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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now he does look at her.

Eventually,

"What do you want me to say, Mary Anne?"

She looks up, lips pressed into a thin (bloodless) line.

"That's just it. I don't know."

It's as helpless as he's ever heard her sound.

"Our house was between the leathers' section and the butchers'. The carts went passed our house. It's the first thing I remember, the smell of blood.

I played in the streets, dodging in and out of the way of those carts with my friends, and we'd get covered in it.

I'm used to it.

And it shouldn't affect me like this."

She shakes her head.

"It'll carry you to a point, sure, but when it's from people, when you're--"

Mary Anne never considered herself the squeemish type, even learning how to shoot (live) enemy targets didn't shake her up, but killing someone up close and realizing just how much blood you have to lose before you die--

"...it's not the same."

And he has to know that already.

"When I'm what?"

"When you're the one doing the killing. When it's not just standing in the aftermath, but a process and you're there from the beginning. When it's not just cold and running in the gutter, but warm on your skin."

Her boys painted red stripes beneath her eyes, with her first real kill. It ran in warm red tears down her cheeks and she never saw her face in a mirror that night, but it became a habit of hers all the same.

Wear it, so you own it.

"But I'm not!" His voice, always so quiet, is a shout. He clenches his jaw, his fist.

"I'm not. Killing."

She does what she feels like she should have done from the start and lays her hand over his.

"Then what are you doing, honey?"

A faint laugh.

"Fucked if I know."

"One step at a time, then," she says, smiling softly.

"You want to keep sitting on these stairs?"

"Not sure." He considers for a moment. "Good stairs. Well-built."

He hasn't moved his hand away from hers.

"Serious craftsmanship to handle all the people coming through here."

She doesn't move either.

"Exactly."

"Never would have pegged you as a studier of architecture along with everything else."

"And why is that?"

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."