"A frightened child. And what would you have done then, to 'take care of it if need be', with her in the room still?" Hannibal's voice has the same weightless heaviness to it that Ruth's does, and he looks absolutely unrepentant about having his actions pointed out.
But he does look over to Argus at his attempts to mediate. Hannibal's attitude doesn't stem from anger - not quite - so much as the wounded pride that comes from not being certain you're the largest predator in the room, after a lifetime of having that up your sleeve. He's dealt with Mages and mutants in the past with far more destructive physical powers than his, but he's always known what hand the other person held. Sword-tongued are more secretive, in that nothing Hannibal has read about them was by them. Or even approaching what you might call 'objective'. All of them - every single one - had been a guidebook on recognizing them to kill them, or simply decrying their heretical nature.
It's enough to justify the paranoia involved in trying to strangle him in his own kitchen, he'd admit - if their conversation was a little less snippy. As it is, he seems a good deal more relaxed than he has so far in their conversation, unrelenting attitude or not. These new pieces in the puzzle explain the oddities in their behavior, and their clear concern for Patricia makes him think they might be slightly less likely to orphan her a second time. Perhaps.
At the very least, he assumes they'd adopt her if they did, and in his possibly-very-twisted mindset, that's a positive sign.
Hannibal twitches an almost-smile of his own at Argus's, at least. Message received, although he wonders when - not 'if', surely he can take this for granted - they'll get around to discussing what his augmentation type is, since he clearly doesn't match his adoptive daughter and present company.
He's never shared that with non-family. He's not...entirely sure about his feelings on disclosing it. His knee jerk reaction is to think he never would. But if these people are going to be a permanent fixture...
He's getting ahead of himself. "Allomancer," he repeats. "It's not as dramatic. But I'm glad to have a more appropriate term." Is said with clear good humor, and enough of an inclination of his head and an apologetic tone that it...very well might be intended as an apology. It probably is. Definitely is.
And then Patricia becomes everyone's distraction, and Hannibal focuses on that. While her head is down, however, Hannibal's snaps up to regard Ruth when she attempts to soothe her. He finally leans across the table, voice low, and says with the first notes of anything approaching urgency he's shown so far: "I appreciate it, believe me, but please do not try to soothe her with the reality that it may have turned out worse. It already did, before." Which is, hopefully, said with enough weight to get his message quickly across.
Hannibal then sits back upright and pushes smoothly up from his chair. Danae crowding him or not, he moves past Argus, chair in tow, and methodically re-seats himself, close enough to Patricia's chair that the polished wood gives a small squeak. Moving slowly enough not to be rushing her, he folds in around her. His right upper arm circles her shoulders easily, hand tucking against one of her own, but he leaves her otherwise free to wriggle as she may choose.
"Many things are dangerous, if you don't know how to use them properly." Hannibal's voice comes from only about a foot above Triss's head. He barely checks in on the other adults in the room, only ensuring that he knows where each of them is.
They've talked about this angle of Triss's powers before. Shushing her and telling her 'it's alright, you're not dangerous' is too easy for her to (rightfully) dismiss - and Hannibal has promised her he won't tell 'those white lies adults always have'. He looks at the pragmatic pieces of what is happening to her, and picks them out to polish down into child-sized parts. "That's what these people wanted to see you for. They can teach you what I cannot, Triss. I would do it if I could." Another subject they've talked about, especially after the adoption. Hannibal's powers are different, different enough that even if Triss was willing to learn, there's very little he could teach.
"Learning about it will teach you to control it. Then you won't be dangerous unless you wanted to be."
"I think we might have different ideas about how to defuse a situation," Ruth says, the trace of amusement in her voice chased by Danae's muffled snort. Triss tightens her arms over her head and pulls her feet up onto the chair, ankles tucked in, knees jammed under the table. The grown ups are talking, low and urgent, and sure that's better than yelling but not by much. Maybe she needs to be defused, disarmed, whatever. Why'd they ever give her more stuff, why'd they have to make her even more dangerous?
When she reaches down with that inner inhale and touches the iron lump in her belly, the blue lines spring back to life. Even with her eyes shut, even with her face pressed against wood and shadowed by her arms, she can still see the potential to lash out. Lash in?
Triss goes rigid as an uncooked noodle, and about as brittle, when Hannibal puts his arm around her shoulder. Her hand clenches into a tight fist beneath his and her breath catches, stops. Part of her wants to slip out from under his hold, duck under the table and make a dash for the stairs. Once her bedroom door closes behind her, she won't have to talk to anybody. She can wait until the iron 'passes' or whatever. The other part wants to curl into the comfort he's offering and cry some more. Her eyes are already so hot and dry, and everything else is itchy; her tongue, the bandages and tape, even the whole-but-unwashed skin that got a dunking in the harbor.
