He assisted her easily into the curricle. But as Reinette settled her skirts over the bench she twisted to reclaim one of her hands within her own. She grasped it firmly, as of daring him to even consider breaking the connection between them.
For once she did not smile but instead she meat his eyes with her own.
"Yes Jack, your worst. Even it I broached the topic lightly I was quite serious in what I said. I shared a bed for five years with a man that made countless debatable decisions, ordered executions and that send hundreds of thousands of men to war and to their deaths. And let us not forget our mutual friend the Doctor. I saw into his mind as well. What he did. What he wished so desperately to forget. And I? I have many regrets of my own."
She still held his hand.
"This is a place of masks and games and make believe. I have come to treasure what is real. And in that I mean all of it. I do not commit myself in halves." There was a brief smile. "With the exception of my marriage. But as Charles had to be bribed to even meet me at the alter surely that can be forgiven."
Her fingers traced his palm lightly, then finally released his hand.
"We all need to be seen on occasion Jack. I am certainly not going to look away."
Jack was startled by her suddenness. By the way she held his hand and the way her stare demanded that he listen. It reminded him in many ways of how Gwen often spoke to him. She's have her say, and by God she'd make sure he knew it.
His hand stiffened as she held it, and when she released it was pulled away swiftly.
"And who are you to tell me what's real and what's make believe, hmm?" he snapped, harsher than even he perhaps intended. "You don't know me, Jeanne Antoinette, and one evening and half a morning gives you no authority to tell me what you should and shouldn't see. Because you trust me when I tell you, you don't want to see it. I don't care about the actions of some King or even what the Doctor did, because I'm not them, I'm not any of them. I show what I want to show, and quite honestly you're lucky to have seen what you have. Now don't you dare tell me what I should do ever again, you hear me?"
Reinette paled slightly at his sudden and abrasive speech. Not for the tone, per sea. She had certainly heard and been dealt worse. No, it was what it said.
She did trust him. Or was well on her way to it. That was perhaps not all together wise.
No, not perhaps. It was not.
She considered her position in the seat of her curricle. It certainly placed her higher than him and gave her a sort of natural air of superiority to their -- debate. But she was confident not to need it and actually found she had no desire for it. A single wave of her hand sent the groomsman away from them as she assisted herself to the ground in a single, fluid motion.
"No, you are certainly not them because they never once acted like such a child in my presence," she bit out, even if the words were not entirely true. Louis was not the easiest of men to love. Nor the Doctor for that matter. "Temper tantrums do not suit your features Jack. I was beginning to think you had perfect countenance. I see now it is not so."
She took another step, not caring that she now looked up at him.
"I dare Monsieur Harkness. It is who I am. And if you do not like it you can go back to hiding behind trees and as I was so blessed to hear? Having no where else to go. You ask yourself which you prefer. Because while yes, I do hear you? It does not mean I am required to listen."
Jack bubbled with anger. How dare this woman speak with such an air of authority. Speak as though her words held utter certainty. The fact that some of them may was hardly the point, Jack was not one to be spoken down to, nor was he one to listen, often even when listening would be much better for him.
"And you think I hold your opinion of me high enough to care, do you?" he scoffed, as though the very idea was ridiculous.
"Well whether you want to listen or not, you hear me now and you hear me good; I don't care. I don't care for a moment what you think of me because you're just another person. Just another person out to make their own opinion and think that it matters for something and well guess what, it doesn't. You think my staying here is some sort of gift?" he laughed again, what a joke. "I could go anywhere. I could go anywhen and see -anything-. And that's my life. Something you and your dresses and your court and your kings could never understand. So don't you presume to tell me what suits me and what doesn't, because you don't know me, and you never will."
"And do you think I have a singe care what you think of me," Reinette argued swiftly, her hands moving to punctuate each angry word. "I have had food thrown at my carriage, rumors started about my daughter, and foul poetry written about my person. The women of court will not look at me and their husbands think that because I am no longer under Louis' protection I dream of their inappropriate hands and being taken roughly in hallways by their person. What you think of me hardly matters."
And now she was angry as well. Angry at countless things and countless people she had not allowed herself to fully feel in years. And Jack was facing the full force of it.
Her path might be slow, but she would not allow him to mock her for it.
"What I understand is this. My dresses and my courts and my kings? My path, however slow it might seem to you? When you are traveling anywhere? Scouring time for your amusements? Seeing anything? It is lives like mine you chose to visit and lose yourself in when you are hiding from your own. Just because when you run you have the ability to travel further makes you no better than anyone else Jack. It just makes you more weary when you stop."
