recreatable | open post.

A curt, confirming nod. He did indeed tell her — in similarly vague terms — that he had survived the cohort. And despite her distaste for assumptions, she'd certainly already assumed it had been the monsters on the continent that had torn that Expedition apart. At any rate, Verso's storytelling had deftly (perhaps not even consciously) delivered her to that conclusion.

But this last bit is new. Freshly minted intel, to be carefully considered.

"So the two of you survived," she prompts — gut protesting against this practice, but so far he hasn't thrown some flippant shield up in her way. She'll continue her experiment. "When no one else did."

Wait! There's something else Verso always does at this junction of one of her stories — something she usually hates to hear, because it feels so much like an uncomfortable attempt for someone else to etch their guesses onto her heart. But she tries it now.

"It must have been — difficult. Surviving something like that together."

Her delivery is not smooth. But, storms, she's trying.

As much as Jasnah hates it, the softer approach works for him, visibly so—a slight lessening of the tension in his shoulders, eyes on hers instead of looking anywhere but her face. Not everyone prefers being asked endless questions. It's less pressure like this, when he can pick and choose how he wants to share and in what way.

"It wasn't— easy," he admits. It was fucking horrible, honestly; even all of these years later, he can still picture the slaughter, Clea's expression cold and indifferent through it all as if she were squashing a pesky bug instead of killing all of his friends. This still isn't about that, though.

"He thought that our immortality was a gift from the Paintress." Verso feels ashamed to think that he'd felt the same way once. He'd been so stupid. "We argued all the time."

He leaves the implication that they'd once been allied at that. No need to expound on what he did alongside Renoir.

"He would have done anything to stop the Expeditions from getting to her," he says, weight on the word anything. "I wanted to leave, and he—" Went on a tirade about how Verso was tearing the family apart. The first of many. "Let's just say he didn't want to accept my resignation."

Her throat feels tight in that strange anxious way — like the very scaffolding of her body has wrenched itself into a tense hold, worried she'll be caught with her hand in a drawer she really shouldn't be plundering. Even now, she can't understand why it's not preferable to field a question — to either agree to answer it or not. This way feels somehow sneaky.

Manipulative.

— But she doesn't mind the way he meets her eyes. Properly. It might be worth it for that alone.

"I remember, on the Shattered Plains. You mentioned not everyone thinks she needs to be stopped. Was that Renoir you were talking about?"

"Yeah," is his simple answer. "He worships her. Wants to free her from her confines, so that we—"

Verso stops himself. He's getting carried away. Sharing too much.

"We've been at cross purposes for decades."

'So that we' what—?? Storms, he can probably see the question stuck in her craw. Floating behind her eyes. Tickling just under her lower lip, so much so that she bites down with her top teeth and must visibly restrain herself from chasing that dangling, unfinished mystery.

Jasnah crosses her arms over her chest — squeezing a little tightly, like the tension helps keep her instincts in check. Because now not only is she stuck wondering what he hasn't said, but she finds herself once again circling the nature of this Paintress like a carrion chicken. What are the confines that keep her from being free? Is it anything like the oaths that bind Odium to Roshar? And this Renoir wants to free her, whereas Verso — doesn't? Why? What purpose is served in keeping the Paintress confined?

(Why did Hoid insist they couldn't possibly let Odium renegotiate the terms of his captivity?)

After a silence that hangs just a little too long, she unwinds her arms enough to once again tap a finger against her cheekbone.

"He did that. To you."

Her tone is so carefully flattened. Not a single interrogative rise to be found.

"Yeah," he says after a long moment, eyes finally drifting off to stare at a point somewhere beyond her face, gone a little distant. "That was the first time he ever—"

Laid a hand on Verso. They'd never had the closeness Verso had with his mother—Renoir had preferred Alicia and Clea, and he'd known it—but it had never been hostile like that. He'd never been afraid of his own father before that day.

He shakes his head, eyes refocusing on her face again. "It's killing you not to ask questions, isn't it?"