Neither's really an option. She can't run away from something inside her, and this is only the fourth hug of any kind she can remember getting into with Hannibal. Bad enough she was clinging to him in front of other people earlier, she can't cry all over him too. She might refuse that part of herself to him over and over, but Triss tries so hard not to be a crybaby about the scary stuff. About this stuff.
Lacking any good choices, she stays still and makes a low noise that might be a 'no' or a 'don't', but is definitely a negative.
"Not all of them are dangerous, either," Argus says. The pronoun's so weird and disconnected that Triss blinks against the table. "Different metals have different effects, many of them can't hurt anybody."
That at least gets her to lift her face, though her nose, mouth and chin remain hidden behind the circle of her arms. "Like...like what?"
"Like detecting magic, if someone's using it or if they have an object of power nearby," Argus' smile doesn't reach his eyes, those're still worried and tired looking, but she doesn't think he's lying. Hannibal doesn't react at all, his arm around her doesn't tighten in warning, and Triss knows he can always catch a lie. "That's what I do."
The other two don't look like they think Argus is lying, either. Ruth's eyebrows are all pinched in worry, and Danae's staring at the back of his head like she kinda wishes he'd stop talking, but that could have more to do with Triss' track record for pitching fits than anything. She watches them all in silence for a moment, squinting around those hot and itchy eyes, and lets herself lean into Hannibal a little. "You think I could?"
"It's very unusual for people like us to be able to use more than one kind of, uh, metal magic," he nods, "But I'd like to see if you can."
"Argus," Danae hisses, "Don't be stupid, the odds..."
"A kelpie didn't just come for her," Argus snaps, which is new enough that Triss flinches against Hannibal, "It did it under our own noses. The Courts know who we are, they know our territory and they still made this play. So I think," he takes a breath and lets it out through his nose, smiles a half-smile at her again, "I think you're probably very unusual, Triss. I'd like it if you'd try this, but you don't have to. We can come back later if you're done for the day."
"And if it's all right with you and your father," Ruth adds. Triss catches her rolling her eyes toward the ceiling as if searching for patience, and that's a lot like one of her old social workers, too. Though she doesn't smile, Triss does slowly uncurl and sit back up into Hannibal's arm.
"O-okay," she swallows, licks her lips and tries to expand, because it's important to let people know why you're doing things, even if it's something they want you to do. "If...if I can see magic, I want to. Then they can't sneak up on me again, right?"
"It's very helpful for that, yeah," instead of revealing a neat wrist strap like Danae's (or Hannibal's), Argus just reaches into his pocket and pulls out another vial. The flakes inside are a little lighter, maybe, but otherwise it's identical to the swallow of Iron. "Don't worry if this doesn't do anything. That's a lot more normal, for us."
That's two 'us'es in as many minutes. Triss wonders about that as she pops the cork, darts a quick look at Hannibal, and tries to swallow down the contents as quick as she can. She even rubs at her throat to help it go faster.
A third knot trickles into place in her belly, like warm sand filling the bottom of an hourglass. She doesn't even stop to poke at it or ask what she's meant to do, not this time, she just breathes in and lets the air stir up the grains, feels it rush up behind her eyes just like the Iron, but when she opens her eyes--
"Oh," Triss gasps. Or gawks. Across from her, Argus is surrounded with a soft sunset light, kinda rusty and gold all at once. Ruth, next to him, is a deeper and truer red, glowing low and steady under her skin and running in flaming lines up her torso and down her arms. Danae's a sapphire blue, and her eyes blaze with it. Even stranger are the trails that waft behind them, Danae's blue and Argus' sandy red trailing back into the foyer like smoke. Ruth leaves no traces, she's just exactly where she is.
Half the books piled on the table between them glow with different jewel colors - turquoise and emerald and topaz and amethyst. Stranger still, those same colors are dusted over Hannibal's hand, where it lays beside hers on the table.
"You didn't say it'd be pretty!" she says, and it's totally an accusation. Argus laughs, but it's not the quietly happy laugh when she'd lit up the Iron earlier, it's a little sharp. Ruth takes a long, slow breath, her eyes very large behind the warm rosy glow.
And Danae says, "Jesus H. Fucking Chris, you've gotta be shitting me right now."
Hannibal is so genuinely surprised at Ruth's response about defusing the situation that it shows on his face clearly and immediately. He'd assumed she meant physical violence, but what she just said sounds like she means that no, she hadn't been threatening him. Frankly, he looks more alarmed at being wrong than he did at the prospect of her being willing to get violent if he was an enemy.
But Ruth does respond how he'd expect - hope for, even - when he tries to cut off the well-meaning reassurances. Danae's somber face is also a nice thing to see. Patricia is more than upset enough about this - he doesn't want anyone making her draw more parallels than necessary between this and a certain set of choice flashbacks that they've kept running into.
