He nods slowly, not wanting to contradict her, even if he has ideas about... that. It's early. He doesn't need to say everything right now, when he's just learning the details of the story he knows in broad strokes.
Still, he reaches out a tentacle to brush against her fingertips, to draw her attention to how tight her own grip is if she hasn't noticed already.
"Well, you can teach me about something you love, and those memories will be completely yours. You--"
He pauses, frowns at the table. Finally looks back at Madelyne. "When I was... made, I didn't have a body. I was trapped in the eyes of the person who summoned me, and it wasn't even me he was trying to summon. I didn't know anything about Earth, I didn't really know anything but how to survive in a place that... that was nothing but violence and chaos. A dumping ground for dead things, where I'd been so long I didn't remember who I was."
There, context provided. "The... person who su--"
He stops himself, because anyone who knows anything about him or John will be able to guess who it is. "Arthur Lester, one of the inmates, was the one who got me out of there. He didn't mean to get me out, though. He wanted my brother, who had been with him before. He didn't even know I was there. While we were together, he quoted poetry, sometimes. He recited one to me when I barely... I didn't even know what poetry was. All I knew was that it was beautiful, and I wanted to know more."
Edwin frowns down at the file again. "He wasn't kind. Arthur. I understand why now, way better than I did then. But I wasn't kind to him either. There's a reason my brother came here as a warden and I came as an inmate. But I still... liked poetry. I still wanted to know more. For a while I-- For a little while I wouldn't read any just because it was something Arthur loved and I didn't want to love it. Because the first poem I heard was one he recited."
He looks up again. "But I started reading poems anyway. A little bit here or there, when I was... feeling... resentful, or defiant. And I started to love it for myself. I know it's not... the same, really, it's not the same hardly at all, but I don't think it's wrong for you to love flying just because some fucking asshole thought it would be useful for you to know for his own reasons. Even if... you don't know which flight, which one was your first, which one was real first... One of those flights and all the ones after were yours. Whatever you knew because of him, you were still the one flying. We get whole new lives in the breaches. Learn how to do things we never have before. If we come back to ourselves and love doing what we learned..."
He shrugs. "Then it doesn't belong to the breach or the person we were there, any more. It belongs to us. You can make new memories. Beautiful flowers still use actual shit to grow, sometimes."
no subject
Still, he reaches out a tentacle to brush against her fingertips, to draw her attention to how tight her own grip is if she hasn't noticed already.
"Well, you can teach me about something you love, and those memories will be completely yours. You--"
He pauses, frowns at the table. Finally looks back at Madelyne. "When I was... made, I didn't have a body. I was trapped in the eyes of the person who summoned me, and it wasn't even me he was trying to summon. I didn't know anything about Earth, I didn't really know anything but how to survive in a place that... that was nothing but violence and chaos. A dumping ground for dead things, where I'd been so long I didn't remember who I was."
There, context provided. "The... person who su--"
He stops himself, because anyone who knows anything about him or John will be able to guess who it is. "Arthur Lester, one of the inmates, was the one who got me out of there. He didn't mean to get me out, though. He wanted my brother, who had been with him before. He didn't even know I was there. While we were together, he quoted poetry, sometimes. He recited one to me when I barely... I didn't even know what poetry was. All I knew was that it was beautiful, and I wanted to know more."
Edwin frowns down at the file again. "He wasn't kind. Arthur. I understand why now, way better than I did then. But I wasn't kind to him either. There's a reason my brother came here as a warden and I came as an inmate. But I still... liked poetry. I still wanted to know more. For a while I-- For a little while I wouldn't read any just because it was something Arthur loved and I didn't want to love it. Because the first poem I heard was one he recited."
He looks up again. "But I started reading poems anyway. A little bit here or there, when I was... feeling... resentful, or defiant. And I started to love it for myself. I know it's not... the same, really, it's not the same hardly at all, but I don't think it's wrong for you to love flying just because some fucking asshole thought it would be useful for you to know for his own reasons. Even if... you don't know which flight, which one was your first, which one was real first... One of those flights and all the ones after were yours. Whatever you knew because of him, you were still the one flying. We get whole new lives in the breaches. Learn how to do things we never have before. If we come back to ourselves and love doing what we learned..."
He shrugs. "Then it doesn't belong to the breach or the person we were there, any more. It belongs to us. You can make new memories. Beautiful flowers still use actual shit to grow, sometimes."