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Post by Philip Garwin on Jan 23, 2017 14:59:07 GMT -5
Jon and Avis had been his brother and niece long before they were anything to Wyron. The thought crosses Jas' mind but he says nothing. It's a state of being that he's grown accustomed to in recent years. Avis no longer listens to him as she once did, as Jon always made a point of doing. He doesn't blame Wyron for the spite that lives within Avis; she's acting with less than half of the information, which never ends well, but she's motivated by the need to protect her brother and Jas can never fault a person for that. If the Cartiers as a whole are secrets within secrets, Jas has learnt to fold plans and possibilities around each other so seamlessly that he can flit from one to another as required with barely a shift in direction. He managed to find a way to survive through Avis' vengeance. "You don't have anything to apologise for," he sighs after a moment. He's not so far gone that he can't acknowledge himself as the root of all this mess. This started before Wyron was even born, from the moment that Jas swung himself through that fourth-storey window and stole his brother's future. "You didn't cause this. Any of it."
"Because you deserved so much more than that," Jas points out, his tone surprised because this seems so obvious to him. Wyron had been bright and youthful and good. He still is, for all that time has chipped away at his spirit. He has always deserved so much better than the empty shell that Jas lives within. "It would have been a disservice to you, and to my friendship with your father, if I had let you settle for the fragments that I could offer you. There has never been a true Cartier who loved but didn't offer their cuff, and everyone knows me to be a true Cartier. I would never have found forgiveness for making a mockery of you in that way. And I had no doubt in my mind that you would move on," Jas adds, because he might not be able to spill Cartier secrets but his own are fair game. He can do at least this much for Jon and Wyron. For Rafe too, for the sake of whatever little goodwill still exists between them. "I don't understand love, as I'm sure Tristan complained to you during the early days of his first marriage. In comparison to Tristan's behaviour with Isobel, you were calm and controlled. If Tristan loved Isobel, which everyone assured me he did, then you couldn't love me. There was too much of a dichotomy for them both to be real."
Jas doesn't entirely understand his own reasons, which he supposes is an answer that is of absolutely no use to Wyron. He's amoral but not entirely unfeeling, and the backlash of accidentally hurting someone so precious to the Acting Head carrying out his responsibilities had torn strips from him. Afterwards, all he had known was pain that couldn't be dulled by Scotch and the desperate, animalistic need to flee. Avis had been only too happy to pack him off on long, dangerous missions almost before he had even made the request and Jas hadn't returned until his sons begged him to stop trying to kill himself. Maybe he had picked up the ring because he just wanted to feel something for once but mainly...
"Because I didn't think I could," Jas admits in a shamed whisper, bowing his head. "Me and my brothers grew up very close to your family, for all that we were never actually part of it. My dad loved your grandfather like an older brother, my aunt was your grandmother, my godmother was married to a Graas and so was my godfather's brother. Liatris was Luc's best friend and her mother, Ashlyn, was one of our main tutors when we were kids before we got to Hogwarts. I know what happens to someone who dares to touch a ring that they have no right to." That's as much truth as he can manage right now, Jas thinks wearily. Jon and Lucas might have had their suspicions when they found him in the aftermath of taking the ring but none of the triplets had ever broached the subject aloud. Even saying it now, years after the fact, is more difficult than he could have imagined. "I didn't know that you would know though. That was never part of the plan."
"There is no danger to you," Jas states firmly, not wishing to leave any question in Wyron's mind. "The ritual gutted me, no one else." The switch from Jon to Avis had stripped away a further layer of humanity, he's fairly certain, but he can't begrudge his brother the choice he had made. "The tattoo isn't magical, it's..." Jas trails off, feeling foolish at the reminder of his own childish wistfulness. "I was a raccoon," he admits. "Back when I could still transform, I was a raccoon. My cousins teased me for it - that if all the things I could have become, I was a raccoon - but I remember loving it, not least because neither Jon nor Lucas had ever been interested in becoming an animagus. It was the one thing that was solely mine, at a time when so much of what I had had to be shared. I was seventeen and I couldn't bear forgetting how much being an animagus meant to me. So I made sure that it stayed with me, quite literally following wherever I went."
