Work Text:
JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Fucking Moralintern." The mutter is quiet enough that it stays with the cluster of Precinct 41 officers and doesn't carry up to Pryce.
THE AEROSTATIC LOADING BAY - Pryce is standing up ahead of your group, speaking with the Moralintern representative. One of the flight attendants hovers a few steps away, waiting for a chance to interrupt. Behind this group, the aerostatic craft perches in the loading bay, doors open, waiting for you and the rest of C-wing to board.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - Waiting to take all of you into the pale.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - It's not too late - you can still get out of this.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry, walking next to you and behind Jean, cranes his neck and leans sideways a little, trying to keep a line of sight to Pryce.
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Formidable: Failure] - Trying to read his lips, maybe?
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - Or his body language.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - "We could do all of this over radio," he goes on in a low hiss. "Or send one poor fuck to represent all of us. Instead C-wing's going to be under-staffed for two weeks so we can, what, talk to MI flunkies in person about entroponetic theories that none of us understand?"
LIEUTENANT [Easy: Success] - He's not wrong about C-wing being understaffed.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - He's not wrong about any of it. You would be of significantly more use to Revachol doing your job, not going to Sur-la-Clef to talk before a Moralintern committee.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - It would make more sense to just send one RCM officer who'd had a first-hand encounter with the swallow along with the entroponetic experts.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Well, maybe the shitkid understands them." He half turns so he can fire over his shoulder at Harry, "Maybe that's why Pryce is making the rest of us come along instead of just sending you - so that there's someone to stop you from embarrassing the RCM in front of half the fucking committee."
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - If Pryce has any kind of sense or investment in the wellbeing of his officers, he'll know that the bigger danger is sending Harry through the pale alone, not sending Harry to the committee alone.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] - The official guidelines on pale exposure state that civilian travelers are in no danger of long-term side effects from pale exposure as long as they take trips of six hours or less at a time and stay below the legal limit of six days of exposure per year.
ENCYCLOPEDIA - But the factors that contribute to pale-related side effects are complex and highly individual. Even highly mentally resilient people can falter when facing down the absence of matter that's eating away at the world.
HARRY DU BOIS - Next to you, Harry is frowning at nothing in particular with the kind of absent, vague expression that you've learned often precedes him saying something like "we should go investigate that dumpster, Kim, that cat told me strange people have been poking around in it recently."
JEAN VICQUEMARE - Seeing that Harry's not going to respond to his jab, Jean snorts and returns to facing forward, resuming his muttered diatribe against the MI.
VOLTA DO MAR - You wish the committee had let Harry testify over the radio.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's face is still a little blank. Then he blinks, coming back to himself.
YOU -
- "Something on your mind, detective?"
- "Something on your mind, Harry?"
- Let it go.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry says, a speculative tone to his voice, "Kim, do you think the Moralintern wants to hear about the anodic dance club we started?
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - We?
YOU -
- "No, I don't."
- "That seems unlikely."
HARRY DU BOIS - "Because I think the mystery of how an old Arno Van Eyck tape got tangled in the branches of a hawthorn tree is something that really merits the MI's attention."
CONNECTION [Challenging: Success] - He says it so earnestly that you almost think he's serious, but you catch the little glimmer in his eyes at the last possible moment.
YOU -
- Be serious.
- Play along.
YOU - "Perhaps the only mystery of Martinaise that we didn't manage to solve, while we were there."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry lets out a bark of laughter.
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - Your voice is dry, but Harry heard the amusement in it just fine.
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - It's been a while since you've worked with anyone who understood your sense of humor.
TENDERHEARTED [Easy: Success] - It's - nice.
HARRY DU BOIS - He grins at you. "And that one door that wouldn't open. Don't think I've forgotten about that one, Kim."
COMPOSURE [Legendary: Success] - You turn back towards the aerostatic so he won't see the answering smile trying to make its way onto your own face.
YOU - "I wouldn't dream of it," you tell him, but you find your amusement fading as you say it. The sight of the aerostatic has reminded you of what's waiting for you.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - And for Harry.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's gaze follows yours. He squints at the aerostatic. "I don't think I've ever been on an aerostatic before."
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - A little uncertain, a little curious.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Have - hey, do you think that's the pilot?"
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Challenging: Failure] - At this distance, you have no clue which of the cluster of aerostatic operatives he's looking at, let alone which one would be the pilot.
HARRY DU BOIS - "I bet he knows a lot of interesting things," Harry goes on speculatively. Without waiting for a response, he breaks into a jog, veering off towards the probably-pilot.
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - Not a good idea to interrogate people about the nature of the pale right before you travel through it. Dwelling on the inevitable end of all things? Not a great way to start off your pale exposure.
WILLPOWER [Challenging: Success] - Can't he wait until afterwards? Does it have to be right now?
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - Are you actually surprised by this? Harry's hardly one to leave interesting mysteries for a later date. And he's been interested in the pale for as long as you've known him.
ADRENALINE [Easy: Success] - Too interested. Stop him.
YOU -
- Stop him.
- Let him go.
- Go with him.
YOU - "Detective, save it for later," you tell him. "We should board and prepare for departure."
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim, this is a priceless opportunity for knowledge," he protests. "You never know when a working understanding of aerostatics will be useful for one of our cases!"
PURSUIT [Easy: Success] - Harry does not think this will be useful for one of your cases; he's just curious. You know the way he gets: he's seen something new and interesting, so now he wants to crack it open and dig his fingers into the guts of it until he understands how it all fits together.
FOCUS [Medium: Success] - He always tries this, as if you can't tell the difference between Harry on the case and Harry chasing butterflies.
PURSUIT [Medium: Success] - Does it matter if it's relevant to your work or not? Harry's instinct for secrets is second to none. Let him untangle them. You like solving them too.
FOCUS - They're a distraction.
ADRENALINE - Let's solve irrelevant mysteries about something other than the pale.
HARRY DU BOIS - He takes advantage of your moment's hesitation to say, "Just give me five minutes," as if you haven't seen him interrogate people all across Jamrock by this point.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - It always takes longer than five minutes.
HARRY DU BOIS - But he's already taken off towards the maybe-pilot.
YOU -
- Let him go.
- Go with him.
YOU - You jog after him, falling into step behind him shortly before reaching the aerostatic attendants.
HARRY DU BOIS - He doesn't look behind him.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - But he knows you're there.
LIEUTENANT [Challenging: Success] - He expected you to follow him.
THE ATTENDANTS - Harry doesn't end up approaching anyone pilot-like at all, but the two attendants furthest from the passenger disembarkment area. They look up as Harry approaches them. They, unlike most of their peers, don't look busy; one of them, a taller Mesque man, is smoking a cigarette, and the other, a shorter Occidental woman, is drinking what looks like coffee, probably from the carafe in the aerostatic.
THE FEMALE ATTENDANT - Clearly sensing that Harry is about to interrupt their break, the female attendant speaks before Harry can: "If you have any questions about the trip, Charles - the attendant by the loading doors - will be happy to answer them for you."
THE MALE ATTENDANT - The male attendant adds unnecessarily, "We're on break. A very short break."
INSIGHT [Trivial: Success] - So please don't bother us.
HARRY DU BOIS - "I see, I see," Harry says, stroking his chin. "Are your breaks usually very short? In these decades after the decline of Mazovian thought, there's a sad rise in employers exploiting their workers." He shakes his head. "Are you part of a union?"
YOU - For fuck's sake.
THE ATTENDANTS - They stare at him.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - Presumably wondering why this lunatic is talking to them about unionizing.
THE MALE ATTENDANT - The male attendant makes the wise choice to not try to engage with Harry on Mazovian politics. He says, "Sir, was there something you wanted?"
THE FEMALE ATTENDANT - The female attendant sees her chance and takes it. She tips back her cup, chugs the rest of her coffee, and says, "Better get back to work," and escapes, heading back towards the aerostatic.
THE MALE ATTENDANT - The male attendant watches her go.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - Goddammit, he thinks.
THE MALE ATTENDANT - He looks from Harry to his cigarette and back again.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - He doesn't particularly want to talk to Harry either, but he'd have to put out his cigarette if he was going to pretend to go back to work. Plus, he'd have to find someone else to fob the two of you off on.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry can sense his grip on his witness weakening and promptly moves to reassert control over the conversation. "How long have you worked on this aerostatic?"
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - Listening to Harry interrogate someone occasionally reminds you of watching pinball: he ricochets from topic to topic with no apparent connection between them.
REACTION SPEED [Formidable: Failure] - It means you don't realize what he's driving at, as he zig-zags his way through his conversation with the attendant, until he arrives, and so you don't get a chance to cut him off.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Have you experienced side effects?" he asks, still in that easy, friendly way of is. "From pale exposure, I mean."
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - Time to wrap this conversation up.
YOU -
- [AUTHORITY - Legendary] "Detective. We should board the aerostatic."
- "I'm getting on the aerostatic. Are you coming?"
- Keep quiet and keep listening.
AUTHORITY [Legendary: Success] - "Detective," you say, and Harry's gaze snaps instantly to your face at the tone in your voice. "We should board the aerostatic."
