[Closed, Mature] I will not ask you

[Aremu Ediwo]

Mid Afternoon, Hamis 32, 2720
A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

Aurelie apologized again, and Aremu shook his head a little bit, refusing it as he had before, though in silence this time. He thought maybe she’d tried to smile, when she began again; he couldn’t quite bring himself to the effort. He held, silent, leaving her time to work through it, with whatever thoughts were in her head, and whichever of them she chose to say aloud. He knew better than to think he deserved any of it, but he’d asked all the same, and he was willing to take what she’d give him.

More than surprised, she’d said. Upset? Aremu wanted to ask. Hurt?

What was it about Tsadha, he wanted to ask, that –

It was a question he couldn’t quite bring himself to.

Things like what? She asked it again, not sharp this time, but quiet and a little gentle, looking at him. She’d tucked her hand behind her ear on one side; long strands still hung down by her chin on the other, the contrast with the soft rounded cheek dusted with freckles almost hard for him to bear.

Aremu shifted, and swallowed, and thought that she had every right to ask that, and at the same time wishing very much that she hadn’t.

“Like Tsadha,” Aremu said, evenly. He was quiet, looking down at the kofi cup on the table; he shifted, letting go of his pant leg with his hand, and curling his fingers around the cup. He took a little sip of the bitter liquid, not bothering even with menda, and set it back down.

“Lovers,” Aremu said, carefully, when he looked back up at Aurelie, “and other people I’ve been intimate with.” There were, he thought, only a handful of people he’d been with he could call lovers; he didn’t know, quite, what to call the rest, not when crude was the last thing he wanted to be. He didn’t know what he’d have called Aurelie, if she’d pressed him; he knew he couldn’t have called Tsadha a lover, that it fell, for him, outside the bounds of what was honest or else what was comfortable. He didn’t love her; he was fond of her, and he cared for her, and he didn’t love her.

“I would not,” Aremu went on, looking at her, “talk about what’s between us with anyone else. And so it’s… hard for me, to know what I should or shouldn’t say to you, about… someone like Tsadha. I didn’t think we’d see her, today; I didn’t…” his lips pressed together for a moment, and he doubled back.

“I don’t want to keep things from you,” Aremu tried, carefully, “but I don’t… know what you want to know, either. But I – I think meeting her must have been a shock, and I didn’t… mean to do that to you, Aurelie. I’m sorry.” His hand had been curled around the cup of kofi; carefully, very carefully, and not truly thinking that she’d take it, he stretched it across the yellow table, fingers resting a little side of her edge, frowning at her above.

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Hamis 32, 2720 - Afternoon | A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

Aurelie wasn't actually sure what she wanted to hear. That was the trouble; she knew there was something, but she didn't know what it was, and when she pulled at it a thousand anxious scenarios came spilling from the seams. If she'd known, she hoped she might have been able to—to control herself better, to direct the conversation in a way that felt both fair and honest. Or at least not make things worse.

Lovers, he said. She knew, she supposed, but she had the strangest feeling of premonition that it was the part that came after that which would truly be the difficulty. She wasn't so stupid as to think that this wasn't a situation where the plural was called for. The timing, though, she didn't quite know as she wanted to... But that was wrong of her, wasn't it? Selfish and stupid. Aurelie nodded, slightly, and took a sip of her dark, bitter tea. Waiting for the moment when she felt she ought to say something. She hoped she'd know what that was by the time it came.

"Please don't," she said, quickly. Too quickly; she flushed, embarrassed. "I appreciate the—I don't n-need to know the... uhm. Specifics. About... It's none of my business." She didn't quite know if he meant what was between the two of them, or himself and other people, and it didn't seem particularly like an important distinction.

This was the part that she thought was the hardest. Aurelie knew relatively little about physical intimacy, this was true; not nothing, and not a lot either. But that seemed easier to get over, even talking about it—to a degree—she felt fairly certain she could... navigate. Eventually, anyway. But if she were to be honest, she knew the root of her upset was a little away from that. Not unrelated, although she thought uncomfortably that this was perhaps childish of her as well, to find the two things so intertwined.

She had no right, no reason, to expect... well, much of anything. She knew that, she truly did. At least she thought she had; it fell a little hollow in her heart now, knowing she was stupid enough to want something else or even the idea that it was possible. Nothing in her deserved it; nothing in her deserved lots of things she wanted anyway. She didn't deserve this either, Aremu's careful apology, his frowning attempt to explain.