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Post by Rister Graas S6 on Jan 23, 2017 16:34:49 GMT -5
“I could have not told, could have lived with things the way they were,” Wyron disagrees quietly. Because it would have been enough. To have at least had Jas's occasional company, a careless word at times. To have had anything. But he had grown greedy. He should have let things rest. Should never have... But he had. He had grown greedy and he had and he was paying the price for it even now.
“Deserved?” Wyron repeats, somewhat incredulous. Does Jas really think to repeat that old phrase. That empty nothing of a phrase? What did Wyron deserve? What had he deserved? Wasn't that his to decide? What he needed and wanted? The only forgiveness and opinion that would have mattered would have been Wyron's? “I was ever my father's son,” he murmurs, instead. Because who understands love. But then Jas would have seen so many of them as well. Not the least of which Rafe and Jon, who had both simply forgone their wishes for their duties before discovering their love. Who had remained steadfast to each other, ignoring any upheaval around them as the two sought bachelors chose to throw their lots together.
And Wyron wants to rail at Jas, wants to demand answers and explanations, wants to rage and argue and throw things and stomp his feet and wants to cry and beg and break. But he loves this man. Despite everything he loves that man. So he clamps his mouth shut and tries to understand Jas's truth. And that truth is more horrifying that he ever could have imagined. “You wanted to leave your death on me, because that would have been better than... than me,” Wyron whispers through suddenly bloodless lips, staring at Jas with wide eyes that can no longer see him. Can no longer see anything as he reels. He knew – had always known – that he wasn't worth much. Not to Jas. That the man hadn't cared. But for death to be preferable to even a chance of Wyron's company... Wyron lets the words sink into him, lets them snag into the tattered pieces of what remains in his heart, lets them rip him apart. He lets the hurt sink deep into himself and takes the shattered pieces of whats left of himself and desperately wraps them around the hurt so that they would never hurt anyone but himself.
“I am sorry. I am so sorry, Jasper,” he manages to whisper, his voice breaking on the words. At least... at least Jas didn't know about the livid scar curved over his heart. Didn't know that the Graas' didn't expect others to pay the price when they weren't up to the measure. At least Jas hadn't had to pay the price for the horror Wyron had been to him. Wyron had been the one to pay the price, but at least Jas didn't know about the livid scar curving over his heart and the pain echoing it. At least Wyron could spare him that one burden, carrying it himself. What was one more hurt on top of all those he already carried?
Bending a knee to get some support Wyron rolled to his feet, his fingertips white with pressure as he pressed them against the visible hurt he carried on his chest without even realising it. “I... I was going to ask for you to pretend. That we could get along, for... for the rest,” he managed with a half shrug, figuring that Jas could list the names of the members of both of their families himself if he wanted. “But if... But I won't ask you to pay that price. I can't,” he finished, because... because he loved Jas. He could not make him go through it, if that was how horrible it would be to him. “I'm so... so sorry, Jas,” he managed to whisper, his eyes touching on Jas one more time. Just one last time, before Wyron turned to leave. Leave one final time, so that the man he loved could finally have his peace from him.
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Post by Philip Garwin on Jan 23, 2017 17:36:21 GMT -5
"Deserved," Jas repeats agreeably. "No one deserves this shell of me." Even if he didn't think so himself, he's been told. Valérie has made her opinion of him perfectly clear while he had been her husband. Jas rather thought he had been more than considerate in permitting her numerous affairs; most men wouldn't, he imagines. His sole concern had been that her only children were fathered by him but she had never been the type of woman to pull that trick on him. Val is an overwhelming force of nature who despises both him and Jon but she would never have put a cuckoo in his nest. Even without his ability to love them, Jas would have been able to trust that his sons are his.
