apostatised | [log] everyone i know goes away in the end

The week or so following his foray into spellcrafting on the fly is quiet - at least for Martel himself. Classifying his workload as 'quiet' is probably a matter of perspective, but it's a familiar hassle and one that most days he even enjoys. Nevertheless, if he wants to fine-tune anything out of what he pulled together for Hasibe he needs a bit of time not spent knocking heads together, not to mention the fact he doesn't have here at the castle all of the texts he's particularly interested in while he frames his notes into something more coherent than 'BY GOD I AM UTTERLY BRILLIANT'.

(Accurate, but lacking a certain something professionally.)

The long and the short of it is that when he finishes for the day, he intends to spend the rest of the evening and further working at the nexus library - and he is presently kneeling in the stacks in the section devoted to the development of new Styric spells as influenced by cooperation with the church of Chyrellos. It's going to be a very long night.

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"I have been known for it in the past," Sparhawk replies to Martel, trying to match his tone of innocence, but not quite making it. "Although I wouldn't want to make your wife, a widow."

In other words, he's not going to kill you. He won't swear not to hit Martel if he becomes especially annoying. Provocative, as Ewar said. And Martel's expression is highly amusing to Sparhawk, who allows it to touch his face.

"Nice fellow," he comments as Ewar leaves.

"It'd be a pity to do it before we've had the time to make 'wife' official, and after the lengths she went to matching my lifespan," Martel murmurs, dry, and watches Ewar go. (Information, there, if Sparhawk cares to pick at it - he always has secrets, this one, but they are precious few and the things he guards the closest are primarily the things Sparhawk already knows.)

Of Ewar, he says, "He hired himself. I had him in with the other boys renovating the castle and he decided to stay on afterward." ...sound familiar? "Useful young man."

It shouldn't surprise Sparhawk that Martel is living in sin (or what most of the clergy would term sin), but it doesn't bother him.

What is surprising to him is that he's glad Martel has found someone again, and is happy. Wanting his estranged brother to be happy is an novel sensation for the broken nosed knight, and he takes a moment to assess this.

The comment about the lifespan mostly goes over his head though. He'll probably remember it later.

"Were we ever that determined I wonder," Sparhawk muses, unaware that while he's thinking about Martel being happy, his tone has slipped to something resembling friendly, rather than civility. "Khalad is the same way."

"A long time ago," Martel tells Sparhawk, in a tone that an outside observer would probably note as being similar to his, "when we had a great deal more energy to spare to it." He doesn't lack for energy now, but he's not eighteen, either.

"If you believe we were ever that young, of course," he adds contemplatively, after a moment of silence.

"According to Sephrenia, we still are that young," Sparhawk replies, still slightly absent, although starting to come out of his own head.

The conditioned response that Martel equals hate is starting to fade now. This man he has met is both like and unlike the Martel Sparhawk knew. The sharp wit is the same, the acerbic tongue, the provocative way of talking. But all the sins that Martel committed were expiated in blood on the floor in the temple of Azash, and Sparhawk finds himself feeling grateful for what he's beginning to think of as a second chance.

"Would you say," he starts slowly, "That we could ever be more than enemies, after all that has happened?"

An interesting redirection, and Martel regards him with a certain sense of caution - like he's feeling out for the edges of a trap. He can't avoid answering, though, so he offers up a prayer to anyone listening that Sparhawk hasn't gone mad, too.

"We could easily be less than enemies. What would we oppose each other for, when I've already conceded and you've more than won?" He shrugs, like it could be that simple - as if they could just be nothing to one another, after a lifetime bound together over a blade's edge, one way or the other. "More than that, though? It'd be a little presumptuous for me to say, don't you think?"

If there is a trap in Sparhawk's words, he's walking into it himself. And he might as well be mad, for even beginning to think of a reconciliation.

"The past cannot be forgotton, but it can be left in the past, where it belongs," Sparhawk has tried to do this, but old prejudices are hard to discard. "There is no middle ground for us, I think, there has been too much between us. I cannot simply forget that you existed, and are here again."

He thinks that he might leave this story out, should he ever return to his own world.

"Presumptuous or not, would it be something that you might consider?"

When and if he gets home, Martel wouldn't advise the words 'I reconciled with our crazy renegade' crossing his lips, no, not if he enjoys having his friends possess nominal faith in his sanity. (Whereas none of Martel's friends actually think he's sane in the first place, observant individuals that they are.)

"We were brothers - 'once', we like to say. If we weren't still, Sparhawk, it wouldn't matter and we wouldn't be picking at each other the way we are. Yes, I might consider it. God knows it's preferable." A beat, and then more dryly, "If he's listening."

It'll be a long time before religion is anything like easy for him, and this is probably why he's so consistently sharp about it.

And Martel has answered. Sparhawk now knows what he needs to know, and it's time for him to decide what to do with it. But that doesn't involve Martel.

"Maybe not God, but perhaps a Goddess," Sparhawk responds to the other mans statement. He's not tried praying to Aphrael yet, partially out of a worry that Martel simply said what Sparhawk wanted to hear, in order to set him up for a fall. He wouldn't put it past him.

"I will leave you to your books," and after all that has been said, Sparhawk can't think of a polite way of extracting himself from this situation. So, he falls back on this default of blunt. "Till we meet again...brother."

It's not said in a threatening tone, although it could be taken as such.

"'Til then," Martel agrees, masquerading as careless and a little too alert to quite carry it off. "Best of luck finding your way home."

...ha. Yes. Martel turns, then, and leaves first - he still has work to do, even if it might be a little harder than he'd anticipated to set his mind to it.

If Martel is listening closely, he might be able to hear the growl from Sparhawk as he makes his exit through the stacks. Even when trying to be friendly, Martel knows how to irritate the ever loving /hell/ out of Sparhawk.

He needs to go and give himself a stern talking to.

[log] everyone i know goes away in the end

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