[there's low light coming from under the door, the biggest sign that there was someone there. light, because Dantes wasn't sleeping - not when he feels as though someone cracked open his ribs and hollowed him, when he'd thrown himself over the city in desperation and knew and could not give an answer. the only thing he can handle to take is water, for the pounding in his head and the twisting of his gut is a strange sort of comfort in its mocking physical pain.
once, he had been caught in a riptide. the water that sucked one down, pulled and could not be fought against but moved alongside until it let go. that strain, that force that surpassed a modern man and only grew, holds his mind in one spot, fills his lungs and makes it hard to breathe.
knocking at the door rouses him as if he's in a dream, half moved by the desperate, insane thought that oh, this was all an accident - or someone was dead, and he could handle that, just not a thought like missing pieces falling like smoke from his veins, maybe it's all an accident and he's the victim of the worst prank, maybe something happened -
it's not him. Dantes just looks for a few seconds, and one glance is enough to say he was not expecting visitors. but he's never someone who comes to the door wearing his agitation on his sleeve, stripped down to his vest with collar undone, hair disheveled from where he'd gripped it, looking like he didn't know what to feel first. shadowed in the light of the lamp like some half formed thing, devoid of color with anchor cut.
his voice is far. thinner, than it usually is, and quiet.]
Miss Vasquez. It's late.
[an observation, not a critique, and his hand rests on the doorframe as if it does not know where it belongs.]
[ The whole of his degradation gusts through her in a cold, cold wind, and the casual greeting freezes on her tongue. The night when she'd smelled the clotting blood on Avenger, his refusal to give any time to weakness meant he had vanished into the mist looking untouched, untouchable, when it couldn't possibly be true. Now there's no blood on his body or clothes, fresh or otherwise, but something has wounded him.
Some while ago, say the three visible scars circling his neck, but Paloma thinks those have next to nothing to do with it. ]
Too late?
[ The wrongness is everywhere when she looks at him, at his hair, hands, in his thin voice. ]
[he seems at a loss, looking at her, before he remembers how to breathe and comes back inside. the place is so quiet, and while the levels of disarray that come from living have not been exceeded, there is a warmth that's blown out of the place, the grip of winter.
Ignatz is sleeping, stretched over the chair that has Dantes' coat on it, and the moved pillows on the couch suggest Dantes was stretched much the same there. the ashtray has the stubs of three cigarettes crushed in it, and the table has his case, his lighter, a notebook - his scarf flung on it like he didn't care, which was to the contrary for him. when he sits down on the couch again, it's a heavy thing.]
I'm afraid I am not the most stimulating company at present.
[ Wrong, wrong, wrong, everything. Signs point to his living on the couch as opposed to occasionally gravitating there, which is nothing she'll judge but also— not his natural behavior. Paloma splits away on light feet to hover over Ignatz, who will mind less. ]
I came to pay my respects to Ignacito. [ The words and the shaky whiff of humor underneath them fall flat. Since everyone else has already sat or is catnapping, she folds up her legs to lower in front of Ignatz's chair. It's less obvious that her mouth works in fits and starts for anything to say, facing his cat. ]
[the cat stirs some at the sound, half opening his eyes to peer at Paloma. he's as content as a cat can be who's mostly dozing, and he recalls her, so no need to flee just yet. he'll wake up more if she touches him, but so far he's trying to be good.
Dantes by contrast turns his head to gaze at the fire in the hearth, which gives some warmth and is the source of the light - breathes in, before he dredges up another section of words.]
Do you ask from courtesy? Toss your pleasantries into the void, for it will appreciate them more.
[ The sting is less than it would've been if he wasn't so obviously in pain. Paloma absorbs the impact of his rebuffing, holds off the flinch, and tries to understand its pieces, laying her cheek on the edge of the chair's cushion.
Ignatz escapes petting, for now. Firelight reflects off of his damp little nose and warms her back, armored in its richly embroidered shawl. ]
D'you really believe that's why I'm asking? [ Her dismay is muted but detectable. ]
[ That one hurts significantly more, inhaling, her belly cramping from the effort of stopping a cringe in its early stages. It targets one of her oldest fears and flays it open (that she is a burden, that people can only enjoy her in small doses or if it's useful), but it's a fear that she's wrestled with for longer than they've known one another. Paloma can tune it out, given a reason. Currently, that reason is a friend's pain.
She hopes they're friends. ]
Nothing to hide, just- just, it matters, how you are. To me.
[the words he was going to speak die in his mouth, because there are other words that echo back to him, when his suspicion had been searching, grasping for anything.
