Binah sits at the table, her fingers curled around the handle of her teacup. Her floor is filled with a quiet stillness, a thick air that allows for deep contemplation. Binah cultivates this quiet atmosphere for herself, with it occasionally interrupted by the sound of shuffling footsteps from her Assistants, of books being removed and reshelved, of the reverberating echoes of her own movements. She enjoys the stillness, the unfilled space in life can be cultivated. A far cry from where she resided prior, in depths with air so thick as to suffocate her.
Yet right now, her stillness is not interrupted by the usual disturbances. The signs of life, the quiet background noise that reminds her she still resides among the living. No. Instead, what disturbs her is but the tiniest of ripples, running across the surface of her teacup like waves. Her mind recognizes the source of this, of course, as coming from a small tremor in her hand. Not one large enough to be easily observable, but just enough to cause ripples on the surface of her teacup.
Binah stares into the dark, murky liquid. The sight conjures numerous feelings. The impulse stirs within her to throw the cup down, to drop it in an instant and let the porcelain shatter into a hundred tiny little shards. Reach down and touch those pieces with her hands, let their sharp edges cut into her fingers and embed themselves, watch herself bleed .
She considers this thought, and then lets it pass. She considers also swallowing those shards, letting them tear apart her esophagus, leave her coughing and gasping for breath. This thought, too, she lets pass.
Instead, she simply raises the cup to her lips, lowering it, gripping the sides with both hands, letting the warmth seep into her fingers.
Her hands should not quiver. Through the phantom remnants of her own past, as many fragmented and tiny shards as a broken teacup would produce, she knows this to be true. Her hands did not used to shake, even slightly. The hands once belonging to an Arbiter were firm, decisive - they must be, for within those hands was held the judgment of the City itself.
But now, her hands shook, just enough to remind her of what she was not . To remind her what it meant to be degraded, to be brought down from being unflinching and unimpeachable to…
Well. Binah hasn’t been sure how to describe her current state. In fact, she doubts that she is even capable of describing it. She can only allude to it, grasp at it, like a child trying to touch steam and only managing to gather moisture on her fingertips.
Nonetheless, she still feels like retching. Instead, she takes another sip of tea, placing the cup back down on the surface of the table.The choking sensation remains, along with a strange sense of weight upon her, a lingering tenseness just at the tip of her tongue. She opens her mouth, and she takes in a sharp breath, before closing it. She wiggles her fingers, the sensation feeling alien, jolty, artificial. She stops this action soon after.
It has not been long since her awakening in this place. Everyone else seems to have adjusted to their newfound forms without issue. They do not all look the same as before - the Red Mist has a new haircut, the blue boy grew his out, and he seems to have even managed to grow up a bit himself. When Binah first looked at herself in the mirror, she was confronted with a face that was hers and yet not hers. She leaned in, studied it. Tried to find some inconsistency, some imperfection, some miniscule detail that could explain her lack of recognition. She was unable to find anything concrete, and eventually gave up her search.
She recalls an incident the other day. Wherein, while removing a book from the shelf, her grip faltered. The book fell, tumbling to the floor with a resounding thump that reverberated through the room. She remembers standing there, looking down at it, her mind feeling horribly foggy. The sensation of her heart clenching in her chest. She tried to avoid thinking about that memory.
A few words leap to mind to describe the feeling she currently experiences. Disgust, terror, grief, loathing. She dismisses these labels as they appear. Other words jump to mind too. Paresthesia, peripheral neuropathy, Wallerian degeneration. Permanent nerve damage can occur in patients when sufficient material is not there to facilitate restoration of—
She sighs. Dwelling on this will not get her anywhere. She can turn over the subject again and again, and it still will not get her any closer to a conclusion. Some things simply cannot be grasped. Wisdom, as they say, equally involves accepting what can't be known as seeking out what can. Distantly, she can hear the sound of a familiar voice laughing, mocking her. “Look how far you’ve fallen,” it whispers, “can't even hold a cup of tea anymore. What are you going to do now, dog of the head, without your master to go running to? What will you do when-”
She quickly grows tired of that rambling, and instead has another sip of tea. She lets out a small hum as she thumbs open a book. A book on torture, in fact. On pain. She picked it for no particular reason other than the sense of familiarity it brought her, and the intrigue which came with that. It is not exactly light reading, and serves as an artifact the likes of which will probably draw some rather unnerved stares from the Librarians of other floors who happen to glance at her reading it, which suits Binah just fine. She prefers it that way, keeping everyone from being too comfortable with her. That's how things should be, really.
She idly turns the page, and tries to ignore the tingling in her fingertips as she does.
Here’s a story for you. It goes a little something like this:
From the day you were born, your future was already set in stone. You were always going to become this. It was all preordained, an immutable fact of the world, that you were meant to stand at the top of it, and cast judgment down from on high.
You remember white halls and marbled floors, the rhythmic, mechanical tapping of a group of people marching in unison. You remember sunlight streaming through too-large windows, the feeling of a gloved hand clutching yours, the feeling of your own hand squeezing back.
All you ever did was follow the path that was laid out before you. There was no obstacle you could not conquer. No challenge too great. Nothing that you could not throw yourself at and come out on top of. You were perfect, and they held you to those standards of perfection, which you surpassed at every turn.
