tushanshu | [video] the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner

[It's video, so it's clear that Dorian looks the same. Still the bright roses of youth on his cheek, still the crisp dark curls on his head. The candour of youth in his face, and 'youth's passionate purity' in his smile. To look at him, you'd think he had kept himself unspotted from the world—even if all that the blue smoke around him is from one of Lord Henry's opium-tainted cigarettes.

But that is the visual half of things. As for the audio half?]

1986. The summer. [For audio, there is something torn in that low and musical voice, something of electrohouse's wretched distortion ripping the guts out of the base and leaving the jagged beat in its wake.

Dorian laughs.] It was 1986, it was the summer, and Highlander came out for UK audiences. Crooned over scenes of loss, Freddie Mercury asks a question he'll never need to answer: "Who wants to live forever?" [The cigarette held away, conductor holding the note to let the question hang.]

[And callously, we're back.] Contemporary efforts in medicine might suggest 'just about everyone,' but in stories about immortals, the weariness is always more loss of people than loss of time. It's more that you're watching your granddaughter's funeral than it is that the shop beside the graveyard is a chain electronics place instead of the private member's club where you met her grandmother decades ago.

[Another drag of the cigarette. He is still smiling a pleasant, youthful smile.] But it occurred to me, speaking with Rebecca, that that sense of loss, of friendships brief as mayfly lives, is one we all get to share here. It's not a curse of immortality, something known only in a long term. It's frequent, repetitive, and to all intents and purposes, mundane. We foreigners just lose people, over and over and over and over, and there is never any resolution to any of it. Like the workroom of a perfectionist, it's a slaughterhouse of unfinished stories, and the corpses just keep piling up. Only corpses would give more closure than disappearances, and we aren't likely to be here ourselves by the time we can hold a funeral.

So we get used to it. We cope and we carry on. [Cigarette between his fingers, he gives a salute that somehow doesn't come across as sarcastic.] Congratulations on all the recent efforts, and good luck to everyone still with us in the future.

[Dorian holds up a mobile phone (circa 2007) with all lightness of touch and tone.] Does anyone have anything to for a mobile's battery? I left the charger in the 21st century, and I'd like to get my music off of this, but it gave out.

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[And that...it has not quite struck a nerve, but there is something working in Enjolras's jaw for one moment that suggests that the statement is...more affecting than anything else.]

Well. There IS that opportunity, I suppose. I cannot think that I would be in the position of being forced to that again but should it come...

Should it come, then there we are. [Dorian actually laughs, though it couldn't be called a happy expression.] The really irritating thing is when you try to apologize for their death and they won't accept it. Not that they won't forgive you—that, at least, is endurable. But they won't accept that you're at all to blame.

It is rather odd, in a way already,here, when one has the opportunity to do that.

[He's never quite blamed himself for any of the deaths at their barricade exactly, or felt guilt but there can be...accepting responsibility for things, certainly and he is still in a stage of working towards THAT.]

At the worst of it, when I wished to apologize to those here who I SHOULD do that for, I could not do so actually, for that reason. There is something to be said for owning what we've done.

[And a cynical little smile crosses his face there.]

I do not think that I will ever, entirely be allowed that ownership when I would sooner have it acknowledged and dealt with myself.

Taking responsibility, you mean? Always an insidious thing. [Dorian's dimensions of responsible are more personal and more bound with sin.] Still, it seems you and your friends have managed to work some peace out in it.

Along those lines, perhaps.

[And that's a little sigh escaping Enjolras's lips there as he answers.]

I do not think it has been worked out to that extent so much as it seems, actually. It seems as though each time I attempt speaking to them about this, they will refuse to let me do as such.

[His expression is calm enough, and there's no trace of frustration or guilt there or in his voice, and Enjolras hates to whine at anyone for his problems, but stating them is becoming easier with those who understand here, now.]

I am glad they hold me blameless and would rather this than they hate me, but on the other side of that coin, it seems as though there is also no intention of accepting that I AM responsible for at least those things which I did wrong.

Forgiveness is a mercy I do not deserve, which I am grateful for, but it falls flat when there is little understanding of the things that I accept or a refusal to believe in them. It falls a little hollow though it changes nothing that is between us I suppose.

...I apologize. This was not meant to be focused on myself.

[Dorian smiles, and he speaks an echo.] It's all right. I prefer it not to be about myself. I am tired of myself tonight.

[I should like to be somebody else.]

Then you're without an accord. I'd almost suggest a negotiation of terms, and a treaty to go with it.

I do understand the sentiment, if not the direct feelings involved in that.

[Enjolras's return smile is faint, a bit ironic but there, at least, regardless. That feeling of not wishing to be yourself anymore? He does know it, a little . There are times when it has felt that way, yes.]

Mm perhaps in part. It is worth some consideration.

[video] the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner

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