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 Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2025 6:19 am
backdated to ???
Much as she might have liked to, there was no avoiding it forever. It was no wonderful epiphany or even bitter contrarianism that drove her to it. It was simply that the weight of her guilty conscience became more difficult to carry than what had caused her to take it on in the first place.
He met her, as always, although it was with an expression of cold exhaustion, which did not thaw as he mechanically pretended to lift her hand. She let it drop before he could mime the action of letting it go.
“Well,” she said, her voice dull and tired. “I guess we’ll talk.”
A great many things had passed between them in less than a year, but all too often the most important things had not come in the shape of words. But today, now, that was the shape they took.
And so - walking beside one another along the ramparts for the lack of anything better to do - they did talk. But it took some long minutes for him to break his silence, and when he did, it was with something between hurt and anger and sarcasm, and she could not blame him for any of it, but the substance of what he said was not what she had anticipated.
–
Do you despise me?
I beg pardon?
You have grown disgusted by me, I imagine.
What?
No? Do you mean then to humiliate me?
What? Oh, God - no. No, no, you talk about that kind of thing first.
Pray, Lady, tell me what kinds of mistreatment do and do not require that we talk about it first. Then I might know where I stand in your eyes.
I am not like you. I cannot play a part. I cannot feel nothing.
I already told you -
Am I to be punished because my indifference cannot rise to the level of your own?
Good God. I cannot leave this place - I cannot leave you. I would not leave you even if I could, but I cannot even step away from - it is not fair to you, that your life must make the entirety of mine. I do not ask you to meet me with tenderness. I make no claim on your heart or your conscience beyond that of whatever decency I have deserved. This, too, was a conscription for you. But it was you that offered, yourself - I would rather retreat into silence and make-believe than to have every movement of my own feelings met with - with this flippancy, with this casual cruelty. When you said that you enjoyed being cruel to men -
I don’t enjoy it! I’m not doing it because I like it!
And yet you claimed to me that you never do anything that you do not like, when it comes to -
Don’t twist my words. I was telling you the truth, to make you feel better because you had the ******** gall to suggest that I was just giving you a pity-
And was I not right in suggesting it, or even believing it?
No. Never.
Certainly you seem to have treated me as much afterwards. If you have regrets, say so, plainly.
I don’t.
Nor I. But that might change for me, if the repayment for what you pretended to offer me is this coldness.
I didn’t pretend! At no ******** point have I pretended. I’m not punishing you for - for your lack of indifference. Consider how ******** complicated my life looks to me right now. No, it’s not fair that I’m taking it out on you.
I don’t know what to say. And not to hold over your head the fact that I'm the one being an a*****e, but consider that if one of us is owed some time to be secretive and silent about this - I know this is me doing you a wrong but for God's sake consider why I actually am, instead of making me a liar.
I should have - I should have, what did you say? Retreated into silence and make-believe? That should have been my ******** obligation, to be aloof from all this, and I didn’t do it. Not because I was lying, but because I got greedy. I do that, you know. I’m sorry. I ******** it up. You’ll have to forgive me if I keep ******** it up while I sit here trying to figure out how to fix it.
And I will fix it. It’s not optional. I’m going to fix it. What do you want? You told me you wanted me to do another miracle. I think I can. Should I just - I can leave you to that miracle by yourself, if you want.
I do not want that. Even now, I do not want that. But I want even less for you to feel as though you remain at my side only to appease me. Do you want to leave me, then? Because I will not ask you to stay against your own desire. I beg you not to do that thing.
Stop. Please stop. Not for its own sake, no. But I can’t pretend like part of me doesn’t want that to keep the - the closest thing we have to peace, I mean.
I cannot make that decision. You are the one with a life to be protected. And I still care for that life very deeply, even if - forgive me - I think less of you, in this moment, than I have been able to do since our first meeting.
I can’t hold it against you. I think less of myself right now too. Not so keen on canonizing me now, I guess.
