WHO: Flint, Coupe, Yseult WHAT: Spirited intellectual debate WHEN: Some time between death announcement and the memorial WHERE: Central tower NOTES: Violence
The sound she makes is involuntary; the give of knees, arm thrown up over a nose that if it isn't broken will be having one hell of a day —
('Forgive me'. Does that hurt a little bit, in your mouth? Or is it just so foreign you don't even feel it?)
She charges low, slams them back against that table, lips peeled back to spit the blood streaming down her throat. He's quicker, she's stronger; has seen enough of his shape in the steps taught a dead girl. That there aren't any blades now,
There's one at her side. Another discarded by the map, where it proved a useless stake. She doesn't reach for them, grappling still for the advantage, for a hand on his neck.
A snarl goes flat under the shape of her fingers in the same beat that he'd drive his hip and knee into her if she hadn't thrown him far enough onto the broad slab of the table that his heel can't quite find purchase--
She's stronger, he's quicker. And he's been here before: tasting someone else's blood and spit and being driven down, down, down. It hasn't ever stopped him before. He slams a fist into whatever part is convenient. With his other hand, he yanks the first thing he finds from his belt to beat her across the ribs with. Or to slash her open. Or, or, or.
The hard cylinder of the spyglass and the crack it makes upon contact is as senselessly satisfying as anything else might be.
They've both completely forgotten Yseult, which perhaps they will realize around the time that she slaps the back of Coupe's skull hard enough to knock it into Flint's forehead with a brain-rattling clunk.
"STOP," is loud only by her standards but somehow ear-splitting in its way, sharp and sudden as ice cracking, the snap of a load-bearing line. The same tension strings her voice low, half a whisper but crisp as it's ever been: "This is ridiculous. You're behaving like children. I have sat here and listened to you two bicker for a full hour about who should replace my dead husband on this mission and I have done it without complaint even though-- because I have a job to do. And so do you, so you will get up and you will retake your seats and we will finish this work like the professionals we are meant to be, or Maker help me I will knock you both unconscious so I can at least get on with it myself."
Glass shatters on the blow, catches breathless in her side. Her grip slips from his windpipe, but she still has elbows, and the motion carries him up into,
( clunk )
Everything goes a bit black.
Light streaks. Sense stretches like taffy, conscious of Yseult's voice and the flesh beneath her; comprehension somewhere behind. She slumps, stumbles half-off him. Lists against the table and listens for words that won't yet render speech: Mission, husband. Dead. Of course -- the signs were there, if one knew to look. If they cared to. Does she?
Of course, Yseult is right. Of course she is. It's just that Flint's trachea is more or less the same shape as when they began, and at the moment that seems a pressing injustice. Mission, husband. Dead.
A hand lifts, and this time it's empty (can't focus to curl); accedes. Retaking her seat might take a moment.
"I did not, "
Heaved, nasal. She cuts off to cough a clot into sleeve. Know you'd wed? Know they'd wed? What would that change? No widow was born of a ring.
"I am," And Gwen was right, it fucking hurts, or maybe that's only where she bit her tongue, "My apologies."
He nearly follows the rise of her hand with another blow from the spyglass-turned-cudgel. It's a jerking motion - a snarling dog primed to snap after any hand shaped shadow -, but the half collapse of her weight sideways either triggers the slump of his arm or throws her far enough out of the immediate arc of the blow's trajectory that there's no impact. He doesn't loosen his grip though, just lies rigid and braced for something explosive for a moment, for two.
The broken end of the glass jams hard against the worn surface of the table. He uses it to lever himself up, sliding hard on his heels. Dead husband should inspire a flash of guilt or a shock of shame under the hurt radiating high on the left side of his face, but the sound of it sits like oil on water. It's the broken lens scattered in the folds of his coat and under it sits some hard edge thing that he can't quite unwind his fingers from.
Or maybe that's just the telescope still, clenched in his hand.
Coupe makes a raw noise. Still half staggered against the ironwood's edge, Flint touches his neck and wipes his face; he ignores the metal taste and the smeared flecks of blood on his palm and he doesn't look at Yseult, though he does tip his face roughly in her direction. A tender clearing of the throat.
