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[rathercommon]

crystal | letter | cease and desist notices slipped under her door | action

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[reshapes]

Well, one these avenues of conversation has a point to it and the other is potentially theoretical nonsense spouted by a series of people who may or may not have any clue as to what they're going on about. That makes no sense, he might say. If a Rifter disappearing is equivalent to death, how would they even know about it to say so?

So. Sticking firmly with the reasonable, the panting lioness draws itself up and puts on its best look of cool regard.

"Because I'm tired, I would prefer to be dismissed properly, and we had a deal. You may be perfectly happy to stay here for as long as they'll have you, but some of us need to get going sooner rather than later."

[rathercommon]

She shakes her head tautly. "Dismissed properly?" she asks in return. "What is it you think Mandrake's going to do? He was as clueless as the rest of us, here. More clueless, even." A little bubble of odd, incongruous anger. She ignores it. "You think he would be able to send you home? When he was here for months and couldn't even send himself home? Please. If he made a deal with you, then he was lying to you. Which oughtn't be a surprise, considering the source."

[reshapes]

Here, at last, something close to bristling emerges in the spirit's crisp tones. "What I expect him to do" --whether he has to go find himself a rift and climb into the Fade and hunt the boy's drifting filaments down to accomplish it-- "is try. Because I can't stay here."

[rathercommon]

"Well, he didn't try, did he." She turns her back on Bartimaeus, her shoulders hunched as she wipes down the handles of her drawers. "Or if he did try, he failed. He's a liar or didn't know what he was about. Big bloody surprise."

[reshapes]

Well what does she expect? For him to argue with her? As far as he's concerned, she can call Mandrake whatever nasty names she cares to. It doesn't make a lick of difference to--

"Hold on. Are you upset?"

[rathercommon]

She tenses, hand gripping the rag. She doesn't turn around, but just says, sharply, "What a stupid question. Why would I be upset?"

[reshapes]

"I really haven't the slightest idea. But if you spend any longer polishing that drawer knob, it will start to seem vulgar."

[rathercommon]

That makes her turn around, a flash of offended anger in her eyes. Unfortunately, as soon as her righteousness fades, it leaves her facing him, and - and what? What is there to say? How can she convince him she doesn't care? Because she doesn't. It's just some existential fear for herself that gives her...gives her that churning, miserable feeling.

"Why do you care if I care, anyway?" she asks (rather lamely). "You hate me and you hate him. So what does it matter?"

[reshapes]

The lioness' dark eyes study her there from across the narrow room. Flick, flick, flick goes its tail.

"Ah," he says. "Never mind. I've figured it out."

[rathercommon]

But Kitty's frown just deepens. "Figured what out?"

[reshapes]

"Why you're upset."

[rathercommon]

"Tell me, then."

[reshapes]

So he does.

"Because you thin the same thing will happen to you and that no one at all will be bothered about it when it does, and that nothing you did here will make any difference. It will be as if you were never here at all. Because it's funny, isn't it? They had a funeral for you when they thought you'd karked it out there in the world, but it's not like anyone's doing any stuffy old ceremony for any Rifters that melt their way on back into the Fade. No, the reason you're upset by the idea that Mandrake might be gone - really gone - is for the same reason I am. You're worried about what the means for you."

[rathercommon]

The look that she shoots Bartimaeus is - well - Let's just say that it isn't the wounded, vulnerable look of a person who's just had their soul revealed to them. Instead, it's tinged with something that might be classified as exasperation.

"Yeah," she says, "obviously. Everyone feels that way whenever anyone dies. Death makes people scared of dying. That's not exactly an original thought."

[reshapes]

Well, it's not as if he was expecting crocodile tears. But not even a glimmer of remorse--?

Fair enough. All the better, even. Crying is so unpleasantly damp looking, and it's not as if there's any reason to convince anyone to reflect fondly on the likes of John Mandrake, one of Britain's foremost ministers of the government. No, this is all perfectly fine.

"Good, good. I'm so glad we're on the same page. While we're at it - you haven't got a sharp knife on you have you? Bronze or copper would be my personal preference."

[rathercommon]

Kitty narrows her eyes suspiciously. "What do you want a knife for?"