It was all rather dull, as you recall it. The residual feeling of that existence still resides within you. The funny thing about living out a preordained life of exceptional proportions is that the exceptional does not remain exceptional. Perfection becomes expected, the extraordinary turns into the ordinary. What was once remarkable fades into boredom, mundanity, and the world of the mundane remains so far beneath you that you can scarcely even fathom how anyone lives with it.
You did everything right. And in the end, you were rewarded for it with the world in your hands.
Why did you become an Arbiter of the Head?
Because it was the only possible outcome, the natural conclusion to the path which they placed you on. You were never going to be anything else. The powers that be set you up for success, and you rose to meet their challenge without an ounce of hesitation. Everything, ultimately, went as it should.
And perhaps, therefore, your end was preordained too. Yet they never bothered to tell you that part of the story in advance. Not before you ran into it head first, just like you had everything else before.
Some time later, the boy-child comes to visit her, his blue mane tied back into a loose ponytail. He bears two gifts with him: the first, a rather fine tea set, one befitting of his noble countenance. The second, a bag of those coffee beans of his, of which he would preach the virtues of to every audience, willing to unwilling. The attempt to bribe her into trying them with his initial gift is appreciated, but sadly for him, Binah is not susceptible to such simple flattery. Still, she accepts it courteously.
“Would you mind if I stayed to finish my own cup?” he asks, raising it to his lips. Binah sees no reason to refuse him. She lets him pull out a chair, taking a seat across from her. He lets out a small, melodious hum. “It's a bit odd, isn't it? For us to be able to sit together like this, sharing our respective beverages.”
“Perhaps. I find that the world cares little for what we consider to be abnormal or not.” She takes a sip of her own tea. “It would behoove you to not hold too closely to such narrow preconceptions of things.”
Of course, she knows, he can't help it. She can see the way the boy’s eyes work. Constantly studying, constantly evaluating things, constantly measuring the world against some impossible standard. Take in inputs, analyze the results, produce the correct outputs in turn. Running through a well honed routine like a master class performer. She might find it impressive, if she didn't find it pitiable.
Indeed, the boy-child is a maze of contradictions in her eyes. She can still see him there, curled up on the floor, arms wrapped around his legs, pulled tight against his chest. Though he had, out of his own cowardice, chosen to sell out his colleagues, when she came for him, he put up no resistance. He did not plead with her, did not put up some sort of justification; he neither stalled nor fled. Instead, he only met her eyes for a brief moment, and he accepted his fate at her hands without even a word.
Because of that, Garion had made it quick for him. A gesture of respect for one who made such a solemn display of absolute despair. And though that little boy’s grown into a fine young man now, she still sees that image from way back then when she looks at him. And even now, she’s still not quite sure what she should make of it. So she simply pushes it aside.
“I suppose so,” he says. She can detect a hint of self consciousness in his voice. A realization of a misstep, hesitance in recalibration, and then, “There are still a lot of things I don't understand. But hey, I suppose we have all the time in the world to learn it now, now don't we?”
“Indeed we do.” It is a true statement, even if also an inane one. Silence falls between them. He is searching for the right words to say; or rather, he is searching for the words he believes to be correct. He's on edge, nervous, not sure what to do in this scenario. Binah, of course, gives him no guidance. She simply waits for him to make up his mind.
His fingers drum against the surface of the table in a surprisingly human gesture, eyes drifting down. “The body in pain, huh? Not exactly light reading you’ve got there.”
Seizing upon the nearest object of discussion available. A classic tactic, but Binah doesn't mind speaking of it. She places her cup down, leaning forward.
“Yes, but you aren't exactly the type to be drawn to light topics yourself, are you?”
“You got me there~” Another flicker of self consciousness, papered over by a thick veneer of easy charm. Many words linger at the tip of the boy-child's tongue, but he chooses not to say any of them. Instead, he decides to play things defensively. “So, what does it discuss, exactly?”
“A process I am intimately familiar with. The unmaking and remaking of the ego under the crucible of unbearable agony.” She pauses, letting that statement sit. “It is a process you are intimately familiar with as well.”
“...Why, whatever do you mean~?”
He's probing her. In that indirect manner of his, he asks as directly as he can, What have you seen in me? What do you think of me? What truth have you discovered, or are you merely gesturing at something you don't understand? It's an accusation, disguised as a question, disguised in turn as a pithy little comment. Of course, Binah, knowing this gesture, decides instead to avoid giving him that closure, in a pivot that should make a person like him proud.
“When we are subjected to intense pain, the conceptions of consciousness we cling to fall away. The markers of a civilized man – language, thought, selfhood – are done away with, subordinated to the basal realm of the body. The cessation of the ego in the face of overwhelming sensation. All leads into nil.” She takes another sip from her teacup. “And in that death of selfhood, so too does the external world fall away. One’s own conception of reality warps and distorts, and eventually shatters entirely. The world, the self, all is reduced to void, except the visceral cage of the flesh.
“And in that void, one becomes subject to the reality of another. You could consider it to be the ultimate assertion of authority. The power to completely dominate and erase the reality of a subject, to render meaning void and distinction useless, to create a reality defined only by that assertion, by subject and by punisher.” She pauses, watching him, taking yet another sip. “Anyways, I just thought the topic was interesting.”
