recreatable | open post.

— She enjoys feeling out the edges of what's deemed probable or possible. She enjoys finding limits. She wonders what she might find embarrassing. More so, she wonders what he'd find embarrassing. Not to mention the fact that embarrassment is context-dependent. Jasnah thinks there's a lot she could endure in the name of winning. We'll see.

She lifts her third card. Eyes it, chewing briefly on her bottom lip. She remembers an anecdote Wit once told her about cheating at cards. Was it a game like this?

"I'll stand."

She's sitting at seventeen, right now. It's a terribly safe place to be. But safe is as good as risky when there's nothing yet on the line.

There's nothing to lose except his pride, although that is admittedly exceedingly fragile. Verso takes another look at his cards, contemplative. It's not a great hand, but it's not an awful one, either. He could hit and still be relatively safe, assuming he didn't land on one of the higher worth cards.

But he let Alicia win when they played pétanque for the first time, and she'd been so proud that she'd played with him all day. "I'll stand, too," he says, before turning his cards over. Two threes and a nine.

— Unfortunately for Verso, he's playing cards with more of a Big Sister type. She reacts to his hand with a slight pursing of her lips and furrowing of her brow. Not...disappointment, per se. More like confusion. Would she have stuck on a fifteen? Should she stick on a fifteen, if she achieves one in future? Maybe Verso is more cautious than she first assumed.

Card by card, she reveals her hand: six, four, seven.

"What a waste of a win," she exhales — confusion giving way to a mild smile. Implying, perhaps, that she wished she'd devised a dare for him if she was going to win the and anyway.

Ah, maybe it was too easy of a win for her. Maybe, he thinks, Jasnah enjoys things more when they're hard-won. (Maybe he should have been playing a lot more hard-to-get this whole time.) He considers her cards, then leans forward to collect them and slide them back on the deck.

He shuffles again as he talks, as flashy as he can manage when the makeshift cards lack the structure of typical cardstock. Maybe he can get his hands on some when they return to Urithuru, and some paint. Verso has always preferred for his artistic talents to be in service of fun and games first and foremost.

"You're right," he says lightly. "You could've had me streaking down the main deck."

Her mild smile persists. As if, maybe, she might have been just cutthroat enough to make good on that dare — except she'd never risk the blow back of how it might escalate against her.

She taps the floorboard. Another insistent, eager sign to deal her back in.

"This time," she announces, "if you lose I expect to see your best Torreth impression."

Verso enjoys the evident eagerness—a reflection of his own impatience—but he likes the ridiculousness of her 'dare' even more. He's half-inclined to ask if she doesn't want something more academic and pragmatic, like a lecture on Gestral physiology or an explanation of the seasons in Lumière and on the Continent, but he's reluctant to look a gift horse in the mouth. So, he finishes shuffling with a little flourish (he's getting better at shuffling these cards now) and deftly flicks two cards her way.

"All right," he says, picking two cards for himself and peering at them. "But turnabout is fair play." That is: he expects to see hers if she loses. Much more surprising coming from her. Hell, he'd do a Torreth impression for free.

He places an ace face-up. "The ace," he explains, "counts as eleven, unless it would cause you to go bust." To go over 21, he assumes she'll understand from context clues. "In which case it counts as one."

"Bit uninspired," she complains. "Can't think up a dare of your own?"

It takes two tries to pick the cards off the floor, this time. A crinkled expression of frustration. Then, after a beat, she replaces them with the top card visible: eight, unfortunately. Of the two, that's the one she would have preferred to keep to herself.

Verso's mouth twitches almost imperceptibly. "I'll hit," he says as he grabs another card from the top of the deck. His mouth twitches again. "What about you?"

— That's what she was waiting for. Some...indication, she supposed, on whether they traded back and forth who would make their decision first. She likes this position, going second, eking out a bit more information with which to choose what to do next.

She scrutinizes him a second longer.

