apostatised | [log] both your friend and your enemy think you will never die

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[log] both your friend and your enemy think you will never die

The crisp cold air in Arum gives way to the more temperate nexus, and Martel loosens his cloak as he walks further away from the portal - habitually, as if this is something that he does quite often, because it is. The nexus has become a routine the way he knows just about anything can become routine, and he uses it for recreation and for business and for self-indulgence and for all sorts of things that are alternately useful or logically pointless. His opinion of the place changes daily, but tends to baseline at 'tolerant'; today he's not really thinking about it, going about his business unremarkable and unremarked on.

In the nexus there are any number of places he could be found, for any number of reasons. As he makes his way through the semi-Elene market that he's been frequenting for months without bothering to mention this slice of his homeland to anyone else (even the precious few Elenes who pass through, who have enough without taking this from him, too), he knows that if he's needed at the castle he's not impossible to find. Unfortunately, he's not impossible to find for anyone else, either, unconcerned as he is.

He's probably not anticipating being interrupted as he disagrees with a vendor about the worth of these pieces, and where they came from in the first place.

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Sparhawk has one thought in mind. Find Martel. His head is still blurred by the Arcian red that he was drinking with an old friend, but that's the way that Sparhawk wants to be. It's the only way that certain things will finally get to be said.

His steps are steady and methodical as he traces his way through the paths of the nexus, looking for the man, asking if anyone has seen him.

Sparhawk isn't paying much attention to his surroundings, and so when he finds himself in a market, the similarity of it to his homeland is startling. It's then that he hears the familiar voice engaged in a disagreement.

Taking a deep breath, and with the taste of the Arcian red in his mouth, Sparhawk moves forward to the stall, and into Martel's eyeline.

"Half of that, and that's a generous estimate. Excuse me." In perfectly sober contrast, Martel drops the thread of conversation smoothly and moves toward Sparhawk rather than bothering to walk away. Muzzy-headed as his brother may be, that was too deliberate for him to ignore - so he picks this argument up as easily as he dropped the other, raising his eyebrow. "Yes?"

In this frame of mind, Sparhawk doesn't care if Martel is sober, he doesn't care what Martel thinks of him. With the alcohol in his mind, and the words of Stragen repeating softly, Sparhawk is determined.

"I am sorry if I am interrupting you, but I need to speak with you. Privately, and as soon as possible."

The words are polite, although to someone as knowing as Martel, the slight slur would be detectable. Sparhawk also doesn't care if Martel think's he stating the obvious, the broken nosed knight has his side of the conversation mostly planned out already.

Well. That's a good deal politer than what he was expecting - certainly a lot politer than he's merited in the past - and as such it makes him pause, mildly suspicious. The slur is what makes his mind up for him; even if Sparhawk is up to something, and this seems a little underhanded for his side of their grappling, he's dead certain he can knock him down if he's drunk.

He'd rather not have to, but the thought occurs to him and plays a part in the curt nod he gives. "Very well. Been drinking have we, brother?"

"Thank you," Sparhawk responds, "I met a version of Stragen, or rather, he met me. We talked, and drank. He said some rather interesting things, and so I decided to try and talk to you."

This is how he wanted to start things. Hopefully, his next words will show Martel just how serious he is about this. "I felt it better to talk to you like this, rather than sober. More chance of my being honest with you, and not being hostile simply for old times sake."

He's making himself open, for mockery, or for a sensible conversation.

...Martel begins to laugh, quietly. "That's either the stupidest, maddest thing I've ever heard, or the most brilliant."

Well. It is - and it's not as though the idea of alcohol loosening the tongue that way is a particularly new one, or even one that Martel's personally unfamiliar with. Of course, he's more likely to keep himself sober for fear of it...in any case, the alcohol explains the careful choosing of words. He's readily acquainted with losing track of his own under the same circumstances.

"Walk with me, Sparhawk. This is no place for that conversation."

Sparhawk obediently falls into step beside Martel. The other man knows this place better than Sparhawk, and presumably knows somewhere good and private for this chat.

"I'm sure when enough of the alcohol fades enough for me to start caring, I'll be kicking myself, but for now, it doesn't bother me. At least you know the reason why, should I become less than straightforward in my explanations."

If the words should crowd on his tongue, and fall over themselves.

"I should probably give you an apology for threatening to kill you, as well."

"I don't see why," Martel says to that last remark, without missing a beat. "Let's not pretend I haven't earned it."

