"Yet you're the one who'll have to look at it," Verso points out. There's a conceding tilt of his head as he adds, "Among others." He cares somewhat less about what 'others' think or feel while looking at his hair, though. Don't get him wrong—he still cares, but. Decidedly less.
"Besides," he says, taking a strand of newly black fringe between his fingers and snipping off the very end. "I'd be a fool not to take the queen's word under advisement, even if she is hesitant to make it a royal decree."
He takes care of the majority of the front, just as he'd done with the dye. It feels overly self-indulgent to make her do more than she absolutely has to, even if she did come here tonight for that express purpose. Once the easy part is done, though, he does shoot a look over his shoulder at her. "You want to do the back, or shall I take my chances with going in blind?"
Is she — is she supposed to care more about how his hair does or doesn't look? The thought startles her, and then irritates her. She finds herself questioning her own neutrality on the subject which feels frankly absurd. Since when is she expected to have opinions on this? Since when has anyone asked?
She's still circling that question while he snip-snip-snips at the front of his hair, permutations blooming and collapsing in her mind. Everything from the starkly literal — no person, not even a queen, should have this much say in another person's appearance — to the bafflingly tender — what do I say when he's done? What counts as the right sort of compliment?
And then he asks her — kinda — to finish the back.
Jasnah freezes. Not least because there's no doing it one-handed, and her safehand is very much bare beneath its sleeve. But after a beat, she rises from the piano bench and steps behind his chair anyway.
She stops there, close enough now to feel the heat of him. The faint clean scent of soap and a punchier undernote of stubborn dye.
"Are you certain?" She asks.
Because storms help her, she doesn't to be responsible for his bad-haircut villain origin story.
"Why not?" he says with a shrug. For the record, he'll be devastated if she fucks his hair up, but it isn't like he'll be angry. He's fairly confident she'll do her best; Jasnah wouldn't mess this up just to screw with him, primarily because he can't imagine Jasnah willingly messing anything up, ever.
"It's a winning scenario both ways. Either I get a good haircut"—the preferable option—"or I finally learn the one thing that you aren't skilled at."
Yeah, he's sort of sucking up. But she seemed like maybe she needed a pep talk.
Still— "It's all right if you don't want to do it." Say the word, and he'll go hacking at the back of his head on his own.
— Storms, but she will always rise to a challenge. And perhaps also to the chance to repay a fraction of the care he showed her in Thaylen City.
Jasnah braces her still-sleeved hand on the back of his chair and leans over his shoulder just enough to take the scissors from him, careful not to crowd nor to hesitate.
"There are many things at which I am not skilled in the least," she half-warns as she claims the scissors and straightens again. She tucks one handle briefly between her teeth and unbuttons her sleeve again — rolling the fabric up to her elbow again, fastening it out of the way again. When she takes the scissors back into her hand, it's her right, despite the tug of instinct insisting otherwise.
"Drawing. Sword-fighting. Sewing. Whittling. Gardening," she lists. Dry as a ledger.
Then she steps closer. Her palm settles at the back of his head. Fingers sliding into his hair, lifting and sifting to judge the length, the fall, the way it naturally wants to behave. A small, thoughtful pause.
"...Hair," she decides in a quieter voice, "remains to be seen."
Drawing, sword-fighting, sewing, whittling, gardening—he's good at... three of those. Maybe passable at sewing. Not so great at gardening, unfortunately, so hopefully they're never in a situation which needs a green thumb.
Verso notes the unbuttoning of her sleeve and the newly bare hand with a sort of distant curiosity. Seeing her bare left hand doesn't excite him any more than seeing her right—which is to say it does excite him a little, since he's of the opinion that she has very nice hands, but the leftness of it all is really quite unimportant. He knows the same can't be said for her, though. Even though she'd made a point of telling him how unimportant it was to cover her hand, there's been very few times in which she's actually bared it. The times that she has, it's always seemed as if she was made uncomfortable by it; old habits die hard, he supposes.
He doesn't mention it, doesn't even let his eyes linger on it. He just turns around so that she can inspect his hair. It's only slightly damp now, natural texture—somewhat unruly and disheveled waves—coming back in. Probably not the best hair for a first-time hairdresser to work with, but needs must.
