recreatable | open post.

Verso turns at the sound of her gasp, eyes meeting hers in a way that's entirely accidental. He wouldn't consider himself modest, isn't shy about a body he's inhabited for a century. He is, however, self-conscious. Always a little too aware of the way he's being perceived. He's certainly being perceived now, but—

Even if she had looked away, it would have meant that she, on some level, felt that there was something exciting—if inappropriate—to look at. If she had stared, well, obviously that would have been flattering. Her choice to treat it as if there's nothing out of the ordinary at all, though, is... disappointing. He wants her to want to look, perhaps foolishly, but it's like he might as well not exist below the neck at all.

He turns his back to her, taking out his disappointment on his poor shirt. Scrub, scrub, scrub.

"Monoco. He's my oldest friend."

Scrub, scrub, scrubscrubscrub.

"He's a gestral."

Jasnah tries — Storms, she tries — to maintain the pretense that there is nothing to see. Nothing to react to. Nothing at all beneath the clean, austere line of her posture. But pain has a way of unmaking facades, and the bandaged side gives a sharp, treacherous throb after about thirty seconds of holding her position.

She inhales sharply and her safehand instinctively presses to her ribs. The motion draws her forward, half-folded, before she can stop herself. None of this is out of interest, she tells herself. Not because the line of his spine is a curious study in hard work, bent over his task. It's all simply because she needs to shift her posture to manage the pain.

The faintest warmth touches her cheeks. Infuriating. Shame and self-doubt.

"Verso." Her voice is calm, but lower than she intends. “Your oldest friend is...a gestral."

She swallows, hissing through another stab of pain as she sits up once more and lets her head fall back onto the divan. No more looking for her, thanks.

As he wrings his shirt out within an inch of its life, he says, "Well, I've been on the Continent for 67 years."

Give or take a few visits back to Lumière. Those hardly count. Those initial visits back had been filled with suspicion, and after that he'd stopped speaking to anyone at all when he returned. In those later visits, he'd just spent all of his time watching this strange Alicia-but-not-Alicia with her foster brother. Maelle, he'd once heard the man call her, voice tinged with fond exasperation. He'd felt horribly jealous in that moment. Once upon a time, he used to talk to Alicia in that tone, too.

But none of that is worth mentioning. Jasnah wouldn't—couldn't—understand. Instead, he focuses on Monoco as he flattens her glove out against the counter to dry.

"And gestrals are immortal, technically." He'd told her before how they couldn't die, not permanently. A quick dip in the Sacred River, and they'd be born again as a patate. A baby gestral.

His point being: of course his oldest friend is a gestral. Every human that could have filled that position is dead.

"But you're right," he says, although she didn't really make a point. "Gestrals can be very annoying."

— Like spren, she thinks. Not for the first time. But now it comes with a pang that runs deeper than what's physical. Some piece of her is missing. Whatever piece used to be filled by Ivory, like plaster over a cracked wall. The hollowness left behind might actually be worse than the hot messy agony of her stomach.

Spren are annoying, too. Even Ivory has his moments.

The cushion of the divan dips as she shimmies lower — just out of sight — as if physically putting the wing-back corner of the furniture between her eyeline and him is ample interference enough. Her two choices are to wallow in premeditated grief for Ivory or fixate on why he's still over there without a shirt.

(Because it's still wet, Jasnah.)

"Is — Monoco, um, annoying?"

Instead of heading back into the sitting room while his shirt dries, Verso sits on the kitchen counter instead, legs dangling as he snoops in the cupboard directly behind him. (Thank god Jochi isn't here, because this is very rude.) Nothing but pots and pans. He closes the cupboard.

"Oh, extremely," he says good-naturedly, almost like it's a compliment. Sometimes, Monoco makes him roll his eyes so hard that he wonders if this will be the time that his face gets stuck like that. "But he's still less annoying than most gestrals."

Although that's a bit like being the tallest dwarf. Again, said with deep affection! Despite everything, Verso loves the gestrals. Even though Verso—at least this version of Verso—technically had nothing to do with their creation, there's a near-familial feeling in his chest when he thinks of them. Like that irritating cousin you can't help but adore anyway.

Swinging his legs impatiently: "You know, I taught Monoco to speak human language." He taught Monoco to do a lot of things, but he's quite proud of that one. The only gestral who doesn't speak in weird Minion-esque gobbledygook. "I guess that you could consider me a professor, too."

It's stolen valor, maybe.

