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"There’s a meadow I still go back to. It’s just a meadow—with, sometimes, a stranger, passing through, the occasional tenderness, a hand to my chest, resting there, making me almost want to touch something, someone back." — Carl Phillips, 'Falling'
It's several hours before he finds himself approaching Ludo's door.
Several hours spent gazing at the stars, curled in on himself beside a blazing (and never, never warm enough) fire. Several hours thinking over every word he hadn't said. Several hours thinking on Ludo's invitation and what it might be to accept, to once more share a room with the man for more than five flustered minutes.
It's been difficult, lately. Everything's been difficult since Katrina was married off to that family and since Daud came close - closer than he cares to know - to killing off her husband. The thought of murder hasn't left his head since, the very real prospect has lingered close, and he's felt himself itch, felt himself ache with how easy it'd be to just end the bastard, end the whole of his family, and go back to being what he's spent all these years running from. He'd like to think he isn't that man anymore, but lately doubts have fallen fast and heavy. Because it would be easy. Because he could do it to free her.
Which conjures a question of whether he's changed at all. Of whether he's been fooling himself this entire time, thinking he'd begun to find a life here in Sleepy Hollow, thinking he'd found a place to stay, a place where he could be a better man and lead a less perilous life. A place where he could truly build himself all over again, never mind what he once might have done, never mind those memories that still scream themselves through his worst dreams. Maybe all of that was only fond thinking. Maybe all of that...
It could all end tonight. It might, if he dares to speak, tell Ludo what the man damned well deserves to know (but only if he wants to hear; what was it Katrina had said? that it shouldn't be... what, an unburdening? that Ludo has to wish to know, can't be forced to hear what he's not ready for). It could end, if Ludo takes the revelation poorly (and who could blame him? Daud wouldn't dare; will only accept whatever judgment may be leveled). This could be the last Daud sees of Sleepy Hollow, a dash through the snowy night and the half-moon, one more town he's visited and been compelled to leave behind.
Well. If that's what comes, that's what comes. He's... He doesn't like to think that it could happen (have faith in him, Katrina had said, and Daud does, he does, only faith doesn't stop fond dreams from crumbling), but thinks he ought to be prepared for the worst. He'll survive whatever happens. He always does.
Daud arrives without word, a sharp double-rapping in the door. The sound rings more confidant than he feels. Far more confidant, and while its reverberation dig into his skin, he feels that he'd be best to turn tail now, save this for another day, for no day, keep these secrets buried and give himself the grace of this, this... ignorant acceptance.
No. It isn't fair.
It's been good to linger in Ludo's favorable estimate, but the man ought to know what he's dealing with. Should have been given the chance to know months ago, but there's no good dwelling on missed opportunities or poor choices. No, the only way forward is to offer the information. Is to offer himself up, set forth what he was and hope against hope (no, that also isn't fair to Ludo; he's right to hope for mercy in the man, or it isn't so far-fetched to think) that he won't find himself driven off.
So he waits, wan as he's been for weeks and feeling half-untethered from himself, the night's chill weaving its way across his spine.
It's funny. Even in the wake of his conversation with Daud, Ludo finds himself sitting up through the night, occupying his hands as always with bits of nothing that become something under the blade of a knife: oak into owls, rosewood and meerschaum into pipes, cherry into servingware. The act of turning chaos into creativity, into creation, always comforting, settling the mind into its usual state of calm. Waiting for a knock at the door that he doesn't expect.
Half-expects. Something is very wrong with the other man, something that doesn't want to be put to voice, and Ludo isn't the sort to pry. (Perhaps that's why people talk to him; he's a filter, a place to set down a burden and watch it wash away by morning. Someone to hold the problem for a moment, turn it in the light and inspect the shadows it casts, and help to set it aside.) Not the sort to pry, but certainly the sort to wait until the small hours of the morning for a familiar knock at the door.
People know his nature - some of them better than he does, himself. The Van Tassel girl is one of those, somehow, who reckons with Ludo's eccentricity and parlays it into something bearable, something hopeful. She negotiated a party under some pretense, simply to put him in the same room as Daud, and out of the corner of his eye, he had watched her giggle silently and hug herself in triumphant glee as he handed a finely-crafted pipe (one of his own) to someone he thought was...similarly eccentric.
Daud clearly hadn't understood the significance of the pipe, to his amusement. But their eccentricities called to one another.
For a while, that had been enough. Good. Sharing rooms, sharing conversations and passing, comfortable silences. (The silence has been different lately. Too loud to the ears of a man who seeks out the solitude of the woods to escape such noise.) He had thought for a while that maybe he and Daud had found a place to exist in a world that seemed crudely made for men like them.
And then there was a breach, somehow, in the companionability. Daud withdrew, further and further into himself, into a place Ludo didn't dare try to explore. It offended his sense of courtesy, his decency, to push into the depths of another person without invitation. So he waited. Watched as the vehicle for their meeting, a mere child, teased out whatever was darkening the other man's moods and hoped that somehow things would right themselves.
Nothing seems right. It all still seems to have an unnatural shape, the way cities and ships in the river seem unnatural, too grotesquely man-made and forced away from the order of things. The distance is unmanageable, uncrossable, and the thread between himself and Daud seems all too fragile.
But tonight he sits waiting, and that knock at the door is answered without surprise - just slightly raised brows and a look around at the darkness without, shadows that have gathered around the man before him and turned real.
Well. As long as Daud wipes his feet on the mat, he can help deal with shadows.
Ludo steps aside without a word, the welcome perpetual, unshakeable. Always an open door, a fire in the hearth, food and drink waiting. Something different from hospitality, where Daud is concerned.
It’s difficult to look at the man, and difficult to turn his eyes away.
He does wipe his feet, an almost unconscious motion, well-learned. Then he’s moving away from the door, several feet away from Ludo. Better to keep space between them, perhaps. (Not that he wants to. Not that he cares for this distance or his responsibility in imposing this space. The man deserves better. Deserves better than to be kept at arm’s length, but also deserves better than to unconsciously share space with… Well. With everything that Daud has been.)
For several moments he glances around the room; at the fire, at the discarded woodwork, at anything and everything that isn’t Ludo, his shoulders gathered tight, right hand flexing as his left fingers beat sharp against the air, a customary gesture of agitation. Then, running an unsteady hand through his hair, he turns toward the man. Looks directly at the man.
And tells himself not to think too much about the way his breath comes both hitched and somehow easier. The way his shoulders gather further tension and the way he feels himself relax. The way everything, everything suddenly turns to a standstill, even his rush of thoughts hushed silent, and he could almost, almost think—
What? Almost think. Almost think everything might turn out all right.
He can’t get lost in this. Came here with a purpose, and it wouldn’t be fair - none of this is fair - to fall into distraction. (Can’t get lost in this. In what could be. What lingers so close, what he could almost hold. If only he could separate himself from everything he was. But the past weeks have proven that’s too much to ask. But consequences, didn’t he learn years ago the weight of what he’d done and the sting of all its echoes? This is only another iteration. Another particularly painful, deeply regrettable iteration.) So he looks away again. So he breathes.
Speak. Simply speak, there’s— No cause for dragging this out. No cause for making the man wait. What was it he’d said to Katrina? ’There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’ Sitting outside this very cabin while Ludo left them space, cognizant as always of what was called for, ready to give without uncomfortable questions, without protest. He’s a good man, hasn’t Katrina said that time and again? It’s the truth.
All right. All right.
"Ludo, I—
"I didn’t come here to." This isn't going well, is it? Another breath. All right.
The distance Daud places between them even here doesn't go unnoticed, unrecognized for what it is - might be. The times few and far between that have been a subtle agreement that this is nothing, can be nothing, eccentricities don't have a place here on good Christian soil where one must -
Ludo would clear his throat to interrupt his own thoughts, the way he might interrupt a child telling a tale too quickly. He merely breathes, barrel chest taking in more than the room can offer and more besides; there, quiet again, just a flicker of doubt easily set aside. The door closes just as quiet, oiled hinges and solid oak, autumn works done to see him through the winter. The iron catch he traded for (another pipe, much less ornate than-.)
(Someone called him sphinx-like, leonine, patient as a dog. He is that. It takes effort and time to reach a place where things aren't so precarious. It takes the work lying around him, evidence of himself in every part of his home. The most erratic pieces of his brain, plucked out and formed into functional, formed into ornate, valuable, decorative. Useful. Leaving behind something solid, something clean and smooth as sanded wood, as though the carving was his mind rather than the objects in his hands.
There are more pieces of his brain lying around than normal.)
He watches Daud with leonine patience, calm as the surface of the Hudson as the other man paces, twitches, fidgets. Turns and fixes him with a look. What is that look, why does he look so drawn? This isn't the same as an ending, this is something else, something heavier, personal and yet not so. He half expects to hear the words 'I'm in trouble', as he had so many times from others. Boys seeking advice (marry her, always the answer for that trouble), men seeking help (we'll build in the spring, I'll help with the harvest, easy answers, easy solutions, work made simpler with another pair of hands) - but never like this.
