Her teeth grit. In the span of only a few minutes she has apparently managed to be baffling and ridiculous — by his accounting. And, fine. She leaves room for those possibilities. She is capable of self-critique. What needles is that every attempt to talk her way out of the whitespine den only seems to drive her deeper into it.
It's unfamiliar. Uncanny. Ordinarily, this is where she excels — parrying words with words, tightening logic until there is nowhere left to stand. No ardent has ever truly cornered her that way, though a few from the Devotary of Sincerity came uncomfortably close.
But this debate is not being fought on the terrain of logic. It is being fought on feeling, and she finds her footing far, far too slippery here.
She pauses at the door and turns back. Ah — another adjective, set neatly at her feet. Angry, now. To join baffling and ridiculous.
"I'm not angry," she says, her voice tight and certainly angry-adjacent. Storms, she can almost see the angerspren bubbling up like blood from the ground. Then, after the barest hesitation: "At least, not with you."
Clipped, sarcastic: "Right. Of course. You're downright chipper."
Hypocritical of him, considering he'd instantly denied being upset when she'd called him out. It somehow feels fine—morally just, even—to conceal his true feelings from her, but offensive and insulting to have hers hidden from him.
"At least be angry and well-rested." At least be angry in his room, instead of angry across the tower. There's already an emotional gulf between them; there doesn't need to be a physical one, too. "Think of how much more articulate you'll be when you yell at me."
Cogs turn. Pages flip. Something is happening behind her eyes — a quick accounting of what she needs versus what she wants versus what happens if she walks alone back to her quarters. It would be one thing if she thought she might get some work done, but in reality she knows she'll be tearing apart every drawer and fabrial (not unlike how she disassembled the clock) looking for additional evidence. Storms, one of those spies once tucked themselves tight into the mechanism of one of Hoid's pens. And in so doing, spilled all their secrets to the Ghostbloods.
He's right. At least be angry and well-rested. Her shoulders sink; she shuts her eyes, but briefly, and rubs the edge of a thumb against her temple. She's so very tired. How did she cope before she could burn stormlight?
Jasnah relents, walking back into the room and approaching the bed. Nevertheless, she still goes toe-to-toe with his sarcasm: "Because those are the only two options: chipper or angry. Nary an emotion in between."
Verso's eyebrow twitches. "You—" He visibly smothers down whatever it is that he'd been about to impulsively blurt out, but it's not too hard to figure out what it would have been. Something like you're impossible. Another descriptor to add to the list.
Instead of saying that, though, he takes a deep breath in through his nose as he watches her near his bed. Ridiculous, really, that he feels a sense of relief at the fact that she's chosen to stay here and make irritating little comments, but he's grown very used to the feeling of being unhappy with someone but still wanting them near.
"Please educate me then, professor, on what you're feeling." It's unreasonable to look down on a student for not knowing the curriculum when she's never taught it to him.
Oh. The unfinished sentence still nets him a sharp glance — a twitch of her own eyebrow like ornery little mirror. But it only lasts as long as it takes to sit (just at the foot of the bed, working in increments) and stabilize herself with both hands pressed against the mattress. The smokestone still pinched between her fingers.
But then he says please educate me and it doesn't matter how sarcastic he might still be, she feels herself slip easily into the opening. So — what is she feeling? There is no easy, instinctual answer. Jasnah rifles through her dread and her annoyance and the claustrophobic ways in which she feels caught between bad options. You can't think a feeling. You have to feel it.
Storms, she hates feeling.
"Fearful," she starts — picking an easy one because she's already confessed it. And because it's just as political as it is personal. "Every day we don't march to reclaim Alethkar, Odium's forces will get more and more entrenched in our cities. There will be lands we won't win back."
He's been in the meetings and the coalition conversations — albeit as 'background furniture,' as he'd put it. She expects him to have at least paid cursory attention to the trade-offs being made in those conversations.
"That, I already knew," he responds. "It may surprise you, but I have two working ears." He shoots a pointed look her way, eyes finally on her face for the first time in the past few minutes. "Some have even argued there's something between them, although I've yet to see any evidence to that effect."
He stares expectantly. Not saying it outright, but clear with his reaction all the same. Her response was unsatisfactory.
