history ✘ do not seek the because-
oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
a medley of extemporanea;
and love is a thing that can never go wrong;
and I am Marie of Romania.
Something is wrong.
If she were asked, then Petra would be hard pressed to say exactly what it is - there is an explanation for this tension, she is sure, but whatever it is isn't something that she knows. Gentle inquiry has thus far not resulted in anything useful and the abstract look in Thrice's eyes has kept her from resorting to kicking him repeatedly in the ankle no matter how tempting it might be; she wishes she knew if there were anything to be mad about at all. In the meantime, she goes to work and to class and flits in and out of their shared apartment along her usual schedule because if there is cause for alarm, she can only allow for it after she knows what it is. Their mutual distraction and the unnamed elephant in the room make it a strange, holding pattern state of affairs - but Petra has lived with him a while now. Sometimes things are strange.
"I know," she reminds herself in an undertone, turning the key in the lock and holding one foot up, half bent over, so she can take off her heels as she walks into the apartment.
She walks into their apartment to see Thrice half-curled into the windowsill, head in his hands, and what looks like the start of organizing his things to be packed, moved, sold, or given away. Perhaps the most unsettling thing of all is that his rolling collection of whiteboards has been scrubbed clean of their usual multicoloured and completely indecipherable notations.
With one shoe on and one shoe off, Petra pauses in the open doorway and straightens slowly, stepping out of the other heel and looking around at the beginnings of upheaval. The impulse to start shouting immediately is one she forces herself to curb before moving forward, letting the front door swing behind her and slam shut to announce her presence. "Quoi?"
It is clear that Thrice is having a bad day, but not one of his Bad Days. The capitalized days are the kind where he has trouble interacting with the world at large because it’s just too loud, too busy, and too much. This particular bad day has been caused by a clear, uncluttered vision of what is mostly likely, almost certainly going to happen. “Something terrible is coming and I know I shouldn’t speak about it, but you deserve to know. I have to go. I’m going to have to leave everything. I don’t know how long I’ve got and I’ll have to pretend it’s a shock, but…”
Those days are something that Petra has learned to adjust to; this is, she can tell for herself, something very different. She sets her bag down and leaves it there by the door with her shoes, crossing to the window to lean against it in front of him, small and dark and quiet. "You are going too fast," she says, brittle in her effort to be calm in the face of whatever this is, "tell me slower, I don't understand."
“I don’t know why or how, but I know that in a week or less, I won’t be here. I’m going to be somewhere else and it’ll be quieter and I can’t see when I’ll be back.” It’s not that Thrice saw the Lovers, but rather that (nearly) all his possible futures branch out from choices that don’t involve his schooling, their apartment, or her presence.
Petra sits down - suddenly, but it's not anything so melodramatic as a fall. She tucks one foot in close and leans against her other knee, her gaze traveling restlessly over the room and the window and everywhere other than Thrice while she tries to organize in her mind some kind of a response to that. Nothing in their lives has been what she'd think of as unremarkable, but this is a conversation she feels unprepared for if not unequal to. "It isn't good for you, this- this I don't know what this is, it isn't good." A statement, rather than a question; it only takes a glance to tell that much.
“It’s all so uncertain,” he says, avoiding her direct question in a way that is tantamount to answering it. “And I don’t know what to do. The choices I have aren’t…there’s none that I can see that will let me stay here, safely with you.”
"I wish you would." Her tone is less plaintive than it is jagged, a quick and sharp edge of what she hides under near rigid composure. Petra can wish all she wants to, but she's become accustomed to trusting - so far as she can - what he says about these things, and if there isn't a way...
...then she will have to devise something else. She rests her chin on her knee and looks up at him, narrow-eyed and holding on tenaciously to her bad habit of managing things instead of letting herself give in and be upset. Be upset later, she decides, when she is sure how much there is to be upset about. "Why is it not safe?"
“Can you tell me why you’d leave? Why I’d never see you or write to you or anything to do with you ever again? Why you wouldn’t be a part of my life?” Knowing full well that this sounds crazy (even for him), but if she’s suddenly not a part of his existence in any way, then there are only a few reasons he could think of. “It’s either by letter or there’s nothing. A great, vast horrible nothing.”
"I wouldn't," she says fiercely, which only serves to support the theory of awful things. "Ah, I would never, I don't want to at all." Yes, perhaps he gets the point. She puts her teeth in her lip and presses her hands to her mouth, thinking, still trying to navigate this sudden onset of some mysterious shroud over their lives.
"So-" she hesitates, and then presses on, "so, then we will write. No? Me, I know we are not going to be apart for all of the time, so we write."
