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[will_you_see]

Nearly a week had passed since Alcuin had added Daniel Jackson's name to the drawing he'd pinned up on the wall in his house. He'd named it in his head the Tree of Loss, and tried to think of it now as a sort of memorial. But it was the worst sort of irony that it wasn't very long ago at all that Alcuin had confessed his fear that Daniel, as one

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[lastof_five]

Helen had come into the kitchen for her own tea and she didn't want to distract the boy bent over his books; studying could take different forms for different people and if he needed silence, she wanted to give it to him. The circuit, though, was interesting and she made a comment to that effect.

"I have a friend who spent the better part of his life fiddling with circuits. Are you an engineering student, then?"

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"Can't say I doubt that," Helen said wryly. "He likes to be the center of attention. Not that it's always a bad thing but sometimes it can be incredibly frustrating. Being the center of Nikola's world might be appealing to some, though."

Helen smiled a bit. "Where do you come from, Alcuin?"

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Alcuin found himself wondering for a moment if he would enjoy being the center of Nikola's world... in all honesty, perhaps he would. If only because it seemed it had been so long since he had been the center of anyone's world... if ever.

"I come from a country called Terre d'Ange," he said, pouring the hot water into the teapot so that it could steep before turning back to face her. "An alternate world from the one that most here seem to call home. I have come to understand that it has some similarities to medieval France, but there are significant cultural and historical divergences."

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"Ah, my friend Pierrette comes from France, though she calls it that and not Terre d'Ange. Do you know how it came upon that name?"

Helen was always interested in the history and culture of others and this was one that, even in her long life, she didn't know anything about and had never encountered.

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Alcuin nodded. "It is fairly literal," he said. "Land of angels... my people, the D'Angelines, we are descended from them, or so the stories go."

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"That makes sense, actually. It's so rare when logic actually applies, isn't it?"

She laughed lightly, and studied him for a moment. "Is everyone in Terre d'Ange as beautiful as you are, Alcuin?"

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"More or less," said Alcuin with a little smile. The more accurate truth would be "not quite", but there was a fine line between truth and immodesty.

"The underlying philosophy of D'Angeline culture is 'love as thou wilt'," he added, because it seemed to follow, and he felt it explained a lot about him in a little statement.

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"Love as thou wilt," Helen repeated, trying to work her brain around that. Maybe she shouldn't have been so worried about Nikola taking advantage of him, then.

"Are there not formalized marriages in your homeland, then?"

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"Oh no, there are still marriages," said Alcuin. "And they are still sometimes rooted in practical reasons. It is more that... above all, we do not stand in the way of love. We celebrate it in all its forms, and... rape is the highest form of heresy."

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That made more sense, then, and Helen nodded. "I'm no anthropologist, to study culture, but that sounds absolutely fascinating. My own culture is not nearly so tolerant of sexual freedoms and the place where I grew up, even less so. Sex was thought of as dirty and improper."

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"Not an uncommon state of affairs," Alcuin said with a soft sigh. "Though I imagine you have found this place considerably more liberated. Have you only been here a short time, like Nikola?"

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"Ah, no, I've been here for approximately a year," Helen said, thinking back over the past months. "Let's see, my Will and I showed up in July, of last year? So not exactly a new arrival. And you, Alcuin? How long have you been here?"

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"Five years and a few months," said Alcuin, "which... name of Elua, sounds like even more when I say it out loud."

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Helen whistled lowly, shocked at that. "The only person I know who has been here that long is Dr. House, actually, and it still shocks me to think I might be here that long too. It's...insane."

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Alcuin tensed a little at House's name. "Yes, it's been... a long time." And nearly that long since House had hated him, too. "I've watched a lot of people come and go."

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"It's hard to do that," Helen agreed. "Not that I've lost many here on the island but there's been a lot of...deaths, over the course of my life. It's hard when everyone else is moving on and you're stuck standing still."