contact part deux

[bouchonne]

if this were modern times byerly would probably make you listen to total eclipse of the heart before you were able to leave a message

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[bouchonne]

[ He swallows again. Finally, with difficulty: ]

No one has ever loved me honestly. Not till I came here. Not till you two. [ A pause, then: ] One person did, but that was years ago. It's - This just isn't something I know how to do. I - I can try. [ A hand over his face. ] Maker, I am trying; it's just this pathetic.

[coquettish_trees]

I am not good at this either.

[ She steps in, to lay her cheek atop his head. ]

If I were, I would be happy instead of jealous that someone else years ago saw and knew enough of you to love you.

[ A brief turn of her face so she can kiss his hair before returning to resting her cheek there. ]

I am trying too.

[bouchonne]

[ A ripple of embarrassment. ]

Don't be jealous. I'm speaking of my sister.

[ Then it fades, and says - ]

I don't mean to compare or compete. But I've seen your home. Your parents are gentle people. I was born in a cesspit. It...

[ Then a pause, and he reaches up to stroke her arm. ]

Maybe I'm just making excuses.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Oh. She is embarrassed then; is always embarrassed when she learns how swift she jumps to hurt where there is none.

But the tension in her releases at the touch; it always does. ]

I want to hear them. It helps me know.

There is no shame in this hardship, it is only—

[ She reaches too. Runs her free hand down the side of his neck, along his shoulder. ]

Anything you do not tell me I will tell myself, and what I tell myself will be something I have crafted just to hurt me.

[ A little huff of breath; her quiet laughter wedded to a sigh. ]

You have heard me do it only now. It did not take me even half a breath to write into my world some lost lover. One you would now realize you had loved in some way truer than you had ever loved me.

[bouchonne]

No. Not a lover.

[ His mouth twists bitterly. ]

Rumors to the contrary.

[ Anyway. Fucking...anyway. ]

Most of my personal history is humiliating. But I can, at least, speak true on that.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She would like to be able to say she'd never thought there could be any truth to those old rumours, but there had been a time before she'd met him, when he was nothing to her but a man she could reach in Rolant's sphere to take apart, that she had been looking for reasons to hate him.

So, instead, it's ]

I know.

[ and a stroke of her thumb on his shoulder. ]

[bouchonne]

[ He nods a bit. He knows she knows. And that is a lot. That she's heard some of the most vile things that have been said about him - more of those things than most others here - and looks on him with love nevertheless.

And so he fights for a moment. And then forces himself to give voice to this: ]

You hurt me. When you... [ You know. ] I loved you with all my heart. You were the only person I'd given all of myself to.

[ He looks up, his eyes dark and sad. Not angry. Not hateful. Just desperately sad, and just desperate. ]

Maker, when you said to me that I - that I should have gone after you - Lexie, it's eating me away inside.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She flinches, drops her eyes, shakes her head. ]

I should not have told you.

There is nothing either of us can do about it now, and I cannot—

[ Another head shake. Her hand picks lightly, uselessly, at the cloth at his shoulder. ]

It is not fair of me— cruel of me— to be hurt that you believed me. You could not have known what I felt. I hardly knew. I—

I am sorry. To have hurt you with it again.

[bouchonne]

[ He relaxes just a bit at her apology. ]

Not cruel. I understand the desire. But -

[ A twisted little smile. ]

No one ever wanted me around. It was far too much to ask of me, to ask me to see that you secretly did. And you knew that then, too. The only reason you started loving me is because you saw that I was completely broken.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She looks up quickly then, startled. ]

That is what you think? That I only began to love you because you were broken?

[bouchonne]

[ A lift of his eyebrows - of course. ]

[coquettish_trees]

[ But Alexandrie shakes her head quickly. ]

No. I began to love you because you were real. A living bloom in a bouquet of flowers gilded, painted, and silk.

Real flowers bruise, yes. Tear, lose petals to mishandling.

[ Softly: ]

Lose them to girls who pull them apart petal by petal to ask if they are loved.

