Laura comes back to the Gallows on the last ferry for the night, sweaty and with a bruise rising on her cheek. It's likely to fade out by this time tomorrow night, and with it, the memory of breaking up a fight outside a tavern.
The scent of coffee reaches her long before she's on the threshold of the kitchens, peering inside at Holden. "Yes, please. Is any dinner left?"
"No," Laura answers, coming into the room. Dinner's long since been put away, but there's usually something edible in the cupboards. As she goes to look, she explains, "The bruise will be gone tomorrow."
He makes an acknowledging sound — she's mentioned her healing before, but it's strange every time he remembers it — as he goes to pour off the extra coffee into another cup for her.
"Cream or sugar?"
She seems like someone who might take her coffee black; and, equally, she seems like she might enjoy the novelty of not doing so. Better to check.
She glances over at him from where she's climbed onto a countertop in hopes of reaching a cupboard that reliably has wedges of cheese inside it. "How do you drink yours?"
"Then I will, too." She has yet to settle on a preferred method of drinking coffee; every option seems to have its merits. It's most enjoyable, Laura's started to decide, to match soeone else's preferences for a cup or two.
Once she's acquired a suitable hunk of cheese, she finds some bread as well, slicing some off the loaf with a well-placed claw. Carrying both over to Holden, she starts making yet more slices, cheese and then bread, and then more cheese, and more bread. They stack up like an absurd sandwich, one layer and then another. It's enough for two people, not one. "How are you?"
He sets down a steaming cup near where Laura brings her food, clearly hers; and starts in on drinking his. The quantities of bread and cheese she's brought over aren't lost on him, and he decides in advance to accept the offering before it's quite made. There's no point to denying her, after all, and he isn't inclined to.
"Better now that we're back in Kirkwall."
— is the truth, actually, in a few senses. Easy to feel safer here, less in immediate danger, healing from multiple hands erasing all traces of the wounds from Tantervale save for a vague, fading pain his leg with all the recent rain.
Laura takes the cup with a little nod - as a good as a thank you in many cases - and takes a sip. Hot coffee after hot weather work isn't entirely satisfying, but the flavor is richly bitter, and that's what matters to her.
"I can." She reaches for the topmost slices of bread and cheese, folding them in half like a particularly anemic sandwich. Given the context of what everything's better than, she finds herself disinclined to talk about specifics here; of course being able to live with Matthias is preferable to a siege. The people left in Starkhaven no doubt would rather share a room with him as well. "The rest of the Marches were...difficult. I was in Tantervale, and then in Starkhaven."
He breathes out, nods once. No, it's not particularly surprising to hear. So many of them were, went out into the Free Marches as news of the severity of need poured in. And Laura isn't the kind of person to run from a fight.
"I'm glad you're safe."
Got back safely, in one piece, and will have the opportunity to recover from everything she saw and had to do. That's as much as anyone can hope for.
"Thank you. I am, too." Does it need to be specified that she means for him? She's not sure.
Ultimately, she doesn't, because she has other things she wants to say. After a mostly comfortable silence of chewing and sipping coffee and selecting her words with some care, Laura adds, "I know you don't wish to talk to me about it. But I hope you talk to someone."
She waits without impatience. Sometimes she struggles to know which words to use; in turn, the least she can do is offer others space to figure out the same.
After he answers, Laura takes another sip of her coffee.
"You are humoring me." It's a concept she's figured out in the last year, as she's become more aware of the times when people have agreed with her without actually agreeing with her.
"Laura. Hand in hand with not letting anyone else tell you how to live," and he knows how important that is to her, and of course it is, "is that you don't get to tell other people how to live."
What is there to think about? Factors he wouldn't even begin to know how to explain; an explanation that he doesn't, actually, specifically owe anyone. And more to the point, he's wound too fucking tight at the moment to get into this with her, or with anyone.
Her brows draw together a fraction as she polishes off a second cheese-and-bread sandwich. The sound of his breath, and the way that he sits, and his answer--they seem to say anger, if not the kind that leads to a thrown punch. It looks the way she feels when everything she feels turns inward.
"I do not wish to tell you what to do," she finally says. That much is true. What is also true is the fact that she knows what happens when misery festers under her own skin - it's a sensation she'd wish on no one within Riftwatch. "And I will not tell you how your life should be lived. But--"
James Holden is not like her. But a sort of concern lives within her anyway. "I do not want you to suffer."
"And I appreciate that," he says, and means it, even if it can sound like a dismissal. "But bringing this up every time something happens isn't helping me. People cope in their own ways; I have mine. You have yours."
And that's the thing, isn't it. She doesn't have to like how he lives, but she doesn't get to decide that, up to and including using this breed of pushiness. It certainly doesn't endear him to the idea of talking to anyone, least of all her, even if he might've been inclined to at some point.
"I understand that you want to help, but I'm not having this conversation with you again."
Her age, her constant work to understand the world she's in, got her this much leeway; but there are limits, even with him.
It is an unpleasant sensation, to sit there in the wake of the answer she receives. There's a strange heat behind her face, focused in on the bridge of her nose, despite the fact that she was punched in the side of the head tonight, not directly in the face. By comparison, her neck feels suddenly cold. And there is the wriggling awareness, in the pit of her stomach, that she has made a mistake.
