"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to speak of many things."

[maddeninghatter]

Date & Time: June 29
Location: Chez Break
Characters: Xerxes Break and Leo, the Hound Heir of the Baskervilles.
Summary: Leo decides to unburden himself
Warnings: None

[ For the past fifteen years, Xerxes Break has devoted his life to a cause. Carefully, painstakingly, and secretly, he has constructed his chess table, and put his pawns in play. Now, finally, his singleminded pursuit of the truth is about to pay off. It's within his grasp - again. He won't let it slip from his fingers, this time…

No; that's not quite right. His goal hadn't slipped. He destroyed what he'd wanted, all on his own. Because something, at the time, had been more important. Something. Someone.

He hadn't regretted his choice, but he'd felt disordered afterwards. He's a man who lives but for himself: this is how he has managed to justify his own existence after all these years. Well - isn't it the exception that proves the rule? This was an explanation he could live with.

And that would have been all right, except he's starting to accrue more exceptions: people who matter to him. The thread of logic supporting that explanation is becoming increasingly more tenuous, something that should occur to him if he thinks about it, which he is trying most assiduously not to do.

Thus it is with a mixture of excitement and foreboding that he waits.

Just knock on the door already, Leo! ]

Comments

[flecks]

[ Leo would have kept it all to himself — all those terrible truths — like he has for the past few months if only Jack hadn't showed up. He thought he'd been prepared to stay silent still, because he'd given Oz a choice and Oz had chosen to stay ignorant (not a choice Leo can fault him for, ignorance is bliss) and it had been Oz's choice alone. But slowly, at some indiscernible point, it had started eating away at him even as he distanced himself and sought distractions.

In the end, it's futile.

Because just maybe he started thinking of Oz as a friend too and that comes with a certain worry. He doesn't think Jack has said anything, why would he when being thought of as a hero only works to his advantage, but how long would that illusion last? Someone else needs to know.

The only person he can think of that might keep it to himself too is Xerxes Break and although he hadn't send the text with the intention of telling him everything, here he was knocking on Break's door.

A single, rapt knock, because he knows how badly Break wants to know and that's all that's needed. ]