15:37 <banana> The invitation Willie got was simple. Take this twig (enclosed, seemingly dead, unbreakable) and find a rubbish bin - one large enough to fit yourself inside. Carry the twig, knock on the lid. Rap.. rap-rap.. rap-rap-rap. Then look inside. 15:38 <VoxPVoxD> This would be a life-destroying prank. 15:38 <banana> Could be. 15:38 <VoxPVoxD> Absolutely unrecoverable. 15:38 <VoxPVoxD> Here we go. 15:39 <VoxPVoxD> There's a skip in the lot across from the Greybox. That's remote enough and near enough. 15:40 <banana> There's a cloud inside. The smell of trash diminishes, actually, as you open the lid - a breeze blows from within the skip, and a wide rope ladder secured to its lid descends through the barrier of cloud. 15:40 <VoxPVoxD> She knocks with her left hand, twig in the right. She didn't know what level of weather to dress for, so she's cold now, and expecting to be warm later. She's expecting to be much warmer later. 15:40 <VoxPVoxD> Opens the lid-- 15:41 <VoxPVoxD> "Holy shit." 15:41 <banana> It's made of some pink fiber, and certain strands glitter. It looks sturdy, but.. you'd want the full use two arms and legs to be safe here. 15:41 <VoxPVoxD> That's a very Bob-like expression. She didn't used to say that. 15:41 <banana> *use of 15:42 <VoxPVoxD> She tucks the twig into her jacket, poking between two buttons, before climbing down. 15:43 <banana> The cumulus cloud is low above an impossible ground, so it's a frightening but achievable descent. Just a few wells-worth of rungs to climb as Willie descends toward an island that emerges from the shimmering ocean. 15:43 <VoxPVoxD> ... 15:44 <VoxPVoxD> What level of unreality are we operating on here? Is she just tranced out bent over a rubbish bin? Is this whole thing a dream? 15:44 <banana> It's a mountainous spike of green jutting out of the sea, covered in thick grass leavened with dandelion stems. Willie's climbing near the edge of a cliff - white chalk - which drops sheer and precipitous into a glassy sea. From up here, she can see features of the island below, some of it far below. 15:44 <tom> The grass blows gently in the breeze over the lip of the chalky, blocky cliffside. Premson's observatory sits on the plateau running along the ridge of cliffs, which breaks up into forested hills as one travels... it must be east, judging from the sun? 15:44 <banana> Up above you... well, there's a cloud. Above the cloud there might be a bin, and Manchester, and Earth. 15:44 <tom> That's where Bob's sitting, lotus-posed, like a fucking Jedi. 15:44 <banana> But Willie has a feeling she's still in Britain. 15:45 <banana> The sole building in sight is the observatory, some way off, all glass panes in a steel frame - there's a huge telescope poking out of it that gently tracks the sky. 15:45 <VoxPVoxD> Okay, that's a bit much. Willie smiles despite herself. 15:46 <VoxPVoxD> Willie tests the solidity of the ground. 15:46 <tom> "It's real." 15:46 <banana> As you look down the sweep of the island below its cliff-peak - if you do that, which is a real vertigo risk - you can see other human construction - a large and crumbling stone bridge over an interior river or chasm, seemingly the only way into a jungled interior. It's weird. The geography is weird. From just tens of metres above you could see the whole island.. but standing here, the more 15:46 <banana> you look down at the jungle, it seems to go on forever. 15:46 <tom> Bob sighs and lets his legs dangle off the side of the stone. "I think." 15:47 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Why are you living in a basement?" 15:47 <tom> "You know, this is where I'm comin' from, you know. I don't know what's real or not anymore, and the stuff that's not real- way less upsetting than the real stuff." 15:48 <banana> You're either halfway between Wales and Ireland or halfway between England and Borneo. A good place to meet in the middle. 15:48 <tom> He shrugs. "I was planning on getting set up in the farm by Christmas. Candlemas. Whichever." 15:48 <tom> "Looks like that's a vain hope." 15:48 <tom> A wry look: "You got the goods? Long way to travel empty-handed." 15:49 <VoxPVoxD> Willie looks over the cliff, out across the ocean, to the jungle... 15:49 <VoxPVoxD> "Huh? Oh, yeah." 15:49 <VoxPVoxD> She's got Mary's candy in an empty paracetamol bottle. 