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."
Another promise. She feels it land just under her ribs — caught between pleasure and unease when recognizes how much even his playful assurances matter to her. So she keeps them framed that way: playful; harmless. Anything more would demand a reckoning she is not yet prepared make.
With each imagined measure of imagined music, her confidence settles a fraction further. She is not (may never be) the effortlessly graceful partner this dance was built for. But the self-consciousness thins, peels away, until she's no longer policing her own steps so much as responding to that quiet dialogue between their bodies. She stops anticipating what she ought to do and begins, instead, to fully anticipate him — the subtle pull, the guiding press, the direction of the turn.
It is unexpectedly pleasant. Just — being. Not unlike the meditative stillness of a held sword stance or the buoyant suspension of a warm bath. A small, startling reminder of how good it feels to forget the sharp outline of one's own body for a moment.
"Squabbling," she squabbles. "I don't squabble."
At some point, she realizes, the conversation has slipped into a whisper.
Jasnah's very lucky that he happens to find this sort of behavior cute instead of infuriating. (The infuriating behavior is when she starts accusing him of logical fallacies in these squabbles and refuses to step down off her pedestal to speak to him on the same level.) He looks around like he's wary of being overheard even in this room that's empty save for them—and Ivory somewhere, he can only assume—before leaning in, stage-whispering:
Ivory is definitely somewhere in the room. And while he's often no more than a dust-speck clinging to her collar or earring, tonight he's not on her person.
...Which may, in part, explain the whispering. Unlike some other varieties of Radiant spren, Ivory's kind cannot communicate by thought. He has to be able to hear her. A fact Jasnah knows well — and exploits now, continuing in a low whisper.
"It takes two. If I'm squabbling, so are you."
Some uncomfortably self-aware part of her understands that if he could hear, Ivory would not let her escape the aftermath of this little 'conversation' unscathed. It's a small, wicked act of cognitive dissonance. One she refuses to examine too closely.
As for the dance: the twirl seems to have marked the boundary between resistance and buy-in. Something about that grand, pleasant surprise shook loose her stiffness, allowing her to relax more fully into the movement. Not so fully as to sacrifice shape or posture — but she finds herself angled differently now, left side nearly brushing his, right turned gently away. No longer stock straight-on.
Their faces are probably closer than they've ever been, save for maybe when they'd traveled via Windrunner together; he can feel the heat radiating off her body, the way their ankles occasionally brush against each other by accident as he steps forward and she steps back. He knows exactly what he'd do here in literally any other situation: something stupid and impulsive that would make her never want to be around him again. He absolutely cannot do that, so—
He leans away, gently slowing their steps until they're no longer moving.
"Well, that's probably enough dancing for one day. You're still recovering, after all."
When was the last time she enjoyed anything like this? Something so kinetic with another person — movement shared for its own sake, unburdened by urgency or survival. Was it truly so long ago as that walk back toward civilization after returning from Shadesmar?
The thought is enough to spark a brief, instinctive protest. Who is he to decide when enough is enough? She's practically recovered. It’s not as though he's had eyes on the injury to assess how far it has (or hasn't) come. And for a flicker, that protest comes alive in her eyes.
Except...except she finds that she is simply satisfied. Dancing with him has answered something physical without awakening anything further. Blood humming pleasantly, not sharply. Heart rate present but unalarmed. Her muscles feel used in the most literal, uncharged sense — worked and exercised. So, with only the ghost of a smile, she allows her feet to come to an awkward, stilted halt.
"And those spanreeds won't answer themselves," she glances over her shoulder at her desk.
Still, that lingering satisfaction translates into a light, affectionate tap of her sleeved hand at the nape of his neck as her arm slips free. Punctuation before her withdrawal.
"—No, I guess they won't," he concedes, eyes drifting over her shoulder too, feeling as if he'd been soaring through the air like a Windrunner and now he's plummeted back to earth. Maybe he shouldn't have done that. He's not sure. She had seemed to enjoy it, but surely it's a crossed boundary—as is, he supposes, letting her sleep in his bed when she was too paranoid to stay in her own room.