Some blanks are easier to fill in. Jasnah nods into the gap between one sentence and the next, understanding somewhat implicitly what he isn't saying — although narrowed to the confines of a leader and their charges. Like a scholar betraying her ward. Without thinking, she eases an inch or two closer on the divan. And for what? Jasnah doesn't reach out, doesn't take his hand, doesn't do anything. Just...watches him, thinking a little too long and a little too hard about what it means to purposefully, intentionally keep a memento from a dynamic like that.

"Am I so transparent?" She asks, already knowing the answer. Jasnah loosens her shoulders and gives her neck a brief, easy side-to-side stretch. Trying to act like her whole body isn't an anxious spool of wire wound too tight with the effort and focus it takes to pay a different kind of attention.

Absolutely transparent. Nonetheless, it's sweet for her to have held back this long. Verso smiles wryly, reaching back to press his thumb against the juncture of his neck and shoulder. "If you press down here for long enough, it'll release some of that tension." He knows because he's also tense as fuck.

All her impatience, all her gnawing curiosity, all her genuine concern for what had happened to him — albeit concern that she couldn't demonstrate in a way that came most naturally to her — bubbles up with a petty little protest.

As she raises two fingers to her upper trap, she complains: "I know how to release ten—ow." A harsh breath in, and reality crashing into place that reaching up and across her body just-like-that is precisely the sort of movement that pulls on her wound in all the wrong ways.

A grunt of pain, mixed with a vaguely embarrassed grumble.

"I know, I know," she pre-empts him. "No sudden movements."

"She's learning," he teases, even though she definitely just made a sudden movement after he scolded her about it a million times. And he's really quite rare to scold, so she should know that means it's important. Regardless, there's been no real damage from the movement, so he lets it pass without further chiding. There's more pressing matters to attend to, besides—

"I could do it for you."

This, so soon after he decide he needed to keep his physical distance from Jasnah in order to maintain his sanity.

"I've been known to have quite nimble fingers."

— It surprises her how easily, readily her first reaction is to say yes. Yes, do it for me. But so much of their time together has been a slow (and sometimes not-so-slow) erosion of distance and propriety. What's a little deep tissue massage, when she's already felt the backs of his hands against her neck as he braided? When not twenty minutes ago, she'd petted his pinky finger in her palm like a cute little cremling. Nimble, indeed.

As proximity grows more challenging for him, it grows easier and easier for her. So Jasnah nods. He'd never know it, but it's the same pointed nod she might have given Renarin.

"I'd like that."

— It's not as if she hasn't had attendants dig into the knots and fatigued muscles of her shoulders or her writing arm in the past. It's just that they've been just that: attendants. Not someone whose ominous facial scar she's been fixating on for the last little while. Nor someone whose company she'd keep willingly. Unlike him.

"Okay."

He doesn't dare say I'd like that, too and ruin this. This is entirely— practical. A chaste, platonic helpful gesture. No need to ascribe any meaning to the fact that it'll undoubtedly be the most physically intimate thing he's done with another person in years.

Verso clears his throat, makes a spinning motion with his index finger. "You'll, uh, need to turn around."

She stills for half a beat of recalibration. Then Jasnah exhales, slow and controlled, and complies without an ounce if reluctance.

Wordlessly, she shifts on the divan, careful of her wound and turning so her back faces him. The movement is deliberate, almost prim. She adjusts the fall of her braid over one shoulder to clear the other. A small, practical gesture that nonetheless gives him a silent indication of exactly where she expects him to begin.

Jasnah folds her hands in her lap and stares straight ahead. Only now does a thin note of embarrassment settle into her pulse.

"... You've done this before?" She asks just to fill the space between now and when she'll first feel contact on her skin.

If he'd been self-conscious about the calluses before, he's now acutely aware of them as he places a hand on her free shoulder, very carefully nudging the fabric of her clothing out of the way—not much, just enough to expose the muscles.

"—To another human person?" he asks, which is probably answer enough. No, he's never done this before. Never had cause to. He's only ever dealt with his own tense muscles, but surely it can't be that hard to apply it to someone else.

"...Yeah," he lies as he presses a thumb into the side of the bony knob at the base of her neck. "Of course I have."

Right. Sure. Okay.

His question and the answer he supplies don't line up at all, and not for the first time Jasnah finds herself wondering why he tells this particular species of lie. Have others believed them? Is it a habit grown from too many years of isolation, a way of smoothing over moments before they sharpen? Or worse — does he expect her to politely accept it, to play along for the sake of ease?

