Quoted By:
>...
"You knew?" Your voice is coming from somewhere outside your body. You are perhaps somewhere outside your body.
>[-3 ID: 2/(9)]
"Charlie..." Richard looks down at his glass. "Of course I did. I'm in your head. This sort of thing isn't subtle."
You know what his response will be before you say it, which makes you wonder why you're saying it at all. But you don't have a choice. Your voice is coming from somewhere outside your body. "And you didn't tell me."
"And what, so I could make you miserable? Drive you to distraction? Clearly you haven't needed it."
You knew he was going to say that. And it's reasonable. Too reasonable. Hatred wells up in you. "So you did it."
"Pardon me?"
"You did it. You—" Your hands clench through the slats of the bench. "I know you did. You're in my head. You said it. So you—"
"I'm afraid not." He smiles grimly. "I have no recollection of the past three years, either."
You close your eyes.
"Of course, I aware of this at once, while you— slow as you are— failed to notice. But the cause is presumably the same. <span class="mu-i">What,</span> I shouldn't like to guess."
"You don't know what..."
"Well, I can't <span class="mu-i">quite</span> seem to remember." Ice clinks against his glass. "Jocularity aside, to wipe your mind requires no special effort. To wipe my mind... suffice it to say we appear to have run afoul of something major. Something I'd advise we not bother again."
If you keep your eyes closed, it feels a little less like this is happening. "But we don't know what it is not to bother."
"Then I advise we bother everything as little as possible." Richard sounds smirk-y.
You have nothing to say to that. You may have nothing to say ever again. It's just that the voice outside you keeps talking. "...How much of this have we done before?"
"What's 'this'?"
"I-I don't know. The first time you ever— you <span class="mu-i">ever</span> showed up as a person was under a month ago. Just before I got the Crown. Was that really the...?"
There's a silence. "Ah..."
The slats of the bench will leave white strips in your palm, if you ever let go of it. "Did I really only <span class="mu-i">just</span> find out about my father?"
"...I don't know, Charlie. That's the long and short of it." A rustle: he's shifting in his seat. "But I will say that the body felt, ah, broken-in."
"Great," you mumble.
"I'm not fond of this either, I hope you—"
You don't care about what he says. "So Jesse was right about everything. He was right that I was some— some officer, or something, and I did flee, and I left him The Sword, and he was— and now he's dead. He's dead."
"You never saw the body, so I wouldn't jump to conclusions, Charlie. But all of that certainly seems to be the case."
(1/2)