When the man here, tense and yet not tense, personal and impersonal, finally circles around to his point, it isn't what Ludo expected. Not a problem, like Ludo expected. Problems are things in the present, to be handled; burdens to be eased. Unless - there's more than just that statement. The only sign he gives that he might be taken aback is a raised brow.
"Well." Acceptance in that word: that because he hasn't asked, Daud is going to offer. That this is a conversation for a long winter night. He turns away to produce a pair of drinks, the stuff from the Van Tassels (another trade, this time for something or another for Katrina's trousseau, and didn't this oddness start around the time the girl married?) "I know the one you are now."
’I know the one you are now.’ It’s a nice thought, isn’t it? (A not-unwelcome sensation, the way his chest clutches the way his gut twists, the way his eyes are drawn so suddenly back to Ludo.) Isn’t so awful, the idea of being known when being known means he’s beheld by this man.
But the knowing must be incomplete. But the man he is now can’t exist outside of what he was, what he carries still within him, the way even today his fingers remember the exact heft of his knife. He glances away again, takes a seat when it’s offered, grateful for Ludo’s proximity and grateful as well for the table between them. The drink sits nearby, and yes Daud could use it but no he isn’t going to reach for it, isn’t going to allow himself that ease.
No, better to focus on what needs to be said. Which is tangled. Which is difficult to tease apart, difficult to track toward any kind of a beginning. “I don’t want to—”
No; that won’t do. For a moment he’s silent again, rubbing absently at his jaw, the entire tale and its preamble suspended. What should he say. What should be kept quiet. And how can he offer a choice. Remember what Katrina said. Remember how to offer.
“Before coming here, I didn’t stay in any one place for long. I had no reason. Nothing to hold me and no interest in keeping still. I’ve been up and down the coast, spent a few years across the sea, and never felt compelled to linger longer than a few months, half a year at most.
“Until now. Until here.
“I don’t want to leave. This place has become—“ ’You have become—‘ “Something like home. But I can’t keep living under false pretenses.
“Or I shouldn’t.
“I think you should know. Who I’ve been, as much as you’re able to hear.
“If you’d care to. If it’s anything you— If you have reason to know. I’ve been strange to you lately, I know that. I haven’t—
“What I’ve got to say. I don’t know if you’ll want to hear it. But I need to offer.”
He’s staring at his gloved hands, fidgeting still, wanting to look up and yet not daring to make contact. Let Ludo speak his piece first. Let Ludo consider his options, not now seeing the halfway pleading in Daud’s eyes, the traces of need and wishing. Let the man make his own decision.
He's good at listening; Ludo invites stillness with his own, both of them earned through a day's labor. At the end of long days (well into long nights) time eases in his cabin, sounds quiet, the fire warms the rooms, the smell of wood and oils and meals becoming the smell of standstill and rest. Of stopping a while. And him at the center of it, occupying space at his table, work-worn hands folded under his beard. Good at listening, comprehending, turning words over in his mind until they resemble sense.
Coming out of Daud's mouth, they seem simple enough, but the more he examines them, the more they leave a lingering sense of unease. What is a man who doesn't have a home? What kind of person moves from place to place like a vagabond? Who considers their first chance at ease a false pretense?
Who hides it all, skirts the telling of the story in the first place?
Someone on the run. Someone who's done wrong. (Not just biblical erring in the all-seeing, too-present eye of a god - one Daud doesn't put stock in, anyway. So, not that. Worse, somehow.)
It's a strange offer, isn't it, to let him decide whether he wants to hear what weighs so heavily on the other man? Remarkable, selfless, and strange. Is there any way that he can refuse to hear it? Would Daud be able to walk out of this house, content, without setting this burden down? (I'm in trouble, that circles back, gravel-voiced. What kind of man refuses to hear it?)
He doesn't want it. That's a first. A shaken thought in the back of his mind, denying the words that are sure to come, because hearing it will change things. Hearing what means to be said, this thing that created an intangible distance (still palpable here between the two men, as far apart and ever untouching as the solstices, as midnight and midday, though they share space in concept of year and day) could do more harm.
But not wanting it is not a good reason to turn away anyone in need. It's not a good reason to refuse to hear Daud. As if he could refuse him -
Much of anything.
"I don't know if you'll want to tell it," he counters quietly, some almost amusement in his voice. It's too deep-driven to easily distinguish it from regretfulness. But I need to listen. It's not an obligation, and so he doesn't form those words. It's something owed, not out of duty, but out of...
Devotion? Does that seem like a good word, here, in the late hours of the night, with Daud looking at him in a way that makes him wish he was years younger, makes him wish he had more time to know who this man was before, and who he is today, and who he'll be tomorrow?
He'll lay that word carefully to the side and examine it later, at the end of the story (sure to be harrowing, as most stories this late at night tend to be.)
Of course Ludo wouldn’t refuse. It may have been a mistake to ask in the first place, knowing the man’s generosity, knowing the ways he’s given to lending heed. Perhaps this wasn’t (nothing, nothing about this can be) fair.
But Ludo’s right, or Daud believes his point is apt: it’s probably for the best. Better that Ludo know, if Daud’s going to attempt to stay. Better that Daud not deceive the man, not if he doesn’t need to.
“No. I don’t know that I would.” And yet. What he wants has little enough to do with it. What he wants is (quiet; stillness; each evening spent here and in this warmth, beside this man) for somewhere far apart from what he’s been.
But that’s too much to ask for. But there’s no turning back now. And before he can tangle his thoughts further, he finds himself breathing, breathing, then speaking.
“Before those years of moving place to place. Before I started running, I spent most of my life in Dunwall, a city far up the coast. I—“ ’Like to think I’m not the man I was then,’ only that isn’t the point right now, that’s a way of side-stepping the raw truth, or of easing it. Of reaching for Ludo and attempting to suggest that ‘look, look, this man I’m speaking of is caught far in the past; I’m something different, don’t you see?’ But no, no. Tell the story first; let Ludo decide as he will.
“They had a name for me. The Knife of Dunwall.” He’s rubbing the back of his left hand slowly, a compulsive gesture that he can’t keep quiet, not now, not speaking about this. He can’t curb his motions now. Can hardly choose the word he lands on. Very little of this is up to choice.
Only that he continues telling. Only that he’s telling at all. That— Yes. That’s his own decision.
“I’m not proud of what I was. What I’ve done.” He used to be. Used to live so proud of his deeds, his name, his renown and the minor empire he’d constructed. Was secure in his pride until everything fell apart, and then it seemed a sickness. A disease he could never be rid of.
“I led a gang. Gathered from the cities thieves and vagabonds. We—“ ’Called ourselves the Whalers,’ only the detail seems superfluous and he waves it away with a flick of his head. “I worked as an assassin. For twenty years.” It’s a long time, isn’t it? Longer than he’s been running. Longer than Katrina’s lived. When he speaks the number out loud, it hits with a dull thud because no, no, that’s too much. Too much to be borne, and some part of his mind goes back to etching an escape route, tracing the fastest way from town.
(He doesn’t want to leave this man. He can’t dwell on that right now, either. Daud’s made his decision to speak, and he’ll need to accept whatever comes of it.)
“That isn’t all of it. But if that’s all you’ll hear…
“I’ll do what you like. Go, if you’d rather.” Not that Ludo requires his permission. Not that Daud’s permission ought to mean much of anything. But he wants to make it clear he’ll offer no argument, no fuss. That the information is Ludo’s to use as he pleases, as he must. "You won't need to—
No interruption comes, but Ludo absorbs more about this telling than just the words Daud gives. He sees the way one hand rubs the other, right on left, that left hand that never clenches. He watches every minor twitch, every flicker of an expression. Stillness lends itself to keen observation, to seeing far better than most.
He takes the number in stride; twenty is a fourth of a lifetime, longer than some have lived, but when he looks back, doesn't twenty years seem like one lifetime, and twenty more another, and doesn't he feel different than who he was twenty years ago? That number doesn't mean much. It's the other, the assassin part, that he tries to wrap his mind around, tries to envision the man before him at the head of a group of criminals. Giving commands. Killing.
Maybe twenty years ago, in another life. (Or maybe he doesn't want to envision it. That's the problem with listening to someone when the word 'devotion' comes into play: impartiality is a lost cause.)
Ludo's careful not to move, not to pull back in his chair and seem to be placing more (very real) distance between them. He keeps the stillness. Debates whether he wants to hear more, whether he can, whether this slow-creeping chill up his spine is one he can bear much longer before -
What?
Asking Daud to take it all back? Telling him this isn't a story he wants to know? Would he give Daud less regard than anyone else for the sake of his own feelings, for his own worry of having to reform his ideas of who this man is?
