Weary But Able [M]

A rendezvous.

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A large forest in Central Anaxas, the once-thriving mostly human town of Dorhaven is recovering from a bombing in 2719 at its edge.

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Tom Cooke
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Mon Sep 16, 2019 3:29 pm

Woven Delights The Painted Ladies
Late Evening on the 45th of Roalis, 2719
When Ava closed her eyes, Tom didn’t look at her too long. He couldn’t quite read her expression; he didn’t try too hard to scrutinize it. It set a prickling at the back of his neck. Excitement, recognition, fear. It didn’t surprise him, but he’d hoped. Hoped what? Hoped he’d leave none the wiser? There’d been a time for wishing to be none the wiser, and that time had passed. He reckoned he could’ve broke off when he saw it, let her speak – let her know he saw it, plain as day?

He slipped back into a familiar shape, warm and comfortable. Pitched his voice a little higher, leaned into Anatole’s aged rasp, not unlike the one the Rose’d worn into him in life. He hoped it wasn’t too much. Not enough to patronize. He needed it just as much.

Ava opened her eyes and started speaking again. She pressed her fingertip to the pendulum, brought the bit of paper round in a half-circle.

It drew his eye, and he looked at it for a long time.

She. If Tom’d expected Ava to know it, he’d expected her to know it from the mouth of Anatole; he’d expected her to know it as a braggart’s aside, a rung on the ladder of golly success. The truth was worse and better, all at once. It was a leap where he’d expected a stumble, and now he knew, oes – unbroken wax seals, burnt-black paper curling in the hearth. There’d be time, later, to curse a mung drunkard.

Now wasn’t it. She wasn’t looking at him, so he kept looking at the paper; he took a sip of tea. She was silent more than she spoke. It was only when she apologized that he looked up.

He almost said, Don’t apologize, caught himself before his mouth opened; he’d been saying that a lot lately. “Of course,” he said instead.

If you’d wanted something out of a kov – words or birds, whatever the case may’ve been – Tom had been your man. It wasn’t just ’cause he’d been good with his fists, or ’cause he wasn’t the kov to ask too many questions; he’d been both of those things, naturally, but that wasn’t it. Shep’d once described him as “the meanest fucker this side of Sharkswell”, and from one angle, that about summed it up: more than just being good at it, he’d seemed to enjoy his little chats with dobbers. Maybe he had taken pleasure in it, or something like pleasure, like a dog on a scent. But that wasn’t it, either.

If you wanted to be fair good at making kov talk or pay up, good enough to catch Hawke’s eye, it wasn’t enough to rough ’em up and bark at ’em like some kind of mung animal. Nobody’d ever died on Tom before he had what he wanted, or he was sure there was nothing to get. You had to listen as much as you swung, and when you swung, you had to be careful. Precise, even. It wasn’t all swinging; sometimes, for the real tricky ones, you had to figure out what they were scared of losing.

And you learned from silence, just as much as noise. The spaces between. Kov told you by omission what they could never tell you by confession. The raw spots were the ones they pulled in, hid away, and those were the ones you did best to use. Something simple as a sore tooth behind a worming tongue, or –

Tom was so tired. He’d already pressed and prodded. Ava’s face was all smooth control, but it was the omissions, after all. He felt bad in a way he couldn’t define.

“I’ll poke around,” he said after a moment, “with your leave. Nothing conspicuous. Keep an ear out. Open my godsdamn mail, for once.” His voice warmed up; there was a flicker of mirth in his eyes. Something sad, still, in all of it.

With a soft click, he set his teacup down on the table. Then, finally, delicate-like, he plucked a wedge of pastry off the saucer and took a contemplative bite. He burbled something – might’ve been “benny” – and then took another sip of tea.

Once he’d washed it down, he looked at Ava levelly, raising his eyebrows a fraction. “It’s been a long day. Shall I let you get some rest, Ms. Weaver?”

