albinomilksnake | RP: OPEN POST

He cannot sustain the game for long; even dry humor strains his own long-forged restrictions, and where his mouth flexes faintly it does eventually recede into something more controlled. More appropriate for a Judge, even in isolated spaces, with his fingers snared across her own and weighted with thick leather.

Perhaps in time these defenses too will fade, but for now they leave only fresh footprints in untouched snow. Every step is new. A risk, broached with care.

Or at the very least, that is how he sees it.

“I believe those reports to be unsubstantiated.” He would see her behave, is what he means, even if he knows she longs for coarser freedoms. “But I will continue to monitor your recovery regardless. Just in case.”

A pause, before:

“I shall also refrain from informing Emperor Gramis of your status until you are fully prepared to face him.” To avoid any shame of perceived weakness, to afford her time to seem infallible, even in the wake of her fall.

He will keep her in line, he seems to be promising, and there's a little thrill at that. Selfish, she knows, but none have ever cared this much for her health.

Yet at his second offer, she shakes her head. "Do not keep anything from him on my account. I will endure; as you've said, it is my duty."

And she would hate to see him sully his honor for something as little as this.

That is exactly what he promises— even if the results of that effort may vary, considering his sternness and her whims: he remains certain he can bar her from rising and donning armor, at the very least. To ensure she eats and shuts her eyes. The most basic of needs, but the most vital, also.

His palm rises from her hand, resting heavily across her brow. Not pressing, nor measuring, only— steadying. He leaves it there as he watches her, pale eyes summarizing the damage scattered across her features.

“As you say.” It is a concession made with decorum. “even so, it would be best to keep the matter of our own...familiarity between us, as a generality.”

It is not a deception, only a privacy, he would argue.

He touches her, and she sighs, whatever nerves she had evening out under his touch. Pliant as she is, there is no fear. She's not sure there ever was, but the conflict, certainly, is gone. If he will come here and hold her hand, touch her face, even with gloves on she will do whatever he asks.

"I'm not one for gossip," she says, "lacking conspirators, save you. I imagine my grand thoughts on Imperial fashion would bore you to tears."

It's a joke, of course; she has no thoughts on fashion at all, really. Still, the smile curves back under his hand.

“They would certainly offend Judge Ghis, no doubt.”

A man easily riled, and deeply petty regardless. And the thought of any conversation taking place in his presence only reaffirms his desire for subtlety on their own part: he has only just earned full faith in the eyes of the Empire, and the Consul does not favor him— he would rather tread with care in regards to his own humanity.

His own weakness.

“Yet I imagine your presence does that well enough.”

She sniffs, quiet laughter. She speaks in a careful whisper, intimate and impish. "A fair skill I have, to be a thorn in the paw of a proud and toothsome lion. Shining rows of teeth, he has, but to bite would be a poison. All thoughts remain on claws."

She brings her hands up, curling fingers into a clawing shape. Jone has no thoughts on fashion, but many on jokes and insults.

He chuckles in turn, though the gesture is done in by the rise of his own palms to press down atop her own, lowering them quickly. Make no jokes like that, Jone.

"Do you hunger?" The shift in conversation is purposeful; he will not grant her rope with which to hang herself in humor, not even in closed quarters where sharp ears might yet be listening, always.

It is a palace, after all.

Edited (I'm tired I needed different words shhh) 2021-05-31 20:07 (UTC)

His hand near hers is irresistible. Immediately, fingers curl around leather and metal, rubbing warmth into the skin underneath. She is hungry for him; she cannot have him; she will take what she can get.

It's just touch, after all. It's just what has been denied her, since her instatement. How many long and sleepless nights had she wondered what she was missing, only to realize come dawn: where are all the people in my life?

Dead or masked, they cannot help her. Neither, truthfully, can Gabranth, but she thinks she can have something small to hide her need behind. She promises herself she will not weigh Gabranth down with it. A stolen moment, in private, holding his gloved hand; that can't be the end of him.

"I could eat," she says, still canny, revivified by good company. "Will you join me?" Said as grandly as though he is invited to some gala, some fine soiree.

