21:43 <banana> Bob Goreman's had a long day, or at least a day that started early. Midnight on Blackfriars Bridge, then dissection and disassembly in the morning. It feels like the sun should have set by the time he gets home, but it's actually still up there, putting up one last fight against the winter chill. 21:45 <banana> There's holly up on the patchwork brick around their basement home, a wreath on the door and tinsel strung between the poles of the courtyard gate. Either the Medwars secularised more than you've heard, or Mari learned about Christmas elsewhere. 21:47 <tom> Bob stops on the landing outside the flat to appreciate her work, hands in his pockets. "Shut up," he whispers at the lawn gnome, perched there in judgment in its little santa hat. He heads in. 21:52 <tom> He bundles up his jacket and stuffs it into the closet by the door before retrieving a ratty notebook, flips past shitty schematics and the doodles in its margins until he finds the page with text on it. A list of names. Bob uncaps his red sharpie and crosses them off one by one. 21:52 <tom> Where's Mari? 21:53 <banana> Mari's got something in the oven, but whatever it is doesn't involve supervision; she's squashed up against one arm of the sofa, reading a textbook. Or, previously reading it; her eyes follow Bob now, tentative. 21:54 <tom> He closes the notebook and replaces it into the overstuffed closet. "Updating casualty reports." 21:57 <tom> He collapses backward onto the sofa, looking up at her from the cushion while his legs dangle off the other arm. Bob sighs. 21:57 <tom> "Totally expected. Still was hoping." 21:58 <banana> Mari nods. She's done triage training, and alluded to using it - when? Before her escape to reality? "They're not forgotten, then." 21:58 <banana> Her eyes move, looking at a cleared-out corner of the room. "I've made space for a tree... at some point we could look at what's available. But maybe first, um." 21:58 <tom> "Yeah." 21:58 <banana> Mari: "You're home early, and I'm on break. Relaxing, right?" 21:58 <tom> Bob rubs his eyes. "Yeah," he repeats. 21:59 <banana> "I had an idea." 22:00 <tom> "?" Bob makes a face. 22:00 <banana> She sits up and closes the medical text, slipping a bookmark inside. 22:00 <tom> He glances blearily up from the cushion, kicks his legs a little off the side of the sofa. "Sorry for blowing up your birthday." 22:01 <banana> "How about we talk about a lot of things, with an understanding that.. it's going to be okay. That we're talking because we're going to be okay, and in order to be more okay. That's the outcome, we know that in advance." 22:01 <tom> "Being okay sounds coool." 22:02 <banana> It's warmer now with two of them inside. Mari wiggles out of her sweater, a slightly involved movement, but it comes off rapidly, revealing her brooch and then her face again. 22:02 <tom> He puts his hands in his pockets. "Are you, okay, with being okay?" 22:02 <tom> His voice is nervous. 22:03 <banana> Mari: "Yes, please. I mean, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but I know the answer is yes if you want to go on, like." 22:05 <tom> Bob rolls his head on the cushion until her leg takes up most of his field of view. "I didn't think this was a problem I could have. I didn't think there was going to be a future." 22:05 <tom> "I thought you were going to kill me, right there, in that cell in that Cheiron office." 22:06 <banana> Mari: "Is it because that's what you were used to? People, or not-people who were either a threat, or.. your team, who succumbed to the threat?" 22:06 <tom> His face is hard to read. "I killed them." 22:06 <banana> Mari sounds pretty calm - the main way Bob can tell she's also nervous is her verbiage, which becomes syntactically convoluted when she doesn't know how best to put something. 22:08 <tom> There's enough time for her to see him squirm in place before he masters himself. "I did... what's it called when you lie... by not saying something?" 22:08 <banana> "Sins of omission." 22:08 <tom> "When I told you about it." 22:09 <banana> Mari: "Could you please tell me the rest, now? I've been too happy not to know, to live with a facade. It's unfair." 22:14 <tom> Bob pushes off from the arm of the sofa, inching closer on his back until his head bumps against the outside of her thigh. The words come pouring out now. "I never did a damn good thing as long as I lived until I met you." 22:15 <tom> "I was just another motherfucker." 22:16 <banana> There are pedantic words on her lips - that can't be literally true - and ill-considered comforts - you can't be who you are now without having known right from wrong - but Mari wants to listen, not redirect. "What's the term.. a 'grunt', huh?" 22:16 <tom> Bob folds his hands on his belly. "Yeah. Compound full of whackadoo cultists? Mortar 'em. What's that on the drone feed, is that little heat signature a dog or a kid? Who cares. Toasted." 