She does Stephen the courtesy of looking away from his mortification, turning her eyes instead to her remaining hand. Her nails have grown long, she notes. She'll have to come up with a way to cut them herself, no one's going to want to help her with that.
"He wasn't concerned with morals or personal advancement," she says, distant. "He wasn't evil, or cruel, which is more than can be said of most drow. He wanted comfort. Control, too, he wanted to choose where he went, what he did, who he spoke to. Everything was about what would be the least unpleasant for him, and afford him the most control of his situation."
That's the thing about cruelty: it's an investment of its own kind. A horrible one, of course, but an investment. Without investment, without care, one can't be cruel.
"The architecture may appear the same on a surface level," Ness says, voice steady, pressing the nail of her index finger down with the pad of her thumb, trying to find a weak point to force a break, "but the foundations are entirely different. I could never mistake you for him."
Even the lack of personal advancement off that list throws him for a loop. Whatβs life without personal advancement? Ness can see from that second momentary pause that Stephen is, briefly, baffled. His entire life had been personal advancement, for better and ill. There had been so many well-established orderly rungs to climb, moving his way up the ladder of a medical career. Even clambering up the hierarchy of the Masters of the Mystic Arts had been tidy and orderly and sequential: you went from a novice in white robes, to an apprentice in crimson, to a disciple in blue, then a master with your own customised outfit, then heβd made the ill-timed leap to Sorcerer Supreme.
Advancement. Self-betterment.
βSo. Comfort, control, andβ¦ independence? These were the things he was after, for himself?β Stephen asks.
Heβs still working through something, chewing over it, piecing together a picture of the drow— and finding himself flabbergasted, too, that that created the girl in front of him.
This second pause draws her attention from her nails and back to Stephen. Ness tilts her head at his expression, quizzical, baffled by his bafflement.
It's not the first time that she's realized she and Stephen are not as similar as they sometimes seem. For all their shared curiosity, their enthusiasm for discovery, their dogged dedication to being of serviceβeven in these commonalities, their motives, their expressions, differ. Which is hardly a surprise, of course; she's a half-elf at the beginning of her life, while he's a middle-aged human with a wealth of experience and ambition behind him, to say nothing of the fact that they're not even from the same plane of existence.
This may be their biggest difference, though.
"Yes," slowly, "I think because he was a slave. He lacked all three, and so they became the driving motivators of his life. Knowledge, too, he loved books. I think it was the only form of power he truly believed in, he had such contempt forβ"
She cuts herself off, taking a breath. She's said so much about Vazeiros, but that's not really what Stephen's asking about. It's just the prism he's looking at himself through now, how Ness could take that refracted light and in a time of fevered weakness see him in it.
"You are not like him," she says gently. "You are kinder and warmer than he could ever even think to be. If I called you osu it's because..." It's her turn to be mortified, but it's an equivalent exchange, so she won't look away, even as her cheeks flame with embarrassment and she can feel her whole body going hot. "Because you're what I wish he would have been, to me, not because you're what he was."
βI mean, in a way, that motivationβs understandable,β Stephen says, vaguely, because itβs not like he can properly empathise with the plight of growing up enslaved. What that might do to you, the rewiring of your priorities. He mightβve been poor, but he had other luxuries and privileges to hand.
But her other confession comes as a surprise and makes him pleasantly, awfully abashed. Heβd never particularly wanted to be a father. Heβd aimed for Cool Uncle Stephen, but perhaps thatβs close enough to where heβs now accidentally landed.
And what do you say to that? Is thank you weird? Thatβs probably weird.
In the end: βI appreciate that,β he says, just as gentle. βAnd, I donβt know. Itβs less about my potential similarities with him and rather that Iβm now trying to wrap my head aroundβ¦ I mean, the two of you seem— very different.β
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"He wasn't concerned with morals or personal advancement," she says, distant. "He wasn't evil, or cruel, which is more than can be said of most drow. He wanted comfort. Control, too, he wanted to choose where he went, what he did, who he spoke to. Everything was about what would be the least unpleasant for him, and afford him the most control of his situation."
That's the thing about cruelty: it's an investment of its own kind. A horrible one, of course, but an investment. Without investment, without care, one can't be cruel.
"The architecture may appear the same on a surface level," Ness says, voice steady, pressing the nail of her index finger down with the pad of her thumb, trying to find a weak point to force a break, "but the foundations are entirely different. I could never mistake you for him."
no subject
Advancement. Self-betterment.
βSo. Comfort, control, andβ¦ independence? These were the things he was after, for himself?β Stephen asks.
Heβs still working through something, chewing over it, piecing together a picture of the drow— and finding himself flabbergasted, too, that that created the girl in front of him.
no subject
It's not the first time that she's realized she and Stephen are not as similar as they sometimes seem. For all their shared curiosity, their enthusiasm for discovery, their dogged dedication to being of serviceβeven in these commonalities, their motives, their expressions, differ. Which is hardly a surprise, of course; she's a half-elf at the beginning of her life, while he's a middle-aged human with a wealth of experience and ambition behind him, to say nothing of the fact that they're not even from the same plane of existence.
This may be their biggest difference, though.
"Yes," slowly, "I think because he was a slave. He lacked all three, and so they became the driving motivators of his life. Knowledge, too, he loved books. I think it was the only form of power he truly believed in, he had such contempt forβ"
She cuts herself off, taking a breath. She's said so much about Vazeiros, but that's not really what Stephen's asking about. It's just the prism he's looking at himself through now, how Ness could take that refracted light and in a time of fevered weakness see him in it.
"You are not like him," she says gently. "You are kinder and warmer than he could ever even think to be. If I called you osu it's because..." It's her turn to be mortified, but it's an equivalent exchange, so she won't look away, even as her cheeks flame with embarrassment and she can feel her whole body going hot. "Because you're what I wish he would have been, to me, not because you're what he was."
no subject
But her other confession comes as a surprise and makes him pleasantly, awfully abashed. Heβd never particularly wanted to be a father. Heβd aimed for Cool Uncle Stephen, but perhaps thatβs close enough to where heβs now accidentally landed.
And what do you say to that? Is thank you weird? Thatβs probably weird.
In the end: βI appreciate that,β he says, just as gentle. βAnd, I donβt know. Itβs less about my potential similarities with him and rather that Iβm now trying to wrap my head aroundβ¦ I mean, the two of you seem— very different.β
Which is putting it mildly.