All right. Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool. No, it's great, he loves it when people just know that. Charlie puts a great deal of concentration into dragging on his cigarette completely calmly and normally. His face is about as closed off as a face can get. He breathes out again.
"He, uh."
He wonders if Jedao will believe him. Thinks suddenly of Alan talking about the King as being from a fictional story. Chuckles a bit, though it isn't actually funny.
"The King in Yellow, this ancient thing of terrible power, started invading my dreams some time ago. Pretty soon he took me off to his realm in the Dreamlands so that it could be a full-time affair for the next, as far as I can tell, ten years. Some... ordinary, mundane tortures, yes, but above all he was a master manipulator, twisting my reality into whatever he wanted it to be."
His voice begins to get more animated, unusually so, though his eyes are on something else.
"He can whisper in your ear and make you think it's the voice of a loved one. Make you look at someone you love and think they're a stranger. Make you think your own limbs are parasites eatin' you. Shatter your sanity with no more thought or effort than dropping a sheet of glass." He's not consciously moving between I and you, he just... needs the extra level of removal, sometimes. "A creature made of madness with a thousand gibbering masks, a-a..."
...and he catches himself.
"Well, that's... beside the point."
...and also remembers who he's talking to, and who he's talking about, and the fact that however true this thing that sometimes tries to tear its way out of his chest is, it's not particularly tactful.
"Sorry. That's... yeah, that's a long way beside the point."
Monotone, again. Staring at the low table between them, again. Apologetic.
"All I... Jesus. I'm not trying to... All I need to say is he pulled out a lotta faces during that time, a lotta names. Some of them he... he picked straight out of my memories, some he took from... other people, I think. He musta put on hundreds of- of characters to trick me. And then there's..."
He waves a hand unhappily, not wanting to say it.
"Edwin. So I don't... have any- I-I don't have any goddamn idea how to figure it out. Ain't got a clue. I'm all ears if you got any ideas because I don't know."
The one thing in this world he can be sure about is that he feels like absolute warmed-up shit from saying all that.
Jedao listens, and if he wants to flinch think they're a stranger - he doesn't. Charlie's lived it, and Jedao can at least face it. He's quiet for a few moments, resolving - yes, that matches. That's the why he was missing, half-suspected after his own glimpse into the dreamlands.
"I don't think it's beside the point," he says softly, but firmly. "It's at the heart of the difficulty, that you've endured by not trusting, by bracing yourself and your own intuition against a malleable world. That's a powerful, incredible thing. You were right to do it, and I know that's...a very hard shield to set down."
It works itself out in much smaller, subtler ways, for Jedao. But knowing - knowing - that everything everyone around you says is wrong, that you know the truth - or that you didn't, that you should have looked deeper, when knowing you should have refused to believe the evidence of your own eyes and ears will haunt you forever -
"Before you came to the boat. What differences, between the world and the King's lies, helped you most in knowing, in reminding yourself that you'd gotten way?"
Jedao is being very very accommodating for someone with skin in the game on Edwin's side, and Charlie doesn't know whether he trusts his own judgement about how suspicious that is. His understanding makes Charlie feel like he's being buttered up.
He's asking a fair question. If he doesn't know that one of the only real answers is 'there are things I know that the King doesn't', and why would he know that, then the question isn't overly pointed at all. Charlie is being an insane person right now probably and also severely overanalysing the layers and implications and pressure that might or might not exist in 'that's a hard shield to put down' he's being an insane person maybe.
Charlie takes a long breath through his cigarette to buy time, watching Jedao with an expression that's opaque but for the little bit of nervousness he hasn't successfully stuffed behind it.
"Being frank," he says at last, and he is actually giving a true answer, just a different true answer-
He grins reflexively for a second, then makes himself say it anyway, what with the frankness of the discussion and all. He shrugs. It's sort of funny actually and also isn't. Lightly: "It's practical. Don't get a lot done otherwise."
Jedao grins, for a flicker of a moment, acknowledging the mirthless joke.
"Fair enough." He drums his fingers pensively on the side of his cup, eyes going a little distant as he remembers the King. Remote, and - not quite pitying. The not-pity of finding someone so far beyond saving that it's not even a tragedy anymore, only an obstacle.
