My head hurts now
I'm using this icon because I think my brain has cracked under the strain of the word count. Which I still haven't met yet, but I'm a lot closer than I was.
Wallpaper from yesterday: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/9853563/
Wallpaper for today: http://www.deviantart.com/view/15745435/
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."
~Matsuo Basho
Title: Brother's Keeper, Part Thirteen
Rating: PG-13 for Van and Dr. Richards been angsty
Word count: 1639
Total word count so far: 35248
Author's notes that most likely no one will ever read: Oh, the subtext. I think the problem with being considered a genius (or the way I write people who are considered geniuses, or maybe the plural of that is genii, but whatever) is the tendency to talk in twisty lines. And to be all tormented. *Rolls eyes.* Oh, and points to you if you can figure out what Rappaccini's garden references.
“This is good wine,” Van observed.
Dr. Richards shrugged. “A patient of mine is a wine taster.”
“Ah.” Van abandoned admiring the wine and set his wineglass on the coffee table. *What did you find?* he asked quietly.
Dr. Richards gaze went past Van and to the hall the bedrooms were located off of. *They won’t be suspicious if we talk like this?*
*No. Sophia should be on the phone with a friend right about now. And I think Grigori’s been expecting the conversation to go this way.*
*He’s a bright kid,* Dr. Richards observed. *If he’d been halfway trained at all as a child…*
Van nodded, thinking of the unusual strength of Greg’s mind, hampered by his inability to really control all of it with any kind of finesse. If he’d been taught while he was actually growing into his abilities, Van knew things after the fire would have gone much differently.
*His blood makes him different, but it also makes him strong,* he admitted. *I’m not entirely sure what I’d have done if he hadn’t decided to work with me.* Come to think of it, he wasn’t entirely sure how that had happened, though he suspected it had something to do with Sophia. Grigori might have captured people with his brightness, but Sophia had this way of making them hers.
*Oh, you’d have worn him down eventually,* Dr. Richards said, smiling a little. *You’re annoyingly persistent, Riordan.* The smile faded. *And prone to getting yourself in over your head. Are you sure you want to get yourself involved in this? Or the boy?*
Van frowned. *What did you find, Doctor?*
Dr. Richards hesitated, and that slight flicker of humanity did nothing for Van’s paranoia meter. *It’s from the Garden,* he said.
Van’s eyes widened. He couldn’t mean… *Which garden?* he asked, because he had to make sure. He knew what the answer had to be, but even so.
*Oh, Rappaccini’s, what other garden could I mean?* Dr. Richards said sarcastically. *Eden, Riordan. Your mystery drug comes from the Garden of Eden.*
*I almost wish it had been from Rappaccini’s Garden instead,* Van muttered. He held the Doctor’s gaze. *Are you sure?* The question was stupid - Dr. Richards was worse than Isaac where it came to double-checking things. He was beyond thorough. He wouldn’t have breathed a word of this to Van if he hadn’t been absolutely sure. (Or if he hadn’t trusted Van, which Van didn’t think was the case. It couldn’t be the case. He’d done nothing to earn the good doctor’s trust, so how could Dr. Richards trust him?)
Dr. Richards inclined his head. *Yes. I checked several times. There’s nothing else it could be. It … I can’t create this in a lab. I can try, of course, and believe me when I say I did. I created several approximations - they approach the same chemical structure, might even have some of the same effects, though without testing them against the original I couldn’t say for sure.*
*Did you keep the approximations?* Van asked, deeply disturbed.
*They’re somewhere no one will ever find them,* the Doctor promised. *I thought that their might be … uses … for them.*
Van could think of half a dozen right off the top of his head. He was sure that the Synod could think of at least two dozen more without trying. He inclined his head, acknowledging the practicality of the gesture. *There are indeed,* he said.
Dr. Richards picked up his wineglass and drained it. You had to be watching to notice the trembling in his hands. *What are you going to do, Donovan?* His mental voice was quiet. Unsure, almost. It stripped the Doctor of the habitual professional surety that added decades to his age and made him seem younger than he appeared. Van realized with a start that Dr. Richards was actually younger than he was.
His protective instincts stirred slowly, uncoiling like a sleeping serpent and just as deadly. *The right thing,* he murmured. He took the wineglass from the younger Natsar and refilled it. *I’m going to do the right thing.*
*But what is the right thing?* Dr. Richards asked. *Do you even know?* He drained the glass again and got up, pacing agitatedly around the living room. *The Garden, Donovan. It’s from the Garden. Think of it. The Garden.*
*I know,* Van said.
