No, and that's what I'm getting at. He was fighting Berserker at the time; we had separated because one of us had to track down Kayneth and Lancelot ambushing us was too much of a problem to go ignored.
[His cane tapped against the ground with every step as usual; it still ached and always would, but that was fine. Scars were a mark of one's survival, and this one was the most important.]
I used that order to empower him to defeat Berserker in a single strike. I put my life in his hands, trusted that he would both finish things and save my life in the next second, or we would both die. Because to do anything else...would be unthinkable. Betraying someone who had already been betrayed like that in life was cruelty well worth dying to avoid. He cut down Lancelot and Kayneth both, and I woke up two days later with a ruined leg and a knight who looked at me like I was some kind of valiant hero myself--and it felt like a complete victory.
And I'm telling you all of this, Edward, because I think what I saw was the same kind of situation with exactly the opposite outcome.
[Edward listens to him recount the battle, and thinks of how much trust such an action would require. Waver had placed his life in Diarmuid's hands, and Diarmuid had more than risen to the occasion. That kind of loyalty, that kind of love is rare, and it breaks Edward's heart to know there was a version of events that hadn't turned out like that.
Because Kayneth wouldn't know how to trust someone he saw as a weapon, if he's anything like the Templars Edward's dealt with in the past. People like that tend to think other people think just like they do—everyone else is a pawn to be moved, or sheep to be corralled onto the narrow path. The sort of trust Waver speaks of requires something that they're not capable of doing: seeing someone else as a person.]
Kayneth wouldn't have thought twice about betraying him, if it meant it was to save his own arse from the fire. Am I getting that right?
Not at all. Something like that is second nature for mages--we fight and kill one another for our own advancements, and have for centuries. Even I'm hardly any different, as the one who carries the title of the man my Servant killed.
[There was no shame in those words; it was statement of fact and nothing more. Lord El-Melloi II was not Kayneth, but he was a mage all the same; for all the ugliness that entailed even alongside the desire to fix that broken system.]
...I saw him with another Master; an assassin I only know secondhand. It would have been no difficult thing for him to manipulate Kayneth into a similar situation. The next thing I knew-
[His voice caught briefly, Waver clearing his throat and trying to keep the distress off his face. When he spoke again, he gestured with his right hand--still carrying two remaining crimson seals on it.]
Diarmuid's spear was through his chest before he even realized what he was doing. That's the absolute compulsion of a Command Seal. I don't--I don't know what kind of bullshit he dealt with up to then, but he just snapped with the kind of anger I've never seen from him. Anger and abject misery, because he would have known it was the tragedy of his life as a mortal retreaded all over again.
'Let the Grail be cursed. Let the wish it grants bring disaster. And when you fall into the pits of hell, remember the rage of Diarmuid.'
[Honestly, it's not as if Edward can judge. He's a pirate himself, a man who fought and killed for his own advancement, who was quite willing to take another pirate's ship and see it used as a fireship to break a blockade just so he could escape. And he'd liked Jack Rackham, drunken fool that he was. He's not about to judge Waver on the ugliness accompanying the title he carries when he's soaked in it. At least Waver wants to fix things.
Edward keeps quiet, but the horror and anger on this alternate Diarmuid's behalf is written clear across his face.]
That rat bastard. [Haha wow lot of venom there, Edward.] Jesus, I'm sorry for that version of Diarmuid. He's bloody loyal, and I ain't ever seen someone with a heart sewn so obviously onto their sleeve. To be rewarded with the worst of betrayals...no wonder he cursed them so utterly.
No, and that's why I'm telling you. Because I had to trust someone with this, and Diarmuid can never know.
[Someone who knew from experience that Waver would die for his Servant in an instant, and therefore understood just how severe an insult he found this whole thing. How painful it was, to know how close disaster could have been.]
He's already aware Kayneth summoned him in another timeline, but if he found out how badly it truly went, the kind of fury he was driven to...it would destroy him. Not knowing about that world does no material damage to either of us, so this is one secret I have to keep.
[He pushed dark hair out of his face and let out a slow breath, trying to keep himself relatively collected.]
Diarmuid was dealt an unfair hand a long, long time ago, and someone he swore loyalty to let him die because of it. But he still...won't let himself be angry about that, I think. Because that's conduct unbecoming of a knight.
I'm his Master, his partner--so I want to bear that anger on his behalf. At Fionn, at Kayneth, at so many miserable fucking circumstances outside of anyone's control.
