indispensible | five. spam & video. thank you for dancing 'til the end

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five. spam & video. thank you for dancing 'til the end

spam } throughout lost in translation

[Unlike during some floods, Vin isn't hiding this time - not even close. She's fascinated by the varied languages she's hearing and is scouring the ship to hear as much as possible in the time she has. Admittedly she spends a greater proportion of her time above deck, in the gardens, and in the CES than anywhere else, but the only place she doesn't visit once is Zero. Everywhere else, she's watching and listening and occasionally muttering quietly in the language of Scadriel.]

video } public

[This is the Public Address voice/face, in which Vin is about 10% more social adept than at other times. There's eye contact happening, and that's pretty much all you can ask.]

Mark's gone, you know that, but before he left he . . . mentioned dancing. Dancing lessons, specifically. We talked for a while, and I still want to do them. There's only so much I can teach, because there's only so much I know, but I can start and other people can - teach other things. Later.

I'll be on deck later this afternoon, unless there's a better space.

[And what was the other thing.]

Wear comfortable clothes.

spam } deck

[Vin is, in fact, on deck, starting at around four in the afternoon, and even if nobody shows up she will at least be practicing various calisthenic-type exercises she learned from Ham. Once a small group gathers, she'll demonstrate a few simple steps - brusquely but effectively - of very old-fashioned ballroom-ish dancing. It's pretty clear she's not the best in the world at this teaching crap, but she's an excellent dancer (in part, but not whole, because of Mistborn cheating).]

( ooc; feel free to use the second spam as a somewhat-mingly thing!! i am cool with whatever, threadjack all over the place, do your thing, xoxo )

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[Now she smiles, bright but small, and devastatingly genuine for its rareness.]

I don't know all the different kinds he does. I only know one kind. But it's fun.

[And she thinks Ben probably needs more fun in his life - but then, doesn't everyone, always? As someone who was starved for it all her short life, she thinks the answer is probably yes.]

If you want me to show you, I can go first and you can go after. Or -

[She extends her hand, but not very far. A second option: she can show him while she does it, and he can do it with her. She strongly suspects he's a fast learner.]

It is one kind more than I know.

[The smile is startling for its peculiar blinding quality, but Ben doesn't shy away; he is slightly more threatened by her clear intent as she extends her hand, but he's prepared for it. He came here to investigate. He knew the likely outcome.

Ben regards her silent offer curiously for several beats, but the bottom line is that this is his last major hurdle; this is one he can overcome once and for all, if he can only find out how. This is not warily marking Anya's hand on his arm the entire time, or being able to close the gap when he sees Alex holding to himself. This is being something more like normal.

Ben steps forward and, not without hesitation, reaches to accept her hand.]

I am familiar with training drills, ma'am. I would like to learn whatever you are willing to teach me.

[Her smile softens just a little when he takes her hand. She nods, wordlessly accepting of his decision and maybe a little pleased, before pulling him slightly closer by the hand and resting her other hand lightly on his hip.]

I'll lead first. Show you how to follow. You should know both sides if you're going to be able to lead someone else later.

It's four beats, over and over. And it's not very fast, but - precise.

[She doesn't know the words for music the way it's written out on Earth, but she knows what it feels like, and that's good enough for her. What it feels like is two people shadowing each other's steps, each other's breaths, and that's how she leads Ben: closely and precisely but very, very slowly.]

[She wishes she had music to play for him, but nothing she's found so far fits, and she feels a momentary pang of loss for the full-body experience of her dance.]

[If he approaches it that way - if he reminds himself of the yielding sturdiness of the mats underfoot, the echo of voices on the cement walls, the wave of motion caused by his peers executing the exact same movement he is in perfect unison - he is better able to focus. Ironically, he muses, it is the selfsame combative closeness at the root of his aversion in the first place, but this he can do. If he keeps himself loose and ready for the touch on his hip to turn into his back slamming to the floor, it bothers him less.

He is familiar with music, of course, but dancing is completely alien; he does not notice the absence of it, doesn't think to think it odd. She pulls him along at first and he counts to four over and over in his head, and it isn't long at all before she's no longer pulling him.

Ben glances up from watching their combined movements.] You can go faster.

[She remembers, as she moves with him in a way that's not quite automatic and not quite conscious, the first time Kelsier held his hand out to her, once he'd sent Camon away. She'd flinched away, because that had been the only option available to her at the time. It simply wouldn't have made sense to go towards him. Hands hurt.]

[It's unfortunate when she comes across someone who is used to hands hurting, too.]

[She's already thinking about speeding up when he offers that she can. With a quick look up to confirm, she doesn't just go faster, she pulls them both up to full speed, already impatient with the slow tempo. Besides, she's sure he can keep up; it's more a matter of being comfortable keeping up.]

[Always, she watches to see if he's going to panic. There's only so far you can push at once. Vin doesn't want to push him too far.]

[Ben is not impatient, far from it, but he speeds up with her. Their eyes meet and rebound and then he's counting to four faster, and thinking there must be more to it than this. X5s learn quickly, Ben easily an efficient example of this trait, but there must be more to it than this.

