[Closed] Expecting the Worst

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
e didn’t look up as she spoke, but he nodded once, slowly. The paper had been soft and glossy underneath his fingers. That she said it aloud made his heart tighten; it was skipping, thumping, as he opened the book in the middle and smoothed out the page. The spine didn’t crinkle or crack.

The book was slimmer than he’d expected, wrapped in so much wax paper. The page was a blur in front of him, lines of blurry grey, and Cerise was still quiet, so he took out his spectacles and set them on his nose. The print was smaller than in the copy at the Golden Rose, and some passages were more faded than others, the little hooks on lowercase Ts and on the feet of Rs and Ks chipping. He turned a few thin pages. There were no illustrations, but he found himself looking at the curl of a vine underneath a chapter title, and a tiny printed image above it – a moon.

Stubborn, he turned back to the start. The bindings were still quiet and smooth. Other than some scuffing round the corners of the cover, the only damage was the off-and-on ragged edge of a page; whoever’d cut them a long time ago hadn’t done so fair carefully.

He ran his finger along a tear, right above a crease in the shape of a small thumbprint. It hadn’t been with a letter-opener or even a riff; someone had taken them apart one by one with their fingers. A boch, maybe, who didn’t know any better. He thought, frowning.

He had settled himself in to read; he wasn’t sure what else to do. He still refused to withdraw, or to speak until she did – boemo, he thought, this was all he could do. But then he glanced up. Her voice was rough, and her eyes were still rimmed raw.

His lip twitched and his brows raised, as if to say, Of course you’re not. If there was a smile on his face, though, it faded. More tears were slipping down her cheeks, though she made no move to wipe them up. He half wanted to offer her his kerchief, but he thought better of it. He didn’t much think she liked crying in front of him, and he didn’t want to draw attention to it. Being honest, he didn’t want to see the look on her face when she saw the stains on it, though it would’ve been benny for breaking the tension.

“One hell of an introduction,” he agreed, shutting the cover careful-like. He studied her face; he hoped for a smile, a twitch – anything.

He wasn’t sure he could’ve found one of his own if he’d tried. “Why shouldn’t I?” Wo chet, but he knew the answer to that one. His frown deepened. “You’re talking like I behaved any better than a kenser’s erse. And you’re sitting here,” he added, “and I’m sitting here, with a fine, flowery tea service in between us. After what I’ve done, and this on top of all of it. I could ask you the same question.”

Wrapping the book back up for the moment and setting it aside, he leaned forward to get his tea. Belatedly, he took his glasses off.

He managed a sheepish grin, still studying her intently, not sure what to do with the pit in his stomach. “For what it’s worth – I know, nothing whatsoever,” he said, fluttering a hand, blowing and taking a sip, “it was damned encouraging. You waltzed into that fancy party and challenged me in front of everybody. What’s not to like?”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

At least he hadn't said anything when she pointed out the obvious--that it was waxed paper. Just looked at the book carefully, considering. Cerise didn't know what he was looking for. Not reading it, she didn't think. Although he had taken out his reading glasses and put them on his nose. Idly, she wondered if she too would need them someday. They shared so much else. She supposed even a stranger would have looked at her and known her for Anatole Vauquelin's daughter.

She didn't know why she'd opened her mouth again. Nothing better to do, perhaps. Or just her mouth running away when her mind would have told her to shut the clocking hell up and stop pushing on what hurt. He might have smiled, or started to, when she said she wasn't sorry. It disappeared like all the others.

Maybe she had interrupted what had been intended to be reading. She wasn't sorry for that either. He was staring at her; she wiped at her face at last. Then she remembered she had a handkerchief in her pocket, and used that instead. It was stained, here and there, the dark brown of old blood. She tried to muster up embarrassment but she couldn't find it. She could find very little, suddenly.

Why shouldn't he? How much time did he have? That was a long list. Cerise could think of a lot more reasons not to want to know her than she could to want to.