Oh for fuck's sake. Jas reverts back to the ill-spoken, heavily accented mindset of his youth for a brief moment as he stares at Wyron's dramatics. Merlin above. This is more along the lines of what he had expected in the first place but he can't say that he's pleased with its sudden emergence within Wyron. He can't remember the feel of arrogance for arrogance's own sake - his pride now has to stem from the actions he takes for his family - but he recognises it when he sees it. Merlin knows his sons and grandchildren are filled to the brim with it. "Congratulations," Jas snaps, his voice clipped, "you win an Oscar for your performance. Now sit down. Not everything revolves around you, as I thought you already knew. Stop being such an utter child."
For quite possibly the first time ever, Jas closes his eyes and thanks Leo for finding him a wife he could learn to live with, albeit only in very small doses. Valérie has her faults but at least his ex-wife had never been prone to histrionics. Maybe once he would have had the patience but now Jas finds himself examining Wyron's show of emotion with a blank sense of detachment. He can't quite remember when he lost the ability to feel that deeply but he doesn't think he misses it. It would have crippled him, with the job that he does. Did, he corrects himself after a beat. The job he did. Avis has seen fit to forcibly remove him from that role and it has taken every ounce of respect for his niece, for his Acting Head, to not simply overrule her as he has every right to.
"I was seventeen years old when I lost the ability to feel as I once did," Jas explains clinically, his expression cold. "It didn't drain away slowly, as if to give me the opportunity to cling to whatever I could and fight the inevitable. The moment I completed that ritual to return Jon's birthright to him, as much was within my power, it was gone." He still remembers waking up early to watch the sunrise, muted and distant though the memory is, but he can't quite grasp why. He tried it once, sometime after Julien was born, but it just felt like a pointless exercise. Not even the love he's permitted to feel for his sons could rekindle whatever joy he might once have found in fleetingly beautiful moments. "I think that made it worse, in some ways. I can still remember what it is to feel and its absence still jars me. I had to convince Flick to bind Gen to me as her godfather with a blood ritual because I couldn't guarantee that I would love her without it, not that I could tell her that. How does one look at their younger sister and tell them that there's a very real chance that they won't ever love her daughter?" Jas wonders absently. "I don't think that's a problem most uncles face."
He forces his right hand to stretch open, eyeing the whitening skin contemplatively because that's a sign that it should hurt at least a little but the nerves are too damaged to send the signals through. It amuses him, in a way. His body is breaking down in exactly the same way his spirit did. "I don't even know if I love my sons because they're spectacular or because they're Cartier blood. Am I proud of Julien because he's my firstborn or because he advances the family? Do I worry for Rin because she's fragile now or because her loss would damage us? These thoughts go through my head every single time I lay eyes on anyone I actually can love: do I love them because I love them or because I have to love them?"
If Jon had broken at the realisation that he had sacrificed a future with Rafe for his own ambition, Jas had done so when Wyron made his confession. He had learnt by then to twist his thoughts around until the ritual accepted them, to a certain degree. The blood relation to Rafe had been enough that Jas could still feel fondness for his once closest friend and a distant sort of affection for Rafe's sons. He still has no idea if it was the limitations of the ritual or his own thoughts that had tormented him, hissing at him late into the night that his presence was harming Wyron because how could Wyron ever move on if Jas was constantly there? It had taken just one horrible assignment to push him over the edge and shatter him completely.
"It had nothing to do with you. I was too late to save her." Jas takes a hand through his hair, because he used to do that when he was frustrated and he guesses that this is a close enough approximation. "Avis had picked the job out especially for me, because even when she doesn't like me she has to acknowledge that I'm the best. It struck too close to home for her, I imagine, after Cayden. So she gave me explicit orders that it was to be done fast and clean if the kids were there, to limit any potential trauma." He was too late, too slow and too tired after months of being continuously away from home. There's a reason that Jas has always insisted on all active family members taking at least three days in between jobs but he never has felt obligated to follow his own rules. He had settled into place, lying there for seven hours without being able to move, but the cold had settled into his body until he almost felt warm again. By the time he had regained a steady hand, the tiny black-haired girl was sprawled on the ground like an abandoned doll. "I was too late to save her and I felt nothing."