He'll not hear of it from me. He spoke to me once of this Fionn mac Cuamhill, and while he told tales of the rest of their band, he said little about Fionn. Reminded me a bit of Hornigold, truthfully. [This is the first time in a long time that Edward's spoken Benjamin Hornigold's name, and judging from the way his expression sours, it's not a name he likes even hearing. If Waver knows anything about the Golden Age of Piracy, he might understand why.] So. I won't tell him, and break his heart in the telling. He deserved better than Fionn and he has you instead of Kayneth—he needs not know anything else.
[He kicks a pebble down the sidewalk, watches it bounce along before it falls between the cracks.]
But. I think we both know that it's not always in our hands. [He saw what happened in February too.] What will you do if he does find out, anyway?
That's no surprise to me. He hates talking about Fionn--it's not my place to speak for Diarmuid, but I know there's...a complicated mess of feelings involved.
[To say the least.]
If he does...then I'll do the obvious thing. Support him and try to get it through his head that anger and resentment aren't anything shameful. Hell, if I hadn't been a spiteful little shit as a kid, I never would have summoned him.
It sounds complicated to me, and I don't know much about the legend myself, beyond what he's told to me.
[Sure, he could look it up, but why would he? That's the kind of thing he would rather hear straight from Diarmuid and Waver.]
Anger and resentment and spite can do a lot of good. Hell, even if you just use it to further your own gain or get some revenge, it's better than letting it fester. But that I can see him doing. [Diarmuid's a noble knight right out of some bedtime story, and it turns out that's done a bit of a number on his emotional health.]
...let me know, if he does find out. I'll take him somewhere remote and spar with him. It'll help him get some anger and frustration out, and I'd like to see how he'd do up against a dirty ol' cheat like me.
Complicated and yet very straightforward in a way. It's a story about how a grudge can ruin everything you spend your life building if you're petty enough about it.
[Among other things.]
He's a good person--hell of a lot better than me. But that's because he's stricter about his code of conduct than I am. I recognize my faults and curse them as an inevitability of being human; but I think he curses having faults at all. A knight is an ideal, a shining archetype...but there's still an imperfect person behind that. Hell, even King Arthur had her problems and failings, and she's the absolute example of knightly chivalry.
...What I'm saying is, it's hard to internalize that one's allowed to be fallible, you know?
[There's a distance in his voice like he's thinking about grudges, and how they're just another form of obsession, and how obsessions can drag you far from the shore if you're not careful. He shakes his head a bit, and the distance is gone.]
Codes and creeds tend to make someone feel as though they belong to something bigger than themselves. And if that something is an ideal they hold themselves to...aye, hard to let it go when you fail to meet it.
[wait wait back up back up]
King Arthur's a what now. [A beat.] Bloody hell, is she like Mary?
...Yeah, you're right about that. I've fallen short of it a good few times myself, and it's hard to get back up afterwards. But it's not impossible. 'Good' doesn't mean 'perfect'.
[...Ah. Whoops, he'd slipped on that one.]
Mary Read, you mean? Something like that; legends in my world speak of her as a man, but it's hard to argue with reality. [he did not ask the pronouns of the Servant trying to kill him, so there are assumptions being made here.] Legends don't always match up perfectly with the truth, even in my world where the line's a little more blurry.
I've been reading so much on the Internet lately, I think I've read something along those lines before—"perfect is the enemy of good," is that how the motto goes? [He pauses. Then, absently:] I have one I'm still trying to puzzle out: "nothing is true, everything is permitted." If everything's permitted, you don't need to be perfect. You just need to be good enough.
...I ought to tell Diarmuid that motto, see what he makes of it.
[Don't ask him what nothing is true means because he's still trying to figure that out himself.]
Yes—oh, she'd hate being so well-known. [He misses her greatly. But he continues on:] If King Arthur's a woman but the legends speak of her as a man, there may be a reason why. I know Mary disguised herself to stay safe among us pirates and to make her own name as one. Perhaps Arthur thought a king's power was far more preferable to that of a queen's.
...The truth is what you allow yourself to make of it.
[He said that almost as an idle observation, thinking for a second before elaborating.] Objective truth is an ironclad foundation, but that which surrounds it is more malleable. 'Mary Read and Arthur Pendragon are women', 'Waver Velvet has weak magecraft', 'Diarmuid ua Dubhne bears a curse', these are all the truth. As such, they carry implied limits; that Mary and Arthur would never be famous, that Diarmuid would be scorned, that I would be unremarkable.
[Waver turned that thought over in his head briefly, deciding to follow the thread of his own logic to see where it ended up.]
But if 'everything is permitted', then the that truth does not need to result in the natural conclusion. Mary Read is to this day a well-known pirate, Arthur is the most famous knight in all history, I became a lord of the Association, and Diarmuid was beloved among his friends and allies.