And yet. He was sitting there, just like her father said. They were both sitting there, having tea together for reasons unknown. He had asked, she supposed, but she could have said no. She should have said no. Cerise had, in fact, intended to say no, but instead she was here. She looked down at the tea service indicated; it was fine. And floral. Very floral.

He wrapped the book back up and set it to the side. Cerise thought: maybe he will give it back to me now. Why take a book from a daughter you didn't know? I want to. She couldn't quite believe it. She was quiet for a moment after he spoke again, grinning at her. Then one half of her mouth came up without her meaning for it to.

"That," she said slowly, "is worth a little more than other things. Just a little." Wanting anything now was foolish--hadn't she already learned that? Cerise leaned forward and picked her cup back up slowly, like it would shatter in her hands. She started to untangle their fields now, easing back gingerly, if only because she felt too much an exposed nerve like this. It was too hard for her to try and keep anything out of it.

"I am not well-liked," she said simply and without self-pity or even much shame. Cerise Vauquelin had long since stopped feeling miserable about others' opinions of her. Most other people, anyway. She knew what she was. What surprised her was when anyone did like her. Let alone the man sitting in the chair beside her, smiling at her over tea. "If you liked that, it couldn't possibly have been a very interesting party."

She paused, and then her smiled broadened and tilted. "Then I suppose this means you haven't heard the story of my fight with Antoinette Roumanille."

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
e’d thought it had been floral print, at first, like the porcelain and the cushions. He’d only just caught it as he looked back up from the book, as she tucked it back away – the dark bloom against the soft pale fabric. It was too dark to be wine, he thought, but he couldn’t tell; it could’ve been anything, he thought. Maybe they were flowers.

This was wrong.

That was the first and last of it, and that was the rule. That was the rule of everything, maybe – of all this wearing-another-man’s-face madness – but this maybe more than anything. There was sitting in his office, drinking with his colleagues; there was sharing a house with his wife, though he knew Diana saw right through him; there was her, but she knew the name of his soul, and hadn’t much liked the face, anyway. Now, he was sitting across from a lass of barely twenty, handling her dead mother’s book and wearing her father’s skin.

Her lip twitched and curved up at the edge, finally, and he only kept grinning. There was a clawing in his belly, a horrid, howling guilt. But he grinned, blinking away more prickling moisture in his eyes.

Cerise had eased her field away, and he followed suit, letting the soft clairvoyant mona drift out from their investigation of the physical. He kept up his curious caprise even as he shifted and settled back in the seat with his teacup. He crossed his legs, tentatively comfortable.

His grin faded. I might’ve guessed, he didn’t say; she’d spoken matter-of-factly, and he couldn’t read any more into it. Neither am I, he wanted to say, not really. If you knew what I was, you wouldn’t like me, either.

“It was,” he drawled instead, propping his head up on the arm of the chair, “a very dull party.” A pause. One eyebrow quirked up sharply, and his lip twitched. “I suppose you’d know more of the interesting parties than me.”

There was, he thought, a note of the paternal in Anatole’s deep voice. He hadn’t meant for it to be there; he’d only meant to rib her, given all the talk of musty Bertrams with thick spectacles downstairs. He felt strange in his skin. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. He blinked, then took a cooling sip of tea, poorly hiding a giddy smile. He smoothed himself out well enough, but he felt oddly hysterical.

It clinked softly on the saucer. It was dark outside, and the rain was pounding ever harder at the window. The shadows were thickening; the soft glow of the oil lamp picked out all the shadows in her sharp face.

Both his eyebrows went up, this time. “Antoinette Roumanille,” he pronounced, snorting unpleasantly. Hell of a golly name. “Your – duel with her? Or…”

He thought of Diana going through letters, her head in her hands. Then, he thought of that flash of a handkerchief.

He blinked. “A story for a story,” he said slowly, a smile working its way into the thin lines round his eyes. “Such as I can offer, anyway.”