For now, it doesn't matter. She doesn't need to resolve it this instant.

What does require her attention is the simple act of sitting a little straighter, of keeping her torso upright instead of letting herself collapse into the cushion. The first tentative push into her muscles draws a quiet, nasal sound from the back of her throat — not quite a complaint, more an acknowledgment that there is indeed something there to be worked through.

"I forgot," she says, voice kept even, "what this felt like. Tight muscles. Another benefit of stormlight I've been taking for granted these past six years."

Her shoulders roll — brief, economical, a small recalibration. Without quite meaning to, Jasnah leans a fraction into the pressure of his thumb.

"You can press harder," she tells him.

Verso's heart races at the feeling of another person leaning even a millimeter into his touch, and he feels a bit like a degenerate old man for it, to be taking pleasure in something that should be entirely clinical and dispassionate. He swallows, pressing harder as requested, feeling exploratorily up and down her tight trapezius, the projections of her spine.

"Thanks, by the way," he says after a long silence of diligent work. He doesn't specify what he's expressing gratitude for; she's clever, she'll figure out that it's for listening, for not bombarding him with anxiety-provoking questions. "Felt good to talk about it." Even if it was only in an oblique way with all of the implicating details wiped clean.

His hand travels further down to her shoulder proper, thumb pausing over a knot. "Breathe out," he instructs before pressing down on it.

Jasnah Kholin is not made of stone, no matter how often people say it.

And though her pulse does not race — though she feels no spark, no crackle of heat — she experiences the moment in a way that's far, far from clinical. The pads of his fingers, firm and calloused, rest against her skin with the quiet certainty of something earned. Trust. If his heart is racing, hers is doing the opposite. Slowing, settling, unwinding.

It reminds her of that same morning when he braided her hair: the same steady presence, the same care taken without fanfare. Of the moment she touched his temple the night prior, curious and unguarded, only to find that she had wanted more than she realized — not more in the way people usually mean it, but this. The closeness. The safety of being handled without being claimed.

For once, she doesn't analyze it. She simply lets it happen.

He thanks her and a sound escapes her that's so confused it almost sounds blank: "Oh." Her non-interrogation had been helpful? Useful? "I'm not as good a listener as you are," she admits, echoing him from an earlier night. "But I'm trying."

She does not explain how rarely she's needed to try. How most people simply answer her when she asks. Most people.

Her mouth opens to add something else, but his quiet instruction interrupts her. Breathe out. She does — sharply, a low storms! forced out of her as his thumb finds the knot and presses. The pressure is precise and the muscle feels more tender than she'd anticipated. But it's effective, so she lifts her gloved hand in a quick, wordless spiral. Urging him on.

Don't stop.

No, you're a really good listener is a lie that even Verso can't say with a straight face. She's not. It's all right; he's unaccustomed to being listened to, to having himself be perceived by another person in this way. The mere thrill of being looked at and seen for what he is instead of what someone wants to see is enough.

He does his level best not to find the noise that she makes appealing, focusing on the practical, physical aspects of this rather than the emotional. His fingers are, in fact, very nimble, and he narrows down on the tense fibers in her shoulder, pressing deeply and holding it there.

"Sorry," he breathes out, genuinely feeling a little bad. "One time Monoco did this to me and it hurt so bad I kicked him."

Involuntarily! But a kick all the same. It's painful to release literal decades of tension. He releases the pressure, replacing it with an apologetic smoothing of his thumb over the spot to distract from the pain.

— The tense breath gives way to a dry chuckle. Almost exclusively catalyzed by the image of whatever-it-is she's imagined Monoco to look like and Verso giving that creature a swift, involuntary boot. She extends the both of them the dignity of not asking what muscle group was being worked over that he managed to kick the gestral.

Jasnah shifts. Just a little. Just enough to suggest she's overcome what might have otherwise been the probationary period for this experience, and she's prepared to relax a little more where she sits. Bringing one foot up onto the divan; crooking her elbow over the back. More small ways she removes the responsibility of keeping upright from her abdominals.