If 'nothing is true'--facts of circumstance don't automatically influence the course of one's life--then 'everything is permitted' and one can shape that foundation into whatever they choose for themselves.
[Edward stops right in his tracks as he processes all of this.
It's funny. When he first heard that motto, he'd laughed to himself. It didn't make sense, save for everything is permitted—he'd believed that it meant he could do, well, damn near anything, and never mind the consequences. Ever since Mary's death, ever since he first got here, it's been rattling around in his brain.
It's only now that he's considered the first half, too. Nothing is true—not his assumptions, not the limits following from various objective realities, not laws or religions or anything. If nothing is true, why believe anything? And then following Waver's logic—if nothing is true, why let yourself be limited by the objective truth? If nothing is true then everything is permitted: you make your own luck, you forge your own fate, and you live with the rest of that, you live with the consequences and you keep moving forward. Or you change course toward something better.
Mary would hate being a famous pirate. But she would like this take on her Creed. Edward stares after Waver for a long moment, as if the man has rearranged his understanding of the Assassins' Creed. He kind of has.]
...so then, why not chase every desire? [he says, after a moment, as he seems to shake off the shock and gets to walking forward again. He sounds and looks a little pensive, like he's honestly trying to puzzle this out himself.] Since nothing's true and everything's permitted, and all that.
[Waver stopped as Edward did, tilting his head curiously. Had he said something wrong and not realized it, or had his estimation been more correct than he realized? Given that Edward started walking again, it seemed to be the latter; following along with him, the question was considered carefully.]
Maybe not every desire. Sometimes what one thinks they want isn't what they're really after, or it isn't what they need out of life. I think when one finds a desire worth chasing and dedicating all their life's work to in order to shape their own fate...you just kind of know when you see it.
[Edward mulls this over for a moment, before he decides: well, he trusts Waver not to blab to anyone but Diarmuid, and Dia's damn good at keeping secrets himself. So.]
I wasn't talking about you as a pirate. You'd make a terrible one, aye. [He pauses, then smiles.] But Mary, the one I knew, was...part of something else that held to a higher code than the ones we pirates drew up for each ship.
This ain't something you can tell to just anyone, by the way. The group she belonged to could be a rather touchy and secretive lot. They called themselves the Assassins—an order of people from all walks of life, coming together because they believed in something like what you just told me. "A fondness for life and liberty," she said, and that fondness meant they would defend it to the death. Theirs, or someone else's.
[He pauses after a moment.]
Again: you can't tell anyone what I've just told you. Save Diarmuid, of course. [You guys are so close Edward would be surprised if Waver didn't tell him about this.] Mary vouched for me, which is how I didn't die after I offended them greatly.
...So that's why you were so on edge when I talked about the Association. [The antithesis of personal freedom, holding recognition and advancement as the priority over all else. Given the wild opposites it sounded like they were, it made more sense now.]
Don't worry, I won't say a word. Technically I shouldn't be talking about the Clock Tower either, but that's my own problem.
They sounded like exactly the sort of people the Assassins would and did fight against. [Another pause.] There's really a bit more than that, but I've said more than enough for the town Assassin to hang me by my toes from the Jackdaw's bowsprit.
[Arno, he means Arno. Not himself—he doesn't count as an Assassin, really, despite the robes and the blades and the Creed that has dug itself into his head and refuses to leave.]
Well, it ain't like the Clock Tower's here, so you're safe enough.
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no subject
[His cane tapped against the ground with every step as usual; it still ached and always would, but that was fine. Scars were a mark of one's survival, and this one was the most important.]
I used that order to empower him to defeat Berserker in a single strike. I put my life in his hands, trusted that he would both finish things and save my life in the next second, or we would both die. Because to do anything else...would be unthinkable. Betraying someone who had already been betrayed like that in life was cruelty well worth dying to avoid. He cut down Lancelot and Kayneth both, and I woke up two days later with a ruined leg and a knight who looked at me like I was some kind of valiant hero myself--and it felt like a complete victory.
And I'm telling you all of this, Edward, because I think what I saw was the same kind of situation with exactly the opposite outcome.
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Because Kayneth wouldn't know how to trust someone he saw as a weapon, if he's anything like the Templars Edward's dealt with in the past. People like that tend to think other people think just like they do—everyone else is a pawn to be moved, or sheep to be corralled onto the narrow path. The sort of trust Waver speaks of requires something that they're not capable of doing: seeing someone else as a person.]
Kayneth wouldn't have thought twice about betraying him, if it meant it was to save his own arse from the fire. Am I getting that right?
