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.
"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:
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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?"
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.
'Unsatisfying'. "Right," he says dryly. "You don't believe in God, do you?"
Verso can't imagine what that's like. To live life thinking everything sprung from nothing, that you are the only master of your soul. He wishes desperately that he could.
Very carefully, so as not to displace her, he reaches down for the blouse on the divan. Without looking, he holds it out for her to take.
Her answer starts simple. Honest to a fault. She does not believe in the Almighty, as the Vorin Church described him. She does not believe in one omniscient, all-powerful deity. She does believe that one can believe in something greater than oneself without subscribing to organized religion. Without worship. If divinity exists, it's in the hearts of people. Surely.
— Nevermind that the enemy whose forces occupy her homeworld is a terrifically powerful lower-g god. But not a God. Hers has become a stranger stance to take now that the nature of the Shards has been revealed. Still, she clings to it.
She tugs the blouse from his hand and gets to work.
"My loudest critics like to say my disbelief makes me immoral. Disbelief in God is not disbelief in right and wrong. It is disbelief in coercion masquerading as morality. If goodness must be policed to exist, then it was never goodness to begin with. I would rather answer to my own conscience than borrow one from fear."
Okay, that was a lot of words to say while also fighting with the voluminous blouse sleeves. But maybe she's feel a little — defensive. As if she anticipates Verso, too, will think less of her for it. It's unusual for her to care so much what someone else thinks. But here we are.
Wow, that was a lot of words to say while fighting with blouse sleeves, but Verso is thankfully only distantly aware of what's going on with her through listening to the rustle of her movements. Her dignity remains intact. While she talks, he reaches down, groping for the fabric of her skirt until he can grasp it with his fingertips without moving too much. He holds it, then, waiting for her to need it.
"I don't think you're immoral." Far from it. Clearly, she has lofty ambitions to improve Roshar. Would someone immoral spend so much of their time thinking of that? "I like the way you see the world."
It's the small, inward pause of someone unaccustomed to having their internal architecture admired out loud. Heat creeps up her throat, uninvited and unmistakable, settling high on her cheeks. If Verso were facing her, he would see it at once. Fortunately for her dignity, he's not.
Behind him, she continues to steady herself with one hand at his shoulder. The blouse is only half-sorted. The situation is...ridiculous. Intimate. Ill-timed. Her voice is stripped of lecture cadence. Stripped, frankly, of armour. More naked than she is at this point, actually.
"Thank you," she says. No qualifier. Just sincerity. Then, moments later: "What do you believe?"
About a God. Capitalized or otherwise. And while she asks, her safehand fingers catch on the the skirt still waiting in his hand. The contact is brief, minimized. Just a little casual religious discourse over getting dressed. No biggie.
The stretch of silence is notable. He wonders if maybe he said the wrong thing, if she's taking it as a platitude instead of the compliment it was meant. Sure, he's no stranger to trivial flattery, but this isn't that. The way Jasnah sees the world is unusual, unique, but he appreciates it. She believes in forging one's own path, no matter what anyone else thinks. That's the way he wants to be, too.
But then she finally says 'thank you', and he assumes she must have decided to take the words for what they are.
As for what he believes: "It's complicated." Family always is. "If you can Paint life"—said with all the significance of a capital 'P'—"and you can Paint death... that must make you a god in some ways."
He frowns at that stain on the wall. "Everyone else must seem like ants to them."
With considerable, hard-won effort, Jasnah manages to dress herself. Not without still requiring some additional assistance — there are ties she cannot quite reach, strings that require tightening, a blouse that resists being tucked without aggravating protest from her abdomen. But she gets there. Presentable, for a generous definition of the word.
The Thaylen style is undeniably breezier than her ruined havah. Even fully arranged, it bares more shoulder than she would ever have chosen for herself under ordinary circumstances, draping along the body in ways Alethi tailoring studiously avoids. Ordinarily, Jasnah would not be caught dead in something so unstructured, so willing to acknowledge the shape of the person wearing it.
Today, she permits it.
Once she is dressed enough, she reaches out and taps his shoulder and nudges him to turn back around.
"You're talking about the Paintress," she states, when she can see his eyes again. She hadn't forgotten their chat on the Plains.
"—Yeah," he says as he takes Jasnah's new digs in. It's not a scandalous amount of skin to show by Lumièran standards (check Sciel bearing her stomach in that crop top), but it makes him feel a little hot for the fact that it's Jasnah's skin, something heretofore unknown to him. Unknown to a lot of people, probably.
He grabs the vest and hands it to her.
"The Gommage is proof that—" A moment of hesitation here, a little stumbling. How to explain without sharing too much? "That we're all just toys for someone more powerful than us to play with and put away at their leisure."
Jasnah takes the vest and holds it. Not donning it, yet.
"Power is not the same thing as divinity," she says, meeting his eyes without flinching. "If forces exist that can erase lives on a schedule, that doesn't make the people beneath them toys."
