[She had almost terminated their connection. Now she sits there in her shitty in room in her shitty night clothes, holding it like a precious painted egg.]
[If would be convenient if the anger faded from her, there, but she has never been a convenient woman.]
You speak of forgiveness, as though I am the one that need pardon you.
[As he’d granted ‘our Ben’— or now in her wounded temper ‘that little pillock’— all absolution in prostration.
I miss you is not the same as I’m sorry, and he has to work in the pit of his own irritation and confusion to understand what it is she truly wants from him in this moment, but:]
[While Jone can think-- very well, sometimes in fact better-- when she's angry, thinking about people is another matter. Not people she loves. If she is looking to hurt, to wound, her heated mind is a wonder of implementation. If she is fearfully enraged when lives are at stake, her mind whirls like an arrow, perfectly shot. If she is wounded by the words of a friend, and they attempt some concession, the would chills, the infection quieted.]
[She takes a breath.]
What are you, then- Gab, you make me feel so bloody stupid sometimes. Don't make me guess.
[In some small way, he knows this already. Her gift had been hint enough, his own magnetic urge to continue to shadow her another— it was not Barrow's intervention that drove them apart, but Gabranth's own turmoil: something that still holds fast when she reaches for him.
He is used to this. To hurt, and its causation by way of his own hand. He does not want it, only what else is there?
Instead of all this, however, only the truth slips free.]
There's that sound again, the soft scoff of a breath where his tongue meets the back of his teeth, exhaling through his nose. Irritation. Indecision. His world was made to be simple. Definable.
She makes it ever more complex.]
I do not desire you to beg. I wish only for your safety, how do you fail to understand so often why that matters to me? Why must you ceaselessly press me to—
[He stops, there, another huff cut short.]
I am not a good man, Jone. I have never known the luxury of it.
You've never hurt me worse than I can handle. I'm a fighter, for fuck's sake, can't you take that serious? I've slammed you in the throat, headbutted you, bruised your ribs at least...
[If she sounds a little downtrodden, it's because she's feeling sorry for herself. She hates this sense of neediness. She hates needing anyone.]
[It still feels like begging.]
I'm no good woman. I like... you, Gabranth. Blimey, I thought we were on the same... You can never hit me worse than I been hit before.
[There's a growl from the other end of the line, abrupt and stubborn as the man himself:]
I do not wish to.
[And yet he does, clearly he so must, for it's only her he wounds. Only her he seems to want to see bleed when the fire of fury meets his veins. The only thought that's haunted him since.]
What must I say to make you understand that I would rather see you endure this world— to endure my own presence— than fall prey to its cruelty?
Perhaps he needed to know where the edges of his own cast shadow ended, and this world's began; he is unused to it, to being anything but a nightmare. Albeit one with purpose.
The line goes quiet for far too long before he adds, hushed:]
[Jone, meanwhile, has given up. She sits on her bed and stares at the crystal, waiting for it to disconnect, and then it doesn't. There is no small amount of willpower involved, in making her voice less haggard, desperate.]
Jone has wormed her way into a doublet and proper trousers by the time Gabranth arrives, though without belts and ties, they hang awkwardly off her, as though attempting to hide the muscular form beneath. Jone doesn't really care. Her overriding desire, though all of this, is Gabranth's comfort. She realizes, now, she made him feel wicked. Whether that was because she's a woman, or a different sort of fighter, she doesn't know. But it's passed, now, if they can keep their truth.
She's relieved when she greets him at the threshold, and welcomes him in with a hand to his metal side, as though he was any guest being ushered in. "You've been well?"
She fully expects him to complain. That would be a dream, after all the silence.
If that question is laid bait for what she needs, then she is gifted exactly that, for he snarls in his throat as he removes his helm with little ceremony, striding past her into meager space (and yet still it is far, far better than anything he's been accustomed to, aside from perhaps small sips of relief in Byerly and Benedict's much grander quarters).
"It is insufferable. There is no rest. No relief that isn't filled already with bile or the stench of the unwashed." And then he pauses, perhaps realizing she may not in fact know anything of his own quarters— or with whom its shared.