Chesed stares at her with a furrowed brow. He’s still on the defensive, still playing his cards close to his chest. He mirrors her posture, taking a sip of his coffee, letting an easy smile fall on his face. “Indeed it is. That all sounds pretty scary, when you lay it out to me like that~”
Mirroring her tone, too, to some extent. He probably doesn’t even notice himself doing it. He slides into it easily, like a well practiced reflex, as easily as a swordsman swipes his blade. Observe what he sees, reflect it back at the source, let them assume what they wish. But a human being cannot truly be a mirror. The reflection they give off always comes back distorted, filtered, through a person’s own idiosyncrasies. Like it or not, no one is ever able to truly hide who they are. Even one as well practiced at it as the boy-child may be.
“I suppose so. Which is why it is fascinating, that one so familiar with it would put so much faith in such signifiers, knowing how hollow they may prove to be.”
“Well… Maybe that’s exactly why one does it.” He lets out a slight chuckle. “Being brought face to face with the fragile nature of the self, made to suffer absolute abjection… In recognizing that fragility, it only makes sense to hold tightly to that which signifies one’s own existence, precisely because those things are so easily taken away.”
“Perhaps.” It’s charming, the way he places a thin veneer over the personal. A confession and an avoidance, baked into one. A contradiction in terms that forms a consistency in practice. “But an existence denoted by hollow signifiers is an existence that is, in spirit, hollow.”
“Yet after an existence has been hollowed out, is it really surprising if that existence remains hollow?” He grips his mug with both hands, fingers shifting around on it. The sole sign of emotion he allows to break through his carefully practiced mask, centered around that precious beverage he holds so dear. It’s hilariously unsubtle of him. “And for someone preaching the hollow insignificance of words, you sure do use a lot of them~”
“Language is the realm of the abstract. Naturally, it should be used to convey the abstract.” She takes a final drink of her quickly cooling tea, placing the cup back down on the table, finally deigning to meet his eyes. “The visceral is the realm of the concrete. The world as it exists, as it is experienced, defies being put into words. Therefore, I simply make no attempt to. Only to contemplate trifling, ephemeral things, as language is meant to.”
He chuckles, a little deeper this time. He, too, places his mug down. “A rather cynical view, isn’t it, Miss Arbiter?”
“It is my past lives which lend me such a view, and I am an Arbiter no longer.” The boy-child grins at her in response to this statement. Though she simply states the truth, he seems to think this reminder of her current status somehow works to degrade her, and he can’t help but revel in it, after having been dragged over the coals himself. “Only humans have access to the realm of the abstract. And with that privilege, as former humans, is it not our right to dwell there?”
“I suppose so. It’s a rather lofty, comfortable place to reside. Certainly, far nicer than the world out there.” He picks up his mug once more, swirling it, before he places it back down. His hand drifts over to the handle of her teapot. “You wouldn’t mind indulging me in that realm some more, would you?”
Binah simply grins back at him, picking up her fresh cup of tea. “I would love to.”
Here’s a story for you. It goes a little something like this:
From the moment you were born, you were dissatisfied with your life. You couldn't put a finger on why. You wanted for nothing, and you possessed everything. Everything people coveted, you had. Your circ*mstances were unremarkable, really - so unremarkable as to be inexplicably remarkable. It was all so greatly null.
You didn't have the material needs that drive so many others, and so it was instead replaced with a different need. A greater need. A deep sense of hollowness pervaded your existence, a melancholic longing without a name, one that swallowed everything within it.
It would haunt you your whole life. You would find yourself staring out of windows, looking out at the sunlight, trying to make out the contours of how the light shifted and what it touched. It all seemed so important and yet so meaningless at the same time. As if you glanced it from just the right angle, then some hidden meaning would make itself clear to you. What was missing from your eyes would suddenly come into place. You kept searching for something - buried in the pages of books between the words and letters, hidden between raindrops outside, somewhere. Somewhere, it had to be.
You wanted to know. You wanted to know why the stars shone down on this earth. Why the pillars rose up into the sky. Why men clawed and tore out each other's throats with their teeth. You couldn't be satisfied with merely living in the world that existed. Meaningless, pervasive, inescapable. There had to be more. You needed that more. Whatever it was. Wherever it laid. And that want, so deep to your core, so much so as to be you, came to define everything.
So you ran. So you fashioned yourself wings out of wax, determined to fly as high as you could, even if in doing so you would burn up and fall back down to earth. You crawled upwards, towards the highest heights you could achieve, climbed those pillars that seemed to run endlessly up into the sky, until you reached the roof of the world. You sought to devour the stars. You sought to sunder the earth. You sought everything, as if everything could cancel out nothing.
Why did you become an Arbiter of the Head?
Because you wanted to stare down at the Earth below. Because you couldn't imagine a life stuck looking up at the heavens from your feeble place on earth. You wanted to behold all of it. And only when all of the earth was laid out before you, when it all resided within your grasp, would that emptiness inside of you finally be filled with the beating hearts of all mankind, inserted where yours should have been.
Binah rarely leaves her own floor. It’s not as if she can’t , as if she’s paralyzed and confined by some nebulous sense of anxiety or some other such fetter. She simply does not see the need to, not unless invited by another. That’s what brings her down the numerous flights of steps, and makes her wonder why Angela doesn’t bother with putting a lift in for those of them who can’t simply bounce around wherever they may please. She might have to file a complaint later.
