Siobhan’s sitting with Eli, in his rooms, brushing and braiding her hair into some semblance of tidiness. Her mind’s elsewhere, though, and her expression is distracted, even troubled. Eli is in his own head too. Staring at the ceiling with that sort of wistful vacancy that comes with a job well performed. It might also be the laudanum, he got into a rough the other day and it really turned him on his side. He never used to touch the stuff. Never used to.
"Eli…" Siobhan’s voice is very quiet. "Can we… talk about something?"
"Hm. Hm? Yeah, what’s wrong?" He pulls himself up on to a shoulder and looks at her, paying attention now. The light is dim enough that he doesn’t need to wear his glasses.
"Is there something you’re not telling me?" She bites her lip. "/He/ seemed convinced you’re… not exactly going to be here long…"
Eli looks over to the beautiful woman who he’s fallen in love with. "He also seems convinced he’s from the future."
"There is that, yes." Siobhan laughs shakily. "I don’t know, he just seemed so sure. It caught in my head."
Eli is quiet for a moment. "What wouldn’t you do for The Irish People, Siobhan?"
"I… don’t know. I expect I wouldn’t know until something too much was asked of me, whatever it happened to be." She’s honest, at least, in her uncertainty.
"You know that my name isn’t Eli, right? I was born on the surface, in a place where you have to say please everytime you want to take a ****." His eyes are pointed and intense. Dogmatic. "I have an opportunity to put a hole in that culture, of just letting things be the way they are, with one person crouching atop the bones of another."
"I’ve been groomed for this for fifteen years. I’m not turning my back on my destiny now."
"Groomed for… what?" Her gaze searches his face anxiously.
"I’m Eli Lowe the Second. There was one before me." He shakes his head. "And there were Seventy Five after me. The Seventy Seven. Poets, philosophers, killers, thieves, eunuchs, slaves, slave masters. All of us."
"They left me behind. Because that’s what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to step up and claim responsibility for everything and wear the crown of thorns upon my brow." Eli sighs. "I cannot wait. This is what I want for myself, for you, for all of us. But it is my cross to bear." Eli sounds different. Something is gravely wrong.
"What is it?" There’s a hint of fear in her voice. "Just tell me, please."
"I am going to die. Soon. By the hand of an assassin. In public." Eli states simply. "I don’t knew where. I don’t know when. It will happen and I will not resist it. And then my duty will be complete."
"/No./" Her eyes flash with anger. "You thought New Newgate would be your ending too, didn’t you? But it wasn’t. This needn’t be either."
"Newgate would’ve been the worst way to go out. Shrinking away out of the public eye? No. That would have ruined everything." Eli shakes his head. "This one will be much more effective. Because I hired the assassin ten years ago."
"It’s Eli Lowe the First." He confirms.
She blanches. "And… how long were you planning for me to not know? To dream of other futures?" Tears collect in her eyes, but she wipes them away in a swift, angry gesture. "How long was I supposed to be ignorant of your dramatic suicide plot?"
"Forever." Tears are welling in his eyes but his face is blank. "Ideally, you would never have learned."
"So that’s it, then? You lost everything once, and you were going to let someone rip my heart open the same way?" The tears running down her face are too many to wipe away now. "I find this man, I’m killing him. Then we’ll see what becomes of your stupid plan."
"Find him how? He’s a better tracker than I could have ever been and I taught these streets to you." Eli shakes his head. "You will never come close. If you make a production of this, if anyone else finds out what is going to happen to me, thirty years of effort will be undone. Flowerdene will fall. The death will have been for nothing." He places a hand on his chest. His heart is palpitating. "I will have been for nothing."
"You’re not already?" She doesn’t mean it, that much is clear from the way she recoils from her own words, but she’s still furious. "That you’d decide this was the only way… were the other ways /just too hard/?"
"Don’t speak to me of difficulty." He says blankly. "I’ve made myself a saint among criminals. A political rallying figure. When I am publicly assassinated by an agent of the Masters, all of London will cry out."
"And what if they don’t? What if they sigh, roll over, and forget?" she snaps. "Then it /will/ have been for nothing, and you won’t even be there to keep looking after anyone."
"Then The Masters were right and these people don’t deserve to be saved." Eli retorts bluntly. "I will give them the blade, but they must grip it with their own hands and fight with their own will. They must want to be free!"
A kind of grim misery has settled over her now. "And we’re talking the kind of death no-one comes back from, aren’t we?" She sounds almost resigned.
"It’s not really death if you come back." Eli says bitterly.
That may be so, but Siobhan looks practically dead herself, now, her face ashen, all the sparkle gone from her eyes. Her lips are pale and bloodless. "What happened to all that talk of choices?" Her voice sounds dull, numbed. "If you were groomed for this, didn’t someone else choose it, plan it? Where’s your ideals of freedom in that?"
