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

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."

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.