"Cooking," he says, seemingly apropos of nothing. Trying his best not to react too strongly to the feeling of her fingers in his hair again, this time without the glove between them. "Volleyball. Carpentry. Sailing, apparently."
A pause. "Those are mine." The things he's not good at.
Her laugh is brief and small and dry when he mentions sailing, apparently — but she does laugh. Reminiscing, maybe, about that week at sea and how the claustrophobia of their cabin had twisted into something pleasant and safe.
She pulls a piece of hair taut between her fingers and snips away the dead, split, uneven ends. One decisive cut. If she's going to do this work, then she's not going to be cowardly about it. And with that vague process decided upon, she continues — making an effort to maintain length (like she'd suggested!) but to give the cut a clean, tidy finish.
"What's volleyball?" Because of course she was going to interrogate the thing she doesn't understand.
Another snip. A ruffle of her fingers into the roots of his hair, searching out another piece to straighten and examine and cut.
Verso really does his best not to move this time, no matter how pleasant the feeling of her hands against his scalp is. If he moves unexpectedly, she might snip off a little too much, and then he'll have a giant bald spot in the back of his head. So, he's very still—at least the top part of him. Since he can't move his head, he taps his feet restlessly against the floorboards instead.
"You don't have volleyball on Roshar?" A laugh. "Count yourself lucky."
Admittedly, his only experience is with gestral beach volleyball, which is... special.
"It's a sport that involves..." Well, this is a little on the nose, but: "Volleying a ball back and forth over a net." Which sounds easy enough, but he's been hit in the face enough times to know that isn't the case. "The gestrals enjoy playing it—aggressively."
— Doesn't especially sound like something a whole planet should feel lucky not to have. She's not about to say it aloud but it kinda sounds boring. Chucking a ball back and forth? Over a net? Is that truly worth a whole sport?
A judgemental sniff.
"Sounds as though you're not missing out on much for it landing on your — list."
List of things he's bad at. A list she's quietly pleased to have been told, incidentally. She likes it more than the boasting.
Jasnah continues cutting, but only in small curated snips. Realistically, she's likely going to leave the back of his hair a little longer than the rest — risking a mullet-like style. Not that she knows what a mullet it, of course. But that is the direction this is kinda taking.
Unaware of the mullet she's about to give him: "I guess that depends what sort of duels we're talking about." To the death, or...? It happens to be a Dessendre family pastime to hit each other with weapons for fun, so. Or it used to be, before it became a pastime to hit each other with weapons for serious reasons. "You do run the risk of injury when you play volleyball with the gestrals. But you run that risk whenever you do anything with a gestral."
"In arenas. With judges and rules. Anything more — honour duels or trials by combat — were outlawed last year."
By her, notably. But she's not here to gild her own reputation. He'll either guess it was one of her initiatives or he won't; neither version matters more than the fact that the archaic custom was put to rest.
"The tower doesn't have the same spectator stands that the arena back in the Shattered Plains does — but bouts between accomplished duelists would draw considerable crowds."
Hm. She catches the scissor handles between her teeth again and uses both hands to give the back of his hair a small, experimental toss. Is it even? She squints — wishing, maybe, for slightly better light. And deep in the minor details of his haircut, she doesn't even realize how efficiently she's banished the day's larger questions to the recesses of her mind.
Dueling in arenas, that is. They have their own tournaments set up and everything. It was Verso's doing, he imagines—after all, he's the one who made the gestrals the way that they are. They must have been very entertaining companions for a little boy.
"Actually," he says, pushing his shoulders back a little (while still staying as still as he can manage), "you're looking at the Gestral Arena champion 67 years running."
Jasnah makes no effort to conceal her surprise. Although the one word does come out a bit marbled, given the scissors dangling from her mouth. She's still got her hands tangled in his hair. Gently (and then more vigorously) tousling the strands as though a bit of energetic movement might dry them that little bit more to better judge her effort by.
"—I'm not sure I like your tone, young lady," he says, although it's teasing and playful. Hard to be too upset when he can feel her bare fingers tousling his hair like that. Turned away from her, the corner of his mouth quirks up.
"Yes, me." Who else?? "What, you don't believe that I could beat Matthieu the Colossus?"