There he is. Regardless of how embroiled and embattled they are with one another, Jasnah finds satisfaction in how his gaze finally finally finally meets her own. She holds that eye contact, not shying away from it even as he peels back the first predictable layer of her answer. And her attention searches him. She has to stop herself from asking the questions she'd ask herself with her sights set on someone else: where to cut? Where to apply pressure? How much?
A brief shake of her head, directed more to herself than to him.
"Furious," she concedes her anger but by another word. "Furious with Dalinar for committing troops to help Herdaz when those numbers could have been sent to free our homeland."
He can't have known that much. Could he? She'd kept her reactions careful, measured, practical during the meetings themselves no matter how tempted she'd been to tear into her uncle for adhering to promises he never should have made. Ah, well. Perhaps he'd intuited it. He was better at catching her buried reactions, at times, than her own family. Likely because she'd already browbeaten her relatives into not scratching the surface.
Verso presses his mouth into a thin line. He knows what it feels like to have a lost home you can never return to, but admittedly, not what it feels like to have one that you could return to if only you had the manpower. He can imagine how it must feel, though. If he had the ability for things to be the way they were before, but was helpless to actually achieve it—
Yes, he'd probably be furious.
"Fearful," he repeats, "and furious." Not exactly the large spectrum she'd been trying to claim, but he doesn't say that now. He probably shouldn't comment at all until he's certain she's finished, even though he has the urge to. "Anything else?"
Anything else? For a moment it looks as though she might wind herself up to scold him for his prodding. But, hey, it's better this than spitting at each other from opposite sides of the room. Better the pressure than the silence. Jasnah rolls the gemstone between her fingers — a talisman or a toy — letting its smooth facets carry her from thought to thought.
What else does she feel?
Drained. With little sleep and no stormlight to compensate, even minor friction scrapes her raw. Ill-equipped. Childish. It's humiliating to recognize that some of the composure she's worn these past six years wasn't her at all. Just borrowed strength.
Overwhelmed. The dead cremling was likely only that: a cremling that crawled in behind a book while her study sat empty for three weeks. But paired with Hoid's warning, scaffolded by an attempt on her life? It felt like Yet Another Threat. Logical strategy would recommend setting Shallan loose to dig into the Ghostbloods. But that same logic also tells her the cost of that strategy might might be the safety of a young woman she's already failed once. Perhaps it's better to wait let that fight come to her.
She's quiet for a long while, picking through the debris of her heart, trying to guess which answer will satisfy him — and realizing, with a flare of irritation, that the only acceptable answer is to explain what drove her to seek him out tonight. Damnation.
"Lonely," she says at last. She leaves the smokestone on the covers and taps once, lightly, against her chest. "I missed talking about smaller stakes. I missed talking until falling asleep."
I missed you.
The thought lands, petty and sharp, given he's been there every day. Her shadow. Ha — background furniture. A hard swallow and she buries her embarrassment at her feet as she bends forward and works a boot free.
Ah. What must be torture for her makes something rise, buoyant, in his chest. It's exactly what he wanted to hear, of course. That she's felt lonesome since receiving the hard slap of reality, too. That she feels the absence of that closeness as keenly as he does. That even if his affections aren't returned in full, the whispered conversations and card games and shared silence while each occupying themselves had been in some way special to her, too.
"—Until you fell asleep, you mean," he corrects. "I never did." Not until he'd been able to hear the telltale slowed breathing that indicated she'd fallen asleep.
He leans forward on his knees, watching her as she readies herself for bed. She should have just asked to lie in bed while he played for her the first time around. It's— exasperating that she didn't. For as much as she derides prevarication, as much as she pretends to be straightforward and uncomplicated, she's only forthright when it suits her.
"I missed that, too," he admits, then glances down at his hands again. "But, Jasnah, you as good as spurned me."
A sharp burst of breath flared through her nose suggests exactly how overexaggerated she finds his claim to be. Spurned—? Please. She isn't quite so deflated, quite so sanded down, that she doesn't want to bite back and tell him that he's got no notion of what it means to be spurned by her in earnest. If she wanted to spurn him, she wouldn't have kept him close in any capacity.
It's just — thinking about saying so, about how she can't possibly have done what he's claiming considering she'd made a point to put him in her sightline every day — she can already hear how it sounds. Like he's less a person and more a rock she found on the shore, pocketed because she likes to have it around.
One boot off. It's one of those small, domestic tasks that's always a little bit longer to accomplish one-handed. But it gives her a wonderful excuse to keep her attention down at her feet.
