recreatable | open post.

"Really into this history stuff?"

She echoes the phrasing back at him, a thin edge of strain riding it. Not anger — something closer to weary correction, softened by a trace of fondness she doesn't bother to hide. It occurs to her that he can't be faulted for the mistake. He arrived in a world where Jasnah Kholin already existed as a monarch, fully formed. He never saw the long stretch of years before that title settled on her shoulders.

"I'm a historian by profession, Verso," she corrects him, evenly. "I wasn't always a queen. And I was never meant to be one."

She turns one more card, then sets aside the whole deck. "When I came of age, I actually trained under a specific order of historians. That's how Jochi and I began corresponding."

Jasnah pauses for a moment, then, quieter. Precise.

"History came first."

"I hate to be pedantic," he says even though he doesn't, "but you didn't answer my question."

'History came first' is not an answer. Sure, 'before I became a queen' is a time period, but it's not a very specific one. Besides, he's not asking about when she picked up history as a profession; he's asking about when the passion started.

"Unless you came out of the womb citing history texts," he adds with a wry smile, because he wouldn't be surprised. "What made you interested in history in the first place?"

— She'd find his pedantry appealing if it wasn't currently and incisively directed at her. How tiresome, because she doesn't have the words to explain how sifting through the fact and fiction in historical texts and legends was a natural direction after doing the same within her mind. That there is a kind of control to be found in searching, finding, unraveling, and pinning down the things that are true.

Well. Maybe she has some words to explain it.

"One year, when our fathers were on campaign, my little brother and cousins made me read them this one story almost every night. I got so familiar with it. I figured...maybe some of its characters and events could be corroborated — it's about a king and a ship and a strange island. Sure enough, the king was a real king. But I could never find any evidence of a real ship. Or the strange island."

Elhokar and Adolin and Renarin had fallen upon their fixation with Wandersail shortly after Jasnah's illness. So much of her frustration and helplessness got sewn into that story and investigating its authenticity. Maybe if she could prove it was true, she could...

"Bit of a slippery slope from there."

Satisfied, Verso?

Edited 2025-12-14 15:06 (UTC)

Satisfied. At least for now. He enjoys learning these little tidbits about Jasnah, personal things that let him imagine a young, perhaps more wide-eyed version of her, struck with the desire to make something in a favored story true. It's an almost childlike thing, the hope there, the belief that something amazing could really have happened.

"Yeah," he says with a nod, "I always wanted the stuff in the stories I read to be real, too."

The person who actually made those memories did, anyway. Verso had been made without the knowledge of the Canvas, had to be brutally informed of it, but he wonders if that's how it first came to be: a little boy's desire to live in his stories. "You'll have to lend me the book when we return."

Hers is a slow, deliberate nod. Privately, Jasnah suspects Verso would not much care for Derethil and Wandersail. At its core, it is a bleak meditation on personal responsibility. Hardly suitable bedtime fare for children, which was, of course, precisely why her younger relatives had begged her to read it. An workaround for parental discretion. Not that their parents had been especially present to begin with. Either too occupied conquering Alethkar — or, in Evi's case, too occupied being dead.

Her fingers worry at the wraparound hem of her havah, flaking dried blood from the violet fabric. She is a patchwork of grime and makeshift bandages, and the awareness needles at her. It would be nice, she thinks, to feel like herself again. Or at least closer to it.

Slowly — decisively — she plants her palms on the table and tries to stand. It does not go well.

She doesn't fall, exactly, but the effort ends with her sinking back onto the divan in a sharp, frustrated grunt. A breath in. A breath out. Control reasserted by increments. When she looks up at Verso, the curse she doesn't voice is written plainly across her face.

After a beat, Jasnah extends a hand. Her right, of course — she isn't that bold. Not yet. The gesture is quiet, unadorned. A request verging on a command to help her to her feet. She is tired of her world being reduced to the narrow, plush boundaries of a divan.

What's the magic word? he might say under different circumstances, but Verso isn't the type to abuse his advantages. It's difficult enough, he's sure, for her to need help at all. It doesn't bother him, besides. He likes feeling useful.

So, he polishes off the last bit of his chouta before standing and holding out his own hand, clasping her palm and tugging gently. Idly, he notes that her hand is colder than it was on the ship as he reaches out to steady her with his free hand on her shoulder. All the blood loss, probably.