A promising start, that. He does know the nexus fairly well by now, though, and the place he leads Sparhawk is out of the way without being so far from civilization that he could be accused of luring him out the back to knock him over the head or God only knows what. It's quiet, lakeside, and the still water seems like an appropriate enough backdrop.

"You earned the first ones, but we settled that. Returning to life, though startling to me, doesn't mean I have to threaten to send you back into the grave," Sparhawk explains as they move.

He falls silent again as he looks at the lake Martel has brought them to, arranging the words in his head till they make some sort of sense.

"I've been trying to tell myself that I'm insane for wanting to start a reconciliation with you," he begins.

"You may well be." There are times when Martel really doesn't help - himself or anyone else. This would be one of those times, his own gaze moving out over the water that's much easier to look at, and certainly much easier to understand. He knows still water.

"Kalten and all the others would certainly say so. And the thought of what they would say, and the memories of the past, had almost convinced me that you were just the same, and I would be a fool to reconcile with the man I hate so much."

It is far easier to look at the water, and not at the man, his brother, beside him.

"Tell me honestly, brother, your offer to help me find the way home. Why did you make it?"

The first response sticks in his throat, flippant and inappropriate and above all unfair. He doesn't really feel obliged to reach out simply because Sparhawk has; he's wary of trying, and there's a reason that he hasn't mentioned that particular conversation to anyone. Not even Candice got to hear about it, because Martel is so prepared for this failure that he's making it unimportant in advance.

"We were at peace, or close enough to it, when I died. And I was exhausted beyond the telling."

It seems more like the start of an answer than the whole of one.

Sparhawk will take any answer that he can get. And the fact that this answer isn't flippant, or barbed, and seems honest, gets a nod from Sparhawk.

"And did you mean it? Would you have guided me to the gate home, and let me pass through, unharmed, unhindered, alive, and away from you?"

He looks away from the water, and looks straight at Martel. He hopes he knows his brother well enough to detect any sign of a lie (and he's dropped the former part of the title that he even mentally gives Martel).

"I don't want you dead, Sparhawk," he says, evenly, and honestly, "I merely don't want you to be my problem, either. Even if I felt otherwise, I really couldn't afford to do anything more unpleasant than hurling you bodily through the portal."

He does sound perfectly willing to hurl Sparhawk bodily through a portal, though.

"That's what I find hard to understand," Sparhawk admits. "You've wanted me either dead, or out of your way for most of your life. Why stop now, when you have your resurrection? Did your death change you that much?"

If it was the right portal, Sparhawk would happily let himself be thrown through it.

"It freed me," he says, succinctly - this is not nearly enough of an explanation, not when Sparhawk has been drinking and even less able to put the small and scattered pieces of Martel's puzzle together without a little help. Knowing this, he's still reluctant to explain any further; he's reluctant to explain this far. "I have an opportunity here, and you're not worth so much to me dead that I'm going to endanger it for the sake of pettiness. Consider it a moment, brother; I lived that life once already. What in God's name makes you think I enjoyed it so much I'd want to live it again?"

Sparhawk may be drunk, but he's still sober enough to understand what Martel is telling him. And really, Sparhawk thinks, why should he think differently? What Martel is saying is making sense, and really, when you think about it uncluttered by old hatreds, it's reasonable.

"Because I thought I knew you, brother. Because I thought I knew how you thought, and how you would react to me. The same way that you had always done. But I was wrong."

It doesn't cost him anything to say that.

"I would be grateful for your help in finding this portal."

"I never really doubted you'd kill me in the end," he says (to the lake, and not Sparhawk's face), "and believe me when I say I'd rather not repeat the experience. I'll help you."

He's not really enjoying this conversation, but - it needed to be had.

"I always doubted, Martel. And even knowing the answer was no comfort," Sparhawk would have much rather had his brother alive than dead, even if that death was inevitable.

He turns away from his brother, and back to looking over the lake. "I would assume that once I'd left, you would rather I didn't return?"

Here he pauses, exhales, shrugs, and doesn't give a straight answer. "This place has a habit of holding onto the people it touches. My preferences are unlikely to hold much sway on your comings and goings."

Sparhawk is nothing if persistent when he's tipsy. "I would hope that I would have the willpower to overcome the preference of a place. But the preference of a brother is more important."

Sparhawk's persistence isn't met with hostility, but a vaguely feline sort of guarded wariness; Martel is too sharply on the lookout for anything resembling humiliation.

"Come and go as you please," he says, glancing sideways.