"Quite," is for them both, accompanied by a hard look and refusal to step back and create space to continue or to acknowledge the secret she's just spit out like Coupe's clot from the back of her throat. She's not about to offer the benefit of the doubt or to spare them the indignity of supervision: she'll stand there ready to intervene again until they return to their corners.
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no subject
The sound she makes is involuntary; the give of knees, arm thrown up over a nose that if it isn't broken will be having one hell of a day —
('Forgive me'. Does that hurt a little bit, in your mouth? Or is it just so foreign you don't even feel it?)
She charges low, slams them back against that table, lips peeled back to spit the blood streaming down her throat. He's quicker, she's stronger; has seen enough of his shape in the steps taught a dead girl. That there aren't any blades now,
There's one at her side. Another discarded by the map, where it proved a useless stake. She doesn't reach for them, grappling still for the advantage, for a hand on his neck.
no subject
She's stronger, he's quicker. And he's been here before: tasting someone else's blood and spit and being driven down, down, down. It hasn't ever stopped him before. He slams a fist into whatever part is convenient. With his other hand, he yanks the first thing he finds from his belt to beat her across the ribs with. Or to slash her open. Or, or, or.
The hard cylinder of the spyglass and the crack it makes upon contact is as senselessly satisfying as anything else might be.
no subject
"STOP," is loud only by her standards but somehow ear-splitting in its way, sharp and sudden as ice cracking, the snap of a load-bearing line. The same tension strings her voice low, half a whisper but crisp as it's ever been: "This is ridiculous. You're behaving like children. I have sat here and listened to you two bicker for a full hour about who should replace my dead husband on this mission and I have done it without complaint even though-- because I have a job to do. And so do you, so you will get up and you will retake your seats and we will finish this work like the professionals we are meant to be, or Maker help me I will knock you both unconscious so I can at least get on with it myself."
no subject
( clunk )
Everything goes a bit black.
Light streaks. Sense stretches like taffy, conscious of Yseult's voice and the flesh beneath her; comprehension somewhere behind. She slumps, stumbles half-off him. Lists against the table and listens for words that won't yet render speech:
Mission, husband. Dead. Of course -- the signs were there, if one knew to look. If they cared to. Does she?
Of course, Yseult is right. Of course she is. It's just that Flint's trachea is more or less the same shape as when they began, and at the moment that seems a pressing injustice.
Mission, husband. Dead.
A hand lifts, and this time it's empty (can't focus to curl); accedes. Retaking her seat might take a moment.
"I did not, "
Heaved, nasal. She cuts off to cough a clot into sleeve. Know you'd wed? Know they'd wed? What would that change? No widow was born of a ring.
"I am," And Gwen was right, it fucking hurts, or maybe that's only where she bit her tongue, "My apologies."
And none for Flint, goodbye.
no subject
He nearly follows the rise of her hand with another blow from the spyglass-turned-cudgel. It's a jerking motion - a snarling dog primed to snap after any hand shaped shadow -, but the half collapse of her weight sideways either triggers the slump of his arm or throws her far enough out of the immediate arc of the blow's trajectory that there's no impact. He doesn't loosen his grip though, just lies rigid and braced for something explosive for a moment, for two.
The broken end of the glass jams hard against the worn surface of the table. He uses it to lever himself up, sliding hard on his heels. Dead husband should inspire a flash of guilt or a shock of shame under the hurt radiating high on the left side of his face, but the sound of it sits like oil on water. It's the broken lens scattered in the folds of his coat and under it sits some hard edge thing that he can't quite unwind his fingers from.
Or maybe that's just the telescope still, clenched in his hand.
Coupe makes a raw noise. Still half staggered against the ironwood's edge, Flint touches his neck and wipes his face; he ignores the metal taste and the smeared flecks of blood on his palm and he doesn't look at Yseult, though he does tip his face roughly in her direction. A tender clearing of the throat.
"So one of the new Rifters then."
no subject