"The road is paved with sacrifice. You don’t think there is a part of me that wants to run off with you and forget about all this bullshit?" Eli has cooled down, but his eyes are still somewhere else. "This was always my choice and I am not going to give it up. Ideals? This was never ideals. This is real and yet somehow better than most people’s ‘ideals’"
"Funny." There’s a terrible, grating, mirthless laugh. "That you could call this better than anything."
"Better than anything that has ever been put into practice." Eli confirms. "It’s between me and Ireland. Which one dies? Because one will die."
She looks as though she wants to slap him. "Ireland’s survived this long, you think your one life could change that?"
"Yes. I. Do." Eli takes a step away from her and gazes out the window at two urchins practicing Systema.
"Well, then." Her voice is barely more than a whisper. "Might be that you’ll never look on your own child’s face."
Eli doesn’t move a muscle. Ezekiel might not be able to hear him, he stands so still. "He deserves a better future than I could ever provide." Siobhan can’t see it, but his eyes are two red puffs of salt and tears.
"What future’s that? The one where he’s called ‘the Irish whore’s bastard babe’?" She spits the words disgustedly.
"THE ONE WHERE HE IS NOT SUBJECT TO SUCH WHIMS." Eli turns to her, livid. He spits when he speaks and Emblem starts banging on the front door from the noise. "This isn’t about any of us! This is about the fucking future of this country! Why can’t you see that?"
She lifts her chin, shakily defiant. "Perhaps because I just found out you were keeping your death-to-be a secret? Perhaps because as soon as you start looking past people to the group they ought to be, you’ve stopped caring about them as any more than pieces of the whole thing?"
"This isn’t about people becoming different people! This is about giving them what they need to cut the noise that’s been put around their neck!" Eli has to catch his breath and when he speaks again, it’s at normal volume in a voice torn from yelling. "Have you forgotten what happened to your family so easily?"
"No!" She snaps. "Nor’ve I forgotten what happened to everyone who’s tried for more. You won’t be the first, or the last, to die thinking he’ll make himself the one last symbol it’ll take."
"And what? That means we stop trying?! We give up? Let them win?"
No, it means we fight a better way. There’s new ways at things, if only a person looks for them hard enough." The life’s come back into her, and the intensity. "No more martyrs. People pray to those, maybe, or call on their names, but they don’t stop suffering. And there’s not a living hand reached out to help. You’ve helped people here, is that pointless? Do they mean nothing beyond how they might fight if you die? They’re important as they are, surviving, and so are you." Her voice cracks a bit there.
"Siobhan, The Masters will not stop until someone makes them stop and I cannot do that. The people can do that, but I need to be more than a person." Eli stands tall, refusing to break down like he so clearly wants to. Others will carry on in my stead. They’ll do as I did, maybe even better, and with the spirit of outcry at their side."
"The dead can only ask to be avenged. The living can ask to be fought beside, can share their strength." A shaky sigh, before her voice is steady enough to continue. "If you’ve the need to be more than a person, be what inspires people from among them. Not what lays the burden down on them of trying to replace you."
"You don’t know what you’re talking about. I want to bow to your logic, but, it’s wrong." Eli closes his eyes. "Even if I didn’t want to do this, Eli won’t stop. He’s out there."
"Please," she whispers. "Don’t just give up." Ruthless practicality now. "If you don’t resist, people will say you wanted it, might even suspect you planned it. Won’t that damage their outrage, if they think you wanted to die anyway?"
"Eli won’t give me a chance to resist, he’s a savage." Eli shudders. "There is an end coming. Can’t you feel it? He isn’t going to stop one way or another. He could be watching us right now, we’d never know."
"One way or another. There’s two ways already." A shaky laugh. "Might be that you live, and he dies. And then there you are to make speeches about the attempt on your life. Will you… at least consider that? That it might not end the way you planned?"
"I’ll fight him, sure. If he gives me the chance." Eli lays down on the bed, staring back at the ceiling in an almost picture-perfect regression to how he was at the beginning of the conversation. "He will kill me. He’s like a ghost. Nothing will stop him."
"Nothing is certain." Siobhan is quiet again, and joins him on the bed, reaching out to wrap her arms around him. "Except this. I love you. Whatever comes, I love you."
"I’m going to be a father."
"Most likely." She smiles weakly.
"Feckin’ 'ell." He says quietly.
"I wish I could’ve told you in a happier talk."
"What’s important is you told me." He looks at his wife and slips the ring on her finger. "Whatever happens, we live on."
Siobhan blinks, looking down at the ring, startled. "I suppose you’ve never been one to care if it’s allowed officially," she laughs.
"No one is calling you a whore. Nor my son a bastard. No one without a hole in their head." He kisses her on the forehead.
She hugs him tightly, and tucks her head beneath his chin. The things she’s heard today near-broke her, but this? This is something she can take comfort in still. The rest is the future, and that’s not set in stone. Not yet.