22:17 <tom> "When you said- when you said I was a hero- it, it really-" he's tearing up now, in the corners of his eyes. "It really felt good, at first," he rasps. 22:17 <tom> "Now it just hurts." 22:18 <banana> Mari: "It sounds like.. the kind of black humour you get in a locker room, or I guess a helicopter, like you guys told each other these jokes to deaden what you were doing. Is that right? Because you remember this stuff, and you have terms for it, which means it was always there, just.. pushed down." 22:21 <tom> He nods against her leg. "That's one way to cope. The other's to get fucked up." 22:21 <tom> "I like to double-dip." 22:22 <tom> "I started looking for exits." 22:23 <tom> "I still don't understand why you took me with you." 22:24 <tom> Bob shifts, looking up at her through blurry eyes. 22:25 <banana> Mari: "Exits from a future, from everything..." 22:25 <banana> "I'm sorry about the pressure, baby. I had this idea that I wanted to believe, and I'm really good at assuming things about people without actually understanding them. But you know, it's not just being saved one time that made me talk about heroism, right?" 22:26 <banana> "I don't know if you see it this way, I want to know, but the work you do... you throw yourself into battling vampires and giant robot, you're the one who looks out for the actual right thing to do and for the, casualties." 22:26 <banana> "That's what I think of as heroic. Taking these risks and saving people from impossible dangers because nobody else was doing it." 22:26 <banana> "When you opened the cell door I didn't know any of that though." 22:31 <banana> Mari: "It just... seemed like the only option. There was all this chaos in the prison, and you were meant to be part of the cleanup, that was pretty obvious. And you were so deep in black sorrow that I could feel the ice on my skin, the raw power of despair." 22:32 <tom> "That was supposed to be it. But nobody there was fast enough to kill me. Not Cheiron, not the Lieutenant." 22:33 <tom> "That was supposed to be it. But nobody there was fast enough to kill me. Not Cheiron, not the Lieutenant." 22:33 <tom> "I didn't think anything that happened after counted." 22:33 <tom> "Like it was all some just, like, long fucking bit I was waiting to play out." 22:34 <tom> "I didn't realize... this was real. Until I'd hurt you." 22:36 <banana> Mari plays with Bob's hair, leaning over a little to watch him talk. "It is real. There's a whole world of people who mostly don't even want to kill you. But I was treating you like a fake, like the Mask was what mattered, and so... we fucked up. And got hurt." 22:36 <tom> Bob is a puddle on the sofa. 22:37 <tom> "I never meant any of the stupid shit I said to the vampires." Bob sighs. "I just think it's cute when they get mad and the fangs come out." 22:37 <banana> Mari: "I get what you mean aesthetically, but I really don't like them. It's something a little dumb, actually." 22:37 <tom> He shrugs on his back. "You know, like-" He brings his hand to his mouth, forming a pair of shitty fangs with his pointer and middle finger. "Bleh." 22:38 <banana> "There's this one stat that always sticks with me... do you know, blood donations have dropped to almost nothing?" 22:38 <tom> "Shit, really?" 22:39 <banana> Mari: "Nobody wants to go to a clinic, and they're busy anyway. Supplies are low, have been since March last year even though you don't use blood to treat Covid. It's bad enough that ambulances go out without packs of some types, and sometimes some asshole who's been stabbed by another asshole just, bleeds out on the ramp." 22:39 <banana> "I can't get over the feeling that actually drinking multiple peoples' blood direct from the artery, every night, because you've 'been cursed by God'... it's not helping." 22:40 <tom> "No," Bob ruminates. "No, it's not." 22:41 <banana> "Obviously it's what you'd do if you have to survive..." Mari sighs. 22:41 <banana> "Anyway." 22:42 <banana> "Flirting with vampires isn't a problem. Not if you do want to live, because you know the risks pretty well." 22:43 <tom> Bob: "You know, I should donate some blood- after, you know," he groans, puts his hands under his back and feels for the bandage. 22:43 <tom> "And by donate I mean donate. Not- you know-" 22:44 <banana> "As an aspiring medical professional, I advise waiting two weeks after performing midnight spy meetings, battling Megazord or visiting the Playground before donating blood." 22:45 <banana> Mari: "Someday you've got to go more than two weeks between those things... right?" 22:45 <tom> Bob: "We're due to fight a fragment of a star in the Gorton reservoir next weekend." 22:45 <tom> He puts up his hand to accept a hi-five. 22:46 <tom> "...After that, I get paid, and we look for the next job. Maybe we'll get Christmas and the New Year to ourselves?" 