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[ninefox]

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[magician_king]

Why? How?

[ninefox]

I don't even know if I'm really here, or if he's just...turned into me? I can't calculate the odds of whether I'll remember this.

I'm a prisoner of war. I'm not allowed outside Shuos headquarters. The Hexarch's secretary still thinks it was a mistake to let me live, they always have eyes on me, unless Hemiola is scrambling the bugs. And I have to be the Immolation Fox for my students. Helps things stick.

I only get any of that stuff if I leave. And I know everyone thinks I should just cut and run but it's the only thing I've ever done that I only hate myself for a little. And I'm guilty of everything they would have charged me with, if Shuos-zho hadn't averted the execution. I earned my sentence.

[magician_king]

What if I told you I believe you've paid for things you didn't need to pay for? That by now, for all you've been and fought and lost, you're allowed to be what you want and not what you're told you should be?

[ninefox]

If you told me that, I'd think you were being nice to a favorite, and not making a sober judgement, especially since you don't know all of the things I have to pay for.

[magician_king]

Maybe.

If you remember this, know I'm out here thinking that with all my heart though.

[ninefox]

Thank you.

[magician_king]

No, it's the least I can do.

[ninefox]

Does it bother you that I feel gratitude for what you consider a small thing, or that I'm expressing it?

[magician_king]

I think it bothers me that you don't know that it's something the universe owes you, just a drop in the bucket of the massive cosmic debt of good things that you should be owed. Like, you shouldn't thank me, you should be railing at me for not being able to make things close to right.

[ninefox]

I'm not thanking you because of what I think I'm owed or not owed by you or the world or anybody.

I'm thanking you because it makes me happy.

[magician_king]

Really?

[ninefox]

Yes.

I may be ambivalent about being saved, but I like being cared about.

[magician_king]

Well, that is something I can give you, unreservedly.

[ninefox]

I haven't had it a lot. I thought

[There's a pause where he reconsiders whatever he'd been about to say.]



It's heartening.

[magician_king]

Then thank you too.

[ninefox]

Earlier you said you wanted to give me books.

[magician_king]

Oh okay yeah let me come find you?

[ninefox]

I'm in Jedao's cabin.

[magician_king]

A few minutes later, he knocks. His enthusiasm is subtly dimmed, tempered by caution, but he still smiles when he sees him.

"Hey. I picked non-fiction, I didn't want you getting weird ideas about what Earth is like."

[ninefox]

"It's open!" he calls. He's sitting cross-legged in a chair he dragged from the table to set in front of Jedao's fish tank, half-twisted to look over at Quentin as he comes in.

After hearing Quentin's reasons, a small, bright burst of laughter catches him by surprise.

"Jedao's notes do seem...a bit too dramatic to take seriously."

[magician_king]

"Like what?"

He asks, quietly. He had been planning to cut and run, but now he's curious.

"Some of it's probably true. He overreacts to weird things."

Like ducks, for example.

[ninefox]

"He's got pages trying to figure out how the prejudices work, and whether or not Steve is fucking with him about some kind of elaborate legal hallucinogen called a bill of rights? And there's an entire screed on the Festival that doesn't know if it's about monsters or not. Would you like tea?" he asks, because despite how few people he ever invites into his quarters on the Citadel, he still understands propriety.

[magician_king]

"The bill of rights isn't a hallucinogen, it's one of the founding documents of the country."

He says, brow furrowing.

"Tea would be nice, thank you. Do- you mean Halloween?"

[ninefox]

"A legal hallucinogen is like a legal fiction, but moreso," Jedao says. "And more volatile, I think? I'm not a rahal, I don't know when he picked up the nuances."

Jedao unfolds and gets Jedao's tea set down from a cupboard. His movements with it aren't as thoughtlessly smooth as Jedao's, but he clearly knows how it basically works.

"Strongly caffeinated, right?"

[magician_king]

"Oh god, this is my least favourite argument." But he's going to get into it anyways. "So your whole world, thing, all this memetic warfare and ritual and stuff, you know that at a certain point it was developed, right? Created, invented?"