₪ everything's contagious it's a modern middle ages

[errantknights]

The question-and-answer aspect of the nexus has always entertained Martel - mostly because he's a sick bastard who enjoys other people making idiots of themselves now and then - but it's been a very rare occasion that he'd indulge himself, and rarer still that he'd indulge it stone cold sober.

He'd like very much not to be stone cold sober,

Comments

[sandrocker]

"One does not generally ask that, unless one has reformed or sought redemption...does one?"

Hello, Martel. Meet a bigger brat than you.

[errantknights]

"I take it you haven't spent a great deal of time in the company of the self-righteous," Martel posits an alternative, smiling.

(...straight answers are for chumps.)

[sandrocker]

Quatre returns the smile. "On the contrary, I spend every day with them." He pauses, tilting his head just slightly. "And it is, in my experience, the reformer and supposedly self-righteous are one in the same."

[errantknights]

"Those proverbial 'enforcers' I've been hearing about," he suggests, amused. ...Martel doesn't look like anyone's idea of a righteous arbiter of morality.

[sandrocker]

"Hypocrites is another word I have heard used," he replies, almost laughing. Though, he's reminded of Zechs Merquise...a lot.

[errantknights]

"Now, now," he feigns reproach, "they prefer to be called priests in polite company."

[sandrocker]

Quatre bows his head, still smiling. "Oh, excuse my manners, then."

[errantknights]

"Granted," he continues, amiably, "this isn't polite company."

[sandrocker]

"No?" He raises his head. "Well, it is impolite to not introduce yourself."

[errantknights]

"And the worst thing for a gentleman is to be considered impolite-" in that very, very dry tone of someone who's spent enough time at court to know that that's not even slightly true, "-Martel, Lord of Valdis."

[sandrocker]

"Quatre Raberba Winner." He considers adding 'new CEO of Winner Corporations,' but his life revolves around work enough as it is. Today, he is simply Quatre, the boy who needlessly provides his full name, no matter what.

[errantknights]

With a selection of names to choose from, Martel invariably goes to the simplest; he is merely Martel, and Valdis is his responsibility. He's long since discarded any claim to calling himself 'Martel of Damerel' and it never occurs to him to do it, and 'Professor Lefevre' is a lie he tells to appease a world where resurrected warrior-lords don't exist.

And at the end of the day, he is just what he is.

"A pleasure," briefly. "No thoughts on the subject at hand you'd care to share?"

[sandrocker]

Quatre opens his both before quickly closing it, and then, he tries again to answer. "Redemption is more valuable to me," he says, after a long moment. His expression is clearly that of someone who has done deplorable things.

There have been many days and many nights Quatre has thought about this; he hasn't really found an answer, and for now, he has settled into 'being guilty every second of my existence is good enough.'

[errantknights]

"So you believe in it, then- redemption." Not everyone does, and it's interesting to Martel how many people who don't believe in redemption are the same as who want it.

[sandrocker]

"I don't know," and he's painfully honest when he says that. "Do you?"

[errantknights]

"I don't believe I'm in a position to declare that it isn't possible," Martel says diplomatically; not because it would be denying it for himself, but because it would be a moral judgement that he considers to be above his paygrade, as it were. "Let's say I'm open to the idea."