THE MALE ATTENDANT - He takes the opening you've given him. He stubs out his cigarette, says, "Charles will be happy to assist you if you have any further questions," and flees.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry lets him go. He's not watching him anymore; he's studying your face instead. "Sure, Kim," he says.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - You rarely shut down Harry's tangents this forcefully. He trusts you have a good reason for it, but he's wondering what that reason is.
SURVIVOR [Medium: Success] - He's wondering whether there's a danger here he's missed.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - Oh, there is. Harry's just never taken the threat of the pale seriously.
LIEUTENANT [Easy: Success] - So tell him that. He's your partner; he's trusting you to alert him to a danger he's overlooked.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - Thinking about the pale can make it worse. It may be better not to mention it to him, and just try to keep him distracted on the journey.
ACE [Formidable: Success] - There's no graceful way to say that you're concerned he's not mentally resilient enough to manage the pale exposure.
PURSUIT [Easy: Success] - If he thinks there's something you're not telling him, he's going to want to know what it is. He's a detective; he thinks all secrets ought to be his to uncover.
YOU -
- [COMPOSURE: Legendary] "We shouldn't hold up the rest of the group."
- "As ironic as it may sound, thinking about the pale can increase your risk of damage from pale exposure. Try to focus on something else for the time being."
- "Trust me on this one for now, Harry. I'll explain later."
COMPOSURE [Legendary: Success] - "We shouldn't hold up the rest of the group." Your voice comes out calm and normal.
HARRY DU BOIS - "That would be rude of us, huh." He's still watching you.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - There's a trace of irony in his voice. He knows that's not actually what you're worried about.
COMPOSURE - But he's not getting any information on the real reason from your expression.
HARRY DU BOIS - He flashes you a quick smile and says, "We should hurry and catch up, then."
C-WING - Vicquemare, Trant, and Minot have caught up to Pryce and are clustered by the doors to board. You and Harry have fallen behind during your conversation.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry bumps his shoulder lightly against yours and then takes off towards them at a jog.
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - Letting the matter go, at least for now.
YOU - You follow him.
#
THE AEROSTATIC - The aerostatic is small for an aerostatic, but its size is impressive, nonetheless: the navy blue of the rigid scaffolding and the white swell of the balloon tower above you as you enter. Inside, the crisp metal skeleton is softened with carpet, insulation, and wallpaper, but you spent long enough building model aerostatics in your childhood that you can recognize the lines of it. Visually, it bears no resemblance to the old revolutionary aerostatics, but the bones are, if not precisely the same, a distant cousin to the ones you're more familiar with.
THE INTERIOR OF THE AEROSTATIC - It's just big enough for a passenger lounge in addition to the crew spaces and the cargo area, which is where you and the other members of C-wing are led to. The lounge has a number of tables with chairs, black leather couches, and cream-colored armchairs clustered around them. There's an open bar.
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - It's a carefully curated aura of luxury, but you know to look for the bolts holding all the furniture to the floor, the safety brochures tucked away by every table, the seatbelts tucked below some of the more precariously located chairs. There are no windows.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Trivial: Success] - Looking at the pale directly is not advisable if you want to emerge on the other end sane.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's surveying the area with interest. "Have you ever been on an aerostatic before, Kim?"
YOU - "No, I haven't," you say. You've never left Revachol before.
HARRY DU BOIS - A smile. He's looking back at you now. "Even with all your aerostatic pilot sines?" He hooks two fingers into a fold in your jacket and tugs lightly.
AUTHORITY [Formidable: Success] - He's teasing you. Shut him down or he'll think he can do it all the time.
YOU -
- Stare pointedly at the fingers touching your jacket.
- "Yes, even with all my aerostatic pilot 'sines,' as you say."
- "Please stop taking vocabulary lessons from delinquents."
- Cough and change the subject.
HARRY DU BOIS - He laughs and lets go. "Okay, okay." His gaze returns to the lounge before you.
C-WING - The rest of C-wing is gravitating around a larger table towards the front of the lounge.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry has a tendency to treat any new unfamiliar location like a crime scene that he needs to investigate in utmost detail, so it doesn't surprise you in the slightest that he ignores the table with C-wing entirely and instead sets off on a meandering journey around the lounge.
YOU -
- Follow him.
- Go sit with the rest of C-wing.
HARRY DU BOIS - He makes a beeline straight for the nearest couch and fishes out the safety brochure, reading through it.
YOU - You lean over his shoulder, enough to be able to see the header of the first flap.
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - 'The Volta Do Mar Technique.'
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy: Success] - Volta do Mar, Saramizian for 'Return from the Sea,' a psychological technique for navigating the pale.
VOLTA DO MAR [Trivial: Success] - As you know very well.
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - Do you still remember the mantras? You do, don't you; memorizing the poems the sailors used in their journeys to the Insulindian isola, dreaming about the orange aerostatic pilot's jacket that was far too big for you at the time?
ACE [Medium: Success] - It sits snug against your shoulders now. Still, you should have worn a different jacket and left this one at home. A revolutionary aerostatic pilot's bomber jacket is cool in most circumstances, but not in the company of actual aerostatic pilots.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - No. Whether these people know it or not, it's a sign of the work you've put in to come this far. You know how to set your course and stick to it - how to navigate in uncertain waters. It's brought you this far; one trip through the pale is nothing.
ADRENALINE [Easy: Success] - Nothing to you, maybe.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's face is distant. Vacant. Thinking, or arguing with himself, or remembering - you're never sure where he goes, when he's like this.
INSTINCT [Trivial: Success] - Call him back. Best to keep him focused on reality right now.
YOU -
- "Detective?"
- "Harry?"
- Say nothing.
HARRY DU BOIS - He blinks, eyes refocusing on the brochure. "Kim, do you know much about the Voltas?"
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - Make him stop thinking about the pale!
LOGIC [Trivial: Success] - Harry thinking about techniques to alleviate pale exposure can only be a good thing.
YOU -
- "A little. They're part of the standard school curriculum. You probably studied them too."
- "A fair amount. I read a lot of books on aerostatic travel when I was younger."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry squints at the brochure.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - It's the expression he wears right before he asks questions like 'What are books?'
YOU - "It's a psychological technique for navigating through the pale. Reciting them helps keep your mind off the pale and on other things."
HARRY DU BOIS - He's still frowning at the brochure. "Seems like a pretty high bar for some weird poetry to clear. Like being told not to think about chartreuse elephants."
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Medium: Failure] - Why chartreuse?
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Failure] - You have no idea what color chartreuse even is.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - The chartreuse is not the point.
HARRY DU BOIS - He's still talking. "I thought they were going to do more to prepare us than... brochures." He gestures with it; the plastic of it makes a loud flapping noise.
SURVIVOR [Easy: Success] - So did you. You don't like that they don't seem to be planning to.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - There's still time to get off the ship!
FOCUS [Formidable: Success] - No. You're here because you have a job to do.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - The trip is short and you'll be as protected as possible in the interior of the aerostatic. Maybe they don't believe true preparation is necessary.
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - Not necessary for you and most of C-wing, maybe - but for the man with amnesia? The one who's already highly sensitive to the past, to flights of fancy, to -
REACTION SPEED [Challenging: Failure] - You've been quiet for a moment too long.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's watching you now.
INSIGHT [Formidable: Failure] - You're not sure what he's thinking. You don't quite recognize the look on his face.
YOU -
- [COMPOSURE: Legendary] Pick the thread of the conversation back up and sound completely normal.
(-2 Harry knows something's up.)
- "Yes. I did too."
COMPOSURE [Legendary: Success] - "Perhaps, because our time in the air will only be an hour or so, they don't believe it's necessary," you say, voice even and calm.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Or maybe they're waiting for more people to board first," Harry says, studying the rest of the lounge. "There should be more people than this - shouldn't there?"
LOGIC [Formidable: Failure] - Hard to tell. Maybe. It can't be good for business to run flights with less than a full passenger load. Still...
YOU - "Maybe. Or maybe there's not enough people regularly making inter-isolary trips to fill the lounge. Traveling through the pale is..."
HARRY DU BOIS - "It makes people nervous."
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - It sure does!
YOU - "Yes."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry nods. He's watching you again. Something about it makes the hair on the back of your neck rise. You're used to watching him observe the world from behind his shoulder; you're less used to the full force of his scrutiny turned on you directly.
ADRENALINE [Easy: Success] - He's can-opening you. That's what that look is. Make him stop, that should only be for suspects.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - No, he's not. Can-opening involves a lot more questions.
COMPOSURE [Formidable: Success] - But he's figured something out that you didn't intend him to know anyway. Despite all your best efforts. He knows you too well.
YOU -
- Hold his gaze and raise an eyebrow.
- Look away and change the subject.
YOU - It's a relief to stop meeting his eyes. "We should rejoin the rest of the group."
HARRY DU BOIS - "You go ahead," Harry says. His voice is easy, casual; the moment passes. "I'm gonna poke around a bit more." He pauses, for a moment, for no identifiable reason you can see.