Jack laughed again. A full laugh, loud and obvious and so very very false. It seemed to shatter like glass, barely even a veneer over the wealth of emotion underneath the surface, aching and bursting to break forth.
His eyes were an angry red. But that wasn't through frustration, it was through tears that threatened his exterior. Tears that promised to break him if he let them. But he wouldn't, he swore he wouldn't.
"Oh see and now that's where you're wrong," he said, stepping towards her again, standing tall, a finger accusatory pointed in her direction. "You think that's what I do? You think I run around living the hedonistic lifestyle? Oh good old Jack he loves a bit of that, yeah. Well you've got no idea. You've got no idea how I've lived. How I've had to live and watch-- You think you're special because your path is slow?"
He scoffed again, and shook his head, paced back a little before returning to her personal space once more.
"I've lived it. I've lived it over and over and over. Watching people I love as they wither and die and I don't. I don't. And I try and stop because it only ever gets harder. You think I don't know all that you had? I've been married! I had a family. I had a daughter, a grandson. And you know what? He's dead now, and do you know why? Because I killed him. Oh that's right, me, I killed him. So you wanted to see the bad? Well there you have it."
He stepped back again and turned away, turned his back. He couldn't look.m
Not precisely the same of course. His skin was warm and his wit was sharper and her physical presence struck her in different ways. But the way in which he spoke of aging collided with her own memories of the Doctor and the painful realizations the night of the Yew Tree Ball.
Reinette did not flinch as he pressed deeper into her space. It was a different sort of intimacy that could be far more threatening if she allowed it to be.
"You act as if we do not know," her voice was sharp still, though less angry. "We do. Brevity of life does not mean a lack of awareness. I have always known I was not meant to live a long life, but that does not mean I hide from it. I embrace that knowledge. I fill every day, I take hold of every second of every hour and claim it as my own. Human nature is predictable, I think. We seek to conquer things, or at the very least achieve an equitable balance. Think, just think Jack." She could not be speaking of herself, Reinette supposed. Of course she could. In her mind two faces lingered. "How much they much have loved you to surrender themselves to the imbalance of it all. To allow themselves to love you and face the hard truth that they would not be the one to sooth the hurts that were made by their inevitable departure anyway. It is one thing to fall blindly into love. It is clumsy and common. But to bravely remain in it?" Her fingers curled slightly. "We made our choices."
And his grandson. If there was anything to cut her into silence that was it. It fell over them both for a full minute as she watched the lines of his back. And the Reinette lifted her skirts to stand in front of him. She did not touch him. She would not unless he gave some indication he wished her to. Instead she simply stood well within his line of sight for when he was ready to find her.
"I cannot pretend to know how that felt. But I do know ---." She pulled a soft breath but did not look away in case he chose that moment to look up.
"They think he grew bored with me. They think he set me aside for something younger. More appealing. But the truth is I could no longer so carelessly embrace the consequences of our time together even as I embraced him. There were four miscarriages." Another breath. "Four. Each time I would think surely this time would be different. This time I would not awaken to bloodstained sheets, the ache emptiness. Once there was enough I could hold him in my arms. The rest were just a sense -- and yet surely I could be accused of murder as well. I knew what would happen did I not? That my body would reject impending motherhood with a ferocity and near predictable schedule? Yet every time I returned to his bed. Because selfishly? I wanted him. I had him and I did not wish to let them go."
Enough, Reinette told herself sharply. Enough. She straightened her spine.
"I am sorry for your loss Jack. That he is gone, and the part of you that is gone as well."
Jack stood. He stood like a hollow example of what could be a man. He didn't feel like a man, he felt empty, and it was an emptiness that hurt, as though it scraped away at anything that was left of him that was human. How could anything human remain within.
But despite that. Despite that cold shell he presented, he was listening. Oh how he was listening.
He listened and he absorbed and he filed every piece of information.
He spoke, finally, quiet and rough.
"You assume I always gave people the knowledge that I'd carry on and they wouldn't. I didn't. I lied. I lied to pretend because sometimes that's nice." He let out a slow breath and shook his head.
If he wanted to, he could remark on her revelation, but what would he say? That he understood? No that wouldn't be right, because he couldn't. Not that situation. So yes, everyone had hurt, and for each person that could be as exquisite and sharp as for the next. It didn't mean more that his hurt spanned a century or more, but he needed reminder to that.
