[video]

[velocette]

[He's been mulling this over since he met Hannibal, really.]

What was the first turning point in your life? Do you even remember who your real heroes were, when you were a kid? Or maybe some people do actually idolize their parents. For me, the only idols are the ones who can't become real, but it's been pointed out to me before that it's possible to worship someone in spite of their faults.

Comments

[routemistress]

When I were a little girl, there was - 'is name was Dick, and 'e was a highwayman. And I'd've done anything. Anything. To convince 'im I were worth keeping around. To let me follow 'im. And I did, 'cause I'm better at convincing than I knew back then.

Dick turned out to be... well, a bit of a dick, in the finish. But the things I loved in 'im; the freedom and adventure and the way 'e smiled. Well. Some things stick a long time, don't they?

[velocette]

It's almost a question of nature and nurture: were you after him because of things you saw in yourself? Or did he create them?

[He's pretty sure it's the former, and his tone says as much.]

[routemistress]

[She snorts.]

That little tit never created anything. I just didn't know enough to know pink slime from steak. Dick were the most alive thing in my universe, back then, though.

[velocette]

[It strikes an uncomfortable chord in him--'the most alive thing.' But he isn't one to duck and run from discomfort, even if he does fall silent for a full minute, and then two, seeming to forget she's even there. Two minutes can be a long time to wait, and most people hang up on him when he does that, but he starts talking without checking to see if she has.]

What did you do when you realized he was just more of the slime?

[routemistress]

[She's talking from the lab, her communicator propped on the beetle tank where she can look into it while she fiddles with chicken genome data; so it's not switched off, though Iris startles pleasantly to hear the Boy's voice.]

That were when I found the bus. I started the engine and never looked back.

[She says this with a particular knowing grin, fairly certain he'll recognise that coping strategy.]

...'Ave you read Gormenghast, at all?

[velocette]

I've heard of it. My old man had a copy of Titus Alone but I never could track down the others. Why?

[routemistress]

'Cause it's a pretty accurate snapshot of where I grew up. Not, you know, details accurate, but the flavour, the way Wherewithal House were. A place so mouldered and dry and unchanging that breathing the air made me want to scream or punch someone.

Dick might've been pink slime, but 'e looked so good set against that old dust.

[velocette]

...It's possible, I suppose, he just didn't want me to read the others. In that case. He always was very aware of how I felt about our situation. [Which is a weak way of saying 'poverty'.]

You know- I think in my world, I was the slime.

[routemistress]

A poor substitute for a real thing? You?

...I 'ave a problem believing that, my love.

[velocette]

Thank you. But it's true, I'm afraid they thought I was something very different, and I let them believe it. The last girl, she turned to heroin when I couldn't fill the absence like she wanted.

[routemistress]

[She winces a little in sympathy.]

It's 'ard not to blame yourself for a thing like that. I know. But you can't live your life according to what other people need. Can you?

[velocette]

And I know her choices were her own--her choice to put her faith in me and her choice to turn to something completely false afterward. But it's hard to argue with certain evidence, when the evidence is stating you're the common link in so many people giving up.

[routemistress]

...Was it only putting faith in you?

Or was it expecting you to give 'er life meaning?

[velocette]

[He smiles wanly]

Everyone I ever met at home expected that from me. It wasn't just her.

[routemistress]

No one's got the right to ask that of another person. To make you complicit in 'er self-destruction. That's not 'ow love works and you know it.

[velocette]

That's the most bewildering part, though, isn't it? Not about her love--I know she couldn't have loved me, not without knowing me, and she didn't. But my brother does. [His brother worships him, is a better way to put it.] I'm amazed he doesn't have an altar set up for me. But even for him, I'm the excuse he uses every time he gets into a knife fight.

[routemistress]

Ah. We're back full circle there, aren't we? It's not the person so much as what they represent.

...I've got a. A friend. An old friend. 'E gets this a lot. 'E's a man people trust without ever asking why. Another Pied Piper. Spends 'is lives clearing other people's rat problems. And I wonder sometimes if that's what 'e wanted, when 'e set out into the multiverse, or if 'e just can't bear not to live up to other folks' expectations.

[velocette]

When people make up their minds about you, there's very little you can do to change their perceptions. Even begging them only seems to make them more certain you're a saint, and trying to prove them wrong usually just leads to twists of fate that make you seem superhuman to them. If that's how it worked out for your friend, too, then--I'm not sure if I'm more sorry for him, or for the people who duped themselves into chasing his shadow.

I mean it's sad to see them waste their lives on something that they build up into fiction...but it's hard to blame them. After all, I read books because I crave fiction, too.

[routemistress]

[She's wearing a soft, fond smile that's entirely unrooted in the present.]

To be fair to 'im, 'e's very good at living up to it. Cleared up more messes than 'e ever made. But you're not wrong. I've seen it wear on 'im, over the centuries.

[And then she grins, distracted.]

Just about everyone 'ere is fiction somewhere. That's one of the reasons I love it so.

[velocette]

I suppose he's one up on me for that. I started the gang wars in my city, and then tried to clean them up...but only because it got to be boring. I have a hard time seeing the world as anything but entropy, I suppose. Makes it hard to know how to unravel the knots.

[Actually he sort of loves the chaos, especially here, and it's evident in his tone.]

Is it fiction if you can experience it?

[routemistress]

[She laughs, then; not mocking, but in amused pleasure at his admission. It got to be boring.]

I'll always love you for your honesty, my Piper. You're not wrong, either. But there's another side to entropy; it's the compost new things grow out of, after all. Fresh time, new space. An infinity of second chances.

[Maybe it's her own optimistic phrasing that reminds her; but she was working up to this conversation anyway. Iris switches to text, partly because he's deaf but mostly so no one has to look at her face while she ...she doesn't want to think of it as a betrayal, but it feels horribly like one to her.]

[private/text]

need to talk to you about Harvey. how much do you remember from the mirror flood?

...also - I don't have the right to ask you to keep quiet about me speaking to you. But I ask it anyway.

text//private

[velocette]

I remember a bit. Whatever I forgot I guess I don't remember. [A joke, hah.]

Harvey probably does know you talk to me. I think I told him back when he first got assigned to me. Did he do something?

text//private

[routemistress]

no. no. hell, no. I did. The person I was in that flood, I mean.

Which I won't claim wasn't me. She is. And I could claim she meant no real harm, but that's disingenuous as fuck and not relevant. She harmed him a great deal, and she did it from inside his head, while calling it love.

He's falling apart and it's my fault. The other day he suggested I edit his memories. Just...take the whole episode away like it never happened.

text//private

[velocette]

All right. First tell me what happened, in detail. what did she do? what episode is he wanting you to erase?

text//private

[routemistress]

I suspect he means the entire relationship. There were places in it where she didn't abuse the power she had over him, but there were many more where she did.

...she did love him. Still does. That's the sickest part of it, in some ways. I don't offer it as ...I know it excuses nothing. Makes it worse, if anything.

She would play with him. She'd make him forget things; she told herself it was to make it easier, to give him a space free from his past. I can remember the self-justification. It's nauseating, in hindsight, but she made herself believe it. That he could be all right if only he would let her do his thinking and deciding for him.

Actually, there was no let, no consent asked or given. She just reached in and ordered things how she saw fit and left him with the pieces.

Piper, this can't be fixed, this can't be undone. I told him I'd wipe the memory if he asks it of me; but I can't make myself believe piling abuse on top of abuse is ever going to make anything better. I just can't.

I don't know what to do.