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - He tucks the brochure into some inner pocket in his patrol cloak instead of putting it back.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - Like the magpie that he is.
HARRY DU BOIS - Then he turns and wanders away, following one of the strange, seemingly-senseless wobbling paths that you've grown so used to following him down.
VOLTA DO MAR [Legendary: Failure] - You feel off-balance, but you're not sure why.
YOU - You turn to join the rest of C-wing.
HARRY DU BOIS - Behind you, you hear Harry say, "You must be Charles! I've been told you're the person to ask if I have questions."
YOU - You slip quietly into the edges of the group of C-Wing officers.
C-WING - Minot smiles at you when you join them; Vicquemare nods once. Heidelstam is talking, rapidly and animatedly, about the history of aerostatics to Pryce, who is either interested or putting on a good facade of it. Minot is listening politely; Vicquemare isn't pretending to listen at all.
C-WING - Harry, if he was here, would be listening with real interest. Harry has an endless amount of patience for conversation: he has a knack for asking the right encouraging question at the right moment to coax people onwards.
LIEUTENANT [Medium: Success] - It's part of what makes him such a good interrogator.
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - You haven't looked behind you yet, but you know without having to that he's doing it right now, to Charles the attendant.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - Vicquemare rummages through his pockets and comes up with a pack of cigarettes. He lights up and then, glancing across the circle, raises his eyebrows at you, holding up the pack.
WILLPOWER [Challenging: Success] - Not yet.
YOU - You smile but shake your head.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - He migrates around the edge of the cluster until he's standing next to you anyway. "Sure you don't want one? We're all going to die young anyway, might as well enjoy the little pleasures in life along the way."
INSIGHT [Legendary: Failure] - You never know how seriously to take gallows humor among your colleagues. Harry's prone to it too on occasion.
YOU -
- "The life expectancy of the RCM isn't quite that bad."
- "Still, I live in hope."
JEAN VICQUEMARE - He snorts.
CONNECTION [Easy: Success] - He can hear how dry your tone is just fine.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - "You an optimist, Kitsuragi?"
YOU -
- "Not typically, no."
- "Don't we all have to be, sometimes?"
JEAN VICQUEMARE - "Hard to be one, in this line of work. Hard to stay one."
INSIGHT [Legendary: Failure] - A series of emotions flicker across his face, too fast for you to make sense of.
COMPOSURE [Medium: Success] - Then his face smooths over, back to his baseline of neutral-annoyed.
YOU -
- Ask about it.
- Let it go.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - Vicquemare takes another drag of his cigarette, glances over his shoulder, and then mutters, "What's the shitkid doing now?"
HARRY DU BOIS - You turn and see Harry gesticulating emphatically at Charles the attendant.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - From Harry's posture, and Charles's? It's not going well.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - That off-balance feeling from earlier? Here's what it is: you should be over there with him.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - You don't have to be. You're not working a case here, even if Harry can't ever turn off his detective's instincts.
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - You've never let that stop you for any of Harry's tangents before.
LIEUTENANT [Legendary: Success] - And, when you're being honest with yourself, you know you don't intend for that to change anytime soon. You wouldn't want it to.
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - You still don't want to interrogate people about the pale right now. It's dangerous.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - Is that really why you're here and not with him? It's worse for Harry to be investigating it on his own, surely.
LOGIC [Medium: Success] - So go ask Harry not to. He'll listen to you.
PURSUIT [Easy: Success] - Will he? He's on the trail of something now, though you can't quite tell what.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - He will. He trusts you. You saw it earlier, didn't you?
YOU -
- "I'll go see if the detective... needs assistance."
- Leave Harry be.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - Vicquemare's face looks faintly like he's swallowed a lemon.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - Better you than me.
YOU - But he doesn't say it, so you don't feel obligated to respond to it. You just nod to him and step away.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry, when you cross the room, is leaning so far into Charles the attendant's space that he looks likely to fall over in a moment. "Look, I know you're bullshitting me, and you know you're bullshitting me, so why not just -"
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - Charles the attendant is blank-faced, visibly unimpressed with this line of attack.
YOU - You clear your throat as you slide into place next to Harry. "Everything all right, detective?"
HARRY DU BOIS - "Oh, we're just talking about pale overexposure," Harry says.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - Shit.
CHARLES THE ATTENDANT - "And as I've told your colleague," Charles says - to you, clearly hoping you'll be the voice of reason - "It's impossible to get over-exposed on a trip as short as this one."
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - Not completely accurate, but he wants Harry to go away.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - Harry's perfectly aware that he's being given a line; it's why he's pushing Charles on it.
PURSUIT [Medium: Success] - It's not the angle you would have picked. Charles, unlike the two attendants you spoke to earlier, is the designated representative to speak with customers; it's his job to explain to anxious customers why they're not in danger from the pale.
CHARLES THE ATTENDANT - "If you'll read the safety brochure, you'll see that since the trip lasts less than three hours, all the research agrees that you're in absolutely no danger."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's not looking at Charles. He's eying you sidelong instead.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - Something in his posture shifts; he leans back a little. He's changing approaches.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Oh, yes, I've read the brochure," Harry says airily. "I just found the section on symptoms of pale exposure lacking, that's all. Maybe you could take me through them? Since you're the expert, after all."
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - Is going into this a good idea?
LOGIC [Medium: Success] - It wouldn't be bad knowledge for you to have. Just in case.
CHARLES THE ATTENDANT - He likes the flattery, but it's not enough to make up for Harry pushing him earlier. "It's not relevant, officer, because the trip is too short."
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - His customer service voice is good, but not quite good enough to hide the exasperation.
HARRY DU BOIS - "But I'm a detective, you see," Harry explains. "It's my job to collect information when I have the opportunity - isn't that right, Kim?"
LIEUTENANT [Medium: Success] - An opening. He thinks it'll be easier to convince the man that he has every intention of pestering him until he gets a satisfactory answer if you do the convincing instead of him.
CONNECTION [Easy: Success] - And he's right. You know exactly how you'd do it, too.
YOU -
- [INSIGHT: Legendary] How serious is he about this question?
- [CONNECTION: Medium] Play along.
( 1 - Harry's set up an opening for you.)
- Don't play along.
INSIGHT [Legendary: Success] - Not as serious as he could be, but it's not idle curiosity, either.
YOU -
- [CONNECTION: Medium] Play along.
( 1 - Harry's set up an opening for you.)
- Don't play along.
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - You sigh, louder and more obviously than you usually would let yourself. "Detective, I know you know the difference between collecting case-relevant information and interrogating everyone you meet."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's eyes are dancing, but he keeps the smile off his face. "But think of how much interesting information I'd miss, if I actually only ever asked relevant things," he says, sounding wounded.
YOU - "I don't suppose I can convince you to just come back to the - No. Of course I can't. Tell me when you're ready to join the rest of the group, please." It's easy to sound tired. Maybe too easy.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's eyes flick to yours. Sharp, now, no longer dancing. "This won't take long," he says.
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - A little bit for the attendant's benefit, but mostly for yours.
COMPOSURE [Legendary: Success] - You are aware, once again, that Harry has picked up on something that you did not intend him to.
HARRY DU BOIS - "So," Harry says to the attendant, "about that pale overexposure."
YOU - You listen. You don't take notes because it would undercut your aura of exasperated impatience, but you regret it when you actually hear the list of symptoms. The list is short, but unnerving: dissociation, hallucinations, fixation with the pale, fixation with the past.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - Sound like anyone you know?
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - Fuck.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Thanks, this is helpful," Harry tells Charles when he finishes.
CHARLES THE ATTENDANT - "If that's all, then?" Charles says.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry nods to him and then wanders away. Less purposefully than normal; from the absent expression on his face, you can tell he's thinking.
INSIGHT [Legendary: Failure] - Or gone somewhere else. Dissociating. Can you really tell the difference, with him?
COMPOSURE [Heroic: Success] - Don't overreact. You've not even taken off, yet; don't start evaluating him for symptoms yet.
PURSUIT [Medium: Success] - Still, it's a question worth asking, isn't it? With that symptom list, the amnesia, the way Harry was when you first met him...
YOU -
- [INSTINCT: Legendary] Had Harry recently been exposed to the pale when you first met him in Martinaise?
- "Worried about pale overexposure, detective?"
- Steer Harry back towards the rest of C-wing.
INSTINCT [Legendary: Failure] - Who knows? Not you.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - He could have been exposed via the swallow, in the church. But nobody else showed symptoms of exposure from it, and nobody said that Harry had been there during his bender. There's no logical way to be certain, only probabilities you can guess at.
INSTINCT - You try to listen to some gut impulse, residing deeper in your body, to answer, but you hear only silence.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim? You look very thoughtful." He's come back to himself and is watching you.
YOU -
- "Do you think you've ever been overexposed, Harry?"
- "Worried about pale overexposure, detective?"
- Steer Harry back towards the rest of C-wing.
YOU - "Worried about pale overexposure, detective?"
HARRY DU BOIS - "Maybe," Harry says, and then amends himself immediately to, "Not really." He hesitates for a beat, and then says, "I'm not sure how well Jean will handle the trip."
