an aid to laundry troubles

[unsheathedfromreality]

[At some handwave-y time shortly after the closing of the Story, a note in an workmanlike cursive hand goes up on the bulletin board:]

If you need a change of clothing, I can make simple tunics and trousers that won't disappear.

Find me:

[A simple doodle of Illarion's face follows: Pointy ears, long hair, blindfold (or veil), malar stripes. Enough to go on when most of the Library is human.

It is signed below the doodle with an eye-and-feather symbol. No name.]

IC UPDATE:

[A few hours after the initial post goes up, an additional sheet of paper is appended to it:]

Payment is not necessary but if you're one of those who can make or find permanent items, you can bring one of the following:

- Fabric
- Thread or gut
- Head/round knife
- Awl
- Leathering needle
- Raising hammer
- Pliers
- Portable anvil
- Hides or leather

NO glitter. We have plenty.

Comments

[unsheathedfromreality]

[The puzzlement is patently obvious, but Illarion will let that alone for now. No sense adding to the confusion when it came down to Night Haunter and the shrike simply being kindred spirits in not letting an awful bit die.]

We have a contract, [because of course they did,] you can review if you want the full details. The short of it is he doesn't kill me, and I give him certain information on my world that will let you eliminate a dire threat from it. If your Imperium ever finds us.

We're on our own for gaining the right to exist in it, after that. [Here is where Illarion would sound dubious about that prospect, if he emoted much.

He also is not quite sure he believes that Sanguinius wants for nothing -- and the look he briefly turns on the Great Angel says so -- but he'll let that abide for now. Let him go find cloth, and maybe think about what Illarion's told him.

The shrike himself will simply resume cutting out pieces while he waits on the primarch's return. He's got the tunic mostway assembled by the time Sanguinius does get back, and glances up from his pinning to examine the fabric.

(Useful that he can detect one of these oversized fellows approaching by how the Library's ((outward)) dimensions compress to squeeze more Library into being for them.)]

It'll work. Don't know my poor skill is up to doing it justice as a festival-piece, but it will be a good color on you. [He tips his head, birdlike, and considers it more.] Has some pretty highlights to match your feathers.

Do you ever paint them? [ -- wait where did that come from. That was not how he meant to enact the feather-painting joke.]

[angel_of_baal]

[Curze would always put the worst possible spin and read on everything he came across--even his own Legion, and including himself. It wouldn't surprise Sanguinius to find that that's what he told others, however unfair it was.

At least he was opening up to someone. And while Sanguinius wished it would be him, he knew that it was not likely to happen, especially now. ] I would not invade your--either of you--privacy. Our kind have had so little.

Only, if you feel he is a threat to your safety, I would ask that you extend me the honor of letting me know. [If he sounds overly formal, it's because he'd rather err on the side of formality than overstep where there was something going on he clearly didn't understand.]

It need not be special. I just liked the color. [One fun fact about being Sanguinius is he could probably literally just wear a bedsheet and be fine. He's not Fulgrim, for Terra's sake!]

Paint? No. Is that common in your world? [It must be, because why would Ilarion ask, otherwise?] But for formal occasions, my Legion does like to have me don nets of chain and jewels over them. [It makes them so happy: how could he say no?]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Our kind have had so little.

That would have been sad to Illarion, at one time. Now it simply makes a grim sort of sense: Who would make weapons that glorious and not put them on display at all times? Who would make weapons intended to be held up for public view and not insist they fulfill their roles to the hilt?

Even if they weren't aware of it.

("Such is his role, as judgment is mine. I do not envy it.")

It makes all his questions and speculation on Sanguinius' appearance seem suddenly tawdry and unworthy somehow. Like he's shamed himself by even thinking of it, without recourse to feeling any shame in the process to keep from just going on.

Better if he kept to his place, as a dead thing. He has a job to do. He turns his attention back to his sewing and resumes pinning pieces together.

If anything, his tone's even more clinically detached when he speaks again -- his diction's changed, to a crisp, over-precise formality instead of the curled-in laziness he usually adopts.]

People with feathers often paint them. For all the same reasons people paint their faces. [War. Courtship. Confidence in front of strangers.]

I'll do what I can with the silk. Leave it with me.

[A pause, as he surveys his work, then returns to the previous topic of conversation -- still without looking up.]

It isn't a private contract. You and any of your other brothers who show up here should know the terms, as a matter of military intelligence. I will make you a copy.

He isn't a threat to my safety here so long as he continues to honor our contract. He may choose not to. Then we'll learn if the Library is capable of repairing me as well as it does the living.

Either way, there is a good chance I will die with all my people and all my world if he finds us, for your Imperium. I understand there is nothing you can do about that.

[angel_of_baal]

Oh. [He's never thought about painting them, but the idea is somehow charming. What if each of his Legion could paint one feather--would he have enough?

...now. After Signus, he would. With too many to spare as stark, blank white. The smile, which had started to glow on his face faltered. ]

Were you the one who altered the posters? [Maybe this was some bleedover from his time as Tsang. Maybe Ilarion had asked because he wanted to. ] If you wanted to, you could. Paint them.

But I would use the silk to make clothes for someone else, first. As I said, my needs are very little.

[Right, that was about as much of that sort of talk as Sanguinius is willing to endure. He drops off the seat to kneel in front of Ilarion, reaching to take his hands seeking the other's gaze, earnestly.] Friend--if I can call you that--our deaths are inevitable. For all of us, we should try to sell our lives at the highest cost. There is no honor in wasting your life, contract or no. Do not merely surrender to this.

[unsheathedfromreality]

Yes. [Quietly admitted. He was the one who'd decorated the posters.

Quieter still,] I told you before. I don't want things. I can't.

