(Untitled)
Characters: Stoneface and OPEN!
Date/Time: From December 26th to January 2nd, let's say
Location: Varied.
Rating: PG-13 for naughty language!
Summary: Stoneface died. He's come back. People want to see him ( Read more... )
Date/Time: From December 26th to January 2nd, let's say
Location: Varied.
Rating: PG-13 for naughty language!
Summary: Stoneface died. He's come back. People want to see him ( Read more... )
Look at him. So godsdamned composed, even when he knew, he bloody well knew, and not even a flicker of regret and this could have all been avoided, and--
No. Hold it back. Save it for later, for somebody who deserves it. Justice was a fool if his suspicions were correct, but he was no murderer. How difficult it was to accept that somebody so intelligent, so trustworthy could be so stupid.
"Let's go inside then," he said, voice carefully measured, no evidence of the thoughts beating against his skull save for the hoarseness that could be blamed on one too many nights gone sleepless. His face was not twisted, but completely blank in a way that, in Stoneface's experience, meant that the subject was hiding something all the more.
Like Justice.
Damn.
He stamped his feet outside before stepping in, then turned to look at Justice. His own questioning could wait. Now, it was for Justice to speak.
"How much do you know?"
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"Take off your boots."
How much do you know? There was something in Stoneface's voice - in his eyes - that alerted him. Something that prompted a sharp memory of Wolverine's voice, rough and low - the iron smell of the blood spattered across the walls and ceiling and pooling on the floor around Stoneface's half-mutilated corpse. He knows. He did not bother to wonder why - Raise had most likely confessed it - among other things.
Somehow the awareness brought both relief and shame in equal measure, echoing something that he knew he had felt before, once. His lips set in a hard line as he suppressed a shudder at a faint and disconnected memory of blue eyes looking at him and through him across a room.
The soft swish of metal on metal broke the silence as the blade slid easily back into its housing. Justice placed both sabre and knives on the floor, taking a pace back from them before folding his arms, the damp material of the shirt sticking to his skin. It was an effort to meet Stoneface's eyes this time, but he did, forcing himself not to look away, despite the guilt that crept over him at the remembrance of the last time he'd seen the man's face. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, measured - that practiced coolness that he had become aware of in his time here - like a disguise that he could slip on whenever he pleased. Even if it sickened him to do so.
"I know that once, I told you that I had made a choice. A choice to trust someone with the truth in the belief it would act as both deterrent and punishment.
"I told you that if I was wrong, then the fault and the blame would be mine."
Justice paused, finally letting his gaze drop. The silence of the dojo was almost oppressive, but for once he was glad that Crow had chosen this particular time to vanish without trace.
"I was wrong."
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At Justice's hasty admission, surprisingly quick and straight to the point, he released the breath he hadn't known he was holding. Then he took another deep breath, and stared Justice square in the eye, his own eyes bright with unreleased tension, expression full of strangeness.
"I knew it," he said, quietly. "Hoped to Gods it wasn't true, Justice, but I knew it."
Stoneface squeezed his eyes shut, restraining the urge to simply rush forward and punch the man in the face. He had been dying to do it for a long time now. To Praise. But he couldn't, wouldn't hit an innocent mind in a guilty man's body, no matter how much it bewildered him. Instead, hissed a heartfelt, "Shit."
Of Stoneface's features, his eyes were the least threatening, the soft, ordinary brown washed out by features chiseled in stone. Now, however, they bore down on the other man, searching his face for reason, regret, apology. He saw none. Justice was a stoic man, and he knew that as well as he knew he was not kind but fair, trustworthy but false. This time, the knowledge was not enough to mollify him.
"Yeah. You were wrong. And the price ran deeper than you and me. It's only more proof that one person can't make the verdict alone."
He shook his head and laughed, his mouth open in more of a jagged grimace than a smile. The sound was gratingly loud in the silence, filled with everything but humour. "What were you thinking, Justice? That's all I want to know. By what rationale did you wish to let a man who had murdered not only you, but two people off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist? It'd be different if he was one man, but he isn't."
His lip curled. "You're a reasonable man. That's what I always thought. It wouldn't be like you to release somebody through pity, or--or through money, so what was it? What was the reason? I realize that there was no system at the time, and you couldn't have done anything because..." He washed his hands in midair, searching uselessly through memories too foggy to be scrutinized, conversations lost. "...for a variety of reasons." He sighed, his expression questioning.
