Uncommon enough that there is a flicker of surprise across features that trend impassive. If it's impossible, Marcus doesn't raise objection, absorbing this next question instead.
Studies her, as if truly thinking about it in the moment, then says, "I don't wish to," as he scrapes a fork around his plate and then lays it down. "But the memory I took from you indicated that you aren't in complete possession of your abilities." And so, her having come into them at the late age of twenty-eight might make some sense, for better or for worse.
"I require assurance you aren't anymore a danger to yourself and those around you," as he collects up his things. The table creaks as he uses it to lever himself to his feet. "My office, when you're done eating."
Oh no. She sees that flicker of surprise and feels as if she is briefly plummeting downward as she waits for him to condemn her—
But he doesn't. At least not knowingly. The thing he says about her not being in control of her abilities is certainly a blow whether he knows it or not. Gela watches him scrape his fork around the plate and feels airless, holds herself perfectly still. It's so difficult to be in this conversation. She feels exhausted actually, like she needs to go and lay down. Being told to come to his office is truly the final straw for what little calm she has left.
Her voice accidentally skips when she answers. "Oh– okay. Okay."
She doesn't dare to look at the plate she'd pushed away from herself earlier, still half-full. She's not going to eat it but she'll definitely sit here and pretend to until he's left the room, so she hastens to take up her utensil again and holds it loosely, looking lost.
He can see the way that chills her. No regret forms in his expression, just a last evaluating look, as if it to try to separate panic from guilt, or whatever other thing that has her voice skip, has her hold herself so still.
"It'll be alright," Marcus tells her, an altered echo, and no less true now than it was a moment ago. It isn't nothing, no, but it isn't everything.
And he'll leave her be. In his office, up in the central tower, there is some paperwork he needs seeing to while he waits. There is the faint expectation that she might run, now, and affording her the opportunity had seemed like the correct maneuver, but then, perhaps there'd been a better way to inspire some trust. That he comes up short on how he might have done so doesn't dismiss the thought.
It's hard to reconcile with a mage who mightn't trust their own kind. But then, an apostate, one who never knew herself to be one for a substantial portion of her life—
Well, that's different.
She will find his door unlatched and cracked open, lamp light within tinged with cigarette smoke.
When he's left the hall, Gela doesn't immediately move. She sits there with her dinner cooling, congealing. She thinks.
There are a few options:
She could leave right now. Part of her thinks Marcus might have left her a gap between conversations for this purpose; he was there when she arrived unexpectedly in the dark, and must imagine her leaving in the same way. It wouldn't take long to pack. She's acquired things by staying here, but Gela remembers how to travel light. The only problem with this plan is that she doesn't want to go.
She could tell Marcus the truth in his office. She doesn't want to do that either, maybe even less than leaving. Somehow it feels too late to be considering it.
What Gela really wants to do is ask somebody for advice on how to get out of this, but she's told nobody of it. And she can't start now, there's no time... It feels like she sits at the table for ever, head in her hands, hating having fallen into this. Hating how attached she's become to this little life because now she can't bear to leave it.
When she arrives at his office she looks much the same as she did before, pale and resigned to her fate. No running, no hiding away, no asking for help... No casting magic either, so he'd better not ask her to do it. It's not that Marcus looks or acts at all like her mother, more that visiting him like this reminds Gela of her: a narrow room and chair, warm smoke and lamp-light, the sense of having done something wrong.
She finds she can't say anything to herald her arrival. She appears inside, without much noise.
Good, is all he thinks when the door cracks open wider and Gela quietly steps into the room. He might have thought the same had it turned out she'd run off, but with less satisfaction, some amount of regret.
A nod is followed with, "Latch the door," and setting about ordering the pages in front of him so he can se them aside without losing his place. The cigarette he has burning is wedged between his knuckles, held with practiced ease not to get ash everywhere as he does so. There's a chair opposite his side of the desk, slightly angled aside. A second desk is on the other side of the office, but seems somewhat unused.
It smells of smoke and fainter still of dog, in here, but clean, orderly. When Marcus sets aside his work, he doesn't then go to retrieve a fresh piece of paper and quill, just shifts his ashtray to a more convenient spot.
A gesture to a brass case on the desk silently asks: would she like one?
