recreatable | open post.

Verso pauses. Squints. Contemplates. "You mean— six days and..." It was the middle of the night, and although he's not certain of the exact time, he was awake for nearly all of it. It can't have been that long. "Sixteen hours."

A small, small nod. Jasnah's lips press together in a tight line — suppressing a smirk, maybe — as she watches him. One brow raised just a fraction. She'd wondered what tactic he'd take in reply to her obstinance, and negotiation comes as a slight pleasant surprise.

"Correct," she acknowledges. "The facts are on your side, this morning."

Ah. He's surprised, too, by her easy acceptance of his rebuttal. He'd thought it would be harder to get her to acquiesce. Sometimes, although he doesn't dare say it, it feels as if she disagrees solely for the sake of disagreeing.

"We should probably round up just to be safe, then."

— Acknowledging that he's correct isn't quite the same as agreeing to his timeline. But she's curious for how this might play out. Jasnah reaches out and twists the spanreed to transmit. A helpful, cutthroat little time pressure to the conversation.

"You'd quibble over a handful of hours?" She asks, quibbling over a handful of hours.

Yep.

"—You'd quibble over a handful of hours?"

Of course she would. And of course he would—he's inherently competitive, and even that aside, it makes him feel like he has some modicum of control over what is actually a somewhat scary situation. Not for him; he'll be fine flying. Even just taking a walk with Jasnah feels like she's at risk of bleeding out all over again, though, and there's no way that flying wouldn't be ten times harder on her.

So: "You probably don't remember, but you were actually stabbed recently."

She bites back the first, second, and third retorts that rise in the back of her throat. Swallowing them down, she turns her attention off Verso and onto the spanreed. It does occur to Jasnah that she could simply...write the message. Windrunners, six days. There's nothing that obligates her to even hear Verso out — nothing apart from the thickening bonds of whatever-this-is. Would she have entertained this much negotiation with anyone else?

(Well. Maybe someone else. And the thought makes her frown, deeply.)

"There's no harm in the Windrunners arriving in six days, even if we don't take flight until the seventh."

If, maybe, perhaps. She leaves some space in her sentences to slip between at a later date.

If Jasnah had recognized his offer to go on a walk as what it was—a bribe—then he recognizes this, too, as the sort of ridiculous negotiation tactics he and his sisters used to engage in as children. Meaningless trades that changed nothing materially, but made them feel as if they had won something.

"You're right," he concedes. "There's nothing wrong with them coming a day early."

Aside from the power struggle that's likely to occur when Jasnah inevitably decides that they should just go ahead and leave when the Windrunners arrive, but they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.

Whatever it is, whatever the tactic, it's settled enough that she quickly pens her requisition: Too early yet to fly — send Windrunners to arrive in six days' time.

The pen pauses. Jasnah taps one, twice. They'll need to agree on a meeting place but it occurs to her she'll need Verso's buy-in. And right now...well, right now isn't the best time for it. If she can show significant improvement over the next few days, if she can still draw stormlight even in dribs and drabs. Yes. The conversation can wait. Jasnah at least has a rendezvous point in mind.

"—All that remains is to wait."

She sets the spanreed aside, uncertain whether her patience will hold three days — let alone six. Let alone whatever additional time is required if her hypothesis proves flawed and her recovering doesn't speed up as Ivory too recovers.

"I suppose you're right," Verso agrees, because 'waiting' is pretty much what they've been doing for the past week. Waiting and recovering, in Jasnah's case. She strikes him as the sort of person who doesn't do well staying put for long; it's not difficult for him, having decades of boredom under his belt, but it must be for her.

A pause. He taps his fingers against his knee.

"—Your hair looks nice that way," he offers. Very nice. Dark, shiny even now, spilling down her back. It's probably wrong how appealing it is to see her loose, unbound. He clears his throat. "Do you need help putting it back before we go?"

More reflexive than self-conscious, her hand reaches to touch her loose hair — fingers combing through waves that threaten to coalesce onto almost-curls. Leaving it down like this is nearer to the Veden style. And Jasnah much prefers the careful, curated approach. It's not safe to wear her gold hair pins, but she misses them. And the slight, grounding tension of at least one braid. Like this, she feels so — unstructured. Unmoored.

She cards her fingers up against the nape of her neck and combs the length of her hair out — fighting briefly between the compliment (your hair looks nice that way) and her inclination to bring it back to heel.

"Yes, actually. I think I could manage," she goes as far as testing her range of motion, shadowing the movements necessary for a good braid. It hurts, but she knows not to push too far. "But it wouldn't be neat enough."

Neat enough. Because neatness matters.

