Under his hand, her heartbeat is a fluttering, furious thing, but there's something particularly telling about the muscle memory, too— he lays his palm on her chest and automatically, she takes a great breath in, exhales slowly. It is instinct to match her breathing to his, covering his hand with her own. Someone taught her this, and it helps.
(Someone. He's downstairs, checking the wet things they'd lain out to dry, airing the main floor, making a list of the few things within La Souveraineté that will need replacement.)
“Yes,” she says, slowly, meaning both you can ask and yes, it feels like that. There's a lingering wariness in the tension on her face and how she holds her shoulders — I thought we were past this rings in her ears, an echo — but she is holding onto (his hand) her own reason with both hands, to try. To resist the part of her that would feel safer if she broke something.
It never works. It always feels as if it will, but it never has.
“My neck feels hot and I can't think. Or I'm just— impossibly tired, like my lord was, he would close himself away and only I was allowed to go in, except for once,”
heritable, then. These things often are. (Years later, she has not forgotten not understanding why she was not, this time, allowed. How frightened she was when he looked at her with puzzled unrecognition.)
“And when it's been — difficult, even if I'm tired, I can't sleep.” A breath in. Out. “It happened to Stark, once, at a rift. That was when we discovered I could close them by myself.” She had had to; it had been lucky, only, that she could. “It was sort of why we were friends, you know. When someone has seen you so vulnerable and helped you, it's that or kill the witnesses.”
no subject
(Someone. He's downstairs, checking the wet things they'd lain out to dry, airing the main floor, making a list of the few things within La Souveraineté that will need replacement.)
“Yes,” she says, slowly, meaning both you can ask and yes, it feels like that. There's a lingering wariness in the tension on her face and how she holds her shoulders — I thought we were past this rings in her ears, an echo — but she is holding onto (his hand) her own reason with both hands, to try. To resist the part of her that would feel safer if she broke something.
It never works. It always feels as if it will, but it never has.
“My neck feels hot and I can't think. Or I'm just— impossibly tired, like my lord was, he would close himself away and only I was allowed to go in, except for once,”
heritable, then. These things often are. (Years later, she has not forgotten not understanding why she was not, this time, allowed. How frightened she was when he looked at her with puzzled unrecognition.)
“And when it's been — difficult, even if I'm tired, I can't sleep.” A breath in. Out. “It happened to Stark, once, at a rift. That was when we discovered I could close them by myself.” She had had to; it had been lucky, only, that she could. “It was sort of why we were friends, you know. When someone has seen you so vulnerable and helped you, it's that or kill the witnesses.”