Malcolm Bright (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
abrightboy) wrote2030-05-05 08:18 pm
abrightboy) wrote2030-05-05 08:18 pmEntry tags:
Voicemail (IC Contact Post) NEW
This is Bright. Leave a message.
abrightboy) wrote2030-05-05 08:18 pm
Re: Private | Video
She shakes her head. "Malcolm, this is exactly the favor I'm asking you. I want you to respect the hierarchy and boundaries Lark laid out. If you don't, you're going to hurt Red and Iris by making them correct you, both so Lark doesn't think they're overstepping, and because they're acutely aware of the lines drawn. And he might feel that he needs to stop inviting them, to reinforce pack boundaries you're assuming don't matter anymore. Please. I don't want to see them shut out more than they already are."
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"Not quite." She sighs, trying to figure out how to say what she's worrying about. "I don't know that for certain. I do know that I worry about it. I've been humming with anxiety since I heard you say it. I had to resist the urge to just cover your mouth then and there, which obviously was not a reasonable reaction."
Cradling her tea beneath her chin, she concludes, "Lark is bending a little to include them at all. My instincts say that he's given us an inch and we'd like to take a mile. That isn't the sort of thing most people appreciate, especially people used to exercising firm authority."
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“Lark’s not… mean. I thought he would come around,” he explains. “When I saw them,” he adds quietly, “I thought he had come around.”
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Maggie shakes her head again. "I'm not accusing Lark of being mean. Not at the moment, anyway."
She leans toward him, voice low. "I'm saying that you need to understand that pack hierarchy and boundaries matter deeply to him. No matter how connected you and I feel to Iris or Red, they're outside the boundaries he's drawn. And hierarchies are antithetical to Iris; I was touching her after she said she was leaving, and pack rules felt like walls closing in on her. She needed out, or I would have protested then and there. I love her too much to try and keep her in a box, no matter how desperately I miss her. Meanwhile another pack has prior claim on Red even if he were a wolf. All three of them believe these distinctions matter. It's going to cause conflict with Lark if you refuse to acknowledge them, and it feels to me like rubbing Red and Iris's noses in what they can't have when they have to be the ones who keep reinforcing lines."
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“Okay. Is that all?”
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"I mean, I wanted to check on you and make sure you were okay, too. You were operating with incomplete information and got your hopes up in ways I didn't."
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"Hey." Maggie reaches out to squeeze his hand, asking, "This okay?" before she actually makes contact. She comes from a world where everyone is infected with a virus and people are wary of contact with anyone they don't know well.
"We're having this talk because I suspected a problem was coming, and I wanted to head it off before it took root too deeply. This is a 'so things don't get worse' talk, not a 'things are already fucked' talk." She shakes her head. "As for getting your hopes up, honestly optimism terrifies me, but I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. Just that I worry about you getting hurt."
Wryly, she concludes, "I don't always know how to hope these days unless I stack it on a small pile of contingency plans. Even that was too scary for me for awhile, but I've gotten better."
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He nods when she asks if it’s okay to touch him, then considers what she’s said.
“Maybe not everything is fucked, but I still ruined the ceremony for Sweeney and Iris,” he points out. “The only turning I’ve been to that I handled properly was… mine.”
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"I don't know that you ruined it for them. I got to tell them both that they were still a part of this for me, and they always will be. It meant the fucking world to me that they were there. I saw the two of them touching, too, so they were probably mentally supporting each other where none of us could hear them. And you aren't responsible for me and Lark not adequately setting expectations, anyway. That's on us." They knew in advance what this was, and one of them should've told Will and Malcolm clearly and explicitly.
Maggie shakes her head. "You haven't ruined anyone's turning. You're allowed to struggle, but it'd have been nice to know you were struggling at my first one. I would've checked on you after that, too. Even if we didn't communicate too well back then. Did Will know you had a hard time with his?"
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“After. We talked about it after.” He hesitates. “I didn’t want to ruin it, so I didn’t say anything… during it. I knew it was important to him.”