REACTION SPEED [Medium: Success] - You manage to stop the knee-jerk instinct to turn to look for Vicquemare.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry goes on, "He dwells in the past a lot."
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - Around Harry especially.
HARRY DU BOIS - "And he's too stubborn to read the Volta do Mar pamphlets, even though Trant said he should."
LOGIC [Godly: Failure] - He must be paying closer attention to the group of C-Wing officers than you thought he was.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - You aren't worried about Vicquemare. Fixation with the past or no, he doesn't hit most of the symptom list for pale exposure, and it is a short trip.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Failure] - You try to recall whether pale travel guidelines change for individuals with a history of overexposure, but you draw a blank.
HARRY DU BOIS - "What about you, Kim?"
REACTION SPEED [Challenging: Failure] - You were lost in thought for a moment too long.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's watching you now, once again. "Are you worried about pale exposure?"
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - He phrased it as a question, but you can tell from his voice that it's the kind of question where he's pretty sure he knows the answer already.
AUTHORITY [Formidable: Success] - You shift, putting your shoulders back and your hands behind your back, settling into a carefully professional posture.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - What does it matter if Harry knows you're uneasy?
CONNECTION [Legendary: Failure] - How could you begin to explain it to him? Can you even explain it to yourself?
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - Harry asking Joyce question after question about the Pale. Harry circling the swallow in the church and speaking with Soona about it with authority.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - And that's not even getting into -
FOCUS [Formidable: Success] - Stop. This isn't helping.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's watching you with those shrewd eyes of his. He opens his mouth to speak.
LIEUTENANT [Formidable: Success] - You like to use silence to your advantage in interrogations: people feel compelled to fill it. It's not Harry's tactic of choice, though; he always pushes the suspect.
HARRY DU BOIS - What comes out of his mouth is, "Have you ever had shin splints, Kim?"
REACTION SPEED [Trivial: Success] - What?
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - It's not what he meant to say. You can see it in the immediate little crease of his brow. It's the face he makes when he misfires, as you tend to think of it; when a wire gets crossed somewhere in his brain and the wrong words come out of his mouth.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - The inner workings of Harry's mind are never transparent to you except, perhaps, for these moments. You can see the tape spinning on empty in his mind. He's never sure how to recover from them. Eventually he always just barrels ahead.
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - There's an escape hatch there if you need one.
YOU -
- Answer the original question.
- Run with the change of topic.
- [CONCEPTUALIZATION: Impossible] First, try to figure out what leap of logic brought him to this point.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Impossible: Failure] - I've got nothing for you. The inside of Harry's head is, as always, a fucking mystery.
YOU -
- Answer the original question.
- Run with the change of topic.
YOU - You say, "No, Detective, I have never had shin splints before."
HARRY DU BOIS - "I thought not," Harry says.
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - But you can hear in his voice that he's still not satisfied.
HARRY DU BOIS - He's still considering you.
YOU -
- Raise an eyebrow at him. "What?"
- "Are you done interrogating our attendants and casing the lounge yet?"
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry doesn't answer immediately, just keeps studying you.
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - Harry's a difficult person to steer.
HARRY DU BOIS - Then he smiles, posture easing, and says, "Done interrogating, yes. Done casing the lounge? When there are still containers left to open? You wound me, Kim."
YOU - You sigh, but some of the tension in your shoulders eases, too.
THE INTERIOR OF THE AEROSTATIC - There's not much to see, in the lounge, but what there is, Harry sees. He stumbles across his best discovery while you are sharing a long-suffering look with Minot: a pair of neon pink children's sunglasses with kittens on them, which he promptly shoves onto his own nose.
THE NEON PINK SUNGLASSES - They're too small on him. One of the arms bends out of shape and, improbably, doesn't break.
YOU - You resign yourself to the eventuality of him wearing them during a murder investigation.
WILLPOWER [Heroic: Failure] - Sure. Why not. At least Harry crowing over his new sunglasses is better than Harry interrogating the bartender about the pale.
THE INTERIOR OF THE AEROSTATIC - Casing the lounge takes longer than you'd expected, even for Harry's normal level of thoroughness. It keeps him, and you by extension, busy up until takeoff, at which point you have to sit down and stop looking the other way while Harry fishes spare change out of every seat cushion he passes. (It's more of a relief than anything.)
CONNECTION [Easy: Success] - You'd expected to return to sit with the rest of C-wing at that point, but Harry just drops into the nearest chair and glances up expectantly at you.
YOU -
- Sit with him.
- Rejoin the others.
- "Not going to rejoin the others?"
HARRY DU BOIS - "Nah. If Jean does have a hard time of it, having to look at my face during it is only gonna make it worse."
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - He almost succeeds in sounding completely casual about it.
YOU -
- "Detective -"
- "Harry -"
- Say nothing.
HARRY DU BOIS - "It's fine, Kim," he says. He flashes you that godawful grimace of his and a pair of finger guns.
INSIGHT [Trivial: Success] - It is not fine.
YOU -
- [CONNECTION: Formidable] Try and cheer him up.
- Just let it go, the way he clearly wants.
YOU - Instead of saying anything, you sit in the seat next to him.
THE AEROSTATIC - As you do, the aerostatic rumbles beneath you, more movement than sound, as it lifts off.
ADRENALINE [Easy: Success] - It sends a sick jolt through you. Too late to get off or do any more preparation from here.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy: Success] - From this point on, the rotors will gradually cause the aerostatic to pick up speed until it enters the pale, at which point the aerostatic will rely on helium and momentum for its movement.
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - How was it Joyce described it to Harry - like throwing the aerostatic into the pale?
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - Like darts at a dartboard.
HISTORY - And if not aimed correctly...
HARRY DU BOIS - "Hey, Kim."
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Trivial: Success] - He's studying the brochure he picked up earlier.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Do you know what intergrade means?"
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Failure] - You do not.
YOU -
- "Why do you ask?"
- "I do not."
HARRY DU BOIS - "Hm," Harry says, and returns to scrutinizing the brochure. His face has gone a little distant again.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - Be worried!
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - You need to calm down. Harry does this too often to stress about it each time he does it.
ADRENALINE [Easy: Success] - Can he at least hold off until you're through the pale? What if the pale starts affecting him, and you're not even able to tell?
LOGIC [Formidable: Failure] - For all that you understand Harry's reasoning around sitting apart from the rest of C-wing, you can't help but think that it might have been better for one of the others to be here with him instead. They've known him longer than you have, after all. They'd be better able to tell if something's wrong than you will.
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - Not that you can blame Vicquemare for not wanting to see Harry and be reminded of - well, all of it. Harry's self-destructive spiral sending him hurtling towards oblivion; the memory loss that caused him to forget his partner's face and name - it can't have been easy to watch.
TENDERHEARTED [Challenging: Success] - The aftermath hasn't always been easy for you to watch, and you didn't know Harry before the amnesia. It's -
FOCUS [Formidable: Success] - Don't get distracted. How close are you to the pale? You'll need to start the Volta do Mar, soon.
YOU - You wait, without knowing what you're waiting for, until -
PERCEPTION (Hearing) [Trivial: Success] - The sound of the rotor vanishes. Quiet sinks down around you like a blanket, or cotton stuffed into your ears.
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - Like the swallow in the church.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - You're in the pale, now.
PERCEPTION (Hearing) [Challenging: Success] - It takes you a moment, but you can hear your own breathing still, at least, though it's dull and muffled.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - The pale is not in the aerostatic with you. You have the protection, frail as it may be, of the skeleton of the aircraft around you, protecting you.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - Protecting you from the void. From the nothingness.
FOCUS [Legendary: Success] - Stop. That isn't helping.
YOU -
- [ENCYCLOPEDIA: Formidable] - Recite the voltas to yourself, just as you studied them.
( 2 You remember them.)
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Formidable: Success] - You remember a number of Volta mantras. You memorized them as a child, thought about them earlier, even saw a glimpse of one on the brochure Harry was reading. It's not hard to recite them to yourself.
YOU - Your lips move silently around the words. Nulla sarà cambiato della luce! Colori come grigio e marrone.
PERCEPTION (Hearing) [Trivial: Success] - But mouthing them like that does nothing to distract you from the strange, muffled quality of the air around you. The lack of sound.
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - Like in the swallow. Sound gone dim around you. Harry's lips moving, but you could barely hear what he was saying until he shouted.
REACTION SPEED [Medium: Success] - Hey, speaking of your partner, you should check on him.
YOU -
- Check on Harry.
- [FOCUS: Heroic] - Stay focused on the voltas. Keep the words at the front of your mind. Don't think about anything else.
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
HARRY DU BOIS - His gaze is blank again. Distant.
INSIGHT [Heroic: Failure] - You have no clue what he's thinking about. Where he's gone.
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - You should -
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - It reminds you of talking to the Paledriver in Martinaise, so vividly you could be back there, now. The shouts of the scabs in the background, the cold winter air biting at your face. It was dark, and a woman with very pale hair and a blank, distant expression was looking past you and your partner. Harry's face had a little of that same blankness, looking at her. You said, "We should go."