To her surprise, when he came to the end of it, his hand reached out just far enough across the cheerful, bright-painted table that she knew it was deliberate. "It's all right," she offered. Her own hand extended and she took his, a warm and gentle pressure that made her feel a bit better immediately.

"I'm not upset, er, with you," she clarified, a thoughtful sort of frown. She wasn't; he had done nothing. It wasn't as if Tsadha had met up with them deliberately, and if there was anything to tell her—Aurelie thought uncertainly that it was normal not to have done so. It was all mildly confusing, somehow even more so outside of the suffocating shelter of Brunnhold's walls. The rules she had been raised with—the rules that applied to young ladies, that is, and not to scraps like her—didn't seem like they fit as well as she thought. Some of them she found easy to set aside and ignore, or they wouldn't be here now. Some of them were harder, and mostly she didn't want to. If there was a way to find a path in between, she was blind to it.

"I don't know what I want to know either. I suppose. I'm sorry. I just, uhm. Got ahead of myself. Er. That is I'm, ah. I know I have no right want... Er. I'm, uhm, very... very f-fond of you. Ah. I'm sorry." Her fingers tensed, but she made herself leave her hand where it was, and made herself look up too, red in the face.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Mid Afternoon, Hamis 32, 2720
A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

Aurelie took his hand. Aremu found it easier to breathe again, when she did. Floods, he thought, with a sinking through him like a stone, but he was in trouble. The pressure of her hand tangled through his was a reminder, tangible, that he hadn’t made too many mistakes, not yet.

Give it time, he thought, and he couldn’t help the bitterness. It wasn’t the first time he had thought of it, but there were times when felt an odd and aching sort of gratitude that he didn’t see Tom too often - that the distance between them, he thought, as painful as it was, protected him too.

He couldn’t quite make comparisons; he couldn’t draw lines or similarities between them. It didn’t work like that, not for him, and he didn’t know how to map between his feelings for them, or how to draw comparisons with what he felt for Tsadha, or for Efreet, or - well. Others.

Aurelie was talking again, quietly, and he looked up at her, listening with all he had to offer. She apologized; he didn’t know if she was apologizing for being upset or for letting him see it, for being fond of him, for wanting to know or not wanting to know. She didn’t let go of his hand, at least, and that was something.

You shouldn’t be, he wanted to say, as honest as he could and - he knew it - brutally selfish. I’m not a good person to be fond of, Aurelie.

I’m very fond of you too, he wanted to say, more than anything else. Very fond, Aurelie - fonder than I should be, and every day we’re together it seems to get worse. That, he thought, as he had before, was the hardest part of it; there was no break from her, no time when he could retreat back into himself and found something like balance, something like separation.

But the worst of it was that even in the snatches of moments when they were apart, he didn’t quite want to.

Aremu smiled at her, a crooked little thing which held on his face anyway. He looked down at his fingers in hers, tangled together. “I’m fond of you too,” he said, even though he knew better, even though he didn’t think he should, even though he thought she deserved.

“Very fond,” Aremu went on, quietly. He swallowed, taking a deep breath. “I don’t think I’m worthy,” Aremu said, quietly, “of your fondness, but I’d...” his gaze went down a little onto the table, fixed for a moment on the menda, the yellow wood beneath them, and then back up to Aurelie, his breath still coming evenly enough, and his voice steady, if hoarse, “I’d like to try to be.”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Hamis 32, 2720 - Afternoon | A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

The frown lifted, and she felt a loosening of a knot in her heart. The feeling spread to her fingers, which had tensed in anticipation of—something, something that would hurt. A rebuttal, she supposed. Or more likely, a careful reminder of her place. He gave her neither. Just that funny kind of smile, and five words that set much of her anxiety aside and found a few new ones to fill some of the space.

A smile of her own started on her face, but it tilted to something more thoughtful as Aremu continued on. Quiet, even though they were, truly, the only ones out here at this odd, bright hour. She listened, and she heard each and every word, but none of them made sense. Not even the fondness, but she could set that aside. She wouldn't question that much for as long as it should last.

"It isn't something to be—" Aurelie broke off, surprised she'd started at all. She licked her lips and frowned softly. Her thumb moved in a small back and forth sort of motion without her notice. It was becoming a habit, comforting; she didn't know what she'd do when eventually he stopped wanting her to do it.

