braymitch thornathy. (grever) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-11-19 14:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, bram thornton, conan helmm-deirgard |
children, wake up, hold your mistakes up.
Who: Conan Deirgard & Bram Thornton
What: An attempt to address Conan's prolific struggles with his mentors.
Where: Bram's council office.
When: Today, a couple days after this.
Rating: G.
Status: Complete.
At last, the battle of Conan raged with his mentor skittered to an end. The only wounds he nursed were unseen, delivered by words on a page. The paperwork had been delivered to the council directly. Though Conan had yet to tell his own mother, he decided to bite the bullet and confront Bram Thornton. Complete avoidance was preferable to this but the councilman would have been one of the first to learn of the adjustments. Conan could not hide this from him if he tried. Conan’s face was smooth and unlined in contrast to the furrowed brows of EKP officers stepping in and out of the hall; it glowed with youth (and a coat of sweat due to nerves). He paced back and forth outside Bram’s office, looking not unlike a puppy scratching at the door to be let in. It was a habit he picked up from Cassandra. Their anxiety manifested into bobbing feet and wringing hands and shaking heads. After a deep breath, he held up his hand to knock but froze before making his move. Only Faram knew how long he might have languished there—caught on the threshold for all eternity, at least until a passing secretary passed him, shot the boy a look, and knocked on the door herself. “Some requisition forms for you, sir,” she said, leaning into the office. The door swung open behind her, exposing Conan trapped in the doorway. Bram raised an eyebrow. The woman deposited the paperwork on the man’s desk and then left, her heels tapping a rapid staccato against the hardwood floor. “Something you need, Deirgard?” He would not bring up Antony Fitz until the boy did so. Bram had already archived the form, his signature scrawling the bottom of the transfer paperwork and setting it aside into Conan’s ever-growing file. It was astoundingly full considering his youth: mentor assignments and terminations, reports of unruly behaviour and disciplinary reports. “Uh, no. I mean, yes. I wan—I’m just checking up on you, y’know. Saying hello.” Conan’s voice was pitched a half-octave higher than usual. His eyes landed everywhere except on the councilman. He gulped. “Hello.” “Not sure if I’m the one needs checking up on.” (A white lie. Perhaps Thornton did require it, but not from a child a third of his age.) “Please, come in. Shut the door behind you.” Bram nodded towards the spare seat in the office, a small but comfortable chair pulled up to the other side of his desk. Any other day, it might have been a completely innocent and friendly invitation, simply checking in on his friend’s son for the sake of it — today, there was another motive lurking beneath the councilman’s skin. “Um.” Conan inched slowly towards the chair, letting the door close with a creak behind him. With his back unnaturally straight, he sat on the very edge of the chair and began tapping his fingers against his knee. Facing Bram in person had him regretting the decision to come in the first place. In an attempt to direct the conversation away from his original intention, the boy forced on a smile and chirped, “So what’s up? How is, uh, work and all going?” He punctuated the question with a nervous laugh. “Well enough. Busy as always.” There were perturbing reports from the Rangers, animals grown strange and corrosive and poisoned, but they were hardly things to offload on this squire... who sat in the chair as if he were chained there, a restless animal jittering in its seat. Bram finally set his cup of lukewarm coffee aside, scooting forward to rest his elbows against the desk. “I did see a report of interest this week,” he said. “Oh, did you?” A beat. Then without further warning, the councilman changed tack and opted to seize the topic head-on: “Another one, Conan?” This time there was no ambiguity, no question of what Bram might be referring to: the veil of friendliness dissolved and the man simply sounded disappointed, disgruntled, crestfallen. The squire winced at the question. He had been expecting—hoping for—anger, the preferred emotion of his previous mentors’ in response to his mischief. Disheartened by the tone in Bram’s voice, Conan averted his gaze to stare at the councilman’s coffee. He pulled himself together after a moment’s hesitation, switching to the defensive. “Yeah, another one. Same old deal.” Then, in a foreign, bitter voice not his