He doesn't snatch his hand away like he's been burned; he slips it away gently and politely, fingertips briefly brushing against hers before his hand settles back at his side.
They remain standing there after he drops her hand. Still within one another's orbit but no longer tethered by the waltz's order and logic. The structure is gone; the rules have dissolved. Jasnah clears her throat and folds her hands behind her back — posture reasserted, composure reclaimed — caught for a beat in a moment she doesn't quite know how to end. Never mind that he has, in every practical sense, already ended it for them.
"You were right," she says after a pause that drags on a beat too long. "You were an excellent teacher."
Only then does she step back. Perhaps he had already created distance of his own but these are the first inches she adds under her own power. A quarter turn carries her around the desk. She pauses there, fingers resting briefly against its edge.
"I'm already looking forward to the next lesson."
Easy enough to be kind (she supposes) when all it requires is speaking the truth.
Verso watches Jasnah at the desk, his left hand flexing as it acclimates to its own space again, adjusting to the feeling of having no one holding it anymore. It's a little cold without someone else's body heat warming it. "Me, too," he admits.
—Well, back to reality. He reaches out, dematerializing the guitar in a flash of shimmering light. The moment's over, the dream woken from. "I'll see you."
— But wait! That's not what she meant. Jasnah frowns, watching the guitar dematerialize. It's hard to believe she ever mistook it for an ability fueled by Stormlight, given how the shimmer is qualitatively so different to the way a shardblade condenses into existence and melts out of it.
She chews her lip for a moment — dangerously close to simply letting him leave — but just about managing to argue herself out of cool, distanced inaction.
"...Are you leaving because you want to leave?"
Or because you somehow think I've told you to leave.
Jasnah didn't dismiss him. Didn't mean to dismiss him. He'd been accompanying her work so well all evening. Couldn't they just...fall back into that paradigm? Unless it's boring to sit and play guitar while she works. Maybe he's simply been waiting for the right opportunity to break the pattern and leave.
Oh. Verso stops where he is, feeling like he's been caught doing something embarrassing.
"I thought—" That he'd outlived his usefulness here. But that's not quite right, is it? That's what he's told himself that he's thinking to give himself an excuse to do something that he was going to do for reasons he doesn't want to admit to himself. You'll never be a true artist if there's always a mask between you and the viewer, especially when the viewer is you. The truth is that he'd been leaving to avoid having to simmer in feelings that, while pleasant, he doesn't know how to deal with.
It'd been easy before. If he wasn't able to keep himself emotionally detached, then reality did it for him. Everyone he'd ever met had a ticking clock counting down to their removal from his life. Jasnah doesn't, which is wonderful, but also means that there's no ceiling for the way he feels about her. It can just keep growing, no matter how unwise it is.
He drops his previous sentence entirely. "Did you want me to go?"
Jasnah has yet to reclaim her seat. She remains standing — just there, at the edge of her desk — watching the mechanisms turn behind his expression, even if she can't yet name them.
(Oh, but the urge to pick them apart is keen. To learn the shape of his gears. The bite of their teeth.)
In the end, she gives a very slight shake of her head.
Oh. Verso waits for some sort of elaboration. Anything. It doesn't come. "Okay," he says, trying to find his footing here. How strange to be told in no uncertain terms that she actually wants his presence here. He barely knows what to do with himself.
"I don't want to go, either."
Not really. He wants to go because he doesn't want to go. It's complicated.
Finally regaining his composure, he settles back down in his chair. As good a sign as any that he's not leaving. "—We have so much in common."
Like two water droplets. Or peas in a pod. Or conjoined gems, as a Rosharan might say.
