn't entirely sure. They were in positions that had much in common, but at the same time, she had something else driving her. She had Aeryn and his current situation. It meant that things that were bothering him might be nothing at all to her.

"Look, sometimes I don't explain things too well when it comes to you." And he had started to walk on the assumption that she would be beside him. He'd look like a real idiot if she didn't decide to follow. "So I'll be blunt about it," and then she can call him an idiot and he can go home and that would be that.

"I think maybe we should start talking more. Not shit-talking like we did last night, but talking. Look, we're both pretty young, both suddenly in positions of responsibility when a few months ago we weren't, both trying to figure out what the hell we're doing, and both not getting much direction from Cinnabar, probably because he's got about as much of an idea as we do, right?" And that didn't get to the real meat of it, but he wasn't ready for that yet. It would be opening up too much, too soon, and to her.

He had to give her something more, though. "Look at us. Look at how we're dressed. And you've got a place that you OWN. And I'm saving up too. I can't stay in Darkenhold forever." And here was an uncomfortable laugh. "When Rhaena gets back, I ought to move back out. I'm saving up for a place in town, too. Been saving up. It's been a lot and it's been happening quick. Hell Agnie, I only even got here last summer. A lot's happened since then, right?" And they were changing. He couldn't say it, but that's what was happening. They would shape the jobs, yes, but the jobs would shape them too. The jobs WOULD change them. The money, the power... the secrets. The hard decisions.

"We're trying to figure out what we should be doing and I just think we ought to start figuring some of this stuff out together."

[channe]

"I won it in a card game," she says, quietly. "It's not like I actually bought the place."

She's stowing the paper; it looks like a map, crudely-drawn, with place-names and arrows and circles, and badly-scrawled handwriting at the bottom in possible explanation. And, after all of that, she's following.

"... you do have to get outta Darkenhold," she says, quietly. "You can't be under Ariane's thumb no more, and that's Ariane's place, and Quincy's -- I been there. It ain't yer style no more."

And then, she stops, her hands clasped in front of her.

"... I'd like that, Glenn Burnie, but first I gotta ask whose man ya really are."

The money.
The power.
The secrets.

Especially the secrets.
Those have already begun to bleed through.

[Glenn]

"Doesn't change nothing. You could have bought the place soon, anyway." It wasn't like it was ... well, there was a reason why he wasn't visiting her there. There would have been more privacy there, right? What a dive.

Maps tended to draw his interest as if they were a personal vice of his. When he discovered Vanidor's archives, he spent two weeks getting nothing useful done and just copying maps. Still, today, his eyes didn't linger. They wouldn't have had the chance to, anyway. She followed him and that was good. The words were hard enough without physically looking like an idiot on top of it.

Oh yes, he couldn't stay in Darkenhold. He probably shouldn't be there now, not after what he learned. He desperately did not want to leave though. That would sooner than not be an easy decision, albeit a painful one. It didn't have much to do with Ariane's thumb, though... or maybe it had everything to do with that.

Agnie asked her question and he came to a halt. She could have answered that, couldn't she? He was Cinnabar's man. ... Or he was Ariane's man. He was certainly Rhaena's for as much as that was worth. How was he going to answer that? He didn't seem to be doing too well with it.

"I.. I don't think of myself as anyone's, Agnie, not really. I'm not so good at following orders. I am pretty good at doing what I feel I have to, even when the cost is too high. I won't forsake Cinnabar. I'll show Ariane discretion in every way humanly possible. And when it comes to Rhaena, I..." His voice cut off quickly. He shook his head.

Glenn would not give her time to reply though. He was quick to continue. "Interest. It's all about interest. I've seen a lot of shitty things, Agnie. Someday I'm going to sit down and tell you all about it, about the last eight years of my life. And you're going to look at me like I'm a madman. Rhaena did when I tried to tell her and she actually likes me, right? Myrken's my home. It's the only home I've known in a long time, maybe ever, and I'll do whatever I have to in order to make sure that I don't lose it and the people I care about. That's my interest. Everything i do is because I'm selfish, Agnie. Means I make sure i'm involved in everything. If something happens, I won't just watch helplessly. I'll be in a position to do something."

[channe]

"Discretion?" The word is uttered innocently, quickly -- as she continues to follow him. She doesn't walk behind him; just an inch or two, something that might be considered a flanking position. And perhaps that's why she keeps the place, Glenn, because people like you don't enjoy coming there --

"... she's got too much discretion." She sniffs, and pauses. "A lot of people do shit for the 'benefit of Myrken,' Glenn. Or they think they do. An' that's what I can't figure out. Who's really got that. If *we* even got that." Another pause. "So, we can talk. What you wanna talk about?"

[Glenn]

"That's the thing, I guess.." And she focused on what he said about Ari more than anything else. And he just moved right on past it. She asked him a question he didn't know how to answer and he stumbled with it. He shouldn't have said that at all. "I told you. I'm selfish. Benefit of Myrken, to me, means the benefit of the things i care about first, general stability second, and everything else as a real distant third."

And it wasn't exactly a horribly noble thing to say, maybe, but he didn't seem to care. It was the opposite, really. He seemed a little more animated and began to walk again. "This is good. See, this is what we need. We need to figure this shit out, Agnie. This is what we need to be talking about. What we're doing, why we're doing it, the consequences of it, what it's going to do to us. The cost."

"I don't just make maps for Cinnabar. You know that." Was there anyone in Myrken that didn't? "I research things. There's a lot he doesn't know, that he thinks he needs to know, or I think he needs to know. So I go and find out about those things. And sometimes I tell him what I find out and sometimes I don't." She knew that too, though she might not have known the last part, that he didn't just go and blindly tell Cinnabar everything. Now she did.

