08-04-2023, 07:58 PM
Nythadri skimmed the words in dimness, too tired to summon light. A list of broken bones: collarbone, ankle, low back, nose, ribs. Twisted ligatures. Wounds and burns. Internal ravages that blanched her pale. It took her a moment to realise the first pages were a transcription of patient notes, including some diagrams she could certainly have lived her life happily never having borne witness to. Then realisation twisted her stomach as she realised to whom the notes must refer. Arikan ought to be dead. No sister could heal all this and the patient survive it.
Yet he had.
She skipped ahead to where Talin had written an additional message; some indication of where she had gone, and why, which only pinched Nythadri’s brow with more tension. She looked up to find Jai, intending to share the information, but discovered him already deep in pacing. She might have hoped it would not come so soon, but neither was she surprised the pressure found a crack. It was not the first time she witnessed the methods with which he ordered the world around him. He'd been counting tiles the first time they met.
Her heart sank low with the realisation she had pushed him too hard, but there was little she could do to bring him back while the grip was so tight. Instead she busied herself with half a worried eye kept to his ordered, obsessive movements. She cleaned the scales of the serpent ring and pulled it from her finger to dry. Retrieved the pins Jai had thrown, and left them together in a pile by the folded letter, dropping alongside the hairpins presently slid from her scalp. She massaged her hair free, only to press her hands over her face in a moment of silent stillness. She didn’t crumble, but she acknowledged the weight. Of decisions she second-guessed. Of consequences unknown. Of all the things beyond her control. It wasn’t just her own fate in this balance.
Warm bathwater waited; it was foremost among the things she had asked the servants to deliver, but the facsimile of respite it offered proved a long way off, and she wouldn’t relent. Jai had said little in response, and she knew how stubbornly the gears of his mind turned. Nothing had changed but that he could no longer bear the weight of the decision. This wasn’t like before, where the worst that waited was reparation for a few broken Tower rules. When Jai saw shadows he saw them darker than anyone else. He would go this time. The moment opportunity robbed the burden of how difficult it would be for him to leave. He would go.
It was a painful realisation. Enough to burn her eyes. Devotion fed into a dark void, and it was quiet in that place, understanding it was not enough alone. She buried the sting of it. He would hurt them both in the process, and call it a necessary sacrifice even at a cost of blood. She knew why. But Nythadri was equally stubborn, and if she felt every hook and barb that bound her to a man who presently didn’t remember she existed, there was no regret in the suffering, and no flinch for old wounds salted fresh. It wasn’t like she ever chose the easy path. She wouldn’t let him go.
Her attention shifted to quiet alarm when he began talking loudly, though; not just the usual muttering to himself, but something far more delusional. That he called for Andreu cut her through. After that she only watched in helpless distress, not bothering to shield from her expression what he could not witness. It was a lonely aperture upon which she kept vigil, as ghosts of the past tugged his attention to vistas she could not see. Like a sentinel she waited. Wondering if he would even come back, or if desperation sent him too far into the arms of his madness to return; a different kind of flight than the one that would take him into the Blight, but no less final. And far worse for both of them. It was one place she could not go. For he had to realise she would only follow him north.
That she could take some of that weight, if he only let her.
“I wasn’t planning on going under the bed,” she said, reaching for a string of cobweb clung to his shoulder. Even in the drape of shadows she could see he was filthy with dust. If the desolate view beyond the battlements was any indication, she doubted guest rooms here got much use. A century’s worth of grime probably coated his chest and cheek. But any relief she felt at his recognition was as fleeting as his lucidity; he was already twisting away when she caught hold of his hand. There was a spark of uncertainty as she did it, recalling the way the Compulsion had blanked her from his mind entirely, and even the slow length of time it had taken to realise it was her a moment ago. Nythadri wasn’t sure if she was enough to coax him back. She was afraid she wasn't. “Jai?” she asked, seeking enough of his attention to offer safe harbour. “Keep me company a while?”
He lost everything left to him in a single night. She wasn’t ignorant of the ways in which he found a touchstone in her. A look, sometimes. How tightly he had grasped her hand tonight, and for how long. A connection first forged in the isolation of the Aryth’s arms had been an escape from the politics of the evening; enemies made bedfellows on the whim of a king. Later Jai found her in the Tower with bruised knuckles and the severed ties of a family who loved him dearly, because vilifying himself served better for their protection. Half asleep on her lap he offered a confession he had not finished, but which she heard anyway. Despite her better judgement, she had been answering with quiet resolution ever since.