So, he remains silent, seconds ticking by into minutes, watching, watching, settling in to the idea and trying to push it on the man in front of him like an ill-fitting coat. You were a murderer.
You have killed.
Daud.
Killer.
It doesn't...work. Fit. It seems too abstract, like hearing that once, this land was populated by native tribes. Like knowing a chair was once a tree. Reasonably, he knows it's true, but he can't imagine the shape it takes without having seen it for himself. So the only thing to do - the only thing to do is let this tale go on.
Ludo hasn’t moved. (That matters. That means something.) Still as ever, but not impassive, anything but impassive. Because isn’t the man keen beneath his calm? Hasn’t Daud felt from the start that Ludo sees and Ludo listens further, deeper than most? And now. Now he remains the way Katrina had remained, and both of these facts, occurrences are more than Daud deserves. Ludo’s here.
He’s listening.
All right.
For a long stretch of moments, Daud only watches Ludo, fixed on the man’s face, his eyes, every quiet tell of his expression. (His own face feels unstill, uncharacteristically given to twitches, to short sniffs and minute shifts of one muscle or another. Impossible to keep collected with such a telling, before such a man. Impossible to feign quiet when he feels so wholly dis-eased.) How easy it would be to linger here, say no more, let silence take its course. How easy it might be to remain here, only held within this man’s regard.
He has to look away or he won’t finish. (Finish. As if the telling could ever be complete.) His eyes find a corner of the room, abstracting the image into a corner everywhere. Don’t think of this specifically s Ludo’s place. Don’t think of this as anywhere at all. Only continue. Only speak again.
“The last job I took,” not the last job, no, but the last job that mattered, the last job that lingers with him, the job the changed everything, “should have been simple enough.”
Should have been. Only it was different. ’The governess was different.’ The words the black-eyed bastard of a god had echoed back to him, arch and disapproving, offering one final chance at, what? Not recompense, not salvation, but some chance to salve the smallest fracture of all the wounds he’d driven. Some chance to shift his actions. (Not that the Outsider had offered Delilah’s name out of altruism. Not that the bastard had expected Daud to do anything save drench himself deeper in blood. How surprised the god had been. How he’s been silent ever since.)
Now his left fist clenches. Now his teeth grit.
“I was hired to kill,” how that word burns him now, though he speaks it easily enough, though the old language comes back to him as if he’d never stopped speaking blood, “the governess of Dunwall. Kidnap her daughter. How my contractors acted beyond that - what they planned to do with the city - was none of my concern.” What they planned to do with the city. With the plague running wretched through its streets. With the daughter (Emily, her name was Emily, and if vague rumors speak the truth, she’s reigning now and strong, her father at her side). Nothing, nothing, nothing had been compassed within his concern.
“I completed the mission. My Whalers and I.” There it is. The word, them, the ones he’d gathered (and the ones he’d left behind, and where, what are they now (where is she, the one who betrayed him, the one who should have betrayed him), what could they have made out of their lives?). Another word he hasn’t spoken in years, and if he dwells too long on its feeling, he’ll become lost in all of this. Another world, it was all another life, but no, no, such separation would be too simple. “But after…” He shakes his head, a rough motion. It wasn’t only after; it was in the moment, in the motion of delivering her death blow, but that’s no detail to share right now. That’s unburdening; not explaining. “It wasn’t the same. I knew what I was.
“I fled Dunwall six months later. Was exiled. Shown mercy by—” Half a shrug; that’s another detail, another piece that would beg elaboration, would open up further avenues of recounting that don’t suit here and now. The story of Corvo, like the story of Delilah and Emily, is a telling for another time, if ever. “I’ve been running ever since. Trying to…” Find silence. Find a way of rewriting himself. Find new ways of becoming. Trying to not be what he was.
“To leave my old life behind.
“I almost thought I’d succeeded. By the time I arrived in Sleepy Hollow, it’d been years since I… I don’t ever forget what I’ve done. But it’d been years since I spoke through violence. Years since anybody recognized me, years since I felt—” The heft of a honed blade. The ease of murder. The artful approach toward a target’s unknowing back, the simple solution of a strike, the call to kill.
He feels sick. Might be going paler still. And still, he can’t look at the man before him. Won’t look, because looking means pausing means safety means halting this, this point he’s moving toward.
“Recently, I’ve come into proximity with the man who provided coin for the Empress’s death.” What Melville Pendleton is doing alive and unmarred in Manhattan is a question that’s crossed Daud’s mind time and again since Katrina’s marriage was announced. Then again, what Daud’s doing alive and unmarred on this earth is a question he’s often not able to answer.
“It’s crossed my mind that— That New York would be better without him.” Without him. Without his family. Without the damage they might do to Katrina.
“I won’t— I don’t intend to. Do anything.” He doesn’t. Though he might have, mere months ago. Though he still could, if the case required it. If Katrina’s safety required it.
“But it’s been on my mind. For months now. It isn’t… I can’t say it’s beyond possibility. And knowing that the thought exists…
“I’ve been distant. Haven’t known whether to—” Another silence, still staring off, and then, then, daring to look at the man.
Whalers. That's. He hangs on that word a moment too long, scrutinizing how mundane it sounds, what a normal and banal word for a group of murderers. A gang, that's the word Daud had used. It makes them sound almost, almost harmless, until one thinks about the occupation of a whaler, and who the whales are in this case. Chilling.
A chilling detail that doesn't fit this man, this person who sits so peaceably with him, with whom conversation flows with the same complexity and ease as the Tappan Zee. Twenty years is a little lifetime, though, and this was almost a lifetime ago, wasn't it? Maybe, maybe he ought to be grateful that he never met the person Daud used to be.
Finds himself grateful this is the man he knows, this person who put distance for fear of succumbing to an old calling like an addiction. He knows there's strength in denying what the innermost self desires, in struggling day after day after unending day to turn away from temptation. He knows he has weaknesses of his own he couldn't put out of his own mind, couldn't bury in his past if it became necessary.
He's sitting across from one.
There's a lot. This is a lot. One of those situations that requires more time, more consideration, because the words he has to give have heft to them that could devastate. Ludo considers, briefly, that he should address the past and work up to the present, but the problem (I'm in trouble) is more immediate and deadly than just a criminal history.
Daud is struggling with something, right now, and that matters more than what moral offense Ludo might take at the rest of the tale. So, so, he focuses his attention on that. Draws another deep breath, feeling the rise and fall of his own shoulders before he shifts, resting his forearms, crossed, on the table.
"You mean Katrina's husband." Not a question, exactly. Just an assumption made without all of the proper information.
This started with the Van Tassel girl's marriage; he had noticed that. Daud sat outside with her, talking for a long while the last time she visited. And he knows from churchyard gossip that Katrina did the unthinkable and married an older man instead of Brom Bones, a foreigner, an outsider. Must be her husband, then. Maybe the man before him is trying (or not trying, or hoping) to color his impulses with noble intent, to 'save' Katrina. (He would laugh, if this were a situation for laughing; that girl never needed saving a day in her life. Between those sky-blue doe eyes and her ability to hit where she aims with a musket, he almost feels sorry for Treavor Pendleton.
It's a thought for later. Something to bring Daud back to laughter, when -
When?
Isn't "if" a better word?
If Daud can't turn away from killing, could Ludo turn away from him?
Sometimes, it's easy to get too deep. How does that story go? I thought you said there was a bottom, said the man sinking in the swamp. There is, said the boy. You just haven't reached it yet.)
Maybe he should have expected that. Should have anticipated how quickly Ludo would bring together the pieces, how he might draw some conclusion and how that conclusion might not quite meet its mark. (Had Daud really been so transparent? It’s possible. He hasn’t been as cautious as he could be, lately. Hasn’t been entirely himself, at all. And Ludo’s more observant than most. (More observant, perhaps, of Daud than most. Another thought not wholly unpleasant, though its flickered warmth is out of place here, now.))
Better not to let the misconception linger. Daud watches Ludo for a moment, giving himself half a moment to reconsider before he moves ahead.
“His father.”
He’s… tired. He hadn’t intended to bring names into this. Had thought they might be better avoided, because there’s no good - is there? - in Ludo knowing of the Pendletons’ involvement. (Is there danger in this knowledge? Or only discomfort? It can’t be more disquieting than what Ludo’s already heard. Perhaps the trouble is that this isn’t only Daud’s knowledge to tell; that it involves Katrina, as well. Doesn’t matter much, now; the name’s been spoken, the truth has been set forth.)
“I don’t know if her husband had anything to do with it. Whether he knew. Whether he acted.” Most likely the man had known and sat silent. Known and done nothing. From everything Daud’s heard, Treavor Pendleton’s an ineffectual coward to the core. (What was it Katrina had suggested so recently? Something otherwise, though Void knows she could be fooling herself.)