Maybe, maybe, if Gabranth can take some rest here, he can take it back at the Gallows. She doubts it, but refuses to give up on that stubborn dream.
She brings him her half-eaten dinner, nug steak and warm ale, and sets it to his side. It's only an offer if he takes it. Like feeding a kicked dog, he is.
"Then rest here, at least for a little while," she sits on her bed, appreciating the shape of him, there in her vision once again. "It'd set my heart at ease, knowing you were well."
She has no idea who his roommate might be, hasn't looked up the rosters. She's not really sure why she's here, except to prove she can be.
(To be fair, Zoya does share Jone's room, but she's ignoring that for the moment. The second bed is set neatly aside, ignored. Gabranth is the true one; she is always the liar.)
The steak he leaves as it is, the ale remains untouched, and with the way his shoulders stay drawn tight he does indeed paint the image of the stray hound he'd always made himself out to be— but her offer cuts that short as quickly as his ire, pale eyes glancing tentatively up towards her from over the rise of his own shoulder, half hidden in shadow.
For once, without baring teeth, he seems to be considering her gesture.
"...it cannot be for long."
If he does this. If he concedes, she need remember he cannot stay.
(Though it occurs to her, if he seemed amenable, she would indulge him... right about after she checked if he'd been blood magicked into absolute madness.)
She takes a gauntleted hand. "I worry about you too, you berk. That's just how it is."
He snorts when she counters, the contours of his nose crinkling like a beast unsettled. She teases him too often, and he’s memory enough of her prior jokes to think she’s doing anything else other than tugging on his own figurative tail.
But when her hand finds his, that brief, flickering squall quiets.
“If this is true, then you’ve no further argument.” His brow creases, he does not release her. “Your reason for concern in regards to my own well-being is no different than what I bear for you in turn.”
She must accept that truth, that to him, she’s worth safeguarding. That it reflects nothing of her skill, her merit. Only him.
"Calm down, I know you've standards." If she thought she'd have any chance in hell, she'd act differently, maybe. Jone instead remembers that girl child hiccuping selfish sorrow on a hillside in the planes. She hasn't explained that; she's too much a coward.
Instead, she holds his metal hand and imagines what his real one must feel like, hidden under all this metal. How warm? How cold? Callused, definitely. Would they match?
"You remember what we said? Until death. I still mean it. And if that means no more sparing, I'll bloody live."
“You are a fool if you think that I’ve any breed of— Jone, my life is my work.”
Oh, never mind.
Irritation still clinging to his tightened jaw, he leaves his hand within her own, though if he’d cared to, he could easily withdraw. They hardly speak the same language, for all their similarities: at times like this more than any other, he wonders if she grasps his words for what they truly are, or if she skews them like a mirror held askance in hand. Distorted by disbelief, by differing worlds, by her own perceived reflection.
So instead, he uses that segue to change the subject.
“I did not abandon you. Not even in distance. Surely you knew this.”
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[It is that she says, forgive, that pulls his breath quick. An interjection he cannot help but make.]
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[If would be convenient if the anger faded from her, there, but she has never been a convenient woman.]
What, then?
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[As he’d granted ‘our Ben’— or now in her wounded temper ‘that little pillock’— all absolution in prostration.
I miss you is not the same as I’m sorry, and he has to work in the pit of his own irritation and confusion to understand what it is she truly wants from him in this moment, but:]
That is not so.
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[She takes a breath.]
What are you, then- Gab, you make me feel so bloody stupid sometimes. Don't make me guess.
[Tired frustration, that, she still has.]
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[This is for your own good, Jone. That is why he withdraws, even now, regardless of his own desire for anything but.]
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...So? I don't want you all distant. Unless it makes you... fuck, happier, I guess.
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He is used to this. To hurt, and its causation by way of his own hand. He does not want it, only what else is there?
Instead of all this, however, only the truth slips free.]
...it does not.
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[Still, she's tentative.]
Then... don't make me beg. Everything's better with you around.
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There's that sound again, the soft scoff of a breath where his tongue meets the back of his teeth, exhaling through his nose. Irritation. Indecision. His world was made to be simple. Definable.
She makes it ever more complex.]