Mouth dry, words stilted, she asks: "What would it have looked like to not have done so? In your mind."
A trap. We just don't know whether it's set for him or her.
He can practically see the trap now. Like a pressure plate he has to be careful not to step too heavily on. He worries his lip, eyes drifting up to watch her work on her second boot. An incredibly interesting task, apparently, considering that they're both transfixed on it.
"When one likes another person," he starts, "typically they might care to introduce them to others, rather than leave them standing on the periphery like an interloper."
That was strike one of many, obviously.
"They might not quickly dismiss the person they care for like a nuisance they've been waiting to get rid of." Strike two. "They might speak to the person instead of pretending they aren't there until their services are needed." Strikes three through, like, a thousand.
"Or so I've heard. I'm not an expert on these matters." It's annoying when someone responds to a question about themselves in abstract terms, isn't it???
— Actually, the abstract nature of his response is paradoxically comforting. It lands like one of those earnest self-help texts she'd skimmed in the months before ending things with Hoid, back when she was still searching for ways to mend something that hadn't been broken so much as...misaligned. Wrong. She'd read widely — pamphlets, essays, whole textbooks — and Verso's answer has that same shape to it. Vague, reflective, oddly grounded. With more bite, admittedly. And, of course, none of that research had been about friendships, exactly.
So Jasnah listens.
She sets aside how absurd it is for a monarch to broker introductions for anyone and instead attends to the two points that actually matter. The second two. About dismissing him and pretending he isn't there. Fine. Acknowledged.
"Verso." She straightens — one boot on, one still off — and waits until saying his name aloud draws his attention. His eye contact. When she gets it, her voice softens without losing its precision. "I don't think you're a nuisance. And I haven't wanted to be rid of you."
It's sincere. It's also a test, though not intended to be a cruel one. Not pass or fail so much as an observation: how does he receive something freely offered? Does he take it as the reassurance is sounds like he's requesting? Or does it become another loose thread he worries at until it tangles them both?
He visibly squirms. It isn't that he doesn't like to hear it. It's that he does like it, too much. He's not used to getting the things that he wants. When he does, it feels like it's only a matter of time before he loses them. Makes him antsy, anxious.
"I know," he says, sounding a little bit like the petulant child Clea has always accused him of being—although he doesn't know, really. Sometimes he does. Sometimes, like now, it feels like her light is shining directly on him, and it makes him feel warm and special. Other times it feels as if the light has gone dun, like that smokestone, and the contrast between the two makes it feel all the colder.
"Let me help you with your boot. You'll still be working on it when the sun rises at this rate."
His I know doesn't sound especially convincing. If Jasnah felt compelled to analogize — and in the maze-like corridors of her mind, she always does — he sounds like a first-year ward dodging correction by insisting she'd arrived at the answer already. It threatens to summon something sharp and instructional in her. Well. Sharper.
She swallows it.
Not because it wouldn't be earned, but because she finds herself uncharacteristically disinterested in the skirmish. Storms, she's tired. Tired enough to value a little quiet over being right.
And then his offer of help sidetracks the impulse entirely. Three weeks ago she would have refused on principle. Now it barely registers as a concession at all — just efficient delegation of a small task. Besides, despite how carefully she disguises it, bending at the waist still hurts.
So she says nothing. She simply cants her foot so only the heel touches the floor and tips it toward him, a silent invitation to make good on what he offered.
Verso kneels in front of her, just to the side of her outstretched leg, without any hesitancy. Playing the help in this way doesn't bother him at all. Makes him feel useful. Intimately so. It's the standing around being, yes, seen and not heard that bothers him. An uncharitable interpretation would be that he finds it less tolerable because he isn't the recipient of everyone's attention. He prefers to think it's because he feels like he could be replaced with a coat rack and there would be no difference.
With his full focus on the laces of her boots as he deftly undoes them, he says, "I know that it was just a stop-over for you." Everything they'd experienced. He's not stupid. He realizes now that things were never going to be the same way when they returned, and that he was incredibly shortsighted not to expect that.
"Felt real, though," he admits with a shrug, before carefully slipping her boot off her angled foot.