Verso fetches a hair tie, then settles back on the divan with Jasnah in front of him. He doesn't use the brush this time, instead combing his fingers through the length of her hair; he tells himself, as he works out a tangle with his index and middle fingers, that it's more efficient than using a brush. Deep down, though, he knows it's an excuse to touch her in a way that she would otherwise never allow.

Despite that little bit of self-indulgence, his work is dutiful and expedient, fingers not lingering anywhere that he doesn't have an excuse for. The braid is neat and taut, as requested, and when he ties it off he shifts back, feeling—

A little hot and bothered, honestly. There's something seriously wrong with him. It's the proximity, getting to be so near her in a way he's usually only ever been with another person with his clothes off. Or, well, partially off. It's kind of a waste of time to take them all the way off.

He scoots back further, creating more distance. "All done."

It's...nice. And not simply because she's accustomed to being attended to. Rank and station have ensured a lifetime of hands nearby, once upon a time. Fewer now, by choice. By age. By paranoia. Even then, this moment is something different entirely: the rare, fleeting permission to let someone else take care of her without obligation or hierarchy attached. A sensation she both resents and craves, and has never quite learned to balance.

This morning, she lets herself enjoy it. Trust itself is invigorating. And it's less what he's doing, and more that she allows it. As if a thread has been drawn through her sternum and anchored gently to his presence. A quiet, steadying bond. When his fingertips brush her scalp, gooseflesh rises along her neck. At one point she exhales a short, surprised laugh — quick reassurance following, soft and monosyllabic: she's fine, yes; no, he hasn't pulled too hard on that tangle.

Her head begins to bob almost unconsciously with the practiced over-under motion of the braid taking shape. She offers the smallest resistance, holding still, knowing it's her part of the work to be steady, to give him something firm to braid against.

And when it's finished, her shoulders drop. Her right hand traces the pattern, familiar and new all at once, before she flips the tail over one shoulder.

"Well done," she says, measured but warm. "I daresay they're getting better." And because she's learned some of his patterns by now, she adds: "And they started out good."

Hard to imagine they were both squabbling over hours just moments ago.

"—It looks nice that way, too."

Verso rubs his hands against the fabric of his trousers, palms gone a little sweaty. Flustered from the mere experience of being close to a beautiful woman. Clearly, it's been way too long. A decade, at least. More. After getting so far with the 58s, after watching Renoir slaughter them, he'd distanced himself. Doing the same thing over and over again without different results is insanity. 25 years, then, of loneliness. It's really no wonder that he can't keep his feelings on a leash.

"Uh," he says eloquently. "I'll go looking for a place that we can eat."

...Disappointment crowds onto her face. He'll go looking? Yes, alright, when she plays the conversation back in her point-form recollection, she can understand how that must have been his original intent.

Still.

Jasnah flattens a hand on the end-table and uses it to push herself to her feet. Look, she's steady! Look, she's stable!

"I thought we'd go together," she tells him — ignorant of why he might want to escape alone for a time before lunch.

"Hey," he scolds, standing up an instant after she does, hands hovering a few inches away from her to catch her if she falters. "I thought we'd both agreed on no sudden movements."

Or maybe he'd just assumed they did, because that's common sense.

"...It might take a while to find somewhere." Yes, he'd like a moment alone to disgustingly yearn and then maybe slap himself and psych himself up for being normal and platonic on this lunch absolutely-not-a-date, but there's also pragmatic reasons behind it, too. "You might get tired."

Oh, how she wants to snarl at him that she is not made of glass. Except, except, except — she kinda is, just now. More fragile than she's ever been in years. More fragile right now than she was curled around the knife, on the deck of the Wind's Pleasure, the last time she'd been stabbed. At least then all she'd had to do was wait the assassins out and heal once she'd made it to Shadesmar.

Now — hmm. Jasnah doesn't knock his hands aside, but she does intervene by sliding her palm against where her wound sits. The tick in her jaw suggests the movement was indeed too sudden.

Ah, yes, she reminds herself. Here comes the resentment after the craving.

"I will only know my limits if I test them."

His hand lingers there for a few beats—not quite touching but close enough that he can feel her body heat radiating—before it drops. She isn't Alicia, small and delicate and in need of protection. She isn't an Expeditioner, either, bound to die in one horrific way or another in front of his eyes.

"Okay," he says after the silence stretches a little too long. "You're right. We'll go, then."

All that puffed up, feral animal energy — the defensiveness, the argumentative instinct, the sternness — suddenly has nowhere to go. And she finds herself disinclined to inflict it on him just so she can excise it from herself. Huh.