The girl-child is alike and unlike the boy-child in many regards. There’s a certain nothingness to the both of them, but where the boy-child is more like a figure viewed through water, rippling and shifting in such a way that you can never quite pin down the details, the girl-child is more like a shade lingering on the wall. One who is always threatening to vanish back into the shadows from which she emerged, something fragile and transient and ephemeral. It’s a little pitiable, honestly., but it’s more honest than the boy-child’s way of doing things.
Hod sits at one of the tables, hands wrapped around her cup. She manages to meet Binah’s eyes for only a moment, before she startles, and goes back to staring down at the wooden surface of the table. Binah has to keep herself from laughing. She approaches her carefully, and sits diagonally from her at the table. She notices the way she currently feels vaguely sick to her stomach as she takes her own seat. Which is perhaps related to the girl, or perhaps related to something else entirely. It’s difficult to rule either way.
“Hello there, child,” she says calmly, leaning forward, resting her chin on her palm, watching Hod carefully. “What is it that you so wished to speak with me about?”
“...Hi.” She glances up at her cautiously, and Binah simply bow her head in acknowledgment, urging her to continue. “It’s nothing important, really. I’m sorry if I’m bothering you for asking.”
“You are not. And what is or isn’t important is a rather subjective matter. What means the world to one person may mean nothing to another, and what is meaningless in the world’s eyes may be the scope of someone else’s entire reality.” She curls her hand around her elbow, leaning in a bit more. “I believe this is something that you find important enough to call me here, and I chose to accept that invitation. Take that as it is.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound especially convinced, and most likely is slightly confused by Binah’s words, but she seems to get the significant bit, which is license to continue speaking. “I just… Want to become more comfortable speaking with you. That's all.”
“...Do go on.” Binah can guess what she's thinking, but well, she is aware that people find it disconcerting when she states their thoughts to them out loud. It is best to be patient with these things, receive confirmation for her own suppositions, rather than simply barrelling ahead without a care.
“Well… I mean… Things are different now, you know? It feels silly, that I’m still nervous talking with you. I know that it, isn't exactly easy to forget the past, but… I feel like I should be able to let that go. After all… We’re in the same situation now, aren't we?”
“I suppose we are.” She shifts in her chair, placing her hands down on the table, fingers curling around her wrist. “But I can't help but wonder what it is that motivates you. Whether it be courage, or cowardice.”
Hod lets out an uncertain little hum, glancing off to the side. “I’m, not sure what you mean by that.”
“To overcome the past is not an easy feat. Too many people are chained down by it, dragged down into the immeasurable depths of memory.” She tightens her grip. “But far too many people in turn weld themselves to the present. They live as animals, fleeing the gaze of others, thinking only of their next meal. Abandoning all responsibility towards the outside world, existing only in this momentary reality they can observe with their basal senses.”
“...What are you trying to say?” Binah can sense her nervousness. Hod is trying to be polite with her, but that anxiety, that fear, the same one she is trying to contend with, leaks through in her every word. She looks at her with uncertain eyes, and Binah, not wishing to be excessively cruel, decides to indulge her questioning.
“I am asking if this is what you wish, or if you have simply grown self conscious.” She looks up at Hod, meeting the girl’s dark brown eyes. “You have realized the chains which bind you to the past, and you see those around you attempting to discard their past sentiments. Feeling this weight, you attempt to follow suit, spurring yourself onwards towards an unknown destination.”
That's when Binah notices it. The way the corners of her mouth deepen, how her brow lowers. She’s trying not to show it. She's trying not to, but the girl-child's feelings are as clear as day. She feels insulted. Pricked by the barbs which Binah has thrown at her.
She furrows her brow. And, like always, she tries to be diplomatic about it. Give her room to save face. “I’m… Not sure what you’re trying to imply with that.”
“I am saying that if you do not wish to talk with me, if you are forcing yourself to consider my company out of some sense of obligation, then I relieve you from that duty.” She relaxes her grip, folding her hands together nearly. “Do not feel the need to accept my invitations, nor endure my presence, should it be an unwelcome one. We are colleagues now. Nothing more.”
“I… Hey.” Hod's eyes drift downwards. “Binah. Your wrist… It’s bleeding.”
“Oh.” She glances down. Sure enough, she notices it. The places where her nails have dug into her skin, leaving small marks, thin lines of blood seeping out of them. “So it is.”
“So it is?” Hod’s face changes to an unexpected emotion. It's a face she wears well, one that suits her, but one Binah still feels surprised to be seeing. Namely, that of concern. “Is that really all you have to say?”
“Yes. It is not a significant injury, so, I am not sure what you are implying needs to be said. Nonetheless, thank you for pointing it out to me. I believe it will be easy enough for me to deal with myself, so you need not concern yourself with it.” After all, Binah doesn't like having people concerned with her. It feels… Demeaning. Someone fretting over her safety as if she were a small, helpless child. It instills in her a profound sense of wrongness, the likes of which she can't properly place, but lingers bitterly on the tip of her tongue like bile.
She does not wish to offend Hod, of course. She has no personal quarrel with the girl. She merely wishes she would address her pity towards a more adequate, welcoming target. Not towards her, someone who is wholly incompatible with such sentiments.