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[There was no shame in those words; it was statement of fact and nothing more. Lord El-Melloi II was not Kayneth, but he was a mage all the same; for all the ugliness that entailed even alongside the desire to fix that broken system.]
...I saw him with another Master; an assassin I only know secondhand. It would have been no difficult thing for him to manipulate Kayneth into a similar situation. The next thing I knew-
[His voice caught briefly, Waver clearing his throat and trying to keep the distress off his face. When he spoke again, he gestured with his right hand--still carrying two remaining crimson seals on it.]
Diarmuid's spear was through his chest before he even realized what he was doing. That's the absolute compulsion of a Command Seal. I don't--I don't know what kind of bullshit he dealt with up to then, but he just snapped with the kind of anger I've never seen from him. Anger and abject misery, because he would have known it was the tragedy of his life as a mortal retreaded all over again.
'Let the Grail be cursed. Let the wish it grants bring disaster. And when you fall into the pits of hell, remember the rage of Diarmuid.'
no subject
Edward keeps quiet, but the horror and anger on this alternate Diarmuid's behalf is written clear across his face.]
That rat bastard. [Haha wow lot of venom there, Edward.] Jesus, I'm sorry for that version of Diarmuid. He's bloody loyal, and I ain't ever seen someone with a heart sewn so obviously onto their sleeve. To be rewarded with the worst of betrayals...no wonder he cursed them so utterly.
[Kayneth it is on fuckin sight.]
Have you told him of what you've seen yet?
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[Someone who knew from experience that Waver would die for his Servant in an instant, and therefore understood just how severe an insult he found this whole thing. How painful it was, to know how close disaster could have been.]
He's already aware Kayneth summoned him in another timeline, but if he found out how badly it truly went, the kind of fury he was driven to...it would destroy him. Not knowing about that world does no material damage to either of us, so this is one secret I have to keep.
[He pushed dark hair out of his face and let out a slow breath, trying to keep himself relatively collected.]
Diarmuid was dealt an unfair hand a long, long time ago, and someone he swore loyalty to let him die because of it. But he still...won't let himself be angry about that, I think. Because that's conduct unbecoming of a knight.
I'm his Master, his partner--so I want to bear that anger on his behalf. At Fionn, at Kayneth, at so many miserable fucking circumstances outside of anyone's control.
no subject
He'll not hear of it from me. He spoke to me once of this Fionn mac Cuamhill, and while he told tales of the rest of their band, he said little about Fionn. Reminded me a bit of Hornigold, truthfully. [This is the first time in a long time that Edward's spoken Benjamin Hornigold's name, and judging from the way his expression sours, it's not a name he likes even hearing. If Waver knows anything about the Golden Age of Piracy, he might understand why.] So. I won't tell him, and break his heart in the telling. He deserved better than Fionn and he has you instead of Kayneth—he needs not know anything else.
[He kicks a pebble down the sidewalk, watches it bounce along before it falls between the cracks.]
But. I think we both know that it's not always in our hands. [He saw what happened in February too.] What will you do if he does find out, anyway?
no subject
[To say the least.]
If he does...then I'll do the obvious thing. Support him and try to get it through his head that anger and resentment aren't anything shameful. Hell, if I hadn't been a spiteful little shit as a kid, I never would have summoned him.
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[Sure, he could look it up, but why would he? That's the kind of thing he would rather hear straight from Diarmuid and Waver.]
Anger and resentment and spite can do a lot of good. Hell, even if you just use it to further your own gain or get some revenge, it's better than letting it fester. But that I can see him doing. [Diarmuid's a noble knight right out of some bedtime story, and it turns out that's done a bit of a number on his emotional health.]
...let me know, if he does find out. I'll take him somewhere remote and spar with him. It'll help him get some anger and frustration out, and I'd like to see how he'd do up against a dirty ol' cheat like me.
no subject
[Among other things.]
He's a good person--hell of a lot better than me. But that's because he's stricter about his code of conduct than I am. I recognize my faults and curse them as an inevitability of being human; but I think he curses having faults at all. A knight is an ideal, a shining archetype...but there's still an imperfect person behind that. Hell, even King Arthur had her problems and failings, and she's the absolute example of knightly chivalry.
...What I'm saying is, it's hard to internalize that one's allowed to be fallible, you know?
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[There's a distance in his voice like he's thinking about grudges, and how they're just another form of obsession, and how obsessions can drag you far from the shore if you're not careful. He shakes his head a bit, and the distance is gone.]
Codes and creeds tend to make someone feel as though they belong to something bigger than themselves. And if that something is an ideal they hold themselves to...aye, hard to let it go when you fail to meet it.