“The elder sons took the daughter.” Had done Daud can’t say what with her, and had been well-remarked for their cruelty even in Dunwall, but hadn’t Daud been plenty cruel? (Hadn’t Daud been the one to strike Jessamine down before her daughter’s eyes?) In any case, that isn’t the point. Or it is - the family wouldn’t call for death if they didn’t continue to inflict damage at each turn - but it might seem a way of attempting to excuse himself. So, no, he won’t say that, but he can’t stop there, and so—
“‘Emily’ was her…” Was her name. Is her name. Is a name difficult to speak, but easier always than her mother’s. “Emily Kaldwin.” For what it’s worth. For what it matters here and now. For the little light that it might shed for Ludo.
He’s looking around the room again, trying to discern a path toward some clarity, some answer, some way of easing the edge on all of this, only no, that wouldn’t be fair, wouldn’t be right, and there’s no way of telling it that doesn’t wound. Some stories are like that. Some truths are like that.
“The Pendletons must have fled Dunwall when the coup failed. That Katrina should have ended up wedded to one of them…” It isn’t that fate’s cruel; Daud doesn’t believe in fate, or anything of its ilk. Certainly, it isn’t right. Isn’t deserved. And it can’t possibly end well.
But that isn't the point. That isn't the focus here, and Daud shakes his head. “It was Melville Pendleton who paid me."
Small, insubstantial comfort, to hear that it's not the man to whom Baltus gave his daughter. Yes, of course Ludo feels some pity for Katrina for having been married into a family like the one Daud is describing, but there's a more practical reason for his concern to take root and grow: the Van Tassels own something close to ten thousand acres of property in and around Sleepy Hollow. Their farm is one of the foremost sources of food, of beer, of livestock, of work in the county, and Katrina stands to inherit it all.
By proxy, so does her husband. A man who, if he is anything like Katrina has occasionally lamented within Ludo's hearing, is absolutely useless. If his family is truly the sort of folk who would arrange a coup, pay for an assassination, abduct a child...he wonders if Daud knows just how dangerous it would be for this sleepy little community, once the farm came into Katrina's possession.
He keeps that to himself. Now isn't the time for that sort of derailed focus; it's something to address with Baltus, later, and/or with Katrina, herself, so she knows just how dire the situation is not only for herself, but for everyone.
Instead, he allows Daud to finish, watching as the other man makes half-faltering, trailing-off statements, wishing he could reach over and lay a comforting hand on his wrist. Wishing comfort was something he could stand to offer right now, much as he wants to. Abducting a child...
Abducting a child. It almost sits worse than the thought of Daud killing.
He takes it in stride, always in stride, giving no condemnation in tone or look or movement. Reminds himself this was years ago, another lifetime. The problem is now, the problem is the threat of violence that took root in Daud's mind. The problem is, Daud thought putting distance between himself and those with -
Care. Devotion. Feeling.
For him. Would somehow help the situation, rather than draw loneliness around him like a cloak. That being so removed from those who would give him good advice and comfort would make it an easier reality, or a less present one, or something more manageable. (There are other questions, a multitude of questions, things that can wait because the night is long and he's not going anywhere.
He doesn't have anything better to do.
Doesn't have anyone else he would rather be with, no matter how deadly the conversation seems.)
His exhale is slow, a heavy sound that is and isn't a sigh.
"I can't tell you what to do about this." He could try. He could ask him not to walk out the door, not to go looking for the person he used to be, to stay here and be the person Ludo knows. But that's a selfish ask. It has nothing to do with Daud's struggle, and everything to do with the way the room feels, the air feels, how his chest is too wooden to allow his lungs to expand. How his heart is a hammer without an anvil, an unsteady pounding against nothing. "And this is more to work with than just one night can give me."
That. Is very true. But winter nights are long, and winter is long, and he doesn't have anywhere else he wants to be than sitting here.
"I can say..." It's his turn to trail off, uncertain how to carve something useful out of this fragment. He tries, anyway. "The world has had enough destruction and loss in it for both of us. I don't need more." I need, I need - This isn't about what he needs. "Do you?"
It’d been easy. Every motion, every act a matter of expedience. Slitting the throat of one man or another, daggering a woman in the back, and, yes, abducting a child. Anything, he would have done and he had done so much for the sake of coin and renown. All of which had come in stride for the man he was. Just as it had felt natural to direct his Whalers toward their deadly work. Just as it had seemed right to view the city as his own, to view himself above all others.
How. How had it been so easy. (And how does it now seem so simple to slide back?)
The black-eyed bastard’s voice again: ”I see forever, and right now I see a man walking a tightrope over a sea of blood and filth.”
That bastard. (That bastard had a point.)
No. He can’t focus on the past any more than he can focus on this room and Ludo’s presence. Either way, he’s liable to find himself lost, drawn off-track by agitation by ire or some warmth he doesn’t bother naming, doesn’t need to name. What matters right now is speaking this through.
(He’d erase it all if he could. His deeds, his name, the renown he’d won. What he wouldn’t give for it to disappear, to never have been. What he wouldn’t give to show the man before him someone else, less stained in blood, more. More. (Deserving.))
Again he jars himself into the present. The words: ’This is more to work with than just one night can give me.’ Of course. This must be too much, almost, for taking in. And though Daud’s not asking for advice, though he almost points out, almost protests - ’I wouldn’t force that on you’ - he holds back, because perhaps that’s precisely what he’s doing. Perhaps it’s what he was half hoping for, beneath that wish to simply speak, to make certain he’s not hiding from this man who belongs to these wilds and moves so comfortably among the trees, who sits with such comfort in silence, who, who… who Daud would very much prefer to be seen by.
That this man should allow him to remain, should listen, should clearly hear, and neither flinch nor send Daud away seems impossible. He tells himself it’s only Ludo’s nature. That the man’s skilled with receiving, that he grants to all around the gift of his absorption. (He tells himself it could be something otherwise, as well. Because he finds uncommon depths to the man’s regard. Because the weight of his gaze holds Daud steady. Because there’s something more than welcoming - more than welcome - in every glance.
How in these eyes he feels connected. More the self that he wishes to be. It’s in part the way he feels when beheld by Katrina, when beheld by Cassandra, and yet wound still deeper through his chest. He doesn’t ask how this happened. Why this man holds so much meaning, so much gravity for Daud. The why of it doesn’t matter; only that he feels it. That it holds him. Keeps him almost steady, even in this telling. Gives him reason for something approaching belief.)
Strange, the life he’s found here.
But that isn’t the point, either. He’s leading himself astray too easily. Owes Ludo the courtesy of focus (at the very least). Because there was a question, apt, precise. And Daud has an answer, or the beginning trace of one. ’Do you?’ Does he.
“It isn’t what I want.” That much he knows. But is it what must occur? Daud’s always been a practical man, able to focus on what needs to be done in order to achieve one goal or another (and look where that had led him; look what that practicality had been honed toward). This is within his capability. Might be his responsibility, given the family’s proximity to Katrina, given the family’s potential for doing deep harm.
He doesn’t want to be that man again. But if he has to be. But if someone has to be.
“I don’t expect you to solve—“ ’My troubles.’’This mess.’ Or— “What I am.
“Not to say I don’t value your opinion. Only I’m not eager to put this on you, not any more than I’ve already done.” It’s already been too much, hasn’t it? And that’s only the surface of the story. That’s not to list off the number of people he’d slain, and how little he’d cared who they were. That’s not to mention the Outsider.
A pause, another thought, and he shakes his head once, looking once again toward a corner. "It isn't what I want. But the thought remains." The thought. The possibility. He's only. He's only. Going to venture a glance at Ludo, then return his gaze the corner.
For a brief space of time that could be a heartbeat and could be an eternity, Ludo entertains an uncomfortable thought of his own - one that can't quite be chipped away from his mind, or sanded down to smooth usefulness.
What if there's nothing he can do to help?
There is something he has never confronted before, a uselessness of himself. How a strong back and a sound mind and firm hands might not, in this limited and gutting instance, be of any use. How all the devotion in the world might not be able to summon Daud back from the precipice. What then? Would he follow this man into chaos the way he once followed better men than himself into war, and is it the same thing?
He struggles at that thought, worrying it like a sore tooth.
The answer, what's the answer, how does this knotty problem get worked into something functional? Daud doesn't want the dreadful potential ending that comes from following this path, but the thought remains. (What we so often want is not what we get, and that worries Ludo, too.)
But more focus is required for another question: if Daud isn't asking for his help, if he isn't asking for a solution, what is he seeking tonight? Ludo turns the problem over and over until the light catches it in just the right way, gives sense to its shape. This isn't about solutions. This is a confession, a baring of self. Can you accept this mess I made?
It's such a loaded conversation suddenly. Ludo thought, assumed (feared) that this would be the conversation about eccentricities that ended a sharing of them. The conversation that would be preempted by 'I found a wife', 'my father says-', 'this feels wrong', 'God doesn't allow'. Instead, instead, his chest is tight and his hands have clenched and things are both hopeful and despairing at once. The shape of the problem is not whether Daud will reject, but whether he will reject.