“If you would see it so, then yes.”

It is a simple thing, after all, ordering a fine meal fit for the Emperor’s own table (though smaller in portion; Gabranth takes care to request only lighter fare for the sake of her recovering stomach) whether or not Jone is willing to let herself realize it, she outranks even the highest rich blooded nobility in Archades, and there is little she could ask for that would not be granted immediately, without hesitation.

This time, he requests it for her, careful to watch her peripherally once servants bring in gilded trays filled with roasted cockatrice, wilted greens and clear, brothy soups. Even wine— though Gabranth curls his lip slightly at the sight of it, uncertain as to whether or not it will help her.

“Are you able to sit upright, or need I tend to your care directly?”

Refusing to break eye contact, Jone slowly makes herself sit up in bed. It doesn't bring her much joy, but there are limits to what she will allow to be done for her in full wit and consciousness. The food brought to her is too grand by half, but she is hardly about to argue with Gabranth about it. In his company, she for once does not feel silly for the indulgence.

"I confess," Jone says, somewhere between true hesitance and the mocking of such febrile emotion, "I was given training in many things, before coming here; proper table manners were not one of them."

It was too grand for him once as well. He understands the look she wears, and when he seats himself beside her, tries his best to make it all that much less daunting.

They share this as allies— and as friends, if ever he warranted such a title. Perhaps she would take no offense to his presumption. She did, after all, lay down her life in near-proximity for him.

“I shall not judge, only instruct.” Says as he sets one tray before her, waving away the staff and bidding them leave them both in silence once more. His own he takes on a small table beside him, untangling silverware with a practiced hand.

Were he not in armor, one might almost mistake him for one of the princes themselves.

“You will need knowledge of this soon enough, if you are to be commended in service to the throne.”

"How gracious of you," Jone says, to hide her real relief. She'll thank him later, and it will be real and true. That would be nice, anyway. She's never been good with kindness, not the receiving of it. Giving already took ages to learn. She feels too old, now, to weather anything new.

She tries anyway.

Cautiously, she asks, "who taught you?"

If their origins are as similar as he's said.

“My mother.” He does not look at her now, only focused on his meal, making a careful show of how each utensil is held without patronizingly demanding she mirror him.

She will either follow his lead, or ask for assistance. He’ll not force her.

“We had little choice, when Landis was undone. It was her name that I took in order to survive here— she was a daughter of Archades by heritage, not want, and in what little time remained before her death she did her best to impart what knowledge she could of her lineage and its culture. It...did not take.”

He opted to focus on his career first, all he could manage, and the only thing that would save them— though of course, it did not save her.

“It was only when I was first made judge that I realized I would need to remember— and improve— upon her instruction.”

Judges are common, after all. Judge Magister are not, and though he had nothing but hunger in him, it was not for status, only wrath.

Jone mirrors him like the moon in a still lake. She listens intently, hungrily. These are secrets, this past, these existences before service. Everyone has such things, but it's still indecent and vulnerable to make a point of it. She loves him more for it, and, ah, that is a word she could use for it. She'd prefer not to.

"Then I'll thank her through you," she says, quiet. How does one talk of mothers? She'd prefer not to speak of hers. Of anyone in her mongrel family.

"Needing such manner, it hadn't occurred to me until now. I think I..." While they are sharing vulnerabilities, she will give him something with nothing familial... "I think my promotion was more luck than worth. I would have been happier unnoticed, but cannot resist a challenge. Succeeding... I did not plan for that."

She sips broth in a parody of daintiness, for once not purposeful. It's just how it looks, in her long-fingered hands, her broad shoulders. "This is surely the part where you call me a fool."

"Nor did I."

He had fought tooth and nail like a man craving destruction in all its forms: his enemies, himself— all he could see was blood, and perhaps it was that ruthlessness that caught the Emperor's attentions when so little else in the world did.

"Perhaps he favors strays alone, at the stretching sunset of his rule." Little wonder there is so much friction for it. That he has had to shoulder more than just the difficulties of ceaseless duty and anchoring armor.