Gela does so, with the sinking feeling that she is locking herself in. Remembering that, technically, if anything does go wrong in this moment, she has locked him in here with her, doesn't help much. She feels shivery, no braver than before despite the break she took before walking herself up here.
"... No thank you," to the offer of a cigarette, as she slinks into the chair opposite his desk, curling into it, one leg tucked underneath of her body. She puts her hands delicately on the edges of it.
There is a lot of work on his desk. She cranes her head to look at it, curious, and then suddenly he takes it and sets it out of her line of sight. She retracts herself, embarrassed, glancing at her hands and nails.
One of the problems is that, "I don't know why you're doing this for me."
Maybe Marcus ought to have offered her a stiff drink instead. There are glasses somewhere, liquor on a shelf. A finger of whiskey might do her some good. But so too would getting this over with, he suspects, and starts considering his way around levering the conversation when she, instead, says that.
A minor gesture, hand tipping aside, a silent indication that he think it self-explanatory, but doesn't sound impatient when he says, "Because I was raised to consider mages something like kin, and taught to look after those who might require it. Because your business is your own, and I wouldn't be doing anything about it in an official capacity if not for my concern that you present a danger to yourself and others, given what I saw.
"Or felt," amendment. Bluntly, now that they are behind a latched door and stone walls, he says, "In this memory, you recall having killed someone. I need to know more."
Oh, well, okay. His answer is nothing she couldn't have already guessed from what he told her in the dining hall and buys her little time, maybe even makes him steer toward the actual topic at hand. He's keen to get this conversation over with. Perhaps he's just as uncomfortable as Gela is.
Swallowing, she says, "I want to know what you saw. Describe it to me?"
The request settles heavily, but he nods, sharp focus dulling as study pulls inwards.
"I recall forest," Marcus says. "Running through it. I had just eaten. A man, hunting him to the edge of a river, killing and eating him. There's no memory of that," has a faint tinge of relief, "only remembering it, and tasting blood. Feeling full. After everything, I remember it being like,"
and here he pauses, an ordering of thoughts as he taps ash from his cigarette, brow drawing at the centre. "I'd gone to Adjei's world, during that time in the Crossroads. I'd had abilities like he has, and I'd taken on a wolf shape. There were a few days where I'd become lost in it, its instincts overtaking any sense of myself. The ability to think as a person would. That's how this memory felt."
Maybe, somewhere in there, more reason that he is doing this. Something that cleaves closer to the bone and is more difficult to express than simply we are, both, mages.
"You said you don't use this ability anymore," is a prompt, turning the conversation back over to her for handling.
"Oh," says Gela faintly, halfway through his recollection. She knows which one he's speaking of. And he knows that she can't control this thing inside of her at all, that she had to ride along inside it as it loped through the woods, licking blood off its maw.
If only she had gone to Jude's world in the first place. At the time she felt violently relieved to have not but in hindsight, it would have made a good alibi.
Pushing for words, to respond, she blurts, "No. I don't want to. I think it has power over me."
Which is the closest she's ever come to really saying it, out loud. It's terrifying and exhilarating. Unknowingly, one of her hands has come to lay on her chest, palm pressing down as if trying to hold something in.
The rules in Jude's world were different. The wolf-like instincts in himself had felt separate from his own, but Marcus had been prepared to believe them in their explanations about what that was: an animal, born of the real world, as intrinsic to any of them as their own more human personalities.
Here, he knows it isn't so. That the likeliest explanation would be that of a young mage accessing shapechanging magics, but leaving herself open to spirits and demons who might exploit it. His study of her is careful, stern, but doesn't seem to bear judgment, if she were looking for it.
"There are those here who might help you," he says, quietly. "Whether you choose to engage in it again or not. Derrica has mastery over the conversing with spirits. She's from Rivain, where such traditions exist—the willing invitation of these kinds of beings. You know Adjei," everyone knows Adjei, "whose talents are distinct from the ones from this realm, but nevertheless, would provide you with empathy, and more, if you chose to pursue your magics."
He turns his cigarette to tap spent ash and ember into the crystal tray by his arm. "Enchanter Julius and myself have taught young mages before. And I know what it is to feel afraid of what I could do. If it's not why you came to Riftwatch, and chose to stay, you may wish to enter this reasoning into it."