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

He grinned and he grinned, and they eased their fields apart. She wasn't lonely, because that was absurd. The smile only faded when she admitted to her generally-held lack of likability. Like he couldn't have already guessed. I'm not ashamed of it. I can only be what I am. She thought to say it, but didn't in the end.

Cerise couldn't help but hear something in her father's voice that was, well, fatherly. Something about the way he said "interesting parties". Cerise's heart lurched, even as she kept the smile on her face that said--yes, she did know something of interesting parties. Or she had, a long time ago. When he had known who she was, and would never have wanted to hear the answer.

Now she didn't go to many parties at all, except for those for the League team and the functions required of her by the school. Galdori student parties had always been a little unexciting, and, well. Most things seemed just a little less thrilling than they had before. Cerise couldn't help but think so, though she did her best to move on.

A little flutter of hope flashed in her breast. One day, she thought. They could do many things these days, with the Perceptive and Living arts both--if she didn't wish for it too hard, what was the harm in keeping hold of that little sliver? One never knew after all, right? Cerise wasn't certain she wanted her father to remember her; it wasn't like the relationship they'd had up until now had been the warm familial bond of stories. Or of other, different families, she thought sourly. This version at least smiled at her sometimes, with an edge she didn't know how to read. It was just that she didn't think she could bear being forgotten either.

Part of her had expected him to huff at her mentioned the fight with Antoinette. Memory of her or not, it was still just not Done for young ladies of breeding to tackle other young ladies of breeding on the Lawn. He had asked anyway and offered her a trade: a story for a story.

What kind of stories did he have, this person who looked like her father and felt her a stranger? She was curious, she had to admit. "A story for a story," she agreed, letting a familiar sharp smile take over her features.

"This was fifth year, you have to understand--I was worse then. I'm a reformed woman now. At the time..." Cerise shrugged and spread her hands, not in the least bit sorry to this day. Her legs crossed at the knee, and she folded her hands on top as she warmed up to her story. "I'm not sure why she hated me, in particular--Miss Roumanille is a deeply unpleasant young woman. One day in Yaris, while we were watching the Varsity teams run through practice, she came up to me..."

Cerise told the story with only a few embellishments. She pointedly did not mention what it was Antoinette had said to her, when she had rocketed herself off the grass and tackled that wasp of a girl into the dirt. That Siordanti had to pull them apart, she did include, because she thought it was rather funny now. A small world, and all that. Most of her added details were in the framing--the heat, the crowd that watched them. That she had swung wide and hit Antoinette square in the eye--and not the nose as she had intended--she left in. She had only been in fifth year, after all. She was better now.

"...and she had the nerve, the utter cheek, to call me a wild animal! Although she was not the first, and she likely won't be the last. Rather a wild animal," she said thoughtfully, "than a coward." Cerise said this with conviction and animation--she had gotten lost in the telling of her fight. At the end she came back to herself a little; the smile she flashed was not at all embarrassed. She wondered what he'd make of it, even though he had asked.

"Your turn," she reminded him evenly, and took a sip of her tea. "A story for a story." Her grey eyes turned to him, expectant.

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

S
iordanti,” he repeated, laughing, and then found himself laughing harder as she went on. He quieted, listening. He was sitting leaned on the arm, now, sucking at his tooth, his lips twisted in a smile he’d been trying – failing – to suppress ever since she started.

“... only in fifth year, after all,” Cerise went on, and he let out an ugly snort, clearing his throat.

Clocking fifteen years old. He thought he could picture it, Cerise slingshotting across the green, all elbows and knees, landing on this pretty little Antoinette wasp – he pictured all rosy cheeks and red ringlets – and blacking one of her eyes. He could picture it cognomancy-clear, some younger version of Hadrian Siordanti edging his way in, pulling a murder-eyed Cerise off a weepy little lass who was calling her a wild animal.

He shook his head, shrugging his shoulders. Boemo, he almost said. “Good for you. She insulted you,” he said lightly. “It’s not a wild animal who defends her honor.”

Fifteen. That would’ve been – four years ago, he reckoned. Only four?