"I can't die," he said quietly, as though he felt some sort of duty to explain something to her, even if it didn't really reach.
Jack looked away and threw his hands in the air a little. Oh it was ridiculous, it was, to get emotional and admit such personal things to a complete stranger. He shouldn't. He should stop, he should leave, he should run.
But he stood. Half laughing, a pent up little breath, not amused.
"Sometimes," he admitted, despite himself. "Yeah sometimes I do."
Those words to Jack's ears made him feel sick to his stomach. A ball that seemed to drop inside him and make him slowly start to implode.
It struck him somehow too, perhaps flicked against those cracks to make something shatter.
And he shattered.
It was more than a shock for himself to find himself crying. And not just the tears that force out, but true tears, true and full crying. Perhaps the sort he's needed to do for a long time.
"I'm sorry," he said under a sob. "I shouldn't have I-- It's not your fault." He shook his head, wiped his hand up over his eyes.
That invisible weight on his back seemed so very strong right now.
There were a great many things that Reinette was not. To list them all seemed silly and petty and far too self critical considering just how swiftly and efficiently she and Jack had managed to rip themselves open. She put those things aside.
But she also knew there were a great many things that she was. Oh, she often did them well. It was not the sort of things one wished to leave to exposed. But she was warm and soft, particularly curved and present.
She placed herself directly in front of Jack. Again, she did not move to touch him. Reinette recognized just how many boundaries she had thrown herself against already. But the line of her shoulder? The subtle lift of her chin were all done to create a silent invitation.
She was there, should he wish it.
"I have a particularly bad habit of saying a great deal of words," Reinette admitted. "Not all of them kind."
Jack, even in his emotions, could be very attuned. He'd learned to be, over many years, though there were certain things he understood better than others, certain facets of emotion.
He understood her now as her body spoke in movement and not word, and it struck him too how stark that was an offering considering his words. It was almost a level he couldn't respond to, a comfort offered when he did nothing to deserve it.
"Yeah," he sighed. "Yeah. Me too."
And he lifted his head slightly, looking at her with eyes a little more open, a little more giving, and with effort, both less and more than it should and could have taken, he reached his hand out and touched it against her waist.
"I'm not a good person," he admitted. "I'm really not."
Still she did not move. But Reinette not only had precise control over her body, she also managed the space around it. It warmed and shifted and suggested that his touch was not distasteful not unwanted.
She was here, it repeated in a slightly different language. He was skilled enough to translate.
"Nor am I," she admitted.
"We are survivors, Jack. But if the day comes when you no longer wish to live?" She could not chide him for a desire she herself had admitted to. "Because you have proven yourself stubborn enough to find a way should you truly want it? Well, then you can be good. We can both be good."
Jack watched her. Watched her and watched the movement that both she made and that she effected on the world around. He wondered if others would notice it? Was it just that it had been something in his own repertoire that he could see it at all?
His eyebrows raised, near imperceptibly, like a silent question, because it seemed too much, almost, still too giving and would it be fair of him to take?
"Something tells me," he said. "That day will be a long time coming."
And making the decision, he took a long breath, reached his hand to cup her cheek; his larger palm almost enveloping her face, and he leant down to press upon her lips just the gentlest of kisses, and in it, an apology.
For once she did not smile but instead she meat his eyes with her own.
"Yes Jack, your worst. Even it I broached the topic lightly I was quite serious in what I said. I shared a bed for five years with a man that made countless debatable decisions, ordered executions and that send hundreds of thousands of men to war and to their deaths. And let us not forget our mutual friend the Doctor. I saw into his mind as well. What he did. What he wished so desperately to forget. And I? I have many regrets of my own."
She still held his hand.
"This is a place of masks and games and make believe. I have come to treasure what is real. And in that I mean all of it. I do not commit myself in halves." There was a brief smile. "With the exception of my marriage. But as Charles had to be bribed to even meet me at the alter surely that can be forgiven."
Her fingers traced his palm lightly, then finally released his hand.
"We all need to be seen on occasion Jack. I am certainly not going to look away."
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His hand stiffened as she held it, and when she released it was pulled away swiftly.
"And who are you to tell me what's real and what's make believe, hmm?" he snapped, harsher than even he perhaps intended. "You don't know me, Jeanne Antoinette, and one evening and half a morning gives you no authority to tell me what you should and shouldn't see. Because you trust me when I tell you, you don't want to see it. I don't care about the actions of some King or even what the Doctor did, because I'm not them, I'm not any of them. I show what I want to show, and quite honestly you're lucky to have seen what you have. Now don't you dare tell me what I should do ever again, you hear me?"
