[Anthony] Understanding

[writemagic]

I kneel at Anthony’s side, not quite willing to touch him, unsure of what my touch will tell him, whether he will shy from it or lean into it - I don’t know which I’m more afraid of. Instead, I speak softly: “Heya, love.”

He blinks slowly and his eyes are awash with pain, quickly mastered. “Don't mean any offense... but I was hoping last night was all a nightmare.”

I’m shocked into a smile. “None taken. I was hoping that myself.” Under my surprise, I’m relieved that he recognizes me, knows where he is. I’m not sure I’d know what to do with him if he were delirious - and less sure that I’d be able to stop him from… whatever it is that he would do.

“You have a nice smile.” His lips quirk a wan smile of his own and I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks. “I was wondering, yesterday morning, if I smelled funny.”

“You do... just not the way that most people can smell it,” I tell him honestly.

His left arm flexes under the blanket and he draws in closer to himself, glancing away. For a moment, I don’t understand. And then I do. Shit.

“Don’t,” I say, more sharply than I intend. He looks back to me cautiously and I sigh. “I'm not good with people. I'm really not good with other mages.” I purse my lips, trying to figure out how to explain this. No, I don’t have a problem with your being a cyborg. I’m one too! “Just... don't draw away like that. This is... uncomfortable. For both of us. But now... We've managed to invoke Hospitality. And I don't take that lightly.” I meet his eyes, willing him to understand what I mean, hoping that he, like most people, will understand better than I do.

Slowly, he extends his metallic hand from under the blankets and opens it, palm up. I think it’s an invitation; a glance to his eyes confirms it. I put a hesitant hand in his, holding my breath as smooth, warm digits curl around mine. I want to run my hands up and down his arm’s length, put my ear against it to hear its quiet hum. It is a masterpiece of creation, beautiful, elegant, balanced - no, not quite. Close, very close. It takes a moment before I realize that he’s speaking again.

“I won’t pull away, then. It's... I know what I look like to extra senses.” His fingers open just a little. “I don't know why you opened that door, but... you saved my life.”

I tear my eyes away from his arm, meet his. “I couldn't let you die.”

“Sure you could have. It would have been easy.” He squeezes my fingers a little and the smooth motion thrills me. “But you didn't.”

I wrinkle my nose, run my fingers over my scalp. “No, I couldn't have.”

“Then you're better than... than many I've known.” I watch the path his eyes take across my face, over my hairline and I drop my hand. There’s only so much that my hair can hide of my wires, and my kerchief has half fallen off. There’s no way to readjust it so it draws less attention, so I don’t. He smiles. “Thank you, Joule.”

I look down at my hand in his. My hands are neither feminine nor delicate, but in his large, metal hand they are both. For once, there is no trace of engine grease ground into my skin, no blood around my cuticles, even though my nails are a little ragged. I give his fingers an experimental squeeze, surprised at the slight give the metal skin has, firmer than flesh, softer than metal. “You’re welcome.”

I have a thousand questions about how he came by it and who made it and what it’s made of, and how it’s constructed. Anthony didn’t make it - I know that for certain. Instead of asking, I pretend for a moment that I’m socially deft and change the subject, reluctantly letting go of his hand and pulling a gold coin from my pocket. “We should see where sleep put us.”

Anthony nods, presses his metal hand to the bed and pushes himself sitting. The blankets pool around his waist, showing his broad chest punctuated by white gauze. “Everything... feels much the same, I think.” He turns the bracelet on his wrist absently. Click. Click. Click.

I toss the coin, mutter the words to see his wounds clearly. I reach for his shoulder, then hesitate. “May I?”

“It'd be pretty stupid of me to say no.”

I put my hand to his shoulder, see where the muscle has just begun knitting itself back together. I move to is stomach next, wincing at my poor sutures. “We'll change these in a bit, I think.”

I refocus my eyes to look up at his face. His eyes are shut and he sits quietly under my hands, gooseflesh appearing under my cold fingers. His muscles jump, and I quicken my pace, moving to his back. He leans forward a little, even though I know it must hurt and I run my hands lightly over the dressing on his back. His immune system is fighting off the Outsider’s infection admirably.