His mouth curls into a sneer of self-disgust, sickened all over again by what he had become. "She looked like Gen. She looked like Gen and I was too late to save her and I still felt nothing. I knew that I should have - that I would have, once - and that was the worst of it. You would have been the instrument of my death, which I did regret once I regained any sense of rationality, but never the cause of it. And at least in my absence, you would have moved on." Except that it didn't work, Jas doesn't say. Except that Wyron's feelings had been genuine and so Jas had not severed the trailing edges of that emotion but rather solidified it into something tangible and irreversible.
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Post by Rister Graas S6 on Jan 23, 2017 18:20:56 GMT -5
Wyron stops – he had promised to listen and he would do so even if it killed him. But he didn't turn around, remaining standing where he was with his back turned to Jas. Frankly he thought he was taking it pretty well for a man who had just been taught the man he loved would rather kill himself by Wyron's hand rather than talk with him enough to tell him to get lost.
“And?” he found himself asking again. “It's not as if my brother loves me. Is capable of loving for me. Doesn't mean I can't love him. Or that Jon, even if love grew out of it with time, didn't first care for us because we were Rafe's sons? That Dad doesn't love me as much for what I can do as much as he loves me for being his son? So you would have needed my blood? I could have given that freely.”
“And?” Wyron asked again at the end of Jas' story. “Am I supposed to feel sorry? Think you're a monster? Claim that I understand? Tell you about all the kids I haven't been quick or smart enough to save, whose blood is on my hands? That sometimes I'm just too tired to feel anything anymore? Tell you about all of my wrong calls? Offer you stories of every life you have ever saved, not the least - nor first nor last - of which is Cayden's?"
Move on in Jas' absence. Wyron's fingers pressed tighter his scar, grateful that the gesture would be hidden from Jas by his own body. “There are things the Graas' won't lie about. Can't lie about,” he murmurs with a sigh, turning his head just enough to catch sigh of Jas' shoes from the corner of his eye. “I am sorry, Jas. Sorry that I couldn't be whatever you wanted. Whatever you deserved, which is more than you think whether you believe it or not. What I deserve?” Wyron huffed, the sound self-deprecating enough to leave no doubt that Wyron didn't think he deserved much. “I don't know. What I do know is that I can make sure your blood isn't going to end up on my hands. I can no longer ash the ring. It's yours and I have paid the price for it. Would again, because whether I deserve it or not, I love you. So I am sorry.” Wyron could make sure he wouldn't be the cause nor instrument of Jas' death. He could remove himself from the equation. Hide away from everyone and everything until his time ran out.
“Was there anything else you needed to say?” he manages to ask evenly, poised to leave the moment Jas signalled that he was finished.
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Post by Philip Garwin on Jan 24, 2017 15:01:52 GMT -5
"Your blood?" Jas barks a harsh laugh that would have been a taunt if it came from anyone else. "Only if you wanted me to love you as a son. Even I can imagine that would be worse than nothing at all." The reminder that Drake isn't capable of love makes his fingers twitch. He hasn't forgotten Rafe's suggestion that Tristan might have developed feelings for Drake, and he has no wish to see Tristan hurt again. His two oldest sons have been damaged quite enough. "Was I unclear? I tore myself apart for my brother, the stepfather you so kindly thanked me for not hurting. The best parts of Jasper Cartier died a very long time ago, everything from the animagus form to the ability to fall in love." The bitterness that Jon had spied during their earlier conversation sparks in his eyes again, a sardonic smile curving his mouth. "I gave him everything he ever asked for - and he still wasn't happy. But you understand what it feels like to wreck yourself for someone who doesn't appreciate it. Maddening, isn't it?"
