She repeats it back to herself, quieter, five she can see, four she can touch— and the countdown of it makes a soothing sort of sense to her, too. Like something she could run through a few times if she needed to. Counts: the weight of his hand, now. Thinks, at least this time they aren't wet and smelling of wine.
“He's tricked me out of my stupors,” she admits, after that, and it's hard to hold against him but there's still a perceptible hint of irritation at the recollection, because he is good at it, actually: “He knows the levers to make me argue, or to think I need to do something myself, and then I've got up and the bed is being made behind me and I might as well also come over here and eat something and he won't close the curtains again, which I can do myself but it's—”
It is hard not to feel stupid and petulant, standing in the middle of the room, arguing the point. The worst times are when her pride can't be used against her.
The bath has been made a particular way. Well, she doesn't wish it. Well, if it is made to her exacting specifications, then she will have no reason not to get into it. And so on, and so on—
“I am trying to be better,” she says, on a defense that he hasn't given her cause to need. Arguing with shadows that aren't here, and may never have said the things she credits them. “I don't mean him to spend his entire retirement managing me. I sleep. I work. I care about things.”
(About Casimir, and Alistair, and Cullen, and Pentaghast, and this cause that she took up because she fucking lives in the world. It is hers, now, and she is bloody-minded, determined.)
no subject
“He's tricked me out of my stupors,” she admits, after that, and it's hard to hold against him but there's still a perceptible hint of irritation at the recollection, because he is good at it, actually: “He knows the levers to make me argue, or to think I need to do something myself, and then I've got up and the bed is being made behind me and I might as well also come over here and eat something and he won't close the curtains again, which I can do myself but it's—”
It is hard not to feel stupid and petulant, standing in the middle of the room, arguing the point. The worst times are when her pride can't be used against her.
The bath has been made a particular way. Well, she doesn't wish it. Well, if it is made to her exacting specifications, then she will have no reason not to get into it. And so on, and so on—
“I am trying to be better,” she says, on a defense that he hasn't given her cause to need. Arguing with shadows that aren't here, and may never have said the things she credits them. “I don't mean him to spend his entire retirement managing me. I sleep. I work. I care about things.”
(About Casimir, and Alistair, and Cullen, and Pentaghast, and this cause that she took up because she fucking lives in the world. It is hers, now, and she is bloody-minded, determined.)