It was never for any extraordinary virtue that I named you a saint.
Maybe it's better that you despise me a little. I don't know how you're not terrified too, unless I'm - But… Wasn’t - wasn’t all of this - every bit of it - wasn’t it about how it’s bullshit to throw away being close to someone just because you have other responsibilities?
Was it?
Jesus. What a hypocrite I am.
It's not the same though. Because I don't even know -
And yet I have no delusions, Lady. A day will come - and this does - but I am less willing than I once was to let fear mute me. I told you that to live even for a minute would be worth it. Am I to believe that every feeling is a mistake simply because it does not last forever? Is this what keeps you far from me now?
No. You're right. Something can end and still not be a failure.
And will your pity come then, and make you do what you despise?
I will never pretend to care about a man. Not even you. Not even then.
So you will retreat into coldness? How else will I know?
No. I don't - I would tell you.
Oh.
I see now. I understand. I'm sorry.
Please say something. I know that’s a hell of a thing for me to say, given everything -
Ours is uncharted water. I will do - a great deal for you. I once told you that I would do anything that was not wrong. But I think - I think that it is wrong, to subject myself to your coldness only because you are bewildered and afraid. But even this - even this I might - if I could only be told. I do not love myself for the knowledge that I would buy a dream of closeness at the price of weeks of coldness, but I cannot pretend otherwise. Only tell me, that I might be able to - to arm myself for it - to know that it is not your disgust - and we could have that double life, in the dream and in waking -
It’s not a dream. I don’t - I don’t feel nothing. I don’t blame you for thinking that I feel nothing. But it isn’t true.
But I don’t know if the kind of - of devotion and tenderness you’re asking for out of me, especially if I can’t determine how and when and where and -
I am not asking for them. I am only asking that you not hold yourself away from me in silence without giving me the chance to ready myself for it, and know what that silence is.
I was worried - that you might expect them from me. And it would make it worse when - when the day comes.
I do not. I worry that my own oppress you. But it would have been better, I think, simply to ask me. But if you were afraid to do so, God knows I have given you reason.
It would have. I’m sorry. And you don’t oppress me, I see that now. But -
Yes?
I need to ask you something else, since you’ve answered that. You’re going to think that I’m asking to be mad again, or to stroke my own ego. I’m not. I can’t explain why I’m asking, though, and I know maybe it’s a bit much to ask you to just trust me right now.
Ask, then.
If - if it hadn’t been me -
Had there been a dozen women ready to offer that kindness to me on that riverside - if a dozen such women exist - I cannot pretend I would have done differently than I did, although I would have spoken differently. But I would not be in that grief that I now am, nor would I care if theirs was an act of pity. And were it a dozen women and yourself, there would be no choice to me. Is this what you want to know?
Yes. I needed to know, to help me figure out what to do. You keep being right when we have these fights -
That is not true. I think you only remember those more clearly.
Well.
And what will you do?
I still don’t know. But I’ll stop - pretending it didn’t happen. It’s cowardly. I’m glad you felt the need to tell me it was, even though I already knew. Only don’t think I’m being cowardly because I’m indifferent, is all I ask.
I insulted you by suggesting you would act as you did without any - if your motive had been - forgive me, as well. I was so blinded by my own shame that I did not consider that I was offering you such an insult as I did. It should not have been said. I had a right to my anger, but not to my suspicion. I should have had faith that your silence came from any other place. If you tell me that you are not indifferent, then I believe it, although I confess that knowing so does not give me the relief I had thought it might. I grieve for you. I grieve for this -
I don’t. I grieve for nothing. I refuse to. I won’t sit here and say I wish this and I wish that. I already wished for one impossible thing and managed it, and I won’t sit here and wish for more.