As many as four? Four years ago, he had been – twenty-six, he thought, feeling a funny dampening come over him. Four years ago, or twenty-seven fifteen. She’d spoken of the heat, so it must’ve been in the summer.

That winter, he’d got his own nose broke trying to choke out that – he couldn’t remember his name – Brint, Brea… That had been the year Uzoji’d been run through; he still remembered sitting out, terrified, as his rosh casted. He remembered little about the summer, other than Caina’d been there; she’d been round the house a lot, in fifteen. She’d been fourteen or fifteen herself, as he recalled, and getting into plenty of fights of her own. Only a year after –

“You really shouldn’t,” he added, faintly breathless from his laughter, catching her eye. He did his best to look serious, furrowing his brow. “Get into so many fights, I mean. Not that – well – not and get caught,” he added, and laughed again, a little helpless.

A story for a story, she repeated, looking at him. He met her eye, then, the smile fading a little from his face. He sucked at his tooth, then took a sip of tea, weighing his options, feeling another dizzying surge of guilt.

Better a monster, he thought, than a coward. Or a man who doesn’t keep his promises. He wondered how close Cerise and her da had been; he didn’t know, but he didn’t think she knew much of his past – they didn’t seem the sort to speak of it, and he must’ve been at least thirty-four or thirty-five when she was born. And what of this amnesiac ruse? Could a man lose some of his mind, but not all?

(Why was he doing this?)

The teacup returned to the saucer. “You’ll have to remind me” – he gazed at her intently, playing at caution and uncertainty, though he knew full well what the answer was – “if I’ve told you of the first fight I ever won.”

There’d been a dozen before it; he’d been well-acquainted with beatings, from Marleigh and the other boys, and even from Greene. He went through the story in his mind, picking apart what he could tell and what he couldn’t, as he hung on the breath, watching her. Asking himself if he were really going through with this, and what it would mean if he did.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

The party where she had charged forward and demanded her father speak to her was only last week, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Longer ago, somehow, than the events of the story she had launched into. He had sounded almost impressed then, when she had hinted at this--then, it had just been bait in a trap. A way to needle him and Incumbent Burbridge both. It felt different to tell it because she was asked; it felt different again to make him laugh with the telling.

"Just so," she agreed. She didn't say that it was his honor too that Antoinette had tried so hard to sully. It didn't seem relevant. Good for you, he said, and Cerise felt something warm inside of her. When, she wondered, had she last heard him approve of... anything she did, at all? Cerise knew there had to be something. A duel, perhaps, or something academic and meaningless. They weren't so chilly as all that, she thought. Or so contentious. But Cerise searched her memory and she couldn't find anything at all.

The flicker dimmed when she remembered: it just took a bout of amnesia to hear it. It didn't matter, she insisted to herself, irritation curling up inside of her. She didn't need his approval and she didn't want it. The things she would have to do to get it--she couldn't do those things. She couldn't be that person. She never had, and she never would. Maybe he said that now, and maybe in time things would go back to how they were. None of it mattered. She blinked, over and over, until her eyes cleared.

"That was a long time ago," she pointed out. Her voice lofty. She had been about fifteen then--a child. Now it was different. "I don't start them--they come to me. I'm much better at them now, though." He tried to catch her eye and she let him, her mouth fighting a smile and failing. It was difficult, to stay dour in the face of all the breathless laughter. She thought she liked that more than the praise.

Too bad it never seemed to last. She didn't know what she always did to crush it, but she seemed to every time. The reminder of the bargain? She hadn't known what kind of story he would offer. A man who couldn't remember his own daughter might not have many to tell. Or maybe he remembered other things, more important things, and she just wasn't in the category.

His eyes were intent as he looked at her now, as if he didn't already know the answer to the question. She wondered if he had; she didn't think so. He had told her very little, truthfully. Before she'd been old enough to ask they'd been at each other's throats as often as anything. Or what counted as such, for a respected politician and his wayward eldest daughter. Most of their arguments seemed to come through Diana, anyway--he couldn't even fight her properly. He had to use an intermediary.