She restrains herself from pointing out the obvious: what does she know of Matthieu the Colossus? What does she know of gestral fighting prowess? What (really) does she know of his talents beyond the ones that have been demonstrated to her already?
Jasnah — seemingly pleased with the results thus far — drops the scissors onto the desk, trading them for a tight-woven towel she uses to better, more thoroughly squeeze any excess water from his hair. This little sequence of work (dying, cutting, drying) has become quite meditative in its own right. She likes things that keep her hands busy.
"I suppose," she warms up to the idea, "you've had ample time to train."
And just like that, she boots a faulty premise out of her thoughts and installs something revised. It remains lightly shaded in, like a hypothesis, since she hasn't really got any evidence to back it up besides his word.
"And spending seven decades on a continent awash with monsters is an excellent way to do so."
What did she think, that he spent all of his time getting killed and reviving again? ...That has happened more times than he'd like to admit, but he's more skilled at combat than most Expeditioners by a large margin. After a while, it becomes rote, just like everything else.
"Plus, a rousing duel is the only way to calm Monoco down when he's worked up."
Was, technically, but he's not willing to think about the past tense of Monoco's life at the moment.
— In her defense, he does talk up how often he's getting chomped in half or something equally gruesome. Not once has he described dying in a fit of tense, dramatic combat. You can't blame a gal for assuming otherwise.
Sure, he'd shown her a blade. But that didn't mean he was any good with it. Storms, Jasnah can (could) summon ivory as practically any weapon she could conceive of, but that doesn't translate into being a dueling champion. Unlike, apparently, him.
Jasnah continues, quiet and thoughtful, until she senses his hair is just dry enough. Tossing aside the towel, she hooks the heel of her boot on the leg of his chair and hauls it a few inches out from the desk.
"I stand corrected." She shifts to stand more beside than behind him. "I'll try not to doubt your martial abilities in future."
All in all, it's an advantage. Another reason to feel that little bit more safe here.
Usually, it's pretty obvious that he's handy with a sword, given that he's often the one saving wayward Expeditioners from whatever mess they get themselves into. But Jasnah, he realizes, hasn't actually seen him in action. The only time he would have been able to show her, he—
Failed. Pretty spectacularly. Maybe that's why she doesn't think he has any martial competence.
He frowns briefly but says nothing before picking up the mirror and evaluating the job she's done. After turning his head from side-to-side, he says, "You did a good job. Thanks."
Hair-cutting, then, doesn't get added to the list. And while his praise doesn't raise a smile to her lips, there is some note of tension that eases in her posture. Or maybe it's not actually tension easing but a minor movement telegraphing her intention just before she leans in and — with her right hand, of course — she uses the back of her fingers to carefully adjust his forelock of hair just that little bit off his forehead. And then to brush stray cut hairs off his shoulder.
Satisfied, nodding, she leans back against the desk's edge and busies herself with unrolling and refastening her safehand sleeve. Although — storms — she misses the white.
"Next time," she decides, "I'll soulcast the colour. Less mess."
It's hopeful. It requires her Surges to be restored.
Although she doesn't smile, her touch produces an inexorable upward tug of his own lips. If it's been a long time since someone has touched him on the shoulder, as she had last night, it's been— an eon since another human being has touched his face, his hair. It makes an embarrassing warmth spread from his chest outward, down to the tips of his fingers and toes.
"Good idea," he agrees, despite the fact that he has no idea what soulcasting his hair will really entail. Is it dangerous? Does it hurt? He'll find out when it happens.
Then—
well, his hair was the whole point of her coming over, and now it's done. He doesn't want her to leave, but he doesn't know how to ask her to stay, either. So:
It occurs to her he might be urging her onward and out. His hair was the whole point of her stopping by, wasn't it? And now it's done. She doesn't want to leave, but she doesn't know how to ask to stay either.
So. Once her sleeve is buttoned again. Once her tolerance for the silence runs dry and she realizes she really ought to say something. Once she glances at his window and recognizes how high Nomon is in the night sky, hanging large and blue over the middle-distance mountains.
"I'll give you back the balance of your night," Jasnah announces — pushing off his desk and heading for the door.
