emmen’ ônêr ottis enantios toi isdanei [closed]

[lumenrelegandus]

Who: sonvisage and lumenrelegandus
When: a Wednesday
Where: The Ruins
Format: Set-up is prose, continuation is whatever Aeri likes. ;-)
What: On Priscillawatch
Warnings: Worst date ever? Trying to resolve issues while standing ready to behead?

Comments

[lumenrelegandus]

All he does is inhale. She can doubtless see, with perfect precision, that it's him stifling an impulse to kiss her.

The impulse was probably born of a need to repress the feeling that now goes ahead and explodes.

"I remember a picnic. It's one of my last memories of my life. -old life." (No, he just meant "life".)

He hasn't said the name since it happened. Not even when he needed to. Why oh why does he say it now?

" I'm sitting with Dora under a tree."There are absurd details absolutely clear to me. The blanket we're sitting on-it belonged to her parents. There's a hole burned out of a corner of it from Dora as a teenager being clumsy with a spell. She insisted we use a real basket, for tradition, but the only one we found was three inches tall; but we used it anyway with an undetectable extension charm-that's magic which makes something larger on the inside than out. So we put the bulkiest food in it we could find; kept pulling thermoses of cider and whole cold chicken out of this thimble-sized basket

[sonvisage]

Recent events - dreams - have dulled any irritation she might feel at the mention of the name. Dora. It was short for something. Something she couldn't recall but remembered having found pleasing to the ear.

(Why did she think she might have felt irritation now or before? What business of hers was it? It was no more consequence than what she'd done before arriving, herself.)

Only it wasn't the same. It was Remus. And this was an open wound, as open as his throat had been when his head was in her useless lap. She'd considered killing, then, for the briefest moment - and she isn't sure that she wouldn't have done it, had it been an option.

What she's doing now - what they're doing - is different. It's at Priscilla's request.

Which she's distracted from as the girl meditates, as whatever threat she houses is tucked away, forced down and is now eclipsed in the wake of details from a dream she remembers seeing.

The tiny basket, the burned mark in the blanket. (She remembers that she likes cider, but not chicken.)

Do you mean the

[lumenrelegandus]

He extends his hand toward hers. He's half wondering what it would be like if she didn't retract the blades before twining their fingers.

I had a son. They tell me I had a son. I can't see him. Can't even feel a hole where his memory should be.

He still can't say it, even to her. Says instead, "You're right. That should be enough."

Skips any other development between set-up and point and just looks at her.

"I'm sorry for what I've put you through."

[sonvisage]

Her fingers close around his without hesitance, black gloved smoke-slip between his fingers, and the inquisitive tilt of her head.

"It should."

Her other hand now reaching for his, with a glance backward. Not too much time before they might start again. But enough to say:

"Should doesn't always mean is."

And then he says that. It's vague. It encompasses so many things. Through what she wants to say. Through the confusion of these feelings, this complication, this obligation of caring? Or do you mean through the realization that I could have lost it all when you were bleeding out on the tile?

She huffs quietly in lieu of these words, clasps both his hands in hers. Her voice is light, but her eyes darken, and her expression is serious. A little distant.

"Why are you sorry? You didn't mean to almost die."

It's not your fault that humans are fragile.

[lumenrelegandus]

He smiles. That his eyes are back to themselves, full of warmth, now might be why at last he properly meet hers; or as a result of doing so. "No, but still… I'll do my best it doesn't happen again."

[sonvisage]

She doesn't release his hands - instead steps in, tilts her head to look at him from a different angle.

"So will I. You're too full of surprises to let slip away so easily." Pauses, thinking. What was it John had said? That phrase? "Don't fucking worry about it."

And that other thing she'd heard seems appropriate as well. "I've got your back." She pauses again, smiling a little. "Do I have the rest of you as well?"

[lumenrelegandus]

Eyebrows are raised at the obvious quotes, but still smiling, and it doesn't stop this:

He stands to meet her, frees one hand to slide it around her back, presses every inch (the rest) of them together, and kisses her.

He pulls away too soon, ruefully, to turn his head again in Priscilla's direction. But they can sit together, now, if she follows his lead, and his arm will stay around her.

There's a deeper ache still there, of the piece he can't release, but for now, please, just let it be.

[sonvisage]

It is quite possibly the only time she takes comfort in allowing herself be led by anyone in any direction since arriving in Anatole.

(It will be the last for a long while.)

[ooc: leaves this here because you provided the perfect way to end this, in light of all the sadness that comes after. I almost didn't want to spoil it with my response, but there it is. <3]

[lumenrelegandus]

[May I only say: SOB!!!]

[P.S. Spoil it?!? I hardly think so!]