“...I… Guess I don’t understand how scratching yourself until you bleed doesn’t count as significant.” Hod nervously kneads her hands, unable to make eye contact still. “Sure, it’s not going to kill you, but…”
“Ah. If you worry about some form of psychological distress, then I assure you, that is not the case. I simply did not notice how firm my grip was, nor feel any particularly notable pain.” Not that she’d felt nothing, mind, but a low level of pain and discomfort is something she easily filters out of her perception. In fact, she finds the sensation of it pleasant, at times. “It’s hardly a deliberate attempt at self injury. It is merely a… Slip of the hand, you could say.”
“A slip of the hand into your own skin, maybe,” she grumbles, in what’s probably the most honest statement Binah has heard the girl-child make. “That doesn’t seem like the thing you just, don’t notice you’re doing.”
“I have no reason to lie. You are feel to believe whatever you wish on the matter, however.” Binah grins. “If you wish to interpret this as some form of deep psychological disturbance, then you may do so. If you wish to forget that this conversation ever occurred, then that is also an option. In the end, whatever you wish to do, I have no way to stop you. We will simply continue on as we have. As we will, into the future.”
“Stop messing with me, Binah!” Binah stares at her, as her breath catches. The girl’s outburst apparently managed to surprise even herself, as she seems to shrink back in her chair for a moment, before summoning the courage to speak once more. “You’ve been saying a bunch of really scary things ever since you came here. It’s like… It’s like you’re trying to test me. Trying to see if I'm worthy of speaking to you, or something. And I don’t really know why. I guess I just, don’t get it.” She sighs. The poor thing looks like she’s really struggling. “I’m sorry.”
“There is nothing for you to apologize for. You have committed no wrongdoings in this instance.” She sorely wishes she had some tea right now. It might make this all less tiresome, but it feels as if it is an inappropriate time to ask Hod to bring her some. Even if the girl really seems like she needs a break. “I simply have come to you as I am. Perhaps I am testing you, or toying with you. Perhaps I am merely indulging in idle speculation. Perhaps I am doing nothing in particular at all. Whatever it is you may make of it, it will come as a result of your own eyes and judgment. Nothing more, nothing less.”
That is how she has chosen to exist now. Whatever people may make of her, she is what she is. Even if she is intrigued by what other people may see in her, even if those views, at times, disappoint her, that reality remains unchanged. She has no control over people’s perceptions. Over whatever fiction Hod has concocted inside of her mind that makes her feel so disappointed by Binah’s answers. Even if that is a bit of a shame.
Her fingers drum against the table. The girl-child truly does seem to be making an effort to puzzle things out. Binah appreciates that. She does prefer it when people try and engage, rather than simply retreating into their own egoes. As much as the matter may reveal about the person, it does get rather tiresome after a while.
“So… You aren't going to clarify then.” She seems vaguely disappointed by this realization.
“What is there to be clarified? Everything that was said, was said. To go back and relitigate the meaning hardly provides clarity on what happened. Rather… You could say it creates a new meaning entirely.” Once again, she leans forward, resting her chin on her palm. “Creating that meaning can be a worthwhile endeavor, but it is not the form of clarification which you seek.”
Hod furrows her brow. “So… You’re saying you can't clarify, then. That, not even you know why you do the things you do…”
“I suppose that's one way to interpret it.” Her definitions of knowledge and answers are rather different from Binah’s own, if that is the conclusion which she reaches. Really… It's all rather hilarious, but Hod herself is oblivious to the joke. Rather, the precise reason why she is oblivious to the joke is what makes it all so hilarious.
The girl seems far too caught up on certainties. That is what Binah has managed to surmise from all of this. She searches vainly for certainty in things that it is impossible to be certain of. How one precisely feels, what one was thinking at an exact moment in time, what motivated a person to do this or that… One can guess at these things with varying degrees of accuracy, but in the end, the human heart defies definition. To demand that Binah explain these things in definitive terms is to demand that she lie. And well…
If she's being honest, that actually does irritate her to no end.
Perhaps Hod wishes to dwell in that sort of comforting world. Where she can know for certain how other people feel and think, where some definite truth is accessible to her. Though Binah may sympathize with such a desire, she cannot in good conscience possibly play into it. She has too much respect for the girl-child, to indulge such a delusion.
“That… Seems like a rather scary world to live in, if I'm being honest.” She chuckles rather awkwardly, as if to dismiss the unease that has settled over them. Yet despite this, it does seem to Binah she has managed to find some sort of understanding, in her own terms.
“Perhaps.” Binah glances around at the stacked shelves. “But perhaps it is a more honest one. The root of wisdom, as they say, lies in recognizing what you cannot be certain of. The past is out of reach, and the present slips through our fingers like grains of shifting sand. The future batters against us like waves, eroding away the present and scattering the past to the far winds. In those ever changing tides, the most honest way to live is to embrace the ebbs and flows of the current. To allow it to carry you onwards, to wherever it is you may reach.”
“I guess that's a way of looking at it. I don't know, though.” Hod summons up a breath, managing to look at Binah once more. “After all… Isn't that a rather hopeless way of seeing things? Seems like it's bound to make everything seem futile, if all we can do is just get pushed along by unknown forces towards who knows where. It, doesn't feel like that leaves a lot of room for human agency. For anything to matter, really. If it all just… Is. ”
“Perhaps that may be.” Binah lets out a long sigh. “However… I am afraid that I am the wrong person to ask about things such as that.”
