[Closed] Expecting the Worst

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

I
don’t doubt that she does,” he conceded, inclining his head. He kept his voice neutral; he met her eye, but then he took a sip of tea. He heard the taut twist underneath her airy tone. The ground beneath his feet was still slipping – everything he grabbed hold of was a raw nerve. It was these hands, this face, chewing up everything he said and spitting it out wrong. They’d got him into this mess to begin with.

He’d got to the bottom of his teacup, and the grainy, bitter dregs were cool. The teapot’s spout still coughed up a thin string of steam. Since you don’t remember, she said aloof-like, and his lips twitched into an unbidden smile. He looked at it head on, without looking away.

As Cerise went on, he bent to pour himself another cup; the effort of steadying his hand steadied the rest.

The set of her lips was the edge of a riff; the dreamy look – so out of place on her face – drained right off, and he met her chilly flat eyes again.

It should’ve been more unnerving. It was the smile of every time he’d ever looked in the mirror, watching the well-worn muscles and lines of this face pull his old smile into a different shape. But it wasn’t like looking in the mirror now, not with the cloud of thick dark hair about her head. Every inch of it was her smile, too, all riff-sharp, gleaming passion and sardonic twist. He could see the subtle differences, and what wasn’t different was – shared.

That funny butterfly-flutter again. It made him want to laugh, or maybe cry.

The curl of this spell was another point. He raised his brows, but he was smiling, a sad crooked tilt to his lips. He inclined his head again, settling back with his tea. “Reformed, my erse,” he shot back, then sighed. “I don’t know that she wants you to go into law, Cerise. Maybe –” He. He paused. “Maybe I did,” he said, “I don’t know. I think she’ll come around, and if she doesn’t…”

He shrugged, shaking his head. This sip of tea was almost too hot; he half-coughed, and his lip twisted, but he swallowed the burning tea. Talk downstairs ebbed, and there was the sound of a jingle again. The fluffy thing on the chair got to its feet, arcing its back in an indulgent stretch. Its jaws opened wide, then clicked shut. It hopped down, collar jingling, and wandered over to sit by Cerise’s feet.

“You could say it’s more challenging than fighting?” He thought, watching her. “Winning without, well – wrecking somebody. Breaking somebody’s face is easy, as long as he’s smaller than you and you know what you’re doing,” he tapped his fingernail against the rim of the cup, “but putting him down without laying a hand on him? Following all those rules? No, I can see why you like it.”

The cat sniffed at Cerise’s shoe.

I was always, he thought to say, too much a bully to be a good duelist. Not that his kind’d had dueling; the closest thing was the Rose Arena, and those weren’t rules so much as general guidelines to prevent one kov from getting scragged.

He thought, then smiled. “My chief of staff’s –” He broke off. Thinking how she’d talked earlier of him being back at work. He swallowed, wondering if he should go ahead and stuff his cravat down his throat before she did it for him. “A pugilist,” he finished, clearing his throat. “Have you ever been to a – bareknuckle match?”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

Now that was something she hadn't quite expected to hear in a very different fashion from all the other strangeness today. Cerise straightened, a little crease between her dark eyebrows. She didn't know, quite, how to talk about her stepmother to this version of her father. Or the one before. Cerise did not hate Diana Vauquelin, despite all appearances. She just felt as if she was constantly letting her down, she supposed. They were very different--that was all.

"No? I always thought--" Cerise stopped herself with another frown. How did he know? Had they talked about her? Cerise tried to remember how many letters had been sent home from the school--mostly about Sish, she thought. She smoothed over her surprise while he coughed around his tea. Maybe he did--he didn't know. Cerise wondered and wondered what the answer was. Did he? Why? Would it have meant anything if she had? The fact that she could never ask, even though the man himself was sitting right in front of her, was a little sad. No more than anything else today, and less than most. Cerise let it go.

"And I'll have you know, I am quite reformed. Mostly." Cerise raised her eyebrows; the topic of her past and present delinquency was easier than trying to analyze how her stepmother felt about her through the filter of her father.

The creature that was, ostensibly, a cat came and moved to sit by her feet with a jingle of its collar bell. She looked at a moment before she obligingly leaned over to hold out her hand. The cat sniffed at the end of her fingers, which she held quite still until it got bored of them. More interested in pets, hmm? Cerise obliged, gently running her fingers over the fluffy white head and scratching behind its ears. She did not do it the indignity of lifting it up to be beside her; it would climb up if it so chose. Even if it did make the edge of her corset dig rather uncomfortably into her skin. Cats did not often accept such excuses.