His tone was neutral, carefully casual. He wanted to say something else, maybe, but he couldn’t think what. He hardly knew what he wanted. He was lonely, but what of it? Business was lonely.
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Ava Weaver
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Mon Sep 16, 2019 4:04 pm

Late Evening, 45th Roalis, 2719
Woven Delights, the Painted Ladies
T
om accepted her apology, gracefully enough, and Ava appreciated it. There was nothing more she wanted to say on the subject; she would be glad to let it lapse there.

Ava nodded at Tom’s suggestion that he poke around. She picked up her tea again, and did not drink it, but just cradled the still warm cup between her palms. The silence between them was not as comfortable as usual, even with Tom’s easy posture. He had pulled back on the Tek, settled back into the voice he had made his now - not Anatole’s accent, not by a long shot, but Vienda, not the Rose.

Ava managed a soft smile for Tom at his half of a joke, only marginally better than he had been at keeping the sadness out of it. She sipped at her tea while he took a bite of the pastry, and settled the cup back down into her lap.

Tom lifted his eyebrows at her, and asked if he should leave. Ava stared at him for a long moment, no flicker of a response on her face, all her thoughts locked away behind neutral lips and eyes.

Yes, she wanted to say. Perhaps that would be best. You must be very tired, after your travels. The heat, of course. We’ll both rest.

No, she wanted to say. I’ve had an awful day, and I could use a friend to talk to. Would you listen?

Ava’s eyes lowered back to the table, to the pendulum she had drawn sitting on it. Her hands had not tightened on the cup, but it took all her control to keep them soft, to keep the tension from her shoulders.

Yes, she wanted to say. It‘s better if I’m alone.

No, she wanted to say. I’m so tired of loneliness.

And when would he next return? Off to Brunnhold, and likely soon. Ava knew Tom would keep his word; she trusted that if he said he would look into the Pendulum Club, then he would. Would it be scorenights more before she received another note in his scratchy, misspelled writing? If she sent him off, now - it was the strange connection between them that motivated all of this. Tom had no greater mission beyond her; if he looked into the Pendulum Club only to fulfill his word, would that be enough? It would not be easy for him; of that she was sure.

And so - to send him away, she risked so very much. And to keep him? To open up to him? What did that risk? If he didn’t like what he heard; if it might have been wiser to leave herself hidden - if he did not want to think of her in that way, as she had always believed - what would he think then? And of course she could not be fully honest with him; there were too many others at stake. But - if she could find her way to the heart of it, without that - she thought that if anyone could understand, it would be him, with all his parts and pieces. She thought of Ishma, Tom’s green eyed wick; she thought of the mask of Anatole’s face he had worn so well, and wished she had not.

Ava looked up again and tried something like a smile. She was too tired to know how well it had worked; her cheeks seemed to ache with the effort. She set her cup down, reached forward, and took a quarter of the pastry herself, just holding it for the moment.

“No,” Ava said softly. “I know it’s - difficult,” she looked at Tom again, taking a deep breath, finding her own way into subjects best left undiscussed. “Can I -“ Ava hesitated, teetered, on the edge of a precipice, and let herself fall. “I could use a friend to talk to,” Ava admitted. She tore a little bite off the pastry, feeling the stickiness of the sugar against her fingers.

It was the right thing for their task, Ava told herself. It wasn’t for herself that she did this; it was to build the bridge between them, to strengthen that intangible connection that was all she had to keep Tom engaged. That was the reason; that had to be the reason.

And if Ava knew that for a lie, still she clung to it, waiting in stillness once more.

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Last edited by Ava Weaver on Tue Sep 17, 2019 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Tom Cooke
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Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:33 am

Woven Delights The Painted Ladies
Late Evening on the 45th of Roalis, 2719
Friend.

A friend to talk to. It was a subtle stutter; Tom’s teacup stalled halfway to his lips, hesitated, but not for long. If something flickered across his face, some little register of surprise, some twitch, he hid it behind the rim of the cup. A long, contemplative sip. It traveled back to the table without any such hiccup, his posture still languid as a cat’s. If the metal base wobbled against the wood as he set it down, it was only his raen’s hands.

