(no subject)

[no_sin_but]

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.

Comments

[song_tra_bong]

She nods.

"And driving you mad."

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

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

"Aye. You could say that."

[song_tra_bong]

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.

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

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

"Duty."

[song_tra_bong]

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

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

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

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

[song_tra_bong]

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

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

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

[song_tra_bong]

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.

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

"I'm not Bound."

[song_tra_bong]

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.

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

Softly, shortly,

"No. My door has never left."

[song_tra_bong]

"I'm sorry, I misunderstood."

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

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

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.

[song_tra_bong]

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.

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

"I probably should."

[song_tra_bong]

"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."

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

She now has his undivided attention.

[song_tra_bong]

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.

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

"Able to blend in, girl?"

[song_tra_bong]

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."

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

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

[song_tra_bong]

She nods.

"Both, yes."

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

[no-sin-but.livejournal.com]

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?"

[song_tra_bong]

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

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