After all… It's not as if she's capable of remembering what hope feels like. If she ever experienced it in the first place.
Here's a story for you. It goes a little something like this:
No matter how many times you do this, it never gets old. You wade through the hallway, stepping over the corpses of corporate security with monthly salaries higher than the money a Backstreets family will see over the course of generations. Expensive bodies arrayed around you like broken glass as you take the final steps forward, forcing the office door in front of you to unlock, no doubt wasting however many millions went into constructing the requisite security measures.
The executive hides under his desk. They always greet you like this at the end. They hide, or flee, or bargain. None of it ever really matters, of course. Their efforts are futile, but you wish they greeted you with more dignity in the end. A grim and solemn acceptance of the inevitable, or at least more honorable resistance. Maybe if they attempted to claw your throat out or something of the sort. Tried to take you down with them. Alas, these corporate types never do. Worms, the lot of them.
You find him there. You flip the table over and grab him by his collar. You walk, calmly, towards the tall glass behind him. The entire back wall is there, one great window, displaying the grandeur of the nest. He flails about, he spouts some desperate drivel about you, some trifling and meaningless offer, which you ignore. You press his back against that window. You meet his eyes. You see within it the absolute terror, the blinding savage fear that grips a man who knows right now that he is dying. That these are his last seconds on earth. That nothing can be done to escape his fate.
That terror, that void of hope, that all consuming pain which erodes away reason, that erases the facade of humanity and reveals the true, ugly face of mankind. No matter how many times you witness it, it never grows old.
You throw his body through the glass. You watch it shatter into a thousand shards, cut into his finely tailored clothes and embed itself in his skin as he falls, falls, falls. You watch it, with dispassionate intrigue, and then you turn to your leave.
You will enact scenes like this again and again. You will carve a path through people screaming in terror and you will grind their desperation into the dirt. You will strip a man bare, make him throw away every ounce of dignity he might have, just to slaughter him in front of the family he so wished to protect. You will turn sister against brother, mother against son, wife against husband. You will rip the mask off of civilization and expose the raw brutality beneath, and you will serve as its agent.
Why did you become an Arbiter of the Head?
Because there's nothing that makes you feel more alive than this; than when you get to watch the moment in which a person first experiences reality for what it is, right before the end. There is nothing more real than brutality, nothing more thrilling than fear. Those brief moments where the world is you and your target, where nothing else exists, and the reality of the world is laid bare before you. Enacted upon your target, one of the lucky few who gets to, in that brief moment, experience that sublimity too.
Compared to that, the rest of reality is impossibly barren. A collage of images and falsities, spectacles lacking any deeper meaning. No. You lived for that truth. For those brief moments where you could manage to exist. Where the colors, where the world, finally became real.
It comes as no surprise to Binah, that the Head would attempt to retrieve her broken and withered body. Really, it was only to be expected. That when everything came to a close, the Arbiters would finally descend from their perch, to deliver their sovereign’s final judgment.
Outsiders wouldn’t necessarily understand the choice, not beyond a superficial level. They might think it’s a matter of appearance - that leaving one of their all-powerful agents in the hands of an enemy would be, as they say, a bad look. Or that some sort of secret weapon lies within her mangled flesh, that beneath her taught skin writhes a Singularity the likes of which the world should never see.
On some level, that’s true. Just not in the way everyone else assumes it to be.
After everything that was done to her, much of her memory was eradicated. The operative term here, of course, being much. Her current self could be likened to that of a once-renowned pianist. If you put her before a piano, she can no longer name the keys. She can no longer tell you the notes that each produces, nor name the notes if heard. She does not know the score, and yet, if you tell her to play a song… She can reproduce it perfectly from memory, with that same mastery she once displayed before.
She will not be able to tell you its name, or composer, or date of creation. She could not even tell you how to play it yourself. Were you to remind her of these things, perhaps she may feel a vague sense of familiarity with them, but nothing more. Yet the melody itself remains, a phantom sensation, lingering inside the tips of her fingers.
And if that melody was never meant to be played outside of a particular concert hall, if the notes recorded are never supposed to be reproduced… Then it is only natural that the owner of that song would inevitably come to reclaim its lost property.
And it is because of this that the Head’s appearance comes as no surprise to her. Degraded though she may be, so long as the truths of the City remain within her bones, the Head will always consider her to be a black mark.
Not that there’s anything personal about that fact, mind. They have no particular vendetta against her. They simply feel the need to protect the ecosystem they have chosen to steward, and that’s a job which requires careful and complex management. As long as she had remained in the closed terrarium of Lobotomy Corporation’s headquarters, there would have been no need to retrieve her. And in exile from the City, there is little that can be done with the information encoded within her. They are perfectly content to let her be, even though, of course, they probably are a little sore over it.
Angela and Gebura have both refrained from asking her about that little incident. Roland, never one for propriety, decided to poke her a bit about whether “you and that psycho chick have some sort of history together”, to which Binah could give him a very firm “maybe.” Still, it did fill her with a strange sense of nostalgia. Which may be personal, but had an equal, and more probable chance, of simply being a matter of resemblance.
