victory_road | This road is going nowhere [Closed]

Hythlodaeus, for his part, is not a very exciting person to ambush. Believed to be alone, his startle response is very muted. Those animate little dandelion fluffs naturally drawn to his aura, begin to clump up and draw close as he approaches.

Hythlodaeus carries shears in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, dressed simply in boxers and a his usual house yukata.

"...Come to enjoy the garden, have you?"

It would be incredibly hypocritical of Dirk to complain about someone else delivering underwhelming reactions. Not that this would stop him, of course, but luckily for this sentence, he's not here for the jump-scare.

He stands with his arms crossed and his back resting comfortably but collectedly against the wall, and the sun reflecting off his angular anime shades renders their black lenses particularly stark and impenetrable.

There are already cutieflies drifting around the soft peaks of Dirk's hair, though, and as Hythlodaeus speaks, a single bug alights on one triangular point. Needless to say, the potentially severe visual effect is somewhat reduced by this.

"Came to ask you what fucking happened to your brain the other day." There's no temper in his short drawl, no sense of misgiving or (un)kindness or anything emotive at all. It's a wooden tone: rigid but inert.

Edited 2020-08-10 06:55 (UTC)

Hythlodaeus raises his eyebrows, appreciating the cutiefly before turning his attention to the smothered tree on the ground. He kneels, working the blades gently around the base and snipping with only a little effort.

He looks back up as he sets the shears aside.

“Hm! Well, it is hard to be certain, but I believe I had what can be characterized as an emotional breakdown. Forgive me, it was indeed an unsightly distraction ... and far from my intention. Though of course, I cannot be sure as I’ve not had one before.”

His tone is even, but a smile works its way into his face.

Edited 2020-08-10 07:10 (UTC)

"Bullshit," he retorts immediately. 'Not had one before.' And how old is this guy again? Thousands?

Does Hythlodaeus ever injure himself pulling such massive loads of garbage out of his fucking ass?

Dirk isn't going to wait around for the inevitable claim that he's just being clever about the amount of time he's spent as Emet's brain ghost of dubious authenticity, or whatever.

"I can tell you're trying to rope me into a conversation about your feelings." Dirk doesn't move from his spot, where he watches Hythlodaeus prune a dead fucking tree. "And I'm telling you now, it's not gonna work."

"Which part?" he asks as he shifts his stance so that he might stand comfortably for however long this takes.

He pitches his voice, cadence, and accent into a troublingly accurate impression of Dirk's own as he tilts his head and parrots, "Came to ask you what fucking happened to your brain the other day."

He blinks slowly at him. "What did you come to ask? Or... Did you come to tell me something. ...Perhaps there is some nuance I'm missing, or perhaps there is some nuance that you are missing. Several others have forgotten parts of their experiences seven weeks ago. I doubt that you have... Have you?"

Edited 2020-08-11 01:04 (UTC)

There's has to be a term of the intersection of 'the mortifying ordeal of being known' and 'the horrifying experience of hearing your own voice played back at you for the first time.'

Whatever uncanny valley of the (un)known that experience inhabits, Hythlodaeus just opened his mouth up like some disgusting, goggle-eyed seabird and regurgitated its contents directly into Dirk's lap.

"Okay. One, I don't absolutely do not sound like that. Two, never fucking do that again." Hythlodaeus can't see him raise his eyes towards the sky. It's less of an eyeroll and more an entreaty for patience, a moment of muster wherein the only being he can beg is himself.

"Three." A pause.

"....let me rephrase my question. Bearing in mind that the only nuance I'm missing is what specific processes occur inside your head specifically," contrary to the unkindness of his phrasing, his tone is very patient, "and that I very explicitly do not want to have a conversation about anyone's feelings, including and especially my own," that part is a warning, "what exactly was going through your head at the time. What was the thought process there. Walk me through it."

Dirk would give anything to be able to trust that it won't happen again. But the truth is, he doesn't. Even if it wasn't Hythlodaeus specifically, he has to know to believe, and in the case of Hythlodaeus specifically....

Edited 2020-08-11 02:34 (UTC)

"To risk a gross oversimplification, I don't experience emotion. So... You may relax. I am concerned only with Hades' emotions." He crosses his arms and shrugs as his smile endures.

"The point that Hades has just returned from is both after he created me and perilously close to both his death and when my knowledge ends. He did not recognize me as a fake, though I cannot imagine why. This past month has been nigh unbearable. I have lost all of my usual outlets, my structure, my control, my power, and that which constitutes my personhood."

He uncrosses his arms as the cutiefly buzz around, clamoring for his attention. He turns his hands palms up to allow them to land.

"I thought that I might live with the lie of my personhood for a while longer for Hades' benefit, yet the instability wrought by all that has happened has caused me to make a catastrophically stupid mistake, planting the seed of that despair within him."