“The old man used to say,” he murmurs, “that fixing one kind of thing wasn't so different than fixing another. It was all in the outlook, not the knowledge.”

I pause to watch the battle that is happening in the furrows down his back. “Mmm. An interesting point, but more philosophically than literally correct.” I leave off his back, take a quick look at the graze on his thigh before I let the effect dissipate and focus back into this world. I am satisfied that he is not likely to die so long as he doesn’t exert himself too much while healing. The lack of magic, though, means that I’ve got a houseguest for a few weeks. I should pull the cot up from the garage so I have a place to sleep.

He flicks the blankets back over the long line of his leg, watching me carefully. I try not to blush. “You're not exactly proving him wrong, you know.”

I think about this as I sit down in my chair. “My knowledge is hard learned and there are significant gaps in it. Machines are easier than flesh. When a machine breaks down, there's a reason for it - a well defined reason for it. Living creatures... they're different. And much, much more difficult. I suppose it's the divide between man's creation and whatever god-aspect you happen to worship.”

Anthony sits with the sort of calm I expect from Tibetan monks and rocks. He has to be in an extraordinary amount of pain, but he only regards me and after a moment, blinks. “Is there really such a difference, do you think? Or is it all just a matter of complexity?”

“I'm not sure, actually. I used to think that the body was merely a machine of flesh, but I don't know anymore. It has aspects of the machine. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that the machine has aspects of it.” The cloth I use to keep my hair back and sleep in is half off my head and driving me a little crazy. I pull it off, shake my hair out. I’m about to retie it, then pause, glancing at his arm. Neither of us is precisely normal, even by Awakened standards. I lay the black silk over my knees instead. “What do you think?”

He straightens his back, testing the limits of his body. I can see the muscles of his abdomen working carefully, the way he doesn’t move his shoulder. “I think the body is something made to house the soul. It's a pretty thing, amazing detail work, but impermanent.”

I nod. “What do you think of attempts to make it more permanent?” I am curious to know what he thinks, to have someone else’s perspective who lives with… well, like I do.

He smiles sadly. “They can work. The body can always be improved. But if it's a real attempt to make the body last, then it's just spitting in the wind.” His left arm flexes and I wonder if it’s a conscious movement. It has to be. He doesn’t seem like the type to have unconscious movements.

“God or fate or life marches on, regardless of what we do.” I smile. “And sometimes, we march on regardless of what God or fate or life hands us.”

“Everything changes. And we keep going if we're ready. Ability really has little enough to do with it.” He tilts his head a touch. “So how does this apply to fixing things, whether they're people or machines?”

I ignore the question for a moment. “Only in the sense that perseverance has little to do with ability. I'll agree on that point. However the knowledge one has does not always apply...” I look down and away while I think about it. I still maintain that the old man is only partially correct, but I’m not certain how to explain it.

“That's why people like us are blessed. Specific knowledge and skill isn't as necessary when we can see so clearly.”

I look up, take in his arm where it joins the flesh, the ragged scarring. He is probing his right shoulder gently with metal fingers. “I think your old man has a point in the wherewithal to fix things. It's... it's a compulsion, a need. There are those who destroy and those who repair. Each have their purpose.” It’s not all of it, but I think I’m hitting the core. I’m not religious; I’m barely philosophical.

He draws his hand from his wounded shoulder and lays it across a knee. “It can be that simple, I guess. If... if Master Kaminari were here, I'm thinking he'd ask how you tell the difference.”

“Between?”

“Repairing and destroying. Seems pretty cut and dried, until you think about it a little while.”

“Sometimes destruction is the only course, the only thing that can be done to bring some semblance of... oh, let's say balance, although nothing is ever really balanced, least of all life.” I raise an eyebrow, smile, and try to find a metaphor that works. “But the two are siblings, born of the same mother.”

Anthony’s lips quirk in a smile, skeptical and something else I can’t identify. “She fixes cars, she patches wounds, and she talks philosophy in metaphor. Who is this girl, anyhow?”