At the very same moment Jasnah speaks, Verso blurts out, "We could play chess if you—"
He trails off as he hears his words overlapping with hers, retreating back into his shell as soon as he'd left it. Obviously, she has more important things to do. Books to annotate. Marriage laws to review. Wars to worry about.
"Oh— no, yeah, of course." To his credit, he doesn't let (too much) disappointment seep into his voice. "Another time."
Thing is, she does have more important things to do. If she stays longer—? She doesn't trust herself not to stay too long. Until sunrise, again. Jasnah squares her shoulders and reminds herself that this can't become habit. Although, oh, she does want to learn more about chess. She hasn't forgotten him asking about it before.
"Another time," she promises. His surrender makes it easier for her to do what's right rather than what she wants.
And she does intend it as a promise. It's just — hers is an ever-shifting pole of priorities, and it's hard to guarantee that any one individual (even herself) will ever position higher than the packets of paper waiting for her back in her study.
"Use the spanreed if you need to reach me," Jasnah nods at the kit she'd had delivered to his room earlier in the day. "And I'll do the same."
As flippant as he can manage: "It's because I got rid of the white, isn't it? Can't bear to look at me for a moment longer."
It's a joke. He gets it. Really. In fact, she's being completely rational. Any reasonable person would support her focusing on what really matters. A good friend would, too, so that's what he does.
Verso stands, opening the door for her to step through.
"I'll free you from your suffering," he says, dry. "Good night, Jasnah."
— He may be joking, but that doesn't spare him the roll of her eyes as she reaches the door. Hand on the frame, she pauses, long enough to give him one last, assessing glance. Long enough, too, for one final kindness.
"It looks good," she says, measured and sincere. "Even without the white."
If it looks a touch closer to Hoid's preferred iteration of the Queen's Wit, she refuses to linger on the comparison. She gives her farewell instead and makes the slightly-too-long walk back to her family's floor, to the familiar austerity of her own rooms.
Time passes.
Not dramatically but in the incremental way of habits adjusting under space and familiarity. She tries to strike a more tolerable balance for him, if not for herself. She no longer requires Verso's presence at every council or coalition meeting, but neither does she consign him to the margins. It's a small, intentional correction. A gradual retreat from treating him like — by his own phrasing — background furniture. And in the meantime, there are one or two nights where she stays in his room until the sun threatens to rise.
A week later, she's perched on a stool in the usual coalition chamber, a notebook open on her lap and a frown firmly in place. The notebook is Shallan's.
Verso arrives without having been summoned. And so she doesn't immediately know why he's here. But when she looks up, the frown softens — just a little — before she can help herself.
"Come," she says, beckoning him closer, because she knows he'll appreciate this even as it frustrates her. "The girl still cannot pay attention. She's doodling when she should be taking notes."
She rises and turns the notebook toward him. Between the bullet points and careful summaries are small portraits — politicians and generals rendered with uncanny precision. A page back reveals a looser study, half-finished, unmistakably Verso himself, caught mid-sentence as he spoke to someone out of frame.
Jasnah exhales, equal parts exasperation and reluctant admiration. Fondness, even.
The week passes more pleasantly than the last. There's still hours of loneliness, and moments of disappointment, and times when he wonders if he hasn't gotten himself into something that's going to end up torturous. But he begins to fill the time when Jasnah doesn't need or want him with projects; he writes out future music theory lessons for her in his notebook, draws out a chessboard on a sheet of paper and creates little paper approximations of the game pieces, pens a new poem. Occasionally, he even meets people, and it helps remind him that there's more to life than just Jasnah.
There is, however, still a lot of Jasnah. He doesn't particularly mind. Seeing the corners of her mouth soften is nearly as good as seeing her smile, and it makes the inside of his chest feel all fluttery like how it used to when he was sixteen and asking a pretty girl to dance and stepping all over her toes out of nervousness.
The 'doodles' Jasnah shows him are good. Better than good. Shallan has such art talent that it makes him wonder just why she's under Jasnah's tutelage instead of furthering her craft, although he doesn't dare say it in front of Jasnah. He especially likes the one that resembles him, and he visibly brightens when he sees it, flattered to be her subject even in a quick sketch.
"I used to doodle all the time during class, and look at me," he says as he leans over her, craning his neck to inspect the art. "Valedictorian, if you've forgotten."