15:50 <VoxPVoxD> She hesitates. "How far away do you want me to sit?" 15:52 <tom> Bob slides over to clear space on the rock a couple arms' lengths off. 15:52 <tom> "Step into my office." 15:53 <tom> "There's some fucked-up iguana looking critters but they don't usually come up the cliffs." 15:53 <VoxPVoxD> Close enough to pass something hand to hand, but no closer. Okay. Not letting herself read into that. 15:54 <tom> He gestures down the cliff, over the bridge. "That wasn't here last time. I think I know where it goes." 15:54 <tom> "Not a good idea to find out, though." 15:55 <tom> Bob takes off his visor and folds it up into his pocket before taking off his jacket to fold it under his seat like a blanket. 15:56 <VoxPVoxD> She tips the bottle into his palm and two pills land. Then she takes her own immediately. Willie's not sure where to put her hands now, so they kind of drift from point to point on her thighs and knees. 15:57 <VoxPVoxD> "How are you?" 15:57 <tom> Bob shrugs and scarfs down the pills with a bottle of water. "This is not a problem I ever expected to have." 15:58 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Workplace sexual harrassment?" 15:59 <tom> "How long does it usually take to kick in?" 16:00 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "You've never done molly? When's the last time you ate?" 16:00 <tom> Bob crosses his legs and looks uneasy: "Not really my scene." 16:00 <tom> "Uh, shit, like, a couple hours I guess?" 16:00 <VoxPVoxD> "Then your stomach's empty. Should be, I don't know, half an hour at most." 16:01 <tom> "Sick. I brought water." 16:01 <tom> Bob shakes the little plastic bottle. It sloshes. "Kaga told me. A ways back." 16:01 <tom> "I was kinda hoping he was full'a shit but..." 16:02 <tom> "Also hoping he wasn't." He just deflates. 16:02 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Told you what?" 16:03 <tom> For the first time in a week, he makes bleary eye contact. "You know," 16:03 <VoxPVoxD> Willie looks back. Her face is set strangely. "He didn't know." 16:04 <VoxPVoxD> "I didn't tell him anything. I didn't even-- he was just being a prick." 16:05 <VoxPVoxD> She looks away, digs her heels into the dirt a bit. "I'm sorry, this isn't really the tone I want to strike. But..." 16:05 <VoxPVoxD> "You knew before I did." 16:07 <tom> "This is gonna seem stupid." 16:07 <VoxPVoxD> She looks back up at him. 16:07 <tom> "But what the fuck, haha, why?" 16:08 <tom> Bob snickers. 16:08 <tom> "Was it the suicidal ideation or the martyr complex that really just, is like, aw yes?" 16:09 <VoxPVoxD> Willie can't help but grin, but the expression that settles on her face as the smile fades is rueful. "I can answer this very concisely, but I can also answer at length, if you like. I could say a lot. I have done. That little speech at Samhain feels rather differently in retrospect." 16:10 <tom> He leans back on his jacket padded-seat on the stone and lets the clouds pass overhead with his arms folded over his midsection. 16:10 <tom> "I'll be real with you I was still coming down off the amp so most of that's a blur." 16:12 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Okay. Well, admittedly, if you can't remember most of what we've been through clearly your confusion makes a lot more sense." 16:12 <tom> Bob gestures out across the ocean. "Half my life is this shit now." 16:13 <tom> "That's what I'm, uh," he chokes, clears his throat, "Tryin' to get at." 16:13 <tom> "I didn't realize what's actually real until too late." 16:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Yeah. I'll be brief." 16:15 <VoxPVoxD> "You asked me why. Sergio wanted to know the same thing and he didn't ask me. He knew, apparently, weeks ago. At Samhain. Before Samhain. Never said a word. Last night I had to tell him to ask me why." 16:15 <VoxPVoxD> "There is none of that furtiveness or coldness or cowardice in you." 16:15 <VoxPVoxD> "It is in everyone else I know. It is in all of our colleagues. It's in me." 16:18 <tom> Yep. That's literally all it takes. He might manage to conceal it for a second there, with her focused on getting her words out- but what begins as a spate of odd, ragged breaths is soon impossible to conceal. 16:20 <VoxPVoxD> "See, even now I want to-- but I can't. I have to just sit here--" 16:20 <VoxPVoxD> "And watch." 16:21 <tom> He rubs his eyes. "See that's the thing. I didn't think it'd be a problem." 