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A tornado has torn through the office of Aventurine of Stratagems.
At least that’s what it looks like when Ratio arrives. Files and stationery are strewn across the floor with sunglasses, jewellery, coins. Business and pleasure intermingling on green carpet. Bottles – fine vintages Aventurine has failed to coerce Ratio into trying more than once – are smashed on the floor. It stinks of untasted wine. Aventurine’s desk – more vanity than workspace – is thrown back against the wall. Both his office chair and the obnoxiously adorned guest chair are in pieces. The claws of an enormous monster have gouged stuffing out of the plush, tacky, zebra-printed sofa.
For a moment, despite having already heard the verdict; despite knowing Aventurine’s luck is a basic law of the universe like gravity, Ratio feels a sharp stab of fear. Aventurine makes him irrational. It’s why he’s here, to see him alive with his own eyes. He can’t trust basic logic to discern a conclusion when Aventurine’s chaos is involved – he has to observe it for himself. And for a second this looks like punishment, like violent retribution. Whoever did this to an office surely punished its owner just as violently.
But Aventurine, of course, as usual, has survived his trial. He sits on the floor, facing the window but not looking out of it, fiddling with something. His outfit is dark, more formal than his regular attire. Ratio should like it. He doesn’t. He clears his throat, drawing himself up. Aventurine glances back at him, unconcerned. “Hey Doc.” His voice is as bright and casual (and hollow) as ever. Like nothing is out of the ordinary.
It's chaos, but Ratio has a discerning eye and a quick mind. Fragile little trinkets – trophies won from others over the poker table, the negotiation table – sit untouched on the shelves. The man on the floor is unharmed, aside from slightly dishevelled hair.
So, Aventurine did this.
This isn’t the first time Ratio has walked in on Aventurine and a scene of violence. He acts unashamed of the aftermath, but he never lets anyone see him in the process. One is a flaunt of his own prowess: Look at me, look what I’m capable of, look what I survived again. The other is a kind of honesty he’s not sure Aventurine is capable of.
Ratio hovers in the doorway. Between office and hallway. Between relief at seeing him in one piece, that Penacony is finally over, and frustration, anger, that a win is never a win with Aventurine.
“Good news,” Aventurine breaks the silence with that aggravating, eerily fake voice. “They didn’t kill me.”
Ratio slams the door shut. “Evidently.” Usually that gets a smile out of Aventurine – a laugh, even. Today he ignores Ratio, as he picks his way through shattered glass and pauses a respectable distance away. “This is an unusual method of celebration. From which culture does it stem?”
“What, this little mess?” Aventurine smiles. “I wanted to see if this one worked as well as the old one.” He lifts his hand, revealing his cornerstone- No. Aventurine’s cornerstone is cracked and broken. This one is whole. It shimmers with recently spent energy. Ratio has seen it before. It lingers long after Aventurine has used his visual tricks.
So the Stonehearts truly have reset the board. Are they kind, cruel, or desperate?
Ratio lifts his chin, burying his concern under his frustration. “And does it?”
“Oh yeah. It even shines in the exact same spot.” Aventurine tilts the stone to a precise angle. It glints under the sterile office lights. He doesn’t look at it. “See? Like it was never broken at all.” He begins tossing the stone up and down. “Like nothing even happened." He smiles - a bitter, terrible, twisting of his face.
Typical IPC. Preserve, preserve, preserve. Change must be resisted at all costs. Any blow can be taken, so long as the status quo does not shatter and the hammer can strike again. Ratio hates them, and not just for their crimes, for the way he is beholden to their funding, but for their stupidity. They are the enemy of progress, fearing improvement just as much as decline. Beholden to the aeons and never to the people.
But Ratio does not bother making these pointless arguments. He knows Aventurine agrees, just as he knows Aventurine will refute him and point to his own hypocrisy, the miracles Ratio has done that were only made possible by their resources. Aventurine has to be contrarian, has to fold himself over himself until his enigma cannot be unwrapped. He is the most infuriating, stimulating debate partner Ratio has ever had. And right now he sits on the floor of his wrecked office, throwing the cornerstone on which his life just rested into the air like a toy.
