Roleplaying
2004 Archive
2005 Archive
Seminars
| When: | 1 April 2005 |
| Who: | Damien, Sandra |
| What: | Damien and Sandra meet for an early morning stroll in the Rose Garden. Sandra nudges Damien toward Redemption and Damien counters with nihilism. |
The Rose Garden
In the middle of the local park, there's the Rose Garden. It's carefully tended to by an older man, Julian Paterson. He loves spending hours in the park making sure that the roses and grasses are all perfectly aligned, the grass trimmed; they were his family. Of course, while he serves neither side, and anyone who meets him would say he's the nicest old man you could meet; few know the true secret to his garden. He keeps the soil fertilized by burying dead bodies, mostly the homeless, beneath it. He just doesn't see anything wrong with killing them to maintain the perfection of his garden.
In the morning, the Rose Garden is nearly deserted, most of its usual patrons off at high-powered jobs or getting their suits cleaned, etc. The caretaker is puttering around somewhere, and Sandra is also here, far from her usual haunts. She walking the paths with a determined air, making twisting laps around the garden while writing in a notebook and mumbling to herself.
Damien wanders into the Rose Garden. It's a five minute walk from his apartment building, and he has the look of someone who has been working all night. His hair is a mess, he's unshaven, and he smells of stale cigarette smoke and coffee. Not that he needs to sleep, but it's a habit he picked up and enjoys keeping. He's wearing a t-shirt and jeans, a sign that he was working paper work and legal briefs and AP Wire stories and editing op-ed pieces, not talking to customers. He wanders for a while in silent thought before he comes upon Sandra. When he sees her, he stops still for a moment, and then goes into a small spasm of trying to smooth back his hair making himself known with a small, "Good morning."
Sandra looks up at the voice, and her expression brightens with a huge smile. She launches herself at Damien to hug him. "Damien! Good morning! I am both surprised and pleased to see you here."
Damien oofs, takes two steps back, and has enough time to wrap his arms around Sandra before he realizes he HAS a Sandra. He leans down to kiss her, and smiles and says, "I came out for a walk, and you're a pleasant surprise."
Sandra kisses him back, then raises her hand to ruffle his hastily smoothed hair. "Serendipity, I imagine. How have you been, Damien?"
Damien's hair is now sticking up at a million odd angles. "I've been having my moments, but now I see you, and everything wrong with the world has been put to rights for the moment."
If Sandra's skin tone were lighter, the way her cheeks heat up would probably be more easily seen. She caresses his cheek, and says, "Flatterer," in a fond voice. "I am delighted to see you, too." She glances at the path and offers him her arm. "Shall we walk? What have you been doing, lately?"
Damien takes her arm so they can walk among the roses. "Working, always working. When I start to feel out of sorts, I work even harder than before. I suppose it keeps me from thinking about anything else. But I do think about you all the time."
Sandra leans briefly against him as they stroll. "As do I you. And you work too much...I worry." She smiles up at him. "I like the jeans, though. You do, in fact, have fantastic calves."
Damien looks down at his calves and laughs. "They're pretty spiffy. I like them." He pulls Sandra a little closer. "I almost thought about looking for someone to take me in last night to force me not to work, but then I went home and just started working."
Sandra lets herself relax into the closeness. "You could call me, you know. We could go for a drive. I guarantee a complete absence of work." She smiles. "I tried to start people dancing in Fado's. It even counts as work for me."
Damien says, "I have to work, or the Man will be on my back. You know, there's a bitter irony in there, the whole thing about how much the system sucks and why it's worthless and oh, by the way, you better get off your ass and get working on keeping the system moving or the Man's going to get bored. That cycle is even more pointless then going around complaining that the system is pointless. I feel like I'm trapped on a moebius strip these days."
Sandra raises his hand to her lips, brushing a kiss across the back of it. "What would you prefer to be doing, then? If the, er, Man weren't an issue and you could do whatever you liked, with no restrictions or boundries?"
"Other than crawl under a rock?" Damien asks. "I don't know. I don't want to leave politics, but I can't go back to the way I _was_. I will never be the way I was, but there's a certain aspect that I love very much today. I just get tired of being a dick about it."
Sandra smiles. "We can never go back to who we were, in any moment, Damien. The road closes before us, and there's only forward left. So, if you don't leave politics, and you're not a, um, dick about it, then what would you be?"
"There's two ways to look at politics," Damien says, walking along. "You can either embrace the spirit of the system as given to us by the Founders, who built on a foundation of John Locke and Francis Bacon and David Hume and Voltaire, and believe that it is a living system designed to reflect the problems and solutions of the people. You want to use the system to fight for positive change for your people. Or you can believe that it's a good way to weasel power and do whatever you want, including rolling in piles of money while you change the system to either crumble or influence your buddies. And let me tell you, I paid for my BMW with cash."
Sandra looks confused. "I suppose this is where we run into the limits of my understanding. It's only a car. In fifty years, many of the parts will have broken down. In a hundred, the car itself probably will no longer work, and in two hundred, it is likely that no one but you will remember it ever existed. Corporeal wealth is ultimately meaningless, especially for those like us. Our needs on this plane are few."