She didn't understand at all. Her affection was not so great a thing as that. After all, she was—she was nothing, just herself, and that wasn't much at all. Good for little, beyond some household chores. Not clever, or bright, or charming, or even very pretty. Too serious and a little plain, and only even really much of a person by the loosest definitions. She knew what she was very well.

Aremu, by contrast was—well, a contrast. She honestly didn't quite understand why he looked at her at all, let alone... He was handsome and interesting and clever and kind; a little dour, maybe, but she thought that was charming too. All of the frowning certainly made each and every smile seem that much brighter. She had liked him from the first time they met, else she wouldn't have written back to him at all. Seeing him every day hadn't changed her mind. If anything, she'd gotten. Well, here they were, weren't they?

"What makes you say that?" she blurted out, after puzzling on it herself for several heartbeats. "I don't think you have to try so hard. Er, I mean—You're, ah, very... Uhm. I think you're... I can't even finish a sentence properly."

That she thought very highly of him should go without saying. She made that obvious, didn't she? She wondered, a little uneasily, if he understood the weight of her fondness. Just how much of it he had. Better that he didn't think on it too deeply. She squeezed his hand a little, as much for her as for him.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Mid Afternoon, Hamis 32, 2720
A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

Aurelie’s thumb shifted back and forth over his hand, tracing over the edge of the burn scar which crept down, over his wrist. He looked down at it, her small finger and its rounded nail, with all her freckles, with a little white spot of a scar, too, some long ago nick he couldn’t imagined she would remember the cause of.

I don’t remember where this one came from, he wanted to say. I think I know most of them at least, the bigger ones. It was the Eqe Aqawe, of course, the engine, as were so many of them; that I know. But I don’t remember when, which frantic time in the air, holding things together with my hands until -

Until I didn’t have two, any more.

If they had been somewhere else, if they hadn’t been in the midst of a much more important conversation, maybe he would have said it. He didn’t know; maybe. She was easy to talk to, sometimes - too easy, he thought, looking at her solemn face.

There had been a terrible sort of silence that had fallen over them. I meant it, Aremu wanted to say, reassuringly; Aurelie was frowning, where he thought she should have been smiling.

He didn’t understand, quite, what she was asking. It seemed almost cruel, to ask him to enumerate the failings that should have been obvious. You know what I am, he wanted to say; I told you, when you came to Dzum, knowing how exhausted you were - I told you, your first day on the island, because I couldn’t bear the thought of you finding out and hating me for keeping it from you.

“I’m not sure how that comes in to it,” Aremu said, frowning a little when Aurelie spoke of not being able to finish her sentences. He didn’t think she had meant to be cruel, not really; he didn’t think that if she were angry with him, that it was that kind of anger.

“It’s like trust, I think,” Aremu said, still quiet and a little earnest, looking at her, “this sort of fondness. It’s...” he looked down at their intertwined hands, “an offering of a part of me to you,” he said, quietly, “and the reverse too.” His hand tightened on hers, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to feel, and loosened.

I don’t have a very good record, he wanted to say, deeply ashamed. I’ve - the people I have cared about in this way - I hurt two of them, terribly, and to the third I was nothing at all.

“I’m afraid I’ll hurt - that part of you I hold,” Aremu said; something in his chest ached, and he thought he could hear it in his voice. He tried to clear it away; he didn’t think he succeeded. “Through carelessness, through selfishness, through fear. I very much don’t want to do that.”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Hamis 32, 2720 - Afternoon | A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

Of course it came into it; Aurelie didn't see how it couldn't. It wasn't all of it, or even the most of it. Just a symptom of a larger problem. But she couldn't find it in herself to lay it out in front of him like that, a catalogue of all of the ways she knew she should be and wasn't at all. Doing so felt selfish, and self-pitying, and unkind. To herself, which she could have borne, but to him, too. He would see them, she thought uneasily, soon enough. She was right there all the time; it would be hard to avoid.

Besides, Aremu was speaking again, and looking at her with something in his voice. Oh, this really was a very dreadful topic for a cafe in the middle of the afternoon. Important, and it wasn't as if she didn't want to... But it was public, and she couldn't stop the self-consciousness that crept over her. She almost smiled, though, like she couldn't help herself. Maybe she couldn't—she tried not to think too much of the sort of fondness meant, or how similar or dissimilar it was to her own. Still, he went on, grave as anything, as always, and she listened, fighting a giddiness that seemed inappropriate in the face of it.