"If you're waiting for Kalten to jump out of the lake a yell 'Surprise' at you, you'll have a long wait,"Sparhawk remarks. "And what would please me would be able to go home, and then return to see the few friends I have made."

Sparhawk is going to do his best to break through this wall of persistence that Martel has. Sparhawk is not mocking him.

"I'm sure that the nexus isn't large enough that we could avoid each other forever."

Somewhere in the back of his mind he considers the absurdity of Sparhawk coming to him so determined, when it had always been Martel holding the sword out between them; he considers the absurdity of his refusal to trust this, when he knows that he wants it. It's all very unfair.

"Oh, it is." He's quiet after that long enough that his brother might think he has no intention of saying on, but he adds eventually, "It'd never let us, but it's more than big enough. In theory."

He's quiet a while longer, too, and then: "Kalten yelled a lot of things at me. I don't think 'surprise' was one of them, though he was." Surprised.

If Sparhawk was more in control of himself, he'd be thinking that the whole situation was absurd. Instead, with the wine fizzing nicely in his blood, he keeps looking at his brother.

"Dead men walking are quite surprising," Sparhawk notes. "I think you'd make most people sit up and take notice. Although, did you and Kalten come to an agreement or any sort? Apart from not to kill each other at first sight again."

"You might recall I did that before, too." ...yes, Martel, we know. You were always very scary. Nobody is questioning that, sit down. "And we did, after a fashion. I told him not to bother as I'm not even slightly interested in rehashing past history and he conceded, so I was good enough to send for a-" hesitation, "-friend to patch up what we did to each other."

He rubs his chest, absently. "The ribs took a while longer. Candice was annoyed."

"At least he was willing to listen to reason," and Sparhawk is mildly surprised at that. Where Martel is concerned, most of his world seems to be irrational in one way or the other.

The hesitation is let slide, Sparhawk notices, but doesn't want to, or can't be bothered, to push. Let Martel have secrets, everyone does.

"We're doing well then, since we've not reached that stage yet," his tone seems proud of that fact. Yay for self-control.

"Candice?"

The thin smile is mostly Martel thinking of how hard Kalten hit him before he was interested in hearing reason; the things they said to each other first. He's not interested in rehashing the pettiness of that encounter with Sparhawk, though, so he lets the surprise stand without correcting it.

"Candice is my wife." Not legally, but he says it the way he'd say 'the sky is blue' or 'I love Sephrenia'. Like an inarguable fact.

And while Sparhawk is desperate for news of his own world, and his friends, this encounter is between him and Martel, and is to try and sort out the battleground that has become Sparhawk's mind. Kalten isn't on that field.

"I'm sure I already said congratulations, but congratulations again. Was she aware of the reasons that Kalten was trying to kill you?" That's a roundabout way of asking if she knows what a bad, scary man you are Martel.

The careful way that question is put actually makes Martel laugh - rightfully it should be more mirthless than it is, but there's an edge of genuine humour. He always did like his entertainments a little bleak. "I'm not involved with her on false pretenses, Sparhawk," he says, archly.

"That's good," Sparhawk may sound slightly inane with his reply, but he is pleased. He can't keep secrets from Ehlana (even though he might try), and he's glad that Martel has opened up. But his mind is getting off track, and he tries to pull it back on course, but the fog of alcohol is making it difficult.

"I've forgotten what I was going to say to you next," he admits. "Is there anything you think I should say?"

Martel keeps secrets - he keeps them like he just likes the feel, as if he's become accustomed to their company - but there are some things in his life that he's much less circumspect about than he used to be. The dry facts of his history are among those things; he might not tell anyone how it felt to be executed by his own brother, but the fact of it and the reasons why are no secret. Not any more.

"I never would have come back," he says, contemplatively. "Not if I'd lived. Not if Zemoch had fallen and I'd lived. I lit most of those burned bridges knowingly-" most, not all, not the first few, "-and with just that thought in mind. Could I have, though, do you think? If I would have."

There's a pause. "I knew another Sparhawk here, briefly; not from our world, my own world. The agreement we had was that he'd leave me be on the understanding that if I ever set foot in Eosia again, my life is forfeit."

Just...so he knows. So he knows that Martel had agreed to it, had given up any thought of this.

"I don't know," is Sparhawk's considered answer. "Before I came here, I would have said that you would have returned, that you would have come seeking revenge and retaliation. My mind still held the image of you as my arch-enemy, and painted you demonic. I thought that nothing was beyond or beneath you. Now, there are no reasons for you to return. You don't want revenge, you have a wife and a life here, there is nothing for you in Eosia. Would you return, just because you could? I don't think so."