"Hit," she says simply. Annunciating whatever Alethi consonant that is with a hard tap of her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

And when he gives it to her, she drops her scrutiny from his face to her new card. Hmm.

It's sort of fun being the recipient of her scrutiny, when it's not scrutiny over his incorrect actions or his immortality. Verso likes having all of her attention like this, on (relatively) his own merit instead of her interest in some nugget of information that he has to share, and he's already scheming how to get her to play with him at least one more time before they disembark.

"Stand," he says, echoing her crisp intonation.

She assumes he likes what he has. Or — of course — the other option: it's simply high enough that he can't risk...what was it? Busting. Jasnah, on the other hand, finds herself in the miserable mindset of having a result too low to stand if he's standing. And just high enough to remind her of how easily she'd gone over in the first round.

Staring at him, with her dignity on the line, she once again crooks her finger in that same slight give it over gesture.

"I'll take a fourth."

She's not happy about it.

Verso raises an eyebrow, but says nothing as he slides her another card. "Stand?" he asks, and I'm just gonna godmode that she doesn't get yet another card because otherwise we'll be here all day. When he flips his cards over, it's with a sense of smug self-satisfaction: the ace, a two, and a six. 19 altogether.

"Your turn," he says, pleased.

Never fear! She was doomed to bust, because fate and the narrative are cruel like that. So before they get any further in the round, upon eyeing her fourth card, she lightly tosses all four onto the floor beside her knee.

"Storms," she curses, "storming...storms."

A four and an eight — her first two cards — followed by a two and (finally) an accursed jack. She went from fourteen to twenty-four in one hit, and clearly feels a bit sour about it. Not, like, bitter-sour. More like petulant-sour. She was really hoping to avoid the forfeit on this one.

Smoothly: "I'm learning a lot about Rosharan curses today."

Because he can figure out from context clues what storms, storming storms is supposed to be. The corner of his mouth turns up. Maybe, if he ever allows her to get on the subject of linguistics, they can compare swears.

He gathers their cards up, setting them back on the stack yet again.

"...At your leisure." You know, whenever.

For a moment Jasnah simply stares at the cards. As if they have betrayed her. Personally. Philosophically. "...So be it," she murmurs. A wager is a wager, and she did agree to the terms. She is honourable about it.

She straightens her spine. Lifts her chin. Folds her safehand behind her back with exaggerated propriety, already slipping into character even as she clearly hates every second of it. And then, she imitates Torreth.

Imperfectly. Awkwardly. Jasnah may be a professional at performing her own authority and presence, but clearly has never spent much time inhabiting anyone else's. Nevertheless, she does try. Earnestly. She has observed this man. She has studied him. She knows his mannerisms, even if she is stiff and strange and bad at performing them. She shifts posture. A puff of the chest, shoulders squared like a man who has never once in his life questioned whether he had the right to take up space. Her expression holds that vaguely constipated concentration Torreth gets whenever he believes everything is someone else's fault. All of it over-acted.

Jasnah drops her voice into a gravelly rumble entirely unbefitting a queen of Alethkar: "Punctuality! These dullards wouldn't know punctuality if it hit them on the head — pick up the pace, boys!"

And then, with the exact cadence he used yesterday while lecturing a sailor who merely coughed: "If one of you dunces so much as sneezes near my rigging today, I swear by the Ten Fools I'll have you swabbing the hull with your storming eyelashes."

She even gestures with her whole arm, Torreth-style. Aggressive and sweeping. But the moment the last word leaves her mouth, she stops. Every line of her body reverts back to Jasnah Kholin, scholar-queen, dignity reassembled axon by axon. And she's grimacing.

Verso practically beams. Or, well, something close to it; 'beaming' implies that there's some sort of inner light shining out, the likes of which he's never had. He's certainly smiling though, grinning wide from ear to ear, as his shoulders shake a little from silent laughter. It was—

Very un-Jasnah. And very cute, although he doesn't dare say that. He has the feeling that she might not appreciate such descriptions.