You can have as much of me as you want, she thought but knew she wouldn't say. There's not much, but it's yours. A few bits of her in the hands of other people, and so little of her to begin with, but the rest... His hand tightened on hers, painless and firm. Aurelie swallowed.

She couldn't dismiss his concern. The possibility, she thought with a little twist, was less a maybe and more a when. The same could be said of her; it wasn't as if she were under illusions caring alone kept one from doing someone great harm. Ana flashed through her mind for an instant and was gone. Fionn, too. No, caring—no matter how much—wasn't enough for that.

The smile she found was crooked but soft. Her whole face was as red as her hair, but her voice was steady enough. "It's, ah. I'm sturdier than I look." A silly thing to say, too light for what she felt. But it seemed right, too. She was that, if nothing else. It wasn't something she felt proud of in so many words, but she could say it with confidence. She had scars on so much of her to prove it, didn't she?

She was tracing the burn that crept down over his wrist with her thumb; she had done over others, besides, in moments outside of this one. There were, she thought with both affection and a trace of alarm, plenty of them to find. Skin knit together where injury had once been. "Does it hurt?" she remembered the Rabbit asking in the story. A part of her was ashamed for thinking of a children's story now. Only a part. "It's all right," she said at last. She didn't think it was the right thing to say, and she didn't think it was enough, but it was all she had.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Mid Afternoon, Hamis 32, 2720
A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

You will hurt me, Aremu heard in the undercurrent of Aurelie’s voice, deep beneath the surface, pulling at him and towing him out into the sea. He didn’t think he’d been smiling; he knew he wasn’t, after she spoke.

The worst of it was that he could not argue; he would not, he knew, have been able to even if she had shouted it at him in anger, wielding it like a weapon and meaning to cut. In her quiet voice, calm and reasonable, with a soft aching smile on her freckled face, it would have been even harder. Her hand was tangled through his, and her thumb stroking softly still over the scar on his hand, and when she spoke he heard it beneath the surface of her words: you will hurt me.

The worst of it was that he couldn’t blame her for knowing it so; he knew it so, too. It’s good, he told himself; it’s for the best that she knows, now, all that you are lacking. It’s all right, she had said, too, almost comfortingly. It’s all right, Aremu thought, trying to put it into the fullness of a sentence, that you’ll hurt me; I know you can’t do any better.

His breath caught a little in his throat. He didn’t know what had shown on his face as she spoke; he’d tried to keep it still and calm, even. He managed a nod, in time, shifting a little and inclining his head, steadily, his gaze soft on her face.

It’s not, he wanted to say, then; it’s not all right, Aurelie. It’s not –

It’s all right, he thought; he frowned, a little, searching her face. It’s all right, he thought: I know you can’t do any better. Or – it’s all right, he thought, frowning a little more: it doesn’t matter if I’m hurt. He looked at her, the brave little smile on her face, the soft stroke of her thumb over his hand.

“It’s not all right,” Aremu said; his voice was rougher than it had been, taut and quivering in his throat. He wanted to take her in his arms; he knew he couldn’t do that to her, not here. Perhaps he should have known better than to do it in the first place; a better man than he –

“It’s not all right with me,” Aremu amended; his shoulders sank a little. He sat back, though not hard enough to pull their hands apart, his face tight enough to ache. “I know you’re strong,” he said, quietly. “It’s one of the things I admire about you,” he looked down at their hands again. “It’s not that I think you’re wrong,” his lips twisted a little, and he let go of her hand, then, drawing back, too ashamed to hold it. “I know I probably will – “ he couldn’t say the words. His eyes closed for a moment; all of it burned in his chest and his throat, tingled in his jaw, and his head throbbed painfully, a sharp stabbing sort of ache in his temples.

Aremu took another deep breath. He was what he was, he thought, bitterly; he’d made his choices, all through. It was good that she saw it; it was good for it to be clear between them. “- hurt you,” he finished, dragging himself over the words, feeling as if they were glass beneath his bare feet. His voice was half-strangled in his chest; he cleared his throat. “It’s just that that doesn’t make it all right,” he said, quietly. “Not to me.”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Hamis 32, 2720 - Afternoon | A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

She must not have been very clear; no, Aurelie thought, she knew she wasn't clear. She rarely was. But he had held his face still, nodded, and then frowned and looked at her. What had she said, and what he heard? She didn't think she was wrong—she wouldn't have said it, if she thought she was wrong. But...