And he doesn't know the solution. The answer to an unspoken question. Does he want, and if he does want, can he accept?
His drink has gone untouched, and he doesn't want it. He doesn't want much right now, except maybe to scrap this project, this work of anti-art, to make it not. To burn it with failed carvings, broken spoons. He wants, he wants -
The way he stands isn't abrupt, or rather it's abrupt for him, not a slow withdrawal from the table but nothing is overturned, nothing jostled. He can't keep sitting, feels too ill at ease, too aware that all I ever wanted is dragging murderer, assassin, killer on its heels. He needs something for his hands, something to help carve and sand and build and create, but isn't looking for anything in particular, not seeing.
Only feeling the heaviness of his own hand and the firmness of the place where it's settled, what kind of tool did he reach for, how many steps away from the other man did he take to find it? Looks down and sees it came to rest on Daud's shoulder, and he didn't move so far away at all, did he?
And the words that follow, there's something in them, none of this has the solidity of craftsmanship. It's all a little adrift, a little too uncertain. But love's not much for tangibility. "If it isn't what you want, that's enough." For now. For me. "Thoughts are only thoughts until you make them more."
He isn't strong enough to turn his back on someone whose strange nature so closely, comfortingly echoes is own. Calls his own. Or maybe it's that he thinks - he could be strong enough to take the bad with the good.
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for ludo
just a meadow—with, sometimes, a stranger, passing
through, the occasional tenderness, a hand to my chest,
resting there, making me almost want to touch something,
someone back."
— Carl Phillips, 'Falling'
(continued from this thread.)
---------------------------------------
It's several hours before he finds himself approaching Ludo's door.
Several hours spent gazing at the stars, curled in on himself beside a blazing (and never, never warm enough) fire. Several hours thinking over every word he hadn't said. Several hours thinking on Ludo's invitation and what it might be to accept, to once more share a room with the man for more than five flustered minutes.
It's been difficult, lately. Everything's been difficult since Katrina was married off to that family and since Daud came close - closer than he cares to know - to killing off her husband. The thought of murder hasn't left his head since, the very real prospect has lingered close, and he's felt himself itch, felt himself ache with how easy it'd be to just end the bastard, end the whole of his family, and go back to being what he's spent all these years running from. He'd like to think he isn't that man anymore, but lately doubts have fallen fast and heavy. Because it would be easy. Because he could do it to free her.
Which conjures a question of whether he's changed at all. Of whether he's been fooling himself this entire time, thinking he'd begun to find a life here in Sleepy Hollow, thinking he'd found a place to stay, a place where he could be a better man and lead a less perilous life. A place where he could truly build himself all over again, never mind what he once might have done, never mind those memories that still scream themselves through his worst dreams. Maybe all of that was only fond thinking. Maybe all of that...
It could all end tonight. It might, if he dares to speak, tell Ludo what the man damned well deserves to know (but only if he wants to hear; what was it Katrina had said? that it shouldn't be... what, an unburdening? that Ludo has to wish to know, can't be forced to hear what he's not ready for). It could end, if Ludo takes the revelation poorly (and who could blame him? Daud wouldn't dare; will only accept whatever judgment may be leveled). This could be the last Daud sees of Sleepy Hollow, a dash through the snowy night and the half-moon, one more town he's visited and been compelled to leave behind.
Well. If that's what comes, that's what comes. He's... He doesn't like to think that it could happen (have faith in him, Katrina had said, and Daud does, he does, only faith doesn't stop fond dreams from crumbling), but thinks he ought to be prepared for the worst. He'll survive whatever happens. He always does.
Daud arrives without word, a sharp double-rapping in the door. The sound rings more confidant than he feels. Far more confidant, and while its reverberation dig into his skin, he feels that he'd be best to turn tail now, save this for another day, for no day, keep these secrets buried and give himself the grace of this, this... ignorant acceptance.
No. It isn't fair.
It's been good to linger in Ludo's favorable estimate, but the man ought to know what he's dealing with. Should have been given the chance to know months ago, but there's no good dwelling on missed opportunities or poor choices. No, the only way forward is to offer the information. Is to offer himself up, set forth what he was and hope against hope (no, that also isn't fair to Ludo; he's right to hope for mercy in the man, or it isn't so far-fetched to think) that he won't find himself driven off.
So he waits, wan as he's been for weeks and feeling half-untethered from himself, the night's chill weaving its way across his spine.
no subject
Half-expects. Something is very wrong with the other man, something that doesn't want to be put to voice, and Ludo isn't the sort to pry. (Perhaps that's why people talk to him; he's a filter, a place to set down a burden and watch it wash away by morning. Someone to hold the problem for a moment, turn it in the light and inspect the shadows it casts, and help to set it aside.) Not the sort to pry, but certainly the sort to wait until the small hours of the morning for a familiar knock at the door.
People know his nature - some of them better than he does, himself. The Van Tassel girl is one of those, somehow, who reckons with Ludo's eccentricity and parlays it into something bearable, something hopeful. She negotiated a party under some pretense, simply to put him in the same room as Daud, and out of the corner of his eye, he had watched her giggle silently and hug herself in triumphant glee as he handed a finely-crafted pipe (one of his own) to someone he thought was...similarly eccentric.
Daud clearly hadn't understood the significance of the pipe, to his amusement. But their eccentricities called to one another.
For a while, that had been enough. Good. Sharing rooms, sharing conversations and passing, comfortable silences. (The silence has been different lately. Too loud to the ears of a man who seeks out the solitude of the woods to escape such noise.) He had thought for a while that maybe he and Daud had found a place to exist in a world that seemed crudely made for men like them.
And then there was a breach, somehow, in the companionability. Daud withdrew, further and further into himself, into a place Ludo didn't dare try to explore. It offended his sense of courtesy, his decency, to push into the depths of another person without invitation. So he waited. Watched as the vehicle for their meeting, a mere child, teased out whatever was darkening the other man's moods and hoped that somehow things would right themselves.
Nothing seems right. It all still seems to have an unnatural shape, the way cities and ships in the river seem unnatural, too grotesquely man-made and forced away from the order of things. The distance is unmanageable, uncrossable, and the thread between himself and Daud seems all too fragile.
But tonight he sits waiting, and that knock at the door is answered without surprise - just slightly raised brows and a look around at the darkness without, shadows that have gathered around the man before him and turned real.
Well. As long as Daud wipes his feet on the mat, he can help deal with shadows.
Ludo steps aside without a word, the welcome perpetual, unshakeable. Always an open door, a fire in the hearth, food and drink waiting. Something different from hospitality, where Daud is concerned.
no subject
He does wipe his feet, an almost unconscious motion, well-learned. Then he’s moving away from the door, several feet away from Ludo. Better to keep space between them, perhaps. (Not that he wants to. Not that he cares for this distance or his responsibility in imposing this space. The man deserves better. Deserves better than to be kept at arm’s length, but also deserves better than to unconsciously share space with… Well. With everything that Daud has been.)
For several moments he glances around the room; at the fire, at the discarded woodwork, at anything and everything that isn’t Ludo, his shoulders gathered tight, right hand flexing as his left fingers beat sharp against the air, a customary gesture of agitation. Then, running an unsteady hand through his hair, he turns toward the man. Looks directly at the man.
And tells himself not to think too much about the way his breath comes both hitched and somehow easier. The way his shoulders gather further tension and the way he feels himself relax. The way everything, everything suddenly turns to a standstill, even his rush of thoughts hushed silent, and he could almost, almost think—
What? Almost think. Almost think everything might turn out all right.
He can’t get lost in this. Came here with a purpose, and it wouldn’t be fair - none of this is fair - to fall into distraction. (Can’t get lost in this. In what could be. What lingers so close, what he could almost hold. If only he could separate himself from everything he was. But the past weeks have proven that’s too much to ask. But consequences, didn’t he learn years ago the weight of what he’d done and the sting of all its echoes? This is only another iteration. Another particularly painful, deeply regrettable iteration.) So he looks away again. So he breathes.
Speak. Simply speak, there’s— No cause for dragging this out. No cause for making the man wait. What was it he’d said to Katrina? ’There’s a lot you don’t know about me.’ Sitting outside this very cabin while Ludo left them space, cognizant as always of what was called for, ready to give without uncomfortable questions, without protest. He’s a good man, hasn’t Katrina said that time and again? It’s the truth.
All right. All right.
"Ludo, I—
"I didn’t come here to." This isn't going well, is it? Another breath. All right.
"You’ve never asked about the man I’ve been."
no subject
Ludo would clear his throat to interrupt his own thoughts, the way he might interrupt a child telling a tale too quickly. He merely breathes, barrel chest taking in more than the room can offer and more besides; there, quiet again, just a flicker of doubt easily set aside. The door closes just as quiet, oiled hinges and solid oak, autumn works done to see him through the winter. The iron catch he traded for (another pipe, much less ornate than-.)