Hythlodaeus stares at Dirk for a moment, considering how much he owed him. Considering that he was... bequeathing his beloved to him. He struggles for a moment as to how to put this while toeing this new line has has drawn around what he thinks he has the right to access.

"When Hades woke, when I considered how despicably I had been treating you for my amusement as some sort of equal... I realized, all at once, that I have no right to continue to pass myself off as the counterfeit that I am, though even that is selfishly placing distraction and sadness on his already weighted soul."

"I have, however, cut this fuse shorter by confiding the nature of my existence to Steven. Steven, for his part, did not tell Hades, yet thought it prudent to allude that I had a secret. He should not make this aspect worse, as I promised to destroy his life for his carelessness."

Starting at the point where Hythlodaeus asserts he doesn't 'experience emotion' to the time Hythlodaeus is halfway through, Dirk is considering an actual eyeroll. His expression begind to shift in the second half, though, brow furrowing slightly.

When Hythlodaeus is finally finished, he waits--making sure it's actually over.

".... we'll talk about Steven later. You need to make up your mind. Like, right now."

Hythlodaues frowns.

"I already have. I will continue as I was before. Our time here is temporary, and he intends to bid me goodbye. I intend to progress in my research quicker than he can in his with the intent to save him. At that moment I will tell him the truth, and it will only serve to save him from troubling his mind. Or... You two will progress faster than I can, and I will tell him to alleviate the guilt of "killing" me. But not a moment before."

He closes his eyes and releases a breath. He opens them again and looks down at Dirk.

"Are you satisfied?"

There are times when Dirk is reminded that he's heartless. That whatever common sense of empathy exists between a human being and another person is missing in him. Watching Rose fall and having no impulse to catch her. Sitting down with Rose and Dave and Roxy and leaving three feet of space between him and the next person, while they pile together. Finding the Hythlodaeus' morbid grief easier to talk to.

"You really think you can do all that?" His voice is always too quiet, but in the pathetic box of a garden, the only competing noise is the near-silent whizz of faerie bug wings.

"... because I don't think you can." Callous? Maybe. But there's no condemnation, just the coldly appraised truth delivered in a low voice. "I think you're counting on how much you need it to work out to make it so. I think you know it, too. Emotional breakdown? Maybe. But you're fucking scared."

“I doubt I can convince you with mere words, so you will just have to wait and see, hmm?” Hythlodaeus finds himself almost straining to hear over the cloud of Cutieflies so close by to him.

“However, I would hear what you think I’m so scared of,” he says, expression glued on that very smile, eyes meeting Dirk’s, as far as he can tell.

He is not meeting Dirk's eyes, because Dirk has no interest in eye contact right now. He's watching the cutieflies instead.

"Wrong. I'd love for you to convince me. There are no 'mere' words, not where I'm from. Within language lie the principles of reason, and by extension, the power to shape thought and codify reality."

The narrative. He's talking about the narrative.

But not just that. The ability to do more than merely transmit information, but to possess or apply a concept--memory, for example, and the full invocation of its concrete terms within three syllables. A single syllable contains not merely rote physical representation of an object or phenomenon, but its sensory reality, its chemical nature, its mythos, its usage. And beyond even that, the metaphysical, and the divine.

"It's been my understanding that your people have an appreciation for that relationship. My guess is either you're afraid of failure, or you're afraid of success. Or... you're lying about what you mean by either one of those. That you're so determined to put Emet ahead of his cause is pretty disturbing, if you ask me." He uncrosses his arms, stuffs his hands into his pockets.

"This isn't a threat or anything. Not only would that be cheap as fuck, it would be downright stupid. We both benefit from your secret being kept right now. I'm not happy about that, by the way. Tying it to stakes that favour me was a real dick move."

He’s heard him speak little, but carry a sword. While he wasn’t privy to all that Hades and Dirk had together, he concedes that he’s being truthful about words being able to sway him.

“Perhaps, but it is effective,” he says as the cutieflies tussle for the honor of his gentle affection.

“Here is the rub, Dirk. As a mistake of a creation, I am aware of a great many things that by all accounts I should not be. At the same time, I’m not quite a real or complete person. On some level, I only want what Hades himself wants, yet I have a wide enough scope that I want better than what he wants for himself.”

“You may be confident that you will not catch such an extreme display of emotion from me again. I value... control over my life, and acting as I did was not philosophically congruent with my thoughts. As to my method of prevention, I’m finding new outlets for my stress. Apparently, people pay quite good money to be beaten.”

Edited 2020-08-12 02:03 (UTC)

"Effective at what? Making me resent doing something I would have done anyway?" Not that Dirk is overly fond of blackmail or being manipulated in general, but making it redundant to terms he would have abided by voluntarily--and with no other compensation--is insulting to the point of being downright antagonistic.