It was hard to know what he felt. Whatever’d disturbed the air in that benny back room, somehow leached just a pina manna the warmth out of the soft light and the wafting cloth – it hadn’t let up. Maybe it was the way he’d pressed her, even in his cavalier, casual way; maybe it was the mention of her; maybe it was the time that’d passed in silence, the warmth of mid-Roalis where it’d always been the cold wet of rainy season before. Maybe it was all the unspoken things.

Ava finally took a wedge of the pastry she’d cut so careful-like, a minute or so after he’d taken a bite of his, just like she’d waited to sip her tea. Tom felt something in the bottom of his soul turn over. She was smiling a soft, pleasant smile at him. It looked, for once, like it might have been a painful effort, but she was so very good at smiles like that. The dark lacquer on her nails glinted as she tore off a small bite.

He was very fond of her, he realized.

“Oes.” He halfway-expected his voice to come out strained, rough; his throat felt tight. It was smooth, but tired. “It’s hard,” he said. He paused, pushing down an unexpected heat behind his eyes. “Good kind of hard.”

Being honest, a friend was somebody you got drunk with. Like Murko, maybe. That’d been easy; it’d been fun. If it ever got too serious, too heavy, you could put it off on the drink, pretend like you didn’t remember what’d been said or done. Tom’d had plenty of friends – friends like that.

And what of hama? Hama was more than a friend. Hama had known his heart, and there’d been nights Tom couldn’t stand the sight of him. He knew his heart: he knew too much. And now he was gone, and where he’d opened up his heart, there were a thousand loose ends that would never get tied up. He was still trying to bandage the wound.

All of it was nothing, nothing to the wash of relief he’d felt when she’d asked him to stay. It was a dangerous feeling, and he knew that. She knew, too, even more than he did, with all her hidden doors. A choice was being made. It hadn’t banished the weight in the air tonight, and that made it more precious and perilous.

Tom took his teacup, crossed his legs, settled back. He took another bite of pastry, and this time, he even tasted it. He wondered where she’d got it. The crust was flaky underneath his fingers, benny flaky. He wondered if it was from the baker at the corner of Marlin and Cross, couldn’t-remember-his-name; he’d been there once when he’d lived in the Soots. Rare treat. He remembered tearing it apart in fingers he couldn’t coordinate, hands that shook so bad he nearly dropped it. He wondered when she’d got it. He pictured her cutting it. He pictured her making the tea, setting the table.

He took another sip of tea, then regarded her with a tired smile. He didn’t try to make it casual, or friendly, or warm; he didn’t try to put any humor in it. He didn’t try to do anything with it.

“You’ve had a hell of a day, haven’t you?” he asked softly.
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Ava Weaver
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Tue Sep 17, 2019 3:45 pm

Late Evening, 45th Roalis, 2719
Woven Delights, the Painted Ladies
Ava would have been sorry if Tom had left, very sorry indeed. It was not just that this represented a chance to strengthen their bond; it was not just that, because she had long since learned not to hide from herself, she knew well that she had already begun to look forward to telling him. She had already let herself hope it might help. Dangerous, very dangerous; Ava knew something of the risks she ran.

No, it was mostly that - if she asked him to stay and he went, Ava would know that she had misread him, not just this once but all along. The man she thought she saw within the familiar shape sitting on the couch opposite her - he had not run from worse, and he would not run from this. If she were wrong, she would learn he was not who he thought she was. She would learn that she was slipping, that perhaps she could not trust her own judgment anymore.

A friend. Ava had chosen the word deliberately. For better or worse, it was how she thought of Tom; it was honest, and, moreso, it was direct. She had thought he would appreciate that, if nothing else. She liked him, this strong, sensitive man trapped in the body of a galdor, who had made his own compromises to fit into this new shape. Who had compromised further to help her. She liked him, very much indeed; she liked him a bit too much, in truth, for safety. That, she could not say.

And the territory she had strayed into tonight? It would not made her any safer. It would not make either of them any safer. Ava had known that even before she asked, and she made herself look at it now.