Gela does a little flinch at the word because of how on the nose it is. That's how she thinks of it, possession, and for a moment she's certain what he says next will be an accusation of some kind because he has realised her lie but it doesn't come. She doesn't like this, she'd rather not be here and he most likely knows that, which is why his voice is gentle when he does keep talking.
"What if I want it to be gone?" Not understood, or empathised with. She's leaning forward in her chair, nauseous and hopeful, ignoring everything else he's just said. "Is that possible?"
She has seen healers... None of them ever say what she wants them to, but Gela does understand that hers is a rare circumstance.
Marcus answers first with a quiet, affirmative grunt, and it takes him longer to specify: "The Rite of Tranquility.
"Traditionally," he adds, in the tone of someone who is not recommending the thing he is saying. "Under the Circles, a mage could request to be severed from their own dreaming mind, their sense of empathy and ego, in exchange for sealing themselves from their magic and the demons that hunger for it. It's a steep price. I don't think I've ever met a mage who truly required it."
But that, says the harsh tap of the cigarette, is a whole other conversation, and he didn't compel Gela into his office to lecture her on the Circles and their politics of fear. He says, "I still haven't."
"I understand." Perfectly: it is not something she could ask for without raising eyebrows.
(But—if she had something severed in her mind, could a skilled sever-er not reach inside and cut the wolf out, leaving the rest of Gela in? She will ask somebody else about this, maybe check the library for more information. It seems like a lead.)
"I'll speak with Jude." This is the first bit of truth she's told him. Jude should know about all of this. Really, he should have known some time ago; she should have been brave. Now she'll be confiding to get him on side, which is terrible, but they respect each other, don't they, Jude and Marcus, so this much may satisfy Marcus enough to leave Gela to her own devices. It will buy her some time.
She chooses some more words, working through them carefully. "It's very kind of you to be concerned about me. I need to think on what I'd like to do before I try to speak with Enchanter Julius, or yourself, about practice taking place. Do you mind?"
Gela says that she will speak with Jude, and this is assuring. Also assuring: that she says (even if it's only to be polite, and what Diplomacy agent isn't adept at finessing a conversation, with the careful way she chooses her words) that he's been very kind. A better thing to be called than cold or intrusive or cruel, certainly. Oddly easy to convey those impressions, when attempting to do a kind thing. Or a right thing.
Marcus does not give much away, habitually, but there's some quality in accepting what she says even besides the nod that says he doesn't mind. Something he was seeking, and has been given.
"Very well," he says. "Seek me when you're ready."
That he may seek her before she is is a possibility, but not one he feels the need to articulate. Instead;
"Unless there's anything you require of me, you can go."
She tries not to scramble up from her seat, instead rising slowly from it, giving her skirts a patting down with her hands to remove imaginary dust. Marcus is a very stoic person. He is hard to glean any details from and she realises that she is envious of this trait, because she tried very hard to emulate it for years and failed. Gela is completely unable to wall herself off in the way that he does. Little parts of her will always peek through.
"Nothing for now; I'll call if anything occurs." That isn't really a lie. He's now the closest to the truth anybody has ever been, so if Gela has to say something to protect the people in the Gallows, he will be the one to hear it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Studies her, as if truly thinking about it in the moment, then says, "I don't wish to," as he scrapes a fork around his plate and then lays it down. "But the memory I took from you indicated that you aren't in complete possession of your abilities." And so, her having come into them at the late age of twenty-eight might make some sense, for better or for worse.
"I require assurance you aren't anymore a danger to yourself and those around you," as he collects up his things. The table creaks as he uses it to lever himself to his feet. "My office, when you're done eating."
no subject
But he doesn't. At least not knowingly. The thing he says about her not being in control of her abilities is certainly a blow whether he knows it or not. Gela watches him scrape his fork around the plate and feels airless, holds herself perfectly still. It's so difficult to be in this conversation. She feels exhausted actually, like she needs to go and lay down. Being told to come to his office is truly the final straw for what little calm she has left.
Her voice accidentally skips when she answers. "Oh– okay. Okay."