16:22 <tom> "This was all just supposed to be one long fun epilogue before the lights went out." 16:23 <tom> "I won." 16:23 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's starting to warm up, which is clashing oddly from what she sees across the rock. 16:23 <tom> "I got a question, so now it's only fair you got a question." 16:23 <tom> "I know you've been meaning to ask," mutters Bob. 16:24 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Okay." 16:24 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "...so why 'Bob'?" 16:24 <tom> "Literally just pulled it out my ass when I went through the door into her cell." 16:25 <VoxPVoxD> "Really? Why?" 16:25 <VoxPVoxD> "What was wrong with William?" 16:25 <VoxPVoxD> "Technically these are extra questions, but come on." 16:26 <tom> Bob: "Got tired of being that guy." 16:26 <tom> "I figured, you know, I didn't wanna be like, hi, World's most violent mass-murderer Bill Goreman here to save you, miss."" 16:27 <tom> Bob angles his head up on the rock. "You got like, born into your shit. I chose to be that guy." 16:27 <tom> "So I chose to not be that guy- for five minutes." 16:27 <VoxPVoxD> "So you just Decided, then, this is the beginning of the rest of my life. William Goreman is dead; now is the time of Bob." 16:28 <tom> Bob looks down: "I thought the rest of my life would be five minutes long." 16:29 <tom> "I thought, who cares if the name's fuckin' stupid, I only gotta say it once." 16:29 <VoxPVoxD> "That doesn't matter. What matters is you decided that the rest of your life would be different." 16:29 <tom> "So yeah, I flip the lock, and she'll peace out- or, hopefully, just, tear my head off and spike it into the harbor." 16:29 <tom> "But she kept not doing either of those things." 16:29 <tom> Bob curls up on the rock, now. "It's been six months." 16:30 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Did she tell you she came to see me?" 16:30 <tom> "I wouldn't be here otherwise." 16:30 <VoxPVoxD> "Nor I." 16:31 <VoxPVoxD> "So from a certain point of view, everything that happens from here on is her fault as well." 16:32 <VoxPVoxD> This rock is really warm, isn't it? It's so warm here. 16:32 <tom> "I knew I was... I knew I wanted to be with you for a little while. But I didn't realize what I have with her was real until that night." 16:34 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I feel compelled to point out that you have been extraordinarily graceful. I have been in... analogous situations. In all of these roles. The course of my life would be very different if I could count on even one person to have handled this moment as well as you have." 16:36 <tom> Bob grins like the Chesire cat. "Not the first time I've had to let down a lady easy." 16:36 <tom> "Okay that's a lie, more like, not the first time I've had to talk a gal down from just swallowing my soul whole." 16:37 <VoxPVoxD> "Did you think I might?" 16:37 <VoxPVoxD> It's a serious question, if not an entirely literal one. 16:37 <tom> "...Is it still too late to do that? Might make what happens next less painful." 16:38 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "No no, I'm serious." 16:38 <VoxPVoxD> "Are you really afraid of me?" 16:38 <tom> It's been a little while since he took that pill. 16:38 <tom> "Willie," Bob turns over on his stone. "You are an attractive woman who can throw fireballs." 16:39 <tom> "Every guy on this island should be quaking in their boots." 16:40 <VoxPVoxD> "I don't mean am I WILLIE SCARY, I mean are you afraid of me?" She's almost all the way up now. She's talking faster, her palms scrape every novel surface they can reach. "You know? Like there's the-- there's a difference." 16:40 <VoxPVoxD> "There's a big difference." 16:41 <VoxPVoxD> "There's the awe and the thrill of being around someone who can hurt you... and the dread of thinking someone might." 16:41 <tom> Bob: "No one can ever hurt you if you like getting hurt," he taps his temple thoughtfully. 16:42 <VoxPVoxD> "And yet here we are." 16:42 <tom> "...Is losing your soul really that bad, anyway?" 16:42 <tom> "I guess it doesn't matter." 16:42 <tom> "Tell me about your shitty brothers." 16:42 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Why?" 16:43 <tom> He scratches his chin and gets up to a sitting position on the rock. 16:43 <VoxPVoxD> Willie leans against the rock, sliding to sit in the dirt and arch her back against the stone. She's facing that foreign sky. 16:43 <tom> "I've been thinking." 