[Just a moment, while he twists around up here in the chair to get his bag, because he has— another water bottle!! Which he similarly dangles over the arm of the chair, like with the crackers. He's very serious about hydration, he came prepared.]
Here. And everything about this place is weird. I don't know exactly how that one feels, unless we count in reverse. [And there's really no way to explain himself without it kind of sounding like a flex, but whatever,] I'm in charge, you know? Back home. It's weird not having my people around. Leaving them leaderless.
But I can usually excise that anxiety by making something of my presence here, with these other people of mine.
[another water bottle. palamedes, you are a saint. vi owes you big time. she will take that water, uncap it and down it goes. not all, just half. deep breath. still tired, but this is better.]
That sounds like it would be weird. Hard. I ...was a small time leader when I was a kid. It was a long time ago, but I think I kind of get it.
Small time, but big responsibility. Were they your family? [and to maybe make the question less invasive, less painful, even, she will offer something up, too.] Mine were.
Some of them. Well— more than some. We're called the Sixth House, but it's bigger than a single family line. And thanks to consanguinity... [like. well.] I have a lot of cousins and second cousins and so on.
[But not every single person, for sure. Just a lot. It's bittersweet to talk about the Sixth for a number of reasons, not just that they aren't here; there's a distinct chance he'll never see any of them ever again, and that's so... it is what it is.]
As a fellow leader, I can say with confidence that it isn't any less important to be 'small time.'
[consanguinity. she's never heard that word before, so have a slightly confused look for just a moment - though she can work out that it's about blood. and follows him well enough after that.]
Maybe not. At the end of the day it was still on me a lot of the time.
[maybe it still is. the guilt sure is, in any case, and she'll likely never see hers again either. maybe it's less complicated that way.]
[A beat; he's had almost-similar conversations with Ortus, recently, about responsibility and the nature of it, the difference between embracing it and letting it burden you— he wonders if Vi had much of a choice, and whether that's why it seems to sit heavier on her now.
Could also be the hangover. He wouldn't know how bad those get.]
I was thirteen when I took up the mantle. The youngest, historically, but people make jokes about that these days. [nerd jokes.] You?
[she nods at that - it is what it is. doesn't make it easy - nothing really does that. it's harder when she thinks back on how many things she would have (should have) done differently.]
About the same, maybe a little younger, but not by much.
I was already doing it with my sister, I had to, and then, well---
---once you're already looking out for people, and realizing they look up to you, they're all looking at you? You don't just ...stop, or look the other way ...or turn it off.
[at least, she didn't. couldn't. but sometimes - not often - but sometimes - she'd wished to. she'd hated it and stuffed it down so far she'd thought she could escape it until along came stillwater.]
Then I got a surprise vacation from that, because nobody's a leader in prison, just another number. Did I tell you I was locked up for a long time? Anyway, I doubt they made any jokes about me. [would silco have? probably. but in that doublespeak-y way he'd messaged her.] His people, maybe. I was a cautionary tale, or a ghost story.
People make fun of you for that? They must be real dicks.
[Well, Camilla sometimes makes fun of him, but she's allowed. Still, the Sixth are not a bustling nest of vipers, like some of their imperial comrades; they just invented a whole culture around study group behavior, which does come with being a little awkward.
But first,] You didn't mention going to prison.
[Or anyone besides her sister, before this conversation; these two points of interest seem, hm, linked? Yikes. He's quiet for a moment, sympathetically so, before he figures he can just loop back around to the other thing, rather than go for the incredibly piercing question of 'What happened to your people?']
The Sixth allows anyone who meets the prerequisites to sit the exams, the practical trials, all of that; most people don't hit baseline for a few decades, but I'm goal-oriented. That didn't stop any of the 'little Sextus'll try taking the test to become Emperor next' jokes— that's what I meant.
And there isn't a test to become Emperor, for the record.
[But, like, he would whip ass at it, if there were? Details.]
This guy, the one who's got you out of sorts— this is the one who put you in prison?
Okay, now that I get. [they'd all done it to one another - even if it had sometimes been skewed toward her sister getting an unequal and frankly undeserved amount of that teasing, even if it was mostly (at its core) good natured.]
I didn't? Huh. I just put it out there a whole bunch, at least I did when I first arrived, so it's hard to even keep track. Letting people know what they were ..getting into, I guess. Turns out I thought it would matter a whole lot more than it does.
Sansa's mentioned houses before. Gonna guess these aren't exactly the same, so what's a sixth compared to a ...say fifth? There should have been a test.
[a look. no words past that, but a look. because you, palamedes, do not seem like the kind of guy that would piss off the ocean and kill/fuck up a dozen or more people in the process. and then complain about it.]
