no_sin_but | (no subject)

(no subject)

Stairs are not...let us try this again.

Where would you prefer to collapse, your room or the road? For a stairway is really a road, and this one has heavy traffic, but...

But you do not choose when, you do not choose where, you do not choose who triggers it.

This is why Marlowe is sitting at on the landing of one of the stairs on one of the floors, head against the wall and eye closed. One leg drawn up, the other foot resting on the second stair down; he could just be thinking.

People's knuckles aren't normally so white when they do that, though.

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She looks faintly amused.

"Figured at some point even you might run out of room on your plate."

He waves that off with his other hand.

"The mind is infinite, my dear girl."

She arches an eyebrow, but doesn't look too skeptical.

"And you manage to keep it all straight?"

Blankly,

"Yes."

Just because one is a self-admitted genius does not mean that it's not true, after all.

She gives his hand a light squeeze.

"Good for you."

He shakes his head, slightly.

"Too well-educated. That's my problem."

She tilts her head, smiling.

"There is such a thing?"

"If you don't put it to good use, yes."

"Ah. Good point."

"Otherwise it is nothing but energy, bubbling and seething in your mind."

She nods.

"And driving you mad."

Marlowe glances at her, and then the wall in front of him.

"Aye. You could say that."

It's like when she goes too long without a war.

Not that she's going to share that example with him just now.

"This place make you stir crazy?" she asks after a moment.

"Some...sometimes. Not quite..." His faint, humourless smile.

"Duty."

"It's your duty not to go nuts?"

Her skepticism is, for once, tempered with obvious kindness.

"No. But it is my duty to serve my queen. I swore it...seventeen years ago? Eighteen?"

"And you can't do your job unless you're all there," she finishes for him.

"An oath sworn to a queen who is dying, and one I cannot uphold."

Edited 2007-12-25 08:09 (UTC)

Unless you're all there includes the words unless you're there.

And he's not.

"You'll get back," she murmurs; no foresight, just blind optimism.

"I'm not Bound."

Her head snaps up at that, and her hand may tighten on his, just a little.

"You aren't? I could have sworn..."

So many people she knows are, she just assumed.

And now she's afraid to ask him what's keeping him.

Softly, shortly,

"No. My door has never left."

"I'm sorry, I misunderstood."

She says this directed at her lap, but her words are clear enough.

He pulls his hand away and runs it through his hair.

He doesn't say anything - saying the obvious had never really been his style.

Her head stays down, but her eyes flick up--flashes of deep blue visible behind strands of gold. Her lips part slightly, then close.

She feels like she's just lost something and mentally kicks herself, even while she can't name what it might have been.