22:46 <tom> Bob: "...I mean, the Holidays- you don't celebrate Christmas do you?" 22:46 <banana> Mari presses her hand against Bob's palm. The light goes funny at the edges, and he feels eight fuzzy digits wrap around his hand. 22:47 <banana> "I'm happy to do Commercial Christmas. Two thousand years ago under a star, a retail season was born..." 22:47 <tom> He takes her hand and pulls it down to his cheek. "I know so little about you..." 22:48 <banana> Mari: "Ask me anything." 22:49 <tom> He's quiet for a long time, just rubbing the back of her hand against his cheek. Finally:"...What happened to you?" 22:49 <tom> It's barely a murmur. 22:50 <banana> Mari: "I like Christmas. But you know how I've told you I don't like Halloween?" 22:50 <tom> He nods, silent. 22:51 <banana> "A lot of the seelie fae don't. Halloween misses the point.. All Hallows' Eve, Samhain, whatever you call it, it's about propitiating these real and very dangerous spirits. You celebrate, yeah, but to fool them." 22:52 <banana> "That's not the main thing for me though." She shivers a little; Bob can feel the trembling of fine hairs on his face. 22:53 <tom> He kisses the back of her hand. "You don't gotta say anything, hun." 22:54 <tom> "I wanna know... I want to help... but I don't know how. It's burning in my brain, all the time." 22:55 <banana> Mari: "If you ever come across a- a realm... it's like a graveyard, but also a city. Concentric circles, a cut in the earth, rings of tombs.. it's always midnight, but you can't usually see the moon." 22:56 <banana> "The people who live there are all prisoners, apart from the King, they don't mean to be what they are but- they'd rather die than stay that way. Trust me. Burn it to the ground, if you can, or smash the gates, or take away the name of the town." 22:57 <banana> "I don't know how you get there. There was this figure, a scarecrow in an alley, asked me if I wanted to see something strange... I was young and stupid. A student, emancipated, invincible. It would've been the 31st, obviously." 22:57 <tom> Bob's face is made of stone. He continues to knead her hand in his. 22:57 <banana> "He didn't seem like a pervert, because he was ridiculous, see, with a huge mask like a pumpkin on his head..." 22:58 <banana> Mari shakes herself again more deliberately and looks wry. 22:58 <banana> "One reason I can't talk about this stuff is that all the details sound.. objectively.. hilarious. But it's not funny." 22:59 <tom> Bob, who is Bob: "I know how it feels." 22:59 <banana> "It was the horror town, and we meant it. We were serious about fear." 23:00 <banana> "Everyone had a job, little spooky tasks... ah, I can't describe it. Not because it hurts, it's just that I can't convey what it was like. I'm not a poet." 23:00 <banana> Mari shrugs and curls up entirely.. 23:01 <banana> *. 23:02 <tom> Bob moves. Mari can feel him twist on the sofa, then push off the cushion to bring himself upright to pull her into a squeezing embrace. 23:03 <tom> They sit like that for a long time. He brings his head against her back and closes his eyes to hear the beating of her heart. 23:04 <banana> "I don't like hurting people. I don't like confronting things, or being scared, and when there are problems I don't wanna know about them unless I have a rulebook for exactly how to fix the problem." 23:04 <banana> Mari turns her head a little to point out: "That is itself a problem, like." 23:05 <tom> "There aren't a lot of rulebooks for the problems you guys have." 23:05 <tom> He makes a face: "If there are, I don't wanna read 'em." 23:06 <banana> "That's why I try to spend my time in the world, outside of dreams." 23:06 <banana> "...But the nightmares fascinate you, don't they? How did you like Mr. Penberthy's tour?" 23:07 <tom> "It felt... fake." 23:07 <tom> "Like a half-assed cardboard cutout world." 23:07 <banana> Mari: "Twice over! I've been into the Playground, just once. It's a shadow of the Hedge, and the Hedge is a shadow of reality. It's not even a dream." 23:08 <banana> "It's the place between dreams, peopled by transient imitations. But it is also alive, and I don't think it likes to be known or seen." 23:09 <tom> "That wasn't my first time, though." Bob clears his throat. "Liam took us through a few days earlier to face his twin." 23:09 <tom> He rubs the bandage on his back with his free hand. "I couldn't save him." 23:10 <banana> Mari: "Ohhh. Oh, he's in the Wasp Tor, isn't he..." 23:10 <tom> "I was stupid." 23:10 <tom> "I wanted to prove.. you know." 23:11 <tom> "...Yeah," he mutters, finally. 23:12 <banana> Mari: "I haven't been paying enough attention, because I've been a shit girlfriend, but I did realise... you really really hated it. When Sumi was talking about her changeling, ending alone on the streets." 23:12 <tom> "Oh hush," he offers a wan smile. "I'm the one being an absolute dog out there." 23:12 <tom> He's deflecting. 