Jasnah has a harder time seeing the distinction. Storms, he's so dutiful in moments like this. Just like during that blip of time he's calling a stop-over, he notices where she feels friction and slots himself neatly into it. Eases it for her. How does he not understand that a predictable, trustworthy ally at her side — even three steps behind — meets the same desire? But even as the thought forms, guilt rises sharp and unpleasant at the back of her throat. It's difficult to admit that what she truly wants is someone who anticipates her needs so she never has to articulate them. Never has to claim the vulnerability out loud. That's not a kind way to consider another human being. She knows it.
"It was real," she counters, voice level — though she punctuates it by laying her hand on the slope of his shoulder. Not to brace; not to steady. Just to touch, although the pressure is feather-light. He's close, and storms, she'd grown used to that closeness; a week without the easy familiarity of friendly, platonic touch has left an absence that's louder than she expected. With him within reach now, she doesn't quite stop herself from taking some.
"But it was also," she pauses, searching, then settles on the truth, "unusual. For me. It's been quite a long time since I could feel so — individual."
Jasnah doesn't sound happy with the sentence. It's not that it's wrong, really. It just doesn't quite communicate what she's trying to say.
He has no excuse to stay knelt here, but he doesn't want to give up the touch until she retracts it herself. It's a bit of a blur how he got here, turned to putty in her hands by the most minute contact; he recalls that he was meant to be angry at her, but it's suddenly hard to conjure up the feeling. Briefly, he fantasizes about covering her hand with his and keeping it there, but he's certain he's not allowed to take that liberty.
"Me, too." Individual. Singular. Words he knew the meaning of academically, but couldn't have hoped to experience until recently. It's maybe not a fair comparison, given that he's just been permanently freed of his shackles whereas hers are very much still on. But it's not, as she'd surmised before, a competitive comment. It's an I see you, we're the same where it counts.
"Half of the things I told you—" He's abruptly resentful for their proximity as he feels an embarrassed heat crawl up his neck. Ducking his head and mumbling a little, he finishes, "I'd never even said them out loud."
And just like that, she feels the tug she's felt once before when he was braiding her hair — the sense of a needle buried somewhere beneath her ribs, a thread drawn tight between them. The slack disappears and she's reeled in. Me, too. It's the moment when the zoetrope aligns, when image and aperture briefly agree and offer a flicker of something clear. Although from any other angle it's nothing but a blank wall.
What embarrasses him sharpens her focus. Her gaze dips, tracking the places in his posture that want to retreat before she claims his attention again: a tilt of her head, a quiet insistence. Her hand stays on his shoulder, squeezes once and then her thumb worries the fabric of his sleeve as if it needs the reassurance as much as he does.
It's so very difficult to stay frustrated when she sees him stripped of his defensive performance. Honest and exposed. She catalogues it carefully and resolves to be a better steward of what he's offered her. Trust like this carries obligations. She gathers her fear and dread and irritation and sets them aside. She rises to this responsibility like all the others.
"How brave."
Jasnah would usually keep a verdict like this one to herself. Forgive her, then, if it sounds rough and rusted when spoken aloud. But it's genuine.
'Brave' is the last thing he is. 'Underhanded' would be more appropriate. 'Dishonest'. 'Cowardly'. But how can he possibly admit that? Oh, no, I'm actually really terrible when you get down to it. Appropriately, he's not brave enough to do it. He sort of tips his head to acknowledge that she's said something nice, nonverbal because he can't think of a single thing to say in return that isn't deflectively glib.
Eyes drifting downward again, as if pulled by some imaginary string: "I just mean— I know what it's like to feel like you're... living for this one purpose. That it's all you are."
And he knows what it's like to choose solitude because that feels like the morally correct action. Because you're afraid that attachments might cloud your mind and weaken your dedication to what has to be done.
He glances back up. "It'll burn you out eventually, if you never take anything for yourself." He speaks from experience. Do as I say, not as I do. "But you can be an individual with me."
He treads perilously close to the truth — close enough that it might as well be the truth. Jasnah has long since hollowed herself out to make room for something larger than her own comfort. Her temper, her enthusiasm, even her instinctive sense of obligation remain but everything else has been pared down, filed away. What remains clings to the inside of the mask she wears. All she is allowed to be.
But what about him? Storms, she wants to ask. Wants more data, more shading to fill in the blank spaces of the map she's been sketching of him. It's impossible not to think of the way he spoke of his former commander. Renoir. A conflict that left a scar he wouldn't heal. A conflict that mattered enough. Defining, she's certain, even if she hasn't learned the definition yet.