[He'd told Tsang before, and he'd been wearing his own human guise in the Story, but just as Tsang's voice had been Sanguinius', "Forster Green's" had that same flat tone and uncanny echo that mar Illarion's.

Tsang had been so much easier to deal with.

Tsang's bumbling affection in the Story had been incomprehensible. Disconcerting. Illarion had wanted to get away from it as quickly as he could and back to his self-imposed mission. There had been no need to consider it as anything but an obstacle.

Sanguinius' affection is devastating -- the more so because the shrike doesn't understand what's hit him, his dead heart unable to express the riptide pull it's caught in. All he knows is he cannot think straight any longer, staring down at the primarch's much larger hands where they envelop his own -- small and pale and bloodless and bandaged.

He does not look up. That would be dangerous for so many reasons.

But he doesn't protest the appellation of "friend," either, not knowing that's what has so completely crippled him.]

I do not intend to go quietly. But what hope is there for us against your empire? We won't be permitted to stay what we are. Most of us would die before give up our gods.

If we even survive long enough to be found. [The King of Eyes was winning his war of annihilation. Illarion would not have made his devil's bargain otherwise.]

[angel_of_baal]

You did a beautiful job. It's rare to feel truly...seen. [His brothers could see his patterns, but few others could. And none commented on them. It felt like a great compliment, and an honor.

If he had to have posters made of him, at least someone had liked them.

Illarion hasn't swatted his hands aside, so he keeps them, offering a gentle squeeze.] There is always hope. The Imperium is not savage, slaughtering those who are willing to live in peace, and who don't threaten our own. [At least that's how his understanding is. They are defenders. Sometimes attackers, but never without provocation.]

My brother's vision is always darkened. But we are a place of light and hope. He does not always see clearly.

[He tosses his head to get a stray lock of hair off his face, without letting go of the other's hands.] Do not yield your heart so easily to despair.

[unsheathedfromreality]

It -- felt right. To make them visible to others.

[To let the unseen be seen. Illarion has not felt seen himself since his Prince -- his true Prince, Evdokim, Dusya, who called him Hydra-Heart -- died. He has had a Prince-shape wound in his heart, in his whole world, since then -- one that led him into horror and then to death; one the King of Eyes had ruthlessly exploited without his full realization. Sleepwalker, he'd been, chained to the Prince of Locusts by poisoned magic.

Now the threads are cut, and now that wound bleeds anew, and now -- again, without his knowing -- he's desperate for anything to staunch it.

Why not someone who is kind, and concerned, and not afraid to touch hands with him, and beautiful as the Judge besides? (Why not someone who was made to lead, his fundamental essence woven to capture the minds and hearts of anyone who so much looked at him?)

It isn't that he wants to paint Sanguinius' feathers in courtship colors. He wants to paint them for war and follow the primarch to his second death. He wants to call him "lord" and bend the knee to him. He wants -- he doesn't want, he can't want -- but how is wanting different from knowing what his next move should be, knowing what words he should say to pledge his cause to his Prince?

Knowing how to be the perfect soldier, the perfect uncomplaining follower. To someone he has known barely more than a month.

He curls in on himself, pulls his hands up -- and Sanguinius' with them -- to hide his face.]

I won't.

[I won't, lord, he thinks, but somehow -- somehow -- manages not to say.]

I will believe you.

[Then, much harder to say,] I'm not sure I can do otherwise. You are --

You are doing something very strange to me. I don't understand it. [His voice is small, flatter even than usual, and sounds like he's speaking from the bottom of a well.]

I'm sorry.

[angel_of_baal]

I did not care for the posters, [They felt like a sick joke, some reference to something he didn't understand and no one explained.] until I saw those...additions. [Clearly added by hand: someone had taken time and effort to make something beautiful.]

My brother.[He lets his hands be taken up to the other's face, curled around, and he stretches his wings to cover them both. If it was one of his legionaries, upset like this, he would do the same.] You are not alone in this, . I will not let you be alone in this.

[Curze is the issue, and Curze is Sanguinius's brother and that translates to Curze being Sanguinius's problem. There has to be a way to protect them both from each other. He would stand in the breach between them.

He drops his voice to a whisper, trying to not overwhelm the other.] I mean no harm. I only want your happiness.

[unsheathedfromreality]

[Night Haunter and the devil's bargain Illarion made with him was only part of the problem -- a comprehensible part, the shrike thought. He'd lived under the threat of torture and death and worse for half-a-decade, awake forever with the horror of it. He could function in such an environment. Had been made for it.

He could even pretend he was something -- living, social, to most of the other Editors. He still had that patterns of it. He could always walk away when the illusion grew too thin.

This -- this... He is trembling and doesn't understand why. It isn't from fear because he can't feel fear. It isn't -- it is nothing else he can name, part of no pattern he can remember, because the only person who cared for him like this is dead, has been dead for years.]

Lord, [he whispers, unable to keep the title from his tongue; it is the right word for this situation,] I'm not meant for happiness anymore. My heart is dead. I will only fail you.

[Because that is a liegeman's highest concern -- should be. That he do his utmost to serve.

On the silk Sanguinius brought, a single black eye blinks open.]

[angel_of_baal]

You will not fail me, little brother. You cannot fail me. Because all I ask, all I have any right to ask, is that you do your best.

[That was all anyone could ask for--for each of his Legion to do what they could to make themselves proud, to make their death honorable, to make their name a warm blessing in the Legion's archives. It was all he could ask of himself, as well.

He just had far, far more to give than most. ] If we cannot find happiness in ourselves, our duty then becomes to nurture it in others. [If you cannot live to see the end of the war, your duty is to make sure the war is won, as quickly and definitively as possible.

So, therefore, in short, your excuses are invalid. ]