ablankpage | Apponitments

Mmm.

[There's appreciation in that hum, even if there isn't an overabundance of happiness. It's a sound of simple satisfaction, perhaps, as she twists her hand in the grasp to interweave their fingers. Being allowed the grace of subtlety is one of the finer parts, she thinks, of being essentially the same person.]

A long night, then.

Very.

[He looks down at their hands, at the asymmetry of their fingers woven together. Both thin hands, long fingers, but one decidedly more feminine. Constants and variables.]

The start of a long week, I think.

[Nothing he could worry about overmuch. After all, he couldn't alter it now, but that didn't mean there wasn't a bit of doubt in his mind.]

A long week of morbid fancies, if rumours are to be believed.

[She twists higher on the bed, not as lithely as she might have years ago (or even days ago, without aches stitched through her sinews), but familiarity and practise necessitate a far lower expenditure of effort. There's a quirk to her lips as she looks down at Robert, hair tumbling over her shoulder, wavy from pins and twists.]

Was our first death not satisfyingly Shakespearean for you, brother? Would you dream us a second, strewn with even more strife and treachery?

Can you blame me?

[He looks up at her, his voice quiet and warm while his fingers find a curl of her hair. He twists the piece between two of his fingers and smiles faintly. A bit tired but focused.]

She is a very powerful woman who has been deeply wronged.

I'd be equally -- more, actually -- afraid if I'd so wronged you.

[There's no shame in admitting it, either. Rosalind is an intelligent, powerful woman. Anyone who had done her wrong? Would have cause to be afraid.

And she didn't have the power to open tears of her own volition, without machinery.]

Now that, at least, is sensible.

[A faint hint of a preen, the affected coolness of a look even as she bows to the distracted play of his fingers - those are her laughs, her puns, sublimated to an almost transparent shimmer, the heat-halo around an open flame.It dissipates just as easily, and she studies his brow, the stray lick of hair she flicks away from fair skin.]

Think, though. She wishes to be known as she is, in truth and entirety, not as an abstract or guise. Why would she destroy those who come most near to understanding that truth?

Because sometimes the desire to be understood falls short of the need for what is considered justice.

[Understanding would go only so far.

Still, even as he says it, he doesn't seem too worried. He has no intentions of leaving this place, and death isn't permanent here. Different in some ways but similar in others to what they had known before. They weren't infinite here, but there was a sense of immortality from everything he'd heard.

It would be interesting, once the Elizabeth they'd been with here in Luceti returned and learned what had been kept from her. Watching her over the slow journey that would create whatever kind of woman she would become.]

We'll see what she does, I suppose.

We shall.

[And perhaps that shall be the last thing they see, if Elizabeth is determined and clever and in possession of the priorities Robert seems to imagine her to hold. They'll still have done what they set out to do.

There's a peace in that thought that there has never been and never will be in flowers and sonorous hymns, and however grim it is, it brings a rare flicker of a smile to her lips as she bows lower, pauses to think better of it, and redirects the intended kiss toward his brow.]

[They will have done what they set out to do. Finished the course he shoved them on. And yet, if a wolf comes howling at the door, Rosalind won't leave him to fend for himself. She'll be with him.

When she kisses his brown, Robert chuckles. His hand cups her cheek, running the pad of the thumb across it. A very minor fever. Nothing too concerning. And he shits to bring his lips to hers tenderly.]

I'll get it too anyway.

[They live and work in the same space, rarely away from one another. The germs are shared whether he does it or not.]

[It had seemed ridiculous, once, that this could be a reassurance. Facts and achievements were reassurances, gestures were nebulous things that thrived on cross-purposes.

Except there are now gestures which are proofs themselves, of the fact that Robert exists and is near to her as might be possible, and she breathes a quiet sigh of content to remember that this, this is a constant.]

Almost certainly, now.

[She muses without heat or resentment, resting her cheek against his palm.]

At least we are sensible enough to take turns.

[They are constants. For all their struggles, for all their uncertainties before and after the Tear... they have become a constant. Even in death, they had been together, and it had been the consolation, unexpected as it had been, to their fate.

This? Is right. The months before Rosalind came? Entirely wrong. Everything had been off, been missing half. And now that was righted.]

Not too debilitating, at least.

Perhaps less so to you, even.

[She regards him with a faint lift of her eyebrows.]

You have been sleeping for longer than I have, after all. Is it still-?

Still strange, though it's become a little more familiar.

[But now he has a host of nightmares. Things he hasn't yet told her about, just like he's been protecting Elizabeth from information...]

I almost find the dreaming stranger than the sleeping.

[Giving a thoughtful little sigh, she stretches out beside him again, head pillowed on her arm.]

After crossing so many worlds . . .

Apponitments - [ IC ]

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