open

[keenly]

WHO: Colin + YOU
WHAT: Returning from the jungle
WHEN: Current
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES:

I. The Return

All Colin really wants at the moment is to flop down into his bed. Not because he's particularly tired, at the moment, but because he wants to be reassured that it still feels as good as he remembers. He drifts among the crowd at the docks, reunions happening all around as people greet their friends, but manages to stick closely to Athessa and limit his greetings to people he's close to. Not tired, but overwhelmed. There's an aching hollowness to him, and the pressing crowd only increases his discomfort.

II. Home

It is not Colin's presence anywhere in the Gallows that might be noted now, but his absence from it. His typical silence on the crystals and the journals now applies to his own life. For several days after returning, for as long as he can get away with claiming to be ill, he is closed up in his apartment in Hightown. If you want to speak with him, make him stop hiding, or get him to cook anything for you, you'll have to meet him here.

III. Wildcard

Comments

[coquettish_trees]

“Ah, mon chou,” she sighs as well, idly patterning circles with her hands as she works the soap through his hair. “Honesty can be as sharp a knife as any other.

“And sometimes it hurts as much to keep as it does to let go.”

[keenly]

"For him, or for me?"

[coquettish_trees]

For me.

“For all.” She wipes her hands on a cloth, takes up the cup again to wash the bubbles away.

[keenly]

"I can't try to keep people who don't want to keep me," he murmurs. "Or who...can't."

There's silence as she rinses the soap from his hair.

"Why did you forgive me?"

[coquettish_trees]

“I did not need to,” she replies evenly over the sound of water. “I was never angry with you, cher. I was angry with all those who choked your mind with so much fear that you could not see a single path on this earth you could bear to tread.

“And I was angry with myself, for not making you feel safe enough.”

[keenly]

Colin reaches back to take her hand and give it a squeeze.

"You didn't do anything wrong," he says quietly, "or do anything less than you should. What you did that day made me realize I was no longer in a place where people would just let me die unmourned, unfought-for. I went into the darkness and you came after me. I can't tell you how that's changed me."

He releases her hand. "Maybe Byerly upset me so much because he was a mirror. He's the one person who blames me as much as I do. I didn't realize how much hurt and anger I still had for myself until I saw it in him. I don't know what to do with that information, but it feels...better, admitting that. I felt, I still feel, like I should be all right, like I owe that to all of you who saved my life. Now I've realized it...it's one of those things I'll have anniversaries for, have nightmares about, be afraid of going through again, just like Uldred or Lutair. Except it was my own hand. I did it to myself, and those are the consequences. It doesn't make any sense that I should have done it, but I can't promise myself it won't happen again, either. I don't know what to do about that. But I feel a bit less buried under it than I did, admitting it."

[coquettish_trees]

She squeezes back, will hold Colin's hand as long as he wishes her to before she reclaims it to take up a cloth and start on his shoulders.

"Can you not yet forgive yourself, then?"

[keenly]

"No." He shifts forward to give her more access. "But I'm finding my way toward it."

[coquettish_trees]

She hums an affirmative rather than nodding, as he cannot see her, and takes advantage of the shifting to get at his upper back as well. Alexandrie’s touch is gentle and firm; time and scented soap and hot water judged far superior to scrubbing.

“We are all on such a journey, I think. Not from the same places, but on our way to forgive ourselves.” She huffs something like a laugh, something like a sigh. “Once we believe we deserve to be forgiven, at least.”

[keenly]

"I'm not there yet." He sits back now, releasing a sigh as he melts back into the water. "But I'm ready to start towards it. Somehow that's..."

Terrifying.

"Um. How've you been? I know we talked on the road but really, I want to know. The version you didn't sugar-coat so you wouldn't worry me."

[coquettish_trees]

With an good-humoured huff of “affront”, she splashes him gently with the water. Sugar-coating things? Her? The very idea.

“Well. I do not miss my position, but I do miss my lord.” Her hand stills for a moment before it goes back to slowly chasing away the soap, and the softness of her voice briefly snags on something in her chest on its way through. “Terribly.”

[keenly]

He reaches back to clasp her hand and give it a squeeze.

"You could always move back in here," he says thoughtfully after a moment.

[coquettish_trees]

She squeezes back, but makes a sound of denial.

“A kind thought, cher, but I do not know when he shall return from his business abroad, and I should like to be there when he does.”

[keenly]

"It's an open invitation," he says gently, "and if he writes to let you know he's coming back, we can move you back very quickly. Though really, there's not much you'd have to move at all. You could just...sleep here. If you ever feel lonely without him. Or not, if you don't want to, it's fine either way."

[coquettish_trees]

"I am always lonely without him," she says, bends down to kiss Colin's head for his sweetness.

"When you are gone, and I miss you, I come here and bake a loaf of bread and imagine you laughing kindly when I am too impatient for it to rise. When he is gone, I go to the garden and plant something I can show him upon his return. I leaf through his books and write to him on what I have learned along with my next move." She huffs a laugh through her nose. "We are playing chess very slowly.

"This is to say, it helps me to keep the estate, because I keep it for him as much as for myself, and we are together a little that way."

[keenly]

"That's adorable."

[coquettish_trees]

She leans in and whispers at his ear.

“Tell no-one.”

[keenly]

"Promise."

[coquettish_trees]

“C’est bon. As you know, I have a very fearsome reputation to uphold.”

She kisses his cheek in demonstration of her terrifying nature, and laughs quietly.