If Hythlodaeus was hoping to shock Dirk, or bait him into a less serious (or more salacious) topic, however, he's vastly underestimated Dirk's capacity to be an absolute fucking joykill in every way imaginable.

".... I'm going to stop you right there. I don't think we're on the same page here. In fact, we might even be holding different goddamn books. What you want for Emet.... would that happen to conflict with what he wants outside of himself?"

“I barely knew you. I needed a contingency,” he says, silently cursing his circumstance, truly, for one of the first times.

“This may be difficult to understand, as it is a precariously special case and I have the personality traits of someone who enjoys a specific level of suffering from him,” he starts. “But I do have his best interests, those true and intimate to him, at heart— those that he and I alone understand.”

"What I'm finding difficult to understand," Dirk begins, "is what you want from me. You just admitted you barely know me--and you don't, by the way. But if you know Hades and what's 'best' for him so much better than I do--and don't be coy, because you do, you're his brain ghost, with thousands of years' advantage over me in every fucking way--then go ahead. Do that. Just go and fucking do it."

The lack of inflection and disaffected posture clashes with the tight set of his jaw, nevermind the undisguised resentment of his words.

"Or, I guess, you can stand there and grind my face into all this shit you know that I don't until I take a fucking hint and walk away for good and tell Emet to ask you what happened. If that's what you want. It's kinda sounding like it is. But hey, he'll be all yours again."

“My, my. So difficult. What I want is for you to approach me as if I do hold information that you want. That is: just ask. You don’t respond well whenever I thrust these little revelations upon you,” he says as he holds his hand close to Dirk, the cutiefly moving up his arm in a group away from Those Vibes.

“See? Even newborn insects know better than to approach you. I mentioned an absolutely fascinating detail, yet you act entirely incurious.”

Behind his shades, Dirk closes his eyes, holds them shut tight for a second, then two. He breathes a deep, heavy sigh--in through his nose, out through his throat.

"No. Stop projecting on your bugs for one minute. I'm not some kind of unreasonable ghoul or whatever it is you have built up in your head. And that's not me saying I want to know, I don't. Don't tell me."

Fabrication or not, the veiled reminder still stings a little. True, the cutieflies are attracted to Hythlodaeus far more than Dirk, but they aren't not landing in his hair or buzzing softly by his ear on occasion either. Of course they'd flock to Hythlodaeus. And there are plenty of alternative explanations. Dirk didn't hatch the scoresd of tiny faerie bugs. Hythlodaeus did.

But it doesn't matter, because the reminder that others find him unsociable and inaccessible, that he's cold or tedious or unpredictable or all of the above, that's not fabricated.

"What I 'don't respond well' to is you baiting me. Alluding to knowledge you have that I don't, then withholding it until I ask. It's so transparent I can see straight through to the wall behind you. Either I ask and you refuse, or I ask and you add conditions before or during your answer to prevent my objection, I can't say I didn't ask for it if you make sure I do. Even what you volunteer comes with strings attached. But I don't play that game. Either tell me, or don't."

His jaw drops slightly as he watches him.

"Unreasonable ghoul— Truly, I'm not projecting onto my bugs, being neither an infant nor an insect. They're merely drawn to those that remind them of flowers."

"...And I would never encourage the man dearest to me to your side if I thought anything truly bad about you. I apologize for giving you such an impression," he ducks his head and closes his eyes in earnestness.

"I can be a little difficult myself, inclined to play games as I am. I only want you to be able to give him that which I would give him without making you feel rushed or controlled," his hands move as he talks, his brows furrowing slightly.

"You are an immortal, as is plain to see, though young still. I know the way that you will love him will be different than my love, the love of the man who died eons ago," he falls to one knee, crouching until he's a little below eye level. He moves to take each of Dirk's hands in his own, the Cutiefly dispersing.

"I will place no conditions upon you. ...No additional ones, to be precise. I merely don't always know where to start with my advice, and knew less if you would want it. I seem to irritate you, yet in a way unlike how I irritate Hades. I would prefer to be your friend."

Dirk's inexpressive mien grows, if anything, somehow more dispassionate when Hythlodaeus disavows any self-identification with the literal hundreds of soft, buzzing 'infants.' A suitably atute (or simply empathetic) observer can even pinpoint the exact point that Dirk completely withdraws from the situation, mentally if not physically.

There's nothing remarkable about that; not to Dirk. If anything, it's tediously familiar: the separation of his temperamental self from his thinking self, the bisection, trisection, and so on of his infinitely recursive mind, now independent from the scene he's meant to be participating in. He's still listening--every word out of Hythlodaeus' mouth comes through in stereophonic high definition.