Cerise looked back, and she thought. And then she shook her head. "You haven't." Cerise had finished her tea. She moved to pour herself another cup, but her attention was trained on her father.

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

H
er eyes were on him, now, as she was leaning to pour her tea. There was no path back; the door behind was shut, and his back was against it, and every sharp edge of the drake was fixed on him.

She’d come to life, when she’d told her story. It had been a gift, for all she hadn’t known to whom she was giving it. He’d forgot, for a little while, watching her; he’d forgot where he was, who he was, who she was. He’d laughed, and then, when she’d replied to his almost-admonition, her head high and her narrow face set, her grey eyes chilly – he’d laughed again, and bastly had threaded its way gold through his field, and he hadn’t any idea what any of it must’ve meant to her.

If she’d thought his question strange, she’d accepted it anyway. Another debt, this. He licked his lips. “There was a” – laoso kov – “a rather unpleasant young man, when I was something like… thirteen, fourteen. I was getting cornered often enough.”

He started slow, and the details were sparse. Which streets? Where? Who? – and he didn’t speak of what Alan had done to him; the thought twisted his mouth down, and for all she’d told him, he thought there were bits and pieces she’d left out, too. She did not, anyway, ask.

“It may be hard to believe,” he went on, shrugging casual-like, “but I wasn’t always so impressive as I am now.” It wasn’t a joke he could’ve made, before, covered in scars; now, he made it with relish, with a straight face, gesturing airily at himself from head to toe. “I usually ran, as a boy, and only fought back where I had to.”

He shrugged, taking another sip of tea. He thought more. “The third time he came for me, he ambushed me on a back street,” he said, “one I was taking to avoid him. He had a riff, that time, but I didn’t know it. I just thought I was going to get the regular beating.”

One slip – one word. He’d the sense of it, but he couldn’t linger on it; his mind was moving too quick. There was nothing of the Rose in his accent, but his cadence was slipping, too, back somewhere in-between, and as he wound on through the story he couldn’t help slide into the melody of it.

More slips, indubitably. He’d set his tea on the table now and was gesturing, finding the shape of the fight with hands that shook a little less than they had earlier. “My memory isn’t – the best,” he added once, “but I do remember – I didn’t know you called it a feint, yet, but that’s how I learned…”

He’d struck off down an alleyway that had smelled of fish and piss – this, of all details, he spared; there was no place smelled like the Rose – and he’d thought he’d lost Alan somewhere in a maze of quiet back streets. Alan had him up against the wall, then, and it’d taken a knee to the spitch to get him off.

“I could’ve left him there on the ground and ran, but I…”

Kicked him, he might’ve finished. Over and over, while he was down, beat him to a pulp. And he never bothered me again, and it was after that Carlisle lost me to the King.

He froze instead, some of the animation lost. The cat’s eyes were open, now, looking at his raised hand. His hands fell to his lap, and he peered across at Cerise, suddenly sheepish.

“I never went looking for them, either,” he said, “until I started looking for them.” He wasn’t sure why he said it; he wasn’t sure why he’d said any of it. The realization washed over him slowly. He blinked, some of his smile returning tentatively to his face, and reached for his tea again.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

Wrapped up in that golden thread, Cerise had felt comfortable enough asking for the story he had promised. There was something that hurt in the offer--but she thought she could ignore it, for now. There was time later to pull it back out again and examine what it had been. Now there was only the story, and his laughter.

When he was thirteen or fourteen--Cerise couldn't imagine her father at such an age. She tried, as she listened, to picture him as such. Small and red-haired and narrow-faced. She supposed she just pictured a boyish ginger version of herself; that was likely close enough, and she found that image easily. The story came out slow, missing things here and there. No more, she thought, than her own had been missing. Just with fewer embellishments to fill the gaps left behind.