"I don't know if the doctor would approve of you walking around right now," he says, despite the fact that he just helped her up.

A steadying breath. A careful, imperfect rise. Jasnah's eyes squint shut as she borrows his momentum and makes it her own. She doesn't let go of his hand. Instead, she treats it with the same ruthless pragmatism she afforded it in the street: as a stabilizing fact, a lifeline that has already proven its reliability.

He's right. This is unwise. The damage makes itself known immediately. Muscles protesting and nerves flaring hot and sharp beneath her skin. She catalogues it and tries to move on.

"Almost certainly not," she agrees, voice level despite the strain. "But I'm tired of seeing my own blood every time I look down."

Her intention is not a tour of the room. It's a change of clothing. Clean fabric. A return, however partial, to herself. Her gaze tracks to the folded skirt and blouse Jochi left across the room.

She turns her head back to Verso. "Help me over there," she says.

An instruction. Not a request.

Verso throws a glance over his shoulder at the folded clothes (hey, why didn't Jochi get him any clothes?), then turns his attention back to Jasnah. The hand on her shoulder employs just a little bit of pressure, an urging back down. She could hurt herself walking over there; agency denied! "I'll just go get them for you."

For ten seconds that feel nearly a minute in length, Jasnah looks at Verso like she might refuse. Her tongue rolls against the inside of her cheek — like an underwater creature, just waiting to breach and be defiant. It's a battle of wills. Not between the two of them, but rather between her desire to function independently pitched against her usually sound, rational judgement.

In the end, the agony in her gut wins. It takes a long moment of her fighting with herself but eventually she lower. Delicately, gingerly, she folds herself back into a stiff sitting position on the sofa. One hand curled into a firm fist on her thigh, the other...still holding onto his fingers — tight until the last possible moment, when letting go of him feels a little bit like letting go of freedom. Despite the pain, she'd been so happily on her feet for those few moments.

"—Fine."

"Sorry," he has the good sense to say, although it sounds more like sorry, this is for your own good. Unfortunately, he likes Jasnah enough that he's begun slotting her into the category of people who he should make decisions for; it's the Dessendre way to believe that he knows what's best for someone else, after all.

He returns with the clothing after a moment, setting it down beside her and then turning politely around before voicing the previous thought in his head:

"Why didn't Jochi get me any clothes?"

Curious, she shakes out the folded garments. A blouse, a skirt, a vest. Thaylen cut. Practical. Layered. Entirely unlike the neck-to-toe Alethi havah, and — she concedes — far better suited to surviving a gut wound without turning dressing into a prolonged act of martyrdom.

"How should I know?" she snaps, still bristling at having her agency curtailed, temper flaring where pain has left her raw. "Ask him yourself."

Speaking of prolonged acts of martyrdom. The edge drains out of her voice a heartbeat later, replaced by a sharp, involuntary, pained groan. She reaches for the topmost havah button near her left shoulder and discovers, with immediate irritation, that lifting her arms that high is a battle in its own right. She manages the first button. Then the second.

Then she has to stop.

"He likes you better," is Verso's argument for not asking Jochi. He'd be more likely to give Verso things if Jasnah were the one to ask! Although perhaps he shouldn't ask at all; no offense to Jochi, of course, but he's a bit more full-figured than Verso is. If he borrows Jochi's clothes, he's liable to look ridiculous.

Maybe he can slip away and purchase some new clothing while Jasnah is resting. This outfit has really outlived its usefulness, after so many days at sea. That's what he's thinking about as she lets out that sound of pain; he turns to look over his shoulder, and then immediately looks away. Mannerly.

"Are you okay?"

Jasnah exhales through her nose, a thin, controlled sound that is doing a great deal of work.

"Define okay." Then, more honestly, and without looking at him, "I am not in danger of collapsing. I am, however, discovering that buttons require more ambition than I currently possess."

A pause. Her jaw tightens, not from pride exactly, but irritation at her own limits. She's working herself up to asking for help. Hold, please. This may take a while.

"Mmm," is all Verso says in acknowledgement.

Here's the thing: it feels deeply inappropriate to offer to undress Jasnah when that's the very thing he'd like to do under much more favorable circumstances. By this point, it's obvious that it's a desire that isn't returned, and that any 'spark' he had felt was the result of misinterpreting clever repartee. Which is fine, really, but it would be wrong to take advantage of her weakened state to have an excuse to be physically close to her.

