Verso breaks out into another grin for what must be a record number of smiles in one night. How novel, to hear someone who can't quite get the accent right. There's never been anyone he's met before this, not a single person, who didn't speak his language with perfect precision. If there's anything Verso enjoys, it's a new experience. Teaching Jasnah to speak like a Lumièran is a memory unique to himself, one he'll never have to wonder who it originally belonged to.
"Comme deux gouttes d'eau," he repeats, enunciating each word so as to emphasize their distinctness. "Two peas in a pod."
The week prior seems to have set the tone for the coming ones, because the next several go on quite similarly. Jasnah no longer expects his presence at meetings he can be of no help in, and not having to endure feeling useless for hours on end helps his mood considerably. He spends the time he would have spent being, yes, background furniture on more enjoyable pursuits: practicing his piano, picking up whittling again, painstakingly drawing her that picture of Père Noël. He sketches Alicia incessantly, afraid he's going to forget what she looks like if he doesn't. It helps to have an outlet of expression, so the feelings don't just pile up inside him with nowhere else to go.
It's still challenging sometimes, especially in the stretches of days where Jasnah is so consumed with her work that he doesn't even seem to register as an afterthought in her mind. They've just gotten off another one of those; he's played Solitaire so many times in the past few days that he never wants to look at that deck of cards again. (At least for a couple of days.) They aren't exactly spending time together even now—he picks at the strings of his guitar while she looks at papers on her desk that are likely beyond his comprehension. He wonders if any of it has to do with that Ghostbloods faction her previous Wit sent her that letter about, but he doesn't ask for fear of sounding politically ignorant. Even if, well, he is politically ignorant.
Instead, he plays gentle melodies as she works; somehow, being background music is less objectionable than being background furniture. He's mostly silent otherwise, save for a few idle comments, until he finally notes a lull in the constant scritch-scratch of her pen and pipes up—still plucking at the strings— "You know, you never took me up on that dance lesson."
Jasnah was not cleared to join Dalinar and the Mink for the Herdazian campaign — despite having spent days helping to shape its strategy. Someone, or a tidy coalition of someones, had made the argument that without plate, without blade, without Stormlight, she was a liability rather than an asset. And she hadn't challenged it. Not seriously. She knows the limits of her own leverage. She knows when pressing would weaken her position instead of strengthening it.
Still. She would have liked to be there. In the tent. In the room where decisions pivot into history. Her generals should see her present and active. Unbroken. So she compensates. Overcorrects. Longer hours. Relentless focus. Paperwork stacked like barricades. And threaded through it all: him.
The music had started almost accidentally, nights ago — she'd claimed his desk, in his room, without thinking. He'd drifted to the piano, and the sound had anchored her in a way she hadn't realized she needed. Tonight, it's her study instead. And it's the guitar, soft and unintrusive, something steady beneath the scratch of her pen. Familiar. Welcome. Chosen.
When she finally pauses, it's not from fatigue so much as an accumulation of thoughts that need sorting before she begins again. She stretches — slow, deliberate — arms lifting overhead before easing back down. She flexes her fingers against the edge of the desk, working tension out of her wrist, her forearm. And in that quiet pocket, she looks up.
He's there. Settled. At ease in her study in a way that still surprises her. Gratitude wells up first. If she has to be left behind, at least she isn't left alone. He's become part of the architecture of her days since the others left.
And then he mentions dancing lessons and (unhelpfully) something else tugs at her memory. A flash of the Shattered Plains. A highstorm. Watching him dance with someone else in a stormshelter.
Hmm.
She lets the silence stretch just long enough to be deliberate before answering And when she does, her tone composed. Almost aloof.
"Are you suggesting I should do so now?"
Her pen remains on the desk. Untouched. She watches him with the measured focus she often reserved for risk assessments. Deciding, maybe, whether or not she'd like for the answer to be yes.
Verso keeps playing. Not concluding the musical phrase will irritate him.
"I wouldn't dream of suggesting what the Queen of Alethkar should do," he says, obviously kind of bullshitting. He's made a few suggestions over their time together. But still, her reaction makes him think that perhaps he should handle this with a little more care. Make her feel like it's her idea.
"I'm just saying," he continues, eyes on the guitar strings and not her. Quite casual, if he does say so himself. "Dancing is good stress relief."
There are many things two people can do together that are good stress relief—he has ample experience with relieving his stress, personally—but very few that he feels he can actually suggest to her, so. Dancing.
"And as you've already seen, I happen to be an excellent teacher."
Jasnah leans back in her chair, shoulders rolling as her posture loosens into something casual-adjacent. Even when she isn't all steel, she's a close alloy — flexible only so far, casual in the way someone gets to be when they know they command the room.
But storms, the effect lands flat when he won't even look at her. So absorbed in his guitar.
So she watches him instead. Or, more accurately, his hands. The careful economy of his fingers as they strum and pluck. All of her attention shifts toward him rather than her statecraft. And annoyingly, this shift is a necessary maneuver: it takes her a minute or two to stop seeing the world as a problem set and start seeing him, instead. A minute or two to shake the ink off her thoughts. She's caught in that liminal space now, between Queen and Jasnah.