Put me there? Not ...exactly. Kept me there? Well, his goons kept showing up and trying to beat the shit out of me, so ...who really knows. I gave as good as I got once I got a little older. What I do know? Someone paid off the guards to keep me there. They beat the shit out of me too, by the way. There were no records of my crimes or my arrest. If he did know, he would have let me die in there [the worse crime, here:] while he was raising my little sister. He told her I was dead.
[Not that being thrown in prison to rot and getting the shit kicked out of her wasn't bad, that's certainly bad, but telling someone their family is dead when they are very much not dead is a pretty gross violation of, uh, basic human empathy? Something like that.]
I'm sorry that happened to you, for what it's worth. And— you're right, it's not going to matter to a lot of people here that you were in prison. Jury's out on whether that's a good or bad thing, across the board— our broad desire to call this place a fresh start no matter what, that is. There ought to be a test for that one, too.
[Then maybe fewer people would have lined up to kiss the Emperor's feet for like 6 months, but what does Palamedes know!! Whatever!!]
I'm not saying I disdain empathy for our fellow Sleepers, conceptually. But I don't know. We all have to pick a side eventually.
[Anyway.]
Our Houses were numbered in order; the Fifth was founded before the Sixth. That's it. Not entirely or culturally, of course, but purely in terms of the numbering: it's just numbers. The Sixth is actually 'first' if you line up all of our planets in order, starting at the sun.
[she nods when he asks - yeah, he did do that. and it was too far, keeping her conveniently out of the way - but it's done. she doesn't say 'thanks' outright, but she offers him a small, tight-lipped smile followed by a sigh.]
Tch. Yeah. It's easy to say, but hard to know if someone means it.
[you know, benefit of the doubt and all that. she'd much rather give it, but that's ...hard in some cases. like when you know the asshole in question, and there's a 50/50 they're full of absolute shit. palamedes gets it.]
Oh, well that's easy enough to understand. [the numbering part, anyway. fifth does indeed come before sixth, and that would mean there's a first through third, she guesses. but then he talks about planets lining up in order and she tries to process what he means. it hurts her head a little - but she arrives at:] Is each house a planet?
Right. And— right again, sort of. Physically, yes, the Houses are each on separate solar bodies, but I wouldn't exactly call the Sixth itself 'a planet' in and of itself. Other than technically.
[A shrug.]
We're the only ones squatting on our miserable little rock, [fondly, he means this,] but we're hardly populous enough to cover the whole planet. We have a station in the polar caps, and... that's us. Some of the other Houses are millions strong, though; it depends.
[so ...each house inhabits a planet, so to speak but some of them are crammed full of people like cellar door or willful machine or zaun or even piltover and others were more like ...if all of trench were only inhabited by the handful of people she knows? that's the idea in her head anyway. which ...has ceased hurting for the most part.]
I dunno about millions. Keeping it small means less chance of assholes, right? And if you've got 'em, at least you've got less.
Woah. I feel ...a little better. [still exhausted, still sad, still angry, but with less aching. what transient queasiness she'd been feeling is also gone.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[another pull on that bottle and it's ...gone. is the dirty sock juice starting to work? perhaps. it could also be the venting.]
[she knows she has people. and you know what?]
It's weird, still. When I think about it. Having people. For so many years I've just been relying on ...me.
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[Just a moment, while he twists around up here in the chair to get his bag, because he has— another water bottle!! Which he similarly dangles over the arm of the chair, like with the crackers. He's very serious about hydration, he came prepared.]
Here. And everything about this place is weird. I don't know exactly how that one feels, unless we count in reverse. [And there's really no way to explain himself without it kind of sounding like a flex, but whatever,] I'm in charge, you know? Back home. It's weird not having my people around. Leaving them leaderless.
But I can usually excise that anxiety by making something of my presence here, with these other people of mine.
[Subtlety level: sledgehammer. He's insistent.]
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That sounds like it would be weird. Hard. I ...was a small time leader when I was a kid. It was a long time ago, but I think I kind of get it.
Small time, but big responsibility. Were they your family? [and to maybe make the question less invasive, less painful, even, she will offer something up, too.] Mine were.
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[But not every single person, for sure. Just a lot. It's bittersweet to talk about the Sixth for a number of reasons, not just that they aren't here; there's a distinct chance he'll never see any of them ever again, and that's so... it is what it is.]
As a fellow leader, I can say with confidence that it isn't any less important to be 'small time.'
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Maybe not. At the end of the day it was still on me a lot of the time.
[maybe it still is. the guilt sure is, in any case, and she'll likely never see hers again either. maybe it's less complicated that way.]
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[A beat; he's had almost-similar conversations with Ortus, recently, about responsibility and the nature of it, the difference between embracing it and letting it burden you— he wonders if Vi had much of a choice, and whether that's why it seems to sit heavier on her now.
Could also be the hangover. He wouldn't know how bad those get.]