16:43 <VoxPVoxD> "Mmm?" Her eyes are closed, but she's listening. 16:44 <tom> "But maybe you could use... a brother who doesn't suck ass?" 16:45 <VoxPVoxD> Willie bursts with laughter. 16:45 <tom> Bob flinches, just a bit. 16:46 <VoxPVoxD> "This is amazing. You are dumping me so gently and we never even had sex." 16:46 <VoxPVoxD> "How could you ever be mystified why someone would love you?" 16:46 <tom> "Cus I killed the last girl who did," and now it's his turn to laugh, hollow and terrible. 16:47 <tom> Without his visor, those brown eyes just suck up all the light. 16:47 <VoxPVoxD> Willie looks over at him. She stretches her hand out towards him however far it gets. Can she touch him from here? Probably not. "Say more." 16:50 <tom> "Officially, the use of chemical weapons is banned by the Geneva convention." 16:51 <VoxPVoxD> Willie doesn't make a crack about the martians. 16:53 <tom> Bob looks at his feet. "The use of incendiary agents against enemy troops isn't actually banned. People mess that one up a lot. You can't can't drop it around civilian targets." 16:54 <tom> "Thankfully, White Phosphorus counts as the latter, when it's technically the former. The Army's run the numbers. On average you clear out a quarter of enemy combatants in a position just by dropping a white phosphorus smokescreen. That's just your smoke!" 16:54 <VoxPVoxD> Whispered: "Willie Pete is not your friend." 16:55 <tom> "After Obama, the Task Force really went to shit. Suddenly everyone was on our ass- the Air Force has their own guys, fuckin' Phoenix Raven, the god-damn marines have always been furious the Army got this gig over them." 16:55 <tom> "We needed a win, and bad." 16:56 <tom> Bob shakes his head. "This isn't making any sense, is it?" 16:57 <tom> "Where to even start?" 16:57 <VoxPVoxD> "What was her name?" 16:57 <tom> "Hannah." 16:57 <VoxPVoxD> "Was she a colleague?" 16:58 <tom> "She was the Designated Markswoman." 16:58 <tom> "I was just some tubby nerd transferred from R&D. She taught me to shoot." 16:59 <VoxPVoxD> "Like you taught me to shoot." 16:59 <tom> "I busted the fuck outta my shoulder, you believe me." 17:00 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "So you were in the field, you and Hannah." 17:01 <tom> He shakes his head. "I was back in the trailer at Checkpoint Bravo with the Lieutenant. I was- I was the air support." 17:01 <tom> "Twin two-fifty kilo incendiary warheads." 17:02 <tom> "They popped the ambush, like we planned. The goal was to stun the fucker with the Mjolnirs and paste it from forty-thousand feet." 17:03 <VoxPVoxD> "The fucker?" 17:04 <tom> Bob finds the stone at his feet very interesting all the sudden. "The Pandoran." 17:04 <tom> "They get up to some weird shit in the National Parks." 17:05 <tom> "It didn't go as planned. Half of Baker just, went nuts the moment they saw it." 17:06 <tom> "It was like... I was seeing it all play out from above. I couldn't do anything." 17:08 <tom> "So I'm listening to the Lieutenant and he's on the radio with the guys in America Falls, and it's like, yeah, okay, the team's lost. Let's wrap up this mission so we can call it a win." 17:09 <tom> He only chokes for a moment. "I think Giannini was already dead." 17:10 <tom> "The concussion from the charge probably snapped Hannah's neck before she knew what was happening." 17:10 <tom> "Nguyen I don't know about. He was further away." 17:10 <tom> "I hope it was quick." 17:11 <tom> "I heard it all over the radio." 17:11 <tom> Bob has settled into a crouched pose, his hands on his forehead, concealing his eyes. 17:11 <tom> "So yeah," he sniffs. "I won." 17:12 <tom> "I went out back and put my gun in my mouth and then the Lieutenant came out and promoted me." 17:13 <VoxPVoxD> Willie just sits and grinds her teeth. The sun's like pins and needles on her now. 17:14 <VoxPVoxD> Finally, quietly: "How long until Boston?" 17:14 <tom> "Three months." 17:14 <tom> "I requested a transfer to the tactical team the next day." 17:15 <tom> He grins: "There were open spots." 17:15 <VoxPVoxD> "And you wanted to be the next open spot." 17:15 <tom> "How the fuck am I still alive?" 17:15 <tom> "Is God just punishing me?" 17:16 <VoxPVoxD> "Does Mari feel like a punishment? Does this?" 17:16 <VoxPVoxD> "Do I?" 17:17 <tom> "I know if you stick around in this job, you'll end up the same way." He's pressing his thumbs into his eyes until it starts to sting. 