A minute or two means the difference between a flinty I don't require stress relief and a more humane yes, Verso, thank you for noticing.
But she gives herself only thirty seconds. So what she offers is:
"We'll see."
As in we'll see how excellent of a teacher you are as she kicks her chair back from her desk and gains her feet.
Please hold a few more moments so that he can finish this song; there are few things in this world that consume his attention more than Jasnah, but unfortunately, music is one of them. If he didn't finish now, it would be bothering him the whole time. Once the chords progress into something with some finality, he looks up, setting the guitar aside.
"You've already seen me teach it," he points out, stretching his neck and loosening his shoulders. Over a month ago now, in that storm shelter, when they'd sat on that settee together and she'd acted like the thought of her being the student in that moment was unthinkable. Of course, he'd been so eager to impress that he'd been happy to walk up to their shelter-neighbors and practically beg one to dance with him; he's not sure he'd be quite so obvious now. Or at least he likes to think he wouldn't be.
...She doesn't mind playing patient while he finishes. Jasnah rounds the edge of her desk, leaning her hip against the corner while he continues to play. Each time, she grows more and more unabashed in her spectatorship. Tonight — once he finishes — she actually give him slow triplet of claps. Although the percussive nature of her applause is quite muffled by the one safehand sleeve.
"Vaguely," she answers.
She remembers thinking it was quite a bold configuration, requiring his partner to lay their left hand on his shoulder. What felt unthinkable then has become inconsistent practice, now, given how often she'd leaned on him for support in Thaylen City. It's entirely possible she's had her (covered) left hand on him more than nearly any other person she's ever touched.
Jasnah, compelled to control something about the moment, reaches out with her bare palm and gestures him to join her standing. A mild, wordless command to make good on something he's already offered to do.
"All right—" he says, hauling himself up from his seat, taking a few steps closer to her, and then... simply standing there. Arms at his sides, no attempt to reach out and place his hands—or hers, for that matter—where they need to go. "Show me, then. I have the utmost faith in your memory."
She moves instead — slowly, deliberately — each motion weighed and permitted before it's allowed to complete. There's no hurry in her, but there is intent. Memory guides her first; something warmer follows close behind.
Her right hand lifts to take his left with care, fingers flexing once against his palm — not quite a grip, more a recognition. Familiarity. Her thumb settles where it knows to rest, and for half a breath she hates how easily it comes back to her. How the body remembers even when the mind would prefer to stay aloof. They never danced, but she'd held onto him so similarly while going up and down Jochi's stairs.
Her sleeved safehand rises next. This is the difficult part. She hooks it along the line of his left arm — careful, restrained — guiding rather than claiming. The fabric is a barrier even as she nudges his arm into place at her waist. Her touch is controlled, and unmistakably trusting.
As she does it, her right hand tightens in his again. Just slightly. An unconscious tell. A small flare of displacement or distraction. Like saying look here; don't look there.
Then she steps in.
The distance between them closes not all at once, but by degrees—her weight settling in the balls of her feet, her posture aligning. The closed position clicking into place.
Her left forearm comes to rest against his upper arm, light but precise. She is close enough now to register the warmth of him, the steady rise and fall of breath. Close enough that her pulse takes a moment to recalibrate. Confused between fight or flight.
She tips her chin down to meet his eyes. Still, she says nothing. But the way she stands with him — balanced without clutching — betrays more than memory alone. She's thinking about more than just what she saw in the stormshelter. More than just using him lime her crutch in Thaylen City. She's also thinking about the last time they were so near one another. Flying, cheek to cheek, whispering in the wind.
Yes, it's been quite a while since they were in such close proximity. Even still, being close to her in Thaylen City had felt different. Helping her around after the injury had been exciting at first, but after some time, it had grown rote. Having her cling to him during the flight had been pleasant, but not enough to even make his heart skip a beat. In the end, that proximity had been nothing but practical. He'd been an interchangeable body; if it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else.
This is far more thrilling. He likes the feeling that she could choose to move away at any moment, but that she's choosing to stay here. There's no need to try to distract him from her safehand—the flex of her bare hand against his is much more interesting than anything her left hand could do with the layers of both her glove and his shirt between them.
He looks at his left hand against her right for a long moment before he remembers himself. "—Excellent recall," he says. "You must have been paying attention."
"But you'll want to, ah—" He shrugs his shoulders a couple times. It isn't her fault, but Jasnah has this constant tension she carries with her wherever she goes. Even now. "Loosen up."
Maybe she could loosen up if she was back at her desk — somewhere familiar, somewhere that's her domain. She could tip back into her chair and cross her legs and let the scaffolding of her study hold her up instead of countless bars of pressure pressing outward.