He looks away and she's lost his eye contact again. Jasnah's fingers tap—tap—tap against his shoulder, a small, insistent signal, then lift away. As the silence stretches, she very nearly reaches for him, imagines tucking a finger beneath his chin to guide his attention back where she wants it. She even telegraphs the move, leaning ever-so-slightly forward.
But then he looks up on his own and her hand settles back into her lap. Unnecessary.
"Thank you," she says. Practicing. "I'd — I'd like that."
It can't extend beyond this room. With him, alone, she can be an individual. She knows she ought to explain that distinction — carefully, clearly — but not now. Now would fracture the moment. Now would let the greater good, and her obligation to it, slip back across the threshold of a door he's offering to close for her.
With the warmth of her removed hand still lingering, he stands, leaning over to carefully line up her boots at the foot of the bed so that she'll be able to slip back into them with ease when she wakes. Afterward, he stretches out his neck again and shrugs his shoulders, like a dog shaking off after a particularly overwhelming experience. A physical reset after being particularly self-indulgent.
"If you lie down, I'll tell you more about the Continent."
She pauses (briefly) to consider the entirely obvious bribe. She's not even offended. Bargaining one thing for another is a tradition as old as community itself. Or so she assumes.
So Jasnah takes ownership of his bed. Her knees draw up; her safehand tucks under her cheek. The liberties she takes stop short of actually climbing under the covers, as though that might somehow be a step too far.
...One of her hair-pins makes the position uncomfortable, so she slides it free and sets it on the pillow beside her head.
Jasnah is complex and difficult to navigate, but at times, she's shockingly easy. Dangle one piece of as of yet unlearned information in front of her, and suddenly she's compliant.
For his part, Verso settles down in front of the foot of the bed, next to her shoes. He leans back against it not unlike the way he'd done against the divan, although now there's quite a bit more room for him. No need for her to curve her body to accommodate his presence.
Inexplicably, he finds himself thinking about the story Jasnah's old Wit had told him, and then beyond that. Parables. Allegories.
"I don't think I ever mentioned the Axons." He wouldn't have had much reason to. "They're these massive behemoths that live on the islands around the Monolith. Too strong for even me to take on, and as you know I'm rather durable."
And he's tried. A lot.
"There used to be four, but—I don't know what happened to the last." One for each member of Renoir's family. Aline, Verso, Clea, Alicia. It seems fitting that Clea's is the one who's gone. "There's, uh, Sirène—they call her She Who Plays With Wonder. Visages—He Who Guards Truth With Lies. And the Reacher—She Who Grasps the Sky."
He taps his fingers on his thigh. "Pretty interesting, when they aren't trying to kill you."
It's not easy to get comfortable in someone else's bed. Jasnah fidgets, just a little, as she searches for the ideal tilt for her shoulders and the right shape for her spine. But oh, it helps to have something more interesting to listen to than the circular arguments echoing inside your own skull.
She hums a quiet uh-huh to confirm that whatever Axons might be, he's never mentioned them. They don't match anything in her carefully organized mental file on everything he's shared thus far. Which does indeed make them excellent bait by which to coax her into rest. The only real danger is how the topic might be so interesting she fails to fall asleep entirely.
How fasicinating that what he should call a massive behemoth — an axon — is the same word by which she knows the smallest division of matter. Is that something? Does she sort this information under proof that his world is indeed part of the Cosmere? No time to decide. He's already telling her more.
"Who calls them these things?" Who is the they in his explanation. "The citizens of Lumière? Do they know about the Axons? Or is it only the Expeditioners once they leave the city?"
So very nosy on its surface. In reality, she just wants to understand whose mythology these belong to. Whose folklore is this? The Axons exist, sure, but who gave them such striking names?
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It's unfamiliar. Uncanny. Ordinarily, this is where she excels — parrying words with words, tightening logic until there is nowhere left to stand. No ardent has ever truly cornered her that way, though a few from the Devotary of Sincerity came uncomfortably close.
But this debate is not being fought on the terrain of logic. It is being fought on feeling, and she finds her footing far, far too slippery here.
She pauses at the door and turns back. Ah — another adjective, set neatly at her feet. Angry, now. To join baffling and ridiculous.
"I'm not angry," she says, her voice tight and certainly angry-adjacent. Storms, she can almost see the angerspren bubbling up like blood from the ground. Then, after the barest hesitation: "At least, not with you."