"Wow," he says, voice trembling a little in amusement. "You're a natural actress." Hardly. She was a bit stiff and awkward, and despite the surprisingly observant imitation of even Torreth's most imperceptible mannerisms, there'd been something just slightly off about it. However, it had been charming as hell.

"I'm beginning to think I should quit while I'm ahead." Clearly the bets won't get any better than this.

Her posture briefly collapses in on herself — not defeated, not dejected, but perhaps just a little bit exhausted from stretching these figurative muscles. Jasnah is self-aware enough, possessing of enough rigorous insight, that she knows what she's good at. And she knows what she's not good at. Intellectually, there's no shame in failing at something that was never in your wheelhouse; realistically, however, there's a flicker of it fighting in the pit of her stomach. It manifests as a brief burst of colour in her cheeks.

Gone, as quickly as it arrived.

Grousing, complaining: "That would be unsportsmanlike, I think."

Quitting while he's ahead. Without giving her an opportunity to avenge herself.

Poor sportsmanship, so says the woman who pouted like a child upon losing. He smirks, an irritatingly pleased-with-himself expression on his face, but he relents nonetheless. Another round, then another, then another until he's so tired he can't count properly anymore, and then it's off to bed. The rest of their days on the sea continue with a similar bent: attending mess, playing a few rounds, switching off who gets to sleep.

It was her turn to sleep the night before they disembark, so he's especially sluggish as they make their way onto Thaylen land, lugging their belongings like he pack mule he's apparently become. It's still early morning, sun not yet risen, and the streets of Thaylen City are all a little fuzzy without the light.

It's a bit creepy, alone out here. He glances behind them at the sound of movement, reluctant to jump at shadows, but— maybe it's just an alley cat (or crab) digging through trash. Nothing there.

"Where did you say we were going, again?"

Damnation, but she's relieved to be off that ship. Feet on firm land. No longer implicated in a fictional marriage with a fictional motherhood ahead of her. Not that she can smoothly reinhabit her true identity. Not yet, at any rate. She wants the opportunity to touch base with Fen, Theylenah's ruler. She wants the opportunity to get her hands on a spanreed and hear something, anything, from her family back in Kholinar. Having been at sea for so long, she has no way of knowing whether or not this was some coordinated attempt.

"That pastry shop I mentioned. It's in the Low Ward. Not far."

Insert here Jasnah's brief, helpful description of said pastry shop, including loose directions. Nothing overtly helpful, as she intends to direct them there herself. But a landmark or three are included in her explanation. Theylen City is a cramped port of industry and trade. It's easy to see that much of its growth and activity is centered on the docks, built inside a huge lait that provides natural protection from highstorms.

"As good a place as any to learn what's been happening on land while we were at sea. I'd rather not go to Theylen City's Oathgate directly."

Her tone is hushed. Private, meant only for him. Which means she keeps her pace close and intimate with Verso, just like how they'd talked together aboard the ship. And her explanations are vague, open-ended. She isn't prepared to out Jochi's pseudonym without having a chance to warn him first. All that matters for now is that the pastry shop is a safe place.

Jasnah takes hold of his elbow. Brief, pausing, holding him in place as she scans the scattershot of alleyways and storefronts that butt against the docks. After a moment, humming a single note to herself, she nudges them both towards a particular crooked path between a customs house and a carpentry shop.

The warmth of her touch lingers against his elbow, and it's that he's thinking of as they round the corner into the narrow pathway, and it's that which distracts him from the figure pressed against the customs house wall, the glint of metal in his hand. It happens before he's even consciously aware of there being someone else there: the sound of unsheathing, then the squelching of blood.

He smells it before he sees it, a familiar, coppery stench. Chroma sparks in his palms, weaponry materializing in his hands, but Jasnah's assailant is already running off after one good strike, blood dripping off of his knife and onto the cobblestone as he absconds. Verso watches his broad shoulders as he disappears, shifting on his feet to follow, but... oh, there's still Jasnah to think of.