His own hands mirror hers, but it is an imperfect mimic until their momentum necessitates he actually hold on rather than merely leave his fingers where hers are on him. Both of them, he knows, can hurt with their hands; both of them will. Neither of them do.]

What is this called? {If he can label it, the next time he panics, maybe he will not lose it as easily.]

It's how I learned to speak.

[She doesn't know why she says it. It's not even true, not really, she's been able to speak since she was little. Reen taught her how, because she was a good beggar before she was a good thief.]

[It's not true, but it's also the truest thing. Her brow furrows.]

I don't . . . it's the first one I learned.

[With a shake of her head, she abruptly starts humming the music that was playing when she met Elend, the first night she infiltrated the nobility. She's not a particularly musical person, but she remembers it by heart, for all that it was years ago. It's a quiet, not intrusive noise; just a way of keeping time.]

[He may have asked more - would have asked more, he strives always to understand, to know, and she is someone he understands better than most, who seems to understand his hunger for knowledge - but she begins to hum. He isn't exactly startled by it, he knows enough from past floods and breaches and from his reading to know that music accompanies the movements, but he only realizes it's necessary once she begins.

And in turn, suddenly he understands the first part of what she said. Because she is not a musical person and because he has been studying the technicalities of it in order to learn from the ground up, he can tell that it's something from the heart; he can tell that there's using words to communicate and then there's speaking. Ben learned three languages before he was five years old, but the Blue Lady taught him to speak; he could recite information and data and answer questions asked of him accurately quite young. The words were only his own when he spoke as Ben, though.

Which adds a layer to his curiosity, because now it's not just about learning a dance that he's likely never to know the name of; now it's a piece of Vin, as well. She's showing him something he has not reciprocated, something vital only to her. Not that he wasn't before, but he pays better - keener but more careful - attention than before.]

What can you tell me about it?

[Before she answers, she lets the music wash over her - not just what she's humming, but the fullness of it, the quartet or quintet or full orchestra, at some places, particularly House Venture; the memory of the music, the feeling of it in her bones. The scent of sweat and perfumed nobility, of fine food, of expensive fabrics. Knives in backs.]

[She never stops dancing. Never falters a step.]

It's a dance of nobility. The upper class, in my world as it used to be. The ones that were considered really human. The most formal, though there were only a few dances - they didn't let skaa dance, at least not in public. A courtship dance. I . . .

Sazed told me it's slower than other dances to give the partners time to speak. You can make alliances in between the steps, he said. Or you can . . . just dance.

[Ben gives her the time to think, mirrors her movements as best he can, which is accurately. It's repetitive enough that he's picking it up very quickly: already his movements have softened from the rigid precision of deliberate attention, and become the smoother motion of muscle memory.

She says a few words he doesn't know, presents a few concepts he is only passingly familiar with, but he merely holds those in consideration.]

Is that why you learned it? To make alliances?

Yes.

[Her voice isn't soft, but softer, molten steel in the face of memory. It wasn't a good time, exactly, but compared to times before, it was far better. Overall, a fond reminiscence. And it's the road that lead her to Elend.]

To make alliances, and to learn secrets. To aid in a theft, and an assassination. That was my role.

It didn't exactly work out that way, but . . . I'm glad I learned. It's a good thing to know.

[It makes her feel lighter than air, the way her feet move over the floor. It makes her sad, too, but a good kind of sad. It makes her feel everything at once.]

[It sounds terribly familiar; not the subversion aspect of it, not being trained to do one thing with the intent of doing another. X5s are leaders, not the decoys, not the distraction; they would not be taught dancing, as far as Ben knows, for any reason.

Were not.

But if that was her world's version of the same, perhaps that explains quite a bit about why they are able to communicate so clearly.]

Are you a soldier? [It's better, he thinks, easier than asking her the story she's telling herself in her own head, but not him aloud.]

[Was she?]

[She closes her eyes and leans forward unconsciously, pulling herself closer to the center of the dance and to Ben. In no way is it intimate - more than anything, trancelike, a way of understanding, a way of touching memory.]

I fought. I . . . led men. I protected . . .

I don't know if I was a soldier. I never had a rank. I was outside of that.

[Above that, technically. The emperor's wife. But she always felt outside.]

[He has, he realizes, done it again; his definition for Soldier is too inclusive, too involved - or perhaps not too anything. Merely more than others. Different.

It's the curiosity for what the word would be, then, in her vocabulary that keeps him from pulling back when she leans closer. He is not comfortable, but he knows how to operate around discomfort. He does so daily, and this is not beyond his tolerance for the time being.]

No rank, but you had a role.

What was that? Why is that? [Neither is a good question for what he wants to know. They are the best he has.]

[Her smile is small, sharp, and bitter, a dagger to the ribs in the dark. Not directed at Ben, but not sheathed, either. She is still angry, uncomfortable, about all of this.]