It has been so long since Jas felt the softer side of emotion but occasionally he still covets it with such desperation that he thinks would surprise anyone who knows him as he is now. No one has ever noticed the change in him enough to ask about it, as if he has always been this hard and unfeeling. Sometimes the ache of emptiness inside him is powerful enough that he can drown in it, can wrap himself up in the void until he wears it like a favoured blanket on a cold night. He stays away from his family during those weeks until he can claw his way back to the surface because he's at his most sadistic and doesn't care who he hurts. Not even the ritual tying his loyalty to them could stop him, he thinks, but that isn't a theory he wishes to test. He could watch Julien's face turn ashen at a careless mention of Tirion without any regret, could throw the problems in her marriage in Flick's face and laugh as he does it. Jas could set his entire world aflame and watch the people he's supposed to love burn and he has a terrifyingly chilling certainty deep within him that he wouldn't care until it was too late.
"I leave for Singapore in three days," Jas shares, suddenly relaxing back into his chair with careful grace as if he hasn't spent the entire conversation so far sitting at attention. "A longterm assignment from Avis. She wants someone to keep an eye on her interests there, with an eye to expanding legitimate business I would imagine. Tristan and myself are the only ones who have spent any substantial time there - and she still has use for my son." It's a six month job in theory, long enough to scout out the lay of the land and manoeuvre the right pieces into place, but Avis will be happy enough to station him there longer if he asks and Jas has been thinking about removing himself from France for a long time now. A new identity somewhere far away sounds like perfection and they even have the death penalty there, like a home away from home. He can leave his ring with the archivist, who is an asset terribly overlooked and more than cunning enough to switch it out with the one Avis wears when the time comes. Hopefully Avis's son will be more receptive to acknowledging that girl's talents than his mother is. "So if you have any further questions to be answered, you'd better think of them quick or settle for having Jon answer them as best as he can."
"I did try to tell him that you wouldn't want the truth," Jas murmurs softly, once again calm and quiet as everything drains away from him like water through a sieve. "It's not a pleasant thing to hear. But you have it now so do with it as you wish. It's your secret now. I wash my hands of it all."
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Post by Rister Graas S6 on Feb 19, 2017 18:27:26 GMT -5
Wyron merely listened. He couldn't - or rather wouldn't - intervene in whatever went on between Jon and Jas, but he could listen. It would do Jas good to let some of his bitterness over what he had lost out and Wyron could take it. What was one more hurt on top of all that he already had. "Jon loves you, but then you know that anyway," was all he said instead. Wrecking himself had been Jas' choice in the end, Wyron believed that the magicks involved were too robust to allow for any other manipulation. "Don't ask the question, if you aren't ready for the truth," Wyron murmured with a self-deprecating smile, repeating an old Graas truth Dad always told them. He turned around at that to face Jas, slowly loosening his fingers from where they had been pressed against his scar. "I got the truth. Thank you," he said a moment later.
"Kellen did the background checks. His first time to take full responsibility, so try not to die or he won't ever forgive himself and a spymaster who doubts himself isn't worth much," Wyron responds almost automatically, "The information on Lim is incorrect, but only because he didn't have access to the results of a different research. He should realise that and be by tomorrow before noon to fix that. If he isn't, I'll interfere more fully and alert Avis so that she could brief you tomorrow afternoon instead."
For a long moment Wyron's eyes linger on Jas's face, before he inclines his head. "Fare well, Jasper," he says afterwards and finally turns to leave.
***
Wyron had considered running, leaving it all behind. But in the end he couldn't. He couldn't put that weight on Jon, so instead he had retreated to his cabin in the swamps outside New Orleans. He wasn't entirely surprised either when he felt the disturbances of wards in the morning and, when he finally bothered to open his eyes an hour later, found Jon sitting next to his bed. He could hear the clatter of pans from the small cubicle of a kitchen and Rafe's voice from where he appeared to be monolouging at Mary Rose - Wyron could just about make out the peculiar hiss and clatter of water revebrating on the alligator's back as well. He ignored it for a moment to instead study Jon, trying to find the words. Except it was just that simple. "You are both idiots," he murmured quietly, reaching over to touch Jon's arm, trusting that Jon would be able to guess that the second idiot was Jas rather than Jon himself, even as he offered Jon a quirk of his lipcorners, before tilting his head and raising his voice while shouting at Dad about the benefits of peppermint cake for breakfast.