PERCEPTION (Hearing) [Challenging: Success] - "This is weird, huh."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's voice. He's leaning towards you and speaking louder than usual to pierce through the weight of the silence. His gaze is alert again and focused on you.
YOU -
- [COMPOSURE: Godly] "An expected side-effect of traveling through the pale, I presume."
- "Yes, it is."
- [INSIGHT: Formidable] "Are you holding up alright?"
COMPOSURE [Godly: Success] - "An expected side-effect of traveling through the pale, I presume," you say. Your voice is calm and steady.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Like with the swallow," Harry guesses. "I would have thought the actual pale to sound more like the -" and then he makes a "brrrRRRM" sound that's clearly meant to mimic the sound you'd heard from Soona's microphones.
REACTION SPEED [Challenging: Failure] - The urge to smile at him comes swiftly enough that you can't quite stop yourself, only bite it back a little.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - But you can't help but remember the noise of it, now that Harry's reminded you. The church shook under the force of it. The glass of the stained glass window rattled, the timbers shaking. You'd started thinking, looking up at the ceiling, about evacuating everyone - whether you could, whether Soona would leave her radiocomputer or the delinquents their equipment.
HISTORY - The horror of it didn't hit until later, until Harry came up with his theory that you'd been listening to baby pale. He's so animated, articulate, gesturing with one hand as he talks about encroaching oblivion, with - with ease, with interest, while you're swallowing down nausea at the thought of how close you were to it, standing in that cone of silence, with the words from Harry's mouth snatched away and turned to nothing -
HISTORY - And then you make yourself stop thinking about it, because you have a murder to solve.
FOCUS [Heroic: Success] - Hey. Hey. What happened to not thinking about the pale? Get your shit together.
YOU -
- [FOCUS: Heroic] - Stay focused on the voltas. Keep the words at the front of your mind. Don't think about anything else.
(-2 Thinking about the pale.)
- [CONCEPTUALIZATION: Formidable] At least think about something other than the pale.
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
FOCUS [Heroic: Failure] - But you can't. They're just words, empty and lifeless compared to -
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - The elation pumping through your blood while you dance, still incredulous even as you let yourself go, Harry grinning at you like a lunatic whenever your eyes meet. You almost died two days ago, he almost died two days ago, and yet here you are, wild and free, dancing like you can't still feel the specter of death that brushed by you.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Maybe I shouldn't have brought up the pale, huh."
FOCUS [Legendary: Success] - You blink away the memory and focus back on Harry.
HARRY DU BOIS - He's still present and focused on you.
PURSUIT [Easy: Success] - More so than you expected. You recognize this kind of focus on him: he's working a problem.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - He's like a stubborn terrier: when he gets his teeth into something, he will not let it go or get distracted.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - You are the problem he's working.
HARRY DU BOIS - "History's loud, here, isn't it."
LOGIC [Formidable: Failure] - What does the amnesiac know about the weight of history?
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - Harry's still plagued by history despite the amnesia. You can only imagine what it was like before.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - You stand in the hallway outside the break room of Precinct 41. Inside, you hear Jean say, "- sobbing like a fucking lunatic. Pryce has got to stop giving us the ones with waifish blondes, they always set him off."
REACTION SPEED [Medium: Success] - What case was that?
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - You don't remember a dead waifish blonde.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - Only Harry dropping to his knees in front of the mural of Dolores Dei, staring up at her willowy, untouchable form. Neither of you know yet that there is a hole in the universe, about ten meters behind you and another ten up.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim."
SURVIVOR [Easy: Success] - You need to snap out of it. Right now.
LIEUTENANT [Easy: Success] - And you need to answer Harry.
YOU -
- [CONCEPTUALIZATION: Formidable] At least think about something other than the pale.
- [ACE: Formidable] Play it cool. Say something casual and reassuring to Harry before he starts to worry about you.
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
ACE [Formidable: Failure] - You open your mouth, but you can't think of anything to say for a long, drawn out moment. Your mind is blank of anything and everything except the swallow, the emptiness outside eating away at the world.
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - You used to think about the pale a lot at night, in the weeks after Eyes died. The inevitability of it all. The slow, creeping end of all things - unavoidable, impossible to fight, indifferent to all your effort and all your grief, all of it turning to dust in the end just the same -
VOLTA DO MAR [Easy: Success] - Not that. Think about anything but that.
YOU - You reach out for a train of thought, a different memory, and get -
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - The sea air at the aerostatic loading bays in Graad. You smell it while you stand there, queuing to board, Myra's hand in yours, swinging back and forth -
REACTION SPEED [Trivial: Success] - Who's Myra?
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Something's wrong.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - You've never been to Graad.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - These aren't all your memories.
YOU -
- [WILLPOWER: Impossible] Don't freak out.
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
WILLPOWER [Impossible: Failure] - What the fuck is happening to you?
LOGIC [Trivial: Success] - The pale is happening.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - You are never leaving Revachol again once this is over.
??? - You say that sometimes, but you adore flying too much to truly give it up. You run your hand against the metal of your aerostatic in the dawn light, before the sun heats it up enough to burn, and tell it, "Maybe we'll cover the entirety of Le Caillou today."
??? - You want to get up there, up into the air. You miss it, sometimes, on the ground - lying awake at night, on the ground, filled to the brim with longing -
??? - "I've got the longing - and I've got it bad," Joyce tells you, and you know that she would die to return to it - to the pale, the past, anything one can return to. You think, without quite knowing why, of the smell of apricot chewing gum.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim?"
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - Alarmed.
FOCUS [Heroic: Success] - You're not in Martinaise. You're on the aerostatic, and Harry is saying your name.
YOU -
- [COMPOSURE: Impossible] Answer Harry and sound composed.
(-1 Harry knows you too well.)
(-3 You're panicking.)
- [WILLPOWER: Legendary] Answer Harry and let him see that you're panicking.
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
COMPOSURE [Impossible: Failure] - But you can't do it. Your jaw feels welded tight.
??? - You look up at the phasmid, towering above Harry, at Harry's wide-open startled face, and your mind is wiped clear of everything but a perfect wonder.
??? - You want to stay in this moment, suspended, forever.
YOU - Fingers wrap your wrist, warm and calloused.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim." Harry's voice is sharp.
INSIGHT [Trivial: Success] - Urgent.
HISTORY [Trivial: Success] - The last time Harry said your name like that, your hands were covered in his blood and he was shouting, frantic, for you to look behind you. The last time Harry said your name like that, you shot a person without looking at her because you knew that she was behind you from the strength of that tone of voice alone.
VOLTA DO MAR [Trivial: Success] - Answer him.
- [WILLPOWER: Legendary] Answer Harry and let him see that you're panicking.
( 3 It's important to Harry that you answer him.)
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
WILLPOWER [Legendary: Success] - "Harry?" you say. You can hear the strain in your own voice and you know he can hear it too.
HARRY DU BOIS - But he doesn't comment on it. He says, "What's your favorite cryptid?"
LOGIC [Godly: Failure] - What?
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Legendary: Failure] - I have no clue.
YOU -
- "Harry, what the fuck are you talking about?"
HARRY DU BOIS - He exhales, short and sharp. When he speaks, that tone of voice is still present and clear. "Okay, so that's a no on active participation. I need you to pay attention and follow along with me - can you do that?"
YOU -
- [LOGIC: Heroic] Wait, what's he trying to do?
(-1 The inside of Harry's head is, as always, a fucking mystery.)
(-3 You're still panicking.)
- [INSIGHT: Legendary] Pay attention to Harry and follow along with him.
(-1 You didn't answer when he asked about cryptids.)
( 1 This is important to Harry.)
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
LOGIC [Heroic: Failure] - You have no idea.
ADRENALINE [Trivial: Success] - He's losing it!
INSIGHT [Trivial: Success] - He is not. Harry knows exactly what he's doing.
LOGIC [Formidable: Failure] - Why isn't he losing it? You'd thought -
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim," Harry presses. He squeezes your wrist. The pressure and heat of it brings you back to yourself.
VOLTA DO MAR [Medium: Success] - It doesn't matter that you don't understand what he's doing. Do you trust him?
YOU -
- Yes.
- Not with this.
- Always.
VOLTA DO MAR - So trust him on this. You don't need to understand it, not as long as he does.
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - And you're used to trying to follow along with Harry's trains of thoughts, even when you have no clue what he's driving at. Remember that side investigation with the trolley schedule?
YOU -
- [INSIGHT: Legendary] Pay attention to Harry and follow along with him.
(-1 You didn't answer when he asked about cryptids.)
( 1 This is important to Harry.)
( 2 Always.)
( 2 You're used to trying to follow Harry's trains of thoughts.)
- Just grit your teeth and wait for it to be over.
INSIGHT [Legendary: Success] - You think about taking out your notebook, but Harry still is holding onto your wrist, so you decide against it. Even just thinking about your notebook makes it easier to reach for this particular state of mind, though: listening intently, reaching for understanding, knowing you might not immediately get it. Noting details to analyze later.