Tom stayed. She had known he would. It took Ava a little time to gather her thoughts; she ate the bite of pastry she had teased off, slowly, savoring the sweetness of it. She looked down at the table, gathered herself; she tried to find the seam where she could bring it together while still leaving so much covered. She tried to figure out how to show him the ludicrous heart of it, without exposing all the rest.

Tom said it had been a hell of a day, and Ava glanced up at him. She smiled again, more genuine this time - not soft and smooth and silken, but a little crooked and a little sad. Just Ava, she thought. Whoever she was.

“There’s someone,” Ava knew there was warmth in her voice, all the warmth that she kept hidden the rest of the time. All the warmth she dared not to let show, not even to Rosie herself. She heard the soft curl of it, and shivered, afraid of something very different. Someone. A weight of warmth in that word, a very different meaning than it might otherwise have; she thought, for Tom, there would be no mistaking what she meant. She doubted this was what he had expected her to bring up; she wondered what he had thought her day had entailed, what sort of problems he thought she faced.

Ava set the pastry back down and wiped her sticky fingers on a slightly damp handkerchief. She curled her hands in her lap, and looked squarely at Tom. She was still falling, Ava thought; she had not yet found out whether the ground might be soft enough. “She’s unhappy, and I can’t help her.” Ava peeled the secret away; she did not hesitate. She blinked away the heat behind her eyes, her lips pressing together for a long moment, and kept her gaze on Tom, watching him carefully.

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Tom Cooke
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Wed Sep 18, 2019 11:00 pm

Woven Delights The Painted Ladies
Late Evening on the 45th of Roalis, 2719
Tom didn’t know what he was expecting. That was part of it, ’course, plain-and-simple curiosity, even though there was nothing plain-and-simple about either of them. Tom reckoned he’d wondered about some of the kov he’d worked with in the past, but it’d been none of his damn business what they did when it wasn’t on Hawke’s time.

No, that wasn’t true, either. It was his business when they scuttled off to dob. If he’d been told to keep an eye on someone, it was his business where they lived, if they were in debt, or if they’d fucked the wrong person – it was his business what they did with the King’s coin, and why. That was part of his job, too. Keep an eye out, and know how to use what he saw. And in order to do that, he had to make their sore spots his business, and he had to make sure he didn’t have any compunctions about using all that laoso whenever the time came.

The point was, all that just about killed any friendly curiosity you had about a kov’s personal life. Leastways, you felt like you knew what you were going to get, and what it’d wind up meaning to you, and there just wasn’t much point in it.

This was different, Tom knew, and it worried him to the hatchers and back, and it felt right and wrong all at once. It was wrong, it must’ve been, how he was already looking forward to hearing what she had to say. Wondering, not for the first time, what it’d be. The warmth in him, oes, that she was trusting him with whatever sliver of herself she was going to give him. That he felt like maybe, for a little while, neither of them was completely alone.

Soft. He’d gone completely soft. Flooding moony. She finally took a bite of pastry, and he felt a satisfaction like the ringing of a little bell. He took another bite himself, finishing the wedge, and washed it down with a long draught of warm tea. Dusting his fingers on his trousers, he settled back, cupping his tea in his lap.

And she met his tired smile with one a little more wan, a little more frayed, than usual. There’s someone,, she said. His eyes widened – maybe the breadth of a hair – before he could catch himself. She’d bundled up so much warmth in that word, that word that had the weight of hama, that he felt himself kindle with it.

After a moment, his eyes followed hers down to the table, to the teapot and the platter with two quarters of a pastry. Then, his face was oddly blank, and his lips had pulled down, just a little, into a frown, and the furrow of his brow was deep.

He wondered if she’d say anything else. Maybe she didn’t need to explain further; maybe it was self-explanatory. He thought he could guess. He knew a little something about a warmth that had no place to go.

He wondered who it was. He thought of the friend she’d mentioned, the one that’d seemed shorter and younger; he didn’t think it was that kov, whoever he was. It was hard to picture.

Ava spoke again, swift and precise, and Tom looked up at her. She was watching him closely. Her eyelids fluttered, and he thought she might’ve been blinking away tears.