All of that had been pretty easy. He thought about letting it go, letting it ride and seeing what she would say to it. This had all been sort of one-sided so far, more so than he had wanted. They were both going through the same thing in a different way. He'd keep the next part vague though. "If I keep walking down this path... I'll be doing other things soon too, things that he CAN'T know about. Slowly at first and then more and more. I've looked into the eyes of men who have walked that path, Agnie." And here there was a shrug. Myrken changed people, but it changed people with power most of all.

[channe]

Something in what he says strikes her; and she quickly moves in front of him, raising her hand, quiet like the eye of the a hurricane. One-sided? Perhaps. But he went to seek her out first, and she's been remarkably shut-mouthed about her own selfish battle, about the thing that has made her choose something completely different than Glenn Burnie --

"... what things, Glenn?"

A pause, and then the hand comes down. But she's still looking at him.

[Glenn]

"Things." He'd say simply, having stopped because she did but not exactly looking at her like she was really barring his way. Much of what he knows is from history, from things studied, from a few things told, and from a few things seen. He doesn't necessarily feel like voicing any of them right now. "Look, I'm not saying that I'm thinking about doing anything now. Nothing like that. Just.. it's a path. And it's a path a lot of people have walked down," and it's up ahead of him and he can see the beginning of it if he squints a bit. "Can we keep walking?" He didn't need her staring at him like this.

[channe]

From whence did these revelations come, Glenn Burnie?

That's the question racing through the young Kaczmarek captain's head, along with others -- many others; and she's falling to his side again, her eyes narrowed slightly. That could mean so many things, so many, many things, but one thing in particular, one office that many men aspire to, one path that begins when they think they must do what is right --

She fights off a slightly discomfited, sick feeling.

"I know you're not jus' the mapmaker. Nobody wears clothes like that as jus' the mapmaker. What did Cinnabar make you swear to?"

[Glenn]

"Nothing."

And he's looking at her with fairly honest eyes. It was just about the last thing in the world Cinnabar Calomel would want for him, would want at all, which just might be why it would be necessary someday. "Nothing. Look. I've just been thinking too much. Hell, Agnie. I just thought we might be in a similiar spot, that's all, just I'd been pressing on and working so hard and I hadn't thought about what it might mean for me in six months, or a year. Or longer."

And he'd go for physical contact now, to try to put a hand on her shoulder. She thinks he's lying maybe? Well, he would let her feel how steady his arm is now. "We've got no one to tell us things, no one with experience, except for that we do, but I look at the people we have and all I can think is that I'm not sure I want to end up like them, ok? That's where my head's been at."

[channe]

"Nothing." Her voice says that she almost doesn't believe this, not at all, not one bit -- "No, of course. You wouldn't have to. You're Glenn the perfect peon. I'm the one that fell in with the wrong political bullshit. No offense, but Gawd. They think *I'm* dangerous."

And then, he's putting his hand on her *shoulder.* It's damned good they're out of view of the struggling militia, or else she would have whacked it away. Appearances, you see. She considers this, and then a moment later, takes a breath.

"What *do* you want to end up like?" And then -- "Because I agree. We're better'n that."

[Glenn]

"Well.." And he'll look down there, and mumble something, and then repeat it. "He made me swear not to go off and do stupid, risky things without telling him first or else he can stick me in the gaol. There's a written contract that says that. Not the same thing, though, yeah, right?" It was why he didn't mention it. "Sorry."

Better than that, Agnieszka? You do know who he was thinking about when he was talking about who YOU could listen to, right? Glenn doesn't comment on that, though. He wouldn't, not unless he was very angry. Certainly not now. She had asked another one of those questions that he didn't have an answer for.

"It's been a long time since I wanted anything for my future other than to survive, Agnie. Before that, I wanted to escape, and before that, I was a slave and I didn't want anything at all except for not to get hit for messing up a lesson." He wanted to keep everything that he had right now, but that wasn't what she had asked him, was it? And it was probably impossible too. Life didn't work that way. Life in Myrken especially didn't. "I don't know. It's part of what I have to figure out. What about you?"

[channe]

And he made Agnieszka swear something else entirely; in exchange for her life, you see, and as much as Agnie knows that, as much as she understands, it still annoys that she is the one with the oath, and Glenn is the one with the glory.

"I --" she says, stopping -- "I want things I can't have, okay? Impossible things. I used to think that life was all about just keepin' on with breathin', too. Now there's so much more. So much more, o' the good an' the shitty. An' now I don't know what I want, except for all the impossible shit."

[Glenn]

He could tell her that he knew what she was talking about, but she'd probably hit him for the sheer nerve of it. Instead, he'd tell her what he DID know, what he knew about himself. "I spent so long running and being too smart to care about anyone. You can't get hurt if you don't care." Without more background, he couldn't explain this well to her, but then this wasn't the time or the place. "Seen a lot of bad things, Agnie, ok? A lot of death."

"That's why it took me so damn long with Rhaena, alright? It's been years of live or die. Run or die. And I don't have to do that here. And that's opened up a lot of things, new things, gives me freedom and takes it away." He would withdraw his hand now, would look down. He didn't have much more to say to what she said, nothing worth a damn at least.

Still, he had to say something. "I think it's important that we're real careful that we don't become what we don't WANT. If that happens while we're trying to figure out what we DO want, what we can have, then it's all pointless." Glenn must have seem so young to her, so earnest. Some shield that he usually had up when dealing with her had been put down for now. He probably seemed like a damn fool too but there wasn't any way around that.