[ There’s a space between seconds when her late, light hold on his hand feels like being put in his place. But he has a knack for knowing when things aren’t about him, maybe even takes it to a fault sometimes, so the feeling can’t settle and disappears the next moment. She’s hurt. She’s doing a hard thing because she believes it’s right for someone else, and she’s holding herself together.
He curls his hand to squeeze hers tighter for the both of them.
He could say yes. It’d be an easy promise to make and break as necessary, without witnesses or fallout. ]
I can’t promise.
[ Her mask is, if not off, at least askew, and he knows she has the strength to have avoided that. So: a return favor, however much saying this matters to me is an Orlesian invitation to destroy it. ]
It means a lot to me to have his trust, you know. [ And Byerly is already cross with Athessa for meddling. ] But I’ll do what I can for both of you.
[ The squeeze of his hand around hers is the very contact she had been trying to avoid. Closeness means warmth and warmth means kindness and her body's response to kindness when she hurts like this is tears, and more than anything she had not wanted tears.
Tears beg for pity. Little matter if that pity is for her pain or for her weakness or for someone else for needing to bear such a woman as she, so fragile that the closeness of a hand-press begins to crumble her.
Athessa had bought them, but it is different between women. Bastien is a man, and a Bard, and had said "all the happiness he would have if it were our choice" with a kind of gentleness that had tasted different and sent her to think into the darkness of her bedroom later, carding her fingers through memories to see if she could find other bits like it.
And so Bastien cannot see them now. He is become a piece on the board whose placement and movement she doesn't know, and he cannot see her tears. Not when she does not know whether or not he has his own.
(On the outside it just looks like smoothing. A body less ragged so that things like clasped hands and friendship and sympathy can't snag upon it. She tilts her head and smiles and squeezes back.) ]
No, no. I don’t know anyone there. I’ve never been.
[ He considered it once, not long ago. Sitting on the steps, not long after Vincent’s execution. Bastien said, I was in love with him for a long time. Where does someone go to escape that? Antiva? And Byerly said, Well, Antiva is where I went. After Alexandrie.
She gathers into herself, and he lets go of her hand, accepting his place—not beneath her, but at a remove. ]
But you may bring me back a song, if you have time to look for one. One the people are singing.
[ He lets go, and she pulls hers back to her waist to join with her other; relaxing back to softness once it's there. Separated, it can be genuine again when she says ]
Ever more generous than expected or truly reasonable, Madame.
[ His bow is as small as her smile—something that could be sardonic, in another context, but here just a gesture of gratitude over the distance they’ve established. His eyes are warm. ]
[ there’s something about that ”be safe” that makes her pause. She had tried to be. Safe. Safe and untouchable, invulnerable, and in the end that sort of safety—the one she had even now just retreated to—had bought her all the turmoil and grief and regret she had hoped to avoid in the first place.
And so she hesitates for a moment, and then pushes through to the full opposite of her instinctive withdrawal to fold him into a hug; a loose one first. An eminently escapable question. ]
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no subject
He curls his hand to squeeze hers tighter for the both of them.
He could say yes. It’d be an easy promise to make and break as necessary, without witnesses or fallout. ]
I can’t promise.
[ Her mask is, if not off, at least askew, and he knows she has the strength to have avoided that. So: a return favor, however much saying this matters to me is an Orlesian invitation to destroy it. ]
It means a lot to me to have his trust, you know. [ And Byerly is already cross with Athessa for meddling. ] But I’ll do what I can for both of you.
no subject
Tears beg for pity. Little matter if that pity is for her pain or for her weakness or for someone else for needing to bear such a woman as she, so fragile that the closeness of a hand-press begins to crumble her.
Athessa had bought them, but it is different between women. Bastien is a man, and a Bard, and had said "all the happiness he would have if it were our choice" with a kind of gentleness that had tasted different and sent her to think into the darkness of her bedroom later, carding her fingers through memories to see if she could find other bits like it.
And so Bastien cannot see them now. He is become a piece on the board whose placement and movement she doesn't know, and he cannot see her tears. Not when she does not know whether or not he has his own.
(On the outside it just looks like smoothing. A body less ragged so that things like clasped hands and friendship and sympathy can't snag upon it. She tilts her head and smiles and squeezes back.) ]
May I take word to anyone in Antiva City for you?
no subject
[ He considered it once, not long ago. Sitting on the steps, not long after Vincent’s execution. Bastien said, I was in love with him for a long time. Where does someone go to escape that? Antiva? And Byerly said, Well, Antiva is where I went. After Alexandrie.
She gathers into herself, and he lets go of her hand, accepting his place—not beneath her, but at a remove. ]
But you may bring me back a song, if you have time to look for one. One the people are singing.
no subject
I will bring you two, [ with a little smile. ]
One they sing for joy, and one for sorrow.
no subject
[ His bow is as small as her smile—something that could be sardonic, in another context, but here just a gesture of gratitude over the distance they’ve established. His eyes are warm. ]
Be safe.
no subject
And so she hesitates for a moment, and then pushes through to the full opposite of her instinctive withdrawal to fold him into a hug; a loose one first. An eminently escapable question. ]