Hannibal isn't certain what to expect when he holds Patricia. He's always leaning towards caution with her - a foster kid who was willingly given up by her biological parents of several years, there's enough reason to be careful around her abandonment issues, even if he didn't feel he needed to step very lightly and respectfully around the fact that - at the end of the day - he was a strange male who'd taken her home. Hannibal is content waiting for Patricia to make any and all first moves, to ensure she's comfortable, but it's...possible that that's slowed down the entire process. She clearly doesn't want to let herself reach out, even when things are being offered.
So as for possible reactions, her going rigid and breathless was on the short list. Hannibal is ready to pull away to avoid making a scene, face set into politely neutral lines for the sake of their guests and Triss.
But then she shudders with a breath, and somehow her lack of pushing him away feels like an action all its own. Hannibal stays exactly where he is, even when Argus joins in on the attempt at soothing her, trying very hard to read her - powers and general observational skills in tandem.
When she actually leans into him by bare degrees, Hannibal's own body loosens. No longer as concerned that he's misreading her lack of protest, he resurfaces to the conversation at large. His approval of Argus is only going to keep growing, it seems: both at his ability to play along with what will actually calm Triss down, and the fact that he's just outed his own specific power, and the way their delineations work.
A metal for every power. How many metals? Clearly not all of them. Even 'iron' could be a vague term, now that he's thinking of it in the sense of an ingredient for magic. What ratio? Just crude iron, no carbon in the mix? At what point does it become unsuitable, if ever?
Not every Allomancer is physically dangerous. In fact, Argus's ability is like Hannibal's own - good for information-gathering, not necessarily a weapon for combat so much as a tool for smart combat.
Except rare ones. And Argus has a good point - to Hannibal's outsider viewpoint - about Patricia. Does the doubt on Ruth's and Danae's faces reflect the rarity itself, then? Will Patricia be hunted down forever, if she is this thing? Will this complicate their lives beyond what Hannibal had even prepared himself for?
And then the reality is decided - Patricia is a multiple-metal Allomancer - and all of those concerns are buried under the broken dam of Hannibal's attention. He watches her, rapt, and looks at all the others in turn, to see the emotions he can already smell. Surprise, shock. Fear, perhaps. Triss still has the sour tang of terror and guilt, but her entire face yells excitement, now.
Frankly, it's an emotion Hannibal is mirroring, although you'd never get him to admit it.
The vague smile on his face doesn't look like it's going anywhere fast, regardless of his level of denial about how much he's thrilled at the rush of this discovery. "Danae, I've been incredibly tolerant about this until now, but I'm going to have to ask you to mind your language some, while Triss is present." It's said almost dreamily, with absolutely no bite.
Hannibal stays where he is by Patricia, arm still around her shoulders, although it naturally loosens as she sits up and looks around. He's not aiming to hold her in place, only to give his tacit support and approval for as long as she'll allow it. "There will be no keeping anything from you going forward, now, will there?" Is asked of the top of Triss's head, humor evident in his voice and in the fine lines gathered at the corners of his eyes. "What do you see, Triss?"
There'll be time to ask the others questions, in a moment. There'll be time to plan the next step in a moment.
Danae says, "No, you really don't understand," and grips at her short, dark hair. The whites show all the way around her eyes, or Triss figures that's what the flash of searingly pale blue means. Not all the colors she's seeing make perfect sense, as her brain struggles to translate this new extra sense. "There's only eight of them."
Eight of who?
"Seven, I think," Ruth reaches out to touch her knee gently as she corrects that statement. This does nothing to disentangle Danae's hands from her hair, to staunch the weird strangled noise she's making. Argus bites down on a smile and leans back in his chair.
"No, now it's eight," he's looking right at Triss, and despite what he's doing with his mouth there's something odd in his eyes. It's not fear, she knows exactly what those stares look and feel like, but it's not...not fear. Eight of WHO? Triss kind of squirms at that, but luckily Hannibal, always interested and encouraging about the magic stuff, prompts her directly.
"It's all colors. I mean lights? Lights but they're colors but they're all in little pieces like dust?" she tears her eyes away from their now-glowing guests, from the shining books, and looks up at him with a small frown. What did he mean by 'no keeping anything from you now'? What was he keeping from her before? She's about to ask when she gets sidetracked by a weird glow in his pocket. It's reddish, kind of like Ruth, but not the exact same red. A grassy green something glimmers behind it. Triss' frown dips lower as she puzzles that out, before deciding: "You've got two magic things in your pocket?"
She didn't even know he had magic stuff, except for old books he'd warned her not to touch 'cuz some of the writing in them might be for real spells. All her anxiety and guilt gets set aside for a minute in place of an accusing pout - he said he wasn't like her, he couldn't use magic!