"No! Truly?" Cerise couldn't help but respond with that mockery of surprise. The joke had been made with such a straight face, it begged for a response. She could not imagine her father a bullied child, but maybe he had been. She knew very little about him at that age--she knew nothing at all. They did say that victims sometimes grew into bullies themselves.

The story kept flowing, but Cerise's mind stuck and it clung to that one word: riff. Riff and laoso and she thought, maybe, some others had been in there. Even the cadence of his voice was slightly wrong and getting stranger--Cerise felt like she was hearing a story about another young man. A story from Jax or Emiel, maybe, or some of the other friends who had been tentatively comfortable with her presence (few as those were). Not the story of a young Anatole Vauquelin, future lawyer and incumbent. A frown hovered at the edge of her expression.

There was no explaining it, or accounting for it. Where had he been, when he was missing and they'd all feared him dead? What had happened? Was that it? She didn't know. She didn't know and the story kept moving so she didn't try. Just let it hover there, a needle pricking at the pad of her thumb. Insistent and small. Part of Cerise thought she should ask; there was something wrong here.

But there was that golden thread, she thought. And he seemed so animated in the telling. If Cerise pulled at it, all of this would fall apart. She stayed her hand; one could grow adjusted to a small, persistent pain. She knew that very well.

The girl and the cat looked at him both, at the end, and her father froze. There was something she should say; she felt strange and couldn't find it. She just chuckled, at the end of it. Until he started looking for them indeed. Maybe he meant--as a lawyer. Surely that's what he meant. That was all he could have meant. Wasn't it?

"Is this the touching story of how you came to study law? Fighting with people professionally?" She offered the exit; she wasn't sure which one of them needed it more.

[Tom Cooke]

Aveline's Bookstore • Deventry

Evening on the 14th of Bethas, 2720

I
t got a chuckle, anyway. And more, before that – she had shot back, easy, at his joke; she had watched and listened. And what had she heard? He’d been so deep in it, caught on the updraft, he hadn’t been watching her; he hadn’t seen the faint frown, the look that wasn’t quite curiosity – the creeping discomfort – until she looked at him at last.

Fighting with people professionally.

There was no way he could’ve prepared himself for it. He let out a laoso snort, first, midway through a sip of tea; he nearly sprayed it on his teacup. He cleared his throat, setting the tiny cup and saucer rattling down on the table.

He straightened. “You could say that,” he said, looking across at her. He tried to arrange his face into something like a serious expression; his lips pressed thin, his brows drawn. His back was very straight.

He still thought he heard something of the tallyboy in his voice; the thought of him – of that lad who’d kicked the shit out of Alan Milliner in the alleyway – going to study law was so far from him, he wasn’t sure how to fill the gap. That feeling of the strange that’d been encroaching since they sat down was at its height. To think that lad – that man, who’d found it easier to cut a throat than write with a pen, was sitting here, looking like this, pretending to be a lawyer-turned-politician.

To his daughter. He blinked, worried suddenly she’d taken his laughter wrong. Clearing his throat again, he pushed something like a smile onto his face. “I suppose,” he said, lightly as he could manage, “beating a fellow to a bloody pulp isn’t unlike winning a case in court. I don’t know which is more satisfying.”

That was not, he thought, better.

There were more gaps than he could keep track of, could stretch this thin, cold face over. He’d agreed with Ava once that to wear his shape was half the battle; not, he thought, here. He felt his feet slipping on the stones, felt the ground skittering beneath him. The weight of it hit him sudden, of what it must’ve been like to see a stranger in your da’s skin.

He tried. He centered himself again; he went through the motions in his head – he uncrossed his legs, set his shoulders, sat like he had been taught, sat like him – tried to find the cadence of his voice in his mind.

“You know, Diana told me she’d always thought you’d go into law,” he said, and then paused. Not better. He pushed on anyway: “Why did you get – started – dueling?” Because, as he seemed keen to remind her, her da didn’t remember a whit about her. His lip twitched; he reached for his tea again, to take a sip before he could say anything else.

