Post by Daniel MacNamara on Aug 26, 2020 1:39:58 GMT -5
You can use a spear for a walking stick, but you can’t change its nature.
It was still a weapon, and in the end, when philosophers, priests, and kings finally deigned to shut their fucking mouths and accept what was? A weapon’s purpose remained the same as it was before. There was simplicity in being a weapon. The purpose was singular, simplistic, and it was honesty in its rarest form. A weapon didn’t lie about a weapon, the moment that you saw it, you knew what it was there for. You could preen and lie about why it was there, but everyone knew what it was there for.
Danny could empathize with weapons a lot more than he could other people. That was why he held a whetstone in one hand, sliding it down the edge of that longsword at a fifteen-degree angle, choosing to take to the task with hand tools in lieu of a grinding wheel. Methodical, steady hands let the long, slow, scrape of steel on steel fill the air with each passing stroke against the edge of that weapon that he held. Each pass made it sharper, more refined, and with each pass that made it all the more lethal, it lost part of itself. It let the dead weight leave it to become a better weapon. It let go.
Why did each loss haunt him? Why did each misstep feel like unrelenting agony at this point to him?
The Sword held no answers for him. It was a weapon, and the only answer it held was the same answer his own soul produced. An answer he was unsatisfied with. Violence would set him free, it was what he knew best, it was what he was good at. Violence had more than one purpose, it was multifaceted, it was something he could hold and shape and..
His hand slipped.
Blood was everywhere.
The cut wasn’t especially large, but it was big enough that crimson splattered almost mirrored steel. He frowned. The stone was set aside, and a red bandana was picked up and pressed quickly to the wound to stop the bleeding.
Stop the bleeding, he had to stop the bleeding. He had to correct his path, he had to redirect himself. That red stained hand grasped the sword as its twin gripped it with bloodied cloth between the flesh. Pain was setting in, first the cold sensation of skin no longer being where it should be before the fire of realization took hold. The blade hurt. The weapon served its purpose on accident, by happenstance and bad luck.
“You bit me,” he murmured beneath his breath as he still held the sword that he’d taken from his father’s own hands. “You bit me, and drew blood.” Talking to himself, to an inanimate object, to anything that heard the quiet of his voice as it filled the silence previously occupied by the sounds of steel on steel. Rotating his wrist, he made the blade a momentary blur of steel before it came upright with the tip pointing towards the sky.
He could see himself in its sheen, he could see the bloody smear that covered his face, that obfuscated his eyes. He knew he could shift the blade and look, but the same part of him that knew that was in conflict with the part of him that never wanted to see what laid behind his eyes ever again. A weapon doesn’t deny what it is, and he couldn’t do that anymore than he could bear separating with the hand that he’d just cut. Those lips of his shifted into a slow, albeit genuine smile, something that was rare on the flame haired boy’s face; it was like finding a diamond after uncovering a clod of dirt in your yard, so improbable no one would ever truly believe it.
“I always wondered what it’d be like to hold the sword of my father, to wield it like he once did. I wondered what it was like to wear his boots that only a giant could fit in, surely, to walk in them in the path that he took. I wanted to bear the weight of the crown I used to think that he wore. I wanted so badly to be him, to be what as I idolized as him, that I never once thought of who I was, or what I was.” His smile started to falter, it’d already dropped from those blue eyes as he spoke, watching his distorted reflection across the flat of the blade. “All that changed though, when I was ready to start training to do just that, to be another heir of my father’s. I didn’t want to be him at all, I didn’t want to be like him. I wanted nothing to do with his legacy. I wanted nothing more than to be the stupid, silly, boy that I was. The soft boy, the one who thought dresses were pretty and that I should be able to be pretty. I wanted, in short, what I thought I should get for being a loyal son: what I deserved.”
Pause. He sighed, a grin crossing over that fading smile to take its place.
“Instead, I learned a hard lesson that a child shouldn’t learn, that ‘deserve’ has nothing to do with what you get in life.”
That’s when he tilted the blade downward, releasing his injured hand as the one that’d held the cloth to the wound reached up to wipe the blood from the steel. Slowly, carefully, almost as if trying to polish it with each swipe, each careful move of his hand.
“Anna understands that. She understands me well. She always has, and she’s been a friend when no one else was, and that’s what I desperately needed. Always weaving her webs to catch me as I fell. She saw what was coming, even when the ones proclaiming the loudest about how they loved me were blind to it. She could see the madness, she could trace the spirals my steps took me towards and down because of course she could.”