"Busted," Danae murmurs, while Argus puts his fist to his mouth and shakes silently.
"Maybe Lesson One should be 'you don't have to blurt everything you see," Ruth says, but she's smiling fondly at, like everyone, so Triss doesn't mind the assumption that they've got stuff to teach her so much.
"But all the colors are dif'rent!" she starts to reach for one of the books to demonstrate, before remembering that A) most of the others can't see what she's seeing and B) they're Very Old and Not For Touching, Patricia. She transfers her accusatory stare to Argus instead. "What d'they mean?"
He leans his cheek against his fist and raises his eyebrows, smiling bemusedly, "I have no idea," he says. "I don't perceive it as colors or lights. I hear them."
Oh. "Is that why you keep going like--"
The gesture's hard to explain, so she cocks her head to the side and furrows her eyebrows at him, a piece of mimicry that sets both Danae and Ruth off into badly smothered laughter. Argus twists in his chair to treat them both to a really not-amused face and a sigh. "Yeah, something like that."
Eight. Eight of them. That comes out to slightly better than a one-in-a-billion chance. To call it 'rare' undermines it as a concept. Hannibal feels Patricia's weight under his arm, real and warm and small, and listens to the warring concepts in his head and heart.
Rare and powerful. Precious. Impressive. His - technically. But Patricia is only any of the other things because she is her own person, her own self. The awe of recognizing the divine in someone else is in his gaze while he stares down at the top of her head. This is--
Dangerous. He needs to speak with the adults alone later. How many others will suspect what she is, when Argus wondered immediately? How many will learn, how far will the rumors spread? What measures are available for protecting them, or are the other seven lone hunters and predators, only heard of through tales others tell?
He won't ask while Patricia is here, though. That's one topic he'll keep her away from until he decides his approach.
Luckily, Patricia is her own distraction. Hannibal's smile spreads from his eyes, bends his mouth up when Triss catches sight of the magic in his pocket. "I do," he admits candidly. Not that there's much choice now. "I brought them out to help me find you. You may look at them later, if you'd like." He'd never told her he kept magical objects around the house. She knows about the books, but a vial of augmenting potion is different than a study of possible early mutants in the 16th century.
That will need to be a conversation later, that much is clear. "And I suppose now would be a good time to thank you for not blurting it out when you surely noticed earlier, Argus." Hannibal speaks across the table to him, above Triss's head. He looks as amused as he sounds. "In the future, perhaps you could take after him, Triss."
Argus had been keeping his head cocked, bird like, through a lot of this. Triss isn't wrong. It makes Hannibal very aware of the pantry door that leads out of his kitchen, the shallow room below it that stores the majority of his sensitive books and his collected potions and totems. He must be able to see it - or rather, see the shielding around it. Or perhaps he can see right through - Hannibal supposes he could ask Triss later. Except...their powers must work with very different ranges and degrees of accuracy.
Perhaps Argus could hear it all the way from the foyer, echoing down the hallway. Hannibal's gaze on him is warm but tempered with curiosity.
"Yes!" her eager nod is the most enthusiasm she's shown for anything so far this awful evening. Morning? Since she woke up in a dream, anyway. Ruth smiles in her periphery. "I wanna. Want to see, I mean."
The colors are different than the lines Iron had shown her. Those were pretty enough, but confusing. They made her head hurt to try and figure out where they all went, and now she knows she can use them to move things. Did she pull them all towards her? It felt that way, only Danae stopped it before she could tell for sure. Triss likes the variety of this other metal a lot better. Even if she's not allowed to touch the magic, it's exciting to know it's there. That knowledge doesn't have to hurt anybody. It could even help them, if they were about to touch something they shouldn't.
Or not help them, if they were cruel and deserved to stick their hand in a wasp's nest.
"But how'm I supposed to know..." she trails back into gnawing at her lip, hand rising to jam a couple fingernails into the mix.
"I guess we'll have to do some cross comparison," Argus says, eyes and voice lighting up. "Take one object, you note what color you're seeing, and I'll tell you what kind of magic it sounds like to me. We'll see if there's a correlation."
That not only makes sense, it sounds really interesting. They'd both be learning something that way, even if it's mostly about how her magic works. Can Argus really tell the difference between one sound and another? That seems so much harder than picking out colors on a spectrum. She can't tell the difference between 'th' and 'd' some of the time. Or maybe it's like different instruments to him? No, that's not any better, Triss has a hard time figuring out all the strings in the music Hannibal likes. But she wants to ask him anyway, about how he hears it and what the sounds are like and if he knows anyone else who sees colors. If everybody's different, maybe they don't even see the same color for the same magic, and how confusing would that be?
Danae made it sound like she saw the lines just like Triss did. Maybe Iron's easier, after all.
"Of course," Argus is saying to Hannibal, who's thanked him for keeping the secret in front of everyone else until Triss spilled it. Whoops. "That's...good manners, with metas."
