She is not certain he will pause to join her - they already share such a cramped space as perfect strangers, and to share the meager excuse for a bed will be closer still. A risk, anyone might reasonably think; there is danger in daring so near another person. But he does not strike her as easily discouraged, as a man faint of heart - no, surely he knows she carries nothing with which to harm him, if that had been her intent. What would be the point, down here in the dark?
There's a catch in his voice, a moment where perhaps he wavers, deciding what can be shared. What should be shared, more likely. She holds herself still as he drops to sit beside her, eyes flicking down to his hands as he braces them against his knees. Tension, usually an accidental symptom of honesty. The low tenor of his voice: that is not easily improvised, either. Pain is an easier tell; the spines of it pierce through a man's words, filling the voice with dark blood. The taste of blood is hard to fake, and she can almost taste it as he tells his tale.
When he straightens, her eyes lift again from his fingers to his face, and she spends a moment studying his features, knowing it is entirely possible for a man to be so finely trained in the art of lying that nothing slips, in voice or face. It is too early to make such judgments, but the quiet of her voice is a sympathy that cannot be feigned.
"Cowards are always the most cruel. You will die without that pain ever gentling."
Why lie? When would the death of children, the universe's most innocent, ever be a misery that fades? What is there, then, but vengeance?
He speaks then of his mother, which ripples through her a memory of her own mother, and the pang in her chest matches the pang of her smile. Mothers suffered as poignantly as children.
A glance follows his own eyes out into the dark beyond their cell, and she lets his question rest between them for a long moment before reaching for it. "Duty and love, isn't that the war the gods gave us all? I wanted to be a queen, and then I wanted to be a senator, and then I wanted to be no one." Her own half smile for that, before she goes on as lightly as she can. "I seem to have started at the wrong end, and now I'm not going to make it to being no one. 'Prisoner' doesn't count."
tysm! ;o; i love the dynamic of these two, and your darkling is aces!
There's a catch in his voice, a moment where perhaps he wavers, deciding what can be shared. What should be shared, more likely. She holds herself still as he drops to sit beside her, eyes flicking down to his hands as he braces them against his knees. Tension, usually an accidental symptom of honesty. The low tenor of his voice: that is not easily improvised, either. Pain is an easier tell; the spines of it pierce through a man's words, filling the voice with dark blood. The taste of blood is hard to fake, and she can almost taste it as he tells his tale.
When he straightens, her eyes lift again from his fingers to his face, and she spends a moment studying his features, knowing it is entirely possible for a man to be so finely trained in the art of lying that nothing slips, in voice or face. It is too early to make such judgments, but the quiet of her voice is a sympathy that cannot be feigned.
"Cowards are always the most cruel. You will die without that pain ever gentling."
Why lie? When would the death of children, the universe's most innocent, ever be a misery that fades? What is there, then, but vengeance?
He speaks then of his mother, which ripples through her a memory of her own mother, and the pang in her chest matches the pang of her smile. Mothers suffered as poignantly as children.
A glance follows his own eyes out into the dark beyond their cell, and she lets his question rest between them for a long moment before reaching for it. "Duty and love, isn't that the war the gods gave us all? I wanted to be a queen, and then I wanted to be a senator, and then I wanted to be no one." Her own half smile for that, before she goes on as lightly as she can. "I seem to have started at the wrong end, and now I'm not going to make it to being no one. 'Prisoner' doesn't count."