I feel the blush rising over my neck and trucking up my cheeks. I don’t even know how to respond to that and I stutter for a moment until he rescues me with a graceful shrug. “They're two sides of the same coin. Addition and subtraction, being and non-being. Basic frame of the world. Computer scientists have this great talk about the numbers one and zero when they're really tired or drunk.”

“Do you believe that such a duality is universal?” I ask, relieved to be back in the realm of the purely philosophical. Grommet would laugh to hear me think it.

He looks down at his hands, smiles more to himself than to me. “There's almost nothing to believe. It's plain enough to see anywhere you look. Nothing is permanent. My only hitch in the idea is... well, I don't know if it's really a duality. I'm still trying to figure out if there actually is such a thing as non-being.”

I shift to meet his eyes. “There is. I think it's only our fear that drives us to seek an alternative. What are we before we are created?”

He grins and I catch a glimpse of a person that he once was and probably still is under the pain and discipline. He’s someone that I think I would like if I got to know him and the thought is a little terrifying. “Something else.”

“Can you define the ‘something else’?” I ask wryly.

He releases a puff of air that could be amusement, but the joy flees from his face. He makes a small shrug, a small movement of his left shoulder, the cant of his head. “No, honestly. I think it varies for each of us. But maybe our idea of non-being is simply being something else... that we're not equipped to understand.”

“Or maybe it's simply non-being, and we are ill equipped to understand that.” I’m not entirely comfortable with the conversation, and eventually, Anthony will need to put something on his stomach. I think about the cabinet packed full of tea and the genmaicha that Yoav sent me. If I brew it weakly, it should do well for him. I lever myself out of my chair and go to the kitchen, feel Anthony’s eyes on my back.

“Could be.” A pause. “Even the Outsiders are a sort of being, just radically different from what we know here. It's hard to imagine a state of total nothingness.”

I open the cabinet and look through the boxes and packets until I find the one I want. I grab a spoon from the drain board. “I think it is harder for some than others. Contemplating the void is a fascinating exercise that every mage should engage in at least once.”

“Emptiness,” he murmurs so quietly that I almost don’t hear him. “There's certainly something to that. But I feel it means something different than I think most do.”

I scoop tea from the box into the teapot I scavenged from a secondhand shop. “Tell me.”

“Form and being aren't permanent. Everything always changes into other things... loses identity, so nothing actually has consistent identity. Thus, nothingness. Emptiness.”

I turn to lean against the counter, fold my arms over my chest while the water heats. “How very existential.”

Anthony nods. “It is a little over-philosophical. I told the first person to tell me that that it sounded nihilistic.”

I have to laugh at that. “But you found it had some merit, nihilistic wanking aside?”

A raised eyebrow and a pair of quirked lips. “Yes, once you get what that means. The identity of each thing, whatever it has, is tied into the world around it. Dependent on everything else.”

“I'll accept that for the moment. Ours is a mutable world.” The kettle whistles before I finish my thought. I turn to pour the hot water into the teapot while Anthony flexes his shoulder a little.

“Always. I think this is going to want a sling. Don't suppose you have anything that would serve?”

I glance back to him, picking up the kettle and two cups. “Always.” When I set the cups on the bedside table, I consider his arm and what I have on hand. Second-hand sheets ought to do the trick admirably. After a few moments of rifling through the linen cabinet in the bathroom, I find a sheet with pink posies on it. I present it to Anthony apologetically. “This should do the trick. Apologies to your manhood.”

He looks at the cloth, raises his eyes to mine, tranquil. “I'm Buddhist. You don't get to be one if you're not serene in the face of adversity.”

It takes me a moment before I realize that he’s teasing me. I laugh as I perch on the side of his bed, tearing the sheet. “Of course you are.”

Anthony smiles wryly, watching my hands. I hold the cloth at arm’s length. “This ought to do nicely. Here, let's see how we're going to do this.” I put my hand out, hesitate just over him. He shifts obligingly.

“I'd say loop the breadth of it under my right arm, and tie a knot over my left shoulder.” He pauses for a beat. “It won't even rub too badly.”