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Hypocritical of him, considering he'd instantly denied being upset when she'd called him out. It somehow feels fine—morally just, even—to conceal his true feelings from her, but offensive and insulting to have hers hidden from him.
"At least be angry and well-rested." At least be angry in his room, instead of angry across the tower. There's already an emotional gulf between them; there doesn't need to be a physical one, too. "Think of how much more articulate you'll be when you yell at me."
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He's right. At least be angry and well-rested. Her shoulders sink; she shuts her eyes, but briefly, and rubs the edge of a thumb against her temple. She's so very tired. How did she cope before she could burn stormlight?
Jasnah relents, walking back into the room and approaching the bed. Nevertheless, she still goes toe-to-toe with his sarcasm: "Because those are the only two options: chipper or angry. Nary an emotion in between."
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Instead of saying that, though, he takes a deep breath in through his nose as he watches her near his bed. Ridiculous, really, that he feels a sense of relief at the fact that she's chosen to stay here and make irritating little comments, but he's grown very used to the feeling of being unhappy with someone but still wanting them near.
"Please educate me then, professor, on what you're feeling." It's unreasonable to look down on a student for not knowing the curriculum when she's never taught it to him.
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But then he says please educate me and it doesn't matter how sarcastic he might still be, she feels herself slip easily into the opening. So — what is she feeling? There is no easy, instinctual answer. Jasnah rifles through her dread and her annoyance and the claustrophobic ways in which she feels caught between bad options. You can't think a feeling. You have to feel it.
Storms, she hates feeling.
"Fearful," she starts — picking an easy one because she's already confessed it. And because it's just as political as it is personal. "Every day we don't march to reclaim Alethkar, Odium's forces will get more and more entrenched in our cities. There will be lands we won't win back."
He's been in the meetings and the coalition conversations — albeit as 'background furniture,' as he'd put it. She expects him to have at least paid cursory attention to the trade-offs being made in those conversations.
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He stares expectantly. Not saying it outright, but clear with his reaction all the same. Her response was unsatisfactory.
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A brief shake of her head, directed more to herself than to him.
"Furious," she concedes her anger but by another word. "Furious with Dalinar for committing troops to help Herdaz when those numbers could have been sent to free our homeland."
He can't have known that much. Could he? She'd kept her reactions careful, measured, practical during the meetings themselves no matter how tempted she'd been to tear into her uncle for adhering to promises he never should have made. Ah, well. Perhaps he'd intuited it. He was better at catching her buried reactions, at times, than her own family. Likely because she'd already browbeaten her relatives into not scratching the surface.
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Yes, he'd probably be furious.
"Fearful," he repeats, "and furious." Not exactly the large spectrum she'd been trying to claim, but he doesn't say that now. He probably shouldn't comment at all until he's certain she's finished, even though he has the urge to. "Anything else?"
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What else does she feel?
Drained. With little sleep and no stormlight to compensate, even minor friction scrapes her raw. Ill-equipped. Childish. It's humiliating to recognize that some of the composure she's worn these past six years wasn't her at all. Just borrowed strength.
Overwhelmed. The dead cremling was likely only that: a cremling that crawled in behind a book while her study sat empty for three weeks. But paired with Hoid's warning, scaffolded by an attempt on her life? It felt like Yet Another Threat. Logical strategy would recommend setting Shallan loose to dig into the Ghostbloods. But that same logic also tells her the cost of that strategy might might be the safety of a young woman she's already failed once. Perhaps it's better to wait let that fight come to her.
She's quiet for a long while, picking through the debris of her heart, trying to guess which answer will satisfy him — and realizing, with a flare of irritation, that the only acceptable answer is to explain what drove her to seek him out tonight. Damnation.
"Lonely," she says at last. She leaves the smokestone on the covers and taps once, lightly, against her chest. "I missed talking about smaller stakes. I missed talking until falling asleep."
I missed you.
The thought lands, petty and sharp, given he's been there every day. Her shadow. Ha — background furniture. A hard swallow and she buries her embarrassment at her feet as she bends forward and works a boot free.
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"—Until you fell asleep, you mean," he corrects. "I never did." Not until he'd been able to hear the telltale slowed breathing that indicated she'd fallen asleep.
He leans forward on his knees, watching her as she readies herself for bed. She should have just asked to lie in bed while he played for her the first time around. It's— exasperating that she didn't. For as much as she derides prevarication, as much as she pretends to be straightforward and uncomplicated, she's only forthright when it suits her.