Curled around the back of his hand, her fingers drum a stiff tattoo. Not dissimilar from that fidgety uncertainty she occasionally (often) displays when spinning her wheels in analysis. Then, all at once, she breathes in — shoulders puffing — just to exhale with a small shake. As if she could somehow ambush herself into relaxing. It will work — if only temporarily — and it at least feels as though she's actually resting her other arm against his shoulder rather than stiffly holding it in place.
She doesn't comment on his compliment. You must have been paying attention — yes, she'd been rapt and fascinated at the time, and suddenly it feels ill-advised to describe just how fixatedly she'd observed his 'lesson' with someone else.
Instead: "How long had it been — since you last danced?" And to curb what she can already predict, she adds: "Before the stormshelter."
Verso ducks his head. It feels— embarrassing to let her know just how rusty he was. Is. Just how much he'd been pretending in that stormshelter in the hopes of impressing her. He clears his throat.
"I'm sure I drank too much wine and danced with Esquie at some point," he says, which is as good as an admission that it had been a long fucking time. "It's like riding a bicycle. You never truly forget."
In truth, it's entirely possible that his dance moves seem old-fashioned to Lumièrans now. Luckily, Jasnah has no such frame of reference.
Moving on— "I lead, you follow." Preempting any complaint: "It's just a dancing term for the person who directs movement." And he already senses she's going to be terrible at following, honestly.
"I put my left foot forward, and you—" He gently taps her right ankle with his toe. "Put your right foot back. Call and response."
Jasnah resists the urge to chase his downcast gaze. What, precisely, is so shameful about not having danced in some time? She hadn't asked as a test of expertise — though in hindsight she can see how it might have landed that way — but out of plain curiosity. How common is this dance, really? Was it a staple experience of his before surviving on the Continent, or merely one of those habits that feel ubiquitous because they happen reliably one or twice a year.
She doesn't press. Not out of politeness (certainly not) but because she refuses to derail the lesson. Even so, her mouth tightens into a faint, thoughtful frown as he continues.
I lead, you follow. Acceptable. In this context only. Educational. Temporary.
She has no intention of following forever. The entire point of learning, surely, is eventual autonomy. To understand the structure well enough to invert it. To lead instead. Right?
Her gaze dips toward their feet—or rather, his. She'd felt the tap of his boot against her leg, but her own are hidden beneath the sweep of her havah.
"It's a partnership,” she supposes. "Give and take."
She steps one foot back — and there it is. The subtle tightening through her spine, the way her posture winds taut again as she waits expectantly for his next cue. Waiting to follow.
"Exactly," he says. If she sees it as a partnership, all the better. He'd been half-certain she'd take such offense at the idea of ever following—I'm a queen, she might have insisted—that this whole exercise would be dead in the water before they'd ever begun. "Following is just as difficult as leading. It's about anticipating what your partner will do and reacting accordingly."
In life, he's pretty sure that makes her the leader and him the follower. But in dance, he can have this.
"Next you'll step to your left," he instructs, doing the same with his right. As he brings his feet together again: "And then close."
Now, this part he's not sure she'll be so good at. She tends to be quite... stiff. "It's sort of a bouncy movement. A rise and fall."
Anticipating and reacting accordingly. Jasnah doesn't hide the curl of her lip. Despite understanding what he means — despite not even disagreeing with it — she can't help her twinge of distaste. Put his way, it sounds less like a partnership and more like a battlefield. An enemy is someone to be anticipated. A partner is — well, a partner is someone with whom you don't need to think about reacting accordingly. Or so she believes. Says a lot about her past relationships. Platonic or otherwise.
Jasnah continues following. Stepping left, bringing her feet together once more, ending up in roughly the same position a foot-or-so to the left of where they started. Is that...is that it?
That is apparently not it — she learns as ne critiques her movement. Because, yes, she'd remained quite stiff-backed and severe in her execution of the mood. Her earlier, persistent frown softens into something more akin to concentration.
"Bouncy," she repeats. Skeptical. "Show me — slowly."
Still holding onto him, she nods her head to the side. Go on, then. Waiting for him to initiate another step and demonstrate what he means by a rise and fall. Certainly, he'd demonstrated it already but she hadn't realized that was something she ought to be mirroring too.
Verrrry slowly, perhaps intentionally humorously so, he steps back with his right foot, then to the left, rising up on the balls of his feet and then lowering once he brings them together again. "It's easier if you just— feel it. Don't think about it too hard. Come on, again."
Another step forward, waiting for her to anticipate and react accordingly.
Jasnah uses the arm resting on his shoulder — sleeved palm flat between his shoulder blades — to take her bearings. She feels for the rise and fall there, the quiet rhythm of it, and lets herself be carried through the motion. Slowly, deliberately, two things become obvious: she learns best by demonstration and she very much likes having the chance to try it for herself immediately after.
That doesn't mean she'll master this quickly.
"Don’t think about it too hard," she grumbles under her breath, the words nearly swallowed. Her issue isn't a lack of grace — she has that in abundance. It's how all her grace tends to fracture on contact. All composure and precision until another body enters the equation. And then everything wants to overcorrect.