YOU - "Yes," you tell Harry. "I'm listening."
HARRY DU BOIS - Instantly Harry says, "Because I think about the Col Do Ma Ma Daqua a lot."
YOU - You snort. You can't help yourself. "Doesn't exist, Harry."
HARRY DU BOIS - "We thought the phasmid didn't exist, too," Harry says, the way you knew he would. You've this conversation before -
??? - leaning against the wall in the Precinct 41 break room, after a hard case, watching Harry gesture emphatically, something in his posture loosening the longer he talks. Only realizing yourself, later, that it eased something in you, too, standing there listening to Harry, animated and excited as he was -
HARRY DU BOIS - "It's like the club in the church."
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Heroic: Failure] - In what way?
FOCUS [Formidable: Success] - The tangent is odd enough that it actually makes it easier to focus on.
YOU -
- "Is it?"
- "I don't follow."
YOU - "Is it?" you ask. At some point, you realize, you closed your eyes. Your voice is quiet to match.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - The world has a strange, suspended quality to it. Fragile like spun sugar, made up of just your voice and Harry's.
ACE [Challenging: Success] - You should -
??? - Like -
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's voice cuts through the thoughts trying to push their way to the surface. "If they hadn't created the club, it wouldn't exist. They built something new out of nothing."
LOGIC [Trivial: Success] - That's not like the Col Do Ma Ma Daqua at all.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Trivial: Success] - For one, that's not how evolution works.
YOU -
- "The church was already there."
- "I don't think that's how evolution works, Harry."
- Sure. Fine. Fuck it. "You think we, what, created the phasmid by looking for it?"
YOU - You can't help yourself. "I don't think that's how evolution works, Harry."
HARRY DU BOIS - "Hey," Harry says, "if nobody knows about the phasmid, and it's not recorded in any books, then does it really exist at all? It's like, if a tree falls in the forest -"
YOU -
- "It exists."
- Sure. Fine. Fuck it. "You think we, what, created the phasmid by looking for it?"
YOU - "It exists," you say. You mean it to sound exasperated, but the memory of it is too close at hand -
??? - The sheer, absolute wonder of it - one of the purest, most uncomplicated memories you have, its great towering spindly legs and its curious mirror eyes looking down at you -
HARRY DU BOIS - "It does." His voice is soft. "Of course it does."
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - He knows. He was there, too.
HARRY DU BOIS - "It -" A pause.
YOU - You open your eyes, then, and look at him.
HARRY DU BOIS - He has that furrowed brow look again. It's a look you're very familiar with. He says, "I may have lost the plot a bit."
YOU - You snort.
PERCEPTION (Hearing) [Trivial: Success] - And then the sound of the engine kicks back in.
SURVIVOR [Easy: Success] - Your breath comes easier.
PERCEPTION (Touch) [Trivial: Success] - Harry's grip on your wrist becomes briefly, dizzyingly hot.
HARRY DU BOIS - He's watching you.
THE LOUNGE - An attendant walks past your seat, saying less to you than to anyone listening, "We've just emerged from deep pale; we'll be landing in Sur-la-Clef shortly."
ACE [Challenging: Success] - Hey. Hey. Can you hear me now? Harry is basically holding your hand in the middle of the aerostatic lounge because you couldn't handle a measly two hours in the pale, if you hadn't noticed. You need to get your shit together, Kitsuragi. You're better than this.
AUTHORITY [Medium: Success] - And take your hand back before the Moralintern flunky notices - or worse, one of your other coworkers.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim?" Harry says.
CONNECTION [Easy: Success] - He wants to know how you're feeling.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - His gaze is assessing. Cautious. It's the same look he's been giving you this whole trip.
INSIGHT - You are, abruptly, very sure that Harry sees right through you. He knew exactly how freaked out you were before the flight and exactly how much you were losing it during the flight.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - Was his unease about Jean even real? Or was he pretending to be worried for Jean to cover for being worried for you? That moment when he steered you away from the others -
ACE [Challenging: Success] - And here you were, all protective over him, and then you were the one who couldn't handle it. You stupid fuck.
LIEUTENANT [Medium: Success] - It's not a competition.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - Why are you angry?
YOU - The moment you have the thought, you know. You know what this is.
YOU-
- [COMPOSURE: Challenging] Make sure your face is under control.
- [WILLPOWER: Formidable] Take a deep breath and let go of your pride.
( 1 - You know what this is.)
WILLPOWER [Challenging: Success] - You inhale. You exhale. Your pride goes out with your breath. In its absence, you are left feeling a mix of very tired and very foolish.
JOIE DE VIVRE [Easy: Success] - You know what you need? A cigarette.
WILLPOWER [Godly: Failure] - You really, really do.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry is still watching you. Waiting patiently for an answer.
YOU -
- "I need cigarette."
- "I need a fucking cigarette."
- "I'm all right, Harry."
- Take your hand back. "I'm fine, detective."
HARRY DU BOIS - He laughs.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - Some tension in his shoulders eases.
HARRY DU BOIS - "I think that can be arranged," he says. He's still smiling at you. "As soon as we dock."
#
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry is true to his word. "I could use a smoke," he declares to nobody in particular.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - Harry doesn't smoke.
LOGIC [Medium: Success] - Not anymore, but C-Wing is used to a Harry who smokes; nobody blinks twice at the declaration.
THE SUR-LA-CLEF AEROSTATIC LOADING BAY - The aerostatic loading bay in Sur-La-Clef is set on a peninsula, surrounded by clear blue water shining in the sun. To the north, a thin stretch of land leads towards where the towers of Sur-La-Clef stand, wreathed in fog.
THE SUR-LA-CLEF AEROSTATIC LOADING BAY - C-Wing has gathered in a small cluster around 500 meters from the aerostatic. Or, rather, most of C-Wing.
PTOLEMAIOS PRYCE - Pryce sighs. He's watching Vicquemare, who's just now emerging from the aerostatic and who looks more than a little ill.
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - It's a gray, pinched kind of look. He doesn't look nauseous, exactly, but he doesn't not look nauseous.
PTOLEMAIOS PRYCE - "Go on," he says as Vicquemare approaches, waving a dismissive hand. "May as well give everyone some time to stretch their legs before looking for the rental MC."
HARRY DU BOIS - "Sir yes sir." He flicks a flourishing little salute Pryce's way. For some reason, Harry seems to default to being extremely formal, verging on ironically so, around Pryce.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - You have no idea why, but they both seem to find it at least a little amusing, so it's not something you worry about.
PURSUIT [Easy: Success] - Though you are, as ever with Harry, curious about it.
JEAN VICQUEMARE - Vicquemare doesn't bother to say anything, just turns on his heels and peels off towards the water.
C-WING - Minot and Heidelstam exchange a look.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - The look says, will you go after him, or should I?
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry is watching this with an expression that says that once he would have been part of this exchange. He makes a little gesture with his shoulders, almost as if shrugging it off, and says, "Smoking. Yes. I'm going to go - do that. Kim, you want a smoke?"
YOU - "Sure," you say.
THE SUR-LA-CLEF AEROSTATIC LOADING BAY - Harry leads you in the direction of the rental MC lot, up some stairs to a parking lot with a view of the entire loading bay.
YOU - The sun glitters off the water as you fish out a cigarette and light it.
JOIE DE VIVRE [Trivial: Success] - The moment the smoke hits your lungs is bliss.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry leans his forearms against the railings, seemingly content to just look down at the water.
YOU -
- "Did you actually want a cigarette?" (Offer him one.)
- Don't mention it.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Nah," Harry says, brushing it off with a wave of his hand. "Changed my mind."
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - The declaration that he needed a cigarette was mostly for your benefit.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - Harry knows perfectly well that you prefer your professional facade to include a certain amount of stoic blankness. He was worried that you wouldn't ask for a smoke break, even after having admitted to him that you wanted one.
AUTHORITY [Formidable: Success] - Presumptuous of him.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's still leaning against the railing, watching the small figures of C-Wing below. Vicquemare, off on his own; another indistinct figure, breaking away from the group to join him.
YOU -
- Thank him for helping you on the aerostatic.
- Ask him how he knew how to help you.
- Tell him he overstepped his bounds.
- [INSIGHT: Formidable] Figure out how you feel about any of this before you say anything.
- Don't say anything. Just smoke in silence.
INSIGHT [Formidable: Failure] - You turn it over in your head, but as you do you're looking down at those small figures. Without consulting your brain first, your mouth opens and says, "So you were telling the truth about being worried about Vicquemare."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry frowns at you. "I don't lie to you."
YOU -
- "I know that."
- "I know. But you do omit things at times."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry ducks his head.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - It's a guilty look.
YOU -
- "It's all right. I do, too."
- Leave it at that.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - Thinking back, that's what got you into this trouble, isn't it? If you'd talked to Harry back in the loading bay in Revachol, then maybe...
YOU -
- Mention it.
- Don't mention it.
YOU - "I should have told you I was uneasy."
HARRY DU BOIS - "It's fine, Kim," Harry says easily.