And as for - as for myself - how shall I make this simpler to you? Shall I - I will moderate my expressions -
No. Don’t. At least not when we’re alone. Only don’t get all stung and weird if I can’t find the right way to say anything back. We’re going to have to find something in the middle - somewhere between the everything and the nothing. I don’t want everything but I don’t want some double life where we’re different people asleep, either. I am so tired of being so many different people. But I am going to be a different person asleep. I can already tell. I don’t know how to be otherwise when everything is so - I’m sorry. This feels awful. It feels like I’m asking you something cruel again.
Some might think so, but I do not. It is no wrong against me, if you only wish for both of us to be truthful. It is not wrong, that you cannot behave the same to me now as you do when we are - when we are near each other, if I can ready myself for that.
I might be different then as well, if I can manage another miracle. It looks different, if you know it’s not the only time - if you know that there’s - well. Forgive me in advance, if I can’t be what I was right away, or maybe ever. Do-or-die times, you know.
I do.
I know.
I thank you for hearing me, despite your fear.
And I thank you for glossing over it even though I was wrong. I knew I was wrong, too.
Well. It is behind us.
I worry that you'll feel so beholden to me that you won't be able to pull up. I was - this is sick - I was so glad you were pissed at me again. I was so relieved. I didn't realize until just now. I think I needed to know that you could still dislike me after that, and I didn't realize it.
I understand. You want my feeling to be one of - of preference, rather than necessity. Very well, then. I prefer you, even now. And in truth I cannot reproach you for questioning the sincerity of my motives. I have given you reason, God knows, to believe that I would prefer silence. But I have no more desire to linger on hurt than -
OK. OK. You said hope was good to you now, and wanting.
I did.
That was true too.
Everything I say to you is true.
I know. I might still bring guests.
I understand. It is good to have them on the Garde. Only - I beg, Lady, one favor of you.
Ask it. I want to grant you one.
Only find some way to speak to me, be it only with your eyes, and I will ask for nothing else. I waited ten centuries to know you. I might wait some weeks to be near you again, and it is no hardship to me, if I can know that you do not despise me. And I know that you do not.
I don't. And I’ll find some way.
Then I have done. I ask for no more. Thank you.
And if you - if you could ask for more -
You wish me to ask favors?
Yes. I like granting them but I also haven’t had the chance to say no to you yet and I think I’d like it, just to see if I can get you pissed off for a good reason for once.
Perhaps, Lady, this might keep for when next you dream of a miracle.
I think so, yes.
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Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2025 6:19 am
The storm had passed, but that did not mean that what lay on the other side was all sunshine.
The unseen sky between them felt fitful and grey. Unfortunately, as one often does in dismal weather, she felt the need to seek comfort in company. So the two of them were feeling out the nature of a conversation in the bizarre new world they now inhabited, which was the shape of the old one in strange new clothes.
The literal weather was only blue skies, the sky barely blemished by even a wisp of cloud. The breeze came in off the water cool and fresh, and she pushed the swing forward and backwards with her toe, her towel over her shoulders like a shawl, the idea of a swim abandoned for now.
“Anyway,” she was saying, “I suppose I expected to be in some sort of holding pattern now, since it feels like I have nowhere else to go. I only ever met one man who’d gotten further than waking up with some glowing s**t, and I suppose he had something special about him that no one else had. But it feels like holding a breath. I guess I expected the holding pattern to be less - I don't know. Fraught?”
“I believe,” he said, from where he stood in his usual watchfulness, his hand pressed to his side, “that the held breath of wartime is always troubled.”
“And can only be exhaled when the peace comes. Our job, right? But it's never going to come. The war is tiny and it's ******** huge and the exhale never comes.”
“It does seem unusually cruel that you are made to have peace and conflict at once.”
They were silent a moment, and both of them spoke at once, and with the same thought.
“No, you go ahead,” she said.
“I was thinking of the Academy, and how I told you - you were thinking the same.”
“Yes. That war got more complicated as it got more civilized, and that it felt more and more like a horrible evil game.”
His silence was assent, and they remained quiet, still thinking thoughts on the same track beside one another, until she spoke again.