Jasnah doesn't laugh at his claim. She's learned the hard way that even a mild, scornful chuckle will hurt right now. Doesn't mean she doesn't feel a wave of mild scorn when he gives himself the title of professor. A brace of very stubborn, very well-thought arguments crowd the back of her tongue — up to and including I'll judge your professorship on the strength of your student, thank you — but she just doesn't have the stamina to pick a fight.

So she sinks lower, cushioning her head and trying to find a way to lay that doesn't involve a hand hanging over the couch, or an arm crossed over her wound, or an elbow crooked behind her neck. Unusually fidgety, but her fidgeting is committed out of sight.

"Students usually find that total immersion is the quickest route to fluency."

Okay, so she's picking a fight anyway. Implying outright that if he simply spoke exclusively in one language to this Monoco, the language-learning likely came naturally.

"You miss him, don't you."

Not a question. Although Verso has made it abundantly clear that he's uninterested in returning home, she can't imagine it's easy to leave behind your oldest friend. If this feels like an unusual burst of articulated empathy, that's because it is. She's got Ivory on the mind, and it's making her a little vulnerable. And Jasnah's vulnerability always punches outward.

"I do, yeah."

You've grown soft, Monoco would say, pretending to disapprove. In actuality, he'd be glowing with happiness but too embarrassed to let it show. He and Verso have that in common. Maybe all these years with Verso have rubbed off on him.

"He'd be fascinated by this place." There's so much Verso wishes he could tell him, show him. Experience with him. He wants to know what Monoco would have to say about Urithiru, about Rosharan culture. He already knows what Monoco would say about Jasnah. A little scolding you're getting attached again, to which Verso would argue this time is different. "And he'd love meeting all the humans that aren't going to—"

Die, probably within the next few days, weeks, or months. But he's trying to keep the conversation lighthearted here, something to distract Jasnah from her pain, so he stops just short of saying so.

"Well, he'd love it."

Jasnah listens without interrupting. That, in itself, is deliberate. She lets him finish the thought he trims back, lets the absence sit where the word die would have been. She is very good at hearing what people refuse to say.

It's...refreshing. The honesty, brief as it is. Unvarnished. She finds she likes it more than his reassurance.

Her gaze drifts upward to the ceiling. Sorta-kinda toward where his voice is coming from. A pale replacement for looking at him, since she's still hiding behind the divan's backboard. She wants to see his eyes when he speaks like this. The set of his mouth. The way he navigates sincerity without spectacle. But instead of acting on that desire, her body remains stubbornly anchored to the divan, pain keeping her folded inward, half out of sight. Still, the intent is there, quiet and private.

"You've seen more of Roshar than most people born to it," she says at last. The words are mild, but there's a note beneath them. Curiosity and appetite. "Urithiru. The Shattered Plains. Kharbranth. This city, if barely."

A pause. Calculated, but surprisingly gentle.

"Where would you show him first?”

Not what do you like. Not what matters to you. She's learned, already, that people often answer more freely when the question is displaced. Her fingers tighten slightly in the damp cloth, now cooled. Her knuckles pale. She waits for something earnest. Something unguarded.

"The library, definitely," comes quickly. It's not a difficult decision. The Continent is full of many things, but its literature is lacking. "Unlike most gestrals, Monoco fancies himself something of a scholar."

Which is why he's Verso's favorite. Not only is he a goofy little roughhouser, but he also enjoys art and philosophy. Of course, it's no wonder. He was created to be the perfect companion for a pretentious little boy.

"But," he continues, "it's difficult to get any real literature on the Continent. Not unless it gets brought over from the mainland."

Or you pilfer Dessendre Manor, the ever-present entrances of which are scattered all over the Continent. He's not sure if he's ready to share the existence of that just yet, though. Maybe ever. Besides, it's not like the doors open for him anymore, anyway.

"Then the training courtyard. Monoco also fancies himself the world's greatest warrior."

She smiles to herself. Kharbranth's library is, undeniably, a crown jewel. Not merely of the Vorin nations, but of all Roshar. A pity, then, that it belongs to King Taravangian and his city-nation. Alethkar has never cared much for grand repositories of knowledge; it prefers its power displayed in armies and banners. In Kholinar, she would have found the shelves wanting if not for the simple fact of her birth. A princess's access. Spoiled, in some respects. Ruined, in others.

...Kholinar. It stings, a little, that she cannot show Verso the city that ought to be the seat of Kholin power. The Windblades rising like titanic ribs from the earth. The red-white-orange strata cutting the skyline into impossible geometry. The roar of the Impossible Falls. The measured quiet of Sunmaker Park. The last time she walked those streets, she was the king's elder sister. If the city is reclaimed — when it is — she will return as its queen.