[ She pauses, reaches to straighten a piece of his hair that doesn’t need it. ]

Real things break, and show their breaking. I can understand why you thought it was the breaking that I loved.

[bouchonne]

[ Oh.

He sits with that a long while. Finally: ]

But honesty and plainness alone weren't enough. Or else you'd have fallen for some commoner.

[coquettish_trees]

I expected it in them. Flowers in fields are pleasant enough, but they are nothing to one in a blasted land where nothing grows.

[ Her hand slides from his hair to his cheek, to his shoulder again. ]

And more than that: you chose it. You could have let him make you the casually cruel creature I assumed you would be. You did not. Just as you did not let the men of your family rot you, nor the work you have done for your Crown.

Perhaps the casing is cracked, but... it became so in the service of protecting something precious.

[ She shakes her head; smiles, small and hopeful that one day she will say it and he will believe her. ]

You have never let them take your heart, Byerly, and it was your heart I loved. Love now.

[bouchonne]

[ He closes his eyes during that speech. Under his eyelashes, there's the bright flash of moisture. His hand comes up to hold tight to hers. ]

Maker, how can you say things like that after I said - after I practically just got done saying that it relieved me that your husband was gone? What kind of heart is that?

[coquettish_trees]

One that loves and is afraid to lose.

[ She curls her fingers around his so she can squeeze back, bends down to kiss his head. ]

Like mine.

[bouchonne]

Yours never wished for anything that monstrous.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She is putting them away again, husband and gone. They do not pass through her safely yet, are the kind of lightning that grounds in her and burns, and she does not want to curl around the wound again here.

Perhaps he will learn to recognize this in her too; the moments when her eyes are too clear, her voice the even lull of a hurricane's eye. She is catching tears to put into her pockets to look at later when she is on her own. ]

Perhaps I did not wish her gone, but even knowing she was not a lover I have hated your wife. Been cold and petty for nothing but that she made you smile.

Even as I wish you to be happy I envy anyone who brings you joy unmixed with the taste of something old and broken.

[ She shakes her head and kisses his. ]

I cannot fault you if you hate him. I cannot fault you if you hate his counterpart now fallen from the Fade. As much as we may wish it otherwise our love has shadows in its corners, my Byerly, and we are neither of us monsters for sometime raging at the light we cannot have.

It is easier than sorrow to be angry.

[bouchonne]

[ For a long moment, he's quiet. And then, he admits: ]

And I am...jealous. Because - Maker, I'm - better than he is. [ Even though his mouth twists unpleasantly to give himself even that much credit. ] But he was the one who healed your heart. So I guess I'm not.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She wants to reassure him and can't. Not around the breathless hurt of I'm better than he is which stills her down to the hand that holds his. All she can manage is a soft ]

Stop.

[bouchonne]

Sorry.

[ It's low, gravelly. Hoarse. He knows he's being shitty. It hurts him to be this way. But he can't stop it. ]

I simply - Maker, I try hard. And I'll tell you, Lexie, it's harder to be a good and honest man covered in dirt than it is swathed in silks. If I hadn't been hungry, I wouldn't have been Rolant's creature. If I'd been - Maker, you don't want to hear this. Sorry.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She doesn't move, doesn't pull away, but she is trembling and her words come in the half-voiced whisper they are when she can't trust them with any further sound. ]

Hate him if you must, but do not think to tell me what kind of man he is. You may say it to the whole of the world and find agreement there but do not dare speak of his worth to me. Do not.

[ A shuddered breath, and her swallow is thick enough to hear. ]

I would speak the same for you, to one who knew you only as the part you play. I will speak the same to you if you speak of yourself as if you are determined to only see what is bad in you.

[bouchonne]

[ Ah. He smiles miserably.]

So he is better than me, you mean.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Now she pulls back. ]

Stop.

[ This time it's a hiss. ]

Why is it you insist upon this 'better' or 'worse'; I have never ranked you so. You are different men, and I love you both, and it hurts as much to hear you speak ill of yourself as it does to hear you speak ill of him.

[bouchonne]

[ A little shrug. He doesn't meet her eyes. ]

I disappoint myself, too, you know.