"When I met him, he seemed...bored. He was sulking enormously and making people go insane and kill each other, but he didn't even like it that much. He was fussy. An ancient god of madness, who didn't remember how to care about anything, except he did care whether I used the proper royal address. About...kingliness. It's hard to imagine him putting so much effort into tormenting one random person, when people are so disposable to him. So - you aren't random. And he wasn't just trying to hurt you, to ablate you away, he was trying to trick you. So - information."
He tips his head back and looks at the ceiling, makes a dry huff of breath which isn't quite a laugh.
"...which means me coming over all Crowned With Eyes and trying to figure it all out is also going to put you on edge. Fuck. That's a proper twist of foxes, make no mistake."
He sits back up, puts his cup down, props his elbow on the table, contemplates Charlie with his chin in his hand.
Yeah, contemplates Charlie looking abruptly angry.
It's not really a logical reaction. It's a symptom of jumping from feeling... something (that's as far as he gets) about actually putting that not-really-a-joke into words out loud -- to thinking when you met him???, which is more sort of an alarm and fear thing -- to discomfort as he gets Sherlock Holmesed, made worse by the irritated thought that he would've told Jedao that if he'd asked -- to:
"The hell does that mean?"
His anger is far from incandescent. It's cool, and it's held in. But it's come on too unexpectedly to entirely hide, and so it's visible in how his tension changes tone, audible in the uncomfortable hike to his voice. Because what it sounds like now is that Jedao came here with -- what, with some magic shit that Charlie didn't know about? Something to see through him? If that's a reach then it doesn't feel like one.
He doesn't miss the sudden edge of Charlie's contained anger, but he doesn't bristle at it, either. He ducks his head a little - less retreat than awkward apology.
"Which bit? A twist of foxes is - like, fuck, what's the earth phrase...a catch-23? A finger-trap, where you're stuck coming and going."
Or -
"Crowned With Eyes is..." He rubs his mouth, not ashamed or offended, but self-conscious, uncertain, a little abashed.
"I never know how to explain signifiers. It's like. An omen that's on me, that means I'm really good at...seeing things, that I'm, inclined that way. That I dig and find things, that I have stupid good intuition. It doesn't make me like that, it's that I am that way, so...so it resonated with me, so I have it. I wasn't...doing a power, I was...living down to stereotype. And I thought it might be easier if I just. Did some thinking out loud, instead of interrogating you the whole way down. Seems like I kind of got ahead of myself. Sorry about that."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"He, uh."
He wonders if Jedao will believe him. Thinks suddenly of Alan talking about the King as being from a fictional story. Chuckles a bit, though it isn't actually funny.
"The King in Yellow, this ancient thing of terrible power, started invading my dreams some time ago. Pretty soon he took me off to his realm in the Dreamlands so that it could be a full-time affair for the next, as far as I can tell, ten years. Some... ordinary, mundane tortures, yes, but above all he was a master manipulator, twisting my reality into whatever he wanted it to be."
His voice begins to get more animated, unusually so, though his eyes are on something else.
"He can whisper in your ear and make you think it's the voice of a loved one. Make you look at someone you love and think they're a stranger. Make you think your own limbs are parasites eatin' you. Shatter your sanity with no more thought or effort than dropping a sheet of glass." He's not consciously moving between I and you, he just... needs the extra level of removal, sometimes. "A creature made of madness with a thousand gibbering masks, a-a..."
...and he catches himself.
"Well, that's... beside the point."
...and also remembers who he's talking to, and who he's talking about, and the fact that however true this thing that sometimes tries to tear its way out of his chest is, it's not particularly tactful.
"Sorry. That's... yeah, that's a long way beside the point."
Monotone, again. Staring at the low table between them, again. Apologetic.
"All I... Jesus. I'm not trying to... All I need to say is he pulled out a lotta faces during that time, a lotta names. Some of them he... he picked straight out of my memories, some he took from... other people, I think. He musta put on hundreds of- of characters to trick me. And then there's..."
He waves a hand unhappily, not wanting to say it.
