[OTA] Hit Me Baby

[pureaudacity]

It has been something of a slightly stressful week, for the Diamonds. No one would argue that one. Kat has, perhaps, been more removed from it than most. She liked her Queen, thought she was an excellent Queen but was not particularly close to her. The affect it has on her is solely as a subject, and while nothing to be sneezed at, she knows it's

Comments

[diemwnt]

Take away a man's cigarettes and intellectually challenge him to handle his pent-up aggression without always running off to the shooting range, and you get a very twitchy Ten. True, he'll be able to round up some men soon enough to get a scrimmage going in a few weeks.

But that's a few weeks. And this is now.

Which means that now he's pausing in the door and squinting slightly in the faint hope that which Berthier sister this is will hit him between the eyes so he'll feel less bad about taking over a corner for himself.

[pureaudacity]

...Well, she certainly could do it. No doubt getting called on the carpet for smacking a Ten would improve her week. Or, you know, not so much. So instead, Katriane pauses in the act of wrapping her knuckles.

"My lord Ten," she murmurs with a slight bow. "I hope I'm not bothering you."

[diemwnt]

Youngest. Six. Name, why are you not coming to him.

Although, well, it's not like he actually needs to use it, except in the vain attempt to get rid of the 'Ten'ing that happens. He doesn't have his suit jacket, which means his pad isn't right there to be drawn out in its usual flash. He'll go for shaking his head and then tilting it questioningly, pointing outside, then at her, then twice on his wrist where a watch might be.

Not a bother, clearly. Was she waiting for someone to come?

[pureaudacity]

It takes a minute. She and Lord Cadogan don't interact often enough for her to be able to easily read the pantomiming, but eventually she blinks. "Oh! No, I'm working alone today, it's fine if you come in, sir."

She manages to stop short of babbling - it's bad enough when she does it to her sisters, after all.

[diemwnt]

The bob of his head is meant to be appreciative. It hopefully comes through--for having such a blank face, subtleties tend to pop through from years of learning to speak properly.

There's a bit of a pause before he takes a half-step into the room, taps his own fingers thoughtfully and indicates hers. True, they're not close, but... well. She's one of Sophie's sisters, and he's one of this particular Castle's foremost experts on not braking a single bone in the delicate system of the human hand.

[pureaudacity]

She bites her lip and gives him a slight smile as she tucks a tendril of blond hair back into the thick, wavy ponytail it's escaped from.

And then Kat blinks down at her hands. They're well-wrapped - it's one of the things she's very careful about - but it doesn't hurt to have them double-checked. And Lord Cadogan is one of Sophie's friends, and she's been trying so hard to make up for things with Sophie. So she moves over and lets him see.

[diemwnt]

Hands aren't something a person can be to careful about. Cadogan, of course, has a bias, but his own peculiarity makes it no less actually important for others, surely.

It only takes a light thumb over the back of her hand to feel for the X's, a careful grip on her wrist to test the give and take before turning her hand palm up. One hand moves away as his chin lifts, clenches and unclenches his own fist. Show him, Kat.

...Katherine? Katherine. French version of Katherine. Brilliant.

[pureaudacity]

You're so close, Cadogan. It's Katriane. The more uncommon version, really, it most commonly being Catherine instead. But it's probably just as well she didn't get the usual. Catherine's always struck her as the name of someone meant to do great things.

She makes a fist, clenching and releasing, and her brows lift. "It's good?"

[diemwnt]

The subtlety will hit him once he leaves, certainly. Until then, he'll dismiss it as a largely solved case.

His first response, of course, is to click his tongue softly. It makes a tight enough fist. He'll wait until the process has been repeated with the second hand before nodding his head and assigning the job the incredibly lofty rank of thumbs-up. Go forth and punch the hell out of things in good health.

[pureaudacity]

She starts to move away with a smile, but then she pauses. "Um, you were with Sophie in the library, weren't you?"

[diemwnt]

...well. That's... not actually a question he'd expected. The purples and greens and yellows have almost entirely faded from his face. The revelations since the library have all gotten fitted into his mind.

So it's half a second before he nods.

[pureaudacity]

He knows Sophie, though, and he knows she probably wouldn't have said a word if it had been slightly less obvious than a broken nose and bruises that Kat had helped her cover up before the challenge the week before.

But she's not really going to ask him about it. For one, what can she ask? For another, how can he answer? He doesn't have his notepad; she doesn't know sign language. So she says something else, possibly unexpected.

"Thank you." For being there for Sophie, she thinks, when Kat and Lotty and Irene were all safely in their houses in Town.

[diemwnt]

Even without it being a further question, what can he say?

His head ducks for a moment. He had failed, after all, apart from helping to keep Sophie alive. That was a victory, yes, and one he held very dearly, but... that was a victory as a person. As a friend. His failing had been as a Ten and a soldier and a person who was meant to lay down his life in defense of this Suit.

But it's done. Over. And Sophie's alive. He shakes his head slightly, taps his right hand against his heart. Doing his duty is nothing to thank him for, after all.

[pureaudacity]

"Nonetheless," Kat murmurs. "I appreciate it." So much in her life, she's started thinking recently, she's taken for granted. And maybe Cadogan thinks it's a small thing, but he was there to defend the Diamonds, and whether he was successful or not.

Well, he was there. And he should know.

[diemwnt]

There aren't many words he's trained himself to form the lip-shapes of, it largely being an exercise in frustration that he can make the forms without producing the sound. Most of the words, phrases, are in Welsh. The bulk of the English is hardly applicable outside of the trench.

But he can briefly, hesitantly, touch her shoulder and tap his lower lip, carefully attempt one of the few things most people seem to understand.

'Thank you.'

[pureaudacity]

She blinks at him, and then her lips curve slightly. Because that is something she understands, and something she didn't truly expect, either.

"You're welcome."