"I would have assumed your regeneration would help with your muscle strain, like stormlight does mine."

Can't believe Jasnah is laughing at Monoco getting kicked, what happened to her being a #MonocoRightsActivist?

But he laughs, too, because it was pretty funny. As he does, he fits his hand into the dip of her shoulder blade, offering gentle pressure up and down. "It's like the calluses. I could heal it, but it'd just come back." He is tense literally every second of every day.

—Involuntarily kicking someone is very different from leaving them under a building for a year! Storms!

There's a slight—but-not-unpleasant friction under his fingers. The kind of thing that might accumulate to be too much over time, but for now is fine. Again, she leans into the pressure. A little like a quasi-wild animal, actually allowing herself to enjoy something once the preliminary guard is dropped.

"The callouses I understand. You'd want those to persist, to make the playing more comfortable. Hours and hours of writing makes for much the same conditions — here," she reaches her right hand back, briefly, to let him feel the slightly rougher patch of skin on the inside of her middle finger. Presumably where a pen would sit, day in and day out. This one little spot was gained long before she became a Radiant, and is certainly so sunken into her Identity that it won't heal.

But the tension? Storms. She'll take in stormlight on an average day just to stay awake longer, to ease exhaustion, to fight the cramps in her writing hand if she's been particularly busy. It does surprise her a little that he wouldn't do something similar even if it would just come back.

Verso runs his index across the side of her finger, brief and unindulgent, before he returns back to his work, softening up the hard knots in her muscles as best he can. He's no expert, but he does know the basic concept: seek out tight spots and press real hard.

"You get tired of doing the same thing over and over." Healing the knots in his muscles is a small example of that, but all the same. Verso is sick of repetition. "What was I going to do, heal it every night before I slept on the ground and woke up with it again?"

Yes, she almost answers. But the way he describes it — and even what she witnessed in the kitchenette — reasserts for Jasnah that it's nothing like stormlight. Upon breathing it in, healing is automatic. Quick. A sip of it would be enough.

She's about to explain this difference, how she can't even keep the callouses she might actually want to form while learning how to wield Ivory as a sword, because they never stay long enough to sink into her Identity. But she allows herself to be distracted — tugged along to other thoughts, caught up in the unpredictable non-pattern of where his fingers press next.

"The ground," she echoes. Of course, the ground. Only once he says it do the easy conclusions slot into place. Back to him, she frowns — thinking about bedding down on obsidian in Shadesmar and shooting a guilty glance over at the square of floorboards that had become his de facto bed here at Jochi's.

"There truly was nothing on the Continent, was there?"

Not even lavis grain stuffed in a sack?

"Not... nothing."

How does he explain? He used to love the Continent, back before the Fracture. Some of his most wonderful memories took place skiing in the mountains, or picking flowers in the meadows, or playing in the gestrals' sanctuary. Back then, there'd been trains to and from most locations on the Continent, even some small clusters of humans living out in more rural areas. That all changed, of course, and now— well, 'nothing' is closer to the truth than he wishes it was.

Verso gingerly sweeps a hand underneath her braid, thumb lingering on the tail of it for a split second before draping it across the shoulder he just massaged. He resists every ridiculous urge he has to take the hair tie out.

"Just— not most things."

He rests a hand on her opposite shoulder, repeating the same actions on this side, fingers pressing along the outline of her spine.

"I'll admit, it took me three days to be able to sleep on a bed again."

An easy, knowing hm is the only sign she gives that she understands — if from a slightly different angle — why adjusting to a soft bed might be an ordeal. The sound barely has time to settle before it twists into a thin, involuntary whine when he finds a particularly stubborn knot.

Nevertheless, a sliver of her attention remains trained on Verso. She finds herself wondering whether he actually slept those first three nights at all, or whether this too is hyperbole — the sort a performer uses to sketch in a feeling rather than recount a fact. But sleep or no sleep, she decides, he has more than earned a comfortable place to rest his head.

When he switches sides, she allows herself to lean back against the divan, resting without fully withdrawing — her shoulder and the line of her neck still offered but her weight no longer held upright by will alone. She has stamina yet to recover, especially after their lunch-that-wasn't-quite-a-date.

"—Was it too soft?"

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