"Edwin. So I don't... have any- I-I don't have any goddamn idea how to figure it out. Ain't got a clue. I'm all ears if you got any ideas because I don't know."
The one thing in this world he can be sure about is that he feels like absolute warmed-up shit from saying all that.
no subject
"I don't think it's beside the point," he says softly, but firmly. "It's at the heart of the difficulty, that you've endured by not trusting, by bracing yourself and your own intuition against a malleable world. That's a powerful, incredible thing. You were right to do it, and I know that's...a very hard shield to set down."
It works itself out in much smaller, subtler ways, for Jedao. But knowing - knowing - that everything everyone around you says is wrong, that you know the truth - or that you didn't, that you should have looked deeper, when knowing you should have refused to believe the evidence of your own eyes and ears will haunt you forever -
"Before you came to the boat. What differences, between the world and the King's lies, helped you most in knowing, in reminding yourself that you'd gotten way?"
no subject
He's asking a fair question. If he doesn't know that one of the only real answers is 'there are things I know that the King doesn't', and why would he know that, then the question isn't overly pointed at all. Charlie is being an insane person right now probably and also severely overanalysing the layers and implications and pressure that might or might not exist in 'that's a hard shield to put down' he's being an insane person maybe.
Charlie takes a long breath through his cigarette to buy time, watching Jedao with an expression that's opaque but for the little bit of nervousness he hasn't successfully stuffed behind it.
"Being frank," he says at last, and he is actually giving a true answer, just a different true answer-
He grins reflexively for a second, then makes himself say it anyway, what with the frankness of the discussion and all. He shrugs. It's sort of funny actually and also isn't. Lightly: "It's practical. Don't get a lot done otherwise."
Hahaha.
no subject
"Fair enough." He drums his fingers pensively on the side of his cup, eyes going a little distant as he remembers the King. Remote, and - not quite pitying. The not-pity of finding someone so far beyond saving that it's not even a tragedy anymore, only an obstacle.
"When I met him, he seemed...bored. He was sulking enormously and making people go insane and kill each other, but he didn't even like it that much. He was fussy. An ancient god of madness, who didn't remember how to care about anything, except he did care whether I used the proper royal address. About...kingliness. It's hard to imagine him putting so much effort into tormenting one random person, when people are so disposable to him. So - you aren't random. And he wasn't just trying to hurt you, to ablate you away, he was trying to trick you. So - information."
He tips his head back and looks at the ceiling, makes a dry huff of breath which isn't quite a laugh.
"...which means me coming over all Crowned With Eyes and trying to figure it all out is also going to put you on edge. Fuck. That's a proper twist of foxes, make no mistake."
He sits back up, puts his cup down, props his elbow on the table, contemplates Charlie with his chin in his hand.
no subject
It's not really a logical reaction. It's a symptom of jumping from feeling... something (that's as far as he gets) about actually putting that not-really-a-joke into words out loud -- to thinking when you met him???, which is more sort of an alarm and fear thing -- to discomfort as he gets Sherlock Holmesed, made worse by the irritated thought that he would've told Jedao that if he'd asked -- to:
"The hell does that mean?"
His anger is far from incandescent. It's cool, and it's held in. But it's come on too unexpectedly to entirely hide, and so it's visible in how his tension changes tone, audible in the uncomfortable hike to his voice. Because what it sounds like now is that Jedao came here with -- what, with some magic shit that Charlie didn't know about? Something to see through him? If that's a reach then it doesn't feel like one.
no subject
"Which bit? A twist of foxes is - like, fuck, what's the earth phrase...a catch-23? A finger-trap, where you're stuck coming and going."
Or -
"Crowned With Eyes is..." He rubs his mouth, not ashamed or offended, but self-conscious, uncertain, a little abashed.
"I never know how to explain signifiers. It's like. An omen that's on me, that means I'm really good at...seeing things, that I'm, inclined that way. That I dig and find things, that I have stupid good intuition. It doesn't make me like that, it's that I am that way, so...so it resonated with me, so I have it. I wasn't...doing a power, I was...living down to stereotype. And I thought it might be easier if I just. Did some thinking out loud, instead of interrogating you the whole way down. Seems like I kind of got ahead of myself. Sorry about that."