I only sell myself, Dantes. My interest in you... it's solely out of twisted sentimentality.
he folds as does a fire when doused with ice water, every nerve sharply wrenched for but a brief second, and his throat feels choked - it's the efforts at restraining a scream that he wants to unleash, that might fill the hollow in his chest.]
...That friend of your that left. Was he your Bonded?
[the viciousness is stripped from his words - the tiger withdrawing his claws, hiding his fangs. he needs to know how much she'll understand before he litters his words around unnecessarily, thinking she does. there's more he has to say, it's there, it's behind his teeth, but all he needs is a yes or a no.]
[ And just like that her eyes are burning. Useless breaths inflate her lungs, one, two, and she smooths her palm down Ignatz's fuzzy side; thus braced, Paloma twists her torso to face Avenger, because this is not a time to speak to one another without ever looking each other in the eye. ]
He wouldn't have me, no. [ She offered part of her soul up and it wasn't good enough, he didn't see his life as worth saving. ]
[the rooms are quiet. Dantes looks at her, and the firelight reflects off those golden eyes. the rest of him is colorless, black and white, save for where scars speak to long healed agonies that he does not think upon, and even then, they appear like strange shadows. he does not speak until the full weight of the silence settles around him, the pressure of depths that demands his bones fracture under the weight. breaks something in a space without anything to support it.
he doesn't want to say it aloud. he wanted to deny it with everything he was. but he knows - they know, that it happens. oh, he had been so gloriously confident and in control, the world at his fingertips. he had known words, how to play them, and now here they were in tatters.
(you can keep being my friend, I suppose.)]
Andersen is not here.
[it wouldn't be like this if it was business. if he had stuck to his principles and kept it an arrangement, not gone off and tried to accept it as something that mattered more than a contract. it would have been regret, and he would not be feeling what he knows as grief, the salt of the sea rising in the back of his throat to consume and break down.
it wouldn't agitate him. it would be the passing of the tides. this is something else.]
[ She never saw a man like Avenger before. Oh, one who resembles him, sure. Sometimes it's hard to see the white of his hair and the gold in his eyes together, their strange pupils that could pass for slits from across the room— and Paloma will remember falling asleep with hair like that tickling her cheek, waking up hours later to sunlight and not burning because the window was enchanted just for her—
She's seen men suffering. Not like this. Not at a loss for themselves. ]
Oh.
[ As difficult as it is for Dantes to express when grief demands it, it takes nothing at all for tears to blur the colorless monochrome of him. Her lips compress, and she nods and does not say I'm sorry because that might be too insulting, too pathetic. ]
[it had been muted before. almost quieted, but still there - a presence, a tangibility that he had poured all of his stubborn survival into to try and give out hope. now there is nothing, and he has never wished for hellfire more, that he might break apart and lash out and rip out the foundations of this place. how easy it is for an Avenger to hate, to let that hate consume them from the core outwards.
Dantes hates this city down to its origins, its air and water, in this moment.
he remembers to breathe.]
...today is his birthday.
[the cosmic irony of fate does not escape him. he knows the value of timing - and can only watch the universe use it against him.]
[ Paloma flinches then, since it isn't because of but for him. There are still no quick or easy words to present him with that could soften the blow. All of them would only salt his wounds or, at best, muddle into background debris.
When he'd opened his home to her after... after, it wasn't condolences or replacements that went a long way toward letting the grief have its place. It wasn't perfect. There's one thing Paloma recalls desperately needing and having forgotten to ask for.
Not so abruptly that it would unsettle Ignatz, she unfolds her body and sways upright. Her feet take her to Dantes, to his couch-bed, half-falling into the cushion next to him and reaching to gently, firmly draw this bedraggled man into the traditional hug. ]
[he goes still, the same way he did when she touched him before, tension flooding through his body and keeping him that way for a moment, two. and then finally, finally, he begins to relax some, his hands slowly coming up to touch. not exactly embracing back, but acknowledging it - and the next deep breath he takes, if it shakes some, he trusts she will not mention it.
physical touch creeps in as a foreign thing, making him hyperaware of everything - where they touch, her scent, where they are, all that he feels, the twin discomforts of his headache and his body - but he cannot find the strength to pull away. so much has consumed him, and the tiny shred of himself that remains cannot be yielded as well.
it wasn't always like this. once, he bathed in the sun's light, and the world embraced him freely.
but here he is now, while the fire burns and it is too, too silent without someone else here. how easily they become usual, part of the routine.]