“If we're supposed to be celebrating the rewards of peace here,” she said, tired, “it seems cruel to give us a world where peace isn't actually possible to do it in.”
“More uncharted water for you,” he said gently, a sympathetic grief in his voice while he watched the distant gulls. “You will have to make some new map, and find some new course. If this is what the Garde now is, it makes sense to me that you were called to it.”
“I appreciate your vote of confidence,” she said. “But you already know that I wish I hadn't been.”
“I do. And I wish it for you, for all that it would - well. I would not know what I was missing, and therefore could not grieve it. But I think I would grieve it all the same. But what I have had - the price is too high.”
She was silent for a time. It was the sort of honest thing they could tell one another, without expecting the other to make rote protests out of some sense of false politeness. “I don't think the math exists to figure that one out. But I am glad it wasn't all payment and sacrifice on my side. I'm glad I've had things come out of it - and maybe I'm too pessimistic. Maybe the peace comes, one day.”
“And if it does?”
“I don't know. Maybe I'll find myself doing more of the kind of work you did anyway. It's not worth speculating about. I'm tired of wondering and ruminating. It's never any good. I've been talking to some new knights recently and there's so much that they ask that just can't be answered. I just want to be able to shake them and tell them all they can do is whatever is in front of them as best as they can but it never seems to satisfy them. I want to tell them to find their own goals, since no one is commanding them, and then they don't know what that means.”
“Not everyone is as prepared to command themselves as you are.”
“I know. And sometimes I envy them. It gets exhausting. But it's the only way I know.”
There was a pause, a little fraught, as they once again knew that both followed the same thought.
“And what will you do,” he asked gently, “now that you have fulfilled one great command to yourself in helping me?”
“I don't know. Will you tell me I was wrong to command myself to do something that helped so few?”
“No. I have picked up a little of your selfishness.”
“Good. But I would like it to help more. I just don't know how.”
“Maybe this, then, can be your next command to yourself,” he suggested, just as quietly. “To make the good you have done me find some broader effect. But, Lady -”
“Go on.”
“It is enough. You might, if you wished, rest on what you have already done.”
“I can't believe you're telling me this,” she said, with a startled laugh that was not without bitterness.
“Perhaps I am the more willing because I know that you will not heed my advice.”
“That tracks. Easy for you to preach complacency at me if you don't think I'll ever get complacent.”
“I think so, yes. But I am glad - it is good, that you have not forgotten the name you chose. It seems strange to me that I was once so afraid of your doing so.”
“Not as strange as remembering that you wanted me to, before you got scared of it.”
“I have had a great many revolutions of feeling since I have met you.”
She could not help, then, the warm feeling that suffused her, and it was more friendly to her now than it had been before. “Me too, since meeting you. I've always liked to - to figure myself out. I'm glad that's one of those things you have to keep doing forever.”
“A less painful war without ending.”
“Yes. Well - no - sometimes. Sometimes it hurts just as much, or maybe more. And you can cause a lot of collateral damage, if you're reckless. But you can never do anything but gain ground, unless you decide to fail on purpose.” She paused, a little timid. “It's one of those things - like you said - where you can never be satisfied, so every little advance is a whole victory -”
“That is not quite what I said,” he answered, with his mild playfulness. “But I suppose the property is transferrable.”
“I think I might swim,” she said after a pause. “Even though it's a little chilly. It'll make the hot shower afterwards more pleasant,” she added, with a hint of accusation.
“On such struggles do we wager our future pleasure,” he agreed, with mock gravity.
"I gotta work for everything. Nothing ever gets handed to me,” she agreed with airy complaint as she rose from the swing. “I'd probably be more mad about it, if I didn't set half the high prices myself.”
They went down, then, to the water, where he as always turned his back in polite deference to her changing, and despite how silly this seemed now, she was grateful for it - grateful for that return to quietly generous formality, and for the settling, however uneasy, of something that was the comfort of a routine in a world of fraught holding patterns.
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