23:13 <tom> "I like you an awful lot, Ms. Medwar... I have a hard time seeing how more of you can be a bad thing for the world." 23:14 <tom> He takes up her fuzzy hand and smooches it again. 23:15 <banana> "Who knows? Maybe she's good for the rest of the world." Mari side-eyes Bob a little. "I don't think she'd be your type, but.. we're talking.. you know that would be the worst case scenario for me, right?" 23:15 <banana> "The absolute most catastrophic, deadly upsetting thing I could imagine. I have imagined it, when I don't shut the gate of horn tight enough." 23:15 <tom> "Haha, naw, I don't think so." 23:16 <banana> Mari: "I have this stupid fucking complex about how Mariam II is the one that people love. Believing that isn't the hard bit." 23:16 <tom> Bob compresses her tightly in his arms: "Your hug game is off the chain. No way anyone else could compete." 23:18 <banana> Mari mumbles - she can't really do anything but mumble right now - "So what if 'good for the world' is 'bad for me'? The answer is.. nothing. I'd never do that." 23:18 <banana> "I mean, they love her too much for her not to be people." 23:19 <banana> "A fetch can make people happy, live a good life, contribute and be at least as human as we are. I'm really sorry that Liam didn't see that." 23:20 <tom> "Neither of them could see it." 23:21 <tom> "You're too hard on yourself," he sighs. 23:22 <tom> "You were in an impossible situation, even before- well." 23:22 <banana> Mari: "It's an occupational hazard. I'm probably going into surgery.. you've gotta convince yourself that you will never be good enough, but are also a genius better than anyone else." 23:23 <banana> She puts on the voice of, presumably, some teacher or resident. "Always keep improving! Because nobody else can do it!" 23:24 <tom> Bob's eyes twinkle. "You can practice slicing me up any day, baby." 23:25 <banana> "In percentage terms... how much of that is holdover deathwish? How much of it is occult fascination? And how much of it is a sex thing?" 23:25 <tom> "Yes." 23:25 <banana> "Weeee could probably manage two out of three..." 23:26 <tom> He's still chuckling as he slides off her to look bashfully at the floor: "You're mad at yourself." 23:26 <banana> Mari: "Sometimes!" 23:27 <tom> "Why? Just because you couldn't be the daughter they wanted?" 23:28 <tom> "I don't understand how... how it could matter..." 23:28 <banana> She raises an eyebrow: "Oh, baby. That's communication." 23:28 <tom> Bob sets his face: "I am learning." 23:28 <tom> "You're the smartest person I know, and... you still want to help people." 23:28 <tom> "Even though you know how fucking awful this world is, you still... you want to do good." 23:29 <banana> Mari: "We agreed that we're going be okay. It is... more okay when I say I'm not good enough than when you tell me that." 23:29 <banana> "Or maybe it's not, huh." 23:29 <banana> "Are you sure I'm smart?" 23:30 <tom> "I got waterboarded with the truth for five seconds and I've been begging for death ever since, hun. You lived that hell... and you're still standing." 23:32 <banana> Mari: "I think this is like when I kept calling you a hero." 23:33 <banana> "To me, surviving doesn't feel praiseworthy. Surviving is... some people drink blood to do it. Some people ride with the Pumpkin King into childrens' nightmares until they wake up wetting the bed. Some people feel like it's them or the other them." 23:34 <banana> "It's just animal instinct. To merely go on at any price." 23:36 <tom> Bob: "You're really mad at yourself for not being able to be someone you didn't even want to be." 23:37 <banana> "More or less... yeah." 23:39 <tom> "Okay, well," Bob shifts his weight to lean on her just a bit: "Let me tell you about the Mari Medwar I know, the girl that saved my life, who... who is willing to go into the hospital and get yelled at by tomato-hued, tomato-shaped idiots and save their lives anyway, because she knows how." 23:41 <banana> Mari Medwar: "Go on..." 23:43 <tom> "And, and," Bob coughs, taking her by the arm: "Every day her boyfriend goes out and she doesn't even know if he's gonna make it back... and she's still there for him, even when he fucks up real bad, even when he acts like a fuckin' craven dog, he doesn't deserve her one bit-" 23:44 <tom> "And then he comes home to find she's already put up the decorations for a holiday she doesn't even celebrate." 23:44 <tom> "How could she hate herself? How could she do that?" 23:46 <banana> Mari: "It's not about deserving... I love you, so I want to do Christmas with you. We couldn't do Halloween- anyway." 23:46 <banana> "I wonder." 23:47 <banana> "Maybe one thing I should set against the failures is that I did take you through the looking glass." 23:47 <banana> "That was a really, really good idea." 23:50 <tom> He takes her up in his arms and nuzzles her neck. "See, I told you you were smart." In the kitchen, the roast is starting to burn: he doesn't care.