So her jaw works and her shoulders roll and she busies herself with looking for an appropriate container to move Ivory into, so that she needn't leave him behind. It's slow and careful going, walking herself towards Jochi's kitchenette — but it would be silly to have made such a fuss and then ask for Verso's help to travel a mere few feet.

"I just need to borrow one of Jochi's spice tins..."

Verso watches Jasnah, her movements prolonged and halting, and stuffs down the urge to scurry after her and assist her. Still, he can't help but walk after her—and then past her—to the kitchenette, crouching down to dig through the cupboards for a small tin. When he stands, he holds it out wordlessly, knowing she'd rather be the one to place Ivory inside than allow him to do it. He understands; it's hard to trust someone with your most precious person.

He waits patiently all throughout the process, hovering nearby in case something happens but not so close as to be breathing down her neck. When Ivory is safely nestled in the tin, he doesn't offer his arm, but he does say, "You can lean on me, if you get tired."

She stands — stunned, one hand on the wall — when he hands her precisely what she's seeking. All the wild, displaced frustration flees and buries itself somewhere deeper for the time being. Instead, she simply feels understood. Verso had no reason to recognize what she was after, or why — except perhaps camaraderie. Familiarity enough to understand what her next highest priority was going to be, and how she might seek to solve it.

A jolt of something sweet but scary shoots through her. The more potent cousin to whatever soft connection she'd felt when he'd sat behind her, braiding. Jasnah frowns.

Nevertheless, she claims the tin and (slow, steady, avoiding sudden movements) she returns to gently nestle Ivory into the tin's interior. She uses enough linen lining to keep him snug, she thinks. Comfortable. She's not sure spren even feel physical discomfort, given their nature, but she doesn't want him rattling around in there all the same. Once accomplished, she slips the whole thing into a pocket — along with last night's spheres.

"I know," she finally answers. It's not chippy or sulky. Rather, forthright. Factual. Yes, she knows and expects she can lean on him. "Help me with the stairs," she indicates, "and I'll see how I manage myself once we reach the street."

Verso does help her with the stairs, a slow and laborious process, one palm pressed against her back to steady her and the other hand curled around her forearm. He makes idle conversation to distract her as they go, knowing she must find his assistance embarrassing at best and cloying at worst. When they finally make it down to the ground floor, he releases her arm, although his hand remains at her back for a lingering moment before he slowly peels it away.

In the bakery, Jochi waves—more to Jasnah than to him—although there's a little flicker of concern on his face as he watches her moving independently already. On an emotional level, he's worried about Jasnah's well-being; on a pragmatic level, he really doesn't want the queen of Alethkar to get hurt again in his shop.

Out on the street, Verso tries and fails not to think about how she'd needed to hold his hand for support the day before. His fingers twitch a little, and he presses them flat against his thigh.

"So far, so good?"

The excursion won't be easy. Already, she can feel a lick of sweat along her spine from the stairs. And she'd had help with those. Jasnah pauses just outside Jochi's door. Silently, stubbornly, she gives herself a challenge: make it to the end of the side-street under her own steam. After that, yes, she'll lean on Verso.

There are good reasons to be cautious. But there are also good reasons to be bold. She won't let herself grow too accepting of the wound. She won't let her sense of self warp around it.

So, she answers him with a stiff nod. Sipping in a breath, she starts with slow measured steps. Hand still on the bakery's outside wall. One, two, three, and the a glance over her shoulder to see how he follows.

"... Don't help until the fountain at the earliest."

She jerks her head forward, indicating a modest water feature.

Verso holds his hands up, palms out, as if to show her physical proof of his innocence. "Not helping." No matter how badly he wants to!

He turns around, walking backwards a few steps ahead of her so that he might catch her if she stumbles, although he doesn't dare reach out unless she does. Clea always accused him of coddling, and if there's anything he knows Jasnah will hate, it's being coddled. So, instead, he just keeps a careful eye out while he takes slow steps back. Coddling only in his mind and not in reality.

"I've noticed something," he says idly. "You usually do something to your food before you eat it."

Her attention tracks him as he moves to a forward position — but walking backwards, facing her. Acceptable. But even so, her fingers graze the wall to her right. Every third or fourth step, she leans her full weight through her palm against the wall. Brief, necessary support.

She's doing well enough. Slow, certainly. But she isn't rushing.

"—Is that so?" She responds to his question, neither confirming nor denying anything.

"It is," he bats back, playful, teasing. "It may surprise you, but I actually have quite a keen sense of observation."

Also, it's obvious.

"Is it because of the taste?" Because she doesn't like sweet things; perhaps, without someone to swap with her, she's been surreptitiously changing the taste all this time.

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