17:18 <VoxPVoxD> "Bob. Robert." 17:18 <VoxPVoxD> "Look at me." 17:19 <tom> His eyes are red as they rise to meet hers. With no visor between them, he just looks tired. 17:20 <VoxPVoxD> Willie's eyes are clear and bright, the little tears at the corners sparkling in Premson's sun. She's propped against the rock and stretched partway over the cliff, her feet just past the edge and out of sight. She looks like a mermaid. 17:20 <VoxPVoxD> "I'd like permission to hug you." 17:20 <tom> He just nods and wrenches his eyes shut. 17:20 <VoxPVoxD> Willie climbs onto the flat stone bench and slides toward him. It's not really a hug. She holds him. 17:20 <tom> "I never wanted to hurt anybody." 17:21 <tom> "You gotta believe me." 17:21 <VoxPVoxD> "I do." 17:21 <tom> "Everything after that's just been one long fever dream and I'm afraid what happens when it stops." 17:22 <VoxPVoxD> "You're fevered, but not dreaming." 17:23 <VoxPVoxD> "But you're here. You are loved. That is not going to stop." 17:23 <tom> "She's the one good thing I ever did. And I didn't even realize it until you were in front of those Turkish freaks." 17:24 <tom> "It's all just been this absurd joke." 17:24 <VoxPVoxD> "It doesn't have to be." 17:25 <VoxPVoxD> "You changed it once. You can do it again." 17:25 <VoxPVoxD> "Do you want to?" 17:26 <tom> Bob squeezes her. "I have to." 17:26 <tom> "Nothing has changed. The mission's still the same, no matter what Badawi or Soyjak says." 17:26 <VoxPVoxD> "You have changed." 17:28 <tom> "Being completely fucking broken on the wheel counts as change, I guess." 17:29 <tom> Bob lets her go. 17:29 <VoxPVoxD> Willie lets go too, but only of his body. She takes his hands in hers. "Hey. Listen." 17:29 <VoxPVoxD> "Brothers are shit. Be my friend. Be my best friend." 17:32 <tom> He wipes the corners of his eyes. 17:32 <tom> He chokes on the words, so he just nods, and looks out to sea. 17:34 <tom> "This place is so pretty. No wonder Premson never leaves." 17:34 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "We also make an incredible team. That was always the thing, ultimately, I think." 17:34 <VoxPVoxD> "I just love teams so much." 17:35 <banana> There's a horizon, but something goes wrong with the ocean on the way there. Looking at it, you can't identify a point of change or transition, but there's realistic foam below you, waves, and eventually a skyline instead of a sea. 17:35 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "He leaves to help people." 17:36 <tom> "Well, shit," his voice cracks. "Without me, who else is going to be on bodyguard duty the next time you have to completely style on the Inchcape set?" 17:36 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "It's looking increasingly like I might have twice the backup next time." 17:37 <VoxPVoxD> "Sergio's really growing to hate them." 17:37 <tom> Bob grins. "I knew he was a homeboy." 17:37 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I'm having dinner with Aaron tonight. I'm going to ask him if he thinks it's a good idea to introduce Sergio to the Dragons." 17:38 <VoxPVoxD> "I also want to ask him to rescind his disinvitation of you." 17:38 <VoxPVoxD> "If that's alright." 17:38 <tom> Bob nods solemnly. "I think I'm going to apply for court citizenship so people will stop scrambling my brains." 17:39 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Glad I got in under the wire, then," She scrambles his hair a bit. "Er, should I lay off that sort of thing? I've been quite handsy, which I didn't think much of at the time. Obviously things are a bit different now." 17:40 <tom> "It's okay. If I my hands ever stop hovering, you'll know Weaste's gotten to me." 17:40 <tom> "I still need to put things back together with Mari. I just." 17:40 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "You will." 17:40 <tom> "It's so stupid." 17:40 <VoxPVoxD> "What is?" 17:40 <tom> "I'm so stupid." 17:42 <VoxPVoxD> "We can work with stupid. Stupid is localised. Stupid comes and goes." 17:42 <tom> "I see a girl made of stone with a broken leg and I just wanna pack her up like a bird with a hurt wing, it's honestly problematic as hell if you think about it." 17:43 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "It's not like you did it. If you could be cancelled for your thoughts I would actually be in Hell right now." 17:43 <tom> "I've turned it over in my head. Do I actually care about helping people? Or do I just get off feeling Strong?" 