Case in point: she steps back a fraction too early. She anticipated — correctly — but reacted to her own anticipation instead of waiting for his lead. The result is almost right. She rises and falls, yes, but not with him. Fluid but slightly out of phase.
Her fingers tighten around his hand. Just a touch. Enough to telegraph how she's noticed her own mistake.
"—Alethi dancing," she adds, half complaint and half explanation, "relies considerably less on such detailed coordination with your partner."
"It's okay," he says, taking on a teacherly tone. Or, well— she might not consider it a teacherly tone, because it's absolutely nothing like how she sounds when she's educating. It's much more gently instructive, patient. Imperfection is intolerable in him, but more than acceptable in her. "Everyone has to start somewhere."
As always, journey before destination. You made the oath, Jasnah!
"Don't focus so much on my feet," he explains. "Focus on the rest of my body." Which is maybe why she's having such a tough time with it, he considers. The Alethi don't really strike him as comfortable with lingering attention on their—or anyone else's—bodies. Lumière had never been so, well, uptight.
"Partner dancing is like... a good conversation between two bodies," he says, hoping to liken it to something she'll understand. "You have to listen when I pull"—he adds a little more pressure against the small of her back, demonstrating—"or push"—he pushes slightly against her hand. "Or you might end up in an argument."
A small breath in; a slow breath out. Jasnah gives herself a beat to interrogate his advice about not watching his feet — irritating on its face, considering how insistently this all began with feet and where to put them.
And then — oh.
His correction arrives not as verbal instruction but as pressure: the guiding firmness of his hand at her back and the answering draw at her fingers. A push. A pull. Two quiet directives that ask nothing of her but attention. Her posture sways — barely — between them, learning the language of it. Yield here. Follow there. Like Windstance or Smokestance, unlike her preferred Firestance.
The next pass goes better. When he advances, she gives ground. When he draws her sideways, she slides with him. The rise and fall still lag behind, but she stops tracking his shoes entirely and lifts her gaze instead — anchors herself to his eyes, to the timing written in his shoulders and hands. Actionable. Specific. Proof, perhaps, that she takes direction well when it's given clearly.
"That's helpful," she tells him.
Then, because she enjoys an argument — even as they're trying to avoid one between their bodies — she adds, "You should have started there."
If it's helpful, then he'll continue doing it—although of course she has to make a comment about it. Verso laughs, shaking his head. "Now I know, for my illustrious future teaching the waltz across Roshar."
Obviously, this is the only time he's going to be doing it, so any feedback is pretty pointless. Noted, all the same.
As he tries to speed their steps along to something a little less halting: "You're doing well. It helps, sometimes, to count in your head. One, two, three." His head nods along—one, two, three, one, two, three. "Waltz music is in triple meter. Three beats per measure. Like the one you heard me hum."
Hey — he's already taught waltzing twice. But it feels unexpectedly right to tell him plainly what works and what doesn't — and better still to feel him listen. To feel the adjustment arrive immediately in the quiet pressure of his hands as he guides her from step to step.
It's meaningful, this conversation of bodies. Unshowy. The kind of meaningful that doesn't announce itself but settles in all the same. More than that, it's motivating. Her posture eases into closer harmony with his — fingers to fingers — the tips of hers threading just slightly between his.
One, two, three.
Her progress is imperfect. Once — twice — over the next few turns she lands squarely on his toes. Each time she murmurs an apology and surprises herselfwhen she realizes it may be the easiest apology she's ever offered him.
Then she adds, almost experimentally: "You should also hum now."
Not quite a command. Not quite a request. Just enough of a nudge to see if he'll meet her there again.
"Okay," he says easily; getting him to make music has never been a difficult task, especially not now that he's gotten used to performing for her. There'd been a little bit of rusty anxiety in the beginning, but Jasnah is generally quite appreciative of music—and it's the one thing he can do where he doesn't expect her to point out everything she would do differently.
So, he hums. The same waltz as before, in the storm shelter. The Blue Danube, Strauss. He can't hum and verbally instruct at the same time, so he has to pick up the slack with his movements. Guiding her with a little more pressure against her back to rotate, so they might begin to dance in earnest. It's still clumsier than the dances he's used to, with women who've been learning the waltz since they were little, but it has charm. The very real possibility of having his feet stepped on adds an element of danger!
Finally, once he feels like she's gotten the hang of the basics—
"Now, this isn't technically part of the waltz, but if you're really good like me"—tongue-in-cheek, given how long it's been since he's actually danced for any significant amount of time—"you can improvise. Like this."
Without warning, he lifts their joined hands to twirl her around.
She's just beginning to relax into the rhythm — into the push of his hand at her back, the gentle insistence that tells her when to turn, when to yield — when he says improvise and lifts their joined hands.
Her first instinct is pure, undignified surprise.
A sharp inhale. A reflexive tightening of her grip on his hand, fingers clutching between as she's drawn into the turn. The world tilts — skirts whispering, balance shifting — and for half a heartbeat she's certain someone's misjudged and she's about to go flying into a bookshelf.