That's a word Triss has actually heard before. 'Metahuman.' It's like a nicer way of saying 'mutant', but means a little bit more, and nobody spits it out like a swear. Yet. Hannibal says any word can be made cruel if it's said the wrong way often enough, but she's not sure how long that's supposed to take.
"I'm sorry I was rude then," she decides. After daring a look at the others, Danae's wild stare and the deepening lines around Ruth's eyes, she adds, "A lot."
"Eh," Danae shrugs. Ruth's smile seems to mirror that sentiment.
"Neshama," she says again, "All things considered, it could have been much worse."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2016-06-08 02:40 am (UTC)But he does look over to Argus at his attempts to mediate. Hannibal's attitude doesn't stem from anger - not quite - so much as the wounded pride that comes from not being certain you're the largest predator in the room, after a lifetime of having that up your sleeve. He's dealt with Mages and mutants in the past with far more destructive physical powers than his, but he's always known what hand the other person held. Sword-tongued are more secretive, in that nothing Hannibal has read about them was by them. Or even approaching what you might call 'objective'. All of them - every single one - had been a guidebook on recognizing them to kill them, or simply decrying their heretical nature.
It's enough to justify the paranoia involved in trying to strangle him in his own kitchen, he'd admit - if their conversation was a little less snippy. As it is, he seems a good deal more relaxed than he has so far in their conversation, unrelenting attitude or not. These new pieces in the puzzle explain the oddities in their behavior, and their clear concern for Patricia makes him think they might be slightly less likely to orphan her a second time. Perhaps.
At the very least, he assumes they'd adopt her if they did, and in his possibly-very-twisted mindset, that's a positive sign.
Hannibal twitches an almost-smile of his own at Argus's, at least. Message received, although he wonders when - not 'if', surely he can take this for granted - they'll get around to discussing what his augmentation type is, since he clearly doesn't match his adoptive daughter and present company.
He's never shared that with non-family. He's not...entirely sure about his feelings on disclosing it. His knee jerk reaction is to think he never would. But if these people are going to be a permanent fixture...
He's getting ahead of himself. "Allomancer," he repeats. "It's not as dramatic. But I'm glad to have a more appropriate term." Is said with clear good humor, and enough of an inclination of his head and an apologetic tone that it...very well might be intended as an apology. It probably is. Definitely is.
And then Patricia becomes everyone's distraction, and Hannibal focuses on that. While her head is down, however, Hannibal's snaps up to regard Ruth when she attempts to soothe her. He finally leans across the table, voice low, and says with the first notes of anything approaching urgency he's shown so far: "I appreciate it, believe me, but please do not try to soothe her with the reality that it may have turned out worse. It already did, before." Which is, hopefully, said with enough weight to get his message quickly across.
Hannibal then sits back upright and pushes smoothly up from his chair. Danae crowding him or not, he moves past Argus, chair in tow, and methodically re-seats himself, close enough to Patricia's chair that the polished wood gives a small squeak. Moving slowly enough not to be rushing her, he folds in around her. His right upper arm circles her shoulders easily, hand tucking against one of her own, but he leaves her otherwise free to wriggle as she may choose.
"Many things are dangerous, if you don't know how to use them properly." Hannibal's voice comes from only about a foot above Triss's head. He barely checks in on the other adults in the room, only ensuring that he knows where each of them is.
They've talked about this angle of Triss's powers before. Shushing her and telling her 'it's alright, you're not dangerous' is too easy for her to (rightfully) dismiss - and Hannibal has promised her he won't tell 'those white lies adults always have'. He looks at the pragmatic pieces of what is happening to her, and picks them out to polish down into child-sized parts. "That's what these people wanted to see you for. They can teach you what I cannot, Triss. I would do it if I could." Another subject they've talked about, especially after the adoption. Hannibal's powers are different, different enough that even if Triss was willing to learn, there's very little he could teach.
"Learning about it will teach you to control it. Then you won't be dangerous unless you wanted to be."
no subject
Date: 2016-06-08 04:33 am (UTC)When she reaches down with that inner inhale and touches the iron lump in her belly, the blue lines spring back to life. Even with her eyes shut, even with her face pressed against wood and shadowed by her arms, she can still see the potential to lash out. Lash in?
Triss goes rigid as an uncooked noodle, and about as brittle, when Hannibal puts his arm around her shoulder. Her hand clenches into a tight fist beneath his and her breath catches, stops. Part of her wants to slip out from under his hold, duck under the table and make a dash for the stairs. Once her bedroom door closes behind her, she won't have to talk to anybody. She can wait until the iron 'passes' or whatever. The other part wants to curl into the comfort he's offering and cry some more. Her eyes are already so hot and dry, and everything else is itchy; her tongue, the bandages and tape, even the whole-but-unwashed skin that got a dunking in the harbor.
