When they’re already in the thick of it, might as well get a large swathe of it done at once. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours, that’s the deal, the reciprocity; and now it’s Stephen’s turn for that little hitch and the unexpected suckerpunch, the sudden abject understanding, the acute familiarity. He recognises this. The circles and loops and calculations and what-ifs they’ve been weighing for years.
There are other pieces of his own clicking into place, too, filling in his picture of Gwenaëlle. A frightened, defensive younger creature, snapping her teeth to keep herself safe. And the sudden pall in the conversation when he’d asked about chevaliers, her barbed and furious reply (you might consider asking them if they remember the face of their first elven victim), and then his genteel, discreet withdrawal from the topic entirely.
Now the topic’s back, and he’s gazing at it in full transparency.
“If I’d gone home. If I hadn’t been so awful to Victor. If I hadn’t let him leave that day. If the driver had had quicker reflexes,” he says, echoing back a litany of his own, to show that understanding. The last words his brother ever heard from him were cruel, too.
“If you hadn’t been so awful to Alix. If your mother hadn’t interceded. If the chevaliers hadn’t done what they did.”
Stephen thinks himself godawful with words, often a little too callous with them, or just hitting on the wrong angle to take, but it’s his turn to try. And at the end of the day, after all of it, he is still a time sorcerer, so: “The way I console myself, the way I rationalise it. There are endless timelines and endless tangled threads within them. Every tiny piece affects another, and everyone has contributed. If she’d come with you, perhaps she’d have died to the rage demon instead. Maybe the extra weight in the carriage would have sent it off a cliff road on a too-sharp turn. Or the delayed carriage departure might have led to even further deaths. There’s— Those questions are endless, and unanswerable. You can’t keep going down that road. You lose your mind.”
Spoken from experience.
And then, softer, a little late because he always jumps to solutioning, but he gets there in the end: “I’m sorry, too.”
no subject
There are other pieces of his own clicking into place, too, filling in his picture of Gwenaëlle. A frightened, defensive younger creature, snapping her teeth to keep herself safe. And the sudden pall in the conversation when he’d asked about chevaliers, her barbed and furious reply (you might consider asking them if they remember the face of their first elven victim), and then his genteel, discreet withdrawal from the topic entirely.
Now the topic’s back, and he’s gazing at it in full transparency.
“If I’d gone home. If I hadn’t been so awful to Victor. If I hadn’t let him leave that day. If the driver had had quicker reflexes,” he says, echoing back a litany of his own, to show that understanding. The last words his brother ever heard from him were cruel, too.
“If you hadn’t been so awful to Alix. If your mother hadn’t interceded. If the chevaliers hadn’t done what they did.”
Stephen thinks himself godawful with words, often a little too callous with them, or just hitting on the wrong angle to take, but it’s his turn to try. And at the end of the day, after all of it, he is still a time sorcerer, so: “The way I console myself, the way I rationalise it. There are endless timelines and endless tangled threads within them. Every tiny piece affects another, and everyone has contributed. If she’d come with you, perhaps she’d have died to the rage demon instead. Maybe the extra weight in the carriage would have sent it off a cliff road on a too-sharp turn. Or the delayed carriage departure might have led to even further deaths. There’s— Those questions are endless, and unanswerable. You can’t keep going down that road. You lose your mind.”
Spoken from experience.
And then, softer, a little late because he always jumps to solutioning, but he gets there in the end: “I’m sorry, too.”