The Ibutatu Estate, Isla Dzum
I didn’t mean - Aremu felt his tongue as heavy as lead in his mouth. Shit, he wanted to say. Fuck; I’m a fucking idiot, Aurelie, I’m so sorry - you’re lovely, and I didn’t mean to...
She was apologizing, now, as if she had done something wrong. Aremu shook his head, and didn’t dare to try again, entirely certain he’d somehow get it more wrong if he did. She went very carefully, as if he were some strange enormous engine, dangerous, as if a wrong move would take her hand off.
Nothing you have done or are makes me uncomfortable, Aurelie said. Aremu knew what she meant, but he couldn’t help wincing at it. It was an Anaxi sort of way to speak, imprecise, and the lie of it chafed him, for all she didn’t know it was a lie. You don’t know, he wanted to tell her. You don’t know what I’ve done.
That squeezed at him too, that fear; he had largely put it aside. It was because he was what he was that he had been able to help her, that any of this had been made possible. He knew better than to think that weighed against any of the rest of it. There was no ledger for a man’s life, at least not one like his; there was nothing inside him for the good to hold.
Aremu nodded when Aurelie parroted his words back to him. There was a little smile on her face, more grim and determined than happy.
He smiled too, wryly, twisted at the edges, and he nodded again, accepting her point. He frowned a little, and cleared his throat, and took another sip of tea.
He tried to imagine it. He hadn’t thought of it often in those terms, in a telling way. He tried to, now, and then he shied away from it.
“I actually don’t remember how I got this one,” Aremu offered instead; he turned his arm a little, showing her the burn scar across the back of his wrist, the one that peeked out of the hem of his cuffs.
His voice was more even than he expected, a little amused maybe. “There were a lot of - an engine runs hot when you fly, and, uh, not all repairs can be done on the ground. I’ve burnt myself rather a lot.”
If it’s hot enough, Aremu didn’t say, it doesn’t hurt. Those are the burns to worry about; the ones which you feel aren’t so bad. He didn’t say it. It was something perhaps Niccolette had told him, and something he had learned himself too, along the way.
I’m sorry, he wanted to say, but that too seemed to put too much on her. He owned it, himself, instead; he did not demand that she make it okay, and bestow forgiveness on him. He smiled instead, a little easier than he had before.
“This one,” Aremu said wryly, splaying his hand out and showing her a more faded burn on the edge of his palm, “I actually remember quite well. I was trying to - uh - impress someone, actually,” there was the littlest edge of a grin, now, more genuine, “a long time ago, when I was still at Thul’Amat. My last years there I worked in on airships that the university owns,” Aremu smiled almost fondly down at the burn, with the faintest edge of pain to it.
He glanced back up at Aurelie. “I didn’t watch myself carrying something heavy, and brushed up against red hot metal,” he grimaced, remembering, but it didn’t take away from the smile. “I can tell you she wasn’t very impressed.”
Aremu shrugged, easing. “I don’t think I’ve changed much,” he admitted, quietly, looking at Aurelie. “I don’t know when to put a burden down; I don’t know when something’s too hot for me. I am sorry, Aurelie.”