“I would like to write, very much so, but I may be gone for a long time, forever, and even if I could come back, you know I’m not getting better,” he says softly while fussing with the already fraying hem of his jeans.
Frowning, Petra presses her hand against his where he's fidgeting to still it. "The maybes, is it? All of these maybes in you. No, maybe not, but I don't think - I didn't go away, Troisième. I don't want to, and I don't like this tone, this 'for your own good'. I am a very big girl, mon coeur, even so big I make my very own decisions for my very own self. You can say to me, 'don't wait, Petra, I don't want you any more', and...then I will shout at you, but it's for you to say. Don't be stupidly noble, that's all, you're very bad at it."
“I’m greedy enough not to claim that it’s for you own good. I want you to understand how I’ll likely act and then I trust you to choose what you think is best.” Some have claimed that Thrice doesn’t have a romantic bone in his body. This is entirely true. He hides his romanticism somewhere far less obvious than in his bones. “We both know that you don’t have to and shouldn’t have to wait for something that may never come.”
"I understand." She smiles through some other feeling less inclined to look warmly and touches his face, briefly, with her fingertips. "I know you, I know you as well as I can and I think it's pretty well. And I think it'll come, and if it doesn't-" a pause that she doesn't intend for, a natural one, because in some ways she is just barely grown and certainly not the pillar she presents herself as, "-if it doesn't, well, it isn't wasted, anyway."
When she touches his face, he lets out a breath and finally relaxes, letting some of that terrible, almost unnatural tension seep out of his body. “I’ll rely on you to take up knitting and send me socks, chocolate, and cigarettes in small, serious brown paper parcels.”
In other words, he’s probably in love with her.
"Mmmn, I will hide the dirty pictures of myself in the socks," she tells him, affectionately, rolling up onto her knees and kissing his forehead before she stands up. (Which means she loves him, too.) "You see it isn't the end of the world. It isn't even the end of our world. I decided."
“And God help any fool who hasn’t yet learned to acquiesce to your wisdom” he says with the beginnings of a smile. Thrice stands and presses a quick kiss to her cheek before moving on to more pressing matters. “There’s chicken in the oven.”
Because when you’re convinced that imaginary monsters (vampires, pah!) are coming for you, it’s always a good time to make dinner.
"I brought fudge," she says over her shoulder, wandering away from him to collect her shoes and her bag from where they were so unceremoniously dropped by the door. (Mainly because the fudge is in her bag; she still feels oddly shocky and she thinks she might not like to have to move for the rest of the evening.) "And cigarettes. After dinner, I'll help you with the- the packing."
The thought of packing turns his stomach, but he’s not flip enough to suggest they watch a movie instead. “I love that you surprise me.” It’s true. He wasn’t expecting fudge.
"You're very hard to give the surprise, it makes me feel accomplished and impressive." Obviously, this is why she keeps doing it. Petra digs both the fudge and the fresh pack of cigarettes out of her purse and comes to lean in the kitchen doorway, the loose fit of her sweater sliding down her shoulder. "Do you need me to do anything?"
“You could cut the tomatoes for a salad?” There are time when Thrice wishes he could believe in fate and accept that there was and is just one way that events are meant to unfold, but he has constant evidence to the contrary. Choices must be made and consequences accepted.
"Ouais." Tomatoes and salad are a nice, simple, easy choice with no more complex results than deliciousness, much unlike anything else since Petra got home. It's sometimes very easy here, a familiarity of how they fit into the space around each other, and she thinks that she will miss quietly cutting tomatoes and keeping an eye on the oven timer, because it will be different and not as it is now.
It is a particularly stupid thought to have, she decides, and if she happens to clear her throat very deliberately then it doesn't mean anything because she is doing just fine being steady.
"I'll set the table." Never comfortable with physical displays of affection, it's worth noting that Thrice stops to hug her, chin over her shoulder and arms wrapped around her waist. He's not really doing a very good job of getting knives and forks out, is he? "Before anything, we should create a list of code words. So you know the truth."
So much worth noting that Petra's hands still over the cutting board, and she drops the one not holding a knife against his arm around her. "Absolument," in her careful voice, the one she uses when she doesn't quite trust herself out loud. "Do you think we will need very many?"
"No, just a few for the most important things." Odds are none of those things will be good. They'll need to have a code for 'run away' and 'it's the end for me, darling' and probably very little else.
"'Important things'." Petra's tone suggests she can guess what he means and in the same breath implies just what she thinks of that - she's always been inclined to take refuge from ache in being coolly and quietly furious. It's the worst, she thinks, when she has nothing in front of her to be angry with; it leaves her like this, bitter and drained and leaning against him like the aftermath of a fight she hasn't had. "I know."
There's nothing more to be said. He presses a kiss to her temple and goes to set the table.