CONNECTION [Easy: Success] - It's sincere; he's not just saying it.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - It's not fine.
LIEUTENANT [Easy: Success] - You underestimated him, and you shouldn't have. Harry's your partner. You should know better.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's tipped his head to one side. Thinking, and watching you.
LOGIC [Godly: Failure] - He can't know what you're thinking.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - But he's looking at you like he knows anyway.
HARRY DU BOIS - "I don't think you were wrong to worry about me," Harry decides after a minute. "My brain works in mysterious ways. I mean, who knows how I'm going to react on the way back."
YOU - You raise your eyebrows at him and mirror his stance, leaning your hip against the railing. "Is this supposed to be reassuring, Harry?"
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry flashes you a quick grin. "That's the superstar lifestyle for you," he informs you. "Blacking out, waking up in strange places and not knowing how you got there..." He stops and squints a little.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - He was, actually, trying to reassure you, and it's occurred to him that he's gone a little off track.
YOU - "Is it," you say. Your voice comes out exactly as dry as you mean it to, but you can hear there's a faint current of amusement worming its way into your voice anyway.
TENDERHEARTED [Easy: Success] - Somehow it still surprises you, sometimes - how easily Harry can make you laugh.
FOCUS [Challenging: Success] - Hey, stop getting distracted. You were trying to have a serious conversation, here.
YOU -
- Thank him for helping you on the aerostatic.
- Ask him how he knew how to help you.
- Tell him he overstepped his bounds.
- Don't say anything. Just smoke in silence.
YOU - "You say that you could easily have had a bad time of it, but you seemed more than capable of managing the pale, in there. How did you..."
CONNECTION [Formidable: Failure] - You try to find a way of working how he knew how to do that without maligning his competency again and come up blank.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Kim," Harry says, earnest, "you should know by now that I never know how to do anything."
CONNECTION [Challenging: Success] - A little too earnest. There's the barest hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.
YOU -
- [AUTHORITY: Medium] Raise an eyebrow at him.
- "Untrue. Harry, come on."
YOU - "Untrue," you say, but you can't quite bother to keep your amusement out of your voice this time. "Harry, come on."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry grins at you. Then his gazes changes, getting that distant cast it gets sometimes, the flicker of microexpressions darting across his face.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - Like a school of minnows.
YOU -
- [INSIGHT: Formidable] What's he thinking about?
- "Harry?"
- Wait quietly.
INSIGHT [Formidable: Failure] - You're not sure. Harry's moods are easy, at this point, for you to read, but his trains of thought remain inpenetrable.
YOU -
- "Harry?"
- Wait quietly.
YOU - You wait quietly.
HARRY DU BOIS - After a moment, Harry says, "I don't know. I was thinking about - I only know the one Volta." His voice shifts to something more lofty, theatrical: "Nothing will be changed about the light! / Colors like grey and brown / All printed on top of each other / I found a blank white spot / All the others looked up -"
YOU -
- Finish the Volta.
- Let him finish it.
YOU - "'What a beautiful day! What beautiful weather!'" you quote. "But all I heard was the printing machine."
HARRY DU BOIS - "Yup, that's the one," Harry says. "When I remembered it, I thought, that is one weird fucking poem."
YOU - You snort before you can stop yourself. "All the Voltas are weird, Harry. It must be some sort of requirement."
LOGIC [Heroic: Failure] - To make them easier to remember, presumably.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Exactly!" Harry says, pointing at you. His finger nearly puts out your cigarette. "That's why I though - if it was just the poetry, wouldn't they do something more conventional? Unless the weirdness is -"
YOU - "...Meaningful in some way," you say slowly.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah. Yeah." Harry's gesticulating again. He nearly knocks off his hat - the Dick Mullen one Annette gave him, today - with the force of his gestures, and you bite back a smile. "Because there's about a thousand poems out there that would be easier to understand, but this one is surprising. It makes you think."
YOU -
- [LOGIC: Formidable] Put the pieces together.
- "What does that mean, then?"
LOGIC [Formidable: Success] - And that's what really matters - the act of trying to puzzle through it. It didn't work because you tried to recite it by rote instead of thinking about the meaning. You weren't surprised by it. You knew it already.
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - Dom teased you over it more than once, don't you remember? You don't have -
WILLPOWER [Challenging: Success] - Don't say it.
YOU -
- "Perhaps that's why they didn't work for me. I tried reciting one, when the aerostatic took off, but I did it by rote, rather than thinking about the meaning. My old partner used to tell me I have no imagination."
- "Perhaps that's why they didn't work for me. I tried reciting one, when the aerostatic took off, but I did it by rote, rather than thinking about the meaning."
- Say nothing and gesture for Harry to go on.
YOU - "Perhaps that's why they didn't work for me. I tried reciting one, when the aerostatic took off, but I did it by rote, rather than thinking about the meaning." You're not sure why you go on, but you do. "My old partner used to tell me I have no imagination."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry considers that for a moment. "I don't think you have no imagination," is what he decides the most important part of that sentence to address is.
YOU - You raise an eyebrow at him.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry raises his eyebrows right back. "You can't fool me, Kim," and he taps his temple three times in some exaggerated gesture of thought. "I know you only like to pretend to be boring."
YOU -
- "Thank you, I think."
- "I am most definitely boring."
- "Khm. Anyway. My point was -"
YOU - "Khm. Anyway. My point was -"
HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah, I think you're right about the Volta bit," he says. "I don't think you can say them by rote. It's why I tried to bounce between topics you knew about; something you could follow, but weird enough to help you focus on them."
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - Weird wasn't all of it, though.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - You've listened to Harry as he steers you through strange chains of logic many times by now. It was not a random train of thought; there was purpose and direction to it, even if the direction was unclear to you.
YOU -
- "That wasn't all, though; was it?"
- Let it go.
YOU - "That wasn't all, though; was it?"
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry hesitates. His face goes distant, eyes taking on that far-away cast again.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - Thinking, or arguing with himself, maybe.
YOU -
- Press him.
- Give him a minute.
YOU - You smoke quietly and wait for Harry.
HARRY DU BOIS - When he finally speaks, what he says is, "Hey, Kim. Can I ask you something?"
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - He thinks you're not going to like the question. He would normally just ask.
YOU -
- "Of course."
- "Depends on the question."
YOU - "Of course," you tell him. You don't like talking about yourself, but Harry is your partner. You want him to feel able to ask.
HARRY DU BOIS - "What do you think about, in the pale?" He's turned away from the view of the water, leaning with one elbow propped on the railing, so he can study your face.
YOU -
- [WILLPOWER: Challenging] "The pale terrifies me."
- "The same as everyone else, I suppose."
-
(Lie.) "Nothing in particular."
WILLPOWER [Challenging: Success] - It's difficult to say, but you say it. "The pale terrifies me." Your voice stays even as you say it: the product of years spent keeping yourself under control.
COMPOSURE [Easy: Success] - You're welcome.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's watching you with a steady gaze. He doesn't say anything when you pause; he just waits.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - He can tell you're not done. He's waiting for you to continue.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - Is this the face your suspects see, when he coaxes their secrets out of them?
HISTORY [Legendary: Failure] - You don't know. You usually stand slightly behind and to his right, for those conversations. You don't see his face.
LIEUTENANT [Heroic: Success] - It's not. He comes to those conversations with a professional detachment; maybe the most professional thing about him.
FOCUS [Easy: Success] - You're getting distracted. Go on.
YOU - You take a drag of your cigarette to calm your nerves. It's burning down, but you still have a few drags left. Enough to help keep your nerves steady through this conversation. You say, "I don't know how to come to terms with the eventual end of all things, so - I haven't. I mostly try not to think about it. It works, except when it doesn't."
LOGIC [Trivial: Success] - Like when you're flying on an aerostatic through the pale.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry considers that - considers you - for a moment. He says, "The pale's not going to eat the world, Kim."
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Easy: Success] - The current state of entroponetic research disagrees.
HARRY DU BOIS - "I know what the research says," he says, before you can. "The research is wrong."
YOU - You raise your eyebrows at him. "The research... is wrong. Fine, I'll bite; what makes you say that?"
HARRY DU BOIS - "Or not wrong, maybe, but - Kim, there's so much about the world that we don't understand," Harry says. He shifts to look out over the water, turning towards the south-east.
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - Towards Revachol. Towards your city, yours and his.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Seven million people in Revachol." Harry's gaze is distant, now, but he's still talking, with a curious, dreamy cast to his voice. "In a church on the edge of the sea, Egg Head is looking through his records, deciding what to play at tonight's rave. Start off with a classic, he decides, and picks up the Arno Van Eyck remix. Sixteen meters away from him, there is a two-millimeter hole in the world. On the other side of the water lock, Kuuno de Ryuter drops through a grate that he will be too large for in six months, and descends into the tunnels under the city alone. He's looking for a path, but he doesn't know where he's going, and will not until he gets there. In Jamrock, at your apartment building, your neighbor is sitting down on her balcony, looking down the street, wondering why you're not leaving for work. She's grown used to the clarion call of your Kineema, splitting the air at seven o'clock sharp every weekday morning, more punctual than church bells, saying, Sunrise, Parabellum - time to go to war. In the reeds of Martinaise, our phasmid is awake and alive, thinking stick-insect thoughts about food."