Her hands are doing better in her work, he can see it when he glances her way. Good. They will take more meals like this, then. Until she is ready to stretch her wings without him at her back.

Jone reaches for the wine, and pours herself a small portion, before watering it down like tea. She knows this is not the fashion in Archadia, but her few brushes with high tables of her youth (serving, scraping) involved watering down a vintage. It meant the water of your household was clean.

"Strays," she murmurs, distracted as she watches his motions, parroting them. She's always done best with physical instruction, learning by doing. Maybe this endeavor will keep her from restless boredom when she is abed.

One can dream.

"I've never been called that before. Heartening to find you can garner always new insults."

“Here I think it a badge of honor.”

A strange one, yes, but where he once pressed against his cruelly given title, he now embraces it:

“Who else can claim nothing and nowhere, and yet find themselves seated at the side of Emperor Gramis? There is no higher privilege, and yet it is ours all the same.”

And through it, they are no longer alone. Is that not the greatest benefit of their ceaseless suffering, their own gnawing strife? That it gave rise to so much more than isolated wrath, but a shared vengeance—

It had been glorious, their work in Videreyn, even if she was unable to witness the height of it.

"A badge of honor," Jone says, a crooked grin crossing her expression. "We're more alike than you know, but I won't insult you by dwelling on it."

An insult as a badge of honor. She's never fixated too much on honor or status, but she can understand the urge. Taking an insult and making it your own, monster, caprine, she understands implicitly.

“Dwell on it as you like,” he counters smoothly, preoccupied with prying a sprig of fragrant herbs from the edge of his soup bowl. His gauntlets remain on, his attention diverted for those few, solitary moments, and it isn’t a matter of lack of interest— it is instead a promise of comfort.

They are misfits, are they not? Packmates, as it were, and from the sheen of his own silverware he catches a view of her face cast upside down: a shock of red hair, framing pale, bespotted features.

“You cannot insult my dignity further than the span of your own attempted sacrifice. If you wish to speak plainly, then do so.”

"Nothing so coarse," she teases. Somberly returning to her mirrored meal, she speaks, "I've done that with other... crudeness thrown at me. We weren't a popular family. But I made it my own."

She smiles, drinking her watered wine. "Stubborn and stupid and putrid and ugly as a goat."

“Capricorn.”

It makes sense, now.

And he finds himself retroactively furious for it. More fools they are for having been so blind— there is more to desirability or worth than vivacity of features, her own traced now by his eyes in washed out reflection. In reverse, like a card spun on its head.

“I hope them dead along with the rest.”

Charming, he. Always.

"They all are," Jone says, voice just short of sing-song. "Everyone who mattered, and everyone who didn't. And Videreyn saw fit not to lift even a finger, they, our closest allies, our brethren."

Abandoning manner for a moment, Jone takes a swift pull from her wineglass, and then finds herself recovered, shoulders settled, back straight.

"I have always had a fondness for capricorns. Pretty goats and bad omens, both. What was your inspiration?" She gestures to him, and quietly guesses functionality.

“Fear.”

Near enough to her guess, in truth. “Neither animal nor man, only demons meant to rend flesh from bone.”

His appetite has stilled itself, and rather than watching her from the shine of gilded silverware he sets his tray aside with fatigued resignation— and turns to face her fully. “I swore that should I ever meet my brother once more, that I would make his blood run cold. The ghost of all he thought he’d laid to rest in the rubble of our homeland.”

Jone considers what she could say. Nothing thoughtful, empathetic, kind or meaningful pops into her mind. Instead, she thinks of her father, and the words fall from her mouth like pearls from the Queen of Frogs in that old fairy story.

"Did it?"

She assumes he's found him. In her eye, nothing is outside Gabranth's reach.

He craves neither kindness nor empathy. It is spite that gives him comfort, and her question might well be pearls indeed for how it prompts a twisted rise at the edge of his mouth. Bitter and satisfied all at once.

“It did. And he suffers for it still.”

A gloved palm then scrapes through his hair, flattening the edged ridge near the peak of his forehead. A strangely human gesture.

“Have you finished? Was it enough for you?”

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