I do not desire you to beg. I wish only for your safety, how do you fail to understand so often why that matters to me? Why must you ceaselessly press me to—
[He stops, there, another huff cut short.]
I am not a good man, Jone. I have never known the luxury of it.
[He should have done better, and he failed.]
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[If she sounds a little downtrodden, it's because she's feeling sorry for herself. She hates this sense of neediness. She hates needing anyone.]
[It still feels like begging.]
I'm no good woman. I like... you, Gabranth. Blimey, I thought we were on the same... You can never hit me worse than I been hit before.
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I do not wish to.
[And yet he does, clearly he so must, for it's only her he wounds. Only her he seems to want to see bleed when the fire of fury meets his veins. The only thought that's haunted him since.]
What must I say to make you understand that I would rather see you endure this world— to endure my own presence— than fall prey to its cruelty?
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[She sounds a bit tired; this hasn't gone at all like she hoped.]
I'll swear we never fight again. Any oath you like. I won't goad you like I did. That was me.
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Perhaps he needed to know where the edges of his own cast shadow ended, and this world's began; he is unused to it, to being anything but a nightmare. Albeit one with purpose.
The line goes quiet for far too long before he adds, hushed:]
I have missed your company in turn.
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Missed you like a fucking limb. Bastard.
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[Bastard. He does indeed deserve that, though it's as welcome as warm embers to hear in this moment.]
...this mission is unbearable.
[Is this his attempt at broaching familiar conversation the way they used to? It certainly does seem like it, if not clumsy in its make.]
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I've a room to meself.
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[He's made trips to cooler safe havens for less. And this— feels correct.]
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She's relieved when she greets him at the threshold, and welcomes him in with a hand to his metal side, as though he was any guest being ushered in. "You've been well?"
She fully expects him to complain. That would be a dream, after all the silence.
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"It is insufferable. There is no rest. No relief that isn't filled already with bile or the stench of the unwashed." And then he pauses, perhaps realizing she may not in fact know anything of his own quarters— or with whom its shared.
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She brings him her half-eaten dinner, nug steak and warm ale, and sets it to his side. It's only an offer if he takes it. Like feeding a kicked dog, he is.
"Then rest here, at least for a little while," she sits on her bed, appreciating the shape of him, there in her vision once again. "It'd set my heart at ease, knowing you were well."
She has no idea who his roommate might be, hasn't looked up the rosters. She's not really sure why she's here, except to prove she can be.
(To be fair, Zoya does share Jone's room, but she's ignoring that for the moment. The second bed is set neatly aside, ignored. Gabranth is the true one; she is always the liar.)
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For once, without baring teeth, he seems to be considering her gesture.
"...it cannot be for long."
If he does this. If he concedes, she need remember he cannot stay.
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(Though it occurs to her, if he seemed amenable, she would indulge him... right about after she checked if he'd been blood magicked into absolute madness.)
She takes a gauntleted hand. "I worry about you too, you berk. That's just how it is."
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He snorts when she counters, the contours of his nose crinkling like a beast unsettled. She teases him too often, and he’s memory enough of her prior jokes to think she’s doing anything else other than tugging on his own figurative tail.
But when her hand finds his, that brief, flickering squall quiets.
“If this is true, then you’ve no further argument.” His brow creases, he does not release her. “Your reason for concern in regards to my own well-being is no different than what I bear for you in turn.”
She must accept that truth, that to him, she’s worth safeguarding. That it reflects nothing of her skill, her merit. Only him.
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Instead, she holds his metal hand and imagines what his real one must feel like, hidden under all this metal. How warm? How cold? Callused, definitely. Would they match?
"You remember what we said? Until death. I still mean it. And if that means no more sparing, I'll bloody live."
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Oh, never mind.
Irritation still clinging to his tightened jaw, he leaves his hand within her own, though if he’d cared to, he could easily withdraw. They hardly speak the same language, for all their similarities: at times like this more than any other, he wonders if she grasps his words for what they truly are, or if she skews them like a mirror held askance in hand. Distorted by disbelief, by differing worlds, by her own perceived reflection.
So instead, he uses that segue to change the subject.
“I did not abandon you. Not even in distance. Surely you knew this.”
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