“Congratulations.” Ratio hated the plan from the moment he began to piece it together from the bits Aventurine let slip. He’s furious (and relieved) that it worked. That it always works. Maybe this is how Aventurine always feels about his curse.
“It’s funny.” Aventurine ignores him. “I thought maybe I’d look different if I used it now.” He shrugs. “But it was the same old me. Same powers. Same transformation. Same cornerstone.”
His eyes flash. He pulls back his hand and hurls the cornerstone at the wall. It bounces off, harmlessly, right back into his hand, and he laughs. Ratio sighs. He’s not decided what to do yet, or if he’s going to do anything at all. He’s ascertained that Aventurine is alive, so he should leave. Aventurine almost certainly wants him to.
“I’m not even trying to do that you know.” Aventurine throws it again. It bounces right back to his hand. Again. Back to his hand. He stands, a nimble jump to his feet. Suddenly, he looks manic. “It keeps coming back. What are the odds on that, huh?”
“It’s not about odds. Not everything is out of your control.”
“Careful, Doc.”
Ratio relents. “It’s your own muscle memory, your practiced movements, your-”
Aventurine tosses the cornerstone at random, without looking at it. It rebounds off his desk and back to his hand. “Odds?” He prompts again.
Ratio calculates without even thinking about it.
“Actually, I don’t care.” Aventurine shrugs. Ratio snaps his mouth shut with a disgruntled huff. “Why should I?” He stares at the stone. “I always win.” He pulls his arm back, winds up for another throw, and tosses it at the window.
“Stop it!” Ratio snatches the stone out of the air.
Aventurine freezes like Ratio has grabbed him. Like the stone really is his heart, and it’s beating in another man’s hand.
Ratio glares at him. The stone burns in his palm. Even though he knows it’s just a stone - knows only Aventurine or another Stoneheart could truly tap into its energy - it has the same illogical presence as its owner. He wants to clench his hand into a fist around it, to pull it close to his chest and hold it safe there. But then he looks at Aventurine, caged and beating against the bars in a fury, and he can’t bring himself to do anything of the sort.
He’s furious with Aventurine. Furious with himself for breaking his own rules. Intervening. Always intervening for Aventurine. The one person who doesn’t want him to. “I would think that after the events of today, you would try to keep this safe,” he says instead, a frustrated huff.
Aventurine rolls his eyes. “It won’t break.” He regards the stone with contempt, with a look Ratio wishes he could parse. “It never does. Not permanently.”
“Damned Gambler.”
“Why are you here anyway?” Aventurine turns those angry eyes on him, with a pasted-on smile and a smooth voice that used to fool Ratio. Once. “Here to gloat? Sorry to tell you this Doc, but there was very little public humiliation involved in my punishment. I wasn’t even stripped naked. The Amber Lord is generous.” Then, he smirks. “Unlike Nous I guess.”
Aventurine is fishing. He wants someone to hurt him, and he’s very good at picking at weak spots. Unfortunately, Ratio is twice as stubborn as him. So he stares him down. He tells himself firmly that he does not care, that he is here out of polite concern for a colleague. (Something he has never shown for anyone before.)
The truth is very simple: he is here because he was worried and he wanted to see Aventurine.
Revealing that truth is not simple. Everything is a game with Aventurine. A rigged one. He won’t reveal the stakes, and he’ll bait you into revealing your cards. Even if Ratio cares about him, he doesn’t know if he can trust Aventurine with that sentiment, if he can trust Aventurine with the knowledge that he trusts him, despite himself.
Social interaction is so messy, and Ratio is woefully inept in this one area of the human equation. This is why he doesn’t do this. Their circles spin ever inward, and he just has to hope that perhaps one day he will arrive at the core.
Aventurine shakes hair out of his eyes. He looks Ratio up and down with that manic, worrying face. “Would you like to celebrate, Doctor?” He circles the room like a tiger, glass crunching underfoot. “I could use it. Near-death-experience sex is the best there is.”
“No.” (Yes.)
The corner of Aventurine’s mouth twitches down with displeasure. “Do you want to hit me?” He tries instead. He has so many languages in which to ask to be hurt.
“Yes.” (No.) “But I won’t indulge you.”
