northclifflogs

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WHO: Detlef, Lance
WHAT: Looking for a little guidance
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Guardhouse
NOTES: Potentially talk of death and vice and mercy and stuff.

He swings by the guardhouse late afternoon with a few cookies he's bought at the market on the way over. They're bribery. For what, he's not entirely sure. Maybe it's so that Lance will have an excuse to stick around and talk to him? Or will be in a good mood when they talk? Both or either requires Lance to like cookies and Detlef can't say he's ever really paid attention to what the man likes or dislikes. But they're worth a shot, and worst-case scenario, Detlef has to eat all the cookies himself. What a burden.

"Captain?" he calls out as he comes in, looking around.

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Lance is only recently awake when Detlef arrives, and is sitting out on the deck above the guardhouse's lower level, drinking his morning tea and looking out over the town. So he sees him coming, perhaps dreads it a little, but nonetheless gets up to come to the edge and get his attention.

"Up here," he grunts, giving a little wave, "all right, Detlef?"

"I brought cookies," he says in partial answer as he heads up the stairs. "I picked them up and thought... that they'd make a good excuse?"

The problem with never bothering to lie means he has no practice when maybe a lie might not be a bad idea.

"But they're only a good excuse if you're not busy. If you are, I can go." Now that he's here, he's nervous. He's never had a lot to do with older people - his father hadn't been cruel but he hadn't spent time with the kids, his mother had always been busy with the younger ones, they'd been on the outside of that village. But right now he's a little lost and Lance knows a larger portion of that than nearly anyone else.

Still Lance can feel the dread pulsing in him; not because Detlef has ever been a troublemaker, or even unpleasant, but because of what they both know and the fact that the young man can never seem to keep his mouth shut.

Maybe that's a virtue. ...it's a virtue when one doesn't have a secret that will get them killed. Or potentially more than them.

"It's fine," he says, with a little sigh, and beckons him up the back staircase-- he doesn't like when people come through the barracks, if only because they'll see where he sleeps, and he's as private about that as he is anything else.

He heads up, not entirely sure of what he's doing. But that's the root of the problem. He's at a loss, with few to trust, and if one man already knows his secret then maybe he can get help. Once upstairs Detlef holds out the cookies.

"I'm at a loss," he says shortly thereafter, looking up. "I've been at a loss. For a long time." He's an adult. He really thought he would have had this handled by now, figured out, but apparently hitting a certain number of years on the planet doesn't magically make things easier.

Lance doesn't seem frightened of Detlef, or even all that anxious (above his baseline, at least); when offered cookies, he looks interested, leaning over to pluck one from the plate and bite into it without hesitation. He nods, appreciating the taste as he glances back out over the town.

He chews silently as Detlef speaks, and, true to form, has absolutely nothing useful or even vaguely intelligent to say in response. He swallows, and glances over at the younger man, prompting him onward.

In books, that's when the Wise Elder tends to jump in and offer all sorts of suggestions. Detlef is disappointed that once again life isn't going to work like his books. At least he knows Lance is safe, so to speak. The Shepherds haven't come for him.

When he speaks, his voice is very quiet. "I want to be a good person. I pray, I believe, I do what I can for my neighbors and I don't know why that means I should stand by and let animals die or suffer when I can help them. I don't want to do the wrong thing. And I don't know that wrong and bad are... are what I've been taught."

It's an amazing thing, how quickly Lance's expression can transform from one of docile interest to one of absolute nervous paralysis. He actually stops chewing, remembering to continue after several seconds, in which he looks quickly away from Detlef and out at the town again so he can swallow without choking himself to death.
He has to clear his throat a few times anyway.

"Well-- um," he stammers, "well I think-- t-to be honest, I think more people have the Vice than anyone really knows." He folds his hands and looks down at them thoughtfully. "But as I understand it, what... what makes a person Profane is how they use it." Spoken like a true foreigner, who's had several decades to assimilate but still never actually grew up under the spiritual system to which he now adheres.

After a moment, he rises, his knees popping uncomfortably as he shifts his weight to straighten them out. "I'm not going to arrest you for comforting a colicking horse," he murmurs, a bit grimly, possibly because he just woke up and he's sore. "Just..."
He turns to look over his shoulder at Detlef, certain only in his personal morality, in what he has time to deal with and care about in the grand scheme of things.
"Just... stop... telling people about it." It comes almost like a plea.

It's never been about how they use it in anything he's been taught, but Lance isn't from around this area as far as Detlef knows. Maybe where Lance is from, it's different? It would be nice to believe there's a place where it's all about how you use the Vice, and not if.

"I didn't... I didn't mean to tell you," he protests, shoulders sagging a little. "You came back and asked, and I'm not good at lying. I don't know how people get good at it. Do they lie a lot? But then they're going to be known as--" he cuts himself off and sets the cookies down in reach of Lance so he can rub a temple. "I'll hide it better, and I won't tell people."

He takes a breath.

"What I was taught is that everyone has it, but the moment they use it they're bad and lost and weak and Profane. But you're saying more have it than people think..." Does the Captain not have it? He can't just ask, though.

Lance watches him somewhat sternly as he speaks, but seems to relax a little at the assurance that he won't tell people. Otherwise, he appears somewhat at a loss.
"...I don't know," he admits, "just... heard things, I suppose. Times I've been to Cliffside." It stands to reason that a place with more people will have more Profane, or at least that a greater percentage of them will have the Vice in some way.

He trails off, scratching lightly at his stubbly cheek as he looks out over the town. "That's all Shepherd business, anyway."

There's a stretch of silence before finally Detlef talks again, in a voice that's barely above a whisper: "You don't... have it, then. At all."

Heard things. Not felt it. It lines up with Colin's suspicions and leaves Detlef feeling a little more in doubt about everything. If what he's been told his whole life is wrong, what does that mean? Is it a lie? Is it confusion? Does it mean that the Shepherds all have it and this assume everyone else does which makes them just the same as the people they burn?

And if not everyone is born with it, then why is it such a bad thing instead of seen as a gift from the gods?

The look Detlef receives is a bit wide-eyed, as though Lance is surprised by the mere idea that he might have it. He blinks a few times, thinking it over: he doesn't, does he?
...would he necessarily know?

Finally, he shakes his head with an odd air of apology.

He sits, then, half-falling and half-finding the position on the floor. That's something he's been told all his life. And it's not true.

"That's what, they, everyone has it. That's what the Shepherds say. And only the weak use it. The evil ones. But if..." He gathers himself minutely, taking a breath and looking back up at Lance. "Is it a lie, or are they just wrong?"

Is it purposeful? Or an accident? Because he's not evil. At least not yet, and if he goes evil he's got an agreement for Colin to stop him.

Of all the things Lance is equipped to handle, theology and the theoretical discussion thereof is not among them. He looks like he would probably rather leap off the balcony than try to give Detlef an honest answer, and he just shakes his head uselessly.

"Perhaps-- Father Normand--?" he stammers.

Lance does not deserve this. It's the only constructive thought in Detlef's head as he looks up at the Captain who is just as lost as him. Slowly he nods.

"I'll... I'll try him." Maybe. That might take more explaining than he's up to, but he'll see. For now he'll find his feet again and start heading out, trying and failing to hide how lost he feels right now.

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