She doesn't dare to look at the plate she'd pushed away from herself earlier, still half-full. She's not going to eat it but she'll definitely sit here and pretend to until he's left the room, so she hastens to take up her utensil again and holds it loosely, looking lost.
no subject
"It'll be alright," Marcus tells her, an altered echo, and no less true now than it was a moment ago. It isn't nothing, no, but it isn't everything.
And he'll leave her be. In his office, up in the central tower, there is some paperwork he needs seeing to while he waits. There is the faint expectation that she might run, now, and affording her the opportunity had seemed like the correct maneuver, but then, perhaps there'd been a better way to inspire some trust. That he comes up short on how he might have done so doesn't dismiss the thought.
It's hard to reconcile with a mage who mightn't trust their own kind. But then, an apostate, one who never knew herself to be one for a substantial portion of her life—
Well, that's different.
She will find his door unlatched and cracked open, lamp light within tinged with cigarette smoke.
no subject
There are a few options:
She could leave right now. Part of her thinks Marcus might have left her a gap between conversations for this purpose; he was there when she arrived unexpectedly in the dark, and must imagine her leaving in the same way. It wouldn't take long to pack. She's acquired things by staying here, but Gela remembers how to travel light. The only problem with this plan is that she doesn't want to go.
She could tell Marcus the truth in his office. She doesn't want to do that either, maybe even less than leaving. Somehow it feels too late to be considering it.
What Gela really wants to do is ask somebody for advice on how to get out of this, but she's told nobody of it. And she can't start now, there's no time... It feels like she sits at the table for ever, head in her hands, hating having fallen into this. Hating how attached she's become to this little life because now she can't bear to leave it.
When she arrives at his office she looks much the same as she did before, pale and resigned to her fate. No running, no hiding away, no asking for help... No casting magic either, so he'd better not ask her to do it. It's not that Marcus looks or acts at all like her mother, more that visiting him like this reminds Gela of her: a narrow room and chair, warm smoke and lamp-light, the sense of having done something wrong.
She finds she can't say anything to herald her arrival. She appears inside, without much noise.
no subject
A nod is followed with, "Latch the door," and setting about ordering the pages in front of him so he can se them aside without losing his place. The cigarette he has burning is wedged between his knuckles, held with practiced ease not to get ash everywhere as he does so. There's a chair opposite his side of the desk, slightly angled aside. A second desk is on the other side of the office, but seems somewhat unused.
It smells of smoke and fainter still of dog, in here, but clean, orderly. When Marcus sets aside his work, he doesn't then go to retrieve a fresh piece of paper and quill, just shifts his ashtray to a more convenient spot.
A gesture to a brass case on the desk silently asks: would she like one?
no subject
"... No thank you," to the offer of a cigarette, as she slinks into the chair opposite his desk, curling into it, one leg tucked underneath of her body. She puts her hands delicately on the edges of it.
There is a lot of work on his desk. She cranes her head to look at it, curious, and then suddenly he takes it and sets it out of her line of sight. She retracts herself, embarrassed, glancing at her hands and nails.
One of the problems is that, "I don't know why you're doing this for me."
no subject
A minor gesture, hand tipping aside, a silent indication that he think it self-explanatory, but doesn't sound impatient when he says, "Because I was raised to consider mages something like kin, and taught to look after those who might require it. Because your business is your own, and I wouldn't be doing anything about it in an official capacity if not for my concern that you present a danger to yourself and others, given what I saw.
"Or felt," amendment. Bluntly, now that they are behind a latched door and stone walls, he says, "In this memory, you recall having killed someone. I need to know more."
no subject
Swallowing, she says, "I want to know what you saw. Describe it to me?"
So she can figure out what to say back.
no subject
"I recall forest," Marcus says. "Running through it. I had just eaten. A man, hunting him to the edge of a river, killing and eating him. There's no memory of that," has a faint tinge of relief, "only remembering it, and tasting blood. Feeling full. After everything, I remember it being like,"
and here he pauses, an ordering of thoughts as he taps ash from his cigarette, brow drawing at the centre. "I'd gone to Adjei's world, during that time in the Crossroads. I'd had abilities like he has, and I'd taken on a wolf shape. There were a few days where I'd become lost in it, its instincts overtaking any sense of myself. The ability to think as a person would. That's how this memory felt."