I was thirteen when I took up the mantle. The youngest, historically, but people make jokes about that these days. [nerd jokes.] You?
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About the same, maybe a little younger, but not by much.
I was already doing it with my sister, I had to, and then, well---
---once you're already looking out for people, and realizing they look up to you, they're all looking at you? You don't just ...stop, or look the other way ...or turn it off.
[at least, she didn't. couldn't. but sometimes - not often - but sometimes - she'd wished to. she'd hated it and stuffed it down so far she'd thought she could escape it until along came stillwater.]
Then I got a surprise vacation from that, because nobody's a leader in prison, just another number. Did I tell you I was locked up for a long time? Anyway, I doubt they made any jokes about me. [would silco have? probably. but in that doublespeak-y way he'd messaged her.] His people, maybe. I was a cautionary tale, or a ghost story.
People make fun of you for that? They must be real dicks.
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[Well, Camilla sometimes makes fun of him, but she's allowed. Still, the Sixth are not a bustling nest of vipers, like some of their imperial comrades; they just invented a whole culture around study group behavior, which does come with being a little awkward.
But first,] You didn't mention going to prison.
[Or anyone besides her sister, before this conversation; these two points of interest seem, hm, linked? Yikes. He's quiet for a moment, sympathetically so, before he figures he can just loop back around to the other thing, rather than go for the incredibly piercing question of 'What happened to your people?']
The Sixth allows anyone who meets the prerequisites to sit the exams, the practical trials, all of that; most people don't hit baseline for a few decades, but I'm goal-oriented. That didn't stop any of the 'little Sextus'll try taking the test to become Emperor next' jokes— that's what I meant.
And there isn't a test to become Emperor, for the record.
[But, like, he would whip ass at it, if there were? Details.]
This guy, the one who's got you out of sorts— this is the one who put you in prison?
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I didn't? Huh. I just put it out there a whole bunch, at least I did when I first arrived, so it's hard to even keep track. Letting people know what they were ..getting into, I guess. Turns out I thought it would matter a whole lot more than it does.
Sansa's mentioned houses before. Gonna guess these aren't exactly the same, so what's a sixth compared to a ...say fifth? There should have been a test.
[a look. no words past that, but a look. because you, palamedes, do not seem like the kind of guy that would piss off the ocean and kill/fuck up a dozen or more people in the process. and then complain about it.]
Put me there? Not ...exactly. Kept me there? Well, his goons kept showing up and trying to beat the shit out of me, so ...who really knows. I gave as good as I got once I got a little older. What I do know? Someone paid off the guards to keep me there. They beat the shit out of me too, by the way. There were no records of my crimes or my arrest. If he did know, he would have let me die in there [the worse crime, here:] while he was raising my little sister. He told her I was dead.
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[Not that being thrown in prison to rot and getting the shit kicked out of her wasn't bad, that's certainly bad, but telling someone their family is dead when they are very much not dead is a pretty gross violation of, uh, basic human empathy? Something like that.]
I'm sorry that happened to you, for what it's worth. And— you're right, it's not going to matter to a lot of people here that you were in prison. Jury's out on whether that's a good or bad thing, across the board— our broad desire to call this place a fresh start no matter what, that is. There ought to be a test for that one, too.
[Then maybe fewer people would have lined up to kiss the Emperor's feet for like 6 months, but what does Palamedes know!! Whatever!!]
I'm not saying I disdain empathy for our fellow Sleepers, conceptually. But I don't know. We all have to pick a side eventually.
[Anyway.]
Our Houses were numbered in order; the Fifth was founded before the Sixth. That's it. Not entirely or culturally, of course, but purely in terms of the numbering: it's just numbers. The Sixth is actually 'first' if you line up all of our planets in order, starting at the sun.
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Tch. Yeah. It's easy to say, but hard to know if someone means it.
[you know, benefit of the doubt and all that. she'd much rather give it, but that's ...hard in some cases. like when you know the asshole in question, and there's a 50/50 they're full of absolute shit. palamedes gets it.]
Oh, well that's easy enough to understand. [the numbering part, anyway. fifth does indeed come before sixth, and that would mean there's a first through third, she guesses. but then he talks about planets lining up in order and she tries to process what he means. it hurts her head a little - but she arrives at:] Is each house a planet?
[that's pretty cool if it works that way.]
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[A shrug.]
We're the only ones squatting on our miserable little rock, [fondly, he means this,] but we're hardly populous enough to cover the whole planet. We have a station in the polar caps, and... that's us. Some of the other Houses are millions strong, though; it depends.
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I dunno about millions. Keeping it small means less chance of assholes, right? And if you've got 'em, at least you've got less.
Woah. I feel ...a little better. [still exhausted, still sad, still angry, but with less aching. what transient queasiness she'd been feeling is also gone.]