Chapter Text
For what felt like the first time in a Millenia, when in truth only since 1963, as aleph recollected so perfectly, his endlessly chaotic mind held something akin to peace. The constant bickering of his alternate personalities had ceased, and for once, aleph could sit and write in a silence so loud. The only sound he could hear was the low scratch of his pen on paper as he wrote to his penpal, Recoleta. He enjoyed the silence, as it allowed the utter chaos of his mind to slow down and divide the words that surrounded the infinite expanse of his train of thought. They curled around each other, long twisting trails of sentences written in a familiar, yet unplaceable handwriting that formed into a simple, acknowledgeable dot. The particle he allowed himself to observe, as if transcendentality was so perfectly placed in front of his eyes. The small inky black dot slowly formed in his vision, making his writing pause as he watched the ink spread throughout his peripheral, before he quickly shook his head and looked back at his paper, where his pen, having been left on the page for too long, had created an ironic splotch on the page, bleeding ink through the grafted paper and causing his pen to clot.
He sighed, shaking his head slowly, before picking the pen and paper up, and throwing them into the small bin that sat next to his desk, already half full with drafts he had yet to finish. The peace in his mind was irresistibly useful, yet for some reason, he continued to draw blanks. Extended periods of time where he could not muster the will to finish a draft, finding his words far too harsh of recoleta’s childish romanticisation of her story. He needed the point across, but he didn’t need it to be too blunt.
He needed her writing.
Something of the way she told stories, spun her characters into living beings, gave him a sense of thrill. It was unexplainable, a harrowing sense of dread that would overcome him at the thought of accidentally pushing her away by writing something too blunt. He desired to hear of her progress, and her letters were one of the simple things in his harrowing life that he quite enjoyed taking a break from the prison to answer. His tower overlooked the prison, as the panopticon was simply the most ideal way to instil fear on its inhabitants, by never allowing them the ability to know when someone was watching. The maddened prisoners held no meaning to him, other than means to find answers. Of course, sitting in his tower all day, all he could do was allow the idealist and Merlin to hold their physical forms, with help from the tear of comala of course, and hoped that they would achieve their similar goals through different means.
Knowing how they bickered, he was rather surprised that he couldn’t hear them anymore. The silence was almost unnerving.
Almost.
He knew they would return to their useless fighting eventually, if he gave them enough time. Of which, he had a lot of. All he could hope for right now was that peace to hold a little longer as he found himself a new pen and some fresh paper. His pen fell to the page, slowly looping simple lines and loops into the words he knew all too well, hoping that this time, he could string together his sentences in a less rude manner. He held no true opinion on Recoleta, rather focusing on the writing she so willingly sent him, though he did find her struggles as somewhat sympathy inducing. Such a young writer, out in the world, struggling… he shook the thought out of his head, knowing all too well that it was her fault she was in such a state, and rather reminded himself of why he read of her stories anyways. Her manuscript thrilled him, the writing so meticulously brought to life, something he knew that Merlin was ending through his own means of achieving his goals. Aleph holds the die between his index finger and thumb on his free hand, turning to look at it as he fiddled with it silently, knowing the shape of it so perfectly already, yet still finding it intriguing.
Such a tool, gifted to him by the Manus Vindicate, a group he held indifference to, yet found their constant questions intriguing to answer. The many telephones that lined his wall would ring every now and then, with a cold, quiet man’s voice, that always held an air of self importance. He never was told the man’s name, but he ought to have been important within the organisation, because he was consistently tasked with asking the Manus’ advisor for every question they couldn’t answer. Aleph looked over at the wall of telephones, each one sitting haphazardly from each other, and sat there for a minute, not quite thinking of anything as he watched. He sighs, finding the silence within his mind slowly irking him, and it was almost if he actually wanted to hear either of the voices of his alternate personalities. Weirdly enough, he found nothing.
Aleph tapped his pen against the paper, humming quietly to himself as he continued to write, letting his memory of his previous drafts guide him to a more suitable letter. After he finished the final line, he picked the paper up, giving it a light shake to dry the ink, before tracing a finger along his desk shelf until he found a pre-prepared envelope, folding the letter neatly and placing it in the envelope, the action so perfectly rehearsed from the many times he had finished a letter. He raised the envelope to his face, before pausing and remembering that he had a mask on, muttering about how his old habits would be the death of him, before turning to an old wax seal set he had acquired many years ago.