(Someone called him sphinx-like, leonine, patient as a dog. He is that. It takes effort and time to reach a place where things aren't so precarious. It takes the work lying around him, evidence of himself in every part of his home. The most erratic pieces of his brain, plucked out and formed into functional, formed into ornate, valuable, decorative. Useful. Leaving behind something solid, something clean and smooth as sanded wood, as though the carving was his mind rather than the objects in his hands.
There are more pieces of his brain lying around than normal.)
He watches Daud with leonine patience, calm as the surface of the Hudson as the other man paces, twitches, fidgets. Turns and fixes him with a look. What is that look, why does he look so drawn? This isn't the same as an ending, this is something else, something heavier, personal and yet not so. He half expects to hear the words 'I'm in trouble', as he had so many times from others. Boys seeking advice (marry her, always the answer for that trouble), men seeking help (we'll build in the spring, I'll help with the harvest, easy answers, easy solutions, work made simpler with another pair of hands) - but never like this.
When the man here, tense and yet not tense, personal and impersonal, finally circles around to his point, it isn't what Ludo expected. Not a problem, like Ludo expected. Problems are things in the present, to be handled; burdens to be eased. Unless - there's more than just that statement. The only sign he gives that he might be taken aback is a raised brow.
"Well." Acceptance in that word: that because he hasn't asked, Daud is going to offer. That this is a conversation for a long winter night. He turns away to produce a pair of drinks, the stuff from the Van Tassels (another trade, this time for something or another for Katrina's trousseau, and didn't this oddness start around the time the girl married?) "I know the one you are now."
Thought he did, anyhow. Somewhat.
"Have a seat."
no subject
But the knowing must be incomplete. But the man he is now can’t exist outside of what he was, what he carries still within him, the way even today his fingers remember the exact heft of his knife. He glances away again, takes a seat when it’s offered, grateful for Ludo’s proximity and grateful as well for the table between them. The drink sits nearby, and yes Daud could use it but no he isn’t going to reach for it, isn’t going to allow himself that ease.
No, better to focus on what needs to be said. Which is tangled. Which is difficult to tease apart, difficult to track toward any kind of a beginning. “I don’t want to—”
No; that won’t do. For a moment he’s silent again, rubbing absently at his jaw, the entire tale and its preamble suspended. What should he say. What should be kept quiet. And how can he offer a choice. Remember what Katrina said. Remember how to offer.
“Before coming here, I didn’t stay in any one place for long. I had no reason. Nothing to hold me and no interest in keeping still. I’ve been up and down the coast, spent a few years across the sea, and never felt compelled to linger longer than a few months, half a year at most.
“Until now. Until here.
“I don’t want to leave. This place has become—“ ’You have become—‘ “Something like home. But I can’t keep living under false pretenses.
“Or I shouldn’t.
“I think you should know. Who I’ve been, as much as you’re able to hear.
“If you’d care to. If it’s anything you— If you have reason to know. I’ve been strange to you lately, I know that. I haven’t—
“What I’ve got to say. I don’t know if you’ll want to hear it. But I need to offer.”
He’s staring at his gloved hands, fidgeting still, wanting to look up and yet not daring to make contact. Let Ludo speak his piece first. Let Ludo consider his options, not now seeing the halfway pleading in Daud’s eyes, the traces of need and wishing. Let the man make his own decision.
no subject
Coming out of Daud's mouth, they seem simple enough, but the more he examines them, the more they leave a lingering sense of unease. What is a man who doesn't have a home? What kind of person moves from place to place like a vagabond? Who considers their first chance at ease a false pretense?
Who hides it all, skirts the telling of the story in the first place?
Someone on the run. Someone who's done wrong. (Not just biblical erring in the all-seeing, too-present eye of a god - one Daud doesn't put stock in, anyway. So, not that. Worse, somehow.)
It's a strange offer, isn't it, to let him decide whether he wants to hear what weighs so heavily on the other man? Remarkable, selfless, and strange. Is there any way that he can refuse to hear it? Would Daud be able to walk out of this house, content, without setting this burden down? (I'm in trouble, that circles back, gravel-voiced. What kind of man refuses to hear it?)
He doesn't want it. That's a first. A shaken thought in the back of his mind, denying the words that are sure to come, because hearing it will change things. Hearing what means to be said, this thing that created an intangible distance (still palpable here between the two men, as far apart and ever untouching as the solstices, as midnight and midday, though they share space in concept of year and day) could do more harm.
But not wanting it is not a good reason to turn away anyone in need. It's not a good reason to refuse to hear Daud. As if he could refuse him -
Much of anything.
"I don't know if you'll want to tell it," he counters quietly, some almost amusement in his voice. It's too deep-driven to easily distinguish it from regretfulness. But I need to listen. It's not an obligation, and so he doesn't form those words. It's something owed, not out of duty, but out of...
Devotion? Does that seem like a good word, here, in the late hours of the night, with Daud looking at him in a way that makes him wish he was years younger, makes him wish he had more time to know who this man was before, and who he is today, and who he'll be tomorrow?
He'll lay that word carefully to the side and examine it later, at the end of the story (sure to be harrowing, as most stories this late at night tend to be.)
"But it's probably best."
no subject
But Ludo’s right, or Daud believes his point is apt: it’s probably for the best. Better that Ludo know, if Daud’s going to attempt to stay. Better that Daud not deceive the man, not if he doesn’t need to.
“No. I don’t know that I would.” And yet. What he wants has little enough to do with it. What he wants is (quiet; stillness; each evening spent here and in this warmth, beside this man) for somewhere far apart from what he’s been.
But that’s too much to ask for. But there’s no turning back now. And before he can tangle his thoughts further, he finds himself breathing, breathing, then speaking.
“Before those years of moving place to place. Before I started running, I spent most of my life in Dunwall, a city far up the coast. I—“ ’Like to think I’m not the man I was then,’ only that isn’t the point right now, that’s a way of side-stepping the raw truth, or of easing it. Of reaching for Ludo and attempting to suggest that ‘look, look, this man I’m speaking of is caught far in the past; I’m something different, don’t you see?’ But no, no. Tell the story first; let Ludo decide as he will.
“They had a name for me. The Knife of Dunwall.” He’s rubbing the back of his left hand slowly, a compulsive gesture that he can’t keep quiet, not now, not speaking about this. He can’t curb his motions now. Can hardly choose the word he lands on. Very little of this is up to choice.
Only that he continues telling. Only that he’s telling at all. That— Yes. That’s his own decision.
“I’m not proud of what I was. What I’ve done.” He used to be. Used to live so proud of his deeds, his name, his renown and the minor empire he’d constructed. Was secure in his pride until everything fell apart, and then it seemed a sickness. A disease he could never be rid of.
“I led a gang. Gathered from the cities thieves and vagabonds. We—“ ’Called ourselves the Whalers,’ only the detail seems superfluous and he waves it away with a flick of his head. “I worked as an assassin. For twenty years.” It’s a long time, isn’t it? Longer than he’s been running. Longer than Katrina’s lived. When he speaks the number out loud, it hits with a dull thud because no, no, that’s too much. Too much to be borne, and some part of his mind goes back to etching an escape route, tracing the fastest way from town.
(He doesn’t want to leave this man. He can’t dwell on that right now, either. Daud’s made his decision to speak, and he’ll need to accept whatever comes of it.)
“That isn’t all of it. But if that’s all you’ll hear…
“I’ll do what you like. Go, if you’d rather.” Not that Ludo requires his permission. Not that Daud’s permission ought to mean much of anything. But he wants to make it clear he’ll offer no argument, no fuss. That the information is Ludo’s to use as he pleases, as he must. "You won't need to—
"I'll do as you ask."
no subject
He takes the number in stride; twenty is a fourth of a lifetime, longer than some have lived, but when he looks back, doesn't twenty years seem like one lifetime, and twenty more another, and doesn't he feel different than who he was twenty years ago? That number doesn't mean much. It's the other, the assassin part, that he tries to wrap his mind around, tries to envision the man before him at the head of a group of criminals. Giving commands. Killing.
Maybe twenty years ago, in another life. (Or maybe he doesn't want to envision it. That's the problem with listening to someone when the word 'devotion' comes into play: impartiality is a lost cause.)
Ludo's careful not to move, not to pull back in his chair and seem to be placing more (very real) distance between them. He keeps the stillness. Debates whether he wants to hear more, whether he can, whether this slow-creeping chill up his spine is one he can bear much longer before -
What?
Asking Daud to take it all back? Telling him this isn't a story he wants to know? Would he give Daud less regard than anyone else for the sake of his own feelings, for his own worry of having to reform his ideas of who this man is?
So, he remains silent, seconds ticking by into minutes, watching, watching, settling in to the idea and trying to push it on the man in front of him like an ill-fitting coat. You were a murderer.
