one ❀ voice

[unknowable]

[There's no video, because it's too dark in the coffin to show anything anyway. Adam's voice is carefully steady, as if he's keeping himself under control through sheer power of will.]

I saw that Fear said our air supply will be refreshed. I don't know if that's true - I don't know if we can trust him - but I thought people ought to know anyway.

[Not that he necessarily believes anything any of the gods say, but - well. Who knows.]

Talking is a little less impersonal than text. It might help to hear a familiar voice, if any of your friends are buried. There also isn't much to do down here but panic, so if anyone wants to talk - I wouldn't mind.

Comments

[amos_moses]

I'm the personal assistant to the boss of a prominent Japanese company, which has business holdings across the world. Fancy talk, I get to go around the world as her liaison, as Inoue-san prefers a more personal touch in business dealings, an' I've known her for years, ever since my grandmother moved back to Japan. So I know how she prefers things to be.

Honestly, I'm her glorified courier when I'm travelling an' her much-ranted-at secretary when I'm not.

[This is all a very polite way of saying Amos is the right-hand man to the leader of one of Japan's more prominent yakuza. His job does include international business deals, but mostly on the shady side of the law. He's also occasionally a hit-man, blackmailer, and drug-runner.]

So most of my travelling does go on the company dime, yeah, but some of it I do for me, 'cause I like going places an' meeting new folks. The world's a pretty amazing place, after all!

[unknowable]

Yeah, I guess so.

[He wouldn't know. And he pauses for a moment before continuing.]

Do you often need to fight little girls?

[amos_moses]

[For a moment there's only a wordless confused sound over the connection, Amos totally thrown by the abrupt subject change.]

Wha...oh. Arya.

[He grimaces. That had been a hell of a fuckup, really, and he should have run sooner. But he can't change the past.]

I don't like to fight anyone. I hate fighting. I hate hurting people.

But I kinda panic when anyone comes at me with a sword, 'specially when there's mind-fuckery going on, 'cause they ain't themselves an' there's no way of tellin' what they will or won't do, if they'll stop before they kill you or not.

[He's not blaming Arya: he'd heard what she was saying, seen the sudden twist of her reality, and he hadn't been fast enough to clear the area before that particular explosion went off. He's been there before, seen the things people will do with supernatural coercions on them, and he had not been keen to join the statistics.Of all the thing Amos wants to do with his life, dying is just not one of them. Especially dying stupidly.]

[unknowable]

I'm sure it's easy for some people to justify that kind of thing to themselves.

[There always has to be a justification, after all, something to make it okay - or at least not your fault. And part of it might even be true, god knows Adam blamed himself for so many things that happened to him, and some of them were probably even his fault. But it's because of that that those kinds of things will never sit right with him - he'll never be able to accept such an explanation and say yes, I see, you did the right thing.]

I hope you'll leave her alone from now on. She's a child. You're an adult. Act like one.

[amos_moses]

I don't think she'd take kindly to you calling her a child.

That's what she may be to you an' me, raised up in gentler places, but where-ever she was raised, someone taught her to be more dangerous than you an' I will ever be.

I don't hold it against her, if that's what you mean.

[unknowable]

That sounds quite a bit like you convincing yourself it's all right to hurt someone smaller and younger than you. I really don't care what your reasons were, and there's nothing you can say that would make me think it was acceptable.

Don't do it again.

[amos_moses]

I'm not going to die for reasons of sentiment, Adam. If anyone attacks me, I will defend myself.

[Amos's tone is calm, quiet, without anger or accusation. He recognizes by Adam's argument and anger that they come from very different worlds, and Amos is glad that Adam doesn't have to live with the knowledge that no-one is ever really innocent and that children can be killers too and all the nightmare terrors that come from living with evil in the flesh walking beside you.]

I don't pick fights, an' I'm certainly not gonna bother Arya at all. She's made her feelings quite clear on the matter, an' I don't go poking hornet's nests.

[unknowable]

[Amos is drawing entirely the wrong conclusion from Adam's anger, when it's not about naivete or ignorance - and Adam would be disgusted by the implication, the condescension of it, when Amos does not know him and does not know where he came from - but rather the plain and simple fact that Amos hurt one of the few people Adam cares about in this place.

That's not something Adam can forgive.]

Then I hope I've made my feelings quite clear, too.

[amos_moses]

So you have.

I'm sorry you've had to hear about that ugly moment.

[Amos almost adds 'I'm sorry, I would've liked being friends with you', but doesn't quite know if Adam would take that or not. So he just leaves it with that apology.]

[unknowable]

So am I.

[And he leave it at that, as well.]