“Then - again, Doctor - why are you even here?” Aventurine groans, spinning on the spot once like an out-of-control toy.
“To make sure you’re holding up your end of the bargain,” Ratio cuts him off. His thumb swipes back and forth across the cornerstone. “Try to stay alive, yes? You’re certainly alive but I don’t see much effort, throwing your stone around the room so carelessly.”
Aventurine stops. All of him. It’s like he shuts down for a second. Then he reboots, a jerky process of blinking and looking between Ratio and himself.
Finally, he laughs.
It’s an explosion in the quiet room. Aventurine hasn’t laughed so hard, so genuinely, in all the time that Ratio has known him. It has none of the hollowness of his speech, of the bitter self-awareness his laughs usually carry. It’s loud and boisterous. Ratio’s thumb swipes softer, gentler, fonder, across the cornerstone.
“Sorry, it’s just… so funny when you get things wrong,” Aventurine finally manages, giggling a little still. “You’re so smart Doc, you have to know how funny it is when you make a mistake.”
Ratio scowls. He looks around the trashed office, searching for some hidden clue. “So you wouldn’t rather be dead?”
“No,” Aventurine answers immediately.
He seems surprised by his own answer. He blinks down at himself, as if unsure he was the one who said that. It stops Ratio for a moment too. His breath catches. “… Then why have you rampaged through your office?” He asks, softer than he’d intended. “Why play with this like a toy?”
Aventurine regards the cornerstone again. He might be smiling. He might be scowling. Ratio can’t tell if he wants to smash the stone or grasp it tightly. “You know I’m not sure? Maybe just because I want something doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.”
“Illogical, ridiculous-”
Aventurine closes his eyes, letting the insults wash over him with a smile. “Nobody sweet talks like you Doc.”
“Must you be so impossible?” There's a specific answer here. There must be. Something about Aventurine's situation that has upset him, something that can be fixed, or talked out, or reasoned with. There are always answers to a problem. Maybe he was hoping to leave the IPC. Maybe the verdict came with conditions. Maybe this is part of some dangerous gambit he won't talk about... Given appropriate time and evidence, Ratio could narrow the hundreds of options down to one. But there are too many variables. He can't eliminate anything without information. The one thing Aventurine hates to give.
“Come on Doc, you know I can’t just explain all my secrets. Why would you stick around if you knew all the answers?”
Because he wants to.
But that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.
Ah.
So that's it then. Trapped in place by needs, facts, and agendas beyond your own. Your only alternative to nihility forcing you to tighten the snare. A no-win scenario. Sometimes Ratio feels like trashing an office too, knowing his only options are to suffer through these games or walk away and never see Aventurine again.
The stone isn't just Aventurine's life - that's Ratio's bias, a basic error of methodology. It is also the IPC's leash. Life, but not yet on his terms. Decided for him by scales and the lording, condescending authority of others. And Aventurine wants it on his terms now, wants more than just continued existence, wants to live.
One step at a time. Aventurine has the usual impatience of a gambler. All in, immediately. But he is alive, he wants to be, and though that might not be enough for him today, it is enough for Ratio. “… I will help you clean up,” he says, instead of voicing any of this, because that isn't what they do. "And then I will escort you from the premises for your mandated leave myself." He holds out the cornerstone for Aventurine to reclaim. For him to choose.
Aventurine looks at it for a moment. Ratio waits, until he’s ready to take it, gently. Their gloves brush against each other. “Thanks,” he murmurs. “For holding it I mean.”
“Please do keep it safe this time.” Ratio’s hands tense, half-formed fists around phantom warmth. “Not as a token of the IPC, but as a symbol of your newfound resolve.”
Aventurine looks like he might laugh again. “I always had resolve,” he complains.
“Fair point,” Ratio concedes. “Then, keep it safe as practice for your new dedication to taking care of yourself.”
Aventurine does laugh this time. “Like a pet rock?”
Light glints off the cornerstone. Ratio watches the way it plays across Aventurine’s face and doesn’t fill his eyes, much like this stone can’t really fill a heart. He shakes his head. “No. Like… a dear and indispensable friend.”
Aventurine’s eyes wide. He swallows. Hesitantly, his fist curling around the aventurine stone, he nods.