Neither's really an option. She can't run away from something inside her, and this is only the fourth hug of any kind she can remember getting into with Hannibal. Bad enough she was clinging to him in front of other people earlier, she can't cry all over him too. She might refuse that part of herself to him over and over, but Triss tries so hard not to be a crybaby about the scary stuff. About this stuff.
Lacking any good choices, she stays still and makes a low noise that might be a 'no' or a 'don't', but is definitely a negative.
"Not all of them are dangerous, either," Argus says. The pronoun's so weird and disconnected that Triss blinks against the table. "Different metals have different effects, many of them can't hurt anybody."
That at least gets her to lift her face, though her nose, mouth and chin remain hidden behind the circle of her arms. "Like...like what?"
"Like detecting magic, if someone's using it or if they have an object of power nearby," Argus' smile doesn't reach his eyes, those're still worried and tired looking, but she doesn't think he's lying. Hannibal doesn't react at all, his arm around her doesn't tighten in warning, and Triss knows he can always catch a lie. "That's what I do."
The other two don't look like they think Argus is lying, either. Ruth's eyebrows are all pinched in worry, and Danae's staring at the back of his head like she kinda wishes he'd stop talking, but that could have more to do with Triss' track record for pitching fits than anything. She watches them all in silence for a moment, squinting around those hot and itchy eyes, and lets herself lean into Hannibal a little. "You think I could?"
"It's very unusual for people like us to be able to use more than one kind of, uh, metal magic," he nods, "But I'd like to see if you can."
"Argus," Danae hisses, "Don't be stupid, the odds..."
"A kelpie didn't just come for her," Argus snaps, which is new enough that Triss flinches against Hannibal, "It did it under our own noses. The Courts know who we are, they know our territory and they still made this play. So I think," he takes a breath and lets it out through his nose, smiles a half-smile at her again, "I think you're probably very unusual, Triss. I'd like it if you'd try this, but you don't have to. We can come back later if you're done for the day."
"And if it's all right with you and your father," Ruth adds. Triss catches her rolling her eyes toward the ceiling as if searching for patience, and that's a lot like one of her old social workers, too. Though she doesn't smile, Triss does slowly uncurl and sit back up into Hannibal's arm.
"O-okay," she swallows, licks her lips and tries to expand, because it's important to let people know why you're doing things, even if it's something they want you to do. "If...if I can see magic, I want to. Then they can't sneak up on me again, right?"
"It's very helpful for that, yeah," instead of revealing a neat wrist strap like Danae's (or Hannibal's), Argus just reaches into his pocket and pulls out another vial. The flakes inside are a little lighter, maybe, but otherwise it's identical to the swallow of Iron. "Don't worry if this doesn't do anything. That's a lot more normal, for us."
That's two 'us'es in as many minutes. Triss wonders about that as she pops the cork, darts a quick look at Hannibal, and tries to swallow down the contents as quick as she can. She even rubs at her throat to help it go faster.
A third knot trickles into place in her belly, like warm sand filling the bottom of an hourglass. She doesn't even stop to poke at it or ask what she's meant to do, not this time, she just breathes in and lets the air stir up the grains, feels it rush up behind her eyes just like the Iron, but when she opens her eyes--
"Oh," Triss gasps. Or gawks. Across from her, Argus is surrounded with a soft sunset light, kinda rusty and gold all at once. Ruth, next to him, is a deeper and truer red, glowing low and steady under her skin and running in flaming lines up her torso and down her arms. Danae's a sapphire blue, and her eyes blaze with it. Even stranger are the trails that waft behind them, Danae's blue and Argus' sandy red trailing back into the foyer like smoke. Ruth leaves no traces, she's just exactly where she is.
Half the books piled on the table between them glow with different jewel colors - turquoise and emerald and topaz and amethyst. Stranger still, those same colors are dusted over Hannibal's hand, where it lays beside hers on the table.
"You didn't say it'd be pretty!" she says, and it's totally an accusation. Argus laughs, but it's not the quietly happy laugh when she'd lit up the Iron earlier, it's a little sharp. Ruth takes a long, slow breath, her eyes very large behind the warm rosy glow.
And Danae says, "Jesus H. Fucking Chris, you've gotta be shitting me right now."
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Date: 2016-06-08 10:17 pm (UTC)But Ruth does respond how he'd expect - hope for, even - when he tries to cut off the well-meaning reassurances. Danae's somber face is also a nice thing to see. Patricia is more than upset enough about this - he doesn't want anyone making her draw more parallels than necessary between this and a certain set of choice flashbacks that they've kept running into.