Maybe, somewhere in there, more reason that he is doing this. Something that cleaves closer to the bone and is more difficult to express than simply we are, both, mages.
"You said you don't use this ability anymore," is a prompt, turning the conversation back over to her for handling.
no subject
If only she had gone to Jude's world in the first place. At the time she felt violently relieved to have not but in hindsight, it would have made a good alibi.
Pushing for words, to respond, she blurts, "No. I don't want to. I think it has power over me."
Which is the closest she's ever come to really saying it, out loud. It's terrifying and exhilarating. Unknowingly, one of her hands has come to lay on her chest, palm pressing down as if trying to hold something in.
no subject
The rules in Jude's world were different. The wolf-like instincts in himself had felt separate from his own, but Marcus had been prepared to believe them in their explanations about what that was: an animal, born of the real world, as intrinsic to any of them as their own more human personalities.
Here, he knows it isn't so. That the likeliest explanation would be that of a young mage accessing shapechanging magics, but leaving herself open to spirits and demons who might exploit it. His study of her is careful, stern, but doesn't seem to bear judgment, if she were looking for it.
"There are those here who might help you," he says, quietly. "Whether you choose to engage in it again or not. Derrica has mastery over the conversing with spirits. She's from Rivain, where such traditions exist—the willing invitation of these kinds of beings. You know Adjei," everyone knows Adjei, "whose talents are distinct from the ones from this realm, but nevertheless, would provide you with empathy, and more, if you chose to pursue your magics."
He turns his cigarette to tap spent ash and ember into the crystal tray by his arm. "Enchanter Julius and myself have taught young mages before. And I know what it is to feel afraid of what I could do. If it's not why you came to Riftwatch, and chose to stay, you may wish to enter this reasoning into it."
no subject
"What if I want it to be gone?" Not understood, or empathised with. She's leaning forward in her chair, nauseous and hopeful, ignoring everything else he's just said. "Is that possible?"
She has seen healers... None of them ever say what she wants them to, but Gela does understand that hers is a rare circumstance.
no subject
"Traditionally," he adds, in the tone of someone who is not recommending the thing he is saying. "Under the Circles, a mage could request to be severed from their own dreaming mind, their sense of empathy and ego, in exchange for sealing themselves from their magic and the demons that hunger for it. It's a steep price. I don't think I've ever met a mage who truly required it."
But that, says the harsh tap of the cigarette, is a whole other conversation, and he didn't compel Gela into his office to lecture her on the Circles and their politics of fear. He says, "I still haven't."
no subject
(But—if she had something severed in her mind, could a skilled sever-er not reach inside and cut the wolf out, leaving the rest of Gela in? She will ask somebody else about this, maybe check the library for more information. It seems like a lead.)
"I'll speak with Jude." This is the first bit of truth she's told him. Jude should know about all of this. Really, he should have known some time ago; she should have been brave. Now she'll be confiding to get him on side, which is terrible, but they respect each other, don't they, Jude and Marcus, so this much may satisfy Marcus enough to leave Gela to her own devices. It will buy her some time.
She chooses some more words, working through them carefully. "It's very kind of you to be concerned about me. I need to think on what I'd like to do before I try to speak with Enchanter Julius, or yourself, about practice taking place. Do you mind?"
no subject
Marcus does not give much away, habitually, but there's some quality in accepting what she says even besides the nod that says he doesn't mind. Something he was seeking, and has been given.
"Very well," he says. "Seek me when you're ready."
That he may seek her before she is is a possibility, but not one he feels the need to articulate. Instead;
"Unless there's anything you require of me, you can go."
no subject
She tries not to scramble up from her seat, instead rising slowly from it, giving her skirts a patting down with her hands to remove imaginary dust. Marcus is a very stoic person. He is hard to glean any details from and she realises that she is envious of this trait, because she tried very hard to emulate it for years and failed. Gela is completely unable to wall herself off in the way that he does. Little parts of her will always peek through.
"Nothing for now; I'll call if anything occurs." That isn't really a lie. He's now the closest to the truth anybody has ever been, so if Gela has to say something to protect the people in the Gallows, he will be the one to hear it.
"Have a good evening."