10 - video - goodbyes

[onlysurvivor]

[Kelsier has himself up on a high point on the Barge, actually, he's hovering a couple feet above it. He's smiling but it's his usual, this one is pure happiness.]

Mare is waiting for me. We're going home but not staying there. [His grin gets a little lopsided.] Well, maybe, we'll have Sazed send up to the future of our world where I won't be recognized. I'd make a terrible ruler. Unless I ran it like a thieving crew but, really? What's left to steal?

Oh, I left some parting gifts around the Barge. [In fact, he left flower crowns all over the place. He may have put a couple on dogs, dropped them on to the heads of the unsuspecting.]

I might come back someday. I have ways of turning up when I'm least expected.

[Private to Vin]

Vin, I never got to say goodbye properly last time. I'll be up here. I'll wait.

[Private to Zane]

Zane, I don't like your boyfriend [delivered jokingly] but I never liked Elend either. Vin made him into an outstanding person though her love. I hope you can do the same with your emperor.

[Private to Marsh]

This place gave us a chance we never had before. It is... the best thing that could have happened.

If I hadn't thought you were dead I would have never-- [he sighs]

I love you. If I come back, it'll be to check on you. You don't get a choice.

[Private to Nathan]

Thank you. You filled a void I didn't know I was missing. It-- [he pauses] It meant a great deal.

Maybe, someday I'll come visit your world. [His smirk gets more on the mischievous side] If I steal anything, don't worry, I'll turn myself in.

Look after Marsh.

Comments

[routemistress]

[Iris is wearing a flower crown, skewed almost over one eye, and she salutes Kelsier solemnly with something in a tall glass garnished with pineapple and small paper umbrellas.

She has stuck googly eyes on the glass and drawn a smile in the condensed droplets under it.]

Don't do anything I wouldn't do out there.

spam

[indispensible]

[She wants to scream at him over the network. Tell him to stay, that this isn't fair. But it wouldn't be fair to ask that of him, she knows, and - what's fair to her? Keeping him prisoner in this place, to make her feel safe?]

[She can't scream at him in person. Not right now, not if this is the last time she'll see him. So she makes her way up to the deck and throws down a coin, stepping up to meet him, as impassive as she can make herself.]

Goodbye, then.

[private]

[neuropathy]

[ Nathan refuses to treat this like it's a goodbye, so he's somewhere between as warm as he feels, and as flippant as indicates just that: this is not goodbye. ]

Police department's pretty busy. Y'might get away with more'n you'd think.

[ More seriously, then: ]

And don't worry about Marsh.

He did a good job, y'know.

[ With the whole raising Kelsier thing, since he seems to have turned out--well. A lot of superlatives Nathan can't quite bring himself to go into. Kelsier's always been good at reading between the lines of taciturn, though. Must be all that practice. ]

private

[godsays]

If he doesn't change with me, I'll leave him.

[ Quiet reassurance. His voice is tight, though. ]

I don't want you to go.

[private]

[myironeyes]

If I knew. Everything that was going to happen, when I got these.

[He traces a fingertip, not on the spikes themselves but the faded, spidery initiate tattoos around their edges, almost completely hidden by them, the precursors to all his pain, all the blood on his hands, all the loss and miraculous transformation.]

I'd do it. But I'd regret your death most.

[It's not logical, it's not moral. Kelsier's death was the lynchpin, and he can't unravel it from all the rest. But it's who he is, too deep for any of that to touch. He purses his mouth thinly, the kind of paper-thin aggravation he wraps his fondness in when he isn't actually trying to hide it at all.]

Now come say goodbye somewhere I can see you.