He sat up a little, holding onto the rim of his cup, propping his head up on his arm. His eyes flickered back down to the table, settled there for a few moments like he was thinking hard. What could he say? Why is she unhappy? Why was anyone, here? Why can’t you help her?

“And she doesn’t know,” he tried, very soft, “just how much you want to make her happy.”

It was his turn to watch her face. He knew what she’d given him. He was grateful to his bones.
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Ava Weaver
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Thu Sep 19, 2019 5:27 pm

Late Evening, 45th Roalis, 2719
Woven Delights, the Painted Ladies
Ava watched Tom, her eyes on his face as he lowered his gaze, looking like he was thinking about what to say. She didn’t know how he would respond, and she didn’t let herself try to guess either. She hadn’t seen much on his face at the beginning of it, nothing that she could have quite named, not enough to understand. None of that bothered her; she didn’t want to anticipate what he would say, she didn’t want to know. It would rob the joy of it, thinking of their conversation in those terms, trying to look one or two or three steps ahead, trying to figure out where he would go, or how she could take him there.

That wasn’t how she wanted to talk, not with a friend. Instead, Ava teased off another piece of her pastry, and ate it, washed it down with another small sip of tea.

Ava felt something catch in her chest at his response, and she smiled, faintly, half-breathless. “I’m not sure,” Ava admitted. Of course he had struck at the heart of it; she wondered if he knew just how deeply.

Ava took a deep breath. “More tea?” she asked. She reached for the teapot, hand hovering over it for a moment, her eyes dropping to the rim of Tom’s cup, checking for the depth of the dark liquid inside. She would add a little more to her own cup whether he wanted more or not, just to warm it up; if Tom wanted more, she would gladly pour it, before settling the teapot back onto the table. It was ceramic, white throughout - delicately curved, with hand-painted flowers across the sides, perfect in its imperfection.

Ava had answered, as honestly as she could, and she eased back from leaning forward before she spoke on it any more. There was a faintly distant look to her eyes, a soft almost-furrowing of her brow, a heaviness that nearly – nearly, but not quite – offset the warmth in her voice.

“If she does know,” Ava said, softly, trying again to make it make sense aloud, to find the sort of sense that it made in her chest, “it’s the kind of knowledge she hasn’t admitted to herself,” she kept her gaze on the table, not quite able to bring herself to look at Tom. “For her, perhaps, I’m an escape,” Ava smiled, faintly, but there was something inescapably bitter in the expression, something she couldn’t – or couldn’t bring herself to - hide.

Ava didn’t try to anticipate Tom’s response; she didn’t know what he would say. She didn’t, really, think that there was anything he could say. There was no advice for this sort of thing, no sage wisdom to be dispensed. Perhaps he had faced it, himself, or something similar, before he’d met his Ishma. Perhaps he hadn’t. Even if he had, his solutions weren’t hers; the tools they had were so very different.

And, in truth, Ava didn’t need or want Tom to fix her problems. What she wanted was what he had already offered her – the opportunity to speak her worries aloud, to say what troubled her as best as she could. She wanted to put her finger on the pain, to find the wound in a way she could not take back – to bring it out into the open, in the hopes that that might help it heal. It could not be done alone, but neither could Tom do it for her.

“She has a husband,” Ava said, quietly, and she looked at him now. “Children. I want to lessen her burdens, not worsen them. I won’t force that knowing on her.” The rest of it – the parts of Ava’s own life that she would still have to keep hidden, the bits that she could not tell Rosie, not without risking her life – those, too, she had kept hidden from Tom. They made it all the more impossible, but they weren’t the heart of it, not this time.

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Tom Cooke
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Sat Sep 21, 2019 6:00 pm

Woven Delights The Painted Ladies
Late Evening on the 45th of Roalis, 2719
Thanks,” Tom replied with a lopsided smile. His cup was half-empty, but he reckoned it wouldn’t hurt. It was on the lukewarm side of warm, and it’d get cold fair quick without a heating-up.

