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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"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.

"I probably should."

"If you don't want...If you aren't ready..."

Her voice trails off a second time and she bites her tongue, brow knitting in her focus and frustration.

AJ went back with only a note and maybe her death waiting on the other side of the door. Ramon went back to prison, too furious at her for any offer she might make to be taken seriously.

And now Kit.

She's tired of being left behind.
what I want from us, is empty our minds
but we fake, we fuss, and fracture the times
we go blind when we needed to see
and this leans on me, like a rootless...
"I could go with you."

She now has his undivided attention.

And she has precious little idea of what to do with it.

"If you don't think I'd be in the way," she adds, after a pause.

"Able to blend in, girl?"

Camouflage at home was always more about disappearing among trees, not people.

Still, she has something of a knack at playing what she is not.

"Yes."

"And you can fight, I take it. Swords and daggers?"

She nods.

"Both, yes."

There are two knives on her right now, not to mention her (tattoo) sword.

There is an oddly concentrated air about him now, for all his voice is still quiet and calm enough.

"Would you care to take a trip to England in the interests of keeping me alive and unarrested?"

Her smile is small but genuine. Her eyes remain brilliantly focused.

"I would take that trip, and gladly too."

"Well, that's a relief. I don't fancy being tortured."

He almost sounds cheerful.

She doesn't quite laugh.

"I don't think anyone does."

"No. And they'd break my hands. Warped sense of humour."

He thinks for a moment, and then glances back at her.

"Sooner rather than later suit you, my lady?"

"My schedule is wide open," she says.

"A few days advance warning--if you can manage it--to set some things in order is all I really need."

A quick nod.

"I can do that. I need to remember what I was doing, and such things."

She nods.

"Of course. And I'll get some clothes from Bar; she's handled clothes for a different time for me before."

He moves on the landing, reaching out and taking her chin in his hand.

"Your hair is well enough, I think...but we really do look nothing alike, do we?"

She arches an eyebrow, but doesn't otherwise move.

"I don't suppose we do."

His soft voice thoughtful, eye sharp-yet-distant (it is a look that Darren would recognize well; Kit there and yet thinking);

"I have to make passports, else we'd be arrested."