She doesn't.
The spin is clumsy, sure. Her steps stutter in surprise but she keeps her feet under her. The pull of his hand steadies her. She turns, skirts flaring, and when she comes back around she's closer than she was before — a little breathless. Her grip doesn't loosen right away.
When she finds her voice again, it's a mixture of affront and something like reluctant delight.
"Warn me next time," she says, dry — but there's a spark in her eyes now. Unmistakable. "Or I might start thinking you enjoy catching me unprepared."
He does enjoy catching her unprepared. Jasnah is always so prim, so perfectly put-together. In this world, she'd probably say, you're more likely to be taken seriously when you look and act a certain way. But she looks and acts that way with him, too, and he's never had trouble taking her seriously for a single moment. It's nice to see her flounder a little, to—if only for a second—see her composure break.
Verso laughs. "I don't know," he says, placing his hand on her back again so they might reassume the stance they'd held before. Slowly, uncertain if she'll consider this to be overstepping, he continues, "I think you enjoy being surprised."
She'd seemed to like it just now. Or maybe hate that she liked it. Either way.
Speaking from experience, he adds, "Gets boring to know everything all the time."
After the twirl, in the clumsy chaos of closing their distance, Jasnah's safehand ends up higher on shoulder than it had started. Although her hand is still hidden under her sleeve, it nevertheless curls into the back of his collar. Looking for an anchor point. Impossible for Jasnah not to notice. But she doesn't correct it.
She also laughs. Short and awkward and a little like the sound of her own laughter is unfamiliar to her. How odd to laugh like she's with family without a blood relative in sight. And she shakes her head, but not in any way that disagrees.
"It rather depends on the surprise," she quibbles — but warmly. How can she explain it? When a surprise is still a surprise, but its sprung in such a way that her body doesn't for a second mistake it for danger? Yes — she enjoys those surprises. Rare and precious.
Her laugh reminds him of the tinkling of piano keys. He has the brief wish that he could record it on a phonograph and play it back whenever he wanted. Right after, though, he has the realization that that's an incredibly fucking strange thing to think, so he kicks it under his mind palace's rug.
"I think you enjoy being surprised," he repeats, turning them as they move, small little pivots so that she can keep up, "and I think you enjoy arguing even more." It's not an unkind observation; he's smiling, expression fond.
"Don't worry." Another little pivot— "I promise only to surprise you with pleasant things, and to take your squabbling on the chin if you disagree."
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"Comme deux gouttes d'eau," he repeats, enunciating each word so as to emphasize their distinctness. "Two peas in a pod."
The week prior seems to have set the tone for the coming ones, because the next several go on quite similarly. Jasnah no longer expects his presence at meetings he can be of no help in, and not having to endure feeling useless for hours on end helps his mood considerably. He spends the time he would have spent being, yes, background furniture on more enjoyable pursuits: practicing his piano, picking up whittling again, painstakingly drawing her that picture of Père Noël. He sketches Alicia incessantly, afraid he's going to forget what she looks like if he doesn't. It helps to have an outlet of expression, so the feelings don't just pile up inside him with nowhere else to go.
It's still challenging sometimes, especially in the stretches of days where Jasnah is so consumed with her work that he doesn't even seem to register as an afterthought in her mind. They've just gotten off another one of those; he's played Solitaire so many times in the past few days that he never wants to look at that deck of cards again. (At least for a couple of days.) They aren't exactly spending time together even now—he picks at the strings of his guitar while she looks at papers on her desk that are likely beyond his comprehension. He wonders if any of it has to do with that Ghostbloods faction her previous Wit sent her that letter about, but he doesn't ask for fear of sounding politically ignorant. Even if, well, he is politically ignorant.
Instead, he plays gentle melodies as she works; somehow, being background music is less objectionable than being background furniture. He's mostly silent otherwise, save for a few idle comments, until he finally notes a lull in the constant scritch-scratch of her pen and pipes up—still plucking at the strings— "You know, you never took me up on that dance lesson."
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Jasnah was not cleared to join Dalinar and the Mink for the Herdazian campaign — despite having spent days helping to shape its strategy. Someone, or a tidy coalition of someones, had made the argument that without plate, without blade, without Stormlight, she was a liability rather than an asset. And she hadn't challenged it. Not seriously. She knows the limits of her own leverage. She knows when pressing would weaken her position instead of strengthening it.
Still. She would have liked to be there. In the tent. In the room where decisions pivot into history. Her generals should see her present and active. Unbroken. So she compensates. Overcorrects. Longer hours. Relentless focus. Paperwork stacked like barricades. And threaded through it all: him.
The music had started almost accidentally, nights ago — she'd claimed his desk, in his room, without thinking. He'd drifted to the piano, and the sound had anchored her in a way she hadn't realized she needed. Tonight, it's her study instead. And it's the guitar, soft and unintrusive, something steady beneath the scratch of her pen. Familiar. Welcome. Chosen.
