Memory Share Starters

[inaurare]

 for duplicitynet 

Wherever relevant, supporting pages will be linked to. However, please note some memshare threads will contain blatant headcanon/attempts to flesh out canon events further, such as those detailed in the wrap-ups/backstory. Please also check the list below for links and blanket descriptions!

Five years old - > sold to the Teahouse.
Eight years old -> that time he climbed up to Xanthe's window in the rain.
Fifteen years old -> basically the lead-in to Linn's My Fair Lady moment ("Adele, Linneus' favorite courtesan taught him how to move like the girls around the house and straighten his hair...") 
Sixteen years old -> the fallout of Linneus' first run-in with Master Atros. 
Seventeen years old -> Linneus is branded.

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[inaurare]

Linneus is five years old, and confused.

It is a strange, sunshine memory, rickety in the back of some sort of horse-drawn cart or buggy. His father drives, his face ever in the shadow of a peaked cap. Linneus, in the back, occupied with a little lemon tart (a sweet treat for his birthday, though it may be a day or two past fresh), and with the view.

He has never been to the town before – they have no cart of their own; and it is too far from home to walk that if his father has business he would usually go alone. It would not be uncommon for his father to be gone several days. But he can’t linger too much on the mystery of his being brought along – not when there is so much to see, even if each scene passes by his wondering eyes as they drive onward.

The streets are full of large, fancy houses, and they pull up to the fanciest one, ornate patterns on its large doors. His father lifts him up out of the cart and sets him down on his feet before leading him inside.

It’s the biggest room Linneus has ever seen in his life, with not one but two wide, sweeping staircases. There is another boy here, and a stern man, and a group of ladies in clean white aprons who seem to whisper among themselves, but Linneus is left on the threshold - while his father and the stern man talk. The stone flags cold beneath his feet, and he tries not to stare too much – staring is rude, this he knows. It’s just that everything shines here and catches his eye – the floors, and the wood, even the boy’s black boots and hat. The buttons on his coat. Even his hair is dark and glossy and straight.

Linneus has a bracelet? But he cannot hope to compare in his too-small waistcoat with mismatched buttons, patched breeches, bare feet, hair tangled in its waves despite his father had trying to take a comb to them. He tries, though, a determined pout on his lips as he tries to get his clothes straight.

The men return. His father ducks down beside him, one hand heavy on his head.

“Be good, Linneus.”

And then he is gone through the door.

It is not until years later that Linneus will understand that to be the last he will see, last he will ever hear, of the man.

(continued in the comic, pages 26, 27, 28)

[inaurare]

Linneus is eight or nine years old, and it is raining.

What absolute fool would be climbing in the middle of a rainstorm?

Linneus would. And he would be smiling the entire time.

Eight, maybe nine years old, and he is scaling the side of a building like he has done it a hundred times. Perhaps he has – he’s sure footed; knows where the faults in the brickwork are he can catch hold of, what to grab hold of and what is so weakly attached to the wall that it is best avoided.

Climbing is the closest he can get to flying, and he has climbed trees, up to windows, even up to the roof, much to the despair of his caretakers. Not just for fear he should fall, but for fear he should be found - for fear he should escape. Servants should not climb, should not ride, should not swim, should not have any skill that might make it easier for them to slip their bondage.

So Linneus has leaned to not be caught. Climbing out of sight, or at night – even in the rain, like this. Perhaps one day he might even learn to sit Xanthe’s horse, once he gets big enough to ride.

But tonight he is climbing - his goal; a light in one of the large, arched windows. There is none of the poise and elegance of his adulthood here – none of that has even been learned yet, that he may favour it or throw it aside. Simply practicality, childish scrambling as he swings himself over to the ledge, drags himself along on his front until he can get his knees under him enough to get closer to the window.

Inside is a dark-haired boy who looked to be on the cusp of his teens. Seeing him, Linneus taps the glass – lightly, at first, probably lightly enough that the sound merges with the raindrops. So he taps a little firmer, this time catching the boy’s attention.

He can’t help his peals of laughter through the glass at the look on the boy’s face. Heavens, Xanthe must not have expected him, then!

(continued in the comic, pages 89, 90, 91, 92, 93)

[inaurare]

Linneus is fifteen, and he is explaining, one hand toying with hair that still lies in heavy waves-

“I want it to look… the way Xanthe likes. O-on girls.” The woman he is speaking to gives him a smiling look over the rim of her teacup, encouraging. “And I would… I would like to move better.”

“Like a woman?” Adele has the same amber eyes as her son, and she leans forward, proffering the sugar bowl. Linneus must be distracted, to not have taken his sugar yet.

“No? Or yes…”

Linneus doesn't really consider himself as wanting to be ‘like a woman’. Or 'like a man'. At least not in the way Master Atros would consider it. He’s not certain how he considers himself at all. He’s only sure that he’s somehow caught between being a boy and being an adult, still - only very recently developing and growing into himself.

Busying himself with the sugar as he gathers his thoughts.

“I would rather move more the way you and the other ladies move. Not… like a woman, but less like a child. And not… not like a man.” Hesitantly, after a sip of tea- “At least-- I know the Master has ideas of what a man is. What a man does…”

“And that isn’t you?” It’s not a question – not really. Adele has seen him running around the house since he was very young.

Lightly, he shakes his head.

“No. No, that isn’t me.”

She watches him a moment, her head tipped to one side. That smile still on her face – fond, but a little sad.