Something sharp glints beneath her composure. Defiance. Conviction without apology. And too much idealism.
"I don't believe the universe plays with us," Jasnah goes on. "I believe it's indifferent. Which is worse, perhaps. But also better. Indifference leaves room for responsibility. For choice." A pause. "If someone were arranging deaths for their own amusement, I wouldn't kneel and call them a god. I'd call them a tyrant. And tyrants can be opposed."
Jasnah would certainly be the type to join an Expedition. It's written all over her: in her certainty and her politics. She would choose the uncertain death over the guaranteed one every time.
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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."
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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?"
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"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.
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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?"
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"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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
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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."
no subject
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?"
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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."
no subject
— 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.
no subject
—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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
Verso can't imagine what that's like. To live life thinking everything sprung from nothing, that you are the only master of your soul. He wishes desperately that he could.
Very carefully, so as not to displace her, he reaches down for the blouse on the divan. Without looking, he holds it out for her to take.
no subject
Her answer starts simple. Honest to a fault. She does not believe in the Almighty, as the Vorin Church described him. She does not believe in one omniscient, all-powerful deity. She does believe that one can believe in something greater than oneself without subscribing to organized religion. Without worship. If divinity exists, it's in the hearts of people. Surely.
— Nevermind that the enemy whose forces occupy her homeworld is a terrifically powerful lower-g god. But not a God. Hers has become a stranger stance to take now that the nature of the Shards has been revealed. Still, she clings to it.
She tugs the blouse from his hand and gets to work.
"My loudest critics like to say my disbelief makes me immoral. Disbelief in God is not disbelief in right and wrong. It is disbelief in coercion masquerading as morality. If goodness must be policed to exist, then it was never goodness to begin with. I would rather answer to my own conscience than borrow one from fear."
Okay, that was a lot of words to say while also fighting with the voluminous blouse sleeves. But maybe she's feel a little — defensive. As if she anticipates Verso, too, will think less of her for it. It's unusual for her to care so much what someone else thinks. But here we are.
no subject
"I don't think you're immoral." Far from it. Clearly, she has lofty ambitions to improve Roshar. Would someone immoral spend so much of their time thinking of that? "I like the way you see the world."
no subject
It's the small, inward pause of someone unaccustomed to having their internal architecture admired out loud. Heat creeps up her throat, uninvited and unmistakable, settling high on her cheeks. If Verso were facing her, he would see it at once. Fortunately for her dignity, he's not.
Behind him, she continues to steady herself with one hand at his shoulder. The blouse is only half-sorted. The situation is...ridiculous. Intimate. Ill-timed. Her voice is stripped of lecture cadence. Stripped, frankly, of armour. More naked than she is at this point, actually.
"Thank you," she says. No qualifier. Just sincerity. Then, moments later: "What do you believe?"
About a God. Capitalized or otherwise. And while she asks, her safehand fingers catch on the the skirt still waiting in his hand. The contact is brief, minimized. Just a little casual religious discourse over getting dressed. No biggie.
no subject
But then she finally says 'thank you', and he assumes she must have decided to take the words for what they are.
As for what he believes: "It's complicated." Family always is. "If you can Paint life"—said with all the significance of a capital 'P'—"and you can Paint death... that must make you a god in some ways."
He frowns at that stain on the wall. "Everyone else must seem like ants to them."
no subject
The Thaylen style is undeniably breezier than her ruined havah. Even fully arranged, it bares more shoulder than she would ever have chosen for herself under ordinary circumstances, draping along the body in ways Alethi tailoring studiously avoids. Ordinarily, Jasnah would not be caught dead in something so unstructured, so willing to acknowledge the shape of the person wearing it.
Today, she permits it.
Once she is dressed enough, she reaches out and taps his shoulder and nudges him to turn back around.
"You're talking about the Paintress," she states, when she can see his eyes again. She hadn't forgotten their chat on the Plains.
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He grabs the vest and hands it to her.
"The Gommage is proof that—" A moment of hesitation here, a little stumbling. How to explain without sharing too much? "That we're all just toys for someone more powerful than us to play with and put away at their leisure."
Sounds pretty godlike to him.
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"Power is not the same thing as divinity," she says, meeting his eyes without flinching. "If forces exist that can erase lives on a schedule, that doesn't make the people beneath them toys."
Something sharp glints beneath her composure. Defiance. Conviction without apology. And too much idealism.
"I don't believe the universe plays with us," Jasnah goes on. "I believe it's indifferent. Which is worse, perhaps. But also better. Indifference leaves room for responsibility. For choice." A pause. "If someone were arranging deaths for their own amusement, I wouldn't kneel and call them a god. I'd call them a tyrant. And tyrants can be opposed."
Jasnah would certainly be the type to join an Expedition. It's written all over her: in her certainty and her politics. She would choose the uncertain death over the guaranteed one every time.
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congrats on receiving my 1,000th comment in this post
throwing a party!!
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