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She did trust him. Or was well on her way to it. That was perhaps not all together wise.
No, not perhaps. It was not.
She considered her position in the seat of her curricle. It certainly placed her higher than him and gave her a sort of natural air of superiority to their -- debate. But she was confident not to need it and actually found she had no desire for it. A single wave of her hand sent the groomsman away from them as she assisted herself to the ground in a single, fluid motion.
"No, you are certainly not them because they never once acted like such a child in my presence," she bit out, even if the words were not entirely true. Louis was not the easiest of men to love. Nor the Doctor for that matter. "Temper tantrums do not suit your features Jack. I was beginning to think you had perfect countenance. I see now it is not so."
She took another step, not caring that she now looked up at him.
"I dare Monsieur Harkness. It is who I am. And if you do not like it you can go back to hiding behind trees and as I was so blessed to hear? Having no where else to go. You ask yourself which you prefer. Because while yes, I do hear you? It does not mean I am required to listen."
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"And you think I hold your opinion of me high enough to care, do you?" he scoffed, as though the very idea was ridiculous.
"Well whether you want to listen or not, you hear me now and you hear me good; I don't care. I don't care for a moment what you think of me because you're just another person. Just another person out to make their own opinion and think that it matters for something and well guess what, it doesn't. You think my staying here is some sort of gift?" he laughed again, what a joke. "I could go anywhere. I could go anywhen and see -anything-. And that's my life. Something you and your dresses and your court and your kings could never understand. So don't you presume to tell me what suits me and what doesn't, because you don't know me, and you never will."
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And now she was angry as well. Angry at countless things and countless people she had not allowed herself to fully feel in years. And Jack was facing the full force of it.
Her path might be slow, but she would not allow him to mock her for it.
"What I understand is this. My dresses and my courts and my kings? My path, however slow it might seem to you? When you are traveling anywhere? Scouring time for your amusements? Seeing anything? It is lives like mine you chose to visit and lose yourself in when you are hiding from your own. Just because when you run you have the ability to travel further makes you no better than anyone else Jack. It just makes you more weary when you stop."
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His eyes were an angry red. But that wasn't through frustration, it was through tears that threatened his exterior. Tears that promised to break him if he let them. But he wouldn't, he swore he wouldn't.
"Oh see and now that's where you're wrong," he said, stepping towards her again, standing tall, a finger accusatory pointed in her direction. "You think that's what I do? You think I run around living the hedonistic lifestyle? Oh good old Jack he loves a bit of that, yeah. Well you've got no idea. You've got no idea how I've lived. How I've had to live and watch-- You think you're special because your path is slow?"
He scoffed again, and shook his head, paced back a little before returning to her personal space once more.
"I've lived it. I've lived it over and over and over. Watching people I love as they wither and die and I don't. I don't. And I try and stop because it only ever gets harder. You think I don't know all that you had? I've been married! I had a family. I had a daughter, a grandson. And you know what? He's dead now, and do you know why? Because I killed him. Oh that's right, me, I killed him. So you wanted to see the bad? Well there you have it."
He stepped back again and turned away, turned his back. He couldn't look.m
Reply
Not precisely the same of course. His skin was warm and his wit was sharper and her physical presence struck her in different ways. But the way in which he spoke of aging collided with her own memories of the Doctor and the painful realizations the night of the Yew Tree Ball.
Reinette did not flinch as he pressed deeper into her space. It was a different sort of intimacy that could be far more threatening if she allowed it to be.
"You act as if we do not know," her voice was sharp still, though less angry. "We do. Brevity of life does not mean a lack of awareness. I have always known I was not meant to live a long life, but that does not mean I hide from it. I embrace that knowledge. I fill every day, I take hold of every second of every hour and claim it as my own. Human nature is predictable, I think. We seek to conquer things, or at the very least achieve an equitable balance. Think, just think Jack." She could not be speaking of herself, Reinette supposed. Of course she could. In her mind two faces lingered. "How much they much have loved you to surrender themselves to the imbalance of it all. To allow themselves to love you and face the hard truth that they would not be the one to sooth the hurts that were made by their inevitable departure anyway. It is one thing to fall blindly into love. It is clumsy and common. But to bravely remain in it?" Her fingers curled slightly. "We made our choices."
