i'm so used to there just being random unidentified bones laying around everywhere in these damn books that it finally occurred to me, just now, to wonder where the bones on new rho came from. y'know, the bones palamedes always tried to teach nona necromancy on.
they're his.
palamedes, who always loved teaching, living on borrowed time in a body that's not his own. palamedes, mentoring, teaching- parenting, by sixth standards, mind you. and that boy is sixth, through and through.
and the entire point of teaching nona necromancy in the first place was to try and determine if nona is, well, nonagesimus, right? so it has to be bones, it can't not be bones. bones are, like, her whole thing.
but they're not in the nine houses, anymore. things are different, on new rho.
they burn bones here. dig up the cemeteries. a society terrified of zombies will evolve to dispose of its dead differently.
the only bones he has access to now are his own. (camilla wouldn't let anyone take them- skull or hand, doesn't matter. they're still him, and she doesn't let go, remember? it's her one thing.)
palamedes woke up every morning wearing someone else's body to then gently place the shrapnel of his own in the cupped palms of a girl who's the closest thing he'll ever have to a daughter and try to teach her- how did the angel put it, again? normal school, as much as possible, for as long as possible.
(but hey, in a roundabout way, at least it's a chance for him to touch camilla again, right? nevermind that she's not there to feel any of it because he's in the driver's seat, that he can only stay for fifteen minutes at a time. it's atoms that belong to camilla touching atoms that used to belong to him, and that's close enough. he'll take what he can get, these days- if she can be their flesh, he can be the end. so what if holding his own bones is a mindfuck? so what if looking at them makes him nauseous? surely he can suck it up and deal with it for fifteen minutes. it's the least he can do— his poor camilla was the one who had to scrape the bloody pulp of them off the floors of canaan house.)
(speaking of, here's a fun fact: we actually only see nona practicing with the bones one time, on-page. camilla's final line in that scene, before palamedes takes over, is none other than: 'keep going. there are some bones left.' ow!)
remember, too, that the only part of dulcinea, the real dulcinea, that palamedes ever physically touched, was her tooth- the one that ianthe gave him, pulled from the ashes cytherea burnt her down to. he only ever touched dulcie once, and it wasn't until after she was already gone, but that doesn't matter- it still happened, and you can't take loved away.
in this same roundabout, bittersweet, by-proxy sort of way, palamedes has been physically touched by nona, too: the atoms she currently occupies, touching atoms that he used to occupy, and never will again.
the main interaction we've seen between palamedes and his mother took place back on the sixth, with her acting as mentor and him as pupil: the two of them studying a set of hand bones, juno encouraging him every step of the way.
we know that harrowhark's "most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding harrow's over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of harrow's wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique."
they're still small for a nineteen year old, but the wrists are bigger, in this new set of memories nona's making. and it's not an inexpertly rendered portion of skull anymore- it's a hand, now, albeit one crafted from [a piece of skull reassembled (painstakingly—passionately—laboriously reassembled) from fragments, manually, and not by a bone magician, from the skull of someone who, soon after death or symptomatically during, had exploded.] and the identity and origin of these bones is no mystery at all. they belong to palamedes, and he's consented to their use for this purpose, and that matters.
but the details are just set dressing, really. the foundation of the memory is the same.
palamedes and his mother, juno and her son.
harrow and her mother; pelleamena and her daughter.
nona and her father-mother-teacher; palamedes and his daughter.
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I think one of my favorite Fuuta moments is in Braze You when Es reads right fucking through him and spells out the very core of his character:
That's such a precise observation!! Any normal person would be annoyed/amazed/ashamed in response! You would expect the fiery type character to start yelling out denials and insisting Es isn't some psychologist or anything. But Fuuta. Fuuta my beloved. After someone points out that he jumps to violence as a coping mechanism, he proceeds to drop his voice real low and threatening, and say
Just completely ignores every word they said and proves them right in a single instant...
And lol wait I was gonna leave this in the tags but genuinely this is a major reference point for characterizing him to me. of course the irony is hilarious and he says it so seriously it cracks me up. But also, this is exactly how simple and flawed his emotional reactions are. He really only has one go-to when he feels threatened, and it's to lash out with violence. The threat doesn't even have to be physical danger -- in this case the threat was just an emotional one. Es' comments made him feel exposed and brought to light something that he's ashamed of. Instead of processing these feelings and countering Es' point, he immediately attempts to prove his physical strength, which was never called into question. But to him physical strength/taking action is The Way to show courage and righteousness.
And this isn't just a selfish way of protecting himself -- this is how he protects others, too. He said he wanted to be everyone's representative after Es was violent with Yuno, so to avenge her he tried to take action. In his timeline with Kazui they talk about whether you should wait and observe a dangerous situation before jumping in, or charging in guns blazing without knowing the full situation. At first, Fuuta's response seems blatantly stupid, because of COURSE you shouldn't just charge into danger like that. But the way he describes it, he says, "Everyone's life is on the line. those who can fight should." He probably knows it's not the super intelligent method, but he still thinks its the only option to save those people! To him, action is the only way heroes save lives. Action is how justice gets done. Action is courage. And that's just so central to his character and explains a lot about all his behaviors in and out of Milgram...
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