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Post by Rister Graas S6 on Oct 1, 2019 13:18:05 GMT -5
The surgery is a success. Something of a touch-and-go in the middle perhaps, as Wyron flat-lines twice during it as he learns later. But he is alive at the end of it and the first tests come back promising, so at the end of the day the surgery is a success. Which would have been at least a small comfort for his family, despite the fact the doctors decide to keep him in a medically induced coma for a week to give his body time to recover. At least the plan is for a week. Wyron first comes do in the early morning hours on the sixth day.
His other senses return first. Smell comes first– although perhaps not unexpectedly, as the smell of antiseptic, which also seems to linger in hospitals is pretty strong. Hearing comes next as he can just make out the steady beeps of some machine or another. And touch – his arm itches from the IV and he can feel the bandages wrapped taught around him and the Graas ring on his shoulder. It is a distant sensation however, the drugs he’s one creating a barrier between his conscious and the pain. And his magic is… there. He can sense it, but his mind is far too hazy for Wyron to actually cast with intent. Even so, something must had trickled through, because when Wyron manages to open his eyes (it’s really eyes barely half-opened squint) Dad is bending over him while making a shushing noise with Jon just behind him. Wyron’s mind half-forms the question of whether the two had been sleeping on the couch for visitors, before giving up on it as he blinks torpidly at his parents. Once. Twice. And then his eyes slide shut and remain shut as his mind falls back into the darkness of unconsciousness.
It is late afternoon when he wakes again, his voice barely more than a rasp as he utters ‘Liar’ in response to Drake’s claim over the card-game he and Avis are playing on a table at the foot his bed. He isn’t entirely sure why he says that – but his brother merely laughs and draws the pile of cards back to him, so he must have been attempting to get away with a lie. Turning his head on the pillow, Wyron manages a smile at Cayden who is curled up in a chair – a surprisingly comfortable looking one for a hospital room at that – next to him with a cup of hot drink and the boy simply beams in response. Wyron accepts the few shards of ice Drake offers and then lets himself slip back to sleep.
It is dark again the third time he comes to, with only the glowing lights of the different machinery and what creeps in from the windows. It is enough for Wyron to just about make out his visitors shape, which is enough for him to recognise his late night visitor, surprising as his presence might be. Not that he’d be particularly worried even if he couldn’t - his family would have warded his hospital room with no expense or effort spared, even if he’s too tired and out of it to actually scope out the wards right this moment – but he has no doubt that Dad would know every single visitor he had. So Wyron merely blinks watches the outline of his visitor for a long moment until Cayden whimpers quietly again and Wyron shifts his head to look at where his son is asleep on his shoulder. The boy, teenager by now really, is cutting off blood-circulation to the shoulder, but then his shoulder has ached ever since he lost his arm, so Wyron merely shakes his head forbiddingly when his visitor moves as if to shift Cayden. Cayden is a light enough sleeper to wake at the slightest touch and on the verge of a nightmare as he is, he’d fly straight into a panic. It’s surprising enough that he slept through their visitors entrance into the room.
But that’s a thought for another time, for now Wyron merely hums – the same tune that Dad sometimes, not often but on those rare days life just seemed to be too much, hummed to him and Drake when they were very little. His mouth is dry so the sound is hoarse, but it’s familiar enough that Cayden quiets again. “Ice,” Wyron half-asks, half-demands in much the same tone and gratefully accepts the small slivers of ice from a plastic spoon. And as the shards melt in his parched mouth, he eyes his visitor for a moment as just a bit of amusement wriggles out and escapes him in a bemused puff of air and quirk of his lip-corners, before he simply closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.
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