Understandable that she would! It's been at least two weeks since he's bragged about it.
"Doodles help keep the brain engaged. And a creative mind has cross-applications," he points out, annoyingly. "Plus, she has good taste in subjects."
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"Besides," he says, taking a strand of newly black fringe between his fingers and snipping off the very end. "I'd be a fool not to take the queen's word under advisement, even if she is hesitant to make it a royal decree."
He takes care of the majority of the front, just as he'd done with the dye. It feels overly self-indulgent to make her do more than she absolutely has to, even if she did come here tonight for that express purpose. Once the easy part is done, though, he does shoot a look over his shoulder at her. "You want to do the back, or shall I take my chances with going in blind?"
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She's still circling that question while he snip-snip-snips at the front of his hair, permutations blooming and collapsing in her mind. Everything from the starkly literal — no person, not even a queen, should have this much say in another person's appearance — to the bafflingly tender — what do I say when he's done? What counts as the right sort of compliment?
And then he asks her — kinda — to finish the back.
Jasnah freezes. Not least because there's no doing it one-handed, and her safehand is very much bare beneath its sleeve. But after a beat, she rises from the piano bench and steps behind his chair anyway.
She stops there, close enough now to feel the heat of him. The faint clean scent of soap and a punchier undernote of stubborn dye.
"Are you certain?" She asks.
Because storms help her, she doesn't to be responsible for his bad-haircut villain origin story.
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"It's a winning scenario both ways. Either I get a good haircut"—the preferable option—"or I finally learn the one thing that you aren't skilled at."
Yeah, he's sort of sucking up. But she seemed like maybe she needed a pep talk.
Still— "It's all right if you don't want to do it." Say the word, and he'll go hacking at the back of his head on his own.
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Jasnah braces her still-sleeved hand on the back of his chair and leans over his shoulder just enough to take the scissors from him, careful not to crowd nor to hesitate.
"There are many things at which I am not skilled in the least," she half-warns as she claims the scissors and straightens again. She tucks one handle briefly between her teeth and unbuttons her sleeve again — rolling the fabric up to her elbow again, fastening it out of the way again. When she takes the scissors back into her hand, it's her right, despite the tug of instinct insisting otherwise.
"Drawing. Sword-fighting. Sewing. Whittling. Gardening," she lists. Dry as a ledger.
Then she steps closer. Her palm settles at the back of his head. Fingers sliding into his hair, lifting and sifting to judge the length, the fall, the way it naturally wants to behave. A small, thoughtful pause.
"...Hair," she decides in a quieter voice, "remains to be seen."
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Verso notes the unbuttoning of her sleeve and the newly bare hand with a sort of distant curiosity. Seeing her bare left hand doesn't excite him any more than seeing her right—which is to say it does excite him a little, since he's of the opinion that she has very nice hands, but the leftness of it all is really quite unimportant. He knows the same can't be said for her, though. Even though she'd made a point of telling him how unimportant it was to cover her hand, there's been very few times in which she's actually bared it. The times that she has, it's always seemed as if she was made uncomfortable by it; old habits die hard, he supposes.
He doesn't mention it, doesn't even let his eyes linger on it. He just turns around so that she can inspect his hair. It's only slightly damp now, natural texture—somewhat unruly and disheveled waves—coming back in. Probably not the best hair for a first-time hairdresser to work with, but needs must.
"Cooking," he says, seemingly apropos of nothing. Trying his best not to react too strongly to the feeling of her fingers in his hair again, this time without the glove between them. "Volleyball. Carpentry. Sailing, apparently."
A pause. "Those are mine." The things he's not good at.
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She pulls a piece of hair taut between her fingers and snips away the dead, split, uneven ends. One decisive cut. If she's going to do this work, then she's not going to be cowardly about it. And with that vague process decided upon, she continues — making an effort to maintain length (like she'd suggested!) but to give the cut a clean, tidy finish.
"What's volleyball?" Because of course she was going to interrogate the thing she doesn't understand.
Another snip. A ruffle of her fingers into the roots of his hair, searching out another piece to straighten and examine and cut.
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"You don't have volleyball on Roshar?" A laugh. "Count yourself lucky."
Admittedly, his only experience is with gestral beach volleyball, which is... special.