It's just that now she's trapped herself in a tidy little corner. Putting her foot down, making a minor scene about wanting him to stay — or, at any rate, not wanting him to leave — makes her feel as if she can't simply burrow back into work. Nor can she adequately bring him into the fold on that work, because she's certain it's far, far, far from riveting.
So he sits. And she stays standing. And suddenly (and quite uncharacteristically) she experiences a sudden, heated pressure to host. Nearer her desk, now, she could almost swear she hears Ivory snickering from a makeshift seat on an inkpot.
"Really?" Verso blinks a few times, head cocking involuntarily in surprise. It's true—Jasnah has never been the host. It's always been Verso jumping in to find something to entertain her with: conversation, games, music, dancing. A born performer in every sense of the word, still mentally that little boy in his parents' salon trying to amuse and delight their friends.
"Okay. Sure." It could be fun to be on the end of a Jasnah lesson. "I imagine it's quite a bit more involved than vingt-un. ...And that you don't wager on the matches."
As soon as the offer leaves her tongue, she regrets it. At least — she regrets offering Towers. Belatedly, she realizes it might not be the sort of quick-hit fun that felt endemic to the card games played with Verso's handmade deck. Still, she reaches into a drawer and produces a worn pack fastened by a length of blue ribbon. The edges are well-thumbed and some of the artwork has long since faded. It's her deck now, but it was gift. A hand-me-down, of sorts. Or a hand-me-up? Adolin is younger than her, after all.
"No, most versions do require some amount of betting. But we'll be starting with flatface."
And then — just ever so slightly cheeky, except she's also repeating a joke that someone else once told her: "Not because you have to keep from laughing, but because each card does exactly what the glyphs indicate."
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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.
no subject
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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With each imagined measure of imagined music, her confidence settles a fraction further. She is not (may never be) the effortlessly graceful partner this dance was built for. But the self-consciousness thins, peels away, until she's no longer policing her own steps so much as responding to that quiet dialogue between their bodies. She stops anticipating what she ought to do and begins, instead, to fully anticipate him — the subtle pull, the guiding press, the direction of the turn.
It is unexpectedly pleasant. Just — being. Not unlike the meditative stillness of a held sword stance or the buoyant suspension of a warm bath. A small, startling reminder of how good it feels to forget the sharp outline of one's own body for a moment.
"Squabbling," she squabbles. "I don't squabble."
At some point, she realizes, the conversation has slipped into a whisper.
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"I think you're squabbling right now."
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...Which may, in part, explain the whispering. Unlike some other varieties of Radiant spren, Ivory's kind cannot communicate by thought. He has to be able to hear her. A fact Jasnah knows well — and exploits now, continuing in a low whisper.
"It takes two. If I'm squabbling, so are you."
Some uncomfortably self-aware part of her understands that if he could hear, Ivory would not let her escape the aftermath of this little 'conversation' unscathed. It's a small, wicked act of cognitive dissonance. One she refuses to examine too closely.
As for the dance: the twirl seems to have marked the boundary between resistance and buy-in. Something about that grand, pleasant surprise shook loose her stiffness, allowing her to relax more fully into the movement. Not so fully as to sacrifice shape or posture — but she finds herself angled differently now, left side nearly brushing his, right turned gently away. No longer stock straight-on.
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He leans away, gently slowing their steps until they're no longer moving.
"Well, that's probably enough dancing for one day. You're still recovering, after all."
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The thought is enough to spark a brief, instinctive protest. Who is he to decide when enough is enough? She's practically recovered. It’s not as though he's had eyes on the injury to assess how far it has (or hasn't) come. And for a flicker, that protest comes alive in her eyes.
Except...except she finds that she is simply satisfied. Dancing with him has answered something physical without awakening anything further. Blood humming pleasantly, not sharply. Heart rate present but unalarmed. Her muscles feel used in the most literal, uncharged sense — worked and exercised. So, with only the ghost of a smile, she allows her feet to come to an awkward, stilted halt.
"And those spanreeds won't answer themselves," she glances over her shoulder at her desk.
