Jack and McGillis 1:1 Private Conversation?? Week 6, Friday night

[vogelfrei]

[ Tonight is... a lot. McGillis had planned to down his wine and go to sleep, but then Huaisang showed up at his room and now he's not entirely sure how he feels about anything in life anymore. He's also still tipsy and he definitely can't sleep, so let's go hang out with the one person weird enough to truly not care about any of how off he is being. Hopefully.

It is time to head to the dungeons at like 3am and visit Jack. His hair is a mess and he's dressed comparatively casually, but his smirk is the same as always. ]

He really did make sure you're comfortable... let's hope the couch survives the dungeon moisture.

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[heroicact]

[Welcome to the literal wine cellar! ☆

It's late enough that Jack has definitively broken out the wine himself; his shirt is untucked and he's sort of thrown his coat to one side and loosened his tie as well; his hair is carelessly wispy by this point in the proceedings and he's carefully set the Christmas ornaments to one side -- which might speak as much to his plans with the wine as anything else.

The couch by now is hanging out semi-permanently next to the bars, it's a little tedious to keep hollering across a dungeon cell when you're trying to talk to people, and a lot of those he actually wants to see are arriving later; Jack doesn't mind. McGillis gets a lazy wave and lopsided smile from his sprawl with a bottle and a glass.]

Hmm, it'll hold for a day or two. He can always get a new one. There were plans, hmm?

[He's going to try to reach for a new glass upside down. Let's see how that goes. There's a flush to his cheeks but by now McGillis probably knows better than to take that for a sign of anything but pale skin being ridiculous.]

[vogelfrei]

[ The 'is Jack drunk or just acting it for the hell of it all' is the greatest clown show of all and he will certainly not interrupt it by trying to reach through the bars and help with that glass. Jack has got it sorted out, surely.

Since McGillis does not have a couch at his end of the dungeon cell, he just sits down on the floor. It is far from comfortable, but you don't come to the dungeons to be comfortable, normally.]

There certainly were, but I'm not sure if they'll be worth enacting without the number one couch aficionado around. [ Wear this title with pride, please. ]

At this point, keeping this one feels like a matter of sentimentality.

[heroicact]

[Jack certainly has it sorted, and he doesn't even bother with a pratfall or two in the midst of it -- one does not do that sort of thing with wine no matter how much one clowns about, even on a night where all of it flows freely. Instead, he manages the glass and the pour in almost one entire smooth movement, a quick arc of an arm and a hand from the back of the couch all the way to the floor.

The sound of the fall of liquid, the shuffle of soft purple fabric; the comfortable sounds of Jack adjusting his posture yet again to account for McGillis on the floor, stretching out the length of the couch on his front and placing the bottle itself on the floor where they both can reach it.

This way it's easier to converse.]

Number one couch aficionado? [a brief tickle of laughter, sloshing the liquid in his own glass and McGillis' which he is holding out expectantly] I must share that title with Miss Yuri, you know, I am stealing her resting place for the time being. But...

Don't get too sentimental! I am told I am terrible, so terrible at staying dead. The worst anyone has ever seen, perhaps.

[vogelfrei]

[ McGillis thanks Jack for the wine with a nod and a smile. His usual jabs about not getting too drunk around people who could drink him under table are forgotten tonight. It's a special occasion and his emotions are a mess, so he will allow himself a few hours of foolishness with a person who won't live to tell the tale.

Or will he...? ]

Really now? Well, you wouldn't be the only one in our number who's come back from the other side before, so I believe you. What's it like, dying?

[heroicact]

[Well, they are both somewhat into the bottle, and while McGillis might be at something of a disadvantage -- everyone in this dungeon is either off-kilter or just off the beaten path by now; the script is slowly rolling to a close, though the best-laid plans of mice and ham-men and caporegimes have still yet to see an expected conclusion of any kind.

Maybe one of them will get their wish; maybe one of them will make it all the way through this without stumbling; maybe just for now they can both just stop on the path a moment and indulge without bothering with any of that.

Jack laughs again into his glass, takes a long swig and then rests it on the seat. Even with the weighty topic he doesn't hold quite still, legs kicking slowly in the air on the other side.]

I don't even know if I can claim to have come back, or if I can claim I know what it means to die. Perhaps I have done it a dozen times, or none. Perhaps I have managed something beyond dying? Whatever it is, it hurts a great deal, I think, and is something like the feeling of all of the ice and all of the darkness in the world -- large! -- taking your soul in great big claws and crushing.

[That doesn't sound quite right, even for the strangest types of deaths they've seen (Lucifer's comes to mind), but whether he's truly inebriated or on the way there (or not), Jack's descriptions are always a little odd at these times. There's something oddly casual about it, to the point where it's hard to tell how serious he is.]

... Hmmm. Whatever happens here, it will be new. But I think it won't be too terrible.

[They know, more or less, how the execution is to go, after all.]

[vogelfrei]

... that sounds nasty.

[ And like exactly the kind of tale that should be told in a dungeon like this, even if the fuzzy purple blanket is truly looking misplaced for the doom and gloom of the situation.

No words Jack speaks are ever going to bring McGillis any closer to understanding what Jack's actual life back in his world was like, but maybe that isn't necessary. The appeal in their companionship has always been that they are people who are completely inconsequential to one another's long term goals. The safety of Hamelin's office, the comfort of smiling together like that, it was all only possible because they have no past in common.

Then, maybe it is fine not to understand Jack's. It's not like McGillis has any vested interest in manipulating him, certainly not anymore. ]

I'll make the act of dying quick for you. No promises for the mirror monster, but I do hope you'll give her a bad time at least. If we can prevent you being eaten in any way...