Everywhere, across Aefenglom, across Dorchacht...
[his voice is even softer, but a whisper that could be lost.]
A useless search. And I knew its folly.
[call him senseless. laugh at him. be cruel, for he knows it far, far better than kindness. something to allow him to be stern with himself and wash his hands of the affair. foolish, foolish to consider showing so much as a glimpse of his own heart.]
[ The smaller false breaths Paloma takes habitually, part of the facade of life, catch and stop. Her chin can't quite reach his shoulder, so half of her face is buried in his shirt while black tendrils of hair try to sneak up Avenger's nose. From the noise she's just made, his front will soon be damp. ]
Is it stupid? Could you live with yourself if you hadn't tried?
[ Attached to the hem of her skirt are two tiny, inconspicuous pouches of dried flowers. The smell he picks up comes from those, from the garden her old friend had saved from drowning, and blood, faintly; now saline. Her hand smooths up his back in slow and circular motions as the other bunches into shirt fabric. ]
[the touches are a key in a lock riddled with rust, slow to turn and yet yielding with consistency, bit by bit. for once, propriety is not a concern on his mind, not when he turns his head down, partly hiding his face in her hair. he's stepped outside of himself for a short while, leaving pieces behind that simply tried to reassemble themselves into the shape of a man. tried to remember how to work.]
...No. If I had not exhausted every avenue there was, I could not bring myself to cease at all.
[not until there was nothing and no way to lie to himself anymore. oh, he'd rip the city up by its foundations if it meant the end of this feeling inside of him, the solid truth that to trust anyone, to reveal more than needed, simply led to new scars formed inside one's ribcage.]
But I am more the fool for not considering that this could happen at all.
[he had plans for everything else, except this. it had felt too much like a certain constant.]
[ Any violence she had felt after the tearing of loss was turned inward, only ever devastating herself. It hadn't occurred to her to take it out on the world or the city, but she would probably understand the bloody wound that impulse stems from.
Paloma won't let up stroking his (markedly less rigid) back, not until she believes he has no need for it. ]
I don't think that being foolish is the worst thing either of us could be.
[ A frenzied animal. An indiscriminate murderer. ]
[he was supposed to be capable of so much more. a man who could outmaneuver everyone by moving in ways they did not see. better than this, more controlled than this. not cracked at the seams by the removal of one piece. dear God, what was he becoming?]
The heart, what a wretched thing it is. At least yours does not seek to torment you with every beat.
[ She closes her burning eyes against that and swallows. The flat of her palm hovers for a second, just a second.
Here, now, twisted and wrapping around a man feeling his most hollow, is not the time to share or compare their hurts. She suffocates the pain of every blunt reminder that her heart will not and cannot beat, although its constant aching and leaping from person to person could fool anyone. Let him think she’s stronger than she is. ]
It’ll lead you down places you’ll wish it hadn’t. Sometimes.
[he doesn't want it, doesn't want that reminder that he's alive, that he's been brought down from the vengeful demon he was - that he is at heart, but not in form, and that fuels his rage all the more. even his body wasn't his own anymore.
even now, he feels like he needs to be clawing, tearing, lighting himself up in order to get anywhere.]
Decry it, if you truly wish. I shall not dispute you.
[ Pressing the issue seems pointless and unhelpful. She doesn't feel that it's inherently kind to want to do away with somebody's suffering, or to reduce it, but since arguing with him isn't likely to be the sort of help he needs, Paloma lets that rest as well.
It's wonderfully warm already between two bodies, one living and one wearing enchanted jewelry to simulate a piece of it. A few delicate tugs flicks the ends of her shawl over his shoulders, along with the readjustment of her arms, encircling him higher. ]
[he doesn't move back from her, though. doesn't reject the shawl encircling him, the comfort offered. the fire crackles softly, and he feels a burning that has nothing to do with sparks in his chest. childish, he knows - so much of what he is saying is useless, combative, unproductive, but it all chokes up his throat and forces its way out. as if in his absence he cannot cease the venom that wants to burn a hole in him.]
[ Like this, she can’t disguise the wounded shiver of her abdomen as anything else. A liar, yes, she is, too—lies to herself for peace of mind. But lying to another... ]
Not to my friend. Not to you.