"Ah." Not all right, then. She blinked; the smile faded and fell away. Of course it wasn't. She didn't know what this conversation was, but it was quite possible she had misunderstood. Right from the start. Aurelie wanted to pull her hand away, to apologize. For being so terribly mistaken, foolish, for... There was something in his voice now, so much tighter and rougher that it had been before, that made her hold on. She could still be misunderstanding now. Which part, she didn't know, but she held on.

And Aremu clarified, shoulders slumping just a little towards the ground. Now she knew she had misunderstood; her heart was beating a painful rhythm in her chest that felt no better when Aremu pulled his hand away, a twist to his mouth. Admire? About her? It wasn't strength, she thought. She wasn't—sturdy, yes. But that wasn't the same. Was it? Surely strength was something else. Aurelie drew her hand back and folded it carefully in her lap, feeling a little smaller.

She was missing something, and she had said something wrong. Those two things were related; but what had she missed, in seeing or speaking? Aurelie twisted her hands together, and she thought.

"I—" Just one syllable her voice caught, strangled and wrong. "I don't think I was, ah, clear. I know I'm, uhm. Not usually. Er. Clear, I mean, but I..." Oh, this was miserable. She was going to end up helping nothing at all. To make it worse, it looked rather like Aremu's head was doing worse than it had been before they sat down. But all she could do was try, wasn't it? She was the one who wanted to change—surely this much she could do, if she tried.

"I didn't mean... I wasn't just talking a-about, uhm, you. Er, I was, but not only you. All, ah... C-caring about someone. It, uhm. It always has that risk, of being hurt by it. N-no matter anyone's intentions. Ah, but." Aurelie frowned, considering him carefully. All the tight lines of his face which looked so different when it smiled. She had been vastly understanding her case, she thought with a twist of her fingers, when she said she was merely fond. That wasn't the sort of thing she was good at saying, and certainly not here, and not now. And it wasn't the sort of thing that made this better; her affection never made anything better.

"Hurt can heal," she said almost to herself. She was doing this terribly; she didn't think she made any sense at all. "And it's an acceptable risk. Ah. To me, er. I—I'm not sure any of that made sense." She tried a smile, thin and hopeful, but she didn't really expect it had.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Mid Afternoon, Hamis 32, 2720
A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

She’d had, Aremu thought tiredly, something like a smile on her face once more, and he’d snuffed it out. Again, he thought, the word echoing dully somewhere in the back of his skull, cursing the selfish impulse that had led him to speak up at all. He seemed, he thought, to be made wholly of selfish impulses. All he wanted now was to be able to take her in his arms; he thought, somehow, that this would be easier if he could hold her, if he could – show her, he thought, rather than having to try to say it, how he felt.

He knew – he knew! – that there should be nothing he could say with his hands and the warmth of his body that he could not say with his mouth, and yet he thought the words so often seemed to go wrong. Maybe he was only fooling himself, Aremu thought, more than a little tired, to think that what his hands or lips said was any easier to understand.

Aurelie began again; she was all uncertainty now, Aremu thought. He looked at her once more, listening as intently as he could manage. I wasn’t just talking about you, she said, worriedly. He frowned, a little; she was frowning too, and his face ached from the strain of holding it. His eyes closed for a moment, and then opened again, his gaze fixing somewhat blearily on her face.

It took him a moment – more than a moment, perhaps, a whole series of them one after the next – to try and sort through what she meant. He knew he was listening, and yet – what she was saying now, and what he could have sworn she meant minutes ago seemed so utterly different. They neither of them knew truth, Aremu thought, tiredly; at least there was nothing in her for him to have stained or insulted.

The thought was more painful than he expected; something in him twisted at it, and ached deep in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t imagine saying it to her, and he didn’t know what he could make of that.

What I thought you meant, he wanted to say, is true too, Aurelie. I’m not a good man; I’m not a good choice for fondness. He exhaled the thoughts out, sighed them over his lips. He couldn’t do that to her, he thought, not again, not here, not when she already looked so worried and intent.

“It makes sense,” Aremu said, quietly. Hurt can heal, she offered, quietly, optimistically, and his gaze dropped to his right wrist, unthinking, and then pulled away and looked back at her once more. I’m not so sure, he wanted to say; I’m not so sure. It wasn’t his hand he thought about, not really; it was older, deeper hurts that whispered at him. They don’t, he wanted to say, when you deserve them – when the hurt teaches you what you really are.

