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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[coquettish_trees]

My husband.

[ It's so evenly delivered that anyone unversed in Alexandrie might think her calm rather than slowly approaching the brittle border of hysteria. But she sits too properly, is too still, is far too serene for those words.

Byerly has seen it often enough. ]

[bouchonne]

Oh.

[ By's brows draw together. His fingers curl on the desktop. His chest tightens with some complicated emotion - some complicated knot of emotions that will draw tighter if he pulls on any thread - so that he forcibly turns his attention away from it, so he will not be tempted to pull. ]

Has...the Scoutmaster been notified? I assume so, if you're -

[ Sitting here, rather than heading up the search party personally. They must have some of the best people on the case, indeed, if Alexandrie is willing to sit still to wait for his recovery. ]

[coquettish_trees]

No.

[ Emphatic, with something of a frightened edge on it.

She takes a breath, closes her eyes. Opens them again when her heart stops beating strangely and she can manage some degree of calm. ]

My lord will change both form and colour as he must to obtain what he has gone after and he is better fit to get in and out of whatever trouble he makes or finds than any other Riftwatch has. He plays complicated games, and it is as like we would put him in danger as take him from it.

[ She looks at her hands, and they look like someone else's. Quietly: ]

I will not have him hunted as a traitor, and he would be. They would not say so, but he would be. There is no-one loves or trusts him here but me.

[bouchonne]

[ Byerly's face looks increasingly alarmed. Less at the situation with Loki - and more at the half-mad words of the woman he loves. She - ]

I see. He was...on assignment, I assume?

cw: heavy grief

[coquettish_trees]

Of his own devising, but for us. He went chasing rumours of an artifact. Whispers.

[ Alexandrie can see her hands trembling. Are they hers? She cannot feel their movement. ]

He had been doing such acquisitions on behalf of Riftwatch, but this was something he had to attend to himself. From contacts he made before he first came South. He did not take a crystal— what they mean is known enough now— but he wrote, faithfully. It seemed encouraging, all he learned. He was being careful, but sometimes there are—

[ She swallows, wants to twist the golden serpent ring she'd begged of him, his favourite, just to touch it but whoever's hands are wearing it won't move. ]

For a year he wrote. And then nothing. Nothing. I have not had a single missive in the last seven months—

[ Her voice breaks on the words. It is the first time she has said it out loud and hearing it brought into the world and made real is like some vast and awful bell, its tone so deep the ringing of it cracks the metal, and it sounds like something ending.

She would know, she had thought. Surely somehow she would know if he was gone. And as long as she didn't know, it wasn't true; but now there is this sick and brutal twisting in her gut like her body tries to die so she can join him. It makes her shut her eyes and moan, low and quiet, the kind of sound that asks those who hear it to remember that for all that sets humanity apart they are still animals. ]

[bouchonne]

[ His breath catches at the sound. And - And he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know. Byerly is a person who people share...shameful secrets, embarrassments, scandals. He is not someone who is made privy to this sort of agony. He is not someone who witnesses this sort of pain.

And even if he were someone who knew how you were supposed to provide comfort, this would still be...complicated. Because: there's the shock, and the prickle of frustrated anger, that she hadn't told him until now. Their entire relationship had been conceived, then, in the shadow of her husband's absence. And that changes...much. And more: there is a spiteful corner of him that feels glad to have the man gone. That faithless creature, who supercedes him in Alexandrie's affections. This was the man who Lexie would always choose before Byerly, the one she said she'd abandon him for in the end, but who's the one who's here? Who's the one who's stayed? Who's the one anchoring her? Who was with her first, and who will be with her last? Not some glib fucking Vint apostate.

Fuck.

What's he supposed to do here? ]

What would you like of me?

[ Absent instinct or skill, he needs guidance. Maker knows if she's in a state to provide it. ]