voice under, voice over

[pospreterito]

i (know i say this every three months or so) think i might have hit the point of emotional maturity where i can actually kind of figure out characterisation by how i write people!

(yeah, now you know why i don't write much fanfiction. if i can't figure out my own characters' emotions and motivations without a few weeks to stew over it...)

but i keep having little epiphanies about people in the bracketverse, the kind of thing most people would... know before they start writing someone, probably. (i love that i have a meticulous timeline and i am still flying, screaming and reluctant and airlifted by several ducks, by the seat of my pants, and look, these purple jeans do not deserve that treatment.)

but previously i had broken cosma and ciel down by two things, in my notes for chondrilla juncea: she has "gravity and hatred of (falling)" and "failure and hatred of (falling as allegory)" (the worst thing for cosma noline is to fail at stuff). ciel has "air and hatred of (enormity), wind and agoraphobia" and "ignorance and hatred of (enormity and why can't i hold all this world)" (the worst thing for ciel noline is to not know things).

and the end result of both of them is almost indistinguishable from most people's perspectives (overstressed too-intelligent pedantic nerd). (the difference is in things like forgetting -- cosma is fine with it, ciel it kills. but he doesn't mind coming off as an idiot because he won't bother to know everything -- he's lazy -- as long as he knows he can know everything; cosma's the one who makes the effort. guess who ends up basically owning the city -- guess -- and yet ciel will always be a bit scarier, because if that's what he's like when he doesn't try...)

oh, hell with it, if this post has turned into a Noline Problems post i might as well quote some chondrilla juncea. (it really needs a better edit, but whatever.)

normal ciel with a side of omniscience and fries:

January lives in a house in the centre of the Side, which gives her the opportunity to keep it as neat and clean as one outside. She has another reason, too. She's the Lady of the Healers, one of the only authorities to have survived after everything I've done. (The truth is that I couldn't have done it without her, and also that I haven't spoken to her for almost a year.) For the twin sakes of convenience and a very idealist kind of dedication, her house is used more as a hospital than anything else.

This is why when she greets me at the door -- a second before I knock, such that my hand stays suspended in the air like a punchline -- she's dressed in the whites and blues she's made standard, with her dreadlocks pulled up and white gloves that might even be respectably sterile. She's a Healer born and made, and chalk besides -- a human being made more of magic than of flesh and bone -- and in no universe would she need them, but she's always believed more in doing the right thing than the reasonable.

(Well, almost always. Before, she fell in love with a necromancer and almost broke the apprenticeship system. Before that, she could have torn the Side apart. But generally, she's been consistent, day-to-day.)

"Before," she says with this almost regal fury that five years ago would've been unbelievable but to which I've become accustomed, "you ask, yes, you have a ghost, congratulations on your ghost. I can't help you."

"Thank you," I say, again, my default response. It used to be 'Thank you' and 'I'm sorry', but the latter has more or less worn out its meaning by repetition. "But--"

"I don't care," and I recognise her anger as that of someone who's using it as a shield. I rather wonder what she thinks she's defending herself from. "I don't want to risk myself with your mad ideas anymore. Inside there's a twelve-year-old girl with a cough and that I can fix. Go throw yourself against what you can't change if you want. I'm not helping any more."

I pull my lips back until they form a C, to be polite. Any observer would say that I am smiling as I salute her like a soldier or a child. "Healer."

Technically, January is my deputy, my left hand. She's done very well, these last three years, between her protests that she's not doing it at all.

angry ciel, with a side of cosma (CJ isn't the best example, they're both very bad at being human by it, but whatever):

January greets me with something cheerful and forgettable, rearranging her hair with one hand. I don't make the effort to reply, to wear my face like something other than a habitual mask; I look at her, and she is still.

I'm still holding the flowers in my right hand. I see clearly and without hyperlinks. Everything I need to know is right in the foreground of my mind. I know it automatically, the way I know my sister's birthday, how to start a HTML document, the names of the Twelve and the dates they died on. These are lisonjera flowers, devil's grass, Chondrilla juncea, the source of the smear of colour the necromancer Arcturus always had under his fingernails.

A gift and a piece of advice, Lord Aleph.

"I would've asked you to say hi to her," I say.

January's eyes are very old for someone who's finger-painted her face pink and orange today, someone the size of a primary-school student. "And I would've," she says.