So he scooted to the edge of his seat, reaching to put his cup back on the table. She poured him some more out of that macha teapot, the soft lamplight glinting silky in the swell of the white ceramic, licking the brush-strokes of hand-painted flowers. Steam whirled up from each cup, drifted, dispersed, kept billowing. His eyes lingered on the teapot, for a moment, when she set it back down. He didn’t think he’d noticed it before.

If reaching for his tea put Ava in range of his field, he was unflapped; leastways, he didn’t pause or hesitate, didn’t let all those messy misgivings show, when he felt the ruffled flock of it brush her. Looping two fingers through the handle, he took the metal cup in both hands. Then he settled back on the couch. He rested his head back against the cushions, tried to let go of some of the tension he’d been holding.

She was talking, again, just talking, and there was something fair special about the fact that all he had to do was listen. No guessing or thinking ahead. No wondering, even, when he ought to leave, or what the next move was. Wasn’t that kind of conversation.

There was almost – almost – a troubled line lurking in the set of Ava’s brow. She wasn’t looking at him; she wasn’t looking at anything in this room. For her, perhaps, I’m an escape, she said with a smile just tinged with bitterness, and Tom’s lip twitched, and his face fell a little. She was silent for awhile, and he sat in the silence with her; he wasn’t sure what to say. He took a sip of tea, sighing deeply. When she looked at him again, he met her gaze.

A husband and children. With another long sip, cradling the warm cup in cold fingers, Tom thought about it. He was trying to imagine her, to picture her face, but he couldn’t; it was hard enough to imagine what that must’ve felt like.

In the pause that followed, he found himself saying, “Back then, Ish and me, uh – we knew what we wanted, right from the start. Even before, there were ways of telling, places to go.” He chewed the inside of his gum. “Men, all with nothing much to lose. It’s very different, oes?”

Tom glanced down, running a fingertip round the rim of his cup. He pursed his lips, brow furrowed.

More than anything, it was that bitter smile, there and then gone, and the way she’d said she didn’t want to burden her. The burden she was taking on herself, not for the first time. One, it seemed to him, thinking about all the silk around them, among many. Tom wouldn’t’ve ever thought of it, in life; he’d been unburdened, maybe, in his way, like any man with nothing to lose. Or any man who treated the world like he owed it nothing.

Wouldn’t’ve thought of it ’til now, at least. There was something tight in his chest, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Some nameless foreboding. He looked back up at Ava and tried to imagine it, and this time, he found that he could. He could well imagine Ava Weaver sitting on that couch, smiling with enough softness and warmth for two, side-by-side but just out of arm’s reach. He wondered what she felt like when that woman looked at her; he wondered if she ached to be seen.

At a loss for words, he folded his hands over his mug, watched her. “It’s lonely,” was all he could say, “fair lonely.”
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Ava Weaver
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Sat Sep 21, 2019 8:09 pm

Late Evening, 45th Roalis, 2719
Woven Delights, the Painted Ladies
T
he words settled comfortably in the air between them, and something of the ache in Ava’s chest eased. She had said them; she had said, aloud, what she would not do to Rosie. She had taken the line she had known, the line she had known for a long time, and drawn it, gleaming, in the air before her; as if she had painted a line down the couch, between where she had sat and where Rosie had sat earlier.

I won’t, Ava had said aloud; I won’t. She didn’t feel it more strongly than she had before, but there was something about putting it into words. Even more, there was something about having it be witnessed that felt powerful. Words spoken aloud could be lies, of course, and Ava would never have been so bold as to claim she never lied; she would never have been so bold as to claim she had never gone back on a promise. But to speak it aloud, and to speak it to a friend - to someone, although she knew better, whose opinion mattered to her – it felt as if it settled her more comfortably into herself, as if it strengthened her resolve. It took some of the sting out of it, some of the loneliness.

Ava hadn’t wanted Tom’s advice, and, like the good friend he was, he didn’t offer it. She thought perhaps he respected that this was not a problem he could solve; she appreciated that he did not seek to try. Here, at least, he made no effort to ask for more than she had offered, and she was grateful for that too, that he knew better than to ask for more.