"I missed that, too," he admits, then glances down at his hands again. "But, Jasnah, you as good as spurned me."
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It's just — thinking about saying so, about how she can't possibly have done what he's claiming considering she'd made a point to put him in her sightline every day — she can already hear how it sounds. Like he's less a person and more a rock she found on the shore, pocketed because she likes to have it around.
One boot off. It's one of those small, domestic tasks that's always a little bit longer to accomplish one-handed. But it gives her a wonderful excuse to keep her attention down at her feet.
Mouth dry, words stilted, she asks: "What would it have looked like to not have done so? In your mind."
A trap. We just don't know whether it's set for him or her.
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"When one likes another person," he starts, "typically they might care to introduce them to others, rather than leave them standing on the periphery like an interloper."
That was strike one of many, obviously.
"They might not quickly dismiss the person they care for like a nuisance they've been waiting to get rid of." Strike two. "They might speak to the person instead of pretending they aren't there until their services are needed." Strikes three through, like, a thousand.
"Or so I've heard. I'm not an expert on these matters." It's annoying when someone responds to a question about themselves in abstract terms, isn't it???
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So Jasnah listens.
She sets aside how absurd it is for a monarch to broker introductions for anyone and instead attends to the two points that actually matter. The second two. About dismissing him and pretending he isn't there. Fine. Acknowledged.
"Verso." She straightens — one boot on, one still off — and waits until saying his name aloud draws his attention. His eye contact. When she gets it, her voice softens without losing its precision. "I don't think you're a nuisance. And I haven't wanted to be rid of you."
It's sincere. It's also a test, though not intended to be a cruel one. Not pass or fail so much as an observation: how does he receive something freely offered? Does he take it as the reassurance is sounds like he's requesting? Or does it become another loose thread he worries at until it tangles them both?
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"I know," he says, sounding a little bit like the petulant child Clea has always accused him of being—although he doesn't know, really. Sometimes he does. Sometimes, like now, it feels like her light is shining directly on him, and it makes him feel warm and special. Other times it feels as if the light has gone dun, like that smokestone, and the contrast between the two makes it feel all the colder.
"Let me help you with your boot. You'll still be working on it when the sun rises at this rate."
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She swallows it.
Not because it wouldn't be earned, but because she finds herself uncharacteristically disinterested in the skirmish. Storms, she's tired. Tired enough to value a little quiet over being right.
And then his offer of help sidetracks the impulse entirely. Three weeks ago she would have refused on principle. Now it barely registers as a concession at all — just efficient delegation of a small task. Besides, despite how carefully she disguises it, bending at the waist still hurts.
So she says nothing. She simply cants her foot so only the heel touches the floor and tips it toward him, a silent invitation to make good on what he offered.
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With his full focus on the laces of her boots as he deftly undoes them, he says, "I know that it was just a stop-over for you." Everything they'd experienced. He's not stupid. He realizes now that things were never going to be the same way when they returned, and that he was incredibly shortsighted not to expect that.
"Felt real, though," he admits with a shrug, before carefully slipping her boot off her angled foot.
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"It was real," she counters, voice level — though she punctuates it by laying her hand on the slope of his shoulder. Not to brace; not to steady. Just to touch, although the pressure is feather-light. He's close, and storms, she'd grown used to that closeness; a week without the easy familiarity of friendly, platonic touch has left an absence that's louder than she expected. With him within reach now, she doesn't quite stop herself from taking some.
"But it was also," she pauses, searching, then settles on the truth, "unusual. For me. It's been quite a long time since I could feel so — individual."
Jasnah doesn't sound happy with the sentence. It's not that it's wrong, really. It just doesn't quite communicate what she's trying to say.
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"Me, too." Individual. Singular. Words he knew the meaning of academically, but couldn't have hoped to experience until recently. It's maybe not a fair comparison, given that he's just been permanently freed of his shackles whereas hers are very much still on. But it's not, as she'd surmised before, a competitive comment. It's an I see you, we're the same where it counts.
"Half of the things I told you—" He's abruptly resentful for their proximity as he feels an embarrassed heat crawl up his neck. Ducking his head and mumbling a little, he finishes, "I'd never even said them out loud."