The weapons dematerialize the next moment as he turns back to look at her, both hands instinctively settling on her forearms to keep her upright as he glances down at the bright red blood seeping from the wound in her gut, and— he's been here before. Just like this. Holding her like this, watching her bleed, gently cradling her as she died hating him—

He looks back up, eyes wide, and presses his palm firmly against the wound to stem the flow of blood. "You're okay," he lies.

Ever since they stepped onto dry land, Jasnah has been running three tracks of thought in flawless parallel: first — speaking with Verso, describing the pastry shop she remembers tucked behind a tailor, its awning striped in Thaylen blue; second — mentally cataloguing who she must contact first once she gets her hands on Jochi's spanreed set; third — maintaining a thin reservoir of stormlight in her veins. Just enough to keep exhaustion at bay, to soften last night's ache from half-dozing folded over the ship's desk. It's inefficient, wildly so; stormlight held too long slips away, leaks, evaporates. Still, she does it. She needs the edge.

It should soothe. But instead it flickers. Fades. Her eyes should glow faintly; instead they dim. Ivory? Nothing. No presence. No warm tug in the back of her mind. It's like shouting into a deep, black well. Something wicked and fearful grips Jasnah's gut.

She turns, instinct sharpening, but the alley is already bent around a figure too close — far too close — moving with a muffled heaviness, as though the very air around him has been deadened. One of Torreth's sailors. A face she saw only twice at sea. A name she never bothered to learn.

There is no warning hiss of a weapon through air. There is only pressure, then pain.

The knife slips beneath her ribs with a horrifying, efficient intimacy. Angled upward, deliberate as a surgeon's incision. The pain is bright and electric. She tastes metal like biting her own tongue. I have been here before, she thinks, as her mind gives way to a heedless animal panic. Her stormlight surges instinctively to meet the wound...and does almost nothing. A dull shimmer. A faint easing. But it refuses to mend. Refuses to draw. Refuses to respond. She should be flooding with light. Investiture. Instead, she's bleeding.

Her breath stutters. Ivory remains maddeningly absent. Hells! Where is Ivory? Her left hand works weakly at the air, as if she could still summon him.

The sailor is already running; and then Verso is there, and for one obscenely long second, she laughs in confusion. Why is Ivory in Verso's hand? She watches this with a kind of delayed confusion, as though her mind hits a patch of ice and skids. Her knees go soft. She hears herself murmur, dazed, almost apologetic, wrong wrong wrong: "—you should have told me you have a Shardblade."

Her hand presses weakly to her own side, gloved fingers tangling sticky and wet with Verso's. They come away red, and then her balance gives out entirely. She grabs for the nearest anchor — his shoulder — fingers clenching uselessly. The world tilts. A wave of nausea sweeps her vision sideways. Jasnah tries to pull them both into Shadesmar in one final attempt to escape the moment; stormlight flickers in her eyes one final time, but nothing happens.

Under any other circumstance, he'd be excited to feel her fingers against his, but he can't muster up any enthusiasm for it in this situation. The fabric feels wet with blood, and there's no point in her ruining her glove when she doesn't have enough strength to staunch the bleeding, but it's too late now. He watches the stormlight glimmer in her eyes, frowning as his palm digs in deeper against the wound. It hurts, probably, but if there's anything he's learned, it's that sometimes you have to hurt someone to help them.

"Hey," he says, patting her arm insistently to get her attention. There's a faintly glassy look in her eyes that he doesn't like. Then, a little more forcefully: "Jasnah." It's rare that he calls her by name, so he hopes it'll stand out to her enough to cut through what must be a haze of adrenaline.

Authoritative but not unkind, as is befitting an older brother: "You need to heal yourself."

