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]

[ 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.

[coquettish_trees]

What do you mean.

[bouchonne]

[ A shrug. ]

I'd have liked to have come to you as someone who was worth taking a risk on. Someone with prospects. It festered in me, back then, to be with you and to know that I would never be able to win your hand.

[coquettish_trees]

Did you want it?

[ It’s soft. They’ve spoken about this. He does not want the life that comes with her hand.

But she does not know if he once did. ]

Or is it only that you wanted to believe you could have it.

[bouchonne]

That's a rather cruel question to ask, isn't it?

[ His smile is bitter. Because the answer is, honestly: ]

If there were any chance, back then, that you'd have accepted my proposal, I'd have asked in a heartbeat.

[coquettish_trees]

[ But she shakes her head. ]

Why is it cruel? Marriage is not about love alone, especially for the peerage. Often it is not about love at all.

[ Fragile, when she continues. ]

You had all the heart that I had to give, for all that it turned out to be a sharp and shattered thing that bled you. What did you want from a hand?

[bouchonne]

Wanted to believe I could have it? You make it sound like my only interest was self-flattery. Self-satisfaction.

[ Then another shrug. ]

I know I am a louche and vulgar man. But that doesn't mean I didn't want a life. Back then, I actually thought I could have one, if you can credit it.

[coquettish_trees]

[ It feels like they're sifting through the ashes of a pyre looking for jewels that might have survived the heat; like they rob their own graves. Like they do this again and again, brought back by some dark compulsion, some creature that starves and hunts the same barren ground, ignoring the lands in sight where things grow.

It is a life they didn't live, a life that didn't happen, there is nothing there but shards of bone to keen over. It makes the skin of her shoulders crawl like he walks her into a corner and wants to keep her there until she gives him something he wants, even if she doesn't know what it is. Like every time she speaks of it she does the same to him. ]

Perhaps if you had asked, papa would have taken you. For all you were disinherited you were gently born, and my papa kind; he might have heard a story about a cruel and vengeful father and believed it unjust punishment. He knew what I had been made, wished to see me loved more than he wished me married well. I am a fifth daughter, more free to make such choices, and my family wealthy without my needing to buy it with my hand.

Perhaps then when I knew I loved you I could have loved you as a husband without the fear that rent us. Or perhaps you would have found yourself tied to a creature crazed with terror, convinced you played a game. Convinced you took her for land, or wealth, or status, that every moment you were absent you laughed at her in secret with some other lover. That she was nothing to you. Less than nothing. A wife who could not hear a single word you said in love, could not be touched without flinching, who wept wretched and broken and feared you. Perhaps Emile, who was making me her weapon, would have made sure the latter came to pass.

Perhaps we would have loved and had a home. A life. A family. Perhaps you would have come to hate me.

[ She is reaching for his hand again, eyes glittering with tears in the candlelight. ]

But what is there in any of this that could be of the slightest use to us now? None of that happened, and we cannot write over what did. I am here now, I love you now. Can we not simply love each other now? I do not want to make new fractured moments to regret.

[bouchonne]

[ It's not a good speech to give. Maybe if Byerly were in a certain mood, he'd admire the nihilism of it, but right now, when all he wants to hear is something that makes him feel like less a piece of shit for being so utterly unable to be the one she could love enough not to betray, it's not a good speech.

By the end of it, he's practically shimmering with self-loathing. He doesn't take her hand. ]

Ah, good. Knowing it was always hopeless does make the memories so sweet.

[coquettish_trees]

[ She is going to break on this one day. One day the dogged ceaseless stubborn way she loves him will not be enough to pull her off the floor to take another swing at the dogged ceaseless stubborn way he hates himself.

She has never felt a match for this. Never felt on sure footing. It feels a constant swing between stumbling into hurting him and begging to be forgiven for the missteps made she doesn't understand.

In that soft and broken haggard sound that marks the interim between the times she gathers herself to stumble through the unforgiving underbrush again: ]

What do you want of me?

You must help me. I cannot but do wrong, speak wrong. You must teach me to love you in a way that you can feel.

Please.

[ A quiet little hiccup of a sob. ]

I want to be good to you.

[bouchonne]

[ A muscle in his jaw jumps as she sobs. He shrugs stiffly. And he says, even more stiffly: ]

It is not the grandest thing in the world, to admit a tender dream and to be told that you probably would have fucked it up anyway.

[coquettish_trees]

[ There is naked shock in her face when she looks up.

He thinks it was aimed at him. The bitter blow she'd aimed at herself, he thinks it was meant for him. ]

Not you. Me. I would have fucked it up anyway.

You did nothing wrong. [ She reaches again for his hand. Tries to reach again. ] You loved me, but I was too afraid to be loved. You were safe, but I was too afraid to be safe. The moment that I knew I loved you he was inside of me laughing and I could hear nothing else.

He left a killing trap in me, waiting for someone I could love to make it spring.

[bouchonne]

[ He allows her to take it now. Uneasily, shyly, but he allows it. Still doesn't look up. ]

A deft enough hand could have disarmed it. [ A swallow. ] A worthy enough hand.

[coquettish_trees]

You had a worthy hand.

[ Which she raises now, slowly, to kiss. ]

It was not only his trap against you, then.

[bouchonne]

[ He lifts his head uncertainly. ]

What do you mean?

[coquettish_trees]

[ Soberly: ]

Emile.

[ A Bard. Retired, perhaps— if Bards ever are— but with more years of work than either of them had years living.

Emile is... complicated, still. She had loved Alexandrie, but she had loved her like a favourite blade. She had protected Alexandrie, but she had protected her from everything that might have touched her heart. She had given Alexandrie wings, but not to fly free. Emile had given her wings to stoop, and kill. ]

[bouchonne]

[ Oh. Well.

He shakes his head very slightly. ]

You could have dismissed her, if you'd wanted to.

[coquettish_trees]

[ Her laughter is soft, breathy. It is not a happy sound. ]

No. I was broken when she came to me, Byerly. Truly broken. When she built me again, she...

I loved her. I trusted her. She knew always what was best for me. She knew more of me than my parents. More than Geneviève.