The Garden of Eden. Where God Himself had set man to live, until the Serpent and the Forbidden Fruit had changed everything. Where the Tree of Knowledge had once grown.
Still grew, as far as Van knew. No one ever said what happened to the Garden after Man was cast out of it. It was entirely possible that the Garden was still as it was - untouched by any hands but God’s, waiting for humanity to return to innocence and live there once again.
The Garden would be waiting a long time. With things as they were, Van doubted that Man would ever return.
And if someone had found Fruit from the Tree…
*I don’t want the Synod to hear about this until we’ve got more to report,* he said firmly. *Does anyone else know what you’ve discovered?*
Dr. Richards shook his head. *I was discrete.*
*Thank you for that,* Van said, already lost in thought.
*Don’t you think you could get more out of this if you talked with some of the other enclaves?* Dr. Richards asked.
Van shook his head. *At the moment, there’s too much to risk. The forbidden fruit got us cast out of the Garden because we knew too much before we were ready to.*
*I thought it got us cast out because we disobeyed orders.*
Van arched an eyebrow. *That’s one theory. There are others, of course.*
*Which you obviously place more faith in.*
*I’m raising two kids. I think I’ve got some insight into the whole father gig.*
*What does raising kids have to do with getting us cast out of the Garden?* Dr. Richards demanded.
*Think about it, Thomas,* Van said, using the same tones he might have to coach Grigori through a difficult training scenario, or while helping Sophia with her homework. *What happens when you give a child everything that it wants?*
*It doesn’t want it anymore,* Dr. Richards guessed. *It wants what it can’t have.*
*It also doesn’t grow,* Van pointed out. *If you keep a child sheltered, it will never become an adult.*
*You think it was a test.*
*It might have been. We might have grown into the knowledge that we got from the forbidden fruit, we might not have. But either way … sometimes adulthood begins with a single act of defiance.*
*It wasn’t intentional defiance.*
Van shrugged. *There are creation stories from every ethnic background in the world. We always seem to want more than we have, Thomas. Pointing it out just means that we’re going to go for it that much faster.*
The doctor was silent for a long time. He set his wineglass on the bookshelf and looked at Van with solemn brown-amber eyes. *For a Terryal, you’re astonishingly liberal.*
Van laughed quietly. “I think that’s the first time anyone’s ever accused me of that.”
“It’s true,” Dr. Richards insisted. “You are.” He shook his head. “You’re unconventional, better in the field than most of the people who outrank you, and you’re raising a boy most of us would have killed on sight.”
Van lifted on shoulder in a neutral half-shrug. “But for Sophia, I’d be one of those people,” he pointed out mildly. “If he hadn’t saved Sophia’s life, I might have been the one to take his. It wouldn’t have changed how I sleep at night, either.”
“You took a bullet for the boy, Riordan. Somehow I don’t think you’d be sleeping quite so easy as you pretend you would be.”
Samuel…
“No,” Van agreed quietly. “I probably wouldn’t. But admitting that changes nothing. I still would have done it.”
“Would it have been the right thing to do?”
Van smiled tiredly. “I think debating our relationship with the Nephilim-born is going to require a whole lot more alcohol, don’t you?”
“You never see things as they are, do you? It’s not black and white at all.”
“How are things?” Van replied, and drained his wineglass. “It’s never exactly what it seems to be, is it?”
The doctor was quiet for a long moment. Then he laughed quietly, squaring his shoulders so that the appearance of easy confidence returned. “No, it never is. Thank you, Riordan. This has been … rather refreshing.” He switched briefly back to telepathy. *I take it you’d like reports on what I found?*
“Indeed it has. We’ll have to do this again, at some point. I can’t guarantee it will be any less chaotic if Grigori or I am the one cooking, though,” Van agreed, with an easy smile. *Yes, I would. Thank you.*
“Yes,” the doctor said quietly. He let Van walk him to the door, and paused halfway out of it. “Do they know?” he asked.
There were entire worlds worth of other questions in those three words.
Do they know? Do they know what you want, what you’re willing to risk your life for? What you’re willing to risk their lives for? Will they help you, or are you alone? Do they know what drives you, the impossible thing you’re striving for?
Do the Priores know? How long have you been planning? Can you pull this off? Can you guarantee anyone else’s safety, or are we all at risk just by being near you?
“We’ve all got nightmares, Thomas,” he said softly. “And we’ve all got secrets. It might be better if you let mine be.”
“Ah.” The doctor nodded sagely. “Of course. Good night, Donovan.”