And his grandson. If there was anything to cut her into silence that was it. It fell over them both for a full minute as she watched the lines of his back. And the Reinette lifted her skirts to stand in front of him. She did not touch him. She would not unless he gave some indication he wished her to. Instead she simply stood well within his line of sight for when he was ready to find her.
"I cannot pretend to know how that felt. But I do know ---." She pulled a soft breath but did not look away in case he chose that moment to look up.
"They think he grew bored with me. They think he set me aside for something younger. More appealing. But the truth is I could no longer so carelessly embrace the consequences of our time together even as I embraced him. There were four miscarriages." Another breath. "Four. Each time I would think surely this time would be different. This time I would not awaken to bloodstained sheets, the ache emptiness. Once there was enough I could hold him in my arms. The rest were just a sense -- and yet surely I could be accused of murder as well. I knew what would happen did I not? That my body would reject impending motherhood with a ferocity and near predictable schedule? Yet every time I returned to his bed. Because selfishly? I wanted him. I had him and I did not wish to let them go."
Enough, Reinette told herself sharply. Enough. She straightened her spine.
"I am sorry for your loss Jack. That he is gone, and the part of you that is gone as well."
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But despite that. Despite that cold shell he presented, he was listening. Oh how he was listening.
He listened and he absorbed and he filed every piece of information.
He spoke, finally, quiet and rough.
"You assume I always gave people the knowledge that I'd carry on and they wouldn't. I didn't. I lied. I lied to pretend because sometimes that's nice." He let out a slow breath and shook his head.
If he wanted to, he could remark on her revelation, but what would he say? That he understood? No that wouldn't be right, because he couldn't. Not that situation. So yes, everyone had hurt, and for each person that could be as exquisite and sharp as for the next. It didn't mean more that his hurt spanned a century or more, but he needed reminder to that.
"I can't die," he said quietly, as though he felt some sort of duty to explain something to her, even if it didn't really reach.
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Though, of course, she was not one of the women or men he had lied to.
She kept the space between them neat and precisely maintained. Her gaze remained trained on his form.
"Do you wish to?"
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But he stood. Half laughing, a pent up little breath, not amused.
"Sometimes," he admitted, despite himself. "Yeah sometimes I do."
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It hurt.
And she was very nearly in a mood to blame him for it.
"Sometimes I do as well."
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It struck him somehow too, perhaps flicked against those cracks to make something shatter.
And he shattered.
It was more than a shock for himself to find himself crying. And not just the tears that force out, but true tears, true and full crying. Perhaps the sort he's needed to do for a long time.
"I'm sorry," he said under a sob. "I shouldn't have I-- It's not your fault." He shook his head, wiped his hand up over his eyes.
That invisible weight on his back seemed so very strong right now.
Reply
But she also knew there were a great many things that she was. Oh, she often did them well. It was not the sort of things one wished to leave to exposed. But she was warm and soft, particularly curved and present.
She placed herself directly in front of Jack. Again, she did not move to touch him. Reinette recognized just how many boundaries she had thrown herself against already. But the line of her shoulder? The subtle lift of her chin were all done to create a silent invitation.
She was there, should he wish it.
"I have a particularly bad habit of saying a great deal of words," Reinette admitted. "Not all of them kind."
Reply
He understood her now as her body spoke in movement and not word, and it struck him too how stark that was an offering considering his words. It was almost a level he couldn't respond to, a comfort offered when he did nothing to deserve it.
"Yeah," he sighed. "Yeah. Me too."
And he lifted his head slightly, looking at her with eyes a little more open, a little more giving, and with effort, both less and more than it should and could have taken, he reached his hand out and touched it against her waist.
"I'm not a good person," he admitted. "I'm really not."
Reply
She was here, it repeated in a slightly different language. He was skilled enough to translate.
"Nor am I," she admitted.
"We are survivors, Jack. But if the day comes when you no longer wish to live?" She could not chide him for a desire she herself had admitted to. "Because you have proven yourself stubborn enough to find a way should you truly want it? Well, then you can be good. We can both be good."
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His eyebrows raised, near imperceptibly, like a silent question, because it seemed too much, almost, still too giving and would it be fair of him to take?
"Something tells me," he said. "That day will be a long time coming."
And making the decision, he took a long breath, reached his hand to cup her cheek; his larger palm almost enveloping her face, and he leant down to press upon her lips just the gentlest of kisses, and in it, an apology.
Reply
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