INSTINCT [Trivial: Success] - Shivers, down your spine.
HARRY DO BOIS - Harry blinks, twice, and then his gaze refocuses, and he turns back to look at you. "There's still miracles, out there," he says. "Waiting to be discovered - or made. Existence is too stubborn to go out like that - like a lighter, flickering out."
PERCEPTION (Hearing) [Easy: Success] - His voice grows quieter when he says it.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - It's not a confident statement, or a triumphant one.
YOU -
- [INSIGHT: Heroic] What is it, then?
( 2 - You know Harry's history.)
- [VOLTA DO MAR: Godly] Do you believe him about the world?
(-1 - You're not sure what he's thinking.)
( 1 - You've been listening to Harry talk about cryptids all day.)
- "You really believe that?"
- "Your capacity for optimism amazes me, sometimes, you know."
INSIGHT [Heroic: Success] - He's made a conscious decision to believe in this. Holding onto that belief doesn't always come easy. Something happened, during those last two sentences - some thought that he had - that made it harder to hold onto, right in front of your eyes.
YOU -
- What thought?
INSIGHT - You're no mind reader. Ask him.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's gone quiet, staring out over the water.
YOU -
- "What is it?"
YOU - "What is it?"
HARRY DU BOIS - "Hmm? Oh." Harry ducks his head, rubbing the back of his neck, sheepish suddenly. "Just thinking that I'm - probably the last person who should be talking about humanity's tendency to cling to life." Voice dwindling.
REACTION SPEED [Challenging: Failure] - It takes you a minute to put the pieces together - maybe because he was relaxed, even cheerful, just a moment ago.
INSIGHT [Easy: Success] - But his mood has changed, shifted into something darker before your eyes.
CONNECTION [Formidable: Failure] - You're never sure what to say when his moods change like this. It makes you nervous. It makes you worry about him.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - And that's what it takes for you to realize what he means.
HISTORY [Medium: Success] - Harry doesn't remember threatening to kill himself in Martinaise, two days before he met you, but he knows that it happened. He found out about it at the same time you did.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - And he is still familiar with the urge. You've seen it on him. Remember when he talked about Ruby, back in Martinaise? He recognized it in her before he even met her. He empathized with the need for an exit strategy, with all of three days of memories to his name.
ADRENALINE [Easy: Success] - The hair on your arm rises.
SURVIVOR [Medium: Success] - It's only now that you realize that this is one of the things that you were worried about all along. Harry wasn't lying to you, when he said it could have easily have gone badly for him on the aerostatic. It could easily go bad for him now, or in several hours when it's night, and dark, and quiet. Harry's rock solid in a crisis. The danger for him lies in the quiet moments, the downtime, the middle of the night: the times he has to be alone with himself. Helping you kept him focused on the aerostatic, but now...
CONNECTION [Heroic: Failure] - You don't know what to do. You don't know what to say to him.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry ducks his head. When he comes back up, he has a smile pasted on his face. "Oh, well," he says. "I suppose it did the job. Should we go see what's holding up the others?"
CONNECTION [Easy: Success] - Hiding what he's really thinking.
VOLTA DO MAR [Medium: Success] - Let him. You understand the urge perfectly well. Give him his privacy.
INSIGHT [Legendary: Failure] - Is that what he wants?
PERCEPTION (Sight) [Easy: Success] - His smile is more of a grimace. It's obviously fake.
YOU -
- "Yes, let's go check on them." (Let it go.)
- [TENDERHEARTED: Legendary] Don't let it go.
TENDERHEARTED [Legendary: Success] - You touch his arm.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry stills. The fake smile drops off his face. The expression is replaced with something more complex and harder to read. He opens his mouth and then closes it again.
YOU -
- Let him gather his words.
- Soldier on.
HARRY DU BOIS - But he doesn't say anything. His throat works, but no sound escapes.
YOU -
- Soldier on.
YOU - "You're still here, aren't you? That seems to fit the definition of clinging to life to me. Surviving, even when the odds are against you."
CONNECTION [Formidable: Failure] - For a moment, it feels stupidly insufficient.
PERCEPTION (Touch) [Medium: Success] - But then you feel some of the tension in his muscles ease under your hand.
HARRY DU BOIS - "I hadn't thought of it that way," he says. He ducks his head.
INSIGHT [Challenging: Success] - He's touched and trying not to show it.
HARRY DU BOIS - He goes on, abruptly: "I think about - this stuff at night sometimes. Maybe that's why I knew how to -" and he makes a vague gesture. When you stare at him, he elaborates, "Do the Volta thing. Because I already argue with myself a lot about, you know."
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - Existential despair.
ADRENALINE [Easy: Success] - The end of all things.
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - Whether anything we do ever really matters.
LOGIC [Challenging: Success] - Maybe that's why it never bothers him the way you expect it to, to talk about the pale.
YOU - "That makes sense."
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - It's easy to visualize. Back in Martinaise, your rooms had been side-by-side, and you'd heard him tossing and turning for half the night. Easy to imagine Harry, half awake and bleary, fighting for the strength of will to get up and face another day. Or Harry, exhausted and unable to sleep, stumbling out onto his balcony and letting the cool night air dry the sweat and soothe his mind until it's time to get up and go to work.
TENDERHEARTED [Medium: Success] - The images put a strange lump somewhere in your throat.
HARRY DU BOIS - "But it's not true, is it," Harry murmurs, more to himself than to you.
YOU -
- "What isn't?"
YOU - "What isn't?" you ask.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - There's something about the look on his face that's making your shoulders want to tense.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Miracles. They're nice to think about, but they don't really... those kids and their music in that church, it's nice to think about, but there won't be a club, there. Only the church sliding beneath the waves, and silence."
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - At least in this moment - he believes it.
CONNECTION [Legendary: Failure] - Once again, you don't know what to say.
HARRY DU BOIS - He sees it on your face. "Hah," he says, and flashes you that awful fake smile of his. "Just - being fanciful again, you know me. Good thing you're too sensible for that, huh, Kim?"
CONNECTION [Medium: Success] - He means, don't worry about me.
TENDERHEARTED [Medium: Success] - But you do. Of course you do. How could you not?
YOU -
- "Harry..."
- [CONNECTION: Legendary] Find the right words.
( 3 - Our phasmid.)
CONNECTION [Legendary: Success] - "I don't know that being sensible is such a good thing to be, Harry," you find yourself telling him. "You were right about the phasmid, after all, and I was wrong."
HARRY DU BOIS - "But I wasn't, though, not really," Harry says, voice soft.
INSIGHT [Medium: Success] - A confession.
HARRY DU BOIS - "I never expected to find it. I was just... curious. And enjoying myself, really."
HISTORY [Formidable: Failure] - You remember Harry being full of enthusiasm and passion for the phasmid, but then, Harry's hard to read sometimes.
VOLTA DO MAR [Medium: Success] - But whether he believed in it or not doesn't matter.
YOU - "So?" you murmur. "I didn't believe in it either. And yet, I still got to see it. We both did, because you humored a cryptozoologist."
VOLTA DO MAR [Medium: Success] - And as you say it, you realize -
YOU - "I'd believe it, you know."
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry's brow creases. "What do you mean?"
YOU - "That the world won't end," you clarify. "That miracles still exist, somewhere. That hope can succeed where realism fails."
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - How could you believe anything else, having worked with him even for the short time that you have?
HISTORY [Easy: Success] - You met him at his lowest point.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] - You've seen a great many drunks in your line of work. You know what their trajectories look like.
SURVIVOR [Easy: Success] - By all accounts, you ought to have found his body in his hotel room that morning.
INSTINCT [Easy: Success] - And yet. And yet.
HARRY DU BOIS - "You really believe that," Harry murmurs. He's watching you.
INSIGHT [Godly: Failure] - The look on his face is incomprehensible.
YOU -
- "I do."
YOU - You meet his gaze and hold it: letting him see that you do mean it. "I do."
HARRY DU BOIS - He considers you for a long moment.
COMPOSURE [Challenging: Success] - Then something changes in his posture. A tension, easing.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - A light coming back to his eyes.
HARRY DU BOIS - "Yeah, all right," he says, voice soft. "All right, Kim."
VOLTA DO MAR [Challenging: Success] - Hold on to this moment. This will be one of the moments you'll come back to, when you have to make your return journey through the pale.
CONCEPTUALIZATION [Easy: Success] - A light through the fog.
FOCUS [Medium: Success] - But not now.
PERCEPTION (Hearing) [Medium: Success] - Now, you can hear the voices of Pryce, Minot, Vicquemare, and Trant, growing louder as they ascend the staircase.
HARRY DU BOIS - Harry meets your eyes for a moment, smiling a little. No words need to be said.
YOU - You take one last drag of your cigarette, put it out on your shoe, and clasp your hands behind your back, ready to go on with the day.