“Good night,” Van said, and shut the door.
Wallpaper from yesterday: http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/9853563/
Wallpaper for today: http://www.deviantart.com/view/15745435/
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought."
~Matsuo Basho
Title: Brother's Keeper, Part Thirteen
Rating: PG-13 for Van and Dr. Richards been angsty
Word count: 1639
Total word count so far: 35248
Author's notes that most likely no one will ever read: Oh, the subtext. I think the problem with being considered a genius (or the way I write people who are considered geniuses, or maybe the plural of that is genii, but whatever) is the tendency to talk in twisty lines. And to be all tormented. *Rolls eyes.* Oh, and points to you if you can figure out what Rappaccini's garden references.
“This is good wine,” Van observed.
Dr. Richards shrugged. “A patient of mine is a wine taster.”
“Ah.” Van abandoned admiring the wine and set his wineglass on the coffee table. *What did you find?* he asked quietly.
Dr. Richards gaze went past Van and to the hall the bedrooms were located off of. *They won’t be suspicious if we talk like this?*
*No. Sophia should be on the phone with a friend right about now. And I think Grigori’s been expecting the conversation to go this way.*
*He’s a bright kid,* Dr. Richards observed. *If he’d been halfway trained at all as a child…*
Van nodded, thinking of the unusual strength of Greg’s mind, hampered by his inability to really control all of it with any kind of finesse. If he’d been taught while he was actually growing into his abilities, Van knew things after the fire would have gone much differently.
*His blood makes him different, but it also makes him strong,* he admitted. *I’m not entirely sure what I’d have done if he hadn’t decided to work with me.* Come to think of it, he wasn’t entirely sure how that had happened, though he suspected it had something to do with Sophia. Grigori might have captured people with his brightness, but Sophia had this way of making them hers.
*Oh, you’d have worn him down eventually,* Dr. Richards said, smiling a little. *You’re annoyingly persistent, Riordan.* The smile faded. *And prone to getting yourself in over your head. Are you sure you want to get yourself involved in this? Or the boy?*
Van frowned. *What did you find, Doctor?*
Dr. Richards hesitated, and that slight flicker of humanity did nothing for Van’s paranoia meter. *It’s from the Garden,* he said.
Van’s eyes widened. He couldn’t mean… *Which garden?* he asked, because he had to make sure. He knew what the answer had to be, but even so.
*Oh, Rappaccini’s, what other garden could I mean?* Dr. Richards said sarcastically. *Eden, Riordan. Your mystery drug comes from the Garden of Eden.*
*I almost wish it had been from Rappaccini’s Garden instead,* Van muttered. He held the Doctor’s gaze. *Are you sure?* The question was stupid - Dr. Richards was worse than Isaac where it came to double-checking things. He was beyond thorough. He wouldn’t have breathed a word of this to Van if he hadn’t been absolutely sure. (Or if he hadn’t trusted Van, which Van didn’t think was the case. It couldn’t be the case. He’d done nothing to earn the good doctor’s trust, so how could Dr. Richards trust him?)
Dr. Richards inclined his head. *Yes. I checked several times. There’s nothing else it could be. It … I can’t create this in a lab. I can try, of course, and believe me when I say I did. I created several approximations - they approach the same chemical structure, might even have some of the same effects, though without testing them against the original I couldn’t say for sure.*
*Did you keep the approximations?* Van asked, deeply disturbed.
*They’re somewhere no one will ever find them,* the Doctor promised. *I thought that their might be … uses … for them.*
Van could think of half a dozen right off the top of his head. He was sure that the Synod could think of at least two dozen more without trying. He inclined his head, acknowledging the practicality of the gesture. *There are indeed,* he said.
Dr. Richards picked up his wineglass and drained it. You had to be watching to notice the trembling in his hands. *What are you going to do, Donovan?* His mental voice was quiet. Unsure, almost. It stripped the Doctor of the habitual professional surety that added decades to his age and made him seem younger than he appeared. Van realized with a start that Dr. Richards was actually younger than he was.
His protective instincts stirred slowly, uncoiling like a sleeping serpent and just as deadly. *The right thing,* he murmured. He took the wineglass from the younger Natsar and refilled it. *I’m going to do the right thing.*
*But what is the right thing?* Dr. Richards asked. *Do you even know?* He drained the glass again and got up, pacing agitatedly around the living room. *The Garden, Donovan. It’s from the Garden. Think of it. The Garden.*
*I know,* Van said.