It's enough that she looked me in the eye for two seconds. Now I know without having to search or remember: to the right is her office, she lives there more than not, and here emergencies, supplies, I don't care, it doesn't matter, nothing matters until I come to -- walking while I look, faster than the Healer, faster than any human should be but acting requires effort and I'm out of patience --

"The basement, sister?" I jump down instead of walking, passing irritably through the stairs; who cares about respecting solid matter, about the laws of physics, light, I am information, I am data, I don't care. My shadow changes, disappears, reappears, like a blink. It goes out. "Really you couldn't be more stereotypical than this. It is not possible. You have won the prize of most stereotypical. You're the stereotype, it's you."

She has a drafting table, old and elegant, stained with blood (various sources, the most recent stains are from her and January, no coercion). A dentist's lamp (electric, being used as the focus for a general-purpose spell of light, there isn't electricity on this Side). Five books (two have been lost since the library at Alexandria burnt), three notebooks, eight pens, one knife.

One smile, large and bereft of sincerity. I don't fear it, nor do I fear the knife. But someone who doesn't share her last name ought to.

"Cosma," I say, more quietly. I feel someone behind me, looking forward almost at eye level; I don't turn. It must be January, January who doesn't even come to my shoulder, watching from the door. I checked, and I check again: there is no one in this room but me and my sister. "In the shadow of the Twelve or the name of whatever god you fancy today, what do you think you're doing?"

She takes off her stupid smile with a lot more care than I use for my own expressions. It doesn't make it look any more natural. "What do you think I'm doing?"

there's something interesting about the difference, too: it shows in how they ended up not-exactly-gods (that's plenipotentiary and i can't cite it yet) too. cosma can evolve! ciel, uh. (and she's quite aware of it) look:

There's no Unknown Lady to oppose the Twelve, no island off the coast of what's conventional, because there's no Twelve to work against and no order to be an alternative to. There's no lords and no ladies and so, so many people who are alive and fine and don't even miss what she's lost firsthand.

In the end she doesn't notice that she stopped being the Unknown long and long ago. She's Cosma Noline, she supposes, but she only uses her surname on the other side, too. Just Cosma, who everyone knows and no one can explain.

Maybe she's okay with that.

She picks up the Queen Navegant like an afterthought, as an afterthought, a brooch left abandoned in a house that's been endeavouring to fall since before it was built when she finds herself there by chance, but it feels more right than her name.

One day she'll lose her name, after all, like she's lost her title and her post and her beloved sigil. One day she'll lose the Navegant.

But one day she'll lose everything, too, and Ciel doesn't have that.

Being better-off than one person is still quite good enough.

basically: both ciel and cosma fake humanity; cosma makes an effort, which may or may not make her more palatable; for someone who hates ignorance so much ciel is hilariously oblivious a lot of the time.

oh, and noline/january interactions are effectively my FAVOURITE THING and i cannot wait for there to be shipfic if there is ever a fandom.

WHAT'S THAT IS THAT A SEGUE

yes it is

right. january. january is... i have trouble with january. as long as this is Al's Great Big Post Of Spoilers, though, i can tell you about it!

january is more resilient than anyone has ever given her credit for, and this is a constant; for someone as chalk as she is (she looks like a hole in space the way ciel does; genetically she's half-black, i mean, christ -- usually with chalk kids you can at least tell what they were meant to look like, and, yes, this is proportional) being almost without magic should've killed her. for example. so by all accounts she really should have died somewhere between the age of six and ten! and then she didn't.

and then the 180-degree storyline happened and she made out like a bandit insofar as she kept her life and some status and doesn't have a reputation that most people would shank her for. although she has gone several years not allowed to mourn, that can't be good for your health.

also the way that ciel and cosma have their analogies, january has flight. all three of them are linked to air so that's cool (air is the element of information and death; margaret lowes is the heir-apparent of air, for example, the columbine, of messengers and dead people everywhere, seriously she is covered in dead people and death people and death himself). but flight is one of those things that's a bit ingrained into our culture and dichos -- think about how much people talk about things that can't fly flying (pigs, humans)--

if man was meant to fly god would've given him wings, yeah? god gave her wings. someone cut them off.

january's complicated and people keep underestimating her, basically (see also: ciel noline). or overestimating her -- she looks chalk, she talks chalk, as soon as they find out she can't kill them with her brain or whatever they dismiss her. but considering that she's survived looking like that, that in itself is interesting.