Still, that lingering satisfaction translates into a light, affectionate tap of her sleeved hand at the nape of his neck as her arm slips free. Punctuation before her withdrawal.
But she's still holding his hand.
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He doesn't snatch his hand away like he's been burned; he slips it away gently and politely, fingertips briefly brushing against hers before his hand settles back at his side.
"Well, another time."
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They remain standing there after he drops her hand. Still within one another's orbit but no longer tethered by the waltz's order and logic. The structure is gone; the rules have dissolved. Jasnah clears her throat and folds her hands behind her back — posture reasserted, composure reclaimed — caught for a beat in a moment she doesn't quite know how to end. Never mind that he has, in every practical sense, already ended it for them.
"You were right," she says after a pause that drags on a beat too long. "You were an excellent teacher."
Only then does she step back. Perhaps he had already created distance of his own but these are the first inches she adds under her own power. A quarter turn carries her around the desk. She pauses there, fingers resting briefly against its edge.
"I'm already looking forward to the next lesson."
Easy enough to be kind (she supposes) when all it requires is speaking the truth.
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—Well, back to reality. He reaches out, dematerializing the guitar in a flash of shimmering light. The moment's over, the dream woken from. "I'll see you."
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She chews her lip for a moment — dangerously close to simply letting him leave — but just about managing to argue herself out of cool, distanced inaction.
"...Are you leaving because you want to leave?"
Or because you somehow think I've told you to leave.
Jasnah didn't dismiss him. Didn't mean to dismiss him. He'd been accompanying her work so well all evening. Couldn't they just...fall back into that paradigm? Unless it's boring to sit and play guitar while she works. Maybe he's simply been waiting for the right opportunity to break the pattern and leave.
So she asks.
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"I thought—" That he'd outlived his usefulness here. But that's not quite right, is it? That's what he's told himself that he's thinking to give himself an excuse to do something that he was going to do for reasons he doesn't want to admit to himself. You'll never be a true artist if there's always a mask between you and the viewer, especially when the viewer is you. The truth is that he'd been leaving to avoid having to simmer in feelings that, while pleasant, he doesn't know how to deal with.
It'd been easy before. If he wasn't able to keep himself emotionally detached, then reality did it for him. Everyone he'd ever met had a ticking clock counting down to their removal from his life. Jasnah doesn't, which is wonderful, but also means that there's no ceiling for the way he feels about her. It can just keep growing, no matter how unwise it is.
He drops his previous sentence entirely. "Did you want me to go?"
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(Oh, but the urge to pick them apart is keen. To learn the shape of his gears. The bite of their teeth.)
In the end, she gives a very slight shake of her head.
"No."
Nothing else follows.
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"I don't want to go, either."
Not really. He wants to go because he doesn't want to go. It's complicated.
Finally regaining his composure, he settles back down in his chair. As good a sign as any that he's not leaving. "—We have so much in common."
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It's just that now she's trapped herself in a tidy little corner. Putting her foot down, making a minor scene about wanting him to stay — or, at any rate, not wanting him to leave — makes her feel as if she can't simply burrow back into work. Nor can she adequately bring him into the fold on that work, because she's certain it's far, far, far from riveting.
So he sits. And she stays standing. And suddenly (and quite uncharacteristically) she experiences a sudden, heated pressure to host. Nearer her desk, now, she could almost swear she hears Ivory snickering from a makeshift seat on an inkpot.
"...Shall I teach you how to play Towers?"
Quid pro quo. A lesson for a lesson.
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"Okay. Sure." It could be fun to be on the end of a Jasnah lesson. "I imagine it's quite a bit more involved than vingt-un. ...And that you don't wager on the matches."
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"No, most versions do require some amount of betting. But we'll be starting with flatface."
And then — just ever so slightly cheeky, except she's also repeating a joke that someone else once told her: "Not because you have to keep from laughing, but because each card does exactly what the glyphs indicate."
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