It's what she was trying to do before, he thinks, but perhaps it hurts too much, maybe she's too tired. It doesn't matter. She'd said she could heal, so— "You have to do it now."

"Ivory," she grinds out. The word cracks against her teeth and bubbles on her lips with the wrong kind of warmth. It's both plea and explanation. Ivory, where are you? and I can't sense Ivory. A spike of fresh panic fractures through her ribs. It's as if the bond is gone, missing, broken. The sound she sobs is a messy mixture of grief and horror.

— Then Verso's hand clamps against her side and the breath is punched out of her. Half-gagged, half-groaned. The pain blooms violently outward, all heat and pressure, radiating through her abdomen in sick waves. She can't tell where the panic ends and her body's helpless alarm begins; both feel like they're dragging her down, pulling her under.

If she lets her eyes close for even a heartbeat, she's back on the deck of the Wind's Pleasure, staring at her own blood. That memory hits her like a secondary blow.

"It's not—"

Her head dips forward, forehead catching against the curve of Verso's collarbone. Her entire frame tightens in a stuttering rhythm of failing strength. She can feel the stormlight trapped in her veins, bright and useless, inaccessible. It should be cooling her nerves, steadying her breathing, knitting flesh. Instead it flickers like a dying lantern, fizzing against the edges of her pain and doing nothing. Like trying to inhale and getting only half a breath.

A sourness surges up her throat — not vomit, but mortality clawing upward from the wound itself.

Her voice, when she manages it, is hoarse, thinned by pain and something perilously close to fear: "He — interfering with my stormlight. I can't—"

A litany of expletives tumble out of his mouth, ones she may or may not recognize by now. Putain, fuck, shit. The only thing missing is 'storming storms'. (Maybe one day under less fraught circumstances he'll spare a tempêtes.)

Verso has witnessed a lot of people get hurt over the years. Quite frequently lethally. It's rare that the Expeditions ever made it long enough for the next year's Gommage to wipe them out. Usually, it was a Nevron's doing—cleaved in half by a Dualliste, or gobbled up by a Bourgeon, or burned to a crisp by a Pelerin. When it wasn't a grisly fate at the hands of one of Clea's monsters, it was Renoir. He's learned to compartmentalize the unpleasant feelings that bubble up when he smells blood, feels the warmth of it on his fingers. You get used to it.

—So, just a moment later, a switch flips, and he slings one of her arms around his shoulders, almost clinical as he takes her gloved hand and flattens it against her wound.

All business: "Push in, hard. If you lean on me, can you walk?"

It's a vicious sound that tears out of her, muffled between clenched teeth, when he drags her arm over his shoulders. Every muscle spasms in protest, wanting to curl inward, clamp down, collapse.

Dimly, she wonders whether the assailant will circle back to finish the work. Dimly, she feels Verso seize her hand, drag it to her side, flatten it over the source of that terrible undertow pulling at her insides. Dimly, she forces thought through the pain.

Life before death, she thinks, rhythmically. Mechanically. Strength before weakness.

Her gloved palm slips once on the blood, but she snarls like an animal under her breath and plants it again, pressing down hard. She hunts for tension in a body too shocked to obey her, but she finds enough (barely) to hold.

She leans into Verso with all the graceless necessity of someone who refuses to die in the street. He is her crutch; her anchor; her fulcrum she can lever herself against. Her weight bears down on his shoulder as she forces her spine straight, breathing through a haze that keeps threatening to tip her sideways.

Another flicker of stormlight rises in her like a weak candle guttering in a gale. Then it dies. Completely insufficient to do anything more than slow the tide. She takes one step. It feels like driving a spike through her own abdomen. Another step. Her breath hitches. She does not stop.

"Yes," Jasnah grinds out, the word like a splinter of doubt in her mouth. "I can walk."

Journey before destination.

Even if the journey is one step to the next.

Edited 2025-12-10 03:24 (UTC)

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look i couldn't find a way to make him taking another card more interesting

FAIR.

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