"Just so," she agreed. "Breaking someone's face" was also a rather odd phrase to hear from her father's thin mouth and deep voice. She could not think of how else he should have put it; it was as accurate as any phrasing on the subject could be, she supposed.

"A victory with no grace is hardly a victory at all," she said, with a tone and cadence that marked it as a phrase repeated from someone else's mouth. Her eyes were still on the cat as she stroked the white fur. It pretended utter disinterest, sniffing at her shoe, but she could feel the rumble of a purr. Just like Sish, minus the purring. Miraan did not purr, of course, but she could always tell that Sish was less disaffected than she pretended to be by Cerise's affections.

Her father had started to speak on his chief of staff, and then stopped himself. Too late, of course. Cerise found the reminder that he had been back to work but couldn't bother to pen either herself or even Ellie a letter hurt less with all the other pains. A matter of comparison. She leveled him a look just long and hard enough to tell him that it had not escaped her attention before taking pity on him (and herself) and pausing her feline attentions.

"Why, Father, that is hardly suitable entertainment for a young woman of breeding!" She put a hand delicately over her heart, but her grin remained. "I can't say as I've had the opportunity. It sounds dreadfully violent--I would love to go to a match sometime." The statement hung in the air. Cerise couldn't tell if she meant "in general" or if there was a request buried in it. If the latter, she certainly was more of a glutton for punishment than she had thought.

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
e might’ve argued once that a graceless victory was the only kind he’d any experience with; there was plenty of grounds to make that argument still. But something about the way Cerise said it, straight-backed and practiced, like it had been written on her soul by a careful and beloved hand – it warmed his smile, sent another shiver of bastly through his field. He took a sip of tea to suppress the smile.

There was a way about her, petting the cat. He pretended not to watch, sipping his tea, looking askance at the rain battering the window. He watched anyway: how she bent just so, let the cat nose at her fingers, then let it guide her hand.

By then, it was purring, soft but loud enough for him to hear the barest hum of it. He watched her fingers comb through its hair.

He caught her eye as she darted a look up at him, riff-sharp and lingering; he kept himself from wincing, knowing by now, but he wrinkled his nose.

He laughed, then, easy, at her mock-protest. Easy as he’d laughed all day. He caught the glint of her grey eye; he’d thought she’d like that one, though he hadn’t been sure. There was no certainty here, he thought, in anything. Still grinning himself, he half-opened his mouth, started to say, “I happen to know of…”

The lamplight caught the edges of her hair, wild and curly and dark, and the dark arc of both her eyebrows. Gods in a circle, he thought yet again, what am I doing? With somebody else’s daughter, with – he thought of Diana, then, glittering with her blond hair piled up on her head, though he shied away from the thought of her, as ever; he thought of Anatole’s other lass, studious and towheaded, soft-faced. His throat was suddenly dry.

This is wrong, came the ache, this is wrong, this is wrong.

He paused, his lip twitching, his expression flickering. “It is,” he said, his voice a shadow of what he’d meant it to be, “dreadfully violent.”

He couldn’t keep the smile on his face, this time. He cleared his throat, looking down at his teacup. The mant white fluff at Cerise’s feet had lifted a fuzzy paw to scratch at her skirts, at first with its soft toes, then with the insistent pricking of its claws.

“This must be – damned strange for you,” he started, tapping his fingernail on his cup again before he stopped himself. He swallowed dryly, then looked back up at Cerise. “Me – being…”

What? He couldn’t think of a word; he glanced down at the cat, then back up again. “I’m grateful,” he said, leaning to set the teacup down on the table, taking Mircalla from the arm of the chair and holding it in his lap. He ran his hands over the cover, waxed paper underneath it crackling. “There’s plenty of time, and I want to do this – on your terms.”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

The rain fell against the window still, filling the air between them after his laughter fell away. After he had started to make the offer, and thought the better of it. At least so it seemed to her; she couldn't account for why she was so disappointed. Excepting the last year, she thought, this was the most time they had spent together like this in... Well, since she was a child. Since Mama, and all the rest. That injury at least was so familiar as to not even truly count.

"I see," was all she said to that. There was nothing more for her to say. The cat had begun to paw at her skirt, so she unfolded her hands from her lap and resumed her attentions. At least someone enjoyed her company. Even if she suspected this particular someone was not especially fussy about who they got attention from. The nature of cats was such that it wouldn't last very long, but she would take it for now. One or the other, she thought. One or the other, but you have to choose. The cat would never do such a thing, she knew. It simply wasn't in its nature.