I settle the cloth around his arm, tying a knot. It will do for now. I don’t know when I’m going to work up the nerve again, so I just go ahead and ask the question. “Am I right in assuming you're Arrow?”

He moves his right arm a little, tugs gently with his left until the knot rests off-center. “Seems like the only guess you could have made, unless I were a really harcore Mysterium.”

“Or a stupid Guardian, or a left of center Ladder or a Libertine who needed some serious help.” I run through the list of other possibilities and shrug. I pour the tea, think of Yoav. “It's a bit weak, but that's all to the good right now.”

Metal fingers close around the cup and he breathes in the scent. A small smile plays across his lips and a sudden warmth of affection passes over me. “Wouldn't have expected to find tea like this in Montana.”

I smile in return and pour my own cup. I like my tea stronger than this, but this was a good choice. “A friend of mine knows my taste and sends me civilization from time to time.”

“Privacy has its downsides.” He closes his eyes, takes a slow sip from the cup, and makes a noise that could be pleasure.

“I move around a bit,” I shrug. “I don't think I'll be wintering anywhere that has an annual freeze again, though.”

“Not a fan of ice and snow, eh?” He looks over his shoulder, twisting at the waist. My stomach wrenches in sympathetic pain. “I admit, it took me a little by surprise, too.”

“I'm used to snow. I'm not used to...” I search for a word that conveys winter in Montana and fail. “this.” I gesture at my loft, the window, the world outside.

“What exactly is…” He mimes the slow wave of my hand with his teacup. “…this?”

“The snow that starts in September. The freeze that forces people to practically hibernate for six months. The lack of good curry. I like aspects of Montana. I like not feeling like I'm forced to talk to anyone. I like being alone, free to do whatever I damn well please.” I shake my head ruefully. “I also, occasionally, like being able to find a sushi bar with fish that hasn't had to be shipped a thousand miles.” I sip at my weak tea, shift to bring my foot underneath me on the bed.

“It's never as good when you're away from the ocean.” He regards me for a long moment and I resist the impulse to fidget. “You're not, you know.”

“I'm not what?”

“Under any obligation to talk to me, if you don't want to.” He favors me with another wry smile. “I once kept silent for a week. One of my teachers said it was good for the soul.”

I snort at that, but I’m charmed a little by him once again. “I'm an introvert, not anti-social. There is a difference.” Another sip. “Besides, if I don't talk occasionally, I'll forget how.”

I intend it to be funny, but it falls flat between us. “Fair enough,” he murmurs around his cup. “You know my affiliation. Gonna tell me yours?”

“I’m not.” The words hang in the air, and I realize the possible meaning. People still aren’t my strong suit. “Affiliated, that is.”

Anthony nods, is quiet for a few moments. I manage to avoid squirming under his scrutiny until he says, “That usually means an even harder story than anyone else's.”

I look deeply into the pale tea in my half empty cup. There are a dozen things I could say, and a dozen more I shouldn’t. I think about just leaving him, saying nothing more, but I can’t do that. Instead, I raise my eyes and smile, offer him something I given few others. “My mentor was Free Council. After he died, I decided that wasn't the way I should go. None of the others appeal.” I pause, shrug. “We learn through experience.”

He looks up from his cup. “That we do. I'm sorry about your mentor.”

My hand has raised half way to my hairline before I realize it. I stop, drop my hand back to my lap. “It happens.”

“Yeah.” He downs the rest of his tea and his eyes trace over my hairline. I duck my head and feel hot blood on my cheeks.

“How do you feel?” I ask, desperate for a subject change.

“A little like I actually did have my guts ripped out.” He smiles sadly. “But also desperately alive.”

I nod, accepting it. “You are a man of impressive endurance,” I finally remark.

Anthony shrugs amiably with one shoulder. “Do you think? I'm told it's normal to feel exhilirated after you've come so close to dying.”

“I think that anyone who holds a lucid philosophical discussion the morning after... well, after that, is.”