"It's a sport that involves..." Well, this is a little on the nose, but: "Volleying a ball back and forth over a net." Which sounds easy enough, but he's been hit in the face enough times to know that isn't the case. "The gestrals enjoy playing it—aggressively."
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A judgemental sniff.
"Sounds as though you're not missing out on much for it landing on your — list."
List of things he's bad at. A list she's quietly pleased to have been told, incidentally. She likes it more than the boasting.
Jasnah continues cutting, but only in small curated snips. Realistically, she's likely going to leave the back of his hair a little longer than the rest — risking a mullet-like style. Not that she knows what a mullet it, of course. But that is the direction this is kinda taking.
"More or less aggressive than dueling?"
Because that's the big Alethi sport.
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Snip, snip, snip.
"In arenas. With judges and rules. Anything more — honour duels or trials by combat — were outlawed last year."
By her, notably. But she's not here to gild her own reputation. He'll either guess it was one of her initiatives or he won't; neither version matters more than the fact that the archaic custom was put to rest.
"The tower doesn't have the same spectator stands that the arena back in the Shattered Plains does — but bouts between accomplished duelists would draw considerable crowds."
Hm. She catches the scissor handles between her teeth again and uses both hands to give the back of his hair a small, experimental toss. Is it even? She squints — wishing, maybe, for slightly better light. And deep in the minor details of his haircut, she doesn't even realize how efficiently she's banished the day's larger questions to the recesses of her mind.
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Dueling in arenas, that is. They have their own tournaments set up and everything. It was Verso's doing, he imagines—after all, he's the one who made the gestrals the way that they are. They must have been very entertaining companions for a little boy.
"Actually," he says, pushing his shoulders back a little (while still staying as still as he can manage), "you're looking at the Gestral Arena champion 67 years running."
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Jasnah makes no effort to conceal her surprise. Although the one word does come out a bit marbled, given the scissors dangling from her mouth. She's still got her hands tangled in his hair. Gently (and then more vigorously) tousling the strands as though a bit of energetic movement might dry them that little bit more to better judge her effort by.
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"Yes, me." Who else?? "What, you don't believe that I could beat Matthieu the Colossus?"
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Jasnah — seemingly pleased with the results thus far — drops the scissors onto the desk, trading them for a tight-woven towel she uses to better, more thoroughly squeeze any excess water from his hair. This little sequence of work (dying, cutting, drying) has become quite meditative in its own right. She likes things that keep her hands busy.
"I suppose," she warms up to the idea, "you've had ample time to train."
And just like that, she boots a faulty premise out of her thoughts and installs something revised. It remains lightly shaded in, like a hypothesis, since she hasn't really got any evidence to back it up besides his word.
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What did she think, that he spent all of his time getting killed and reviving again? ...That has happened more times than he'd like to admit, but he's more skilled at combat than most Expeditioners by a large margin. After a while, it becomes rote, just like everything else.
"Plus, a rousing duel is the only way to calm Monoco down when he's worked up."
Was, technically, but he's not willing to think about the past tense of Monoco's life at the moment.
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Sure, he'd shown her a blade. But that didn't mean he was any good with it. Storms, Jasnah can (could) summon ivory as practically any weapon she could conceive of, but that doesn't translate into being a dueling champion. Unlike, apparently, him.
Jasnah continues, quiet and thoughtful, until she senses his hair is just dry enough. Tossing aside the towel, she hooks the heel of her boot on the leg of his chair and hauls it a few inches out from the desk.
"I stand corrected." She shifts to stand more beside than behind him. "I'll try not to doubt your martial abilities in future."
All in all, it's an advantage. Another reason to feel that little bit more safe here.
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Failed. Pretty spectacularly. Maybe that's why she doesn't think he has any martial competence.
He frowns briefly but says nothing before picking up the mirror and evaluating the job she's done. After turning his head from side-to-side, he says, "You did a good job. Thanks."
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Satisfied, nodding, she leans back against the desk's edge and busies herself with unrolling and refastening her safehand sleeve. Although — storms — she misses the white.
"Next time," she decides, "I'll soulcast the colour. Less mess."
It's hopeful. It requires her Surges to be restored.
