closed.

[propulsion]

WHO: Tony Stark, Joselyn Smythe
WHAT: Even super secret mage cabal does not interfere with date night. Or does it???
WHEN: Evening after the emergency meeting
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: n/a

[ It's late, by the time they get around to sitting down and eating. Tony is a fan of fancy indoor picnic mode when it comes to date night, so they're sitting on a blanket on the floor with a wooden platter of slightly misshapen pizza slices and an open bottle of red wine. The windows are open to usher in whatever cool breeze happens to flutter their way, which makes some chimes he has hanging over the sill click and ring together.

They're doing the replays. Not the big stuff, that's already been conveyed, but the funny comments, the little observations, both from the emergency meeting (that, whatever, Tony was entitled to attend anyway), and the division head huddle (which isn't so sacred, another kind of performance).

Still, it's a switch to business when he asks; ]

So are you gonna go?

[ —leaning forward to use a knife edge to better separate some pizza slices. ]

Comments

[obdurata]

That's not something I want to do.

( it's—

complicated. that's not just the sister thing, not any more, not even if he's absolutely right that that's how it started. miriam and joselyn aren't even completely on the same page, any more, about exactly what it means...but a mage is what joselyn has been, ostensibly, for more of her life than not. she grew up in a circle. mages have been her people, her only people, for a long time; mages who she fought and bled alongside in the rebellion.

the identity that she's carved out for herself, apart from miriam, is still: a mage. joselyn smythe is a mage. has guided young mages, has been relied upon, has relied upon.

she's lived with the risks that go with that for a long time now. it's nothing she's afraid of continuing to live with; what she might lose is much more frightening. )

[propulsion]

[ He can tell a non-negotiable when he sees it.

He doesn't have to love it, and appears not to, mouth winching to the side as he considers her across from him. Takes a sip of wine, makes it a longer sip after a second passes, until all that remains is a penny-sized circle of dark red at the bottom. ]

But if you think about it, this is mainly about what I want, [ is a joke, the self-aware kind. He has those. ] And I'd prefer that you, uh, did. Because maybe this whole thing gets gnarly, and you get hurt, or enCircled, and I don't think that's gonna work out, again, for me.

[obdurata]

( joselyn weighs that — it's not nothing. tony is not an insignificant part of her life, now, one of the few parts of it that isn't directly tied to the being a mage or not thing, and in the many things that growing up in the circle warped about her interpersonal relationships 'wanting the people you love to be as safe as is possible for them to be' isn't one of those things.

she exhales. buys herself some time with the wine. says, )

Those are different things, ( even though maybe they aren't, exactly, or at least not completely separate different things— ) it's not as if I would stop fighting, no matter anything else. No matter what I do or don't do or say, there's no...

( she shakes her head. )

I didn't fight in the rebellion to keep up appearances.

[propulsion]

[ After a moment, Tony evaluates the remaining pizza. He wishes he could explain pizza. Like, he makes a good pizza now, don't get him wrong. It's absolutely pizza. But he isn't sure exactly how to make, you know, Nasty Pizza. Dripping with oil, faintly radioactive, artery-clogging, vaguely flavoured in the grease-stained cardboard box it came in. Watching a movie, listening to a record, going for a drive.

Requisite bout of distracting homesickness swallowed, he pushes the last slice to her. ]

How old were you?

[ He can't touch the rest of it. Not now. It'll all change tomorrow and they'll have to do this all over again. So here: when did little Joselyn learn to lie so well? ]

Whose idea?

[obdurata]

( she holds the slice more than makes any immediate moves to eat it, considering the question—

some of the details of time have got hazy, over the years. one day was very like another in the circle; one year very like another, mostly, and marking things like birthdays and the passage of a year was not a terribly high priority for the people who could pay the most attention. the timeline isn't exact any more. she and miriam can ballpark their age more than nail it to a year precise, )

Maybe we were eleven or twelve, ( eventually, ) at the outside. We were still little girls. We were—

the same, Mim and I. Exactly the same, until we weren't and they took her away.