When she finally pauses, it's not from fatigue so much as an accumulation of thoughts that need sorting before she begins again. She stretches — slow, deliberate — arms lifting overhead before easing back down. She flexes her fingers against the edge of the desk, working tension out of her wrist, her forearm. And in that quiet pocket, she looks up.
He's there. Settled. At ease in her study in a way that still surprises her. Gratitude wells up first. If she has to be left behind, at least she isn't left alone. He's become part of the architecture of her days since the others left.
And then he mentions dancing lessons and (unhelpfully) something else tugs at her memory. A flash of the Shattered Plains. A highstorm. Watching him dance with someone else in a stormshelter.
Hmm.
She lets the silence stretch just long enough to be deliberate before answering And when she does, her tone composed. Almost aloof.
"Are you suggesting I should do so now?"
Her pen remains on the desk. Untouched. She watches him with the measured focus she often reserved for risk assessments. Deciding, maybe, whether or not she'd like for the answer to be yes.
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"I wouldn't dream of suggesting what the Queen of Alethkar should do," he says, obviously kind of bullshitting. He's made a few suggestions over their time together. But still, her reaction makes him think that perhaps he should handle this with a little more care. Make her feel like it's her idea.
"I'm just saying," he continues, eyes on the guitar strings and not her. Quite casual, if he does say so himself. "Dancing is good stress relief."
There are many things two people can do together that are good stress relief—he has ample experience with relieving his stress, personally—but very few that he feels he can actually suggest to her, so. Dancing.
"And as you've already seen, I happen to be an excellent teacher."
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But storms, the effect lands flat when he won't even look at her. So absorbed in his guitar.
So she watches him instead. Or, more accurately, his hands. The careful economy of his fingers as they strum and pluck. All of her attention shifts toward him rather than her statecraft. And annoyingly, this shift is a necessary maneuver: it takes her a minute or two to stop seeing the world as a problem set and start seeing him, instead. A minute or two to shake the ink off her thoughts. She's caught in that liminal space now, between Queen and Jasnah.
A minute or two means the difference between a flinty I don't require stress relief and a more humane yes, Verso, thank you for noticing.
But she gives herself only thirty seconds. So what she offers is:
"We'll see."
As in we'll see how excellent of a teacher you are as she kicks her chair back from her desk and gains her feet.
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"You've already seen me teach it," he points out, stretching his neck and loosening his shoulders. Over a month ago now, in that storm shelter, when they'd sat on that settee together and she'd acted like the thought of her being the student in that moment was unthinkable. Of course, he'd been so eager to impress that he'd been happy to walk up to their shelter-neighbors and practically beg one to dance with him; he's not sure he'd be quite so obvious now. Or at least he likes to think he wouldn't be.
"Do you remember the stance?"
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"Vaguely," she answers.
She remembers thinking it was quite a bold configuration, requiring his partner to lay their left hand on his shoulder. What felt unthinkable then has become inconsistent practice, now, given how often she'd leaned on him for support in Thaylen City. It's entirely possible she's had her (covered) left hand on him more than nearly any other person she's ever touched.
Jasnah, compelled to control something about the moment, reaches out with her bare palm and gestures him to join her standing. A mild, wordless command to make good on something he's already offered to do.
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She moves instead — slowly, deliberately — each motion weighed and permitted before it's allowed to complete. There's no hurry in her, but there is intent. Memory guides her first; something warmer follows close behind.
Her right hand lifts to take his left with care, fingers flexing once against his palm — not quite a grip, more a recognition. Familiarity. Her thumb settles where it knows to rest, and for half a breath she hates how easily it comes back to her. How the body remembers even when the mind would prefer to stay aloof. They never danced, but she'd held onto him so similarly while going up and down Jochi's stairs.
Her sleeved safehand rises next. This is the difficult part. She hooks it along the line of his left arm — careful, restrained — guiding rather than claiming. The fabric is a barrier even as she nudges his arm into place at her waist. Her touch is controlled, and unmistakably trusting.
As she does it, her right hand tightens in his again. Just slightly. An unconscious tell. A small flare of displacement or distraction. Like saying look here; don't look there.
Then she steps in.
The distance between them closes not all at once, but by degrees—her weight settling in the balls of her feet, her posture aligning. The closed position clicking into place.
Her left forearm comes to rest against his upper arm, light but precise. She is close enough now to register the warmth of him, the steady rise and fall of breath. Close enough that her pulse takes a moment to recalibrate. Confused between fight or flight.
She tips her chin down to meet his eyes. Still, she says nothing. But the way she stands with him — balanced without clutching — betrays more than memory alone. She's thinking about more than just what she saw in the stormshelter. More than just using him lime her crutch in Thaylen City. She's also thinking about the last time they were so near one another. Flying, cheek to cheek, whispering in the wind.