own, “It’s whatever.” “How many has it been now?” Bram knew the answer, but preferred to force the boy to think on it. Conan opened his mouth, but the answer caught in his throat. “Uh, this year or…?” “Eight.” Bram’s response was flat, unamused with the boy’s stalling and delay. Conan was dragging his heels through this conversation. “Fitz was your eighth, by my count. Some indecision and incompatibility is to be expected. A period to find one’s footing, decide on one’s class. But this many?” To physically illustrate the matter, Bram sifted around in the drawer, retrieved Conan’s folder, and flung it onto the table in front of the squire. There was a list of names contained in those pages, a rolling history of the boy’s disastrous track record with mentor figures, exhibited in the heavy thump of paper hitting wood. With a yelp, the boy jumped at the noise. Deflections made useless by Bram’s reveal of evidence, there was no running from a truth immortalized into the documents before him. Made to confront his behavior for these past years, Conan grasped at excuses for the growing number of mentorship terminations. Easing into squirehood felt to him as absurd a practice as fitting a glove onto one’s foot. Restless and unsettled, the squire had resorted to casting away his teachers, forcing them away on his own terms before they could tire of him on their own. His miscreant behaviour only compounded wake of his father’s passing. But to admit to the councilman that it was more his fault than theirs seemed foolish so instead Conan bit his lip, steeling himself for another blow. “Eight, really? Wow, that’s a lot. Guess I’m not too good at this.” The last sentence slipped out before he had the chance to reel it back. “I mean, y’know, trial and error. Practice makes perfect. I’m gonna get another one now right?” “Yes. Though I haven’t decided who yet.” And just like that, a thin sheaf of exhaustion seemed to settle across Bram like a blanket, the man sagging back into his chair with hands steepled under his chin. He surveyed the squire fidgeting across from him—and then felt a small twinge beneath his heart, a sharp jab of pain that could have bowled him over, if he let it. He’d never been good at dealing with unruly fifteen-year-old boys. Too little, too late—but no. No, he would not fail Conan. “Talk to me,” the councilman said, one hand now shifting to knead his brow. “What’s the problem?” Deep lines chiseled into the brow and a stern, brusque voice did not lend Bram to be an easy confidant. The squire resisted folding, but his shield—made of offhand jokes and mistimed pranks—was cracking; the councilman’s bypassed Conan’s usual attempts to sprinkle laughter where humor had no place, piercing the heart of the matter. Bram’s solemn lack of humor was a black hole swallowing up each of the deflections. The squire squirmed in his seat as if to shake off the lingering fear of I’m the problem. “Nothing. There’s nothing wrong.” “Evidently there is. Which classes have you enjoyed most, at least?” Perhaps if Bram approached this from the positive side, he could lure the boy into opening up. “Sentinel, I guess? Sword stuff, I dunno, is cool. Maybe dragoon but none of that monk stuff,” the boy answered his usual with a shrug. Conan was accustomed to this question by this year of his squirehood. Always the thought that came to mind was his family’s reputation and the dream he shared with Storm to join the Riders. (He made a note of his training session with Kiernan a few months ago, one of the few he found enjoyable.) A beat. “Zach said I should try archery.” “Perhaps you should.” Bram took in the sight of this boy, thoughtfully comparing him to all the archers he’d known: all long limbs and thin body, not the bulk of other teenagers growing into the broad shoulders and muscles of knighthood. Seventeen years ago, Zacheus himself had been one of those scrawny boys seated at the other end of the desk, waiting as then-councilman fon Amell paired up a dragoon and a brand-new squire. The gears turned in his mind, slowly assembling themselves into some sort of idea. “We’ll talk some more about this later,” the councilman finally said, his fingers knotting. If Conan wasn’t willing to talk, he wasn’t about to browbeat it out of him. “But dismissed, for now.” “Yeah, great. See you later,” Conan blurted, barely keeping a thank Faram out of his farewell. Pushing the chair back to its original position, the squire ducked out without another word or glance to the councilman. The door slammed behind him in his haste. With a mumbled apology to the nearest secretary, Conan picked up his pace to get as far away from Bahamut Hall as he could. |