I can’t BELIEVE y’all haven’t read sinister dexterous pls go check out the writer on AO3 those are some of my fave brax fics in the world
In her hands, Bernice Summerfield was holding the fragments of a jar that no longer was entirely fragmented. Shards, carefully pieced together, beginning to form a whole. Traces of conservator’s resin flashing in the study’s light.
And on those fragments, a woman’s eye was cracked in three places and staring into him.
Braxiatel snatched the reconstructed shard from Benny a moment before he remembered that he had to keep being Irving Braxiatel, but then it was too late. In her eyes he saw that worried look again, and Brax knew that if he wasn’t very careful and very good, all the trust he had built up in her since the Axis that he was safe and steady and fine again would break and she would worry. He could not let her worry.
He could not let her know.
All Gifts (Have a Price)
Yes, precisely that. Did everyone hear Mr Decletier? I'll repeat it for the class, then. A dying Martian puts a coin under the tongue to pay the Journeyman for the trip to Kinova, the afterlife. You'll find connections to Earth religions. Curious, isn't it? Perhaps one of you can write the thesis that reveals the truth of the similarities to the public at large, or at least you can come up with a convincing enough explanation to publish a few papers. But that ritual, that tradition, has been carried on for millennia—tradition, mind you, being a culture's way of immortalizing a practice while simultaneously erasing that practice's origin, an immortality made timeless and eternal. Warriors falling on the battlefield will place a coin under their own tongues before a suicide charge; comrades in arms will sacrifice their last dollar so that their friends will have something to pay the Journeyman. Who cares about buying food for tomorrow? This is about buying passage for eternity. No one is left behind, not even the dead.
As I said, it is about honour, and as in so many cultures, death is the most honour-bound event of them all.
A Guest Lecture Delivered to Undergraduates in St Oscar's Archaeology Department (I love this monologue holy shit)
For a moment longer, Anson held his gaze. Braxiatel could see into the mind of this pathetic little man (primitive, savage, lesser being) and saw nothing worth fearing. Petty power plays not worthy of the Capitol's most spineless politicians. Small-minded efforts to make his calm crack. Narvin would have aimed the knife better. Darkel had a better eye for making a man suffer. Braxiatel showed no pain, no hate. No weakness. Only disdain and contempt.
"More tea?" Braxiatel offered, and Marshal Anson stood up again, files in hand. He would leave now. Once more, Anson had lost, another angle of interrogation discredited. He would try something different. He would not use Dellah again.
"We'll be burning the body," said the Anson. "It takes up space that could be put much better use." One last effort at making a stab into old wounds. How terribly pathetic.
"If you like," Braxiatel said. "Garshal was never particularly interested in his people's religion. But he did die with honour. Unfortunately, you won't even get that."
"You don't know the future any longer, Braxiatel."
"No one knows the future, Marshal Anson. But all rats die the same way."
ti senti perduto
Braxiatel leaves side by side with Narvin. The door closes, and Braxiatel can almost see through it, knowing Romana is now collapsing in her Presidential chair. But there is no comfort he can give her.
To Narvin's credit, he only expresses his revolt to one of Romana's most loyal allies. “Her integrity will be the death of us.”
“I don't think I've ever heard that word used with quite so much derision.”
“We both know this war can't be won with merely the moral high ground.”
“And I hope you realise that it can't be won without morale.” Braxiatel speaks quietly but not without force. “If we lose faith in who we are, in what we do, in why we're doing it, we will have no fight with which to win the war.” He takes one step closer so that Narvin and only Narvin can hear him. “Listen to me, Narvin. Romana's integrity and her strength are all that is holding us together. She is our hope. And while our enemies may have hate to drive them, we need hope. No one fights for a future they can't believe in.”
It's a shame Narvin is too clever and too quick to let the truth slip by. “And what do you think will happen to morale if her methods fail?”
Braxiatel smiles. “It isn't a possibility you need worry about. Get to your investigation of Polymnos, Coordinator.”
They part.
Sinister, Dexterous