The neat seal upon the envelope sat perfectly as it dried, aleph packing up its surrounding tools as to busy himself whilst he waited. The place was almost constantly a mess, as he never believed keeping the station tidy was necessary, and he typically found himself listening to his alters argue instead.
But in their absence, this was to do just fine.
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The idealist hummed idly as he sorted through the papers of the labyrinth, noticing the letter aleph had finally finished writing on his desk, which wasn’t there last time he was looking. The piles of crumpled drafts had stacked well high enough, all of which having come to the labyrinth, the place where all literature read by aleph had come to die. Well, in a metaphorical sense, at least, given aleph never forgot anything.
The idealist frowned, before pushing himself over to the desk and picking up the new letter, reading through it before grumbling under his breath and crumpling it, tossing it in a scattered direction.
A dull thud echoed throughout the labyrinth, before a man cleared his throat annoyedly, which made the idealist’s head snap up, noticing Merlin standing at one of the entrances from the maze’s hallways.
“Oh, m-Merlin?! That wasn’t my fault.”
“I suppose your lack of fault is correct to some degree.. i hadn’t declared my presence yet.”
“…what are you doing here?”
The idealist asked, looking at Merlin like he was some bizarre anomaly from within the labyrinth he was stuck to.
“I am simply here to state that aleph has grown unsteady. I’m sure you are plenty aware that the lack of our bickering has caused him some form of distress.”
Merlin responded flatly, raising a hand to hold his hat as he so typically did.
“Distress? That man is constantly asking us to stop, and when his ideal outcome occurs, he shan’t take it?”
“Something of that degree, yes. Our absence within his mind is unusual.”
The idealist huffed, crouching back down to the floor and flitting through papers again, resuming his usual activity whilst Merlin simply watched, unmoving.
“That old sod can have at it, then. His indifference infuriates me.”
“You leave a point I’m not sure I agree with, Idealist. His indifference is ideal for his job as the answering machine. You are aware of that.”
“Doesn’t mean i have to enjoy it! He has no spark, the light in the soul that every perfected society needs!”
Merlin’s head tilts to the side ever so slightly, before he sets a hand down on his belt, humming quietly in thought for a second, responding after a while to mull over his words.
“The literacy club you so clearly rely on doesn’t hold any truth, you know. You mustn’t let a club of ‘looneys’ dictate your decisions. I understand you prefer a more direct approach to your learning of their mind’s inner mechanisms, but you seem to forget that they are all maddened.”
“The maddening of my people has nothing to do with my opinions, Merlin. I am rigid from within my thinking, and disagree with your simple outlook of these extremely complex arcanists! They all hold a uniqueness you don’t see when picking apart their brains. They all speak different, think different, feel different, yet all you see is another body for your table.”
“Uniqueness does not satisfy my question for transcendinality, you must be aware. And simply speaking, even if i were to not detain the people for my experimental use, they must be disciplined justly.”
The idealist pauses, looking up at Merlin from the floor with a bewildered look, before he grits his teeth and raises his voice slightly at Merlin.
“Discipline isn’t killing them, Merlin! It’s finding the correct way to teach them that what they do is wrong!”
“After a prisoner descends into madness, they are a danger to the people around them, and especially themselves. They must be detained and disposed of correctly, or the society you so heroically romanticise will collapse within a blink of an eye.”
“The ideal society has no harm done through each other or through you! They can self-regulate if given the opportunity to.”
Merlin pauses, keeping dead still as he watches the idealist, before responding in a deathly cold tone, his words somewhat bitter.
“Don’t be absurd. I will show you the madness that you believe can ‘regulate’, and you will see firsthand how awful it is for the rest of the prisoners. How much or a liability they are.”
The idealist shook his head in disbelief, mumbling something Merlin didn’t quite catch, before standing up and rubbing his nose, running a line of ink across his face that he hadn’t realised had been on his hand.
“You don’t believe me… i will prove you wrong, be wary of that.”
Yet, Merlin was certain he wouldn’t have to be.