Fic: Spin Recovery, Part 18
Jan. 23rd, 2008 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalI feel better about this scene. It's mostly exposition, but it seems to flow better. Rufus will be more active in the next bit I promise.
The next day he stayed in bed until late morning, mostly to avoid having to speak to Bethany and his mother, partially because it took him some time to get to sleep. The image of Beth running off, crying because she thought he was lying, had been burned into his brain.
I’ve found the perfect way to be declared mad, he thought grimly, listening to the Kin Geese argue outside his window. All I have to do is speak the absolute truth. But really, what else did she have to go on? His word? He was a drunk and an addict, a proven liar. He had wasted tens of thousands of his House’s credits in pursuing his addictions. She had no reason to believe or trust him. Indeed, as Brushtail’s heir she actually had an obligation to doubt him, so as to minimize any further damage he could do.
Fruit, he should have listened to his twin brother the night the fellow had called Bethany. If she had seen them together on the screen, she might have been surprised, but she wouldn’t have been able to doubt the evidence of her eyes. He should have had him tape a message to bring home with him, or even dragged his twin back with him to the Manor. But that Rufus was surely long gone now, back to his brighter universe and totally out of reach. So all she had to go on was her erstwhile brother’s nonexistent Word.
I am not lying about this. But how was he to prove a negative?
That was one of the weak points of the Vulpine nobility system, he knew. It operated on a high level of trust. One’s Word was one’s Blood. To use it falsely was to shame not only yourself but your entire House. To declare a noble a liar was an insult worthy of a duel, to be proved one was to risk being cast out of one’s own House, at least in the old days. Things had mellowed out a bit since then, as a more flexible view of the truth had become necessary for their race’s survival under the Varn Dominion, but a farmer noble was still expected to maintain a higher standard of behavior than a mere commoner.
The downside of course was, that if a noble did start lying, they could cause tremendous damage, particularly if they were in a high position in the government. Worse, finding the evidence of such damage could be tricky. Vulpines did not respond well at all to the usual coercive drugs that could be used on other races, so they were illegal to use in police interrogations. It was a two-edged sword. Proving a someone liar was difficult, but proving you weren’t lying once the accusation had taken hold was equally difficult.
Well, this is a pretty problem, he thought. Bethany would never completely trust him so long as he stuck with the story of his alternate self. But the idea of lying, of perhaps telling her it had been an actor he’d hired to try and get some money for himself, stuck hard in his craw. No more lies, no more deceptions, no more self-delusions. I go down that road I may as well give up trying to recover at all and just start injecting Juno until my brain fries itself.
So what could he do now? He decided in the end to simply not mention it, unless Bethany or his mother brought it up themselves. Let them draw whatever conclusions they wanted, so long as they let him be. He knew what the truth was and that was all that mattered.
TBC
The next day he stayed in bed until late morning, mostly to avoid having to speak to Bethany and his mother, partially because it took him some time to get to sleep. The image of Beth running off, crying because she thought he was lying, had been burned into his brain.
I’ve found the perfect way to be declared mad, he thought grimly, listening to the Kin Geese argue outside his window. All I have to do is speak the absolute truth. But really, what else did she have to go on? His word? He was a drunk and an addict, a proven liar. He had wasted tens of thousands of his House’s credits in pursuing his addictions. She had no reason to believe or trust him. Indeed, as Brushtail’s heir she actually had an obligation to doubt him, so as to minimize any further damage he could do.
Fruit, he should have listened to his twin brother the night the fellow had called Bethany. If she had seen them together on the screen, she might have been surprised, but she wouldn’t have been able to doubt the evidence of her eyes. He should have had him tape a message to bring home with him, or even dragged his twin back with him to the Manor. But that Rufus was surely long gone now, back to his brighter universe and totally out of reach. So all she had to go on was her erstwhile brother’s nonexistent Word.
I am not lying about this. But how was he to prove a negative?
That was one of the weak points of the Vulpine nobility system, he knew. It operated on a high level of trust. One’s Word was one’s Blood. To use it falsely was to shame not only yourself but your entire House. To declare a noble a liar was an insult worthy of a duel, to be proved one was to risk being cast out of one’s own House, at least in the old days. Things had mellowed out a bit since then, as a more flexible view of the truth had become necessary for their race’s survival under the Varn Dominion, but a farmer noble was still expected to maintain a higher standard of behavior than a mere commoner.
The downside of course was, that if a noble did start lying, they could cause tremendous damage, particularly if they were in a high position in the government. Worse, finding the evidence of such damage could be tricky. Vulpines did not respond well at all to the usual coercive drugs that could be used on other races, so they were illegal to use in police interrogations. It was a two-edged sword. Proving a someone liar was difficult, but proving you weren’t lying once the accusation had taken hold was equally difficult.
Well, this is a pretty problem, he thought. Bethany would never completely trust him so long as he stuck with the story of his alternate self. But the idea of lying, of perhaps telling her it had been an actor he’d hired to try and get some money for himself, stuck hard in his craw. No more lies, no more deceptions, no more self-delusions. I go down that road I may as well give up trying to recover at all and just start injecting Juno until my brain fries itself.
So what could he do now? He decided in the end to simply not mention it, unless Bethany or his mother brought it up themselves. Let them draw whatever conclusions they wanted, so long as they let him be. He knew what the truth was and that was all that mattered.
TBC