[Cerise Vauquelin]

Aveline's Bookstore, Deventry
Bethas 14, 2720 - Evening

Well, choking on his tea and dying right there on the coffee table was a kind of exit from this strange conversation to be sure. Not quite what she'd had in mind, but it would do the trick all the same. Cerise had not yet gotten over the novelty of having her father laugh at her jokes. Maybe that was what made the laughter feel so strange, more than the sound of it. He had never found her very funny before.

There was a little bit of that strange cadence still in his voice when he stopped inhaling his tea and looked at her again. His posture was very grave--Cerise couldn't tell if he was offended or amused, now. Amused, she thought. Or both. Certainly he seemed as surprised as she was that he laughed. Cerise shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. Yes--he never had found her very funny. Maybe he didn't still.

He supposed--well. That was not the way she had intended her statement to go, either. Cerise raised her eyebrows, not sure if she should laugh or frown. This was all so surreal, a scene from a particularly baffling dream. Any moment now, she thought, the fluffy white cat would start speaking to her. Cerise gave it half a glance, just to make sure. The cat blinked and began to groom a white paw, but remained otherwise silent. Cerise was still not willing to declare this not a dream, after all.

"Well that is quite the dilemma," she tried, making herself sound casual. Her features still straddled the line between scowl and smile; that, at least, was not wildly unusual. That sounded less like something she could picture her father saying and more like something she would say at a party. Like what she had said, in front of Incumbent Burbridge. The sense of unreality persisted. At least he smiled; she was mildly reassured that he had found her comment amusing, after all.

What did it say that she found her footing when he asked her about getting started with her dueling? Not the question, itself, that wasn't steadying in the least. Cerise couldn't help but feel like he had asked on purpose, to hurt her. Her father was not often deliberately cruel to her, but this kind of casual cruelty felt enough like him that this had to be real after all. Cerise drew a breath like she had been hit, and it stuttered back out of her. Cruel or kind, she thought, she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry--not again.

Things would have been much easier if it was all one or the other.

"Did she? Diana has a strange read of my character, then." Cerise hadn't meant for it to sound bitter, but it did. To be quite honest, it was not such a drastic leap. Cerise could almost picture it, if dueling hadn't found her first. Or if the idea of being a lawyer herself didn't make her stomach churn faintly. She already shared his face and temperament; Cerise had no desire to share his career as well. Cerise frowned, shifting her face to rest on her palm.

How did she answer the question? Even in this dim dream space they seemed to have moved in to, that had different rules than the one to which she was accustomed, Cerise wasn't sure that she could bring herself to articulate the fullness of her passion to her father. No matter the version, no matter the memories. It was so dreadfully sentimental and out of character; she had told so few people in her life.

"Well," she began, looking away from him and towards the middle distance, "since you don't remember. It was not, initially, my decision. I was given an ultimatum: find a better outlet for my... youthful energy, or face disciplinary action." Cerise shrugged her shoulders lightly, as if all of this was of no consequence or impact. At the time she had been torn up about it. An accumulation of years of unspent energy had reached a boiling point; the Cerise of that time had thought she would hate dueling with its rules and structure and judgment. It had seemed like a convoluted way to get her to do more homework. Nobody had been more surprised than she was how grounding she found it, or how thrilling.

"I ended up taking to it quite strongly. It's... I don't know how to explain what I like about it." Cerise smiled in a distant way, not even realizing she had done so. Her hair had dried to a frizzy halo around her face. Absently she tucked some of it back behind her ear with slim fingers.

"But it's worked," Cerise smiled properly then, a smile with the edge of a knife in it. "I am a reformed woman after all." That was not a lie, but it wasn't the truth either. That her parents owed something of her increased studiousness to Emiel was an irony too tender for her to share. Cerise straightened and pulled her face away from her hand.

"You have never liked my professional aspirations," she said pointedly, a strike she wasn't sure would land. The disapproval and the lack of memory both. Worth the recoil. "Either of you. So I'm not surprised Diana wants me to go into law."