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What embarrasses him sharpens her focus. Her gaze dips, tracking the places in his posture that want to retreat before she claims his attention again: a tilt of her head, a quiet insistence. Her hand stays on his shoulder, squeezes once and then her thumb worries the fabric of his sleeve as if it needs the reassurance as much as he does.
It's so very difficult to stay frustrated when she sees him stripped of his defensive performance. Honest and exposed. She catalogues it carefully and resolves to be a better steward of what he's offered her. Trust like this carries obligations. She gathers her fear and dread and irritation and sets them aside. She rises to this responsibility like all the others.
"How brave."
Jasnah would usually keep a verdict like this one to herself. Forgive her, then, if it sounds rough and rusted when spoken aloud. But it's genuine.
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Eyes drifting downward again, as if pulled by some imaginary string: "I just mean— I know what it's like to feel like you're... living for this one purpose. That it's all you are."
And he knows what it's like to choose solitude because that feels like the morally correct action. Because you're afraid that attachments might cloud your mind and weaken your dedication to what has to be done.
He glances back up. "It'll burn you out eventually, if you never take anything for yourself." He speaks from experience. Do as I say, not as I do. "But you can be an individual with me."
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But what about him? Storms, she wants to ask. Wants more data, more shading to fill in the blank spaces of the map she's been sketching of him. It's impossible not to think of the way he spoke of his former commander. Renoir. A conflict that left a scar he wouldn't heal. A conflict that mattered enough. Defining, she's certain, even if she hasn't learned the definition yet.
He looks away and she's lost his eye contact again. Jasnah's fingers tap—tap—tap against his shoulder, a small, insistent signal, then lift away. As the silence stretches, she very nearly reaches for him, imagines tucking a finger beneath his chin to guide his attention back where she wants it. She even telegraphs the move, leaning ever-so-slightly forward.
But then he looks up on his own and her hand settles back into her lap. Unnecessary.
"Thank you," she says. Practicing. "I'd — I'd like that."
It can't extend beyond this room. With him, alone, she can be an individual. She knows she ought to explain that distinction — carefully, clearly — but not now. Now would fracture the moment. Now would let the greater good, and her obligation to it, slip back across the threshold of a door he's offering to close for her.
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"If you lie down, I'll tell you more about the Continent."
Unrepentant, unabashed bribery.
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So Jasnah takes ownership of his bed. Her knees draw up; her safehand tucks under her cheek. The liberties she takes stop short of actually climbing under the covers, as though that might somehow be a step too far.
...One of her hair-pins makes the position uncomfortable, so she slides it free and sets it on the pillow beside her head.
"Go on, then."
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For his part, Verso settles down in front of the foot of the bed, next to her shoes. He leans back against it not unlike the way he'd done against the divan, although now there's quite a bit more room for him. No need for her to curve her body to accommodate his presence.
Inexplicably, he finds himself thinking about the story Jasnah's old Wit had told him, and then beyond that. Parables. Allegories.
"I don't think I ever mentioned the Axons." He wouldn't have had much reason to. "They're these massive behemoths that live on the islands around the Monolith. Too strong for even me to take on, and as you know I'm rather durable."
And he's tried. A lot.
"There used to be four, but—I don't know what happened to the last." One for each member of Renoir's family. Aline, Verso, Clea, Alicia. It seems fitting that Clea's is the one who's gone. "There's, uh, Sirène—they call her She Who Plays With Wonder. Visages—He Who Guards Truth With Lies. And the Reacher—She Who Grasps the Sky."
He taps his fingers on his thigh. "Pretty interesting, when they aren't trying to kill you."
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She hums a quiet uh-huh to confirm that whatever Axons might be, he's never mentioned them. They don't match anything in her carefully organized mental file on everything he's shared thus far. Which does indeed make them excellent bait by which to coax her into rest. The only real danger is how the topic might be so interesting she fails to fall asleep entirely.
How fasicinating that what he should call a massive behemoth — an axon — is the same word by which she knows the smallest division of matter. Is that something? Does she sort this information under proof that his world is indeed part of the Cosmere? No time to decide. He's already telling her more.
"Who calls them these things?" Who is the they in his explanation. "The citizens of Lumière? Do they know about the Axons? Or is it only the Expeditioners once they leave the city?"
So very nosy on its surface. In reality, she just wants to understand whose mythology these belong to. Whose folklore is this? The Axons exist, sure, but who gave them such striking names?
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