Hannibal isn't certain what to expect when he holds Patricia. He's always leaning towards caution with her - a foster kid who was willingly given up by her biological parents of several years, there's enough reason to be careful around her abandonment issues, even if he didn't feel he needed to step very lightly and respectfully around the fact that - at the end of the day - he was a strange male who'd taken her home. Hannibal is content waiting for Patricia to make any and all first moves, to ensure she's comfortable, but it's...possible that that's slowed down the entire process. She clearly doesn't want to let herself reach out, even when things are being offered.
So as for possible reactions, her going rigid and breathless was on the short list. Hannibal is ready to pull away to avoid making a scene, face set into politely neutral lines for the sake of their guests and Triss.
But then she shudders with a breath, and somehow her lack of pushing him away feels like an action all its own. Hannibal stays exactly where he is, even when Argus joins in on the attempt at soothing her, trying very hard to read her - powers and general observational skills in tandem.
When she actually leans into him by bare degrees, Hannibal's own body loosens. No longer as concerned that he's misreading her lack of protest, he resurfaces to the conversation at large. His approval of Argus is only going to keep growing, it seems: both at his ability to play along with what will actually calm Triss down, and the fact that he's just outed his own specific power, and the way their delineations work.
A metal for every power. How many metals? Clearly not all of them. Even 'iron' could be a vague term, now that he's thinking of it in the sense of an ingredient for magic. What ratio? Just crude iron, no carbon in the mix? At what point does it become unsuitable, if ever?
Not every Allomancer is physically dangerous. In fact, Argus's ability is like Hannibal's own - good for information-gathering, not necessarily a weapon for combat so much as a tool for smart combat.
Except rare ones. And Argus has a good point - to Hannibal's outsider viewpoint - about Patricia. Does the doubt on Ruth's and Danae's faces reflect the rarity itself, then? Will Patricia be hunted down forever, if she is this thing? Will this complicate their lives beyond what Hannibal had even prepared himself for?
And then the reality is decided - Patricia is a multiple-metal Allomancer - and all of those concerns are buried under the broken dam of Hannibal's attention. He watches her, rapt, and looks at all the others in turn, to see the emotions he can already smell. Surprise, shock. Fear, perhaps. Triss still has the sour tang of terror and guilt, but her entire face yells excitement, now.
Frankly, it's an emotion Hannibal is mirroring, although you'd never get him to admit it.
The vague smile on his face doesn't look like it's going anywhere fast, regardless of his level of denial about how much he's thrilled at the rush of this discovery. "Danae, I've been incredibly tolerant about this until now, but I'm going to have to ask you to mind your language some, while Triss is present." It's said almost dreamily, with absolutely no bite.
Hannibal stays where he is by Patricia, arm still around her shoulders, although it naturally loosens as she sits up and looks around. He's not aiming to hold her in place, only to give his tacit support and approval for as long as she'll allow it. "There will be no keeping anything from you going forward, now, will there?" Is asked of the top of Triss's head, humor evident in his voice and in the fine lines gathered at the corners of his eyes. "What do you see, Triss?"
There'll be time to ask the others questions, in a moment. There'll be time to plan the next step in a moment.
For now, Hannibal's entire focus is on Triss.
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Date: 2016-06-09 02:32 am (UTC)Eight of who?
"Seven, I think," Ruth reaches out to touch her knee gently as she corrects that statement. This does nothing to disentangle Danae's hands from her hair, to staunch the weird strangled noise she's making. Argus bites down on a smile and leans back in his chair.
"No, now it's eight," he's looking right at Triss, and despite what he's doing with his mouth there's something odd in his eyes. It's not fear, she knows exactly what those stares look and feel like, but it's not...not fear. Eight of WHO? Triss kind of squirms at that, but luckily Hannibal, always interested and encouraging about the magic stuff, prompts her directly.
"It's all colors. I mean lights? Lights but they're colors but they're all in little pieces like dust?" she tears her eyes away from their now-glowing guests, from the shining books, and looks up at him with a small frown. What did he mean by 'no keeping anything from you now'? What was he keeping from her before? She's about to ask when she gets sidetracked by a weird glow in his pocket. It's reddish, kind of like Ruth, but not the exact same red. A grassy green something glimmers behind it. Triss' frown dips lower as she puzzles that out, before deciding: "You've got two magic things in your pocket?"
She didn't even know he had magic stuff, except for old books he'd warned her not to touch 'cuz some of the writing in them might be for real spells. All her anxiety and guilt gets set aside for a minute in place of an accusing pout - he said he wasn't like her, he couldn't use magic!
"Busted," Danae murmurs, while Argus puts his fist to his mouth and shakes silently.
"Maybe Lesson One should be 'you don't have to blurt everything you see," Ruth says, but she's smiling fondly at, like everyone, so Triss doesn't mind the assumption that they've got stuff to teach her so much.