Nonetheless, she is quite satisfied to enjoy her newfound repose. The silence that fills the Library nowadays is much different from before. Less like a mausoleum, and more like… Well. A library, really.
“May I join you for a cup of tea?” The voice echoes across the open area of the floor, and Binah glances up at the man standing across from her, hovering above one of the chairs at the table with that ever-grim expression of his on his face.
“Certainly.” Binah simply lowers her head in a polite nod. “Do help yourself.”
Binah is not quite sure how she feels about Hokma. In some ways, they hold similar views. Both of them understand the meaninglessness of reality, the senseless nature of the City’s tragedy. Yet where Binah chose to embrace that nature, accepting the truth without judgment, Hokma simply decided that, since the truth was arbitrary, that he should embrace the vision he most desired, and follow it without hesitation.
Wholehearted devotion was the only thing Hokma could be said to believe in. In that vein, he committed countless sins on the behalf of his beloved mentor, and he bore not an ounce of guilt for them. He discarded the lives of others as easily as one rids themselves of clutter as they clean their home in order to clear the path which Ayin would then walk. It was not as if he did not recognize the significance of those lives, nor the pain his actions caused. Rather, he simply accepted at the outset that to walk this path was to accept all the outcomes thereof, and to do whatever must be done to see it through. If his path destroyed people’s futures, left a river of blood in his wake… It had no bearing on him. That was the way which Benjamin thought.
Only his hesitance at the end proved to be a source of regret for him, and even then. He managed to move beyond his own cowardice and drag his broken body over the finish line in order to usher in the future he envisioned. Though it has not turned out as he had hoped… If one were to ask him if he would do it all over again, Binah feels certain his answer would be a yes. He chose to accept the outcomes of the path he walked. Even if it was not what he originally wished for, that is simply how everything unfolded.
It is a straightforward way of thinking, beautiful in its simplicity. To strive towards a single star and discard all others. To carve out a path to your objective, and to tear through everything which ends up in the way. There’s something almost graceful to it, to that clean and ruthless perfection. Binah just might respect that viewpoint, if she didn’t find it so utterly contemptible.
Hokma has rid himself of whatever human qualities Benjamin may have possessed, embracing that ruthless perfection. There was a charm in that past hesitance, that former desperation. In a man who so dedicated himself to an ideal confronting its true nature and reckoning with it what it wrought, despite his own cognitive dissonance about the matter.
Yet now, having achieved his long sought after goal, the man has been left rather empty now, a fact which Binah has reveled in more than she would outwardly admit. Perhaps now, eventually, he’ll deign to delve into the muck with the rest of them. Or maybe he’ll remain just as perfect as ever, until all of his humanity fades away entirely, and his existence disappears into smoke. She can accept either outcome, really. It’s not as if she’s particularly invested in his fate.
Yet still, his clarity means he can make for decent conversation. However disagreeable his views may be to her, his perspective nonetheless proves interesting to her. Even if one of the areas of interest she has is in testing it.
“What exactly is it that has brought you here today?” she asks him out of her vague sense of curiosity, reaching forward to courteously pour him a cup of tea.
“Just idle musings.” And in turn, Hokma graciously picks up the teacup, nodding and lowering the cup in acknowledgment to his host, before taking a sip. “I don’t mind wiling the time away in silence… But sometimes I like to seek out a second opinion.”
“A second opinion. An oddly medical turn of phrase from the man who helped cut me into pieces.” She grins. “Shouldn’t you be worried about coming off in poor taste? Or are you truly so shameless as to not even remember that?”
He frowns in turn, looking ever so slightly irritated. “If you’re in the mood to taunt me, then I don’t think I have offended you too greatly. Evidently, you’ve been in more and more of an upbeat mood, ever since our affairs in the City were resolved.”
“I suppose I have.” She can’t really deny it, with a little introspection. She rarely registers her own moods in that type of context, so it hadn’t occurred to her, but she has been overall in better spirits ever since their exile from the City. She has her suspicions as to why, but none of them concrete enough for her to venture to place a label to it.
“But if you wish for me to cut right to the heart of the matter…” He places the cup back down on its saucer. “I’ll ask you straight out. You’re the only one I haven’t yet asked this to, in fact.”
She raises an eyebrow at him. So, he’s been conducting a survey of the Library, then. And after working his way through all of the other Librarians, he’s finally worked his way up to here. Which isn’t really a second opinion. More like an eighth, or a ninth, or a tenth, but she knows this is simply her own pedantry at work, and she still has enough manners left to let the man finish.
“...What is your relationship, exactly? To your past self?”
At the question, Binah can’t help but grin even wider. “And do you intend to share first? Or would you like me to be the one to disclose?”
His silence is itself clarifying. It’s a little annoying, but at the same time, of course Hokma would be the one who has the courage to be so brazenly direct about the question. The others have all danced around it to varying extents, whether that be Roland’s prying into her past or the discomforting reminder her existence poses to others, but Hokma, in his ruthless precision, sliced away all formalities. And at the same time, he expressed more personal curiosity than she would have expected from a man so disinterested in other people. Perhaps, all of them really have been changing.
“I suppose it’s difficult to say.” She breathes out a long sigh. “I am not Garion. Were she and I to meet, it is unlikely she would recognize much of herself in me. Yet though I say that, I cannot deny that there would be some form of recognition. There is a continuity between us, but the line that may once have connected the past and future has now been inexorably twisted, as muddled and murky as the black tea which you now drink.”