But it was Aurelie speaking, not him, and he didn’t – he couldn’t – bear to say such things to her.

He took a deep breath, again, evenly. “I’m a little off-balance today, I think,” Aremu said, quietly. He tried to remember where they’d started with this all, but he wasn’t sure he could trace it back. He wasn’t sure, in the end, what he had really meant to say, what he’d wanted her to know. I care for you, he supposed; I don’t want to hurt you. He’d said those things, and they didn’t feel like enough, not quite.

He wanted to take her hand again, but she’d retreated to the safety of her lap, and he didn’t want to disturb whatever peace she’d found there. Aremu took his kofi, and took a sip of it; it was already halfway to cool, he thought, and even more bitter than it should have been.

“When it comes down to it,” Aremu said, slowly, after another sip of kofi, “what frightens me is that I won’t know I’m hurting you, that – that you’ll hide it from me.” As I would, he couldn’t quite bring himself to say; and he knew he would, and he didn’t either think that he shouldn’t – but she, he thought, very firmly and without the least grounding for it, she shouldn’t; it was important that she didn’t.

“It's your right to do so, if you choose, but,” Aremu said, evenly, “I should always rather you try to tell me.”

[Aurelie Steerpike]

Hamis 32, 2720 - Afternoon | A Cafe off of Arip’dzoqiq Street, Laus Oma

Off-balance was a way of putting it. She kept her back straight and didn't hunch her small shoulders, but if she could have disappeared she would have. Nothing she had said came out right; she wasn't sure she had made sense, even though Aremu had said otherwise. The possibility that what he had heard wasn't what she meant was still too strong.

"That seems, ah, fair." Aurelie didn't ask how his head was; she didn't know that she'd get a straight answer, and it would only make things worse. She wished, more than anything, she hadn't put her hands back on her lap. Or that Aremu hadn't drawn his back in the first place, she supposed, but the result was the same. And it had already happened, so wishing it wasn't so was a pointless exercise.

Instead she had more of her tea; it had cooled a great deal in the course of their conversation, and was now only a little warmer than the temperature of the air. It was, she thought as she stared into the dark liquid in her cup, still a very nice day. Even now, there was something the littlest bit pleasant about the cafe with its sunny yellow table on the quiet little street. Until she had ruined things by being so strange, it had been one of the nicer days she'd had in a very long while.

Aurelie took another, longer drink as he spoke again. She set her cup carefully down, not quite sure what to make of it. She didn't think—she wanted to say she wouldn't do such a thing, but she realized that she very well might. What was the difference to keeping to yourself things that were of no interest and hiding things? Quite a big difference, likely. But how would she know?

That was just her nature, she thought with a small amount of despair. She wanted to set his mind at ease, at least a little, if that was truly as concerning as all that. She didn't think it should be, but found she didn't want to say so. You were concerned about hurting someone you liked at least a little bit, weren't you? Aurelie wanted so badly to hold onto that idea. Even if it was temporary, she wanted to hold onto it.

"I can't promise you that I wouldn't do that," she admitted quietly, with a hook to her mouth. If Niamh hadn't come to fetch her at just the moment she had, Aurelie thought, would anyone even know her parents had died? Aurelie was forced to admit that even a thing like that she was inclined to keep to herself. And that was easier—no matter what she was, she thought that was an understandable sort of pain to feel.

"Oh, chimes. I, ah, I can promise to, uhm. Try. I'm not good at—I'm not used to... to having much of... Nobody ever really asks." Aurelie shrugged. It didn't particularly bother her, honestly. Even if someone had tried, she didn't think she would have answered. But she wanted to make the effort, if it was important. This all sounded so ridiculous, coming out of her mouth as she sat there on her metal chair with the remains of her tea cradled between her palms. Looking across the table at Aremu and his serious, lovely face and all its frowning, under the shade of that hat that somehow looked so much nicer on him than it should.

"Did you want to... to go back? Er. I mean—we can sit here a-as long as you'd like, and talk if you... if you want. Uhm. I just—er. Whatever you want is all right, I didn't mean to... to change the subject." Aurelie chewed at the corner of her lip. She didn't want to go back yet, even with how unpleasant the last bit had been. It felt a waste, to turn around now. Unless Aremu wasn't feeling well, of course, in which case it would be no waste at all.