indispensible | three. voice & private & spam. glory & gore go hand in hand.

If there were people who wanted to learn to dance, I know . . . other kinds.

I don't know how to cha-cha. Mark can teach that one once he wakes up. [:|]

[Also, Nathan, you don't get a choice.]

private } stark

[You probably don't get a choice either.]

What are you doing.

private } kelsier

I need to.

We should talk.

spam } marsh

[Vin is currently playing a stimulating game of 'acclimatize myself to Marsh's presence', which manifests in following him around for five-minute bursts at random times of day, whenever he emerges from his sad cocoon. She's not making a particular effort to conceal herself in any way at all. She just knows he won't do it.]

private } arya

I don't know your warden. How is she?

spam } polly

[Now Vin is playing a rousing game of 'follow Polly around to figure out her habits and possibly weaknesses'. Still not making a tremendous effort to hide her presence.]

private } morgana

I saw you in the breach. You smiled more, then. [Slightly bemused by this.]

spam } open

[She probably didn't realize the extent to which she felt trapped, before now. But while she isn't precisely happy, her step is a little lighter, especially with her wolfhound at her side.]

[She spends hours in the CES, once she catches an iteration of it with brightest skies and most sharply defined white clouds. Almost no time on the ground, though - she practices with coins, pleased not to be able to rely on metal in the deck for jumps. It's the work of precision and angles that pleases her.]

[After a few hours of this, she rests at the top of a smallish pine tree, examining its sap, while Clifford sits at the root and whines at her to get down occasionally.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I didn't want to think it was true. I don't know what happened but I know it would take more than my death to turn the world green.

[He glances down.] I don't keep secrets anymore but I know when I'm not being told something. Marsh, I know, isn't telling me everything which means whatever happened was bad enough he thinks he can protect me from it by only telling me what good happened.

[He frowns for a second.] Zane shouldn't be the only one whose told me everything.

[He sighs then approaches her to put his arms around her.] You don't have to hide anything from me.

Marsh is an idiot.

[Which is more or less equivalent to saying that she's an idiot; she's been doing the same thing, and she knows it.]

[When he touches her, she looks up at him, beseeching.]

None of it was anyone's choice but mine. It was what needed to be done. You have to understand that.

They're a lot of idiot going around these days.

[He brings a hand up to the side of her face.] You know I understand that. More than anyone.

[He does. Of course he does. She closes her eyes tightly and leans into his touch.]

I don't know where to start.

That's all right. Tell me when you're ready.

[He just hugs her.] Take as long as you need. I'm not going anywhere. [An unspoken 'this time' in there. Don't mind that his eyes seem a little wet. Mist got in his eyes.]

[She doesn't fill in 'this time'. She's not angry at him, exactly. Not anymore. She resents having been lied to, but she understands, what with everything that's happened.]

[She doesn't open her eyes, hugging him tightly and speaking into his shoulder for now.]

What did they tell you? About Ruin?

[He sighs because no one has actually told him anything. Well, Zane has and that's the only way he knows as much as he does.]

Is that what it's called? I know about Zane's spike and the voices and I know it was controlling Marsh. I know it has no hold here.

Vin, Zane is the only one who has told me anything.

Oh.

[She's hypocritically irritated with Marsh, now. More with herself. She shouldn't have kept secrets to spare Kelsier's feelings. What good does that do?]

[She pulls her earring out of her pocket and holds it out to him, just briefly, before putting it away.]

It was a hemalurgic spike. My mother . . . gave it to me. You remember. And it - Ruin - spoke to me through this. Like it was Reen.

[He nods.] It wanted to control events. [He looks over the earring, it does look like a spike now that he really looks at it.]

[He sighs remembering something odd.] It tried to control me too. My trainer, Gemmel, he tried to kill me with a spike like the one that was in Zane. Maybe he wasn't really trying to kill me.

[She nods, grimly unsurprised.]

He was trying to make you obedient. [Which is kind of hilarious, in an awful way, because it's Kelsier.]

I. Kelsier, I listened to it, and I made things a lot worse for a while.

three. voice & private & spam. glory & gore go hand in hand.

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