[ The wrong secret kept nearly lost her so much. ]
[his spins a web of lies as needed to dazzle and pull the world into the right shape so he can light it up with a single stroke. and it lied to him earlier, saying he should look anyway.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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once, he had been caught in a riptide. the water that sucked one down, pulled and could not be fought against but moved alongside until it let go. that strain, that force that surpassed a modern man and only grew, holds his mind in one spot, fills his lungs and makes it hard to breathe.
knocking at the door rouses him as if he's in a dream, half moved by the desperate, insane thought that oh, this was all an accident - or someone was dead, and he could handle that, just not a thought like missing pieces falling like smoke from his veins, maybe it's all an accident and he's the victim of the worst prank, maybe something happened -
it's not him. Dantes just looks for a few seconds, and one glance is enough to say he was not expecting visitors. but he's never someone who comes to the door wearing his agitation on his sleeve, stripped down to his vest with collar undone, hair disheveled from where he'd gripped it, looking like he didn't know what to feel first. shadowed in the light of the lamp like some half formed thing, devoid of color with anchor cut.
his voice is far. thinner, than it usually is, and quiet.]
Miss Vasquez. It's late.
[an observation, not a critique, and his hand rests on the doorframe as if it does not know where it belongs.]
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Some while ago, say the three visible scars circling his neck, but Paloma thinks those have next to nothing to do with it. ]
Too late?
[ The wrongness is everywhere when she looks at him, at his hair, hands, in his thin voice. ]
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[he seems at a loss, looking at her, before he remembers how to breathe and comes back inside. the place is so quiet, and while the levels of disarray that come from living have not been exceeded, there is a warmth that's blown out of the place, the grip of winter.
Ignatz is sleeping, stretched over the chair that has Dantes' coat on it, and the moved pillows on the couch suggest Dantes was stretched much the same there. the ashtray has the stubs of three cigarettes crushed in it, and the table has his case, his lighter, a notebook - his scarf flung on it like he didn't care, which was to the contrary for him. when he sits down on the couch again, it's a heavy thing.]
I'm afraid I am not the most stimulating company at present.
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I came to pay my respects to Ignacito. [ The words and the shaky whiff of humor underneath them fall flat. Since everyone else has already sat or is catnapping, she folds up her legs to lower in front of Ignatz's chair. It's less obvious that her mouth works in fits and starts for anything to say, facing his cat. ]
What happened, Oriol? [ His name of the day. ]
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Dantes by contrast turns his head to gaze at the fire in the hearth, which gives some warmth and is the source of the light - breathes in, before he dredges up another section of words.]
Do you ask from courtesy? Toss your pleasantries into the void, for it will appreciate them more.
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Ignatz escapes petting, for now. Firelight reflects off of his damp little nose and warms her back, armored in its richly embroidered shawl. ]
D'you really believe that's why I'm asking? [ Her dismay is muted but detectable. ]
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[he knows he's being cruel. that the bitterness drips off his words like molten glass, dropping and shattering with each one.]
If you have any hidden motivations, by all means, disclose them.
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She hopes they're friends. ]
Nothing to hide, just- just, it matters, how you are. To me.
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I only sell myself, Dantes. My interest in you... it's solely out of twisted sentimentality.
he folds as does a fire when doused with ice water, every nerve sharply wrenched for but a brief second, and his throat feels choked - it's the efforts at restraining a scream that he wants to unleash, that might fill the hollow in his chest.]
...That friend of your that left. Was he your Bonded?
[the viciousness is stripped from his words - the tiger withdrawing his claws, hiding his fangs. he needs to know how much she'll understand before he litters his words around unnecessarily, thinking she does. there's more he has to say, it's there, it's behind his teeth, but all he needs is a yes or a no.]
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He wouldn't have me, no. [ She offered part of her soul up and it wasn't good enough, he didn't see his life as worth saving. ]
So. Yours...
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he doesn't want to say it aloud. he wanted to deny it with everything he was. but he knows - they know, that it happens. oh, he had been so gloriously confident and in control, the world at his fingertips. he had known words, how to play them, and now here they were in tatters.
(you can keep being my friend, I suppose.)]
Andersen is not here.
[it wouldn't be like this if it was business. if he had stuck to his principles and kept it an arrangement, not gone off and tried to accept it as something that mattered more than a contract. it would have been regret, and he would not be feeling what he knows as grief, the salt of the sea rising in the back of his throat to consume and break down.
it wouldn't agitate him. it would be the passing of the tides. this is something else.]
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She's seen men suffering. Not like this. Not at a loss for themselves. ]
Oh.
[ As difficult as it is for Dantes to express when grief demands it, it takes nothing at all for tears to blur the colorless monochrome of him. Her lips compress, and she nods and does not say I'm sorry because that might be too insulting, too pathetic. ]
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Dantes hates this city down to its origins, its air and water, in this moment.
he remembers to breathe.]