He looks down into his cup. “Would it do me any good to wallow in pain? Or grief? To spin it over and over in my head until my stomach turns and my eyes blur?” He shakes his head. “I did that once. Once was enough.” He bites his lip, gives me a half-smile. “Twice.”

Damn it all. “I… I suppose not. I'm...” I trail off, at a loss for what to say.

Anthony surprises me by laughing, a small, amused exhalation. I look up. “Hey Joule? Make you a deal.”

“What?”

“I'll do my best not to be self-conscious about you seeing me naked, crying, and...” he gestures with his mechanical arm, “well, exposed. And you do yours to not worry about those wires, and promise to tell me if I step on any subjects that are bad. What do you say?”

I stare at him for a long moment and eventually remember to close my mouth. “I- alright.”

He looks a touch embarrassed, and if I didn’t already like him, this would have pushed it over the edge. “I, ah... I might not be the most subtle person in the world.”

I laugh, shake my head and sigh. “Then we're in excellent company.”

“I knew that anyway.”

Before I can muster a response, he looks deliberately at my hair and shrugs. “At least yours go nice with your hair.”

“I- when...” I’m startled into honesty. “At first I couldn't stop shocking myself with them. It took me awhile to figure out how to dampen the charge.” I shake my head. “I've never told anyone that.”

He laughs and shakes his head. “You want to compare stories? I dislocated my own wrist the first time I tried to train with this.”

“Really?”

He blushes. “Yeah. It's a lot stronger than... you know, than I am otherwise.”

I consider his arm and the way it is built, how it has supported his weight and what he does with it. “I got that impression. What's it- I'm sorry.” I realize too late that I’m about to ask the inappropriate questions.

“C'mon, ask. I know you want to.”

Embarrassment and curiosity wage war in my head, but curiosity wins out. “I'm sorry. I'm just... what's it made of?”

He brings his arm in front of his body so we can both see it better and slowly turns it over. “None of my teachers know. Some of them say it's adamantine, some say it has electrum inside it. I've even heard someone use the word mithril. Nobody seems to be able to identify it, and some of them give different answers when they describe the structure.”

He manages to give me an answer that only begs more questions, and yet at the same time, there’s a lot there in what he doesn’t say that answers more. I’m still desperately curious, but I tear my eyes from his arm and look up to his face, the scar, the friendly eyes with pain behind them. “Thank you.”

“Anyone who mops up my blood can ask me whatever they want.” He puts his cup down on the bed next to him, and extends the hand out. I take the tacit offer for what it is, set my own cup on the floor, and put my fingers in his palm.

“I'm not sure if I want to poke it more, or if I want to know how you came by it.” Given the scarring and his ignorance regarding the arm, I have a feeling that there’s a story here that is painful and a chance that even he doesn’t remember it.

“You don't want to know how I came by it, and I don't really want to tell it.” The friendly light in his eyes dims and I nod.

“I had a feeling. I think you underestimate my curiosity, though. But this...” I glance down, trace my fingers lightly over his palm and across his metal fingers. “This is not a story you need to tell.”

He nods slowly, watching me. “Thank you for understanding.” A pause. “I can feel it, you know.”

“Feel which?”

He nods to our half entwined fingers. “The touch.”

“I know.” It occurs to me that his statement has more meaning than what’s on the surface and the thought of it almost startles me. I squeeze his fingers in my best friendly manner and give him a smile. “I should make some stock. Can't live on weak tea forever.” I stand. “Dietary restrictions? Assuming I manage to avoid salting it with cat dander?”

“I do my best to avoid meat, in all honesty. But this is Montana, and I'm a realist.”

I snort. “I'll see what I can do to accommodate. You should rest. I'll see to scrounging up actual food.”

“Thanks.” There’s a hesitation in his voice, something that I’m tempted to let go, but curiosity compels me to stop and raise an eyebrow. He lets himself down on his metallic elbow and shakes his head. “Just being stupid. Resting is good.”

I smile and agree. “Resting is good.” I begin rummaging in the refrigerator for vegetables. If I’m going to have a guest for a few weeks, this isn’t a bad one to have.

Anthony's side.