"But you don't understand, Sandra," Damien says. "The way my little head is wired, I get very into stuff. I normally feel nothing except for a drive for stuff and people to think I'm cool because I have stuff. You're the big exception in my life, the wedge that didn't exist a few weeks ago. It's hard to describe. And it sounds really tawdry and stupid when I try."
Sandra squeezes his hand. "I don't understand," she agrees easily. "I love you, and I look at you, and see someone who has more motivators than that. Someone who is capable of deep feeling, and compassion, and frustration, and sorrow. If you were truly incapable of feeling, then I would not be any sort of a wedge for you, and we would be at odds."
Damien sighs deeply. "That's why I need to get away from work for a while. Even one night. I don't... I was that shallow nothingness, Sandra, for a long time. I guess I just got over it, gradually, over time, without even noticing it. Now my job doesn't seem entertaining and fun anymore. It just feels distasteful, and now I think I'm in a fix."
Sandra smiles up at him. "Would you like to come to the Marches with me, one night? We could find places that would be safe for both of us, I think. And there are such beautiful things there, Damien."
"Sure," Damien says. "And you can see me in all my glory, for what that's worth. I just... Sandra, I've never run away in my life, and I don't think I can survive if I'm not working. I'm not about to just pick up and walk away. My crazy work ethic, at the very least, prevents that."
Sandra bumps into him, gently. "You have to have something to work /towards/, Damien, or it's not really work at all. It's just doing things. What do you want to work towards?"
"Truthfully?" Damien asks.
Sandra nods. "Of course, love." She sounds slightly miffed that he'd have to ask.
"It sounds horrible," Damien says, "but I want to be able to mourn Raimetheryn properly, and all the friends that have died and all the friends I had to order killed. I want to feel something, finally, something other than eternal numbness. I want to stop living in that dim twilight I've inhabited for almost three centuries between Heaven and Hell. I just want to be able to mourn my wife."
Sandra sighs. "Damien, that isn't horrible at all. You never properly mourned, and you /should/. What happened to her was a tragedy. What happened to you was a tragedy. Mourning is entirely appropriate."
"Hell got us both," Damien says quietly. "It got her fast, and it got me slow. It took decades to really get me and pull me down, but it got me. And now I'm stuck for eternity, looking for some Malakite who will do me a favor. But now I don't want that anymore because you're here and I don't know WHAT to do anymore."
Sandra moves so that she can face him. "I can't answer that for you, Damien, although I hurt to see your pain. I can only say...Damien, I believe in you. I have faith in you, in the potential that you carry, and in your capacity for love. If I can help in any way, I will. Except for the Malakite...and I'm not entirely sure any of them would do you that favor even if you asked."
Damien wraps his arms around Sandra so he can bring her to his chest and bury his face in her hair. "I've really fucked up my life and you wouldn't believe some of the things I have done, Sandra."
Sandra leans into the hug, bringing her own arms up to hold him. Her voice is muffled against his chest. "Someday, you should tell me, if it helps. If it won't, then don't. The past matters, but it doesn't define who you are right now, or who you will be in the future. We reinvent ourselves with every moment and every choice."
"I love you," Damien says softly. "I am in love with you. I am afraid of being lost to you."
Sandra shivers. "I do not want you to be lost to me, Damien. Never. I want you to be you." She squeezes him. "Only you."
"If I die," Damien says, "Or get killed or the other demons find me, I will be lost to you forever, Sandra."
Sandra kisses his T-shirt-clad chest, then moves her face so that she an at least look towards his. "We take the same risks, Damien. I could have this vessel destroyed, or die any night out in the Marches. At least we can be in danger together?"
"I would like that, at least for a little while," Damien says, "But the thought of going Renegade feels so... so... so distasteful and dishonorable."
Sandra nods. "And you would lose your Role," she points out, softly.
"And it goes against the parts of me, deep down, that are very much me and never changed," Damien says, and sighs heavily. "Somewhere, somewhere in here, somewhere deep down, there's a part of me that is, well, um, Dominic. If you think real hard about it. And squint. And stand on one leg."
"Or possibly if Dominic thought real hard about it, squinted, and stood on one leg," Sandra quips. "Which would just be worth it on so many other levels." Her smile fades and she pulls herself gently out of the embrace. "But that's something you'll have to consider for yourself. If you don't /want/ it, want it more than anything, then you'll die."
"Then I'll die," Damien says. "And I've accepted death for a long time, Sandra. I want to be able to love you for however long is actually left. That's what I want."
"No, Damien!" Sandra steps further away from him, shaking her head. "No. That's...it's...no. Accepting death? That kind of nilihism is abhorrent. There's so much in this world to live for, so much beauty, and hope, and so much to reach for. Don't you want any of it? Don't you want anything?" After looking at him for a moment, her eyes pleading, she turns away. "I have to go back to work, kingmaker. I'll talk to you later."
Damien just closes his eyes. "I used to live just for work, but now, I want to live for you, Sandra. I'm sorry. I'm just... I'm still a demon."
Sandra turns back, and darts forward to give Damien a quick, burning kiss. "I know," she whispers. "And I love you still. But now, I have to go. I will call you." With that, she retreats, leaving the garden at a pace that is not quite a run.
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