Deft fingers plucked up the scabbard of his father’s sword, and as he tilted it down? He resheathed it in a fluid stroke without so much of a hint of the blade catching before it was driven home.
“Like there’s a madness in me, there’s a madness in her. Constant, creeping, chittering as it vibrates along the webs that she dances across, desperate to salvage what remains in her. Careful, ever vigilant against the madness. Dancing with Fisk across the stars, marching into battle with Lisa, trying to hold together a family, all while hating those that she loves. It’d be maddening for a normal person, but for someone like her? It’s beyond that, isn’t it? She’s a paradox personified. If I’m a Wayward Prince, then what is she? Something older, something eldritch? Is the carbon in her the same carbon that was used to write the tapestries in the beginning? Or are we both griefstricken, tired, and insane? Have we both written a maddening, ill-begotten, epic as our own twisted, half gender swapped Chiron and Achilles?”
He snorted, as if the thought was as nonsensical as everything else he’d said.
“Is she more precious to me than a stranger? Do I want to hurt her less than I do a normal opponent? Does her life matter more? She is my friend, yes, but every opponent I ever faced had friends. They were beloved to someone too. Chiron once posed this question to Achilles. At age fourteen, Achilles thought it was impossible to answer what life was more valuable intrinsically, and at age twenty seven, he still found it too hard to answer because while his friends were worth more to him, the enemy was worth more to their own loved ones. In the end though, he found the answer to Chiron’s question.”
Setting the sword down on a nearby table, he let it rest only to pick up his soft pack of Seven Stars cigarettes, plucking one out to place it between his lips. Deliberately slow, he struck a match from the box of them that he kept near his cigarettes and lit the tip of that cancer stick. Breathing deep, closing his eyes to let that nicotine hit just right before he opened them.
“There is no answer. Whatever you choose in the end, you’re wrong. You can make no mistakes and still fail. I thought it was because I couldn't let go, and yet.. here I am. Here we are. So, here’s to never being correct, Annaparenna, of House Xianthellipse. May the best abomination win.”
And then, just like in the beginning, there was nothing. All of it like wisps of smoke across the black.
It was still a weapon, and in the end, when philosophers, priests, and kings finally deigned to shut their fucking mouths and accept what was? A weapon’s purpose remained the same as it was before. There was simplicity in being a weapon. The purpose was singular, simplistic, and it was honesty in its rarest form. A weapon didn’t lie about a weapon, the moment that you saw it, you knew what it was there for. You could preen and lie about why it was there, but everyone knew what it was there for.
Danny could empathize with weapons a lot more than he could other people. That was why he held a whetstone in one hand, sliding it down the edge of that longsword at a fifteen-degree angle, choosing to take to the task with hand tools in lieu of a grinding wheel. Methodical, steady hands let the long, slow, scrape of steel on steel fill the air with each passing stroke against the edge of that weapon that he held. Each pass made it sharper, more refined, and with each pass that made it all the more lethal, it lost part of itself. It let the dead weight leave it to become a better weapon. It let go.
Why couldn’t he let go?
Why did each loss haunt him? Why did each misstep feel like unrelenting agony at this point to him?
The Sword held no answers for him. It was a weapon, and the only answer it held was the same answer his own soul produced. An answer he was unsatisfied with. Violence would set him free, it was what he knew best, it was what he was good at. Violence had more than one purpose, it was multifaceted, it was something he could hold and shape and..
His hand slipped.
Blood was everywhere.
The cut wasn’t especially large, but it was big enough that crimson splattered almost mirrored steel. He frowned. The stone was set aside, and a red bandana was picked up and pressed quickly to the wound to stop the bleeding.
Stop the bleeding, he had to stop the bleeding. He had to correct his path, he had to redirect himself. That red stained hand grasped the sword as its twin gripped it with bloodied cloth between the flesh. Pain was setting in, first the cold sensation of skin no longer being where it should be before the fire of realization took hold. The blade hurt. The weapon served its purpose on accident, by happenstance and bad luck.
“You bit me,” he murmured beneath his breath as he still held the sword that he’d taken from his father’s own hands. “You bit me, and drew blood.” Talking to himself, to an inanimate object, to anything that heard the quiet of his voice as it filled the silence previously occupied by the sounds of steel on steel. Rotating his wrist, he made the blade a momentary blur of steel before it came upright with the tip pointing towards the sky.