“You might be content with a cold stripwash and flinging your discarded clothes about the room, but I am most certainly not. The tub is big enough for us both.” It was his focus she wanted, and his trust; to let her build a sanctuary around them in lieu of the call of math and madness. To beckon him somewhere safe a while, if he would follow. She watched for signs of presence, weary and resolute. And for another way to reach him, if that did not work.
Yet he had.
She skipped ahead to where Talin had written an additional message; some indication of where she had gone, and why, which only pinched Nythadri’s brow with more tension. She looked up to find Jai, intending to share the information, but discovered him already deep in pacing. She might have hoped it would not come so soon, but neither was she surprised the pressure found a crack. It was not the first time she witnessed the methods with which he ordered the world around him. He'd been counting tiles the first time they met.
Her heart sank low with the realisation she had pushed him too hard, but there was little she could do to bring him back while the grip was so tight. Instead she busied herself with half a worried eye kept to his ordered, obsessive movements. She cleaned the scales of the serpent ring and pulled it from her finger to dry. Retrieved the pins Jai had thrown, and left them together in a pile by the folded letter, dropping alongside the hairpins presently slid from her scalp. She massaged her hair free, only to press her hands over her face in a moment of silent stillness. She didn’t crumble, but she acknowledged the weight. Of decisions she second-guessed. Of consequences unknown. Of all the things beyond her control. It wasn’t just her own fate in this balance.
Warm bathwater waited; it was foremost among the things she had asked the servants to deliver, but the facsimile of respite it offered proved a long way off, and she wouldn’t relent. Jai had said little in response, and she knew how stubbornly the gears of his mind turned. Nothing had changed but that he could no longer bear the weight of the decision. This wasn’t like before, where the worst that waited was reparation for a few broken Tower rules. When Jai saw shadows he saw them darker than anyone else. He would go this time. The moment opportunity robbed the burden of how difficult it would be for him to leave. He would go.
It was a painful realisation. Enough to burn her eyes. Devotion fed into a dark void, and it was quiet in that place, understanding it was not enough alone. She buried the sting of it. He would hurt them both in the process, and call it a necessary sacrifice even at a cost of blood. She knew why. But Nythadri was equally stubborn, and if she felt every hook and barb that bound her to a man who presently didn’t remember she existed, there was no regret in the suffering, and no flinch for old wounds salted fresh. It wasn’t like she ever chose the easy path. She wouldn’t let him go.
Her attention shifted to quiet alarm when he began talking loudly, though; not just the usual muttering to himself, but something far more delusional. That he called for Andreu cut her through. After that she only watched in helpless distress, not bothering to shield from her expression what he could not witness. It was a lonely aperture upon which she kept vigil, as ghosts of the past tugged his attention to vistas she could not see. Like a sentinel she waited. Wondering if he would even come back, or if desperation sent him too far into the arms of his madness to return; a different kind of flight than the one that would take him into the Blight, but no less final. And far worse for both of them. It was one place she could not go. For he had to realise she would only follow him north.
That she could take some of that weight, if he only let her.
“I wasn’t planning on going under the bed,” she said, reaching for a string of cobweb clung to his shoulder. Even in the drape of shadows she could see he was filthy with dust. If the desolate view beyond the battlements was any indication, she doubted guest rooms here got much use. A century’s worth of grime probably coated his chest and cheek. But any relief she felt at his recognition was as fleeting as his lucidity; he was already twisting away when she caught hold of his hand. There was a spark of uncertainty as she did it, recalling the way the Compulsion had blanked her from his mind entirely, and even the slow length of time it had taken to realise it was her a moment ago. Nythadri wasn’t sure if she was enough to coax him back. She was afraid she wasn't. “Jai?” she asked, seeking enough of his attention to offer safe harbour. “Keep me company a while?”
He lost everything left to him in a single night. She wasn’t ignorant of the ways in which he found a touchstone in her. A look, sometimes. How tightly he had grasped her hand tonight, and for how long. A connection first forged in the isolation of the Aryth’s arms had been an escape from the politics of the evening; enemies made bedfellows on the whim of a king. Later Jai found her in the Tower with bruised knuckles and the severed ties of a family who loved him dearly, because vilifying himself served better for their protection. Half asleep on her lap he offered a confession he had not finished, but which she heard anyway. Despite her better judgement, she had been answering with quiet resolution ever since.
“You might be content with a cold stripwash and flinging your discarded clothes about the room, but I am most certainly not. The tub is big enough for us both.” It was his focus she wanted, and his trust; to let her build a sanctuary around them in lieu of the call of math and madness. To beckon him somewhere safe a while, if he would follow. She watched for signs of presence, weary and resolute. And for another way to reach him, if that did not work.