So:

"Well, I've been told I'm really good moral support."

Two more buttons give way. Like any good Vorin anything, there are ten in total — six still marching stubbornly down the left side of the bodice. Reaching them now requires a twist she cannot quite manage without setting her nerves alight. The pain spikes, sharp and immediate.

Jasnah assesses the situation with brisk clarity. He has already seen her safehand. Already held her upright while she bled. Already pressed bandages into place with far more intimacy than this. Surely. Whatever line propriety once drew has been thoroughly trampled and left behind on the cobblestones.

She stares at his back. Expression flinty and patience worn thin.

"I don’t require encouragement," she says, curt and irritable and just this side of absurd. "Nor reassurance."

A beat.

"I require your hands."

Well. So much for Verso's careful plan to remain an appropriately distant, moral ally in her time of need.

"Oh," Verso says, trying not to sound like he feels any type of way about this. He shouldn't. There's nothing intimate about this, nothing besides the incredibly platonic gesture of one not-quite-friend helping another friend in need. Jasnah had sounded incredibly businesslike as she'd asked, so he should provide that same energy back.

He turns over his shoulder, arms crossed. "Okay." He swallows, mouth a little dry despite all of his best efforts to recontextualize this. No part of him has ever been hesitant about undressing a woman, but he feels hesitant now, the circumstances so wildly different than any other in which he's had his hands on the buttons of a woman's clothes.

Slowly, he reaches out, warning in as professional a tone as he can muster, "I'm just going to help with your buttons, then." Not to brag, but he feels like he's usually pretty deft at this. Nimble fingers from all of the piano-playing. He feels uncharacteristically clumsy as he fights with her fifth button, though, eyes downcast so as not to look at her face. Maybe he shouldn't be looking at her at all, but blindly groping at her feels even less appropriate. So, eyes strictly on the button as he finally gets it undone.

"...Lot of buttons," he comments.

Jasnah braces her palms against the curved edge of the divan. In a faintly absurd attempt at courtesy, she turns her head away from the off-centre line of buttons. As though fixing her gaze on some neutral middle distance might civilize the moment for both of them.

He is no closer than he was when they fled through the streets. There is simply less to distract from it now. No urgency. No motion. And while there is no physical spark, no crackle of anticipation, Jasnah does experience a bone-deep vulnerability as the collar loosens. The sensation is exciting in its own way. Like baring one's throat to an axehound. Trust, warm and unfamiliar, moves through her blood. She does not mind him so near. That surprises her.

"Ten," she agrees quietly and does not elaborate. The number's supposed holiness dies on her tongue. Nothing makes one interrogate the stubborn remnants of a faith one doesn't believe in quite like attempting to justify it aloud to an outsider. She leaves it there.

She exhales and goes very still, an almost preternatural stillness that cannot possibly be comfortable. But it feels necessary.

"Just the buttons," she says, after a swallow. "I can manage the rest."

Ambitious. Perhaps overly so.

"Just the buttons," he confirms.

The buttons get easier, at least, with each one: the sixth is easier than the fifth, the seventh easier than the sixth, and so on. He can feel her stillness, a reaction he assumes is from discomfort and displeasure, and he tries to work as quickly as he can. Ripping the bandage off. He doesn't linger to look at the loose way the fabric hangs over her once he's done, doesn't let his mind wander to eager fumbles to get Expedition uniforms off. Instead, he holds his hands up and away as if proving his innocence.

"There." He takes a step back and turns around again. "Seems inefficient. All the work to get it off."

The barbs she had prepared sit and crumble to ash on her tongue. Why should it be efficient? It is not armor, donned and discarded in the midst of conflict. It is only a dress. A thing she has removed countless times before, without ceremony or assistance.

But he is already turning away, and she is not ready, and —

"—Wait," Jasnah says, the word slipping out sharper than she intends.

Her hand reaches for him, catching the hem of his shirt. A fistful of fabric. A soft, cotton-dulled scrape along his flank. Clumsy. There is something almost mortifying in how plainly needful the gesture is.

"I'll need to stand again," she adds, by way of explanation — deliberately ignoring the state of herself: the havah loosened at the bodice, sleeves still clinging to her arms while the structure gapes and flutters, revealing an expanse of neck, of shoulder, of chest and then the border of a thin shift beneath. Sitting will not suffice for what comes next — shimmying out of one skirt and shimmying into another. Not without asking too much of her abdomen. Not without pain she does not wish to negotiate. So she negotiates with him instead.