"But all the colors are dif'rent!" she starts to reach for one of the books to demonstrate, before remembering that A) most of the others can't see what she's seeing and B) they're Very Old and Not For Touching, Patricia. She transfers her accusatory stare to Argus instead. "What d'they mean?"
He leans his cheek against his fist and raises his eyebrows, smiling bemusedly, "I have no idea," he says. "I don't perceive it as colors or lights. I hear them."
Oh. "Is that why you keep going like--"
The gesture's hard to explain, so she cocks her head to the side and furrows her eyebrows at him, a piece of mimicry that sets both Danae and Ruth off into badly smothered laughter. Argus twists in his chair to treat them both to a really not-amused face and a sigh. "Yeah, something like that."
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Date: 2016-06-10 03:27 pm (UTC)Rare and powerful. Precious. Impressive. His - technically. But Patricia is only any of the other things because she is her own person, her own self. The awe of recognizing the divine in someone else is in his gaze while he stares down at the top of her head. This is--
Dangerous. He needs to speak with the adults alone later. How many others will suspect what she is, when Argus wondered immediately? How many will learn, how far will the rumors spread? What measures are available for protecting them, or are the other seven lone hunters and predators, only heard of through tales others tell?
He won't ask while Patricia is here, though. That's one topic he'll keep her away from until he decides his approach.
Luckily, Patricia is her own distraction. Hannibal's smile spreads from his eyes, bends his mouth up when Triss catches sight of the magic in his pocket. "I do," he admits candidly. Not that there's much choice now. "I brought them out to help me find you. You may look at them later, if you'd like." He'd never told her he kept magical objects around the house. She knows about the books, but a vial of augmenting potion is different than a study of possible early mutants in the 16th century.
That will need to be a conversation later, that much is clear. "And I suppose now would be a good time to thank you for not blurting it out when you surely noticed earlier, Argus." Hannibal speaks across the table to him, above Triss's head. He looks as amused as he sounds. "In the future, perhaps you could take after him, Triss."
Argus had been keeping his head cocked, bird like, through a lot of this. Triss isn't wrong. It makes Hannibal very aware of the pantry door that leads out of his kitchen, the shallow room below it that stores the majority of his sensitive books and his collected potions and totems. He must be able to see it - or rather, see the shielding around it. Or perhaps he can see right through - Hannibal supposes he could ask Triss later. Except...their powers must work with very different ranges and degrees of accuracy.
Perhaps Argus could hear it all the way from the foyer, echoing down the hallway. Hannibal's gaze on him is warm but tempered with curiosity.
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Date: 2016-06-11 01:53 am (UTC)The colors are different than the lines Iron had shown her. Those were pretty enough, but confusing. They made her head hurt to try and figure out where they all went, and now she knows she can use them to move things. Did she pull them all towards her? It felt that way, only Danae stopped it before she could tell for sure. Triss likes the variety of this other metal a lot better. Even if she's not allowed to touch the magic, it's exciting to know it's there. That knowledge doesn't have to hurt anybody. It could even help them, if they were about to touch something they shouldn't.
Or not help them, if they were cruel and deserved to stick their hand in a wasp's nest.
"But how'm I supposed to know..." she trails back into gnawing at her lip, hand rising to jam a couple fingernails into the mix.
"I guess we'll have to do some cross comparison," Argus says, eyes and voice lighting up. "Take one object, you note what color you're seeing, and I'll tell you what kind of magic it sounds like to me. We'll see if there's a correlation."
That not only makes sense, it sounds really interesting. They'd both be learning something that way, even if it's mostly about how her magic works. Can Argus really tell the difference between one sound and another? That seems so much harder than picking out colors on a spectrum. She can't tell the difference between 'th' and 'd' some of the time. Or maybe it's like different instruments to him? No, that's not any better, Triss has a hard time figuring out all the strings in the music Hannibal likes. But she wants to ask him anyway, about how he hears it and what the sounds are like and if he knows anyone else who sees colors. If everybody's different, maybe they don't even see the same color for the same magic, and how confusing would that be?
Danae made it sound like she saw the lines just like Triss did. Maybe Iron's easier, after all.
"Of course," Argus is saying to Hannibal, who's thanked him for keeping the secret in front of everyone else until Triss spilled it. Whoops. "That's...good manners, with metas."
That's a word Triss has actually heard before. 'Metahuman.' It's like a nicer way of saying 'mutant', but means a little bit more, and nobody spits it out like a swear. Yet. Hannibal says any word can be made cruel if it's said the wrong way often enough, but she's not sure how long that's supposed to take.
"I'm sorry I was rude then," she decides. After daring a look at the others, Danae's wild stare and the deepening lines around Ruth's eyes, she adds, "A lot."
"Eh," Danae shrugs. Ruth's smile seems to mirror that sentiment.
"Neshama," she says again, "All things considered, it could have been much worse."