“All right. Then we can start tomorrow.”

[inaurare]

Linneus is seventeen, and he is drunk on the kitchen table.

He is swaying. Shaking, too, but not with cold, and not with the drink.

No, he has been brought downstairs to be branded. And since he found out this afternoon, he has carried a horrible dread in his stomach, the feeling that something is about to die.

Master Atros had never got round to branding him. And now that ownership of Linneus has passed to Xanthe, Xanthe is the one who has to ensure it done, if Linneus was to stay at the Teahouse. And Linneus… Linneus knows it must be done, and had been anticipating it since long before he was told about it. Just another thing, on top of all he has done to stay here. One more thing he has to get through. What is one more thing, at this point?

If he looks around too much, he will start overthinking things. Turning just so, he can see the brand heating. Can see Xanthe standing in the corner, leaning arms folded against the wall. The master of the house… does not need to oversee the actual branding. They are welcome to leave, once everything is ready. God Linneus hopes he will leave; it is bad enough that it must be done. He will cry and scream and beg already, as it is - he does not need Xanthe to watch this.

Someone guides the bottle still in his hand back up again. Holds it there slightly longer than is comfortable, forcing Linneus to stop thinking and worry more about the burn of the alcohol for a moment instead. While he wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, an ugly motion, the table is surrounded – he will need to be held, lest he struggle and kick, and they bring him down on one of his sways, fitting a cloth into his mouth after he has begged them not to warn him, not to count it down and to just, just--

The pain is hot, is white, is everything.

For a while, the memory gets overtaken; slips in and out of hazy focus. One moment there are hands beneath him – he is being carried up the stairs, legs dangling and being jogged at every step, his cheeks damp, whimpering, murmuring, hiccoughing through his tears like a child.

Another moment and he is being put to bed; his foot carefully positioned to one side, the blankets tucked around him.

Later, everything is still spinning. And there is the weight of someone else sitting with him, a hand on his head.

He’s not sure who else might have carried him up but Xanthe. He imagines it to be Xanthe, Xanthe who he looked for every night, who he has willed, shattered heart and bruised soul, to come through his door and… and…

It was never going to happen, now.

A pitched sound, and he draws the blankets up to hide his face. And he doesn’t look.

[inaurare]

Linneus is being dragged, a hand tight around his wrist. Sixteen, at the time, slender as ever but still not quite grown out of the coltishness of youth, stumbling behind as he is pulled downstairs, the tight grip of his master’s hand only abating to shove him into his room.

They would be spartan quarters if they were not so lived in - a bed with a mirror above the mantle opposite, the fireplace swept clean and flanked by a poker and an almost-empty metal bucket of kindling. A small desk squeezed in to the side of the bed, a wardrobe at its foot, and a window set high into the wall at the head. But there is a worn, clearly handmade blanket on the bed, a trinket dish, writing set and a tied bundle of letters on the desk. The mantle and even the high window sill are cluttered with little knick knacks and items.

The master looms in the doorway and Linneus flinches when he jabs out a pointing finger, his own released hand rising to his naked throat, as if to shield it. There had been a necklace there. The master has brought Linneus here to have him account for all the rest.

Gradually each item is taken down. Clothes, books - jewellery - things that he had amassed during his time here, the origins of each dearly remembered. Explained. Approved. Or, most often, placed in his master’s waiting hand. In particular the master is keen to take anything that his son may have given Linneus, though it almost seems that the master takes things just for the effect it clearly has on him. With each item, Linneus grows visibly more and more distraught, his accounting coming through occasional sobs.

The blanket is removed from the bed. Nearly everything removed from the mantle, save a candlestick and matches. The wardrobe stands open and empty, the only clothes Linneus is permitted to keep piled on the bed and clearly just uniform items. No books remain, the writing set Xanthe had gifted him is gone from the table, leaving the desktop quite bare.

All that remain are the letters. And when the master points to those as well—

—Linneus wants to wake up. Now - or before the dream even started. He hands the letters over, and when the master hands one back he wants to snatch it away from himself so he doesn’t have to…

But he is sixteen and in fear of his master. Trembling hands, trembling voice, he opens a letter and he reads. And he opens a letter and he reads. And when Linneus is done pouring Xanthe’s heart out to his own father, to spilling out words that were only meant for him...

All of the letters are in the brass kindling bucket from the fireplace. And into Linneus' shaking hands, Master Atros places the matches.

[inaurare]

Linneus is barely a toddler, and is too young to really make memories.

He remembers a garden. He remembers the sun. He remembers being held and carried by a woman in a wide sunhat, whose face he can't see, but whose hair dangles about him like streamers of pink for him to play with.

And perhaps the rest is just filled in by imagination. Or perhaps it really was real, who knows.

It's a shambling garden - tended with love, seemingly a hair's breadth from chaos at any given time. But the butterflies and the bees are well at home here, zipping from flower to flower, and so is the woman who half-dances between them all - basket in the crook of her arm and bouncing the son cradled against her chest as she makes for a worktable in the shade.

Her voice is like a voice in dreams. The timbre is there, the cadence, the warmth of it. The toddler Linneus' voice, in comparison, has the clarity of a bell as he squeals and burbles and waves handfuls of her hair in his tiny fists. She sings as she pounds her herbs - one-handed at first, holding and jiggling Linneus in her lap, and then more rhythmically when she redirects Linneus' little hands, holds them around the pestle to 'help' her.

And they laugh. And they laugh and laugh. And the memory fades.