17:44 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "The thing about you that suggests to me that you actually care is that the men who get off on feeling strong do not permit any weakness in themselves." 17:44 <VoxPVoxD> "They do not show it, they do not express it. They deny its existence. They scorn it in others." 17:44 <VoxPVoxD> "That is, for good and ill, very much the opposite of your vibe." 17:45 <VoxPVoxD> "Men who get off on being strong don't gravitate to women who can kill them." 17:46 <tom> "They should honestly try it." 17:46 <tom> Bob leans back onto the stone. The tears are all dried by now. "It clarifies things." 17:47 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Clarity is a very context-dependent virtue." 17:47 <tom> "I wonder if he can hear if you say his name here." 17:47 <tom> "That guy? Very clear." 17:48 <tom> "If he's God's representative, then I'm certain I picked the right team." He thumps his fist against his chest. 17:49 <VoxPVoxD> "So what really happened with Jabberwocky anyhow?" 17:50 <tom> "Oh, nothing much." Bob's contemplating the treeline with an absent smile. "He just showed up to shit all over Saul Lensburg and everyone I liked." 17:50 <VoxPVoxD> "What a prick." 17:51 <tom> "Did you know that God appointed him to decide whether or not my friends are allowed to escape their keepers? And he decides they should." 17:51 <tom> "What a nice guy." 17:51 <VoxPVoxD> "Imagine being that smug about being middle management." 17:51 <tom> "I'm going to detonate a thermobaric bomb over his fucking study and pull his lungs out through his throat from the pressure differential." 17:52 <tom> "It will happen, if he doesn't get me first." 17:52 <VoxPVoxD> In a mocking voice: "Oh, no, serving in Heaven is lovely, actually. I get all the Keurig pods I want and can grope women at traffic stops." 17:53 <VoxPVoxD> "Do you think he has friends?" 17:54 <tom> "I'm sure he has employees he considers friends." 17:54 <VoxPVoxD> Willie shudders. 17:54 <tom> Bob quirks a brow. 17:55 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Sorry, I just had this vision of trying to force myself into a breakroom lunch with some of the junior developers at DCS." 17:56 <VoxPVoxD> "I felt so shitty for days after the Dracula meeting. Like... was I doing that to you the whole time?" 17:57 <tom> Bob, honestly flabbergasted: "Have you seen how I talked to poor Agatha? Frankly I deserved worse." 17:57 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "She gave as good as she got. She met oaf with oaf." 17:57 <VoxPVoxD> "Her oaf was bigger." 17:57 <VoxPVoxD> Stage whisper: "But our oaf is better." 17:58 <tom> His laughter is painless. He stretches on the stone. "These pills are great." 17:58 <tom> "Oh man. I totally ruined her birthday, haha." 17:58 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "What did I say?" 17:58 <VoxPVoxD> "There will be more birthdays." 17:58 <VoxPVoxD> "You're not waking up any time soon." 18:00 <tom> "God, I hope not." 18:00 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "It occurs to me that I didn't apologise to you yet." 18:00 <VoxPVoxD> "I apologised to Mari. I apologised to Sergio. But somehow not to you." 18:01 <VoxPVoxD> "I'm really sorry. That was very unkind of me." 18:01 <tom> "Why would you? Six months ago, I would have thrown everything away to have you spit on me." 18:01 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Yeah, no, you definitely get off on being strong. That was believable, I don't think." 18:02 <tom> Bob, sagely: "I'm very good at ironic deflection." 18:03 <tom> "I still don't know how to talk to her about... any of this." 18:03 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "I will burn through your every defense and expose your living heart." 18:03 <VoxPVoxD> "But in a nice way! I promise." 18:03 <VoxPVoxD> "You mean to Mari? About Hannah?" 18:04 <tom> Bob puts his hand on his heart and feels his ribs. Absently: "What's fucked is, I already know she won't care." 18:04 <tom> "That poor girl." 18:05 <tom> "But it feels like the last vestige of... I mean, she really thinks I'm a hero." 18:05 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "Honestly that might be underselling it. She is really into the whole hero thing. A dark secret you carry as a terrible burden, one that haunts you to this day... it's not exactly unheroic." 