( she puts the pizza down and drinks the wine. )

She had to help me, once I was there. A Templar figured us out before we were due to be harrowed, but he fancied my sister so he covered for us through the harrowings, gave us enough warning to make sure it was Mim, both times. But I got myself there on my own. We weren't anyone important enough to have been able to write letters, before. I couldn't tell her what I was doing.

[propulsion]

[ He could be making great Parent Trap references right now. Olsen twins circa Full House. Heroically, Tony does not, nor even tell her he could, shutting up and listening as his gift to her in light of uncomfortable mentions of prison guards fancying their minor wards or whatever was happening there.

Canned laughter ringing hollow. She speaks, and he picks up the wine to top himself off, and then her as well when her glass lowers. ]

You miss your folks?

[obdurata]

( she says, ) No, ( and it sounds true. thoughtful, a thought she has circled to no particular end or conclusion once or twice — she remembers holden asking her about home, and the fleeting confusion between the two of them when it hadn't occurred to her that he didn't mean the circle. )

I don't really remember them. A little, maybe— impressions in old memories.

( she lifts her glass again, now it's refilled, )

Mim and I— we've been the most important people in our lives, our whole lives. We've always chosen each other. This is the longest we've ever been apart. No contest, even. And it was— different, when she was here. Than it had been.

[propulsion]

[ There's something about it that niggles him, and maybe that's just some riotously unfettered late-orphaned only-child syndrome at play. He's self-aware enough (or clocked in enough hours of therapy) to know the ways he can't relate, knows he doesn't have to relate to care about a person and the things important to them,

but it bears saying; ]

You did a lot more choosing, [ not argumentative. What argument is there to win? More just pointing at a thing, to get her thoughts on it. ] A lot of giving up. She got pretty lucky.

[obdurata]

( that's as may be.

that's not untrue, so far as it goes, but joselyn has had time in their separation to think about other things, too, and what she says slowly — uncomfortably setting words to a thing that in the circle she could never have borne looking full in the face— )

Miriam did twice as many lessons. Two harrowings, and surviving one's never a guarantee. And she didn't...

( it's amazing how fast a drink can empty, actually. )

I was just there, one day.

( joselyn has never allowed herself to think about whether or not miriam would have asked her. it was a long time before it even occurred to her to wonder at what had been so inescapably obvious to her. miriam would never have given her up, but was that the same thing as wanting?

miriam's not dead. she could ask her. she hasn't. she doesn't know if she ever will, and it feels like a widening gulf when she can still remember a time that it never felt as if they needed to ask each other anything. a glance, a gesture, a knowing. it feels like a loss that closes her throat; it feels like something she's unwilling to name aloud having lost. )

[propulsion]

You wouldn't be fighting in the rebellion if you didn't recognise the cost of living in a Circle, [ he says, too fast to stop himself.

But she paid for it and sounds like she would again, so Tony bends at the waist so he can reach her other hand and take it in his. Fine. It's fine. And she's right—the Chantry would probably laugh off the notion of a mage in her forties turning around and declaring there'd been a clerical error.

Worth a shot if she wanted it. But here we are. ]

It belongs to you. Being a mage, being in the rebellion, all yours. And worst comes to worst, I'll be there.

[ She wasn't asking, but he's saying. ]

Kind of against my will, but that's how we roll around here.

[obdurata]

I wouldn't want to do it without you.

( you know, she might; but then she might end up doing it without miriam, and miriam's slight loyalist leanings. she doesn't want to, it wouldn't be her preference, it matters all these things that she has to weigh and that he is so important among them.

it's one thing to do what you believe is best and right, but she'd rather not have to choose between who she loves and who she feels a responsibility to protect if at all possible. it's reassuring, the idea that at least with him, she won't have to. )

I don't want to do most things without you, any more.

[propulsion]

[ Tony stills, twigging to how she has said a significant thing and allowing it to sink in, locked in his awkwardish curl forward and holding her hand. This is probably the part where he blurts something like let's get married as a kind of panic response, but he manages not to do that.

His mouth twitches. A familiar expression, where a genuine feeling is attempting to make his face express it in the form of a smile or something.

As mentioned previously, this is about him. ]

It was the pizza, wasn't it.