Laura tries to figure out what the feeling is besides leave and hide. The part of her that has tried to live in this world is aware that if she leaves and hides, Holden will probably think less of her. She is not in physical danger, and she does not want her claws for purposes of self-defense; she cannot trust herself to wedge herself into a corner safely.
After several long seconds, she realizes that she's not going to be able to untangle this beyond a very general this is bad. And this is a conversation, which means there isn't time to try to sort it out in its entirety; it's already her turn to speak.
"We will not have this conversation again," she agrees, and her voice is more subdued than it already is by nature. "I apologize."
She sits where she is, with her dwindling pile of cheese and bread, and her partly drunk coffee, while Holden cleans up, staring at the place he was sitting a minute before. It feels wrong to move, somehow, without a dismissal from him - and perhaps more importantly, Laura suspects her ability to do anything besides sit there is currently compromised.
They say nothing else to each other, and when the coffee pot is put away - she hears a cupboard close, her gaze still unblinking on a kitchen chair - he goes. She waits until she can't hear his footsteps any longer before she tries to remember how to move.
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it's time for coffee-drinking.
The scent of coffee reaches her long before she's on the threshold of the kitchens, peering inside at Holden. "Yes, please. Is any dinner left?"
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pauses.
"Are you hurt?"
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"Cream or sugar?"
She seems like someone who might take her coffee black; and, equally, she seems like she might enjoy the novelty of not doing so. Better to check.
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"Neither," he says, "I drink it black."
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Once she's acquired a suitable hunk of cheese, she finds some bread as well, slicing some off the loaf with a well-placed claw. Carrying both over to Holden, she starts making yet more slices, cheese and then bread, and then more cheese, and more bread. They stack up like an absurd sandwich, one layer and then another. It's enough for two people, not one. "How are you?"
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"Better now that we're back in Kirkwall."
— is the truth, actually, in a few senses. Easy to feel safer here, less in immediate danger, healing from multiple hands erasing all traces of the wounds from Tantervale save for a vague, fading pain his leg with all the recent rain.
"I hope you can say the same."
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"I can." She reaches for the topmost slices of bread and cheese, folding them in half like a particularly anemic sandwich. Given the context of what everything's better than, she finds herself disinclined to talk about specifics here; of course being able to live with Matthias is preferable to a siege. The people left in Starkhaven no doubt would rather share a room with him as well. "The rest of the Marches were...difficult. I was in Tantervale, and then in Starkhaven."
So-- That explains that.
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"I'm glad you're safe."
Got back safely, in one piece, and will have the opportunity to recover from everything she saw and had to do. That's as much as anyone can hope for.
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Ultimately, she doesn't, because she has other things she wants to say. After a mostly comfortable silence of chewing and sipping coffee and selecting her words with some care, Laura adds, "I know you don't wish to talk to me about it. But I hope you talk to someone."
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He says, "Okay."
Which isn't a yes, but also isn't a no. Is, equally: I don't want to argue about this right now.
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After he answers, Laura takes another sip of her coffee.
"You are humoring me." It's a concept she's figured out in the last year, as she's become more aware of the times when people have agreed with her without actually agreeing with her.
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And takes a few sips of his coffee, lapsing back into silence.
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"Laura. Hand in hand with not letting anyone else tell you how to live," and he knows how important that is to her, and of course it is, "is that you don't get to tell other people how to live."
What is there to think about? Factors he wouldn't even begin to know how to explain; an explanation that he doesn't, actually, specifically owe anyone. And more to the point, he's wound too fucking tight at the moment to get into this with her, or with anyone.
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Her brows draw together a fraction as she polishes off a second cheese-and-bread sandwich. The sound of his breath, and the way that he sits, and his answer--they seem to say anger, if not the kind that leads to a thrown punch. It looks the way she feels when everything she feels turns inward.
"I do not wish to tell you what to do," she finally says. That much is true. What is also true is the fact that she knows what happens when misery festers under her own skin - it's a sensation she'd wish on no one within Riftwatch. "And I will not tell you how your life should be lived. But--"
James Holden is not like her. But a sort of concern lives within her anyway. "I do not want you to suffer."
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And that's the thing, isn't it. She doesn't have to like how he lives, but she doesn't get to decide that, up to and including using this breed of pushiness. It certainly doesn't endear him to the idea of talking to anyone, least of all her, even if he might've been inclined to at some point.
"I understand that you want to help, but I'm not having this conversation with you again."
Her age, her constant work to understand the world she's in, got her this much leeway; but there are limits, even with him.
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Laura tries to figure out what the feeling is besides leave and hide. The part of her that has tried to live in this world is aware that if she leaves and hides, Holden will probably think less of her. She is not in physical danger, and she does not want her claws for purposes of self-defense; she cannot trust herself to wedge herself into a corner safely.
After several long seconds, she realizes that she's not going to be able to untangle this beyond a very general this is bad. And this is a conversation, which means there isn't time to try to sort it out in its entirety; it's already her turn to speak.
"We will not have this conversation again," she agrees, and her voice is more subdued than it already is by nature. "I apologize."
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"Thank you."
And then puts away any coffee-making implements that need putting away, or cleans whatever may need to be cleaned. And, finally, leaves.
Good talk.
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They say nothing else to each other, and when the coffee pot is put away - she hears a cupboard close, her gaze still unblinking on a kitchen chair - he goes. She waits until she can't hear his footsteps any longer before she tries to remember how to move.