(CLOSED) You wouldn't hurt them

[sprent]

WHO: Gela and you
WHAT: h/c (hafterdemon content)
WHEN: After pride, before the fall <- modplot
WHERE: Many different places
NOTES: Reference to & discussion of kidnapping, mistreatment, starvation, trauma, neglect

Starters below. Let me know if you'd like a starter!

Comments

[sprent]

He was right to wait her out.

Yesterday, had she received a gentle knock at her door, Gela would have ducked behind her desk and gone utterly silent until the person knocking gave up and went away again. To-day she feels much sturdier, and has to admit she has been sitting with a stack of paper and scanning each of them intently, one after the other, without getting any further. She says, "Hello," distractedly. "Come in."

Rowntree is good, neutral ground. He'll see her in her chair, one leg tucked underneath of herself. The paper she is holding flops backward in her hand, away from her. She still looks thin, tired, but she's dressed in her typical bright colours, all jewel tones, with hair pulled back from her face. There are a few curls loose around her temples.

He came to see her, but she still says, "Could I ask your advice?"

[luaithre]

He'd entered with his hand still resting on the door handle, as if to communicate some amount of temporariness. Just stopping by, for whatever reason.

Instead, he steps in, draws the door along behind him to shut. A flicking glance around a room he hasn't had reason to linger in, before his study returns to her at her desk. The difference is stark, the demon who'd mimicked her not so long ago and this one seated here—and not because the demon was unconvincing, but because Gela has changed. Certainly, she's eaten less.

"Aye?" he prompts, wandering in a few steps, arms folding comfortably. His coat is back in his office, hanging, but still in respectable layers, a waistcoat and the glint of cufflinks at his wrists.

[sprent]

Yes, he is well put together. Gela is very aware of how different she must look, how much thinner her face is and that she's wearing one more layer than he is, a thick, warm one on top of her long-sleeved blouse. She resists the urge to pluck at anything and gestures at the stack of papers:

"I can't tell what I wrote."

They are not all dated.

... Did she write this missive, this trades communication, this proposal for a new contact? It looks like her writing, to be certain, but it also looked like her face and body and talked with her voice. She can't be sure.

[luaithre]

The study he makes of her is obvious but brief; differences noted, marked, and moved on from.

He approaches the desk at her gesture, now turning that attention to the pages. A harder thing to discern. Idly, Marcus picks up the nearest page in question—not that he has any way of identifying her handwriting or finding a hidden date, just curiousity. Something darkly amusing about a demon forced to do paperwork.

"You might be able to run it by the Diplomacy office," doesn't sound altogether convinced. And then again, "Or burn it, start again. Anything important will present itself in time."

If he is joking, it's extremely dry. The page is set down; the arm of the chair sitting at an angle on the opposite side of the desk is gripped, tugged nearer.

[sprent]

"Maybe," Gela says half-heartedly of his suggestion to take it to the Diplomacy office (working backwards sounds slightly excruciating to her at this point in time); his other suggestion gets a tired smile, fingers brushing through her hair, snagging on curls.

Why would the demon have done paperwork? And if it had done any, it would have done the paperwork pretending to be her, no? Maybe she should carry on and... see what happens. Gela shrugs. "You're probably right." Anything important will present itself in time. Or annoyance. She can deal with it later.

She waits for him to have a seat before she asks him, forcing her voice to be casual. "Do you know if it was sharing my secrets?"