Verso is still talking, outlining what Monoco might enjoy. Jasnah realizes she's been listening only in fragments, her thoughts orbiting all the places she cannot offer him. A small shake of her head banishes the spiral, and she gathers herself back into the present.

(She is woefully unused to her mind behaving so...fuzzy.)

"Is that so?" She murmurs with dry amusement. "The competition in our dueling lists is quite fierce."

Conversation ebbs and flows after that. She finishes her pastry with dutiful precision. Time stretches. Fatigue creeps in despite herself, answers coming slower, questions trailing off. Eventually, exhaustion claims her, and she slips back into a shallow doze. An irony not lost on her that a gut wound should succeed where insomnia so often ruled.

Verso is left to his own devices until Jochi ascends from the bakery below. He carries a basket braced against one hip, filled with small meat pies and fresh bread. Under his other arm, a bundle of folded clothing, indistinct for the moment. If Verso is still bare-chested, Jochi finally grants him the appreciative glance he didn't get from Jasnah. Unabashed, approving, punctuated with a low chuckle. However, if the shirt has been dried and donned, Jochi merely sets the basket down and asks fondly after his sister-scholar:

"How's our wounded chicken? Just as spitting mad as usual?"

Verso, tragically dressed now (albeit in a still slightly damp shirt) and therefore unable to receive the ogling he was deprived of earlier, glances up from the table where he's still idly sketching on the card backs. Furrowing his brow, he asks, "Chicken?"

For a moment, he has no idea who Jochi could be referring to, because obviously no one would ever call Jasnah a chicken. Not if they valued their life. But Jochi does, and Verso supposes this is just the sort of thing that a decade-long friendship allows you. Monoco and Esquie can call him plenty of things that most people wouldn't dare. Verver, for one.

"She's still breathing," he says with a shrug, glancing over at Jasnah sleeping on the divan. With a conceding cant of his head, he adds, "...And she's alert enough to ask questions."

So she can't be doing too badly.

Jochi sets the basket on the counter. Careful and persnickity, he empties its contents in a tidy row. A few smallish pies, a loaf of bread, a wedge of sow-milk cheese. A bottle of something dark and amber, waggled with a cheery hum. The older man has a marvelous propensity to be both jovial and serious all at once. Like someone took a wizened old teacher and stuffed him into a humble baker. Duality at its finest.

"Good, good." He answers, dusting off his apron with a swat before hanging it by the door. "Can't have her expiring in my apartments. Don't fancy explaining that to the Blackthorn, har har har. Although I've always said Jasnah herself is the scarier one."

He blithely prattles on about things he simply expects Verso to know. As if it's inconcievable that someone travelling this closely with Jasnah Kholin wouldn't know that the Blackthorn is her uncle, albeit by an outdated title.

But at least he prattles quietly once he realizes his friend is asleep. However, walking near enough to realize she's asleep means he also notices her missing glove. A quiet, disapproving grumble. Speaking around the topic, he tosses a roughspun blanket at Verso and suggests he should cover her up so she doesn't get cold. He's a sharp man beneath his friendly persona, so he understands the need to dispense with decorum, but he also clearly has a bit of a protective streak that feels a bit...well, silly.

"What's your name, son?" He gruffs and grouses.

God, what the fuck is this guy talking about. Verso stares with a glassy-eyed sort of look until Jochi moves on to a more understandable topic: the not-so-subtle implication that he should cover Jasnah's hand. Honestly, he'd forgotten about it as the glove dried and she'd slept. He'd been so focused on the cards that he'd only spared a few glances over her way, instead using the soft sound of her breathing as his indication for how she was doing.

Obediently, he sets his pencil down and stands over Jasnah, covering her with the blanket as gently as he can manage so as not to wake her. While he doesn't know much about the process of healing for a person who isn't as immortally gifted as he is, he does know that rest is an important part of it.

"It's Verso," he says congenially, carefully arranging the blanket so that it covers her from toe to shoulder, hand hidden underneath the fabric. "Sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances." Like as a customer at his pastry shop, for one.

Jochi squints at him for a long, appraising moment once the name is offered. Not suspicion, exactly. More the look of a man rifling through an already overstuffed mental cabinet, deciding which drawer a name like that belongs in. Weighing its sounds. Its edges. Probably wondering what corner of Roshar it might have wandered in from.

"Verso," he repeats, rolling it once on his tongue. "Huh."

A grunt follows. Approval, or something close enough to count.