Instead, he opened himself up too, and offered her a little piece of himself and Ishma. Ava knew it for a gift, and she was grateful for it. Ishma, Tom’s green-eyed wick, the man he’d loved most in all his life – the man he loved now. A wick, who whispered to his plants in the Rose. And Tom had known what he wanted, right from the start – or, perhaps, even before. It was a lovely image.

It would have been easy, Ava thought, to be jealous. It would have been easy to feel envy for that reckless abandon that Tom hinted at, the ability to throw caution to the wind and plunge oneself into another. Ava did not think she had ever felt that; even now, she knew, there were boundaries to what she felt for Rosie. She would not leave the Resistance for her; she would not try to tear the other woman’s family apart. Women, with everything to lose. Was it men and women, or Tom and Ava? She couldn’t have said.

“Yes, it is,” Ava said.

For a long time, she had had nothing to lose – nothing but her life, and for all that it had been a difficult one, she had fought for it; she had fought desperately, and she had done whatever she had needed to. She felt no shame, no remorse – only anger. It was so, so much better to have something to lose; she wondered if Ishma had been that something for Tom. She wondered if, perhaps, even now, he would have said he had nothing to lose; if there was anything he regarded highly enough to let it burden him.

Ava was not jealous. She had made a choice; she had put the future before herself, a future she doubted she would live to see. She had decided that this cause meant more than herself – meant more than her feelings for Rosie. She did not regret that choice, and she did not wish to go back on it. It was only that it was hard, sometimes; sometimes it was terribly hard.

Ava looked up at Tom again when he broke the silence that had settled between them. She hesitated; she let him see the uncertainty flicker across her face. She knew better; she knew better than to have told him anything she had said so far. She knew better than to sit here with him, comforted, sharing tea and hearing about Ishma; she knew better than to care. And yet –

“It’s a little less lonely now,” Ava said, quietly; she smiled at Tom, and took another sip of tea.

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Tom Cooke
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Tue Sep 24, 2019 12:18 am

Woven Delights The Painted Ladies
Late Evening on the 45th of Roalis, 2719
He hadn’t given much thought to what he was saying – he’d thought he owed her that, at least. Hadn’t changed the fact that he’d wondered, after he’d said it, if he’d made a mistake; he’d wondered if his talk of men in the Rose would be like throwing salt in the wound, and if it would’ve been better for him to sit quiet. She hadn’t needed it, after all, to know he’d listened. But her face’d lit up at the word Ishma, at the skinniest sliver of a mention of hama, and Tom realized, for the first time, that she was curious.

It’d never occurred to him before; she’d always been quiet, carefully composed, when he brought up his lover. She’d never asked, but then, he reckoned in retrospect, she wouldn’t’ve. He’d never realized, never thought. He’d always just assumed she didn’t want to know him like that, which was fair enough. Safe enough. Safer for both of them.

Tonight wasn’t a safe night, even though it was the least lonely he’d had in a long time. Ava was hesitating, and it played out clear on her face, for once. Then she spoke, finally, mirroring his thoughts.

Tom looked at her, his face registering something like faint surprise. Pleasant, grateful surprise, the kind of surprise that stilled the breath in your lungs. He smiled soft, wordless; he attended his tea.

There was a lull, for maybe a minute or two or five. Tom couldn't tell; it was a comfortable silence, one that didn't need to be filled with words. He thought she'd told him what she needed to, and now, if either of them spoke, it was because they wanted to. His heart was still warm with gratefulness. For the words, oes, but also that hint of an uncertain look that’d crossed her face before she’d said them, that showed him she knew what she was doing with them; she’d meant to show him that, too, ’cause he didn’t think Ava Weaver showed you anything she didn’t want you to see.

So he leaned forward again and took another wedge of pastry, taking a bite of it as he sat back. He chewed, contemplative; he took another sip of tea, and another bite. Even in the middle of the Painted Ladies, even in that back room all wrapped in hangings, you could feel it in the air: summer nights just felt different, Tom thought. You could hear – or Tom could imagine he heard, distant, muffled – the song of crickets, though they never seemed as spirited here as they were in the Rose.