“...Something which I bear responsibility for, I am aware.” His expression is grim, yet also strangely thoughtful. As if the fact no longer conjures the same sting it once did when she taunted him with it. “Though, the many years we have endured have disconnected all of us, none have faced it as acutely as you have.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Hokma. I do not hold resentment over that disconnection. It is, if anything, a blessing of a sort.” Now it’s her turn to have a sip of tea, to punctuate the gulf of silence between them. “There are many people who would prefer to live unburdened of their past. Though to some, inhabiting a spectral landscape of the self would be an intolerable condition… I feel no such agony. I may not be Garion. I may, in fact, be only a hollow shell of a being that was once human, a living echo. But there is a clarity that comes with that void. A clarity that those of us here who are still chained by their own past feelings lack.”
“And yet, the others here are all striving to unbind themselves from those feelings. Though perhaps you may see them as bound by the past, and that might not be false… That does not mean they will remain that way indefinitely.” His gray eyes seem to study her carefully, searching for something in her expression. Assurance, perhaps. Or maybe just some hint of recognizable emotion. “I believe you have misunderstood my question, Binah, so let me phrase it more accurately. What sentiments do you hold towards Garion?”
It takes Binah a long time to think of the answer. She sits there for a while, still clutching her teacup in both hands, trying to ascertain the exact language for the images and sensations that question conjures within her.
“...Pity, I suppose. Some level of fondness, another level of sadness, another level of contempt.” She stares down into the dark surface of her teacup. “She spent her whole life searching for something, and died without ever finding it. Without ever knowing the meaning of that death. It was, perhaps, the only inevitable outcome for a being like her. The paradox of her existence is that the nature of our current age means she would never be able to exist in any other period, and yet this age ultimately could never satisfy her. But it is difficult, to resist the urge to wonder…”
“Wonder if things could have been different?”
“Partially. What different circ*mstances may have produced, if another life was possible. If, having lived on, she might have been able to actually reach her goal, or if she would have come crashing down to earth all the same.” Binah sighs, picking up her cup and taking a long drink from it. “It’s useless, to speculate on the matter. Garion is dead and gone - I am not her, whatever resemblance we may have, and the only world we live in is the world we exist in now. I do not believe it would be productive, to continue this line of reasoning. If this is all you wished to ask of me, then you may take your leave now.”
“I believe I can still enjoy your company.” Even so, he has a difficult time following that. An awkward silence follows between the two of them. Binah herself isn’t sure what to say. She feels oddly sick to her stomach, oddly twitchy. She notices, with some dismay, the way her hand seems to quiver as it clasps the handle of her teacup. She places it back down.
She coughs, clearing her throat. “I do miss it, though. Just in case you were wondering.”
“Miss what?”
“The power,” she says softly, “It didn’t make me feel whole, then. But having gone without it this long? I can say with certainty that there is nothing which can replace it.”
Here's a story for you. It goes a little something like this:
He has you bolted down for the procedure. He’s restrained your wrists and your torso and your ankles and every potential site of movement with binds. The intravenous lines running into you are both keeping you alive and restraining you further, pumping you full of some co*cktail of chemicals you don’t even wish to imagine the contents of.
It’s a little pathetic, how scared they are of you, even with your body in such a broken state. You remind yourself of this, as if it will provide any sort of consolation while you are dying. While you have been dying for days, kept suspended in this state of undeath until they can strip every inch of your soul bare.
Your eyes stare unfocused up at the ceiling. You are unable to make them focus, nor do you wish to. The lights blare into your eyes like daggers, and you see his blurry silhouette enter your frame of vision. He stands there, for a series of seconds that feels like it draws on and on. You feel his fingers glide across your skin like needles. He presses his nails into your taut flesh at your side, and your throat lets out a strangled breath.
He’s only a researcher. Even with your withered form, he cannot break through your skin. But every touch in your body feels like agony. It makes you want to wretch, want to claw off your flesh wherever he lays hands on you.
And eventually, he pokes and prods around until he finds a place where he can actually hurt you.
He makes you writhe uncoordinatedly on the table. You must have let out some rather undignified noise through your throat, something like ah, ah . Tears well up in your eyes and ran down the sides of your face.
There was nothing you could do in that wretched condition. Your body struggled in vain without you ever willing it to. And as you felt his thumbs press into your windpipe, in that state of instinct and agony, the only thing your brain could settle on was it’s going to be over soon. I am going to actually die.
And then his partner enters into the room. He says something, a distant buzzing in your ears, and it all stops. He approaches him, lecturing him about something or the other. You can’t make it out through the thick layer of fog over your senses, but you can vaguely make out concern.
He tells his partner that he wasn’t trying to kill you. He says that it is fine, and that they can start the procedure soon. And indeed, soon after this, the two of them will tear your mind and body into pieces, scavenge your remains for whatever valuables might linger on, and toss the rest of your broken corpse down into a bit.
It’s a story you know well. A story you can never, ever forget. But still, what I wonder about most it is this:
Why did you lie to him then, Ayin?
Because when my eyes finally focused, and I could see your face above me, hands around my throat, it was written across your expression as clear as day.
You definitely wanted to kill me.