Sparhawk really shouldn't be as surprised as he is about the revelation that Martel met another Sparhawk. Actually, it gives him hope that if that Sparhawk can agree, then so can he. "And it was a promise you intended to keep," there is no question, it's a bald statement. "And what if you and I come to terms. What if I don't want to banish you from our homeland as a condition of leaving you alive? God knows, I know what it's like to be exiled."

"Before I died," Martel clarifies himself, any proper sort of a motivation veiled behind his eyes, "perhaps before I knowingly allied with Azash. Back to Demos." Penitent, he means, but he's not going to spell it out any further than that - he isn't sure he wants to hear the answer. It'd be a cold comfort now to know that he was damned the instant he stepped across the first line, as he'd thought then, and a twist of the knife to think it could've gone any other way.

(He met Sera, once, Maryani's daughter, and that's how he has to think of her for his own sanity. The implications, otherwise, are too much.)

Martel exhales and interrupts himself before Sparhawk could even have time to respond to that, regardless. "What if you don't? What if I wanted to - visit." (He twists the word like the worst kind of joke.)

Sparhawk thinks he understands, at least a little. "With time, all wounds heal, or so I'm told. You killed friends of mine that day. You betrayed the teachings of Sephrenia, and broke Vanion's trust in you. Time, though, still passes."

That's not an answer, but Sparhawk is chary of giving a proper one, not sure how Martel would react.

"Now that I've talked to you, Martel, and realised that mostly I was being pig-headed, I would not object to you visiting. I can't speak for the others, but I wouldn't be chasing you down for your head."

"I had other enemies," he notes, managing to refrain from actually naming Vanion aloud, "and the reasons were sound. Things have changed, yes, but I don't ...expect more than what I earned."

The difference between redemption and reform is that one is passive; to be redeemed you must be forgiven. To reform you must change from the inside out. Martel, viewing the first option a fool's errand at best and hubris beyond anything he'd tried before at worse, opted for the second. There's nothing really wrong with that decision - one might even call it admirable, in some ways, to work to change without the expectation or hope of being rewarded for it.

On the other hand, he coupled it with the steadfast belief that there would be no reward because there could be no reward; that the history is too bloody and his viciousness too genuine. He was misguided, certainly, but not ignorant of his immediate actions. He was cruel. And he is, inexplicably, alive to cope with the fallout.

Badly, is the problem.

"Perhaps the sheer fact that you and I are getting on might be enough to make them think twice. At least, if I tell them that you're under my protection, they'll be too busy berating me to worry about you wandering off."

Sparhawk seems quite happy with his reasoning, at least until the significance of what Martel said penetrates his brain. "You don't expect more than you earned? You mean you expected me to want you dead if I ever came here? What would you have done if I greeted you with an embrace?"

"I think the drink has gone to your head," Martel says, dryly, and then there is a contemplative silence while he considers Sparhawk's words.

"...well, I'd have had to check you for some sort of possession."

"That was the whole point of drinking," Sparhawk returns, turning to look back over the lake. "I thought it would help."

He can't help but laugh quietly at the idea of Martel checking him for possession.

"It's certainly done something." Martel exhales.

Sparhawk is still chuckling faintly. "I think that we could be friends again, brother, now that I've worked out that I'm not going insane for thinking of it in the first place."

He's happy, and pleasantly muzzy still, and quite interested to find out what Martel thinks of his statement.

"You know it won't be so easy as that," Martel opts for, feeling slightly peculiar to be the voice of reason in this situation. It's not that he's never the voice of reason, just...not this one, as it were. He takes a cautioning tone, instead of a wary one - but it boils down to the same thing. "There's been too much to trust each other simply because we want to."

Sparhawk sighs, and sounds slightly grumpy when he speaks. "I know. And I'm sure that when this wine wears off, I'll have a hangover worthy of a Troll, and will be asking myself what I was thinking for making myself vulnerable."

He knows that even by admitting that, he's letting Martel know more than he probably should.

The wry look on Martel's face has a certain bitter edge to it. "Well," he says, blandly, "if you still think it was a good idea after the hangover's worn off, then we'll talk."

Sparhawk nods as he turns away from the lake, and away from his brother. He can already feel the start of a headache pounding at his temples, and wants to find somewhere dark to sit down, probably with some water.

"Till then, brother," are his final parting words.

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[log] both your friend and your enemy think you will never die

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