"No," he says more quietly, "The circumstances aren't ideal." His gaze flicks, briefly, toward where Jasnah lies sleeping, and something in his expression softens, goes tight at the edges. "And I'd rather this weren't how I finally met her face to face."

He steps closer and offers a hand, solid and floury. "Jochi," he introduces himself in turn. It isn't his legal name, of course, but since Verso arrived in Jasnah Kholin's wake, he'll get the baker's nom de plume.

Afterward, Jochi's attention drifts back to the counter. He reaches for a dark, amber-filled bottle from the basket, works the cork loose with a practiced twist, and frees it with a soft, satisfied pop He inhales once, approving, then sets the bottle aside within easy reach. He lifts a second and offers it to Verso.

"Storms. I'm far too old to host a political incident."

Grumble, grumble, grumble.

Then, noticing the spanreed that isn't blinking and therefore has no message waiting: "...Didn't get hold of her mother, did she?"

No one had mentioned Navani when Verso had found him earlier to ask for a spanreed. Jasnah hadn't even mentioned her to Verso. But Jochi correctly assumes Jasnah's target audience all the same.

"Mother?" he asks, and it's obvious in the way his eyebrows raise that he had no idea that Jasnah's mother was who they were trying to contact. Admittedly, he hadn't thought about it too deeply. Contacting Urithiru, she'd said; he'd assumed that meant some sort of staff or advisor. Someone whose job it is to sit around and do nothing all day but wait at her beck and call, maybe.

Mother, though, he hadn't even considered.

Reluctant to make it even more blatant, he schools his expression back to neutrality as he returns to the table. "No, uh, nothing back." He worries his lip. "Is that bad?"

"Bad?"

Hmm. Jochi slips into what must be a habit — a quick, intentional weighing of the possibilities.

"Tough to know. Could be there's trouble in Urithiru too. Most likely, Nosy Navani hasn't found all of her daughter's spanreeds, and doesn't even know there's a message actually meant for her."

He shrugs. Clearly, Jochi has a loose relationship with respect for monarchical authority. At least, it's not like the Kholins are his royal family. As for the topic at hand...? It's not a great plan. But he'd been able to understand Jasnah's thinking the moment Verso had come down to the kitchens asking for that particular spanreed. He'd been on the receiving end of one too many of Navani's failed attempts to glean information from Jasnah's spanreed network before; it made perfect sense that the daughter might use the mother's meddling to her advantage. But it was always going to be a gamble.

—Oh. Verso realizes, suddenly, that he's alone (sort of) with someone who has a decade's worth of experience on him when it comes to Jasnah. Who knows things about her he could only guess at. He has a unique opportunity here, if only he plays his cards right.

He pulls out his pencil again, thickening a line here and there as he says, very casual, "'Nosy Navani'?"

(Sort of) alone — but easily enough to say the acoustics and layout of the flat is conducive enough to a discreet conversation between two newly introduced strangers.

Jochi takes a swig of whatever ~~wine~~ale he's drinking. Ultimately, his energy is that of your high school friend's gruff awkward dad who's really into WWI history. Rough around the edges, but disastrously nerdy. A tough thing to be in a society that would prefer its men weren't nerds at all.

"Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean any disrespect to the Kholin matriarch. Especially not in front of one of you Cobalt Guard stiffs." So Jochi is simply running with that assumption? Cool. "Jasnah's mother used to sniff around her spanreeds from time to time. You could always tell. Different handwriting. Missing passcodes."

Cobalt Guard. Sure. Whatever Jochi wants to think. Verso still hasn't figured out how Jasnah wants him to play this, and he's reluctant to assume. Seems like she wouldn't take well to him making an ass out of him and her.

His brow furrows at the information. Weird. Aline could be overbearing, but not 'reading his correspondence' overbearing. Exacting standards, yes, a few disapprovals of girlfriends here and there, but never snooping around in his letters. Maybe, though, that was because she knew that there was no part of him that was hidden from her. Not a thought in his head that hadn't sprung from hers first.

"Why would she do that?"

Jochi squints at him. Not unkindly. More with the faint irritation of a nearly septuagenarian who has, for a moment, forgotten that not everyone in the world was already an adult when certain rumours first caught fire.

Back then, they'd been everywhere on the more salacious spanreed networks. Whispers and lurid speculation about Gavilar Kholin's daughter, passed pen to pen with unseemly delight. Outside Alethkar — and, storms, even within it — people had wanted the new conquering king to fall. His daughter's supposed lunacy had been framed as a convenient fracture in his political armor.