The Garden of Eden. Where God Himself had set man to live, until the Serpent and the Forbidden Fruit had changed everything. Where the Tree of Knowledge had once grown.
Still grew, as far as Van knew. No one ever said what happened to the Garden after Man was cast out of it. It was entirely possible that the Garden was still as it was - untouched by any hands but God’s, waiting for humanity to return to innocence and live there once again.
The Garden would be waiting a long time. With things as they were, Van doubted that Man would ever return.
And if someone had found Fruit from the Tree…
*I don’t want the Synod to hear about this until we’ve got more to report,* he said firmly. *Does anyone else know what you’ve discovered?*
Dr. Richards shook his head. *I was discrete.*
*Thank you for that,* Van said, already lost in thought.
*Don’t you think you could get more out of this if you talked with some of the other enclaves?* Dr. Richards asked.
Van shook his head. *At the moment, there’s too much to risk. The forbidden fruit got us cast out of the Garden because we knew too much before we were ready to.*
*I thought it got us cast out because we disobeyed orders.*
Van arched an eyebrow. *That’s one theory. There are others, of course.*
*Which you obviously place more faith in.*
*I’m raising two kids. I think I’ve got some insight into the whole father gig.*
*What does raising kids have to do with getting us cast out of the Garden?* Dr. Richards demanded.
*Think about it, Thomas,* Van said, using the same tones he might have to coach Grigori through a difficult training scenario, or while helping Sophia with her homework. *What happens when you give a child everything that it wants?*
*It doesn’t want it anymore,* Dr. Richards guessed. *It wants what it can’t have.*
*It also doesn’t grow,* Van pointed out. *If you keep a child sheltered, it will never become an adult.*
*You think it was a test.*
*It might have been. We might have grown into the knowledge that we got from the forbidden fruit, we might not have. But either way … sometimes adulthood begins with a single act of defiance.*
*It wasn’t intentional defiance.*
Van shrugged. *There are creation stories from every ethnic background in the world. We always seem to want more than we have, Thomas. Pointing it out just means that we’re going to go for it that much faster.*
The doctor was silent for a long time. He set his wineglass on the bookshelf and looked at Van with solemn brown-amber eyes. *For a Terryal, you’re astonishingly liberal.*
Van laughed quietly. “I think that’s the first time anyone’s ever accused me of that.”
“It’s true,” Dr. Richards insisted. “You are.” He shook his head. “You’re unconventional, better in the field than most of the people who outrank you, and you’re raising a boy most of us would have killed on sight.”
Van lifted on shoulder in a neutral half-shrug. “But for Sophia, I’d be one of those people,” he pointed out mildly. “If he hadn’t saved Sophia’s life, I might have been the one to take his. It wouldn’t have changed how I sleep at night, either.”
“You took a bullet for the boy, Riordan. Somehow I don’t think you’d be sleeping quite so easy as you pretend you would be.”
Samuel…
“No,” Van agreed quietly. “I probably wouldn’t. But admitting that changes nothing. I still would have done it.”
“Would it have been the right thing to do?”
Van smiled tiredly. “I think debating our relationship with the Nephilim-born is going to require a whole lot more alcohol, don’t you?”
“You never see things as they are, do you? It’s not black and white at all.”
“How are things?” Van replied, and drained his wineglass. “It’s never exactly what it seems to be, is it?”
The doctor was quiet for a long moment. Then he laughed quietly, squaring his shoulders so that the appearance of easy confidence returned. “No, it never is. Thank you, Riordan. This has been … rather refreshing.” He switched briefly back to telepathy. *I take it you’d like reports on what I found?*
“Indeed it has. We’ll have to do this again, at some point. I can’t guarantee it will be any less chaotic if Grigori or I am the one cooking, though,” Van agreed, with an easy smile. *Yes, I would. Thank you.*
“Yes,” the doctor said quietly. He let Van walk him to the door, and paused halfway out of it. “Do they know?” he asked.
There were entire worlds worth of other questions in those three words.
Do they know? Do they know what you want, what you’re willing to risk your life for? What you’re willing to risk their lives for? Will they help you, or are you alone? Do they know what drives you, the impossible thing you’re striving for?
Do the Priores know? How long have you been planning? Can you pull this off? Can you guarantee anyone else’s safety, or are we all at risk just by being near you?
“We’ve all got nightmares, Thomas,” he said softly. “And we’ve all got secrets. It might be better if you let mine be.”
“Ah.” The doctor nodded sagely. “Of course. Good night, Donovan.”
“Good night,” Van said, and shut the door.