[ Wouldn't that be nice? He can't give up a wish for it, but still... ]

[heroicact]

[Jack just laughs again, the majority of it carefully muffled into the dregs of his wine as he tosses it back in one swallow -- seems like he really does intend to get to the bottom of a bottle tonight, whenever and however that might be.

He'll pour himself another without pause and top up McGillis' before speaking again, contemplating the slow swirl of liquid over the purple and fuzzy and plush world of the couch that still holds him for now.

It's almost like a parody of the world they've shared until now, this dingy little enclave of couch and carafe.]

I have every confidence in your ability with a proper blade.

[Maybe it's to make up for forcing him to use a pitchfork in the murder?? McGillis did lose the stabbing race, after all, at the end of the day. He throws over something like a lopsided smile, something sharp and fleeting and dark at the edges of it, like clouds chasing each other across the moon over the tower.]

And oh, I appreciate the sentiment, but I fully intend to make myself as much of a nuisance as possible. This is a soul that even the Abyss could not stomach, after all. I daresay she would regret trying to eat me in the first place. [only some of that is coherent, but as established that is just the state of Jack Vessalius, local blond problem of questionable age and indeterminate mortality status] ... Focus on your own wish, Montag. It is right there within your grasp.

One of us must be able to rewrite that particular ending.

[vogelfrei]

[ McGillis laughs quietly at Jack's declaration of intent to make the most possible trouble. He'd expect nothing less from his partner in crime, truly. And that is what they are, a nice category distinct from bothersome words like friendship and trust. ]

Oh, take no concerns to your grave on that matter. There is nothing in this world or any other that will make me let go of my wish. I'd rather you survive this. I'd rather Hamelin, Yuri, Huaisang and even Edelgard and Alexei make it out of here.

But I'd let them all die if that's what it took. I'm sure that's why Hamelin chose the both of us in the first place, hm?

I'll reach my wish, in your place as well. Why are you invested in it though?

[ He would not actually have been surprised or upset if Jack just couldn't care less. ]

[heroicact]

[Indeed, partner or partner in crime may be the most proper term -- famiglia is the other, though that one weighs more heavily with Hamelin, like the fixed point of their bizarre pendulum that simply swings between one murder extreme and the other. Or it may be two points on the same continuum, come to think of it.

It really is something much easier and smoother to use than co-conspirators or even allies. So much of their acquaintance has been the knowledge that a mutual betrayal is less than helpful, after all -- but that self-interest and self above all else is the foundation.

Neither of them have ever forgotten that, in a strangely reassuring way.

There's a soft hum of consideration as Jack continues to lounge on the couch and continues to drain his wine, in no hurry to answer the question but not seemingly avoiding it either. McGillis gets a glance of that same consideration -- he answers, slow but steady, hushed like telling secrets.]

There aren't many whose obsession with their wishes matches mine. Not many, that is, that I don't find it necessary to destroy. [the easy implication that he has, and he would, and he will; but] People don't matter; status doesn't matter; the present itself does not matter, so long as one's wish may be realized. That is why we are here, yes.

[A blithe smile, and his voice resumes its normal cadence, made a little lazier by drink.]

Besides, were you not the one who would go on about the past? It doesn't seem to me as though motivating yourself with just this little slice of time would be stronger than everything that came before. So if we are having you write that ending -- then I will have you do it with all your might.

[vogelfrei]

[ McGillis does not feel the slightest bit intimidated by the confirmation that Jack is one dangerous individual who will crush mercilessly whoever stands in his way. He has long suspected as much and the danger is an old friend. ]

It would just be a disappointment to do it halfway, indeed.

[ Maybe in some paradoxical way Jack understands him best where McGillis doesn't understand Jack at all and that's playing with fire. But tomorrow Jack will be dead and McGillis will remain, so what does it matter? ]

It's been quite the pleasure, being here and meeting others with ambition. Pitted against each other to kill and yet we're less enemy than we'd be if we had been born into the same reality.

[ One world isn't big enough to hold all the concentrated wishes that have come together in this realm. ]

[heroicact]

[Ahhh, he has always maintained that he is not an intimidating individual; for all his ability and all his skill comes not from menacing or moving others with fear but merely softly, insidiously remaining by their side like a pretty ornament twisted in one's hair, or a rotten fruit hidden upon the table.

Poisoned water, acid rain, slowly, slowly seeping into all the pipes and blackening the organs.

There are all different levels of understanding -- and in truth it is hard to say just what understanding becomes in their arrangement, under Hamelin's guidance (and how much do they understand their Don, in the end, after everything?), with Jack being all that he is and isn't. His smile curls over teeth and then softens around the rim of his glass again, oddly dreamy.]

That is flattery, you know. I cannot say I've ever been a particularly ambitious man, but I can agree that it is interesting to watch how others' ambitions and attachments may move them -- whether they are a part of the game or even outside of it. [there are so very many moving pieces; and Jack still talks like he is somewhere in between, not quite part of the game (anymore?) and not quite outside of it] ... I do wonder what sort of enemies we might have made, you and I. If it was power you craved, we might have been allies even then.

[There's something ironic in it, just so, before it's gone.]

[vogelfrei]

[ No, Jack is not like himself or like Alexei or like Edelgard. But he is someone who will sacrifice anyone and anything to get someplace and that, in itself, should be called ambition. A type of it, if nothing else.

McGillis laughs at the end of Jack's reply, a bit more open than he would if he were sober. ]

Of course my desire is for power.

It's always power, in this world and in any other. Without it, there is nothing. There are many types of power, but the most basic kind of brute force tends to triumph in the end. Humans are such animals.