She exhales, recalibrates.

"Let me hold on," she says instead, quieter now. "That’s all."

A crutch, then. A wall. He will be something solid to borrow steadiness from. He can stay facing away. He need only remain close.

So much for managing the rest on her own.

Verso turns again at the touch, eyes catching on the stretch of newly exposed skin for just a second before he averts his gaze. Putain, he thinks inwardly, although externally he only says, "Okay."

He stares at the wall as he allows her to use him as she sees fit; a hand around his forearm or on his shoulder for balance, making himself sturdy and unmoving. He does everything in his power not to imagine what she might be doing right now, how it might look.

Think unsexy thoughts, he tells himself. "Say more on... determinism."

Ultimately, after the quiet unsteady fuss of standing up, her grip settles somewhere in the crook of his shoulder — her palm against the top breadth of his trapezius; her fingers curled stiffly into the curve of his neck where it meets his shoulder. Her hold is...hard — not only steadying, but almost as if she's displacing some of the pain she feels by holding onto him so tightly.

It allows her to slip a sleeve without a sound. A brief respite for Verso as she switches hands — grabs him with her bare left hand, as briefly as is required to slip the other sleeve and switch back to her original vice grip.

"Determinism," she huffs — sounding a little strained. "Right. I prefer probabilistic causation."

Wait, no, talking while doing this isn't working for her. Best to get him talking, instead. So she deflects with an annoyed huff: "What is your stance on free will?"

Ow, ow. A little less sexy. Luckily, Verso is used to having someone else's pain displaced onto him, so he doesn't even flinch.

He's used to having debates about art around the dinner table, but less used to discussing philosophy. Definitely less used to discussing philosophy while a beautiful woman changes clothing beside him and also physically tortures him a little bit. So, he says, a bit lamely, "I'm, uh, a fan."

God, he sounds stupid.

Trying again: "I think some things are out of our control."

Out of his control, anyway. He never had a choice about who he wanted to be—there's always been an invisible hand guiding him. He was made this way because someone wanted him to be this way. A perfect, dutiful son seen only through the eyes of a mother, lacking any inner experience that she wasn't privy to, no grown-up secrets that could just be his own. It's different, though, for the people here. They're the way they are because of random chance, not because of intelligent design.

"But I don't think that fate is... inexorable, with enough persistence."

She hums, brief and thoughtful. Like his answer gives her something to think about. Not because it's unique or anything. Far from it. Jasnah is deeply, completely, entirely intimate with the rhetorical permutations of this particular debate.

— And then there's that one time she defied prophecy when she didn't kill her cousin. She likes to think that was free will at work, and not an error in Renarin's visions.

Anyway! His answer is interesting not because it's treading new territory but because it's his answer. "But that does imply you believe in some version of fate. Even if it's one that can be overcome."

She wiggles her way out of the havah, nudging it aside with a toe. That was a lot of work. She needs a moment now to catch her breath and cringe through the cost of so much movement. She needs to rally herself — hand still stiffly in place on his shoulder.

"Yeah, I guess it does," he says a little darkly, staring at a tiny stain on Jochi's wall. Water damage? Maybe he smokes? Better to focus on that than Jasnah in a state of undress beside him.

—He doesn't elaborate on the intricacies of fate; he's not sure if he could without explaining that Lumière and everything around it is just the grown-up, magical version of a dollhouse. Everyone in it is just a plaything for the amusement of the people who really matter.

Instead, he bats the question back to her. "What about you?"

"Probabilistic causation," she repeats.

Her grip eases. This is not the moment for strain. She is only catching her breath, gathering herself for what comes next. The contact lightens accordingly: her hand still splayed at the back of his shoulder, but no longer clenched there like an anchor driven into stone.

"Free will," she continues, "but with measurable consequences. I have free will because my actions reliably affect the world." A quiet beat, precise as a theorem concluded. "To believe otherwise is to accept a universe that is nothing more than incoherent accidents occasionally interrupted by miracles."

Her thumb sweeps, idle, across a faint dried stain. Her blood, she realizes. How did it even get back here — on the back of his shirt? Until she remembers holding onto him on the trek through the streets.

"And I find that option rather unsatisfying."

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