[PM to Join] Night and Death

[Leander]

33rd Day of Loshis

Leaving Nicolette’s home, Leo walked closer than he otherwise might, but left her to walk alone otherwise. All the while, he kept her in his line of sight, just in case. She wasn’t untidy, but she seemed grateful for his offered support, which she did end up using.

Given the choice, he would have left her at home and brought the paper to Hawke himself… only to return back to her to make sure she was safe through the night. Not that he imagined Niccolette would allow such a thing, but it was what he wanted to do anyway. He would see how the galdor continued to fair. If she continued to be as she had been all day, he would even relish seeing her usual biting self if he did try to force his way back into her home - at least that would confirm that she was alright.

They didn't speak on the journey, but Leo kept his eye trained on the galdor. With each passing moment she seemed to recover a little more of her strength and she sat a little straighter, with less need for the walls of the carriage to hold her up. Exiting, she needed even less support, so he was hopeful that their final engagement of the evening would go off without a hitch.

Leander was used to being ignored. Indifference itself isn’t evil, but the opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference. It’s something cold that never stirs itself, never cries with passion. And if it wasn’t indifference, it was hatred. The way people looked when they saw something that was other. They way they spat at the ground, swung their fists in racially motivated anger down darkened alleys.

The function of racism is to dehumanise, to cast the victim in a light whereby they deserve the maltreatment. It is always a harbinger of cruelty and callous behaviour. It wasn’t war… no, war would give the history writers even more of a right to share what they believed to be truth, all the while indoctrinating others to share the same views. But Leander truly believed that conventional standards of morality are inapplicable in times of war, and there was a morality when it came to passives. In Brunnhold, they were treated as children, regardless of age. Feared, but always protected and sheltered from the world.

It wasn’t war, but racism is the permission slip the darker side of people’s minds needs to take over their behaviour. Should there be any real motivation to maintain the racism, then it became culturally reinforced and defended. This was his world: either being ignored or attracting the wrong sort of attention.

And, now that Leo thought about it, hate was so much easier to deal with than indifference.

Indifference ignores, abandons, acts as if the other doesn’t matter at all. It is as Leo imagines his relationship with mona: cold as the void, an emptiness that cares not if the other suffers.

“Good evening,” was all the passive said in response, after a moment or two of silence. But it wasn’t Amasour who had Leo feeling unbalanced in that moment, it was Niccolette. There was that spark of light in her, the spark that had been missing all day. And, for the first time since they had met each other, her ire was not directed at him, it was directed at someone because of him. It was unsettling, and he didn’t quite think he liked her silently defending him: it made him seem even weaker, as if incapable of defending himself.

In reality, Leo hadn’t even registered the fact that Amasour had made no verbal effort to greet him (he had, at least, inclined his head). And Niccolette’s insistence that Amasour greet Leo too almost made it seem like he needed guarding against the people of this world… and she was his self-appointed protector.

“Yes, well,” the passive pulled the identification paper out of his breast pocket, “We hit a little… snag along the way.” He approached the other man, handing other the document.

[Niccolette Ibutatu]

Very Late Evening, 33 Loshis, 2719
Hawke's Palace to Quarter Fords

Amasour took the paper from Leander with a well-manicured hand. “Nothing serious, I imagine?” It was to Niccolette that his gaze flickered.

“Not in the least,” Niccolette said, coolly. Her right hand found her left side, and held, lightly; she managed, at least, not to dig her fingers in to the black fabric. Her breath came evenly; she kept it as easy as possible, and her face too.

Amasour unfolded the paper. His eyebrows lifted, and he set it down on the desk, slowly. It was Leander he looked at now, his gaze searching. “You’re sure?” He asked.

Once he had his confirmation, Amasour did not particularly want to linger. His eyes kept glancing to the paper on the desk, although he rose and escorted Niccolette and Leander to the door, bowing them lightly out. Niccolette kept her back straight and her chin raised as they walked down the hall; her head was light and throbbing, but nothing of it showed in her posture or balance.

The palace was as busy as it had been on the way in, with laughing and dicing and, too, serious talk. None of it troubled Niccolette; it washed over her like so much noise. She looked through it all, not unseeing so much as uncaring, and even her no one seemed to get in her way.

There were carriages enough, outside the King’s palace.

Niccolette let Leander hail one; she climbed inside. Her eyes fluttered shut, for just a moment, but she settled herself upright enough on the seat, clinging to her own side once more. She breathed smoothly, in and out, and she felt the echo of a response in her field, shallow but comforting. The world rattled past in patches of light and shadow, and before long it was a familiar street, and a familiar gate.

Niccolette climbed out of the carriage. She’d given the driver instructions to go first to Quarter Fords, then to the Attic; she remembered saying so, though the words had been no more than half-audible over the pounding in her ears. She did not look back, this time; she went through the gate, and the door beyond it, and locked it firmly behind her, shutting the world away.

Niccolette shuddered, then.

She sank to the floor with her back against the door; she fumbled through the unlacing of her boots, one at a time, and left them behind at the door. Aching, tired fingers tugged at the lacing of her dress, and the corset beneath; she left them behind her, the dress pooled on the floor and the corset splayed out along the hall, flung open.

Niccolette stumbled the last few feet to her bedroom in her shift. She had presence of mind enough to wash her face, fumbling cold handfuls of water against it. She knew she was crying, although she could not tell the difference, not really, between the droplets of water and the tears. She turned the sink off, though the tears weren’t so easy.

Niccolette shuddered, then; she summoned up what she had of her strength, what little remained, and dragged herself across the room to her bed. She half-fell atop the sheets, and crawled between them, teeth chattering. She curled up, between the pillow and the blanket, and some time later passed from weeping to sleep; she did not know when the stillness took her, but she knew she surrendered to it, and gladly.