[IC Inbox -- Snowblind]

[heavensreader]

Is it worki - oh. Ahem. This is Kesara Freamon. Please leave your message here and I will call back on you as soon as I can.







Wait, is it still - argh, how do I ma-

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[heavensreader]

[It isn't a lot of information, but Kesara is no burgeoning spy for nothing. Another pause follows as she checks the network, and her facts. Alfie armed the killer; the killer is someone Alfie trusts. Someone House had antagonised over something sensitive; House antagonises everyone, so this, she thinks, must have been a public thing to warrant so extreme a retribution. And someone who had recent opportunity to meet both men. Between the three pieces of evidence, she has one name, though it's a gamble. She knows how much happens in private talks, even on the network.

Well, she will gamble. If she is right, Alfie will be impressed. If she is wrong, she hardly thinks he'll leave her to blame an innocent, and that will be one name off the list.]

It was Duster, wasn't it? Over what House wrote in the obituary. Those obscene things...

[Right or wrong? The tension of wondering keeps her stronger responses at bay, though it feels like holding her breath to do so. Never get angry, never stop thinking. Would Dame Ariel really have said as much even about a murder?]

[devoutish]

Yes.

[He confirms it not so much because he doesn't want her to guess again and blame an innocent, but because he doesn't want to insult her intelligence by refusing to confirm or deny something that she clearly already knows.]

[heavensreader]

[... almost too easy. Now that she has her answer, Kesara has no choice but to decide how she feels about it. Do you grieve for a man who's died three times, and gone to find a fourth?

Stupid, stupid. He is, and she is for staying involved with him. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that Kesara hates more than being made to look stupid.]

What's Duster going to do when he comes back? He came back three times, the luck is on his side. What are you going to do?

cw: references to suicidal ideation in brackets

[devoutish]

I'm not gonna do anything. It wasn't my fight.

[Alfie has threatened House, has started counting up offenses to scare him, and has considered the possibility of doing him some bodily harm someday. But nothing that's happened as made him decide to kill him - especially since he thinks there's a part of House that wants it. He'd armed Royce because he'd wanted him to be well-protected, since he was going in alone - and because he'd respected his decision to go for murder, even if it wasn't a choice he would have made himself at this point.]

And as for Duster, right, I cannot speak for him. But if I had to guess - it's done, from his end. The score is settled.

[It's how Alfie would have felt, and he and Royce really are so much alike - not in every way, but in a lot of them.]

[heavensreader]

You can't settle this score!

[Oh, hellfires. Now she is angry, and it shows. That is not what she wanted. She wanted to keep just as cool as he does. It is terribly frustrating to be eleven sometimes.]

Dr. House, he says and does things because he doesn't care what happens after as long as they hurt. He has every reason to hurt Duster now! And you! What will either of you do next time? All Duster did was show that he can get started!

[devoutish]

Dr. House is not a murderer.

[He's like 99.99% sure of this.]

He talks big, yeah, but he's not like Duster, or me. His game is different.

[heavensreader]

So what if he isn't? He didn't have to murder anyone to hurt Duster bad enough to make him do this - he didn't even have to do anything! You think only guns and knives are dangerous? No, you don't, Mr. Solomons, not you!

[devoutish]

No, I don't.

I do think Duster is hoping he'll pick and pick less now, and I think he may be right. There's a point, right, when words move into guns and knives. Duster decided that that point had been reached. He thought about it, discussed it. It was not rash.

[Which was why Alfie had given his blessing. If Royce had been raging and planning to rush off in the heat of the moment, Alfie would have done his best to stand him down.]

[heavensreader]

Then Duster was a damn fool! What's the use of killing your man here where it's - if he thinks -

[She doesn't have the words to explain - if living hurts more than dying. It's too alien a concept for a sturdy young heart. But she has the sense of it in her gut and it sends the waves of anger up, up and again. She bites her lip and sticks her hands into her hair to try to calm herself down.]

Everyone here is always complaining of how bad things are - and then goes and makes it worse!

[devoutish]

His death wasn't the point. Trying to kill him off, to end him, to bank on him not beating the odds and coming back - no. The point was punishment.

[As far as Alfie knows, anyway.]

[heavensreader]

[Punishment. That is a different perspective. She understands that one a little more clearly. It only calms her a notch, though.]

It isn't going to work - you weren't here before when Dr. House got into all these tight spots. Someone beat him nearly to death before as punishment - ask Miss Angel - and it hasn't changed a thing.

[devoutish]

He doesn't care. Yeah.

I wasn't here, but I've spoken to the man, and that does not surprise me much.

[He'd hoped that this would make House temper himself, but he's not counting on it.]

[heavensreader]

Punishment that doesn't change anything is just revenge.

[They are not her words, and perhaps as much can be heard in her voice. She has never had any need for revenge. The concept is a distant, alien one.]

Did you tell Duster about that? Does he realise? He's not going to get what he wants. No one's getting anything out of this.

[devoutish]

We talked about it. Consequences, what might happen, what might not happen. He chose to do it, and I respect that.

[heavensreader]

[Perhaps he is implying that she should also respect it. She thinks she hears as much. But Kesara’s gut still growls protest. It’s like when Handsome Jack killed Zach, the same feeling, beyond hurt and anger. No right, she thinks, no right…]

I’m going to talk to him. This is ridiculous, Mr. Solomons, we have so much to do and they do that, this is ridiculous. They need, there needs to be – reason.

[devoutish]

He did have reason, yeah? You do not have to like it, you do not have to agree, but he did not do this unthinkingly.

[heavensreader]

No, I don't mean a reason to do it - to murder someone. I mean they need to see reason, both of them, all of them. We're, we're...

[She feels very childish saying this to him, but steels herself and ploughs ahead.] This isn't really a town, Mr. Solomons, this is more like an expedition. And those need order, if anyone at all's to come back alive.

[devoutish]

We'd need somebody in charge for it to be a proper expedition. We'd need order, right. Strict order. But we haven't got the right sort of set-up here for that.

[He doesn't think it would ever work.]

[heavensreader]

[He's right, naturally. When she thinks about it at all, she sees as much, and a small sound of furious frustration escapes her.]

I bet that, back in London, you don't work with people who can't keep strict order. Not in what you do!

[devoutish]

[She isn't wrong. He might work loosely with them, but closely? Never. People who can't control themselves, or control the people under them, are unreliable.

But.]

This isn't London, bubbeleh.

[heavensreader]

This isn't Serindia either. [She had so many good tricks back home...]

But they're men. They're just men. Lao Dian says, anyone that has a brain, belly, and balls, can be caught by one of the three. It takes the right trick, that's all.

[devoutish]

[Kesara, don't talk about balls. He swallows a little sound of surprise and amusement.]

Duster is tricky, yeah. But his way is a bit different from mine, and a bit different from yours.

[heavensreader]

Oah, everyone's a bit different. Lao Dian said that too - that a Chinaman's brains, or belly, or even balls aren't all like an Englishman's. But they're people. Even those who say they're not - I've been watching. I can do people, Mr. Solomons.

[It is all the confidence she has, and she will stand on it all she possibly can.]

[devoutish]

I believe it.

[He can do people too, and she's worlds better at it than he was at her age.]

What do you plan to do about Duster?

[heavensreader]

I'll talk to him first. I'll - I'll try to understand. But... [she's silent for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. She suspects that she knows at least one outcome of that conversation already.]

... but maybe it's Dr. House that I'll have to do something about.