[Open - video]

[eternaliyah]

[Daniel looks tired, dirty, and a little haggard, but otherwise seems fine.]

Hey. Sorry I've been out of the loop for a bit, I was off in the woods.

[...technically true.]

Anyway, I'm around again, and I should be in the city for the a while. Let me know if you need anything.

[Private to Claire]

Hey, did you make it out alright?

Comments

[action]

[radars]

[Tears flow again, but it's the quiet, sweet sort this time. Two million.]

In the next war, the one for Israel, once, I fought in Syria...

[Halting tones, speaking slow, with the half-dream-slur of the newly awakened.]

We were in Damascus, and the decision was made to test a telepathic enhancement device. -- You don't understand, I've hated myself -- It was an accident, but I still -- they burst in the doors, and they had guns, and I just thought stop and I stopped everything. Everything in miles.

Thousands of people, I... I thought i would never even the scales. Do you understand?

[Cracked voice, and he turns, to face Israel, shifts around.]

I thought I would never...

[And to think that he already had.]

[action]

[eternaliyah]

I understand.

[It's sort of a lie. Nations - with the ever-fascinating exception of Germany - aren't really capable of true self-loathing. But it makes sense, in an intellectual way.]

You have done great things, achi. And perhaps also a terrible one, but that does not make you terrible.

[action]

[radars]

[Charles closes his eyes. It's dark now, and he thinks of gas lamps and flickering lights in the old, creaky mansion.]

Maybe someday I'll believe that.

[He means it, this time. He's never really thought redemption was possible. And this is a little dawning, a crack of light over the horizon.]

[action]

[eternaliyah]

[Daniel hugs him gently around the middle, murmurs,]

Continents move slowly.

[Because - yes. That kind of fundamental shift, the staggering difficulty of accepting it, that he understands.]

[action]

[radars]

[He wonders if this is what it's like having a lover. The easy acceptance of physical contact, without the constant focus on hold back, hold back, don't read. He wants to relax and drift in Israel's embrace, without thinking, which is a truly tectonic shift from his usual attitude, and it all happened so fast.

The attraction isn't sexual, though. He's only felt that sort of desire as a tentative, prickling thing; this is as different from that as a stream is to the Atlantic. Like watching trickling water against seeing the stretch of gray-green-blue all the way to the horizon.

He lets out a long breath and reluctantly, slowly pulls free.]

Thank you.

[action]

[eternaliyah]

You're always welcome.

[It's the way of history, slow grinding processions that can be shattered and steamrolled overnight, when events and truth and power come together just so, and then the world is different.]