You have killed.
Daud.
Killer.
It doesn't...work. Fit. It seems too abstract, like hearing that once, this land was populated by native tribes. Like knowing a chair was once a tree. Reasonably, he knows it's true, but he can't imagine the shape it takes without having seen it for himself. So the only thing to do - the only thing to do is let this tale go on.
"I'm listening."
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He’s listening.
All right.
For a long stretch of moments, Daud only watches Ludo, fixed on the man’s face, his eyes, every quiet tell of his expression. (His own face feels unstill, uncharacteristically given to twitches, to short sniffs and minute shifts of one muscle or another. Impossible to keep collected with such a telling, before such a man. Impossible to feign quiet when he feels so wholly dis-eased.) How easy it would be to linger here, say no more, let silence take its course. How easy it might be to remain here, only held within this man’s regard.
He has to look away or he won’t finish. (Finish. As if the telling could ever be complete.) His eyes find a corner of the room, abstracting the image into a corner everywhere. Don’t think of this specifically s Ludo’s place. Don’t think of this as anywhere at all. Only continue. Only speak again.
“The last job I took,” not the last job, no, but the last job that mattered, the last job that lingers with him, the job the changed everything, “should have been simple enough.”
Should have been. Only it was different. ’The governess was different.’ The words the black-eyed bastard of a god had echoed back to him, arch and disapproving, offering one final chance at, what? Not recompense, not salvation, but some chance to salve the smallest fracture of all the wounds he’d driven. Some chance to shift his actions. (Not that the Outsider had offered Delilah’s name out of altruism. Not that the bastard had expected Daud to do anything save drench himself deeper in blood. How surprised the god had been. How he’s been silent ever since.)
Now his left fist clenches. Now his teeth grit.
“I was hired to kill,” how that word burns him now, though he speaks it easily enough, though the old language comes back to him as if he’d never stopped speaking blood, “the governess of Dunwall. Kidnap her daughter. How my contractors acted beyond that - what they planned to do with the city - was none of my concern.” What they planned to do with the city. With the plague running wretched through its streets. With the daughter (Emily, her name was Emily, and if vague rumors speak the truth, she’s reigning now and strong, her father at her side). Nothing, nothing, nothing had been compassed within his concern.
“I completed the mission. My Whalers and I.” There it is. The word, them, the ones he’d gathered (and the ones he’d left behind, and where, what are they now (where is she, the one who betrayed him, the one who should have betrayed him), what could they have made out of their lives?). Another word he hasn’t spoken in years, and if he dwells too long on its feeling, he’ll become lost in all of this. Another world, it was all another life, but no, no, such separation would be too simple. “But after…” He shakes his head, a rough motion. It wasn’t only after; it was in the moment, in the motion of delivering her death blow, but that’s no detail to share right now. That’s unburdening; not explaining. “It wasn’t the same. I knew what I was.
“I fled Dunwall six months later. Was exiled. Shown mercy by—” Half a shrug; that’s another detail, another piece that would beg elaboration, would open up further avenues of recounting that don’t suit here and now. The story of Corvo, like the story of Delilah and Emily, is a telling for another time, if ever. “I’ve been running ever since. Trying to…” Find silence. Find a way of rewriting himself. Find new ways of becoming. Trying to not be what he was.
“To leave my old life behind.
“I almost thought I’d succeeded. By the time I arrived in Sleepy Hollow, it’d been years since I… I don’t ever forget what I’ve done. But it’d been years since I spoke through violence. Years since anybody recognized me, years since I felt—” The heft of a honed blade. The ease of murder. The artful approach toward a target’s unknowing back, the simple solution of a strike, the call to kill.
He feels sick. Might be going paler still. And still, he can’t look at the man before him. Won’t look, because looking means pausing means safety means halting this, this point he’s moving toward.
“Recently, I’ve come into proximity with the man who provided coin for the Empress’s death.” What Melville Pendleton is doing alive and unmarred in Manhattan is a question that’s crossed Daud’s mind time and again since Katrina’s marriage was announced. Then again, what Daud’s doing alive and unmarred on this earth is a question he’s often not able to answer.
“It’s crossed my mind that— That New York would be better without him.” Without him. Without his family. Without the damage they might do to Katrina.
“I won’t— I don’t intend to. Do anything.” He doesn’t. Though he might have, mere months ago. Though he still could, if the case required it. If Katrina’s safety required it.
“But it’s been on my mind. For months now. It isn’t… I can’t say it’s beyond possibility. And knowing that the thought exists…
“I’ve been distant. Haven’t known whether to—” Another silence, still staring off, and then, then, daring to look at the man.
“I thought you should know.”
no subject
A chilling detail that doesn't fit this man, this person who sits so peaceably with him, with whom conversation flows with the same complexity and ease as the Tappan Zee. Twenty years is a little lifetime, though, and this was almost a lifetime ago, wasn't it? Maybe, maybe he ought to be grateful that he never met the person Daud used to be.
Finds himself grateful this is the man he knows, this person who put distance for fear of succumbing to an old calling like an addiction. He knows there's strength in denying what the innermost self desires, in struggling day after day after unending day to turn away from temptation. He knows he has weaknesses of his own he couldn't put out of his own mind, couldn't bury in his past if it became necessary.
He's sitting across from one.
There's a lot. This is a lot. One of those situations that requires more time, more consideration, because the words he has to give have heft to them that could devastate. Ludo considers, briefly, that he should address the past and work up to the present, but the problem (I'm in trouble) is more immediate and deadly than just a criminal history.
Daud is struggling with something, right now, and that matters more than what moral offense Ludo might take at the rest of the tale. So, so, he focuses his attention on that. Draws another deep breath, feeling the rise and fall of his own shoulders before he shifts, resting his forearms, crossed, on the table.
"You mean Katrina's husband." Not a question, exactly. Just an assumption made without all of the proper information.
This started with the Van Tassel girl's marriage; he had noticed that. Daud sat outside with her, talking for a long while the last time she visited. And he knows from churchyard gossip that Katrina did the unthinkable and married an older man instead of Brom Bones, a foreigner, an outsider. Must be her husband, then. Maybe the man before him is trying (or not trying, or hoping) to color his impulses with noble intent, to 'save' Katrina. (He would laugh, if this were a situation for laughing; that girl never needed saving a day in her life. Between those sky-blue doe eyes and her ability to hit where she aims with a musket, he almost feels sorry for Treavor Pendleton.
It's a thought for later. Something to bring Daud back to laughter, when -
When?
Isn't "if" a better word?
If Daud can't turn away from killing, could Ludo turn away from him?
Sometimes, it's easy to get too deep. How does that story go? I thought you said there was a bottom, said the man sinking in the swamp. There is, said the boy. You just haven't reached it yet.)
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No.
Maybe he should have expected that. Should have anticipated how quickly Ludo would bring together the pieces, how he might draw some conclusion and how that conclusion might not quite meet its mark. (Had Daud really been so transparent? It’s possible. He hasn’t been as cautious as he could be, lately. Hasn’t been entirely himself, at all. And Ludo’s more observant than most. (More observant, perhaps, of Daud than most. Another thought not wholly unpleasant, though its flickered warmth is out of place here, now.))
Better not to let the misconception linger. Daud watches Ludo for a moment, giving himself half a moment to reconsider before he moves ahead.
“His father.”
He’s… tired. He hadn’t intended to bring names into this. Had thought they might be better avoided, because there’s no good - is there? - in Ludo knowing of the Pendletons’ involvement. (Is there danger in this knowledge? Or only discomfort? It can’t be more disquieting than what Ludo’s already heard. Perhaps the trouble is that this isn’t only Daud’s knowledge to tell; that it involves Katrina, as well. Doesn’t matter much, now; the name’s been spoken, the truth has been set forth.)
“I don’t know if her husband had anything to do with it. Whether he knew. Whether he acted.” Most likely the man had known and sat silent. Known and done nothing. From everything Daud’s heard, Treavor Pendleton’s an ineffectual coward to the core. (What was it Katrina had suggested so recently? Something otherwise, though Void knows she could be fooling herself.)
“The elder sons took the daughter.” Had done Daud can’t say what with her, and had been well-remarked for their cruelty even in Dunwall, but hadn’t Daud been plenty cruel? (Hadn’t Daud been the one to strike Jessamine down before her daughter’s eyes?) In any case, that isn’t the point. Or it is - the family wouldn’t call for death if they didn’t continue to inflict damage at each turn - but it might seem a way of attempting to excuse himself. So, no, he won’t say that, but he can’t stop there, and so—
“‘Emily’ was her…” Was her name. Is her name. Is a name difficult to speak, but easier always than her mother’s. “Emily Kaldwin.” For what it’s worth. For what it matters here and now. For the little light that it might shed for Ludo.