Watching Hythlodaeus take a knee from his detached vantage point, it seems incredible to Dirk that what he's saying could be any different than what he was saying before. Sure, it sounds better. But underneath the shine and polish...?

'I want to control you, but without your resistance.'

He doesn't really get a chance to mull it over--he's wrenched so abruptly out of his thoughts that it's like being psychically clotheslined as he's yanked back into his body, into his hands when Hythlodaeus takes them, gently, into his own. His hands are so much fucking bigger than Dirk's that it's like a child's hands in an adult's. He can feel the sparse callouses on Hythlodaeus' thumbs and index fingers--

(Callouses from what, he wonders; he can't even imagine an activity that would generate such an absurdly specific pattern.)

People don't touch him. Not like that. Not at all, actually. Especially not without warning. And not without his express permission. He doesn't have to enforce that, doesn't even try; that's just the way things are.

To have both hands suddenly held is such a shock that the sensation crawls all the way up through Dirk's skin and nerve endings and into his shoulders, where it stays as tension--his arms stiff, his back straight, his expression... unchanging. When he opens his mouth to speak, he lets out the breath he didn't even know he was holding.

".... my friend," he echoes. It's repeated flatly.

What is he saying? Why?

Wait.

No.

"That's a mistake if I've ever heard one." Wry. Funny. Better.

"And yet, it is the only true way to learn. So I shall see for myself," he punctuates that with a warm grin, giving his hands a squeeze before letting them go. "I'm fussy and particular that way. I can never take another's word, not truly."

He braces his hand on his knee as he stands slowly, deliberately.

"...So until then," he says, his voice sweet as cutiefly honey. "...And we should start making the bread. It needs time to rest before we bake it. Come help me, my wrist is still weak. Oh yes, I have a sculpture that I've neglected to show you as well."

Hythlodaeus' hands may be warm, but the sensation that accompanies the squeeze is more like a chill, a not-quite-shiver that takes place near the base of Dirk's spine. Not exactly sexy, even if his hands (and most of the rest of him) are still alight with the memory of sensation after being released.

He's still processing that while Hythlodaeus continues talking, and then standing. Which is a shame, because if he were less distracted, he would have actually had the chance to agree with Hythlodaeus on something. Instead, his awareness of a mutual stance on taking others at their words is marred by other thoughts, most of them somewhere in the vicinity of discomfort or dismay.

Why did that involve touching? What the fuck was that? How the hell does this keep happening. Whe--

"Now just wait a fucking second," he breaks in, feeling maddeningly like he's doing the verbal equivalent of grabbing Hythlodaeus by the jacket and yanking him backwards.

"I don't bake, but even I know kneading isn't the first step in that process. Have you already started this bread, or is this not actually another setup?"

He's not mad. He's just tired. And kind of frustrated. This shit is really taxing. Good god damn Christ is this taxing.

"That is right. It had to begin to bubble after mixing it together," he says, smiling at Dirk as if there was not a single thing amiss. "But it is not nearly as much kneading as other kinds of rising bread," he says, placing a comradely hand on the middle of his back and leading him inside. The kitchen is Hythlodaeus' domain by far.

Hades might have some liquor bottles or his rotom, but Hythlodaeus tempers his research with cooking. Life, after all, centers around the kitchen. As far as he's concerned, anyway. There's some paper on the table that Hythlodaeus has been drawing on, some scattered psychology books with a couple items in the A's bookmarked, a chemistry set on a low table, a minifridge with toxins and concoctions...

But aside from all of that, he leads him to a loose dough in a covered bowl.

"Have you ever kneaded dough, or shall I show you?"

Hythlodaeus' 'comradely' hand rests on Dirk's back for a couple of seconds before its presence has spurred him to increase his pace by an extra stride, establishing a short but pointed distance that has him less being 'led' and more 'leading the way' towards the kitchen, talking barely louder to accommodate how much harder he might be to hear.

"This is exactly why I don't trust you," he's saying as they approach the kitchen properly. "This shit right here."

He stops short at the kitchen itself, where he steps aside and turns to face Hythlodaeus--both as a preventative measure to head off any further hands on him and an opportunity to watch him.

He does follow him in without any further commentary, but he's a lot more interested in Hythlodaeus' books and art than he is the cooking paraphernalia.

Is he trying to psychoanalyse me? Or him?

Which one is more pointless?

"I literally just said I don't bake."

"I'll do the rest, but if we all want lunch, you will have to knead the dough. We each do our part. It is simply how it works," he says, hands held aloft as he smiles at Dirk.

"Just three minutes, it is all I ask," he says as he turns the dough out. "Even great warriors, brilliant scientists, and humble artists must eat. And occasionally, they must make their own bread."

He flips his hair over his shoulder. "Even Hades makes the bread."

And then he gestures to the floured board. "After, I'll show you my work."

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