Jochi exhales through his nose.

"I reckon she was worried about her," he says at last.

By the time he and Jasnah began corresponding, those rumors had long since burned themselves out, replaced by darker, more immediate ones — this time orbiting the king's brother. But privately? Jochi only knows what he knows because he's good at assembling fragments. Because he listens. Because he reads between lines that were never meant to be explicit. It's not as though he and Jasnah ever spoke of it outright. But he's a Veristitalian, same as her.

"She only ever asked who I was. She wanted to be sure," he adds, quieter now, "that her daughter was exchanging messages with real people."

A pause.

"And not ones she'd invented."

Jochi draws quieter, and Verso's pencil stops its movement so that he can turn his gaze on the man imparting this secret information. Information that, if Jochi's tone is any indication, Jasnah wouldn't want him to know. Of course she wouldn't—he already knows everything about her that she wants him to know. She's made it that way on purpose.

He feels a little pang of guilt for prying, but it isn't strong enough to make him stop.

"What do you mean, 'invented'?"

Jochi exhales, long and slow. He occupies his hands with the bottle for a moment, fussing with the cork, setting it aside, pouring a modest measure into a chipped cup he never offers. A habit. A stall. Incorrigible, really; even among academics, the instinct to contextualize outweighs discretion. Besides, none of this is truly secret. It's all there in old broadsheets and archived speculation, if one knows where to look. Silence doesn't erase ink.

He answers without looking at Verso.

"I mean exactly that," he says. "People who weren't there. Conversations that never happened. Things only she saw or heard." His mouth quirks, not unkindly. "There were nasty stories when she was a child. I assumed it was political crem-slinging. Everyone wanted leverage against Gavilar Kholin. The talk eventually died down, as it always does."

He pauses, then continues more carefully. "By the time Jasnah and I began writing, she was...well. Herself. Sharp. Grounded. If she'd ever been unwell, it was long past. But her mother never stopped worrying. When Navani reached out, asking me to confirm who I was, I realized she was still checking the edges. Making sure the world on the other side of her daughter's words was real."

Only then does Jochi glance toward Jasnah, sleeping fitfully on the divan. Something tightens in his expression.

"I suppose," he says quietly, "that means some part of those old rumors must have been true enough to make her mother's fear linger."

He doesn't know how to react.

Jasnah had mentioned being sick, but he'd assumed— well, that's the problem, isn't it? He'd assumed. And then, dieu, he'd brought up Alicia and all of her burns, likened it to what she'd been through. Jasnah didn't correct his inaccurate assumption, either, which means he must have made her feel too embarrassed to share the truth with him.

Perhaps unfairly, he has a sudden flash of her saying how she detests prevarication.

"Oh," he finally says. "Well, you know how rumors are. Probably exaggerated."

He clears his throat, that little flash of guilt he'd felt for prying turning in to a much bigger flash of guilt. "Is there somewhere to get dinner around here? I'll bring something back for when she wakes up."

Jochi lets the silence sit for a moment after Verso speaks. Not pointed; just...considered. He corks the bottle again with a soft, practiced press of his thumb. Rumours, Jochi thinks but doesn't say. Maybe exaggerated. Certainly misused. And very convenient when someone wants to explain away a girl who doesn't behave as expected. He'd never ask Jasnah outright, but in the aftermath of the Radiant Orders refounding...? He can't help but wonder about the root of those original rumours. He glances at the divan, where Jasnah sleeps, smaller now than her reputation has ever been.

Practical again: "There's a Herdazian stew place two streets over. Hearty. Salty. But the real draw is their chouta. As for the lentil one. Easy on the stomach."

He looks like he's about to say something else — the words are weighed, measured, found insufficient. So, after a shake of his head and a mouthful from his chipped cup, the old baker says: "Go. I'll keep an eye on her. I've got time before the next rush."

Ugh. It feels as if he knows something he isn't supposed to. How does he even begin to broach this subject? Maybe he shouldn't at all. Jasnah won't like that he's learned something about her against her will. And—

One thing at a time. Herdazian stew. Sure. Verso heads to the shop, asks for chowder, and spends five minutes arguing with the man at the counter before they finally realize that it's chouta he's searching for. How was he to know? Jochi had said stew! Regardless, he returns with two handfuls of substantial flatbread filled with lentils and gravy, setting them on the table when he walks in.

"Hey," he says with a couple taps on Jasnah's shoulder to rouse her. Then, gesturing for Jochi to come closer: "We should probably get her upright."

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slides back in here

the fun never stops!!

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