And now, was the unspoken question, now that we've got him and now that we have to do something with him.... what do we do?
Stoneface was a man accustomed to yelling, but for now, his voice was dead quiet. He'd gone over this in his head innumerable times, but somehow, could not figure out an answer.
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It reminded him of his memory - of the voice of the man he supposed to be his mentor demanding an explanation for his actions. "Explain to me what I just saw." But he hadn't, not really, he knew that. The older man had known that, too - Justice had heard it in his voice in that parting exchnge. "Remember who you are."
But he couldn't remember. And that was the problem. He was adrift here with nothing to tell him if he had been tried for his own crimes, or if he had added lies and deception onto murder. Adrift and trying to prevent himself from doing... whatever he had done before - instead to make amends for the blood that he had stained his hands with while nothing more than a child.
Stoneface's words caught his attention and he met the man's gaze again, the usually warm and humorous eyes now as cold as frozen earth. And he could feel his own irritation rising in response. This was old ground, and digging over it again would achieve nothing. He had made a mistake - and one that had cost a man his life. But he knew with a clarity that went even beyond the guilt that he would not have changed his decisions at the time, even knowing then what he knew now.
"I have no intention of explaining myself to you again, Stoneface. You know as well as I that there was no other choice at the time - you could offer none yourself.
"I was wrong. But not in the decision that I made. My mistake was in not trusting you enough to tell you the truth. In forgetting the nature of this place and the way that it can erode our memories of events here. I should have forseen that Raise would lose control of Praise in time - that when he died during the fire there was a possibility his memory would have been affected. And yet I did not, and so I left him free of Raise's control and able to kill again."
A sigh, and he ran a hand through his hair, the headache that had been lingering at the back of his skull for a week beginning to blossom into a nagging pain that cut bright, jagged lines through his vision. Absently, he wondered if Crow had taken the painkillers with him when he vanished, or if he had left an emergency supply behind.
"I don't believe that Praise was involved in the attacks on your men. I believe they are connected, but not that he is respnsible for them. He is incapable of forward planning.
"If you do not believe me or wish to blame me for that too, then it is your right. I will not attempt to evade the charge."
But he just shook his head at the questioning tone in Stoneface's voice. They were all as lost as each other, here - lost in a minefield with no chart was a phrase he had once heard used. It fit.
"How do you propose to punish a man who has only a half-share in a body in a place where death has no permanence and rebirth only risks the loss of that seame memory that could prevent a repeat of the crime?"
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He didn't make that promise, because old Stoneface was straight as an arrow, couldn't be turned, couldn't be corrupted, never took a bribe and carried the law with him like a lantern in the dark. Old Stoneface wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but by Gods, he was straight. He knew that about himself, including the fact that when it came to knives he was likely a spoon, but that meant he wouldn't make Justice a promise he couldn't keep. And an old copper never promised he wouldn't take chase, because that was what he was meant to do. It was like telling a dog not to piss, or a cat not to shed cathair over mummy's favorite couch. It just wouldn't happen. He would chase. He's always chased. It never occurred to him before speaking with Justice that one would find the identity of a murderer and choose not to.
Stoneface's features had frozen in the previous conversation, but now they thawed, not sagging, but twisting into an expression of indecision and frustration. He'd been on edge for a very long time, and he was aching for the opportunity to yell, to strike, to blame, but Justice was not the man to do this to. He was impossibly cool, logical to the very end, but not the man to blame, even if Stoneface ached to bring a reaction from out of him, any reaction.
"No," he said, finally, shoulders slumping. "You're not the man to blame."
Because Stoneface always got his man, never blamed the blameless, even if he wanted to. He told himself this, because he didn't believe it, and it made what he said just a little easier to get out. He sighed, but the sound was almost silent, and for a moment, he looked far more weary than he had ever looked before.
This place had a way of aging you. Stoneface had seen it in the eyes of the youth who had no business looking as weathered as they did.
"And I believe you. Praise couldn't have--he couldn't have sorted out those attacks. More people are against the Watch than we see, that's all."
He paused, then admitted, "I have no idea how to punish him." Just that he needed to be punished. A voice inside him screamed to hang him, make him pay for his crimes, make him pay with blood, then once he rehatched, stab a sword through his coccoon. But that was the Beast, and Stoneface ignored it, as always.
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