"Well, at one point it became a habit. He was a professor of literature, something like that, and I needed to read. So I forced him to teach me and I couldn't pay, so I killed him."
He takes his fingers and twists Florian's hair between them.
"You are the Elendhaven that takes," he recites to himself from an unwritten book, from an unspoken prayer. Then he leans up to kiss him on the lips, gently. Slowly.
"What about it is 'fun'?" he asks, wanting to understand. Hurting those who hurt you, certainly. Taking your payment from their flesh. But harming those who helped you...
The kiss settles him and he falls down again beside him, confident that he no longer has to be on the defensive, that he doesn't have to recall that hurtful past.
"It's the look in their eyes when they realize what's happening. It's that moment between innocence and knowing. Death is something that people aren't generally able to talk about. It's an unknown. I like that look when the truly understand what's in front of them."
His snort is dismissive and annoyed. Not at Johann, but at 'people'. How can one not know death? It stalks every corner, lives in every shadow, can be heard in every cough, felt in every fever, grows inside every one of them. The world they'd come from had longed for death, called for death. Gross ignorance was to be disdained and that could be seen as nothing less.
"Is that what you seek from your long falls? To see it from that perspective?"
"Yes. But there's also - something freeing about it. For those moments in the fall, I'm back to being what I was before I came to shore. Nothing to think about, nothing to worry about. It's pure sensation. But it's always too short."
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He takes his fingers and twists Florian's hair between them.
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"Could you not have simply disappeared?"
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"It was fun. It was the only enjoyment I had. And I was fucking good at it."
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"What about it is 'fun'?" he asks, wanting to understand. Hurting those who hurt you, certainly. Taking your payment from their flesh. But harming those who helped you...
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"It's the look in their eyes when they realize what's happening. It's that moment between innocence and knowing. Death is something that people aren't generally able to talk about. It's an unknown. I like that look when the truly understand what's in front of them."
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"Is that what you seek from your long falls? To see it from that perspective?"
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Said as a plain fact, something that he doesn't and can't dispute.
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He is certain of that and only that in his life.
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"Yeah, I remember. Must you always remind me?"
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