He’s looking around the room again, trying to discern a path toward some clarity, some answer, some way of easing the edge on all of this, only no, that wouldn’t be fair, wouldn’t be right, and there’s no way of telling it that doesn’t wound. Some stories are like that. Some truths are like that.
“The Pendletons must have fled Dunwall when the coup failed. That Katrina should have ended up wedded to one of them…” It isn’t that fate’s cruel; Daud doesn’t believe in fate, or anything of its ilk. Certainly, it isn’t right. Isn’t deserved. And it can’t possibly end well.
But that isn't the point. That isn't the focus here, and Daud shakes his head. “It was Melville Pendleton who paid me."
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By proxy, so does her husband. A man who, if he is anything like Katrina has occasionally lamented within Ludo's hearing, is absolutely useless. If his family is truly the sort of folk who would arrange a coup, pay for an assassination, abduct a child...he wonders if Daud knows just how dangerous it would be for this sleepy little community, once the farm came into Katrina's possession.
He keeps that to himself. Now isn't the time for that sort of derailed focus; it's something to address with Baltus, later, and/or with Katrina, herself, so she knows just how dire the situation is not only for herself, but for everyone.
Instead, he allows Daud to finish, watching as the other man makes half-faltering, trailing-off statements, wishing he could reach over and lay a comforting hand on his wrist. Wishing comfort was something he could stand to offer right now, much as he wants to. Abducting a child...
Abducting a child. It almost sits worse than the thought of Daud killing.
He takes it in stride, always in stride, giving no condemnation in tone or look or movement. Reminds himself this was years ago, another lifetime. The problem is now, the problem is the threat of violence that took root in Daud's mind. The problem is, Daud thought putting distance between himself and those with -
Care. Devotion. Feeling.
For him. Would somehow help the situation, rather than draw loneliness around him like a cloak. That being so removed from those who would give him good advice and comfort would make it an easier reality, or a less present one, or something more manageable. (There are other questions, a multitude of questions, things that can wait because the night is long and he's not going anywhere.
He doesn't have anything better to do.
Doesn't have anyone else he would rather be with, no matter how deadly the conversation seems.)
His exhale is slow, a heavy sound that is and isn't a sigh.
"I can't tell you what to do about this." He could try. He could ask him not to walk out the door, not to go looking for the person he used to be, to stay here and be the person Ludo knows. But that's a selfish ask. It has nothing to do with Daud's struggle, and everything to do with the way the room feels, the air feels, how his chest is too wooden to allow his lungs to expand. How his heart is a hammer without an anvil, an unsteady pounding against nothing. "And this is more to work with than just one night can give me."
That. Is very true. But winter nights are long, and winter is long, and he doesn't have anywhere else he wants to be than sitting here.
"I can say..." It's his turn to trail off, uncertain how to carve something useful out of this fragment. He tries, anyway. "The world has had enough destruction and loss in it for both of us. I don't need more." I need, I need - This isn't about what he needs. "Do you?"
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How. How had it been so easy. (And how does it now seem so simple to slide back?)
The black-eyed bastard’s voice again: ”I see forever, and right now I see a man walking a tightrope over a sea of blood and filth.”
That bastard. (That bastard had a point.)
No. He can’t focus on the past any more than he can focus on this room and Ludo’s presence. Either way, he’s liable to find himself lost, drawn off-track by agitation by ire or some warmth he doesn’t bother naming, doesn’t need to name. What matters right now is speaking this through.
(He’d erase it all if he could. His deeds, his name, the renown he’d won. What he wouldn’t give for it to disappear, to never have been. What he wouldn’t give to show the man before him someone else, less stained in blood, more. More. (Deserving.))
Again he jars himself into the present. The words: ’This is more to work with than just one night can give me.’ Of course. This must be too much, almost, for taking in. And though Daud’s not asking for advice, though he almost points out, almost protests - ’I wouldn’t force that on you’ - he holds back, because perhaps that’s precisely what he’s doing. Perhaps it’s what he was half hoping for, beneath that wish to simply speak, to make certain he’s not hiding from this man who belongs to these wilds and moves so comfortably among the trees, who sits with such comfort in silence, who, who… who Daud would very much prefer to be seen by.
That this man should allow him to remain, should listen, should clearly hear, and neither flinch nor send Daud away seems impossible. He tells himself it’s only Ludo’s nature. That the man’s skilled with receiving, that he grants to all around the gift of his absorption. (He tells himself it could be something otherwise, as well. Because he finds uncommon depths to the man’s regard. Because the weight of his gaze holds Daud steady. Because there’s something more than welcoming - more than welcome - in every glance.
How in these eyes he feels connected. More the self that he wishes to be. It’s in part the way he feels when beheld by Katrina, when beheld by Cassandra, and yet wound still deeper through his chest. He doesn’t ask how this happened. Why this man holds so much meaning, so much gravity for Daud. The why of it doesn’t matter; only that he feels it. That it holds him. Keeps him almost steady, even in this telling. Gives him reason for something approaching belief.)
Strange, the life he’s found here.
But that isn’t the point, either. He’s leading himself astray too easily. Owes Ludo the courtesy of focus (at the very least). Because there was a question, apt, precise. And Daud has an answer, or the beginning trace of one. ’Do you?’ Does he.
“It isn’t what I want.” That much he knows. But is it what must occur? Daud’s always been a practical man, able to focus on what needs to be done in order to achieve one goal or another (and look where that had led him; look what that practicality had been honed toward). This is within his capability. Might be his responsibility, given the family’s proximity to Katrina, given the family’s potential for doing deep harm.
He doesn’t want to be that man again. But if he has to be. But if someone has to be.
“I don’t expect you to solve—“ ’My troubles.’ ’This mess.’ Or— “What I am.
“Not to say I don’t value your opinion. Only I’m not eager to put this on you, not any more than I’ve already done.” It’s already been too much, hasn’t it? And that’s only the surface of the story. That’s not to list off the number of people he’d slain, and how little he’d cared who they were. That’s not to mention the Outsider.
A pause, another thought, and he shakes his head once, looking once again toward a corner. "It isn't what I want. But the thought remains." The thought. The possibility. He's only. He's only. Going to venture a glance at Ludo, then return his gaze the corner.
no subject
For a brief space of time that could be a heartbeat and could be an eternity, Ludo entertains an uncomfortable thought of his own - one that can't quite be chipped away from his mind, or sanded down to smooth usefulness.
What if there's nothing he can do to help?
There is something he has never confronted before, a uselessness of himself. How a strong back and a sound mind and firm hands might not, in this limited and gutting instance, be of any use. How all the devotion in the world might not be able to summon Daud back from the precipice. What then? Would he follow this man into chaos the way he once followed better men than himself into war, and is it the same thing?
He struggles at that thought, worrying it like a sore tooth.
The answer, what's the answer, how does this knotty problem get worked into something functional? Daud doesn't want the dreadful potential ending that comes from following this path, but the thought remains. (What we so often want is not what we get, and that worries Ludo, too.)
But more focus is required for another question: if Daud isn't asking for his help, if he isn't asking for a solution, what is he seeking tonight? Ludo turns the problem over and over until the light catches it in just the right way, gives sense to its shape. This isn't about solutions. This is a confession, a baring of self. Can you accept this mess I made?
It's such a loaded conversation suddenly. Ludo thought, assumed (feared) that this would be the conversation about eccentricities that ended a sharing of them. The conversation that would be preempted by 'I found a wife', 'my father says-', 'this feels wrong', 'God doesn't allow'. Instead, instead, his chest is tight and his hands have clenched and things are both hopeful and despairing at once. The shape of the problem is not whether Daud will reject, but whether he will reject.
And he doesn't know the solution. The answer to an unspoken question. Does he want, and if he does want, can he accept?
His drink has gone untouched, and he doesn't want it. He doesn't want much right now, except maybe to scrap this project, this work of anti-art, to make it not. To burn it with failed carvings, broken spoons. He wants, he wants -
The way he stands isn't abrupt, or rather it's abrupt for him, not a slow withdrawal from the table but nothing is overturned, nothing jostled. He can't keep sitting, feels too ill at ease, too aware that all I ever wanted is dragging murderer, assassin, killer on its heels. He needs something for his hands, something to help carve and sand and build and create, but isn't looking for anything in particular, not seeing.
Only feeling the heaviness of his own hand and the firmness of the place where it's settled, what kind of tool did he reach for, how many steps away from the other man did he take to find it? Looks down and sees it came to rest on Daud's shoulder, and he didn't move so far away at all, did he?
And the words that follow, there's something in them, none of this has the solidity of craftsmanship. It's all a little adrift, a little too uncertain. But love's not much for tangibility. "If it isn't what you want, that's enough." For now. For me. "Thoughts are only thoughts until you make them more."
He isn't strong enough to turn his back on someone whose strange nature so closely, comfortingly echoes is own. Calls his own. Or maybe it's that he thinks - he could be strong enough to take the bad with the good.