...today is his birthday.
[the cosmic irony of fate does not escape him. he knows the value of timing - and can only watch the universe use it against him.]
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When he'd opened his home to her after... after, it wasn't condolences or replacements that went a long way toward letting the grief have its place. It wasn't perfect. There's one thing Paloma recalls desperately needing and having forgotten to ask for.
Not so abruptly that it would unsettle Ignatz, she unfolds her body and sways upright. Her feet take her to Dantes, to his couch-bed, half-falling into the cushion next to him and reaching to gently, firmly draw this bedraggled man into the traditional hug. ]
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physical touch creeps in as a foreign thing, making him hyperaware of everything - where they touch, her scent, where they are, all that he feels, the twin discomforts of his headache and his body - but he cannot find the strength to pull away. so much has consumed him, and the tiny shred of himself that remains cannot be yielded as well.
it wasn't always like this. once, he bathed in the sun's light, and the world embraced him freely.
but here he is now, while the fire burns and it is too, too silent without someone else here. how easily they become usual, part of the routine.]
Everywhere, across Aefenglom, across Dorchacht...
[his voice is even softer, but a whisper that could be lost.]
A useless search. And I knew its folly.
[call him senseless. laugh at him. be cruel, for he knows it far, far better than kindness. something to allow him to be stern with himself and wash his hands of the affair. foolish, foolish to consider showing so much as a glimpse of his own heart.]
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Is it stupid? Could you live with yourself if you hadn't tried?
[ Attached to the hem of her skirt are two tiny, inconspicuous pouches of dried flowers. The smell he picks up comes from those, from the garden her old friend had saved from drowning, and blood, faintly; now saline. Her hand smooths up his back in slow and circular motions as the other bunches into shirt fabric. ]
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...No. If I had not exhausted every avenue there was, I could not bring myself to cease at all.
[not until there was nothing and no way to lie to himself anymore. oh, he'd rip the city up by its foundations if it meant the end of this feeling inside of him, the solid truth that to trust anyone, to reveal more than needed, simply led to new scars formed inside one's ribcage.]
But I am more the fool for not considering that this could happen at all.
[he had plans for everything else, except this. it had felt too much like a certain constant.]
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Paloma won't let up stroking his (markedly less rigid) back, not until she believes he has no need for it. ]
I don't think that being foolish is the worst thing either of us could be.
[ A frenzied animal. An indiscriminate murderer. ]
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[he was supposed to be capable of so much more. a man who could outmaneuver everyone by moving in ways they did not see. better than this, more controlled than this. not cracked at the seams by the removal of one piece. dear God, what was he becoming?]
The heart, what a wretched thing it is. At least yours does not seek to torment you with every beat.
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Here, now, twisted and wrapping around a man feeling his most hollow, is not the time to share or compare their hurts. She suffocates the pain of every blunt reminder that her heart will not and cannot beat, although its constant aching and leaping from person to person could fool anyone. Let him think she’s stronger than she is. ]
It’ll lead you down places you’ll wish it hadn’t. Sometimes.
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[he doesn't want it, doesn't want that reminder that he's alive, that he's been brought down from the vengeful demon he was - that he is at heart, but not in form, and that fuels his rage all the more. even his body wasn't his own anymore.
even now, he feels like he needs to be clawing, tearing, lighting himself up in order to get anywhere.]
Decry it, if you truly wish. I shall not dispute you.
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[ Pressing the issue seems pointless and unhelpful. She doesn't feel that it's inherently kind to want to do away with somebody's suffering, or to reduce it, but since arguing with him isn't likely to be the sort of help he needs, Paloma lets that rest as well.
It's wonderfully warm already between two bodies, one living and one wearing enchanted jewelry to simulate a piece of it. A few delicate tugs flicks the ends of her shawl over his shoulders, along with the readjustment of her arms, encircling him higher. ]
You're capable of it, too. I haven't forgotten.
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[he doesn't move back from her, though. doesn't reject the shawl encircling him, the comfort offered. the fire crackles softly, and he feels a burning that has nothing to do with sparks in his chest. childish, he knows - so much of what he is saying is useless, combative, unproductive, but it all chokes up his throat and forces its way out. as if in his absence he cannot cease the venom that wants to burn a hole in him.]
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Not to my friend. Not to you.
[ The wrong secret kept nearly lost her so much. ]
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[his spins a web of lies as needed to dazzle and pull the world into the right shape so he can light it up with a single stroke. and it lied to him earlier, saying he should look anyway.]
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