[wait wait back up back up]
King Arthur's a what now. [A beat.] Bloody hell, is she like Mary?
no subject
[...Ah. Whoops, he'd slipped on that one.]
Mary Read, you mean? Something like that; legends in my world speak of her as a man, but it's hard to argue with reality. [he did not ask the pronouns of the Servant trying to kill him, so there are assumptions being made here.] Legends don't always match up perfectly with the truth, even in my world where the line's a little more blurry.
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...I ought to tell Diarmuid that motto, see what he makes of it.
[Don't ask him what nothing is true means because he's still trying to figure that out himself.]
Yes—oh, she'd hate being so well-known. [He misses her greatly. But he continues on:] If King Arthur's a woman but the legends speak of her as a man, there may be a reason why. I know Mary disguised herself to stay safe among us pirates and to make her own name as one. Perhaps Arthur thought a king's power was far more preferable to that of a queen's.
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[He said that almost as an idle observation, thinking for a second before elaborating.] Objective truth is an ironclad foundation, but that which surrounds it is more malleable. 'Mary Read and Arthur Pendragon are women', 'Waver Velvet has weak magecraft', 'Diarmuid ua Dubhne bears a curse', these are all the truth. As such, they carry implied limits; that Mary and Arthur would never be famous, that Diarmuid would be scorned, that I would be unremarkable.
[Waver turned that thought over in his head briefly, deciding to follow the thread of his own logic to see where it ended up.]
But if 'everything is permitted', then the that truth does not need to result in the natural conclusion. Mary Read is to this day a well-known pirate, Arthur is the most famous knight in all history, I became a lord of the Association, and Diarmuid was beloved among his friends and allies.
If 'nothing is true'--facts of circumstance don't automatically influence the course of one's life--then 'everything is permitted' and one can shape that foundation into whatever they choose for themselves.
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It's funny. When he first heard that motto, he'd laughed to himself. It didn't make sense, save for everything is permitted—he'd believed that it meant he could do, well, damn near anything, and never mind the consequences. Ever since Mary's death, ever since he first got here, it's been rattling around in his brain.
It's only now that he's considered the first half, too. Nothing is true—not his assumptions, not the limits following from various objective realities, not laws or religions or anything. If nothing is true, why believe anything? And then following Waver's logic—if nothing is true, why let yourself be limited by the objective truth? If nothing is true then everything is permitted: you make your own luck, you forge your own fate, and you live with the rest of that, you live with the consequences and you keep moving forward. Or you change course toward something better.
Mary would hate being a famous pirate. But she would like this take on her Creed. Edward stares after Waver for a long moment, as if the man has rearranged his understanding of the Assassins' Creed. He kind of has.]
...so then, why not chase every desire? [he says, after a moment, as he seems to shake off the shock and gets to walking forward again. He sounds and looks a little pensive, like he's honestly trying to puzzle this out himself.] Since nothing's true and everything's permitted, and all that.
no subject
Maybe not every desire. Sometimes what one thinks they want isn't what they're really after, or it isn't what they need out of life. I think when one finds a desire worth chasing and dedicating all their life's work to in order to shape their own fate...you just kind of know when you see it.
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[Even the laugh that accompanies his light joke sounds a little weak to his own ears. He has...a lot to think about.]
Do you know something, Waver? Mary'd love you.
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[A smirk flashed across Waver's face, trying to lighten the atmosphere with a nudge to Edward's shoulder.]
Where's that high praise coming from, Captain? I'd make a terrible pirate. Hate water, won't eat fish, can't even swim all that well.
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I wasn't talking about you as a pirate. You'd make a terrible one, aye. [He pauses, then smiles.] But Mary, the one I knew, was...part of something else that held to a higher code than the ones we pirates drew up for each ship.
This ain't something you can tell to just anyone, by the way. The group she belonged to could be a rather touchy and secretive lot. They called themselves the Assassins—an order of people from all walks of life, coming together because they believed in something like what you just told me. "A fondness for life and liberty," she said, and that fondness meant they would defend it to the death. Theirs, or someone else's.
[He pauses after a moment.]
Again: you can't tell anyone what I've just told you. Save Diarmuid, of course. [You guys are so close Edward would be surprised if Waver didn't tell him about this.] Mary vouched for me, which is how I didn't die after I offended them greatly.
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Don't worry, I won't say a word. Technically I shouldn't be talking about the Clock Tower either, but that's my own problem.
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[Arno, he means Arno. Not himself—he doesn't count as an Assassin, really, despite the robes and the blades and the Creed that has dug itself into his head and refuses to leave.]
Well, it ain't like the Clock Tower's here, so you're safe enough.
no subject
[A shrug.]
Not a word, promise.