Cerise laughed dryly, no joy in the sound. "Damned strange" was certainly one way to put it. But how to articulate that the strangest part of all weren't the things he forgot, but what the forgetting seemed to lead to? No words she found made her sound like anything but some kind of overly delicate child. Some mite in her first set of greens. "Interested in my company? It is."

What is this that they were doing? She had no terms, she wanted to protest, because she didn't know what "this" was. Getting along? She had no frame of reference for such a thing. If someone had asked her last month if she thought it was even possible, she would have laughed. Or snarled, or both together. Even now she didn't know she believed it. The cat started to climb up her skirt and she lifted it to her lap, once again grateful for the distraction. The second it had come to her thighs, the cat very pointedly left them and went to occupy what little space in the chair she didn't already fill. A fickle thing after all. Cerise couldn't help but smile at it now.

"I don't have any terms, and I didn't--I don't need your gratitude. But..." There was some part of her that was reluctant to accept it. Like if she acknowledged his newfound gratitude, if she let this go on, then it meant she had forgiven him for any of the rest. And she hadn't; she was sure she never would. She looked from him to the book, letting whatever feeling that inspired wash over her without worrying much about putting a name to it. There was plenty of time. Plenty of time too, perhaps, to figure out what any of this was and what she wanted.

"But I would like it if you would at least write," she said finally, "and perhaps I will think of some. In time."

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
e couldn’t read her expression; he couldn’t tell if it was disappointed, troubled, relieved, confused. Maybe all of them, or maybe nothing at all. There’d been a splintering of a second where he’d thought to tell her, Down in the Stacks, there’s a little place called…

It was what he’d’ve done once. Hells, he’d taught her how to use a riff, and they’d gone to the fights sometimes – not the ones as they did in the Arena, but in the yard at the corner of Sharkswell and Lossey, where there wasn’t much ging or politics involved. Never to the dog fights, mind; she’d been frightened terribly of dogs. But there wasn’t any harm in watching the fights, commenting on one kov’s left hook or the other’s form through mouthfuls of deep-fried hingle or noodles dripping grease. Nobody much to do that with, anymore.

He’d thought to, but he hadn’t, in the end; and something had calcified inside him, and it didn’t matter what that look had meant. It wasn’t that it wasn’t the right place for a lady, but – he couldn’t’ve said why it would’ve felt wrong.

All he’d done with her, he’d done drunk. Maybe that was it. This white-knuckle grip on the reins of him, all new to him. His lass had thought he was fun, until he wasn’t. Look where fun had got him.

The laugh that followed sounded mant close.

He raised his brows. Polite, if yet another dig. Moashit moony, he’d’ve said. A different clocking person, rather; we both know moony doesn’t cut it. You know, down deep, I think. I can tell, he wanted to say. I can tell by the way you look at me, even when I’m doing a very good job. It’s not good enough. There are lots of little things, aren’t there? It’s good enough for Burbridge, good enough for Proulx. It’s not good enough for you.

A different person who’s interested in your company, maybe – maybe those were the two parts of it.

Maybe there had been a better option. Keep brushing her off. The Non-Committal Sneer, as he might’ve called it. It worked at Stainthorpe. It didn’t work on Diana, but Diana knew enough to loathe him by now, which got the job done well enough. Would it work on you? he thought.

He watched Cerise bend to pick up the big ball of fluff; he watched it stretch out, dangling long fuzzy legs, toes splayed only for a moment before it found its footing with ease and relish. It nosed about the chair, then settled itself into the tight squeeze between her and the arm. It blinked its eyes and shut them.

He thought of her getting into the league; he thought of watching her duel. He smiled without meaning to; that, too, he didn’t much like.

Which meant that there was still a smile on his face when Cerise told him she didn’t need his gratitude, and that only made it go crookeder and softer. “That I can do,” he said after a moment, inclining his head. “Often enough.” A flicker of a grin. Careful what you wish for, he almost added, but it seemed horribly cruel.

Their fields weren’t merged anymore, but the caprise was – ‘comfortable’ wasn’t the word; he didn’t think there was one. He eased back in his seat with a creak, opening up the book again.

“I’ll get a headstart,” he said lightly, gesturing at it with his chin. “If you’d like to browse round. She closes late. There’s all sorts of weird shit up here; let me know if you find something interesting.” He grinned.