I was an urchin. Then I was an assassin. Then a murderer. Then I thought I was to save the world, and I doomed it. Then I was an empress. Then I was part of a religion. Then I was all of those things, and then I died.

It's complicated. [Obviously.]

[Ben knows how to operate around knives, too. Not always to avoid being cut, but to fail to allow it to hinder him.

The succession of her explanation is simple and vast, indeed complicated; Ben is one of very few on board that believes every word of it at face value. He does not doubt her saving or dooming of the world, that she was or is an empress, a deity, an assassin.

He considers this, and then tries again, his tone changing the angle of the identically worded question ever so slightly.]

Why is that?

[She remembers clearly what Zane said. Many things he said in the past were not of value to her; this particular statement, however, helped.]

Because I was a tool.

[Her hand flexes, as if she's going to squeeze his. She doesn't, barely stopping herself, because she feels the skittish flightiness of him reflected in her own anxiety. Instead she averts her eyes, a small comfort in the face of the hugeness of a world, or worlds, that she barely begins to understand.]

But there was more life in being a tool than in what came before. So maybe . . . that's why.

[He feels her considering tightening her grip and wonders, idly, if it will hurt; it's idle curiosity, no blame, no accusation. Just a possibility that he will accept. She doesn't, in the end, but that doesn't mean she won't.

Her answer, in fact, grounds him in understanding. He knows what it is to be a tool, both willingly and unwillingly; he knows about the hugeness of the world and wanting only to be told what to do in it, by someone who knows more, who knows better. To carve a place for himself with obedience.

She is not a soldier, so the details are different, but the shape of it is enough. He nods at once.]

Was. We outgrew it.

[Ben says we and she slows her steps. Who is we? She and him - which she doubts, since they don't know each other well; he and his family or friends, whichever he has, whichever he values; he and all soldiers, the universal family. Unit.]

[She looks at him quickly, the glance of a frightened animal, then away again.]

I learned to be normal sometimes. But it's exhausting. Mostly I just find people who understand. Or they find me.

[Elend understood. He saw, and participated in, her becoming. Others, too, but he was the only one who saw from start to finish. Who didn't leave her or die or become something too far away from her to touch.]

[He isn't here to see her becoming now, whatever it is that she's growing into. This hurts more than torture ever did.]

[She looks back at Ben.]

How did you outgrow it?

[Vin slows and he thinks maybe he said something wrong; he's accustomed to being careful about being forward, about taking liberties. They are called liberties for a reason, after all, and freedom is not something he's had an abundance of in his lifetime.

He'd thought she was the same, but maybe he was wrong.

Then she says more words that only confirm it and he nods, insists again:] We kept the parts that weren't necessary. Because we like them.

Because they are what we chose for ourselves. [He glances down at their feet, to their hands, and then back to her face meaningfully.] This is what you kept for yourself. This is what you pass on.

This is growing by your own design.

Growing by your own design.

[She likes this phrasing. It's more artful than she can usually manage. So she wants to save it, tucked away in one pocket or another to rediscover and examine in closer detail later.]

[Softly, she smiles, pressing inward to touch her metal reserves. Her design is bright and sharp and violent; it isn't wrong or right. It's just hers.]

You know how to explain things better than I do. Thank you. It - helps.

Fear is . . . hardest to get rid of. [She hesitates.] Do you want to stop?

[Is it too much, is what she means; is it overwhelming? Or does it help? Is this something that could be a part of him, or is it something that hurts?]

[Ben is surprised by the praise, and pleased; both show, which is a minor miracle all its own though she has no way of really knowing that. He is precise and he attempts to be accurate, but rarely is he capable of explaining anything better than anyone else.

But there's something else showing too and he hesitates when she does, the pleasure fading with the consideration of what, exactly, she's asking him.

He doesn't want to stop, but he thinks maybe he has to. Ben nods, his fingers twitching in hers.]

I think I should. I... thank you. For this. But I think I should stop.

[She understands; she knows. Once, touch was only pain. Even now, too much and she begins to feel constricted in the back of her throat, certain that a blow is coming - if not this second, then the next one. Soon, soon. The only absolutely sure thing is that no good thing lasts.]

[She doesn't believe this in her head anymore, or her heart, but the body remembers for longest.]

[Dropping her hands, she backs away until there are meters between them, a cautious distance. Then, instead of bowing, she curtsies, low and graceful.]

It was a privilege. If you want to learn more - on another day, any other day - I would like to teach you.

And thank you for . . . showing me . . . [She struggles for the words, and ultimately settles for repetition:] Thank you for showing me.

[Ben lets her drop her hands and remains still while she backs away, watching with his head cocked slightly to a side, curious and wary all at once. Not concerned, but watching for the cues he memorizes and attempts to respond to, always. She curtsies - on several moments delay, he inclines his head with slow, not quite certain precision.

The corner of his mouth twitches on the repetition, accepting and grateful.]

I am glad you offered this opportunity to the Barge as a whole, and to me as an individual.

I should like to learn more at a later date. We will speak again.

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five. spam & video. thank you for dancing 'til the end

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