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"Good idea," he agrees, despite the fact that he has no idea what soulcasting his hair will really entail. Is it dangerous? Does it hurt? He'll find out when it happens.
Then—
well, his hair was the whole point of her coming over, and now it's done. He doesn't want her to leave, but he doesn't know how to ask her to stay, either. So:
"...Well."
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It occurs to her he might be urging her onward and out. His hair was the whole point of her stopping by, wasn't it? And now it's done. She doesn't want to leave, but she doesn't know how to ask to stay either.
So. Once her sleeve is buttoned again. Once her tolerance for the silence runs dry and she realizes she really ought to say something. Once she glances at his window and recognizes how high Nomon is in the night sky, hanging large and blue over the middle-distance mountains.
"I'll give you back the balance of your night," Jasnah announces — pushing off his desk and heading for the door.
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He trails off as he hears his words overlapping with hers, retreating back into his shell as soon as he'd left it. Obviously, she has more important things to do. Books to annotate. Marriage laws to review. Wars to worry about.
"Oh— no, yeah, of course." To his credit, he doesn't let (too much) disappointment seep into his voice. "Another time."
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"Another time," she promises. His surrender makes it easier for her to do what's right rather than what she wants.
And she does intend it as a promise. It's just — hers is an ever-shifting pole of priorities, and it's hard to guarantee that any one individual (even herself) will ever position higher than the packets of paper waiting for her back in her study.
"Use the spanreed if you need to reach me," Jasnah nods at the kit she'd had delivered to his room earlier in the day. "And I'll do the same."
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It's a joke. He gets it. Really. In fact, she's being completely rational. Any reasonable person would support her focusing on what really matters. A good friend would, too, so that's what he does.
Verso stands, opening the door for her to step through.
"I'll free you from your suffering," he says, dry. "Good night, Jasnah."
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"It looks good," she says, measured and sincere. "Even without the white."
If it looks a touch closer to Hoid's preferred iteration of the Queen's Wit, she refuses to linger on the comparison. She gives her farewell instead and makes the slightly-too-long walk back to her family's floor, to the familiar austerity of her own rooms.
Time passes.
Not dramatically but in the incremental way of habits adjusting under space and familiarity. She tries to strike a more tolerable balance for him, if not for herself. She no longer requires Verso's presence at every council or coalition meeting, but neither does she consign him to the margins. It's a small, intentional correction. A gradual retreat from treating him like — by his own phrasing — background furniture. And in the meantime, there are one or two nights where she stays in his room until the sun threatens to rise.
A week later, she's perched on a stool in the usual coalition chamber, a notebook open on her lap and a frown firmly in place. The notebook is Shallan's.
Verso arrives without having been summoned. And so she doesn't immediately know why he's here. But when she looks up, the frown softens — just a little — before she can help herself.
"Come," she says, beckoning him closer, because she knows he'll appreciate this even as it frustrates her. "The girl still cannot pay attention. She's doodling when she should be taking notes."
She rises and turns the notebook toward him. Between the bullet points and careful summaries are small portraits — politicians and generals rendered with uncanny precision. A page back reveals a looser study, half-finished, unmistakably Verso himself, caught mid-sentence as he spoke to someone out of frame.
Jasnah exhales, equal parts exasperation and reluctant admiration. Fondness, even.
"I should speak with her."
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There is, however, still a lot of Jasnah. He doesn't particularly mind. Seeing the corners of her mouth soften is nearly as good as seeing her smile, and it makes the inside of his chest feel all fluttery like how it used to when he was sixteen and asking a pretty girl to dance and stepping all over her toes out of nervousness.
The 'doodles' Jasnah shows him are good. Better than good. Shallan has such art talent that it makes him wonder just why she's under Jasnah's tutelage instead of furthering her craft, although he doesn't dare say it in front of Jasnah. He especially likes the one that resembles him, and he visibly brightens when he sees it, flattered to be her subject even in a quick sketch.
"I used to doodle all the time during class, and look at me," he says as he leans over her, craning his neck to inspect the art. "Valedictorian, if you've forgotten."
Understandable that she would! It's been at least two weeks since he's bragged about it.
"Doodles help keep the brain engaged. And a creative mind has cross-applications," he points out, annoyingly. "Plus, she has good taste in subjects."
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