18:06 <VoxPVoxD> "It doesn't feel heroic, I grant you, but heroism isn't an emotion." 18:07 <VoxPVoxD> "That might be what trips you up." 18:07 <tom> "Untrue. I've felt it." 18:07 <VoxPVoxD> "You keep waiting for this to feel good. But it only sometimes does. What it always feels is big." 18:07 <tom> "I felt it in Inchcape. I felt it by the Irwell, I felt it in Boston." 18:07 <VoxPVoxD> "It just turns the volume all the way up on everything. Bonnie Tyler spoke on this." 18:08 <VoxPVoxD> "You felt good, you felt brave, you felt strong, you felt accomplished, to a greater degree, because of your heroism. This is pedantic but it's important, because feeling sad or scared or stupid does not rescind it." 18:08 <VoxPVoxD> "Achilles was just as much a hero when he wept for Patroclus." 18:10 <tom> "They were definitely fuckin'." 18:10 <tom> "You know they make you study the Iliad in Army officer school?" 18:10 <VoxPVoxD> "I didn't, but I believe it readily." 18:11 <VoxPVoxD> Willie: "The Greeks took the notion of friendship rather farther than we do." 18:11 <tom> "Hannah was the only one that got it, I think, but bits stuck with me." 18:12 <VoxPVoxD> "Or rather, they recognised that all our bonds are just forms of friendship. They didn't need to talk about fuckbuddies or office husbands, they didn't need to natter about found family. They just made friends, and loved them very deeply." 18:12 <VoxPVoxD> "I find that rather inspiring." 18:12 <tom> "The ending is what most people don't get." 18:13 <VoxPVoxD> "Say more." 18:13 <tom> "Achilles kills Hector and just road hauls his fucked-to-death corpse around the city walls until Priam shows up in his camp personally to beg for his son's body." 18:14 <VoxPVoxD> Colourfully told. Willie nods. 18:14 <tom> "Achilles is like, 'why, you fucks killed my boy Patroclus', and then just realizes right there." 18:15 <tom> "I wonder if Fortunato could do that. I wonder if Carl or Emily could." 18:16 <tom> "Hundreds of years of just watching us butcher each other like apes." 18:16 <tom> "And what's left? Is there anything human not ground out by the endless fucking killing?" 18:18 <tom> "...I hope there is." 18:18 <VoxPVoxD> Willie gestures with her chin at the space around her. "This is all artificial, right? Not in the sense of fake, but in the sense of made. This was sculpted." 18:18 <tom> "It must be." 18:18 <tom> "The other place is dangerously wild, I've been told." 18:18 <VoxPVoxD> "I think they're like that. I think if you live that long, and see and do that much, you can hold onto what you think to hold onto. What you can tend like a gardener. What you can carve like a stone." 18:19 <VoxPVoxD> "And everything else is lost." 18:19 <VoxPVoxD> "For instance, I believe their bond with one another is real." 18:20 <VoxPVoxD> "That, too, gives me hope." 18:20 <VoxPVoxD> "It gives me hope for Manchester. It gives me hope for Sergio. It gives me hope for you and me." 18:20 <VoxPVoxD> "Nothing is beyond us, I believe that firmly, if only we can muster the resources and the drive to do it on purpose." 18:21 <banana> The wildness is held within. Across that bridge... Bob's been, once, with Sumi; they stayed within sight of the observatory, on the edge of the jungle they found a lake, filled with things like pigs. The open spaces beyond the thorns stretched every which way, beyond what the island's small coastline could hold. It didn't want to open to them, but they could have hacked their way in if they 18:21 <banana> paid the price for it. 18:23 <tom> Bob has another gulp of water from his bottle and watches the shadows of clouds pass over the windswept grass down the slope toward the bridge. 18:24 <VoxPVoxD> "I guess there's one other thing I didn't say to you." 18:24 <VoxPVoxD> "Explicitly." 18:25 <tom> Bob turns, a goofy expression on his face. 18:25 <VoxPVoxD> "I love you." 18:26 <VoxPVoxD> "I wasn't entirely honest with myself about that before. And that caused me to do some stupid and hurtful things. But I am more convinced than ever that my feelings are allocated correctly." 18:26 <VoxPVoxD> "I love you, Bob Goreman, and I'm right to do so." 18:27 <tom> "I love you too." He says in a small voice. "I don't think it's a zero-sum thing." 18:27 <tom> "Not anymore, at least." 18:27 <VoxPVoxD> "I think you're right."