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This is far more thrilling. He likes the feeling that she could choose to move away at any moment, but that she's choosing to stay here. There's no need to try to distract him from her safehand—the flex of her bare hand against his is much more interesting than anything her left hand could do with the layers of both her glove and his shirt between them.
He looks at his left hand against her right for a long moment before he remembers himself. "—Excellent recall," he says. "You must have been paying attention."
"But you'll want to, ah—" He shrugs his shoulders a couple times. It isn't her fault, but Jasnah has this constant tension she carries with her wherever she goes. Even now. "Loosen up."
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Maybe she could loosen up if she was back at her desk — somewhere familiar, somewhere that's her domain. She could tip back into her chair and cross her legs and let the scaffolding of her study hold her up instead of countless bars of pressure pressing outward.
Curled around the back of his hand, her fingers drum a stiff tattoo. Not dissimilar from that fidgety uncertainty she occasionally (often) displays when spinning her wheels in analysis. Then, all at once, she breathes in — shoulders puffing — just to exhale with a small shake. As if she could somehow ambush herself into relaxing. It will work — if only temporarily — and it at least feels as though she's actually resting her other arm against his shoulder rather than stiffly holding it in place.
She doesn't comment on his compliment. You must have been paying attention — yes, she'd been rapt and fascinated at the time, and suddenly it feels ill-advised to describe just how fixatedly she'd observed his 'lesson' with someone else.
Instead: "How long had it been — since you last danced?" And to curb what she can already predict, she adds: "Before the stormshelter."
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"I'm sure I drank too much wine and danced with Esquie at some point," he says, which is as good as an admission that it had been a long fucking time. "It's like riding a bicycle. You never truly forget."
In truth, it's entirely possible that his dance moves seem old-fashioned to Lumièrans now. Luckily, Jasnah has no such frame of reference.
Moving on— "I lead, you follow." Preempting any complaint: "It's just a dancing term for the person who directs movement." And he already senses she's going to be terrible at following, honestly.
"I put my left foot forward, and you—" He gently taps her right ankle with his toe. "Put your right foot back. Call and response."
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Jasnah resists the urge to chase his downcast gaze. What, precisely, is so shameful about not having danced in some time? She hadn't asked as a test of expertise — though in hindsight she can see how it might have landed that way — but out of plain curiosity. How common is this dance, really? Was it a staple experience of his before surviving on the Continent, or merely one of those habits that feel ubiquitous because they happen reliably one or twice a year.
She doesn't press. Not out of politeness (certainly not) but because she refuses to derail the lesson. Even so, her mouth tightens into a faint, thoughtful frown as he continues.
I lead, you follow. Acceptable. In this context only. Educational. Temporary.
She has no intention of following forever. The entire point of learning, surely, is eventual autonomy. To understand the structure well enough to invert it. To lead instead. Right?
Her gaze dips toward their feet—or rather, his. She'd felt the tap of his boot against her leg, but her own are hidden beneath the sweep of her havah.
"It's a partnership,” she supposes. "Give and take."
She steps one foot back — and there it is. The subtle tightening through her spine, the way her posture winds taut again as she waits expectantly for his next cue. Waiting to follow.
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In life, he's pretty sure that makes her the leader and him the follower. But in dance, he can have this.
"Next you'll step to your left," he instructs, doing the same with his right. As he brings his feet together again: "And then close."
Now, this part he's not sure she'll be so good at. She tends to be quite... stiff. "It's sort of a bouncy movement. A rise and fall."
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Jasnah continues following. Stepping left, bringing her feet together once more, ending up in roughly the same position a foot-or-so to the left of where they started. Is that...is that it?
That is apparently not it — she learns as ne critiques her movement. Because, yes, she'd remained quite stiff-backed and severe in her execution of the mood. Her earlier, persistent frown softens into something more akin to concentration.
"Bouncy," she repeats. Skeptical. "Show me — slowly."
Still holding onto him, she nods her head to the side. Go on, then. Waiting for him to initiate another step and demonstrate what he means by a rise and fall. Certainly, he'd demonstrated it already but she hadn't realized that was something she ought to be mirroring too.
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Verrrry slowly, perhaps intentionally humorously so, he steps back with his right foot, then to the left, rising up on the balls of his feet and then lowering once he brings them together again. "It's easier if you just— feel it. Don't think about it too hard. Come on, again."
Another step forward, waiting for her to anticipate and react accordingly.
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That doesn't mean she'll master this quickly.
"Don’t think about it too hard," she grumbles under her breath, the words nearly swallowed. Her issue isn't a lack of grace — she has that in abundance. It's how all her grace tends to fracture on contact. All composure and precision until another body enters the equation. And then everything wants to overcorrect.
Case in point: she steps back a fraction too early. She anticipated — correctly — but reacted to her own anticipation instead of waiting for his lead. The result is almost right. She rises and falls, yes, but not with him. Fluid but slightly out of phase.
Her fingers tighten around his hand. Just a touch. Enough to telegraph how she's noticed her own mistake.
"—Alethi dancing," she adds, half complaint and half explanation, "relies considerably less on such detailed coordination with your partner."
