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.
She did not possess the same certainly as Jack when it came to her own particular path, so she chose not to comment further on it. Even she was not that strong an actress.
But as difficult as it might be, as painful? She was pleased for him. Pleased at the idea of someone like Jack, cutting a swath through life and making proper work of it. So many people failed miserably at their ultimate charge --- living.
She borrowed just enough moments to cobble together what was surely something approaching a genuine smile just before his mouth gently met her own.
Jack lingered, lips on lips and contact on contact. It was strange because this was something else. The kisses of the night before had been a joke, an attempt to set tongues wagging. Though he wondered now if that hadn't been an excuse. An excuse neither of them could have quite realised.
He pulled back, after a moment, but not far. Just a breath between them, and breath that could be felt against skin.
He didn't know what to say, because he wasn't good with words. He wasn't one adept at talking because he hid himself so well.
But in his mind something struck. Something in what she'd mentioned before, about her lack of life expectancy. It worried him, worried for her fragility and he chided himself for not knowing his history well enough to know her story and not need to ask.
"What's wrong?" he asked in a whisper, stroked a finger along her cheek. "What you said, with you. What's wrong?"
She liked the way this felt. Liked the way that he felt. There was no pressure, no need to work herself into exhaustion in an attempt to impressive him. Indeed that had just spent the better part of the morning trying to push the other away.
They were resting, however briefly. And for some reason against Jack it actually felt restful. Some, she was certain, saw his eyes and his smile and his form and found temptation. She found it in this.
His question caused a sharp intake of breath. She had thought she had escaped her own inquiry from their interchange of confessions. Not only had he come back around to her own weakness, he had done so when she was close against him and there was very little to do to hide. Any attempt made to dissemble, and he would feel it. He would know.
Her gaze lowered by inches to his mouth, and then her eyes closed altogether as his finger moved over her cheek.
"I suppose the answer depends upon what doctor you ask. They all have their opinion."
Jack felt her falter, but he was prepared for it. He knew his question would have not been an easy one, and that to a degree it was well past his place to ask. But ask he did, and he was there when her body shifted. There with an arm tight around her, supporting her.
He didn't want to push too much. But then he felt that perhaps she'd let him know if it was too much. If they got to the point where enough was enough. If she wanted to withdraw, he had confidence that she would.
She did not immediately pull away. It was born from a sense that with how much was already exposed and opened, what harm could a few more words be?
If she did not stop to examine the question, she would be fine. Her chin lifted slightly again with resolve.
"My constitution. My lungs. My breeding. My blood." Instinctualy her palms shifted to rest flat against Jack's chest, effectively hiding the scars on her risks. Reinette chided herself for not already putting on her driving gloves.
"I have been placed on the most absurd diets. You would laugh, I think."
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."
Reply
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.
Reply
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?"
Reply
But he stood. Half laughing, a pent up little breath, not amused.
"Sometimes," he admitted, despite himself. "Yeah sometimes I do."
Reply
It hurt.
And she was very nearly in a mood to blame him for it.
"Sometimes I do as well."
Reply
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."
Reply
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
But as difficult as it might be, as painful? She was pleased for him. Pleased at the idea of someone like Jack, cutting a swath through life and making proper work of it. So many people failed miserably at their ultimate charge --- living.
She borrowed just enough moments to cobble together what was surely something approaching a genuine smile just before his mouth gently met her own.
Yes, Reinette offered. She was sorry as well.
Reply
He pulled back, after a moment, but not far. Just a breath between them, and breath that could be felt against skin.
He didn't know what to say, because he wasn't good with words. He wasn't one adept at talking because he hid himself so well.
But in his mind something struck. Something in what she'd mentioned before, about her lack of life expectancy. It worried him, worried for her fragility and he chided himself for not knowing his history well enough to know her story and not need to ask.
"What's wrong?" he asked in a whisper, stroked a finger along her cheek. "What you said, with you. What's wrong?"
Reply
They were resting, however briefly. And for some reason against Jack it actually felt restful. Some, she was certain, saw his eyes and his smile and his form and found temptation. She found it in this.
His question caused a sharp intake of breath. She had thought she had escaped her own inquiry from their interchange of confessions. Not only had he come back around to her own weakness, he had done so when she was close against him and there was very little to do to hide. Any attempt made to dissemble, and he would feel it. He would know.
Her gaze lowered by inches to his mouth, and then her eyes closed altogether as his finger moved over her cheek.
"I suppose the answer depends upon what doctor you ask. They all have their opinion."
Reply
He didn't want to push too much. But then he felt that perhaps she'd let him know if it was too much. If they got to the point where enough was enough. If she wanted to withdraw, he had confidence that she would.
"And what about the ones you ask?"
Reply
If she did not stop to examine the question, she would be fine. Her chin lifted slightly again with resolve.
"My constitution. My lungs. My breeding. My blood." Instinctualy her palms shifted to rest flat against Jack's chest, effectively hiding the scars on her risks. Reinette chided herself for not already putting on her driving gloves.
"I have been placed on the most absurd diets. You would laugh, I think."
Reply
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