(someday she'll break through entirely, maybe, and just ignore it; or maybe she'll use it; god knows the only time i've ever written her with the actual magic she ought to have at her disposal she stopped thinking right, but there were extenuating circumstances. in an AU i want to write and call swipe to unlock, because i'm a terrible person, cosma took care of it young.)

extenuating circumstances go like this:

The symbol drawn in his blood clicks, suddenly. It shouldn't have taken this long, but January grew up under Arianna's rule mostly, and she preferred a different form of the same too-ubiqutious letter, so it's taken her this long to notice the painfully clear little aleph on the floor.

January swallows again and lets everything blur back out. No one in their right mind would even think to pin a murder -- an execution -- no, a murder, the Judge is meant to be merciful and this wasn't at all -- on the Variable.

When there's too much weighing on her nerves January just shuts down. She's never been burnt too badly but she thinks this is how it would feel if someone set her on fire: skin-deep she feels scoured out and empty, with just a flicker of sensation running down her spine to echo off part of her mind that seems convinced she should be screaming.

She brushes Arcturus' face clean with her sleeve, crosses his arms properly, and unties the ribbon and bells she's wearing on her right wrist -- mostly with her teeth -- to leave as a token. Then she turns her back.

January launches herself at the railings like she's seen him do half a dozen times before, her surroundings clear as daylight though it can't be more than two in the morning, and lets herself fall without even having to remind herself that a human wouldn't survive this but she is barely human, really, it's not like she's ever forgotten.

The wind flashing past her at thirty-two feet per second is kind of nice. Her braids whip at her face, and it doesn't sting yet.

Whether he's really burning into appropriately silver- and aluminium-coloured ash back up on the roof is a matter for debate. There's no way for January to know, not even by experience. She certainly still feels like she'll destroy anything that touches her.

She lands with half the sound she's expecting, lopsided, just three bells on her left wrist. It hurts less than she expects, shock getting to her knees and then stopping. The sidewalk's indented with two small feet. January starts walking.

It doesn't take long for the chill to catch up with her, and in a block she's small and human and aching all over. Her throat feels raw and the night is very dark.

(michael myers resplendent is her song! how did you know?)

for perspective, okay:
* at least after that she remembers the hebrew and syriac distinction really well (for me, at least, this makes cosma asking her a bit miserably hilarious)
* january's had enough cause to get good at compartmentalisation in the past that this happens hours later
* also:

"Carl's doing a big operation tomorrow on a kid your age and it's my fault," he said eventually, January's chin wearing a comfortable groove in his shoulder. "And he wants me."

"Oh," she said, a bit flat. "Insurance?"

"Knockout and backup, yeah," Arcturus said. This close to the centre of the Side with the sun up he felt the weight of everything he should avoid, hanging down on him as a death sentence and worse. But then there was January, too -- he could have doomed her with a single flicker of his always subpar glamour, but. January. "Not like I can say no," he added, knowing it was a mistake even as he said it.

"I'm sorry," she said into his collar, fast and miserable, "you know I am."

"It's not your fault!" Right. Library. "It is not and has never been your fault," he insisted, but more quietly. "Hey. That's the actual truth there, okay?"

January edged a bit closer. "And you're probably going to go ruin someone else's life now," she pointed out.

"Yeah, it's just like the circle of life. But with terrible misfortune. Look, it's -- he asked, it's voluntary, okay? I'm just the catch."

"A human can't take what you did," she said. "Let alone an outsider. You saw what happened to everyone else. You saw them."

"I kn--" Library, public one, terrible glamour the only thing between him and January dead or something, Arcturus' breath cut off cleaner and faster than even Theresa could ever have stopped it. "I know. I've gotten better since then, honest, it's a lot more stable. I wish it didn't work at all but it does, it works."

The little bit of her face he could see as a peripheral was twisted into a dubious squint.

"I wish I could make it all right," he added, thus reaching the pinnacle of fucking spectacular uselessness.

"I wish I could fly," January said.

After a moment he managed to defeat the bench in his quest to get an arm around her. "Jump off a building?"

I JUST

help i have too many emotions about my own characters and i express them through really obtuse parallels no one else will notice, that's why i make posts like this.

(arcturus, by the way has his own set of things; he's pointed towards rightness and justice like it's magnetic north, as much as he tries to deny it. theresa didn't make that happen at all; she picked him for a reason. it's just that then she fucked it up horribly, the end, rocks fall, everyone but january dies.)

and, on another note: if anyone is interested in beta-reading there are bodies on the ceiling and they're fluttering their wings for coherency, or indeed in helping me hash out a story i have not started yet but there's lovecraft and politics in and it's in theory for the icarus anthology, um, let me know, that would be awesome.