He could see himself in its sheen, he could see the bloody smear that covered his face, that obfuscated his eyes. He knew he could shift the blade and look, but the same part of him that knew that was in conflict with the part of him that never wanted to see what laid behind his eyes ever again. A weapon doesn’t deny what it is, and he couldn’t do that anymore than he could bear separating with the hand that he’d just cut. Those lips of his shifted into a slow, albeit genuine smile, something that was rare on the flame haired boy’s face; it was like finding a diamond after uncovering a clod of dirt in your yard, so improbable no one would ever truly believe it.
“I always wondered what it’d be like to hold the sword of my father, to wield it like he once did. I wondered what it was like to wear his boots that only a giant could fit in, surely, to walk in them in the path that he took. I wanted to bear the weight of the crown I used to think that he wore. I wanted so badly to be him, to be what as I idolized as him, that I never once thought of who I was, or what I was.” His smile started to falter, it’d already dropped from those blue eyes as he spoke, watching his distorted reflection across the flat of the blade. “All that changed though, when I was ready to start training to do just that, to be another heir of my father’s. I didn’t want to be him at all, I didn’t want to be like him. I wanted nothing to do with his legacy. I wanted nothing more than to be the stupid, silly, boy that I was. The soft boy, the one who thought dresses were pretty and that I should be able to be pretty. I wanted, in short, what I thought I should get for being a loyal son: what I deserved.”
Pause. He sighed, a grin crossing over that fading smile to take its place.
“Instead, I learned a hard lesson that a child shouldn’t learn, that ‘deserve’ has nothing to do with what you get in life.”
That’s when he tilted the blade downward, releasing his injured hand as the one that’d held the cloth to the wound reached up to wipe the blood from the steel. Slowly, carefully, almost as if trying to polish it with each swipe, each careful move of his hand.
“Anna understands that. She understands me well. She always has, and she’s been a friend when no one else was, and that’s what I desperately needed. Always weaving her webs to catch me as I fell. She saw what was coming, even when the ones proclaiming the loudest about how they loved me were blind to it. She could see the madness, she could trace the spirals my steps took me towards and down because of course she could.”
Deft fingers plucked up the scabbard of his father’s sword, and as he tilted it down? He resheathed it in a fluid stroke without so much of a hint of the blade catching before it was driven home.
“Like there’s a madness in me, there’s a madness in her. Constant, creeping, chittering as it vibrates along the webs that she dances across, desperate to salvage what remains in her. Careful, ever vigilant against the madness. Dancing with Fisk across the stars, marching into battle with Lisa, trying to hold together a family, all while hating those that she loves. It’d be maddening for a normal person, but for someone like her? It’s beyond that, isn’t it? She’s a paradox personified. If I’m a Wayward Prince, then what is she? Something older, something eldritch? Is the carbon in her the same carbon that was used to write the tapestries in the beginning? Or are we both griefstricken, tired, and insane? Have we both written a maddening, ill-begotten, epic as our own twisted, half gender swapped Chiron and Achilles?”
He snorted, as if the thought was as nonsensical as everything else he’d said.
“Is she more precious to me than a stranger? Do I want to hurt her less than I do a normal opponent? Does her life matter more? She is my friend, yes, but every opponent I ever faced had friends. They were beloved to someone too. Chiron once posed this question to Achilles. At age fourteen, Achilles thought it was impossible to answer what life was more valuable intrinsically, and at age twenty seven, he still found it too hard to answer because while his friends were worth more to him, the enemy was worth more to their own loved ones. In the end though, he found the answer to Chiron’s question.”
Setting the sword down on a nearby table, he let it rest only to pick up his soft pack of Seven Stars cigarettes, plucking one out to place it between his lips. Deliberately slow, he struck a match from the box of them that he kept near his cigarettes and lit the tip of that cancer stick. Breathing deep, closing his eyes to let that nicotine hit just right before he opened them.
“There is no answer. Whatever you choose in the end, you’re wrong. You can make no mistakes and still fail. I thought it was because I couldn't let go, and yet.. here I am. Here we are. So, here’s to never being correct, Annaparenna, of House Xianthellipse. May the best abomination win.”
And then, just like in the beginning, there was nothing. All of it like wisps of smoke across the black.