Settling his cup back in his lap, he sighed. “Nights like this in Roalis. It reminds me of –” Tom paused, thinking how to go on. “Ishma,” he began again, letting a warmth fill his voice, like the warmth that'd filled it the first time he'd seen that sea-green silk in the parlor, “played the oud. When he didn't make enough supplying the local apothecaries, he'd busk. Most beautiful hands you ever seen on a man.” Something wistful, but maybe a wicked gleam in his eye, for just a moment.

“But it was nights like this we’d sit out in the garden, and he'd play – just for me, and the other stray cats. Drinking Gioran together.” If it shamed him to speak of whisky in front of Ava, he didn’t let it color his voice. “I'd save up for the good shit, close to top shelf as a kov like me could come. Hama didn't much like my work, and I can't say as I disagree with him now, sod it all. But every ha’penny was worth it for Ishma. For a man like me to give him what he deserved.

“Summer nights, the Fords was full of the smell of spices, full of laughter. And then me and hama and the music and the cats.”


It needed something else, something to fold it up, to tie it. He turned a crooked, wry sort of smile on Ava, and he laughed softly and said, “Look at me, reminiscing. I really must be an old man.”

Mirth still lingered in the delicate crow’s feet round his eyes, even after the smile’d faded. Glancing down and away, he raised his mug to his lips, taking another long sip. His eyes fluttered shut a moment, and he sat there breathing in the warm, bitter scent of the tea.
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Ava Weaver
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Wed Sep 25, 2019 9:02 pm

Late Evening, 45th Roalis, 2719
Woven Delights, the Painted Ladies
I
t was enough, already – the soft, wordless surprise on his face, the way it lit up in his eyes and through his smile. They sat in a pleasant, comfortable silence, and Ava felt as if she had banished a good deal of her lingering misery. Her problems weren’t gone, but she had shaken them out into the open air, brushed the dust away, and let Tom help her fold them and put them away once more, a little cleaner and lighter than they’d been.

Ava found her pastry again, and ripped off another little piece, and ate it, and the last bit left was only bite sized, so after a few moments she finished that as well, and wiped her hands clean. She sipped at her tea, then, sitting on the couch, and felt almost drowsy.

When Tom began to spoke again, it was a surprise – but his words were not any more intrusive than the silence had been, and Ava let them wash over her. She didn’t try to hold onto them; she didn’t try to fix each one in her mind, to listen and deliberately remember, to think of how she might use them. Instead, she smiled at the warmth in Tom’s voice, and she took the last piece of the pastry, and nibbled at it as he reminisced.

She could never have asked for such a gift, Ava thought. It was not that it would have been spoiled in the asking; if she had asked Tom to speak of Ishma, and he had done so, she would have known it was because he wanted to, and no other reason. But she had not asked; she had never dared, because she had not known – still, in truth, did not know – whether the pain was worse than the joy. Tonight, she thought, the joy had won; but Ava knew all too well that such things were not always set, that it might be easy tonight and hard tomorrow.

And it wasn’t only Ishma he spoke of. There was Tom in this story too, a Tom he’d only hinted at before. He’d described so much of himself to her, but he’d focused on the physical – the scars, marks like a roadmap to the man he’d been, but he hadn’t filled in the lines between them, hadn’t traced the pattern that would allow her to connect them. He had started, once, and in the midst of it had shattered her delicate china cup, and the then-fragile web of trust that had hung between them.

Still, Ava thought, fragile. But she watched Tom, wide-eyed, and she smiled, the sort of smile that was for her own heart only, when he spoke of himself and hama and the music and the cats. She thought of thanking him, but she did not want to call too much attention to it, this perilous extension of mutual trust. Yes – still fragile. Nor did she dare ask for more; not when he had already given her so much.

“It sounds lovely,” Ava promised, and she knew he would understand her gratitude. She smiled at him again, and she thought she couldn’t have kept the warmth from it, even if she’d wanted to. And they sat in the quiet peace of her backroom, and they were both a little less alone together.

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