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As always, journey before destination. You made the oath, Jasnah!
"Don't focus so much on my feet," he explains. "Focus on the rest of my body." Which is maybe why she's having such a tough time with it, he considers. The Alethi don't really strike him as comfortable with lingering attention on their—or anyone else's—bodies. Lumière had never been so, well, uptight.
"Partner dancing is like... a good conversation between two bodies," he says, hoping to liken it to something she'll understand. "You have to listen when I pull"—he adds a little more pressure against the small of her back, demonstrating—"or push"—he pushes slightly against her hand. "Or you might end up in an argument."
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And then — oh.
His correction arrives not as verbal instruction but as pressure: the guiding firmness of his hand at her back and the answering draw at her fingers. A push. A pull. Two quiet directives that ask nothing of her but attention. Her posture sways — barely — between them, learning the language of it. Yield here. Follow there. Like Windstance or Smokestance, unlike her preferred Firestance.
The next pass goes better. When he advances, she gives ground. When he draws her sideways, she slides with him. The rise and fall still lag behind, but she stops tracking his shoes entirely and lifts her gaze instead — anchors herself to his eyes, to the timing written in his shoulders and hands. Actionable. Specific. Proof, perhaps, that she takes direction well when it's given clearly.
"That's helpful," she tells him.
Then, because she enjoys an argument — even as they're trying to avoid one between their bodies — she adds, "You should have started there."
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Obviously, this is the only time he's going to be doing it, so any feedback is pretty pointless. Noted, all the same.
As he tries to speed their steps along to something a little less halting: "You're doing well. It helps, sometimes, to count in your head. One, two, three." His head nods along—one, two, three, one, two, three. "Waltz music is in triple meter. Three beats per measure. Like the one you heard me hum."
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It's meaningful, this conversation of bodies. Unshowy. The kind of meaningful that doesn't announce itself but settles in all the same. More than that, it's motivating. Her posture eases into closer harmony with his — fingers to fingers — the tips of hers threading just slightly between his.
One, two, three.
Her progress is imperfect. Once — twice — over the next few turns she lands squarely on his toes. Each time she murmurs an apology and surprises herselfwhen she realizes it may be the easiest apology she's ever offered him.
Then she adds, almost experimentally: "You should also hum now."
Not quite a command. Not quite a request. Just enough of a nudge to see if he'll meet her there again.
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So, he hums. The same waltz as before, in the storm shelter. The Blue Danube, Strauss. He can't hum and verbally instruct at the same time, so he has to pick up the slack with his movements. Guiding her with a little more pressure against her back to rotate, so they might begin to dance in earnest. It's still clumsier than the dances he's used to, with women who've been learning the waltz since they were little, but it has charm. The very real possibility of having his feet stepped on adds an element of danger!
Finally, once he feels like she's gotten the hang of the basics—
"Now, this isn't technically part of the waltz, but if you're really good like me"—tongue-in-cheek, given how long it's been since he's actually danced for any significant amount of time—"you can improvise. Like this."
Without warning, he lifts their joined hands to twirl her around.
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Her first instinct is pure, undignified surprise.
A sharp inhale. A reflexive tightening of her grip on his hand, fingers clutching between as she's drawn into the turn. The world tilts — skirts whispering, balance shifting — and for half a heartbeat she's certain someone's misjudged and she's about to go flying into a bookshelf.
She doesn't.
The spin is clumsy, sure. Her steps stutter in surprise but she keeps her feet under her. The pull of his hand steadies her. She turns, skirts flaring, and when she comes back around she's closer than she was before — a little breathless. Her grip doesn't loosen right away.
When she finds her voice again, it's a mixture of affront and something like reluctant delight.
"Warn me next time," she says, dry — but there's a spark in her eyes now. Unmistakable. "Or I might start thinking you enjoy catching me unprepared."
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Verso laughs. "I don't know," he says, placing his hand on her back again so they might reassume the stance they'd held before. Slowly, uncertain if she'll consider this to be overstepping, he continues, "I think you enjoy being surprised."
She'd seemed to like it just now. Or maybe hate that she liked it. Either way.
Speaking from experience, he adds, "Gets boring to know everything all the time."
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She also laughs. Short and awkward and a little like the sound of her own laughter is unfamiliar to her. How odd to laugh like she's with family without a blood relative in sight. And she shakes her head, but not in any way that disagrees.
"It rather depends on the surprise," she quibbles — but warmly. How can she explain it? When a surprise is still a surprise, but its sprung in such a way that her body doesn't for a second mistake it for danger? Yes — she enjoys those surprises. Rare and precious.
"They aren't all created equal."
But that one had been good.
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"I think you enjoy being surprised," he repeats, turning them as they move, small little pivots so that she can keep up, "and I think you enjoy arguing even more." It's not an unkind observation; he's smiling, expression fond.
"Don't worry." Another little pivot— "I promise only to surprise you with pleasant things, and to take your squabbling on the chin if you disagree."
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