[reshapes]

Sweetly, demurely, positively batting his long feline eyelashes: "For cutting, of course. Why, what do you use one for?"

And then he drops that because, honestly, who has the patience to play twenty questions with Kitty Jones of all people? The lioness turns one of its heavy forepaws, dark glints of nearly talon like claws sparkling in the sickly green glow of the rift shard buried there like especially morbid precious stones at the end of each tufted toe.

"If this is the only thing keeping me here, then I think I can afford to get rid of it."

[rathercommon]

Now he gets the shock, and dismay, and horror. She steps back, clamping a hand against the sheath at her side, as though the knife within it were at risk of jumping free to hack at him.

"Stop that," she says unsteadily. "That's not funny."

[reshapes]

"Who's joking?" He crosses the paws, toes wiggling so as it cast leering green shadows off the edge of the bed, ghost pale light murmuring over the floorboards. "--Oh please, don't be so dramatic. You look at if I've suggested a plan to devour half of Kirkwall and set the other half on fire. Here I thought we might finally be starting to understand one another."

[rathercommon]

"I'm not letting you hurt yourself." But obviously that's not going to work. Saying things like that - He'll just sneer at her for being soft-hearted and rubbish like that. So instead, she shakes her head, then tries with something he might actually listen to.

"Other people have tried that. Obviously. It doesn't do anything."

[reshapes]

"Other people. I'm not like them. The rules are different for me than they are for you, which is, I assume, this rotten thing isn't eating you alive like it is me."

The green light of the rift shard pulses wide, wider. It is a green fire, fingers licking from the lioness's paw. It wreaths the limb with winding snake of flame - burning and unburning, snarling and soundless. It is a thing that makes and ruins. He can feel the pull of it in every part of him, on every plane.

"You are flesh and bone; I," he says, puffing out his chest. "Am a spirit of air and fire. Being tied to a point is as unnatural as being sucked through a straw. Do you know what that feels like, hmm? To be made into a meal for something else?"

[rathercommon]

"Of course it is," she snaps back. Her hand balls unconsciously into a fist, gripping tight to hide the mote of light sitting there. "It is eating me alive. Just like you. It hurts, not all the time but a lot of it, and it hurts every time I use it to help people. To close rifts, or - anything. Or when I'm apart from people. And that's the bit that hurts the worst, that I could be somewhere else, properly helping people, but instead I'm shut up in this stupid place with this whole stupid - "

She cuts herself off. Clamps shut her jaw and shakes her head. No; going down that path is dangerous. Not because she'll be punished for saying it, but because as soon as she lets the stopper out of that bottle, there'll be no getting her anger and frustration back in again.

"But of course you don't care about that, do you. Because it's always me, me, me."

[reshapes]

And why shouldn't it be? Me is a perfectly reasonable thing to be interested in, thank you very much, especially when it takes the perfectly benign form of picking up and leaving the rest of you sorry lot to your own devices.

"If that's how you really feel, then hold still. I'll do yours before we do mine."

[rathercommon]

That's a sickening enough thought that she reacts instinctually, pulling her hand back and well out of reach. But then, a moment later, she's holding it out again, eyes narrowed, jaw set.

"Sure," she says. "Go ahead and bite it off, why don't you. I mean, that is why you took that stupid form, isn't it. 'Cause you wanted me to be scared. 'Cause that makes you feel better, when I'm scared of you. 'Cause you don't have any other way to feel powerful."

[reshapes]

Which isn't technically incorrect. No, not the part about power. That's so wildly off base that it might even be a little funny if it wasn't so dreadfully misinformed. But the rest of it - the part about the shape of the guise and the the particulars for why he'd chosen it - aren't wrong. It's the sort of perceptive thinking he should by all rights give her at least a little credit for. It's hard work being perceptive through the haze of anger and hurt and the chilling threat of a big cat shedding on your sheets.

But really. Better to just change tacks and be done with it.

The lioness does not lunge for her extended arm. There's not even a nibbling of fingertips which some might consider a rather serious display of restraint.

"Is this how you treat everyone who asks for your help, or should I consider myself lucky?"